A financing. Understory developed a solar-powered device that monitors weather information, including wind speed and direction, temperature, humidity, rain, and hail. Leading the round were Madison-based 4490 Ventures and Monsanto Growth Ventures, the venture capital arm of agrochemical and seed giant Monsanto (NYSE: [[ticker:MON]]).
—More funding news: CenterX, a Madison-based developer of e-prescribing software, raised more than $3.3 million from investors. Joe Reinardy, co-founder and CEO of the 20-employee startup, said the money might be used to ramp up sales and recruiting efforts this year. Reinardy declined to reveal the identities of the two investors that provided the financing, which is a combination of equity and convertible debt.
—Zendesk and the United Way of Dane County—where Madison is located—have launched Link-Dane, a website homeless and low-income individuals living in the county can use to request food, medical care, and other services, said company spokeswoman Tian Lee in an e-mail. Zendesk (NYSE: [[ticker:ZEN]]) is based in San Francisco but in 2013, the customer support specialist opened an office in Madison. The blueprint for Link-Dane was Link-SF, a similar site for the Bay Area created in 2014, Lee said.
—Pat Farley has left his positions with the Milwaukee-based venture fund CSA Partners and Ward 4, a co-working space in that city launched and managed by CSA, according to his LinkedIn profile. He now lists himself as corporate affairs director at Digital Realty (NYSE: [[ticker:DLR]]), a San Francisco-based company that connects businesses and data centers. Farley is still based in the Milwaukee area, according to his LinkedIn profile.
—Madison-based Propeller Health has teamed up with Aptar Pharma, part of Crystal Lake, IL-based AptarGroup (NYSE: [[ticker:ATR]]), to develop a connected metered-dose inhaler. The partnership comes on the heels of agreements Propeller inked with other big pharma companies (UK-based GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: [[ticker:GSK]]) and Germany-based Boehringer Ingelheim). What makes this deal slightly different is that Aptar is not a drugmaker, meaning it and Propeller will need to license the new inhaler to a respiratory pharma firm that will bring the device to market in combination with its medicine.
—Murfie, a startup launched in Madison five years ago that made some management changes earlier this year, announced another change: It’s moving to Middleton, a suburb just west of Madison. The additional space will accommodate Murfie’s 20 employees, plus a vault in which the company stores more than 750,000 of its users’ compact discs and vinyl records.
—One of Murfie’s new neighbors in Middleton is WITS(MD), which announced it has changed its name to ImageMoverMD. The new moniker is consistent with the company’s flagship product, ImageMover, which allows physicians to use their smartphones to photograph patients and embed the encrypted images within electronic medical records. Last July, ImageMoverMD raised a $1.6 million seed round, with a majority of the funding coming from Wisconsin angel investors.
—Sussex-based Quad/Graphics has developed a virtual reality viewer made from foldable paper that’s included in 500,000 newsstand versions of this year’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. The device is similar to Google Cardboard in that it’s little more than a box with two lenses that help a user focus on a phone—which one will need to have on hand—running a VR-friendly app. Quad (NYSE: [[ticker:QUAD]]) has long been the company that’s printed hard copies of SI.
