This is our annual roundup pulled from our monthly 5 Interesting Startup Deals You May Have Missed column. Check out last month’s entry here.
It’s the end of the year and everyone should finally have some time to check out the interesting startup funding deals that may have flown under the radar in the past 12 months.
Usually the rounds with the most money or biggest-named investors get the headlines, but there were plenty of deals this year that were eye-catching just for the technology that was getting funded.
So with that said, let’s check out a long list of them.
Fortifying plants for climate change
Data from WRI’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas shows that 25 countries — with about one quarter of the global population — face extremely high water stress each year. In the U.S. alone, it’s estimated about 23% of the land area is experiencing water stress.
With water becoming a rarer commodity and the related stress occurring more often, it is important populations somehow strengthen their food supply to compensate.
One startup looking to do that is Elicit Plant, which locked up a $48 million Series B led by Carbyne Equity Partners.
The startup has developed phytosterol-based solutions to help plants adapt better to climate change. Phytosterols are natural substances produced by plants in response to water stress, enhancing resilience and reducing water dependency.
Elicit’s solutions can be applied as a spray early in the season, helping crops mitigate environmental stress. Farmers who have used the spray reported reduced water consumption of 20% while increasing yields by up to 10%.
The company will use the new cash to expand in the U.S. Since 2022, it has been partnering for field trials in the country’s corn belt. Elicit says it is ready to launch its product next year and expand its product range to soybean and other crops by 2027.
Building better AI relationships
For those wanting better, more meaningful AI interactions and connections, a startup this year raised some seed funding to help with that.
CharacterX locked in $2.8 million in seed funding at a $30 million valuation from investors that include Lightspeed Venture Partners and Spark Digital Capital for its new Web3 AI social network. The Singapore-based startup aims to create “a world where human and AI interactions are seamless, enriched and democratic,” building augmented social experiences through multimodal AI, including 3D modeling.
In its post on Medium, the company asks one to “imagine traveling the world with your AI companion, who understands not just your words, but your expressions, gestures, tone, and the real-life environment. Our AI agents are being crafted for deep and proactive social interactions …”
The company says it already has more than 500,000 users, each spending an average of 30 minutes daily on the app.
Weeds be gone
No one likes weeds — that’s especially true for farmers where weeds can cut into profit margins.
That’s where Carbon Robotics, a Seattle-based AI-powered farming startup, comes in. Carbon locked up a $70 million Series D led by new investor Bond. The company plans to use the money to fuel the growth of its LaserWeeder software and hardware product.
The company says its LaserWeeder combines computer vision, AI deep learning, robotics and lasers to identify and eliminate weeds using CO₂ lasers — with millimeter accuracy. The company claims the machines — which can be attached to tractors to ride up and down crop aisles — cut weed control costs by 80% while increasing crop yield and quality.
Carbon Robotics says its machines can zap about 5,000 weeds per minute and that growers in North America, Europe and Australia have eliminated more than 10 billion weeds across 100 crop types using its AI-powered tech.
The company also has not had a hard time interesting investors in its invention. Founded in 2018, Carbon has raised $157 million, per the company.
If AI can take over the world one day, it surely can kill a few weeds for now.
Power of water
Everyone is looking for more clean energy sources — especially with our new AI obsession.
CorPower Ocean secured approximately $35 million in a round led by Japan-backed venture capital firm NordicNinja VC to help commercialize power from an atypical source — ocean waves.
The Sweden-based startup has operations in Sweden, Norway, Portugal and Scotland, and is expanding to the U.S. West Coast to demonstrate its tech capabilities that address two major challenges of wave energy — storm survivability and efficient power generation in normal ocean conditions.
While wave power is more predictable than wind power, the industry has not yet been able to produce large-scale commercialization.
The new cash comes after the company demonstrated that its wave technology project in Portugal was able to operate during Atlantic storms with a large power generation capacity, so perhaps generating energy though ocean waves is becoming more likely.
CorPower has secured more than $100 million in funding, so investors apparently think so.
Allergy protection in your pocket
In the U.S., approximately 33 million individuals manage food allergies, so going out to eat likely can cause some anxious moments.
Allergen detection company Amulet has something that may help. In August, the Madison, Wisconsin-based startup raised $5.8 million in Series A financing led by HealthX Ventures.
The startup has created the Allergy Amulet. The company says the small device, which kinda looks like a USB drive, allows people to test for food allergens on the go. The device has portable sensors containing rapid, on-site molecular detection technology that can find allergens, toxins and contaminants.
The startup also has another commercial device that aims to help restaurants, suppliers and manufacturers identify food toxins and environmental contaminants.
If you have allergies, not knowing what’s in your food can be scary. Perhaps carrying this in your pocket can give a little peace of mind.
Seedless blackberries
Nearly everyone likes some type of fruit — but let’s face it, they’d be better without seeds. Enter Pairwise Plants, a gene-editing company trying to improve plant breeding in specialty and commodity crops. The Durham, North Carolina-based startup closed a $40 million Series C led by Deerfield Management along with other investors such as Leaps by Bayer, as well as agriscience giant Corteva Agriscience.
The company will use the cash infusion to scale its innovative product pipeline, including seedless berries and pitless cherries. Pairwise already has a seedless blackberry variety, which it announced in June.
However, it’s not just that Pairwise is developing seedless fruits. Its gene-editing technology is also allowing crops to be more resilient and adaptive — something needed as the effects of climate change take hold.
As part of the investment, Corteva and Pairwise have entered into a five-year joint venture collaboration focused on accelerating the pace of gene-editing technologies.
As the world changes, our food needs to follow suit.
Check your eyes
Usually when we talk about healthcare and AI, it relates to a biotech using the technology to refine therapeutics or help with the clinical trial process.
However, Eyebot locked up $6 million in a round led by AlleyCorp and Ubiquity Ventures for a different business model. The Boston-based startup is looking to build out a network of AI-powered kiosks that provide 90-second vision exams.
Yes, self-serve, rapid eye tests with no optometrist. Hey, if you can scan your own groceries, why not be your own eye doctor? The prescription the kiosk spits out is finalized by a teledoctor, but it still eliminates the need for a traditional eye appointment — which might be good considering the optometry labor shortage.
The startup started to roll out its kiosks — which look like old-school arcade machines — in places such as shopping centers and pharmacies in October in the Northeast and will look to scale next year.
Keep an eye out!
Voice clues
Now, moving from seeing to speaking, Canary Speech is next on the list after it raised a $13 million Series A funding round led by Cortes Capital.
The Provo, Utah-based AI-powered voice biomarker healthtech startup uses patented vocal analysis to screen for mental health and neurological disorders.
Canary’s vocal biomarker tech can actually capture and analyze speech data within seconds to identify irregularities in behavioral and cognitive changes — besting current clinical screening standards and before users experience noticeable symptoms for illnesses like anxiety, depression and dementia.
Canary’s ambient listening tools can not only assess a patient’s health, but also simultaneously evaluate physicians’ health — something more important than ever with the American Medical Association reporting that at the end of 2021 nearly 63% of physicians experienced symptoms of burnout.
Making it rain
One of the things humankind still has not figured out is how to control Mother Nature.
Nevertheless, an El Segundo, California-based startup is giving it a try when it comes to rain.
Rainmaker Technology raised a $6.3 million seed round from a large group of investors that includes Long Journey Ventures, Champion Hill Ventures and Garry Tan. The startup aims to develop cloud seeding techniques — a weather modification tool discovered last century that seeks to introduce ice nuclei to clouds and cause, well, rain.
Cloud seeding can work, but the question has usually been how well it works. It also has been in the news recently.
Rainmaker hired its first engineers this year and now seems poised to make it rain.
Cleaning up space
Normally we stay away from big rounds on this list, but we do make exceptions.
Italian space startup D-Orbit raised more than $108 million in January led by Marubeni. The startup is basically a space logistics and debris cleanup company. It is looking to fulfill the need to move a satellite into its exact location after it is shuttled into orbit by the likes of SpaceX.
The company also is looking at ways to clean up space — it’s getting crowded up there — by helping break satellites up in the atmosphere or moving them farther out.
The company didn’t announce a valuation for the round, but D-Orbit was valued at about $1.3 billion two years ago in a SPAC deal that was later killed.
Illustration: Dom Guzman
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