Let’s get caught up with the latest innovation news from around Texas:
—Austin, TX-based RunTitle has raised $8 million in venture capital. San Francisco-based Founders Fund led the round with investments from Deep Fork Capital and Austin Ventures, among others. RunTitle has digitized mineral-rights records and was in Houston’s Surge cleantech accelerator two years ago.
—Jacqueline Northcut has resigned as president and CEO of BioHouston. Chief operating officer Ann Tanabe takes over the top post at the life sciences organization.
—OncoResponse is a new cancer immunotherapy company formed by the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and Seattle-based Theraclone. With its public launch, the company also announced it has raised $9.5 million in a Series A round co-led by ARCH Venture Partners.
—Bio North Texas held its first conference aimed at boosting the life sciences ecosystem in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
—Austin-based edtech company Aceable raised $3 million in seed funding in a round led by Silverton Partners. Other investors included Floodgate Ventures, NextGen Angels, and Capital Factory. The startup has developed software that offers driver’s ed and defensive driving courses via a mobile app.
—Add another player to the field of developing checkpoint inhibitor drugs: Houston biotech DNAtrix. The company has announced a partnership with pharma giant Merck to develop a therapy to treat glioblastoma, an especially deadly form of brain cancer.
—Austin’s Spiceworks continues to grow at a rapid pace. But is an IPO in the works?
—New York private equity firm Warburg Pincus makes a foray into the Austin edtech scene with an investment of up to $60 million in Civitas Learning.
—Houston’s Wine4Me is among the latest startups to join IBM Watson’s Developer Cloud. Its app uses artificial intelligence techniques to make wine recommendations based on users’s preferences.
—Startups interested in space technology could have an incubator to call home at Houston’s planned Spaceport.
