Let’s catch up with the latest innovation news in Texas.
—TeVido, an Austin biotech, has raised $1.2 million to help fund a new facility in which the company can use a patient’s own cells to create personalized pigment cell grafts to treat vitiligo, a loss of skin color that affects about 1 percent of the world’s population. Investors included the Texas Halo Fund, the Central Texas Angel Network, and Life Science Angels. TeVido, which is commercializing technology from the University of Texas at El Paso, initially sought to use a breast cancer patient’s cell to create a more realistic nipple after reconstruction surgery.
—Outdoorsy, an Austin-based RV rental marketplace, announced it raised $50 million in a Series C round led by Greenspring Associates. Aviva Ventures, Altos Ventures, AutoTech Ventures, and Tandem Capital participated in the round, the company said. Outdoorsy connects those who own recreational vehicles with others who would like to rent them. Typically, RVs sit unused for 97 percent of the year, John Avirett, Greenspring’s general partner, said in a press release. The company is in eight countries and plans to use the funding to further expand.
—HopGrade, which has an app to connect residents in apartment buildings, has raised $5.8 million in funding, according to Austin Inno. The company was founded in 2015 and had previously reported raising $600,000 in debt funding. The startup’s app, Hop, enables people in an apartment complex set up a residents-only marketplace for selling, borrowing, and lending things, while also enabling retailers to offer special deals to those residents.
—ArtCraft Entertainment, a video game developer, has raised $2.4 million in funding, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The maker of the game Crowfall, ArtCraft has raised a total of $24.5 million in funding, according to its website. The company said in July that it was forming a new division to provide other game developers with tech to create their own MMO, or massively multiplayer online, games.
—Envirocon Technologies has raised $10 million in funding, according to an SEC filing. The company makes what it says are natural, non-toxic dish soaps and household cleaning products.
—San Antonio companies raised almost $110.2 million in 2018 from venture capital, the most for the metro area since 2014, according to data compiled by PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association. That total came from 21 deals. In 2014, companies in the Alamo City added almost $150 million in new funding. Even with that progress, San Antonio remains in fourth place among Texas’s four biggest cities. Austin remains the startup capital of Texas, adding more than $1.5 billion in new funding through 219 deals in 2018—the most money there since at least 2013, the beginning of this dataset. Dallas took second place, with 99 deals bringing companies $625.8 million. Houston businesses brought in $358.2 million through 76 transactions. Both Dallas and Houston had better years in 2016. As a whole, companies in Texas added $2.69 billion in venture funding through 427 deals last year, the most since 2013, the data show.
Xconomy National Correspondent David Holley contributed to this report.
