Cybersecurity. Health care. Energy. Human Resources.
They’re some of the areas we’ve seen consistent and growing investment over the past year — and where a good chunk of the money continues to flow in the Greater Washington startup ecosystem.
During February, investors backed businesses across these sectors, including:
- Eyrus Inc.: The D.C. jobsite startup announced Feb. 22 a $12 million Series A round led by New York’s Spring Mountain Capital. The company’s intelligence platform aims to connect users with work amid a labor shortage in the oil and gas and construction industries. And the fresh infusion will help to speed its growth “particularly as the company enters new market segments and geographies,” Eyrus said in its announcement. The business, about 7 years old, said it will also “continue its hiring blitz.” Eyrus has raised $15 million in lifetime funding, according to PitchBook.
- Picnic Corp.: The District-based cybersecurity firm said Feb. 23 it raised $14 million in Series A funding. Crosslink Capital, Rally Ventures and Energy Impact Partners led the round, according to the company’s announcement. The company’s platform arms organization with the tools to “harden the human data layer” and prevent attackers from getting access to private information via its employees, Picnic founder Matt Polak said in a statement. Specifically, the firm’s platform gives businesses the ability to see what attackers see and anticipate potential targets, eliminate data beyond the firewall to prevent attacks and monitor other potential threats.
- Federated Wireless Inc.: The Arlington company disclosed $58 million in a Series D round on Feb. 22 led by an affiliate of Cerberus Capital Management, with participation from existing investors Allied Minds and GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund. “Private wireless will deliver the type of transformation for enterprises that the cloud delivered for IT infrastructure,” Federated Wireless CEO Iyad Tarazi said in a statement. “This investment will enable us to scale our spectrum platforms, invest in commercialization, and accelerate private wireless market adoption.” The decade-old company wants to use the capital to make it easier for organizations to customize their wireless networks, and simplify how they’re purchased, deployed and managed. PitchBook pegs the company’s lifetime funding at $187 million.
- Sayari Labs Inc.: The District financial intelligence and corporate transparency startup made public Feb. 1 a $40 million credit facility from Bridge Bank’s technology group. The credit facility, which includes venture debt and a line of credit for monthly revenue, “will provide liquidity as Sayari expands our reach to businesses and governments around the world,” Sayari Chief Financial Officer Eric Rhoades said in a statement. Sayari helps big corporations and financial institutions identify risk factors for fraud and national security threats. And its flagship product gives companies tools to comply with regulations and insights about their customers, vendors, employees and other related players. The credit facility follows a $40 million Series C round the company closed in September. Sayari had raised more than $96 million in venture capital funding as of February, according to PitchBook.
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Those raises came alongside a flurry of others, including McLean’s Somatus with $325 million, Beltsville’s Ion Storage Systems with $30 million, North Bethesda’s Bark Social with $2 million and Arlington’s Shift5 with $50 million. And others — including Woodbridge’s Minwo and CarpeDM, and D.C.’s Rose Health — are raising right now. That’s after a busy January on the funding front.
It all follows a record-setting 2021, when the D.C. region counted 415 venture deals, about a 119% increase from 2020, totaling $5.7 billion — more than 200% growth year-over-year, per data from the latest PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor report. But the pace of VC deals could be slowing down locally as well as nationally, according to Revolution Growth Managing Partner Steve Murray.
“It just feels like between inflation and interest rates and now political strife, that there’s this soup of challenges that reflect themselves in lots of volatility” in the public markets, Murray told reporter Ana Lucía Murillo in a recent interview. That’s “really frozen some folks out,” he noted, resulting in a slowdown in deal flow for some firms that he’s observed just in the past two or three months.
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