cloud-based software to help businesses find freelancers to help them in areas such as software development and website design. The other was American Provenance, which is based in Blue Mounds and sells handmade deodorant, after-shave, pomade, beard balm, and other grooming products.
—Final piece of startup funding news: BluDiagnostics raised $3.4 million in debt funding from two investors, according to a document filed with federal securities regulators. The Madison-based business is developing a saliva-based fertility test for women, and an accompanying app that displays results to patients and physicians. BluDiagnostics has now raised more than $4.5 million since launching in 2015, SEC filings show. Reached by phone, Katie Brenner, the company’s co-founder and CEO, declined to comment on its plans with the new funding.
—The Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Air Force Research Laboratory will provide $5 million to establish a research center on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus focused on machine learning algorithms and other cutting-edge computing techniques, the school said. The center will be called “Machines, Algorithms and Data Lab—or “MADLab” for short—and will be led by UW-Madison engineering professor Robert Nowak, the university said. The Air Force decided to support this area of research “in an effort to build the next generation of machine-learning methods to support its needs,” according to UW-Madison.
