Here’s our latest rundown on recent startup investment news in the Pacific Northwest.
— Seattle-based Symbl landed $17 million for its “conversational intelligence” software used by developers to build speech, text, and video services.
The gist: The 52-person startup sells an API that allows companies to generate insights from conversations natively as part of their existing tools. For example, it can be used during meetings to produce transcriptions that streamline follow-ups and action items, or to provide suggestions for customer care workers on a call. Symbl was previously known as Rammer.AI when it graduated from Techstars Seattle in May 2019.
The people: Former Amdocs colleagues Surbhi Rathore and Toshish Jawale co-founded Symbl in 2018.
The backers: Bay Area-based GreatPoint Ventures led the Series A round, which included participation from Gutbrain Ventures, PBJ Capital, Crosscut Ventures and Flying Fish Ventures. Total funding to date is $23.5 million.
The take: There are a flurry of “conversational intelligence” startups that have raised funding recently. Earlier this year Vancouver, Wash.-based marketing giant ZoomInfo said it would acquire conversational intelligence startup Chorus.ai for $575 million. Rathore said Symbl differentiates by being a developer-first platform that “enables businesses to truly understand human conversations with context or trigger actions rather than just speech to text.”
Other deals we reported on this week:
- As interest in fusion energy ignites, Helion lands $500M from OpenAI CEO, Facebook co-founder
- Amazon vets land $10M for WhyLabs, a Seattle startup that monitors machine learning models
- Notable tech leaders back Magnify as software startup emerges with $6M in funding
- Univ. of Washington machine learning spinout OctoML raises $85M to expand its partnerships
- Pacific Northwest companies merge and raise cash to build energy efficient, modular construction tech
And even more deals:
— Vancouver, B.C.-based owl.co raised a $30 million Series B round. It sells fraud detection software to insurance companies for monitoring claims and mitigating fraud. The company is led by CEO and co-founder Sean Merat, who previously founded Lavia Design, Witkit, and Imperus Technologies Corporation. Seattle firm FUSE participated in the round.
— Seattle startup Evrnu raised a $15 million Series B round. The company’s technology takes discarded consumer apparel waste and converts it into renewable fiber. Evrnu is led by CEO and co-founder Stacy Flynn, a former fabric specialist at Target and manager at Eddie Bauer.
— Spokane, Wash.-based Doorsey raised a $4.1 million seed round. The company is rethinking the home-buying offer process by providing more transparency to both home buyers and sellers, which can define terms at the outset on the platform. Doorsey is led by CEO Jordan Allen, who previously led Stay Alfred, a Spokane apartment rental startup that shut down last year due to the pandemic.
— Seattle startup Hest raised $2 million to fuel sales of its high-tech sleep system targeted at campers. The company is led by Aaron Ambuske, an 18-year veteran of K2 Sports.
— Portland, Ore.-based grocery delivery startup MilkRun raised $6 million in a Series A round. The company’s farm-to-doorstep groceries has been surging since the outset of the pandemic. CEO Julia Niiro is a former farmer who started the company in 2018 when she discovered there were very few channels for food producers to sell to their neighbors.
— Bend, Ore.-based Onboard Dynamics raised cash from private equity firm BP Energy Partners. The startup sells natural gas compression machines used by commercial fleet vehicle operators. It is led by CEO Rita Hansen, a former exec at Agilyx Corporation, Apex Construction Systems, and Roomster.
