Nascent Bay Area startups continue to bring in significant amounts of early funding.
Local companies raised more than $57 million in seed rounds over the last week. Boosting the total was an extra large round raised by You.com.
The startup, which has developed a web search engine that prioritizes results based on users' choices and artificial intelligence, raised $20 million. Investors in the wannabe Google LLC rival included Salesforce.com Inc. CEO Marc Benioff's Time Ventures. That investment makes sense when you consider that You.com, legally known as SuSea, Inc., was founded by Richard Socher, Salesforce's former chief scientist.
Here are more details on that and this past week other seed deals:
SuSea, Inc. (dba You.com), Palo Alto, $20 million: Marc Benioff's Time Ventures led the round for this developer of a new web search engine. Breyer Capital, Sound Ventures and Day One Ventures also invested.
Cradlewise Inc., San Francisco, $7 million: Footwork led the round for this maker of a smart crib that monitors babies' sleep cycle and automatically helps soothe them back to sleep. CRV, SOSV and Better Capital also invested.
Theai Inc. (dba Inworld AI), Mountain View, $7 million: Kleiner Perkins and CRV led the round for this provider of tools for creating intelligent non-player characters for games and virtual worlds. Meta Platforms Inc. — the former Facebook Inc. — also invested.
Supergrain, Inc., San Francisco, $6.8 million: Benchmark led the round for this developer of data management software. Base Case Capital and Operator Collective also invested.
Cascade Labs, Inc. (dba Cascade), San Francisco, $5.3 million: First Round Capital led the round for this developer of cloud-based data analysis software. Redpoint Ventures and Susa Ventures also invested.
Guardians Collective Inc., San Francisco, $3.5 million: Reach Capital led the round for this provider of a service that pairs parents of young children with childhood development experts and educators. Impact America Fund and Gary Philanthropies also invested.
Blotout Inc., Fremont, $3 million: First Rays Venture Partners led the round for this provider of a service that tracks and analyzes customer data. Y Combinator, Pascal Capital and Launchpad Capital also invested.
Climateplan Inc. (dba Waterplan), San Francisco, $2.6 million: Giant Ventures led the round for this developer of a service that helps businesses monitor and analyze their use of their water sources.
Shortboxed LLC, San Francisco, $2.2 million: Adam Draper of Boost VC led the round for this operator of a comic book marketplace. Webb Investment Network and FinSight Ventures also invested.
