This week in Boston, we’re tracking a bunch of funding announcements, trouble at Localytics, additions to the resume of local entrepreneur and investor Walt Doyle, and a new direction for a young co-working space. Read on for details.
—Waltham, MA-based advanced battery maker SolidEnergy raised $12 million in a Series B round led by an unnamed U.S. auto company. SAIC, Applied Ventures, and previous investors also participated.
—Boston-based Flyp raised $5.8 million in seed funding from a group of venture capital firms from the East Coast and Silicon Valley. Flyp’s mobile app allows users to manage all their calls, texts, and voicemail messages in one feed, and to create and use multiple phone numbers on one device. The app has been downloaded more than 1 million times in the past nine months, and the company intends to expand the service to 30 more countries this year.
—Lexington, MA-based mPharma Data raised $5 million from investors, according to an SEC filing. The company is building a pharmaceutical data platform for countries in Africa that helps doctors, patients, and pharmacies more easily prescribe and locate sought-after medicines and report side effects.
—Confirm.io announced it raised $4 million from investors and launched a private beta test of its product, which is software that integrates with mobile and Web apps and helps authenticate users’ identities. The Boston startup’s co-founders include Walt Doyle, who is best known for running Where, which was acquired by PayPal in 2011.
—Speaking of Doyle, although he helped start Confirm.io, he’s actually focused on running GasBuddy, according to various media reports. The company, which runs a gas price comparison website and mobile app, recently moved its headquarters from the Washington, D.C., area to Boston and tapped Doyle as its CEO.
—NuTonomy, a Cambridge, MA-based developer of self-driving car software, raised $3.6 million in seed funding from Signal Ventures, Samsung Ventures, Fontinalis Partners and Steven LaValle.
—Boston-based Tenacity raised nearly $1.9 million from investors, an SEC filing shows. The company’s software, based on MIT research, aims to boost the productivity of contact center workers and encourage them to get more engaged with their jobs and each other.
—Fast-rising Localytics went on a hiring binge last year, but it apparently overestimated its business growth. The Boston marketing automation and data analytics company laid off 15 percent of its 250-person staff last week, or about 37 people, BetaBoston reported.
—The TechHub co-working space in Somerville, MA, has spun off from its parent company and will operate an incubator focused on supporting businesses and nonprofits that aim for social impact, BostInno reported. The space has changed its name to Canopy.
TechHub, which operates co-working spaces around the world, opened the Somerville location last year—its first in the U.S.
