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If you’re new here, I’m Abigail! I’m a mechanical-engineer-turned-investor at Hyperplane, a VC firm in Boston that has been investing in seed-stage B2B machine learning companies since 2015. Every two weeks, this newsletter serves to list Boston’s latest financings and highlight ecosystem relevancies.
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🔥 Welcome back! With finally some cooler mornings! July is usually our hottest month of the year but last week, Boston’s blistering temperatures came with some unexpected add-ons, escorted by bizarre downpours and several-day heat advisory warnings from the mayor’s office. But alas, lower temperatures came just in time for the Pan Mass Challenge this weekend! Shoutout to all the folks riding this year- you’re truly inspiring. In case you’re trying to hang on to the heat, tonight Beyonce will perform at Gillette (check out that punchline setup) with a single-night stop on her Renaissance World Tour. And, in the case you’re escaping to the beach to beat the heat, make sure to check the White Shark tracker app before getting in the water, there have been dozens of shark sightings off of Cape Cod last weekend. Eek. Finally, it would be remiss of me not to encourage checking out the Annual Boston Women's Market in Downtown Crossing showcasing 15 women-owned small businesses this Saturday.
🌟 Boston’s private companies showed up this week despite the tough fundraising markets: 25 companies raised nearly $540M across several industries and as per usual, there was an emphasis on healthcare. Breaking it down, 13 of the 25 were healthcare or healthcare IT companies, 4 were related to climate technology, and we had a few financial technology companies this week as well. Although the spread is large— Biofourmis took more than the majority of it with a $320M round. A ton of cool companies to add to your radar, dive in!
And so, with that, let’s get into it.
Financings are listed from smallest to largest. Biotech financings over $80M+ are usually not covered.
25 companies that raised a total of nearly $540M over the last two weeks. Biofourmis was the Big Kahuna this week with a massive $340M venture round led by Intel Capital.
Best Bees Co. | $100K | Sustainability
A company offering installation and maintenance of honeybee hives in cities across the US, Best Bees, has closed $100K of a total offering amount filed for $4M. Best Bees provides professional beekeeping services to commercial and residential properties, harvests honey and collects data for their research partners (and most importantly, they allow customers to keep 100% of the raw honey produced). Take an assessment to see if your property is fit for bees!!
SimulConsult | $405K debt | Healthcare IT
Provider of an AI-powered augmentation platform for diagnosing medical conditions, SimulConsult, has raised $405K of a $1M offering in the form of debt and other securities from 4 investors. Founded by Harvard Med faculty, Michael Segal MD PhD, SimulConsult’s platform generates differential diagnoses from a patient’s clinical data via genome and phenome analyzers, including both the diseases expected and less obvious diseases that should be considered.
Quolet Industries | $500K | Healthcare
A stealth-mode pharmaceutical manufacturing enablement company, Quolet Industries, has raised $500K from 4 investors. Founded by the Managing Partner of DavCard Group, Dewayne Davenport, Quolet develops SoliSol™, a drug delivery platform for enabling the efficient delivery of hard-to-formulate drugs to their target tissue. Others listed on the filing as directors include the COO of RS Oncology George Naumov, along with Charles Pepin, and Greg Stoloff.
Mercury | $500K debt | Sports Tech
Athlete-driven media company leveraging the recent NCAA ruling allowing college athletes to monetize their Name, Image and Likeness (NIL), Mercury, has raised $500K in debt from 3 investors. Co-founded by former football player turned sports media entrepreneur, Adam Breneman, and digital sports media veteran, Porter Grieve, Mercury originally curated fan experiences using digital NFTs, and has since shifted focus to offering a suite of content-producing and engagement services to athletic departments, athletes, and brands.
EIP Pharma | $810K | Healthcare
EIP Pharma, a clinical-stage biotech working on treatments for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimers and dementia, has raised $800K from 2 investors. Announced in March, EIP plans to merge with a struggling publicly-traded biotech, Diffusion (Nasdaq: DVVN) in an all-stock reverse merger, renaming to CervoMed. They plan to start a 160-person Phase IIb clinical trial for an ex-Vertex drug treating a common form of dementia. More here.
Endolytix Therapeutics | $2M debt | Healthcare
Developing therapies for the most resistant of antibiotic infections, Endolytix, has closed $2M in debt of a $4M total offering amount. Endolytix’s drug development efforts address intrinsic antibiotic resistance in nontuberculous mycobacterial infections (NTM). The company last raised $12M from Morningside Group.
Basys.ai | $2.2M | Healthcare IT
Value based care enablement and financial optimization platform for health systems and payers, Basys.ai, has raised a $2.4M venture round led by Nina Capital with participation from North South Ventures and others. A member of the Harvard Innovation Labs and MIT Sandbox, Basys.ai aims to enable healthcare stakeholders with the ability to participate in value-based care contracting by optimizing the prior authorization process.
Rhino Health | $2.25M | Healthcare IT
Software for the development, validation, and maintenance of AI models in healthcare, Rhino Health, has raised $2.25M from 3 investors. Rhino’s platform aims to accelerate the translation of research into clinical decision-support tools by providing medical researchers and AI developers with fully equipped development environments. The company last raised a $6.7M Seed round co-led by LionBird and Fusion Fund in 2022.
NFlection Therapeutics | $4M debt | Healthcare
NFlection Therapeutics, a company developing treatments for a class of rare disorders referred to as RASopathies, has raised $4M in debt. The company successfully passed a Phase 1/2a trial for one of its pipeline drugs and will move to enter a Phase 2b clinical trial. The Children’s Tumor Foundation announced a “significant impact investment” in said trial. The company last raised a $20M Series A in 2020 from venBio Partners and F-Prime Capital.
CCX | $5.4M | Healthcare IT
A pharmaceutical and healthcare payer negotiation platform for the European oncology drug market, CCX, has raised $5.4M from 24 total investors including FJ Labs. CCX’s platform manages the negotiation, rebate, and deal management process for access agreements between payers and pharma to improve how drug pricing and reimbursement negotiations are processed. The company last raised a $3M round from Accel in 2020.
Pure Lithium | $5.9M | Energy
A company developing a next generation of batteries with the first battery-ready lithium metal electrodes, Pure Lithium, has raised $5.9M from 18 investors. Co-founded by Emilie Bodoin and serial founder, Donald Sadoway, Ph.D., the company claims to eliminate 90% of the costs to produce traditional lithium metal foil in developing the first rechargeable non-flammable lithium metal battery. The company last raised $9.4M from undisclosed investors in 2022. For fellow engineering nerds, more on the tech here.
BusRight | $7M | Mobility
A platform that tracks school buses and student safety, BusRight, raised a $7M Series A led by Las Olas Venture Capital and followed by Underscore VC, Automotive Ventures, and Alumni Ventures, among others. Co-founded by rockstar industry vets Keith Corso and Phil Dunn, BusRight’s platform aims to address the persistent driver shortages and increasing route complexities faced by school districts and integrates routing software, GPS, dynamic driver navigation via military-grade tablets, and a bus-tracking app for parents. They last raised a $2.5M Seed led by Underscore VC.
Portrait Analytics | $7M | FinTech
AI-powered research platform for finance professionals and investors, Portrait Analytics, has raised a $7M Seed round led by Unusual Ventures, followed by .406 Ventures and angel investors. Portrait’s platform leverages generative AI to think, write, and analyze like a well-trained investment analyst, and aims to 10x the speed at which investment professionals discover and become experts on companies. The company was co-founded by a pedigreed former hedge fund analyst David Plon after working at top funds like Baupost and Slate Path Capital.
Ubicept | $8M | AI Infra (Computer Vision)
A company enabling computer vision outputs by using single-photon sensors, Ubicept, has raised an $8M Seed round led by Ubiquity Ventures and E14 Fund. Cofounded by researchers at the MIT Media Lab and UWisconsin Madison, Ubicept’s perception system operates in extreme lighting, capture sharp images of motion, and even "see" around corners. According to Ubiquity Ventures, Ubicept is the first company in the world with a "count individual photons" approach to computer vision, enabling a wide array of use cases.
WindESCo | $9M | Climate Tech
Provider of a software platform for wind turbine and renewable energy asset performance and reliability, WindESCo, has raised $9M from 5 total investors. WindESCo offers two core products for revenue optimization and wake interference, respectively, and claims annual energy production (AEP) improvements of 3-5% while safeguarding assets from climate risks. WindESCo is also working on what it calls "Social Wind Farms" in which smart turbines can "learn" from each other to act as a single optimized unit. The company last raised a $10M Series B from WAVE Equity Partners in 2020.
Vaxess Technologies | $9M | Healthcare
Vaxess Technologies, a company developing slow-release skin patches to deliver vaccinations instead of via shots, has closed $9M of a $12M filing. The MIMIX patch system uses biomaterials from silk proteins to deliver a pipeline of vaccinations that currently include the flu, COVID19, and other mRNA antigens. Vaxess is working to expand the pipeline to deliver undisclosed therapeutics in partnership with DARPA after announcing positive interim results from a first-in-man phase 1 trial of their flu vaccine. They last raised a $35M Series B led by RA Capital Management.
Verve Motion | $10.6M | Robotics
Verve Motion, the company behind the SafeLight Suit, a human exosuit for workers who regularly engage in heavy lifting operations, has raised $10.6M from 12 investors. First commercialized after spinning out of Harvard’s Wyss Institute and the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Verve Motion’s suit takes 30 seconds to put on and provides up to 240N of assistance force for manual laborers, relieving up to 40% of the strain off a worker’s back. The company last raised a $15M Series A in 2021 from Construct Capital, Founder Collective, Pillar VC, and Safar Partners, among others.
Akooda | $11M | Enterprise SaaS (AI)
Provider of an enterprise intelligence platform offering insights into operational efficiency, Akooda, has raised an $11M Seed round led by NFX and followed by Atlassian Ventures, Village Global, and Founder Collective, among others. Akooda’s platform aims to be the central spot for an enterprise’s internal data by integrating with their SaaS tool stack and breaking down units of work using statistical modeling and LLMs, ultimately allowing all employees to understand core business KPIs and goals.
Family First | $11M | Employee Benefits
A company offering caregiving-as-a-benefit, Family First, has raised an $11M Series A led by RPM Ventures and Eos Ventures. Combining an AI tech platform and curated expert care team, Family First addresses the impacts that working caregivers of loved ones suffer on their professional lives, a cause that inevitably touches most working adults at some point in their lives. The company went through the Techstars accelerator and raised from Two Bridge Capital in 2022.
Sungage Financial | $12.2M | FinTech
Residential solar financing company, Sungage Financial, has raised $12.2M in the form of convertible debt and equity from 4 total investors. With offices both in Boston and in Oakland, CA, and teams in Hawaii and Utah, Sungage currently operates in 44 states and offers consumer-friendly solar loan options.
AOA Dx | $23.6M | Healthcare
AI-powered platform for the early detection of ovarian cancer through glycolipids, AOA Dx has raised $23.6M from 119 investors including Good Growth Capital and Adaptive Capital Partners. AOA’s products, GlycoLocate and AKRIVIS GD, use tumor marker gangliosides as biomarkers to diagnose early-stage cancers. AOA was a member of Y Combinator’s S21 cohort and last raised a $7M round from Avestria Ventures, AlleyCorp, and Olive Tree Capital, among others.
P0x Labs | $25M | Blockchain
Provider of blockchain-operating privacy tech for web3, P0x Labs, has raised a $25M Series A led by Polychain Capital and Qiming Venture Partners. P0x Labs is the creator of the Manta Network, a privacy protocol running on the Polkadot blockchain for privatizing crypto assets. Using zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP), P0x Labs competes with projects like Aleo and Aztec to build the private layer for web3. They last raised a $5.5M Seed round from CoinFund.
Allotex | $30M | Healthcare
Allotex, developing customized allograft tissue lenses for use in ophthalmic (eye) surgeries, has raised a $30M Series B led by KCK Medtech. Allotex’s advancements enable a new 7 minute procedure that has demonstrated improvement in near vision without impact on distance vision. Allotex plans to commercially launch its product, TransForm, in the European market in early 2024, while FDA clinical trials will start in the US in 2024.
Biofourmis | $320M | Healthcare IT
Biofourmis, a provider of AI-based patient-monitoring systems enabling virtual care delivery and drug development, has raised a $320M Series D led by Intel Capital— who threw in $20M to the round as an extension— and General Atlantic with additional participation from CVS Health. They hope to draw on Intel’s edge-computing capabilities to level up their tech and will work to add chronic diseases that require long-term care to their platform. The company last raised a $100M Series C led by SoftBank, and Trevor Fetter and Sachin H. Jain are the newest additions to their board.
*deep breath* Phew. All for now!
Covering the upcoming numbers to watch for (🔜) , the relevant numbers of last week (🔙), and the tech headlines of the last two weeks (🆕).
🗓 Earnings calendar here, and full economic numbers release calendar here.
Today, we’ll get S&P Global Manufacturing PMI, US construction spending, Job Openings and Labor Turnover. Wednesday, we have an update on US oil prices, and private employment and pay numbers. Thursday, the Challenger jobs report (national corporate layoffs), S&P Global Services PMI, jobless claims. Friday, we’re getting the updated unemployment rate and avg. hourly earnings.
🏦 Recession update: GDP is up to 2.4% in Q2 2023, up from 2% in Q1, and well above the predicted 1.8% that was expected for this quarter. Core PCE prices, a measure the Fed uses as a measure of inflation, sits at 4.1%, below the expectation and a positive indication. Wage growth is still higher than the Fed would like it, allowing for continued skepticism.
💼 Jobs: Initial jobless claims fell well below expectations (less folks laid off), continuing claims dropped to the fewest in 6 months (workers aren’t staying unemployed for long), and nearly 5% of job postings in the US feature a signing bonus (labor demand remains strong).
🛍 Consumer spending: According to Friday's BEA data, real personal income hit an all-time high in June. The report also pointed out consumer resilience as spending surged during the same period.
💵 US Dollar: USD has been declining since September, and reportedly, nearly 50% of the S&P 500’s earnings have a negative correlation with USD. Beneficiaries include: Tech, Communication Services, Staples, and Materials.
📈 Rates: The Fed hiked rates again by 25 bps to 5.25-5.5%, the highest in 21 years. Powell made sure we weren’t thinking optimistically and reassured us that target inflation (2%) wouldn’t be reached until at least 2025.
🌍 International: European Central Bank decided to raise the three key ECB interest rates by 25 basis points after eight consecutive rate rises since July 2022 totaling 400 basis points.
🫂 Better together: Banc of California will buy PacWest, and JPMorgan is stepping in to cover $2B of PacWest mortgages in the deal.
🏙 CRE: This is the first time that office space in the US is expected to decrease, and it’s not driven by demand, but rather, an increase in demolitions and repurposing of commercial buildings.
🚀 Innovation Corner (new AI product releases):
🤖 Google announced RT-2, a new AI model that translates vision and language into robotic actions.
🎇 Stable Diffusion’s new upgrade of their base model in the new Stable Diffusion XL 1.0 (SDXL) will substantially increase the quality of images generated through text prompts.
🌏🪙 Max Altman, OpenAI’s cofounder, went live with a new project called Worldcoin, a crypto protocol giving users a verified digital identity through an iris scan registering them in the system.
📈 Together AI announced big moves towards extending the context window — and therefore enabling higher performance — of open-source projects. Their approach to extending LLaMA-2-7B to a 32K context model is outlined in it’s entirety and replicable for developers.
❌ Elon’s X Factor: Earlier this year in March, Elon filed paperwork for the incorporation of X, a new company that folks weren’t totally sure of. This company was (is?) Twitter- a rebrand part of Musk’s broader vision to build an “everything app,” similar to WeChat in China.
📣 Buzzy: In Q2, we doubled our mention of AI on earnings calls relative to Q1.
🟧 And it was(n’t quite) all yellow: Yellow, the world’s third largest less-than-truckload carrier behind FedEx and Old Dominion (and whose logo spells out “Yellow” on an *orange* background… uh, what?), is filing for bankruptcy after years of financial instability and union strikes.
🏰 Elon’s Ivory Tower: Tesla allegedly created a Diversion Team to undermine thousands of customer complaints and cancel as many service appointments as possible, according to an exclusive from Reuters.
⚡️ EV: Automakers like GM, Honda and Stellantis have agreed to team up and invest a collective $1B to install ~30K EV chargers across the country.
⚡️ Superconductor: a new superconductor that works at room temperature and ambient pressure. Scientists in Korea said they had synthesised a new material called LK-99 that would represent one of the biggest physics breakthroughs of recent decades.
🇺🇦 Ukraine update: As Ukraine continues to execute its counteroffensive against Russian forces, the cadence of drone attacks has steadily compounded since May and the end doesn’t seem to be in sight as various drone strikes on Moscow continue to be reported. An expert called on by CNN explains the strategic role that drones are playing on both sides.
🏦 Sore subject: Amazon’s acquisition of iRobot last year raised eyebrows, and to no one’s surprise, regulators have prevented the close. In the interim, Carlyle has provided iRobot with a $200M loan to keep itself afloat.
🅱️ Plan B: Foundation Consumer Healthcare, the private equity owner of hormonal birth control pill, Plan B, is considering a sale expected to be valued around $4B.
☘️ 🏙 In the backyard:
👽 Futuristic: Biotech spin-out from George Church’s lab at Harvard, eGenesis, has created pigs with edited genomes, eliminating proteins that cause immune reactions in people. The company is transplanting these pigs’ hearts into baboons and hopes to eventually use organs from these gene-edited pigs to save babies born with congenital heart defects.
⚖️ Move over, semiglutide: Fractyl Health, based in Lexington, MA, is in the early stages of developing a one-time gene therapy intended to lower blood sugar and body weight using the same mechanism as diabetic weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy.
TOMORROW! Wednesday, August 2nd 3-5PM: Boston Hub Day hosted by Fidelity and SVB! Register here.
Thursday, August 10th 10AM-2PM: MIT Momentum Accelerator is having their Demo Day showcasing the startups in the current cohort. Register here.
Thursday, August 17th 10AM-1PM: Tufts’ Derby Entreprenuer Center hosts their Venture Accelerator Demo Day. Event details are here.
Thursday, 8/3- Sunday, 8/6: Boston's North End hosts four major feasts & processions, starting with the 109th Annual Feast of Saint Agrippina running Thursday through Sunday
Saturday, 8/5, 11-4PM: The Annual Boston’s Women’s Market in Downtown Crossing will feature 15 women-owned small businesses and is free!
Wednesday, 8/2 and Friday, 8/4, @ Sundown: The Hatch Shell on the Esplanade hosts live music on Wed. and outdoor movie on Fri. A full list of their events here!
Fred Wilson is calling the bottom.
Forerunner wrote, From Digitally Native Brand to Digitally Native Franchise: a New Model for Commerce and Entrepreneurial Empowerment.
A controversial piece to spice things up a bit: Hallucinations in AI. In the tech-pocalypse desert of 2023, only the AI oasis can save us.
The map of a complete, whole-brain of a fruit-fly has been published and can be explored interactively.
Science reported that after winning the Nobel Prize, winners lower their scientific output as the winner attends more events, talks to more journalists, and generally deals with more bureaucrats.
A article written by Tony Kulesa summarizes the success of Y Combinator and the basis of why it’s been as successful as it has been.
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