A handful of Greater Washington players raised fresh financing in August.
warodom changyencham
The money keeps moving.
Though the rapid pace of new investments slowed a bit in August, D.C.-area companies continued raising new rounds throughout the month. Among them: Riverdale medical device startup Medcura with $7.4 million and Arlington pizza chain Pupatella with $7.5 million.
They followed multiple local ventures that secured backing in July and even cracked the $100 million mark in a single raise, including Arlington risk management startup Interos to Gaithersburg biopharma Sirnaomics. And that came after heavy action through February, April, May and June.
August saw more of that activity. Here are more Greater Washington players that raised fresh financing:
- CareSave Technologies Inc.: The McLean company is raising $25 million in an equity round, it reported Aug. 3 in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. As of that date, more than a month ago, the business had sold more than $17 million of that target. CEO Todd Walrath told the Washington Business Journal Tuesday that the company expects the total amount to be sold over the next week or two, and that he would be able to comment further at that point. CareSave, whose HomeCare.com platform connects families with in-home health care providers, has raised more than $47 million to date, per Pitchbook data. Walrath started CareSave in 2014 and launched the HomeCare.com website in January 2016, after selling his previous venture, senior care website Senior-Living.Net for $4.5 million to RealPage, which took the company public. Walrath was also the former chief operating officer of Weather.com and group vice president of AOL local search, as well as CEO and founder of Leads.com.
- BloomCatch: The Centreville plant identification app has raised $50,000 from CIT GAP Funds, BloomCatch founder and CEO Raymond Magee told the WBJ. That capital, from the Virginia Innovation Partnership Authority Investment Division’s direct investment program, makes the Center for Innovative Technology a lead investor in the company’s $500,000 seed round, which it’s now raising via equity crowdfunding site WeFunder. The Northern Virginia startup has not raised other capital to date, Magee said. The company said it plans to use the funding for marketing.
- Liatris Inc.: The Bethesda thermal energy company opened August with a $1 million seed round led by the Maryland Momentum Fund, the University System of Maryland’s seed investment initiative, and Maryland venture capital firm Old Line Capital Partners. The raise marked the first external investment for the 3-year-old startup, which develops advanced thermal insulation materials. The funding positions the business to scale up pilot samples of its first product, a nonflammable insulation board that aims to diminish major building fires.
- Embody Inc.: The Norfolk medical device company with strong D.C.-area ties announced Aug. 4 a $20.5 million funding round that included $11.5 million in equity financing and another $9 million in debt financing — $5 million of which has already been funded. This comes after the business raked in $9.3 million in May 2020 to expand its team and advance a new soft-tissue-repair technology. CEO Jeff Conroy lives in Vienna, while some investors are also based in Greater Washington.
- Veda Data Solutions Inc.: The data science and machine learning startup — which now goes by veda and has moved its headquarters from D.C. to Madison, Wisconsin — closed July with $45 million in a Series B round led by Greenwich, Connecticut-based VC firm Oak HC/FT. Veda plans to use the capital to speed up growth and cut administrative costs for more health insurance companies and providers — and projects it will save health plans 500,000 hours in provider data processing time in 2021, it said in a press release. The business also said it expects its customer base will grow seven-fold by the fourth quarter of 2022. Meghan Gaffney, veda’s co-founder and CEO, was formerly a principal at national fundraising firm and political action committee MGB Development after working in political fundraising and operations for years.
