Investors backed Seattle-area companies making software as a service for contact centers and Microsoft online communications technologies. Two local efforts to prevent sports head injuries gained funding. And Spaceflight Networks inked another partnership. Read on for details.
—Spoken Communications, which makes cloud based software to help companies run contact centers, has raised $28.8 million in a Series D round led by Riverwood Capital, a Menlo Park, CA-based private equity firm, and Ignition Partners. The Seattle company has raised a total of $54 million. Spoken Communications allows companies to buy call center capabilities as a service. It says it had revenue of $22.5 million last year and projects $30 million for 2015.
—Unify Square added $4 million to its Series B funding round. The Bellevue, WA, company that helps companies use Microsoft online communication technologies, such as Skype for Business, announced the initial $8.2 million tranche of the round in February. Microsoft is the lead investor in the company. Other investors include Bridge Bank, Stanford University, and former executives of Yahoo, IBM, Facebook, Oracle, Isilon, and Ariba. CEO Sonu Aggarwal shares more on the funding, and how his company is like the Tom Hanks movie Big, right here.
—A pair of efforts at improving the safety of sports including football gained funding in the last week. The University of Washington School of Medicine received $2.5 million from the National Football League for a new Sports Health and Safety Institute. Its goal is to “advance research, education and advocacy for the prevention and treatment of sports-related concussions,” UW Medicine said in a news release. Meanwhile, UW spinout company Vicis, which is making a football helmet designed to reduce concussions, raised an additional $1.5 million. GeekWire has more on that funding.
—Spaceflight Industries’ satellite data and communications business, Spaceflight Networks, has signed another partnership, this time with a unit of San Diego-based Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, RT Logic. The company makes satellite ground communications equipment. Spaceflight Networks is building a “cell phone network for space” to help owners and operators of small satellites communicate with and command their orbiting assets, and download data from them. Last month, Spaceflight Networks announced partnerships with four other companies that provide radios, and satellite data services.
