As we head into the final week of 2015, venture investment is pouring into some traditional areas of strength in New England tech. Namely, speech recognition, artificial intelligence, and robotics:
—Stealthy speech-recognition startup Semantic Machines, based in Newton, MA, has raised about $12.4 million in equity funding, according to an SEC filing. The document lists investors from General Catalyst Partners and Bain Capital Ventures. Xconomy’s Curt Woodward wrote the first story about the company back in January. Semantic Machines is led by veterans of Apple and Voice Signal Technologies (which was acquired by Nuance in 2007).
—Prosthetics maker BionX Medical Technologies, formerly known as iWalk, has raised an additional $17 million in equity and debt financing, according to an SEC filing. By my count, BionX has raised well over $60 million to date. It has developed a powered prosthetic foot and ankle for amputees, and is working on other robotic systems as well. The company is led by CEO Charles Carignan and founder Hugh Herr, an MIT Media Lab professor.
Author: Gregory T. Huang
Greg is a veteran journalist who has covered a wide range of science, technology, and business. As former editor in chief, he overaw daily news, features, and events across Xconomy's national network. Before joining Xconomy, he was a features editor at New Scientist magazine, where he edited and wrote articles on physics, technology, and neuroscience. Previously he was senior writer at Technology Review, where he reported on emerging technologies, R&D, and advances in computing, robotics, and applied physics. His writing has also appeared in Wired, Nature, and The Atlantic Monthly’s website. He was named a New York Times professional fellow in 2003.
Greg is the co-author of Guanxi (Simon & Schuster, 2006), about Microsoft in China and the global competition for talent and technology. Before becoming a journalist, he did research at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. He has published 20 papers in scientific journals and conferences and spoken on innovation at Adobe, Amazon, eBay, Google, HP, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other organizations. He has a Master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
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