Nantucket entrepreneurs welcome, and acquisitions abound. There are also new owners, new offices and new money in the bank for Boston-area technology companies this week. Read on for the details.
—Sense, the Cambridge, MA-based home electricity management technology startup, has partnered with Swiss utility technology company Landis+Gyr to put Sense’s technology in Landis’ Internet-of-things platform, the companies said. In addition, Landis+Gyr joined Sense’s previously announced $18 million Series B funding round, bringing the new total to $20 million.
—Waltham, MA-based translation and software company Lionbridge says it has acquired Gengo, a Tokyo-based translation company with background in crowdsourcing, machine learning and localization. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The company says the deal is Lionbridge’s first acquisition since H.I.G. Capital bought Lionbridge in May 2017.
—Onapsis, the Boston-based enterprise resource-planning security startup, has agreed to acquire Virtual Forge, a Heidelberg, Germany-based cybersecurity company focusing on SAP applications. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The companies say the deal is the first Boston-area cybersecurity acquisition of the year.
—Nano-C, a Westwood, MA-based MIT spinout that manufactures nano-structures for electronics and energy applications, got a $2.4 million loan from MassDevelopment, the state’s finance and development agency. Nano-C (short for “nanostructured carbon”) says it will use the loan to upgrade its manufacturing facility and buy additional equipment needed to meet increased demand for its materials. The company will also hire an additional 50 employees.
—The Chamber of Commerce in Nantucket is launching an entrepreneurship program to help early-stage companies on the island, according to a press release. The Center for Entrepreneurship plans to offer consulting, mentorship and networking help to businesses. The center is supported by ReMain Ventures, a Nantucket investment firm. Karen Macuber, a serial entrepreneur who was head of marketing at Monster.com, is leading the center.
—Resolute Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm with offices in Boston and San Francisco, has raised $75 million for its fourth fund. Resolute’s co-founder Mike Hirshland says in a blog post the fund will focus on”lead investors who provide ‘first check’ capital to extraordinary founders.”
Resolute says the fund’s returning anchor limited-partner investors include Foundry Next, Hillman and Company, Vintage Partners and Top Tier Capital. New investors include Adams Street Partner and Baylor University.
—Barac, a U.K.-based cybersecurity startup that looks for threats in encrypted traffic, says it is opening a Boston office to expand into the U.S. market. The London-headquartered company has other locations in Paris and Tunis, Tunisia.
—3D-printing startup Fortify says it has raised $2.5 million in a seed funding round from Neotribe Ventures, Prelude Ventures, Mainspring Capital, Ocean Azul Partners, and McCune Capital. The Boston-based company says it has developed a form of 3D printing using electromagnetic fields.
—Boston-based publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has acquired New York-based Waggle, an A.I.-powered teaching and classroom-learning platform for math and English language arts in grades 2 to 8. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
— Quick Base, a low-code app development company in Cambridge, MA, was bought by Vista Equity Partners. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Quick Base says its current owner Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe—which bought the business in 2016 from Intuit (NASDAQ: [[ticker:INTU]])—will hold on to a significant stake in the company. The Wall Street Journal reports the Quick Base deal is valued at $1 billion.
—Home appraisal technology startup Reggora has landed $3 million in seed funding in a round led by Spark Capital. The Boston-based company says its cloud-based platform makes the home appraisal process as much as 40 percent faster for both lenders and borrowers. Boston Seed Capital, an early investor in the company, also joined the funding round. Alex Finkelstein of Spark Capital is joining Reggora’s board of directors.
—Drone maker CyPhy Works pivoted to A.I. software for its tethered flying machines, rebranding the company Aria Insights (named for a group of canaries). The company is hiring up to 10 people this year, most of them focused on building software to help users get actionable insights from the drone video.
—IBM vets behind Q1 Labs launched another cybersecurity startup this week: Sonrai Security. (Note: It’s pronounced SUN-ree.) The New York-based company, led by Brendan Hannigan and Sandy Bird, is attacking the problem of identifying and tracking the myriad cloud data systems companies are increasingly relying on. Sonrai launched this week with $18.5 million from Polaris Partners, TenEleven Ventures, and the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation.
