US Tech Weekly - Week 8 / 2024
33+ funding rounds were announced last week
Welcome to the latest edition of US Tech Weekly, a newsletter that provides a weekly summary of seed+ funding rounds in the US. It is a sister publication of European Tech Weekly.
About the author - my name is Chirag Modi, and I am a tech investor based in London.
Selected Funding Announcements in the US by Stage
Note: Minimum deal size of $1m for seed and $10m for Series A; excludes several sectors such as biotech; non-exhaustive; excludes debt funding
Selected Thematic Clusters
Based on recent fundraising activity in Europe and the US, I have identified interesting thematic clusters with increased funding activity.
Emergence of AI in Healthcare
Generative AI is transforming the healthcare sector by introducing innovative solutions that enhance efficiency, accuracy, and personalized care. According to Morgan Stanley, AI has the opportunity to infiltrate a number of workflows/products in healthcare as shown below.
The four key areas that have the potential to disrupt healthcare at scale include:
Care Delivery: How AI can optimise the current state of care a patient receives from a scheduling to post-appointment follow ups in order to improve outcomes and prevent high-cost emergency care
Illustrative vendors: Baseimmune* (Personalised Medicine), Vektor Medical (AI-based arrhythmia analysis), Healthsnap (RPM and CPM)
Reducing adminstrative burden: Actively implementing AI to save physicians/nurses time to focus more on patients and reduce administrative costs
Illustrative vendors: Axle Health* (home health scheduling), Abridge* (Workflow mangement), Nabla* (Workflow Management), CoLumbo* (Diagnostics & Recommendations), Rapidclaims (medical coding)
Analytics: Companies can leverage their internal and customer data to provide better insights for their customers
Commercial intelligence: AI can be used to improve commercial intelligence offerings for companies selling into hospitals/physicians
*recently raised capital
Series A
Fabric (www.fabrichealth.com | Healthtech)
Fabric is a care enablement platform in the healthcare industry, offering solutions to eliminate busywork for clinicians and improve experiences for patients. By reducing clinical work time, frustration, and burnout with automation, Fabric streamlines administrative tasks for clinicians. The platform also assists in building a seamless, integrated tech ecosystem that complements existing EMRs, unifying virtual and in-person care across intake, triage, routing, and treatment. For patients, Fabric provides digital-first access to care, step-by-step guides throughout their healthcare journey, and sleek experiences to enhance their satisfaction. For clinicians, Fabric offers automated symptom collection, documentation, prescriptions, and lab orders, as well as evidence-based decision support at their fingertips for better patient flow and resource allocation management.
PermitFlow (www.permitflow.com | Software)
PermitFlow is a construction permitting software company that offers solutions for permit research, preparation, submission, management, monitoring, and expediting. With a team of local experts, including architects, engineers, and former city planners, PermitFlow aims to streamline the permitting process nationwide. Their platform allows users to submit, track, and manage permits all in one place, eliminating the need to navigate various municipal websites.
Vektor Medical (www.vektormedical.com | Healthtech)
Vektor Medical is focused on revolutionizing arrhythmia care with their FDA-cleared AI-based arrhythmia mapping solution, vMap. This innovative tool allows for accurate mapping of atrial fibrillation and six other arrhythmias, providing rich 4-chamber insights from non-invasive ECG mapping. By unlocking insights contained in a standard ECG, vMap aims to improve cardiac ablation outcomes, optimize workflows, and increase procedural efficiency in the treatment of arrhythmia patients.
AtmosZero (www.atmoszero.energy | Climate Tech)
AtmosZero specializes in industrial electric boilers designed to help businesses meet their carbon neutral goals. The company's modular electrified boilers utilize the heat in the air to produce decarbonized steam at the desired temperature, offering a sustainable and efficient solution for industrial decarbonization.
Series B
Antora Energy (www.antoraenergy.com | Climate Tech)
Antora Energy specialises in providing reliable, zero-emissions industrial heat and power solutions. Using factory-made thermal batteries, Antora converts low-cost, intermittent renewable electricity into consistent industrial energy, making it more affordable and sustainable than fossil fuels.
Oula (www.oulahealth.com | Healthtech)
Oula is a modern maternity clinic that brings together the best of midwifery and obstetrics to deliver whole person care that is personalized and evidence-based to provide everyone with the support they need to thrive before, during, and after birth.
HealthSnap (www.healthsnap.io | Healthtech)
HealthSnap is a leading Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) and Chronic Care Management (CCM) platform that empowers healthcare providers to deliver proactive patient care, improve outcomes, and increase revenue. The integrated virtual care platform allows for effective and continuous monitoring of chronic conditions at scale, enabling care teams, administrators, and providers to coordinate care securely.
Synadia (www.synadia.com | Software)
Synadia specialises in creating seamless connections between individuals, businesses, and devices through the power of advanced networking solutions. With a focus on enhancing communication and collaboration, Synadia offers innovative products and services that enable real-time messaging, secure data transfer, and reliable information sharing across the globe
Crisp (www.gocrisp.com | Software)
Crisp is a provider in collaborative commerce to normalise 40+ retail data sources to provide real-time insights and trends. More than 700 CPG brands such as Mars, Hormel, Kraft Heinz, and Sanofi leverage the Crisp platform to strengthen relationships with retail partners by better supporting sales and inventory management across all channels.
Empowerly (www.empowerly.com | Edtech)
Empowerly is a data-driven education technology company that provides personalized college admissions counseling and career guidance to students and their familie
Series C+
Ascend Elements (www.ascendelements.com| Climate Tech)
Ascend Elements is a provider of sustainable closed-loop battery material solutions, ranging from EV battery recycling to commercial-scale production of lithium-ion battery precursor (pCAM) and cathode active materials (CAM), Ascend Elements is revolutionizing the production of sustainable lithium-ion battery materials.
Lambda (www.lambdalabs.com | Software)
Lambda is a leading provider of GPU Cloud solutions, offering a range of services for AI training and inference. Their Cloud offerings include On-Demand and Reserved Cloud options, equipped with NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper™ Superchip and H100 Tensor Core GPUs. Lambda's Datacenter provides large-scale GPU deployments and hosting services with ongoing support. They also offer desktop solutions such as GPU workstations, desktops, and laptops for AI development.
Abridge (www.abridge.com | Healthtech)
Abridge has an innovative platform that seamlessly integrates with Epic to transform patient-clinician discussions into structured clinical notes in real-time. This advanced AI solution saves clinicians over 70 hours of documentation work per month, across 50+ medical specialties and in over 14 languages. Abridge's technology boasts a 91% accuracy rate in generating complete, highly precise clinical note drafts, enhancing efficiency and accuracy in healthcare settings.
EigenLayer (www.eigenlayer.xyz | Crypto)
EigenLayer is a decentralized ecosystem that allows users to stake their Ethereum (ETH) across multiple protocols, providing cryptoeconomic security in exchange for protocol fees and rewards. Users can restake their staked ETH or liquid staked tokens like stETH, rETH, cbETH, and LsETH through EigenLayer to validate more networks with lower costs and provide validation services for new protocols.
Clumio (www.clumio.com | Software)
Clumio is a cloud-based backup and recovery company that specializes in protecting critical data for AWS customers. With a focus on autonomy, Clumio offers comprehensive data resilience solutions for applications, databases, and data lakes. They help clients recover swiftly from operational disruptions, such as production data loss or cyberattacks. Clumio ensures continuous compliance with even the most stringent data regulatory frameworks by offering air-gapped backups, simple auditability, and on-demand reporting. Moreover, Clumio helps clients optimize their AWS backup costs by identifying unnecessary snapshots, versions, and replicas, resulting in average savings of over 30%.
Uhnder (www.uhnder.com | Other)
Uhnder is a digital automotive radar company. It has developed the world's first digital imaging radar-on-chip, providing unparalleled safety and accuracy for automated mobility. Their innovative radar systems offer 4D detection capabilities, tracking height, speed, and distance with exceptional resolution at high frame rates. Uhnder's Digital Radar can identify objects that traditional radars, cameras, and human eyes might miss, ensuring enhanced safety in various driving conditions.
Qloo (www.qloo.com | Software)
Qloo specializes in decoding and predicting consumer taste across various industries globally. With a privacy-first approach, Qloo's API delivers personalized recommendations based on deep insights into consumer behavior and over 575 million people, places, and things. Their vast library spans categories like film, music, fashion, travel destinations, and more, providing companies with valuable data to enhance product development, media buying, and consumer experiences. Qloo's geospatial API allows for ultra-granular queries, while their heatmap API visualizes consumer taste over any geographic area. The company caters to sectors such as media, entertainment, e-commerce, fashion, and financial services, offering insights into millions of cultural entities from movies to books, dining, and sports.
Caresyntax (www.caresyntax.com | Healthtech)
Caresyntax is a pioneer in surgical intelligece and automation technologies. This platform integrates the company’s market-leading data and AI solutions into one seamless surgical pathway that reduces unwarranted surgical variation from pre-operation to post-operation. It also includes a powerful new collaboration capability, which allows remote clinical experts to remotely “scrub-in” into any operating room. Caresyntax’s technology is currently deployed in over 3,000 operating rooms worldwide
Disclaimer
This post and the information presented are intended for informational purposes only. The views expressed herein are the author’s alone and do not constitute an offer to sell, or a recommendation to purchase, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security, nor a recommendation for any investment product or service. While certain information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, neither the author nor any of his employers or their affiliates have independently verified this information, and its accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed. Accordingly, no representation or warranty, express or implied, is made as to, and no reliance should be placed on, the fairness, accuracy, timeliness or completeness of this information. The author and affiliated persons and companies assume no liability for this information and no obligation to update the information or analysis contained herein in the future.