investments—Charter spent about $800,000 to bring broadband and other services to Thorp, a community in Western Wisconsin with a population of 1,621—is allowing organizations in smaller cities to be able to work efficiently with ones located in more populous areas. Last month, Gov. Scott Walker reportedly requested that the state legislature vote to allocate $35.5 million more over the next three years to bring high-speed Internet to rural parts of the state. But some have argued that Walker and other politicians have unnecessarily delayed a much-needed expansion of broadband infrastructure.
—Capio Biosciences, a biotech startup launched in 2013, recently relocated to Madison from the Chicago area and raised $2.9 million as part of a Series A funding round. Capio, which is seeking to commercialize a diagnostic device allowing clinicians to capture greater numbers of circulating tumor cells than they are able to today, currently has two employees. One is Andrew Wang, an associate professor of radiation oncology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; the other is Seungpyo Hong, who recently joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
—Wisbusiness.com profiled Simplifide, a Madison-based startup that’s developing technology to verify peoples’ identities based on physical characteristics. A few months ago, I wrote about the company, and its $1 million seed financing round. According to the Wisbusiness.com report, Simplifide is seeking to raise $2 million as part of another round of fundraising that kicked off last month.
— ParqEx raised $1.2 million from investors. The Chicago-based company has a few different ties to Wisconsin: it graduated from Gener8tor in November; the round was led by two Madison-based VC groups, Venture Management and Wisconsin Investment Partners; and ParqEx recently opened an office in Milwaukee’s Ward 4 startup hub.
