Funding follows VerImmune’s successful FDA pre-IND meeting as well as completion of a key process development milestone.
Participation occurred from existing investors as well as a pharmaceutical partner.
Proceeds will be used to accelerate GLP/GMP activities towards an IND for VerImmune’s lead product candidate VERI-101
WASHINGTON, Sept. 20, 2023 — VerImmune Inc. (“VerImmune”), an early-stage biotechnology company specializing in the development of innovative products based on a novel Virus-inspired Particle (ViP™) technology platform, announced today the securing of an additional $3.125 million from follow-on Seed financing and a partnership milestone payment.
The follow-on financing was led by previous investor, Proxima VC, a specialist seed-to-growth healthcare venture capital firm with participation from other previous investors such as Gaingels, Mana Ventures and others. In addition to this financing, a milestone payment from Fosun Pharma USA was triggered by the successful completion of a process development milestone.
“Receiving this additional $3.125M financing and milestone payment resulting from our successful FDA pre-IND meeting and significant progress on CMC activities is an important step for VerImmune that further strengthens our financial position.” said Joshua Wang, Founder and CEO. “We continue to be grateful to our internal team, network of advisors, existing investors, and pharmaceutical partners such as Fosun Pharma USA who believe in our technology platform and therapeutic potential of VERI-101. We intend to capitalize on this momentum and efficiently execute the next stages to enable the filing of an IND for VERI-101.”
VerImmune’s primary focus lies in the field of Oncology, wherein the ViP technology enables a pioneering first-in-class cancer immunotherapy approach known as Anti-tumor Immune Redirection (AIR). This innovative method harnesses the body’s pre-existing immune memory from past infections or childhood vaccination to combat cancer. By taking a highly orthogonal approach, VerImmune’s technology holds immense potential to revolutionize the Immuno-Oncology market, offering new treatment possibilities for patients facing limited options or resistance to current cancer therapies.
About VerImmune
VerImmune is at the forefront of innovation, dedicated to the development of a groundbreaking first-in-class cancer immunotherapy called Anti-tumor Immune Redirection (AIR). This unique strategy leverages a proprietary virus-inspired particle (ViP) technology platform to redirect pre-existing pathogenic or childhood vaccine immune memory toward tumors. VerImmune’s lead immuno-oncology product candidate, VERI-101, utilizes the ViP platform to harnesses the cellular immune memory responses from prior cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection to fight cancer. Such a mechanism of action not only differentiates VerImmune within the competitive Immuno-Oncology market but also has the potential to redefine the treatment paradigm, as a stand-alone product or in combination with other immunotherapies, for patients with untreatable cancers or resistance to existing therapies. For more information, please visit http://www.verimmune.com.
New financing underscores high demand for a modern checkout solution for pharmacies and patients
NEW YORK , Sept. 20, 2023 — HealNow today announced a $5.5 million Seed round led by Bonfire Ventures. Additional investors participating in the round include Walkabout Ventures, Remarkable Ventures, Alabama Futures Fund, Impulsum Ventures and a number of prominent fintech and healthcare investors.
HealNow enables pharmacies to provide a modern, seamless online checkout experience for patients. Leveraging state-of-the-art payments technology, patients can now effortlessly schedule delivery or curbside pickup, purchase over-the-counter (OTC) items, and pay for their prescriptions online. Hundreds of pharmacies across the country rely on HealNow to accelerate payments workflow and improve the patient experience.
“Pharmacies are vital to the healthcare system in this country, yet they face a massive technological disparity,” said Halston Prox, CEO, HealNow. “Today, only the largest pharmacy chains have established an online presence, while the majority of the industry remains predominantly offline. This gap has placed pharmacies at a substantial competitive disadvantage, as they lack the resources and economies of scale enjoyed by larger players such as CVS. Our mission at HealNow is to level the playing field, enabling any pharmacy to provide a seamless online checkout experience for their customers.”
Today, HealNow is also announcing a number of partnerships with several healthcare organizations, including Omnicell, NCPA and APC. The platform also built integrations with pharmacy management systems, including PioneerRx, Liberty, Keycentrix and others.
Features and benefits of HealNow include:
Streamlined Communication: HealNow streamlines the way pharmacies handle phone calls and eliminates the frustration of phone tag. By simplifying payment collection and patient information gathering, the platform drastically reduces the time spent on administrative tasks. Not only does this increase efficiency, but it also enhances overall patient satisfaction.
Seamless Integration: HealNow easily integrates with existing pharmacy management systems and blends into your workflow. Our platform ensures smooth operations, optimizing pharmacy processes and enabling a hassle-free digital transformation.
Advanced Payment Solutions: HealNow accelerates payments for medications. The platform enables pharmacies to receive payments upfront, reducing waste, cutting expenses, and saving valuable time.
Enhanced Patient Experience: With HealNow, patients can conveniently add over-the-counter (OTC) items, supplements, and additional services during the checkout process. This user-friendly feature not only improves adherence to treatment plans but also expands the basket value for pharmacies. By providing a seamless experience, we empower patients to take control of their healthcare journey.
HealNow will use the new financing to accelerate product development and expand partnerships with other pharmacy service providers to build on the platform ecosystem. The company also plans to expand its national reach to serve pharmacies of all sizes across all verticals, including retail, hospitals, universities, veterinarians and more.
“HealNow is leading the charge on democratizing pharmacy technology—it’s that simple,” said Mark Mullen, Bonfire Ventures. “Not only do they offer a differentiated product, its leadership has the industry experience to serve the unique needs of pharmacies. In the next few years, we see HealNow becoming the de facto checkout solution for the pharmacy industry. We are excited to play a role in their continued growth and innovation.”
About HealNow HealNow is a healthcare technology company devoted to bringing modern solutions to pharmacies and their patients. The company is committed to improving the healthcare industry by providing advanced tools at affordable prices, enabling pharmacies of all sizes to offer a higher standard of service and convenience to their patients. Our goal is to make healthcare more accessible and patient-friendly, one pharmacy at a time. For more information, visit https://www.healnow.co/
About Bonfire Ventures Bonfire Ventures is a leading, early-stage venture capital firm that invests exclusively in B2B software companies at the seed stage. With over $800M under management, Bonfire backs extraordinary founders and aspires to serve as their most trusted advisors. Known for their hands-on approach, Bonfire was named one of the best seed stage VC firms by founders in 2022. Notable investments include TaxJar (acquired by Stripe), The Trade Desk (IPO), ChowNow, Boulevard, Figment, Invoca, Cube, and OpenPath (acquired by Motorola). For more information on Bonfire Ventures visit https://www.bonfirevc.com/.
Valued at $400M, MotherDuck removes the waitlist from its platform, announces new product features, and adds 11 more partners to its growing ecosystem
SEATTLE, Sept. 20, 2023 — MotherDuck, builder of a serverless, easy to use data analytics platform based on open source database DuckDB, today announced a $52.5 million round of funding. Led by Felicis, the round puts MotherDuck at a $400M post-money valuation and brings their total funding to date to $100M. New and existing investors like a16z, Madrona, Amplify Partners, Altimeter, Redpoint, Zero Prime, and more participated in the round as well. Felicis General Partner Viviana Faga will join MotherDuck’s Board of Directors.
MotherDuck notebook-like SQL environment enables you to query local and remote data using MotherDuck’s Hybrid execution engine.
The Modern Duck Stack is a suite of integrations which provide everything you need alongside MotherDuck for your data engineering pipelines: orchestration, ingestion, transformation, business intelligence, data science and AI capabilities.
As part of today’s announcement, MotherDuck will no longer have a waitlist for those interested in trying the platform. Anyone who wants to start leveraging the power of DuckDB at scale immediately can sign up at motherduck.com. The company also announced feedback-driven improvements to the analyst experience including faster data import, a better notebook interface with SQL auto-complete, optimized hybrid query planning, and improved database sharing.
“We’re proud of what we’ve been able to achieve over the last year alongside the DuckDB community and the DuckDB Labs team,” said Jordan Tigani, CEO and Co-Founder of MotherDuck. “Our initial funding allowed us to grow our engineering team to get our platform launched and in use by almost 2,000 analysts. With this funding and the momentum surrounding our platform and DuckDB’s adoption, the sky’s the limit. The key is a simplified scale-up approach to SQL analytics; for the 95% of us who do not have petabyte-scale data, a scale-up approach to analytics based on an engine like DuckDB can be faster, cheaper and more user-friendly than distributed architectures. Spending the last week in Amsterdam with the DuckDB team has solidified that DuckDB is the future. We’re excited about bringing the power of its simplicity to organizations at scale and improving the analyst experience across the board.”
As the popularity of DuckDB skyrockets across the data community – thanks to its ability to run everywhere (including in the browser), query data from anywhere without preloading it, and its super-fast execution of analytical queries – early adoption of MotherDuck has validated the belief that data technology needs to focus on analyst experience. As the DuckDB team continues to rapidly evolve the open source database engine and its close ties to cutting-edge academic research, MotherDuck has been able to add collaboration and scalability of the cloud for organizations who want to use DuckDB at a larger scale.
The partnership between the two teams has led to more than 2,000 users already finding success with MotherDuck across a multitude of use cases to include:
A cloud data warehouse for the rest of us: MotherDuck provides a simplified, performant and efficient data warehouse based on the lightweight DuckDB engine for the majority of data warehouses that don’t need petabyte scale.
A data lake query engine: MotherDuck uses DuckDB to query your data where it sits as parquet, iceberg, or CSV files.
A serverless backend for data apps: Customers of SaaS applications like SaaSWorks and Dexibit need fast and fresh analytics on their data to make better decisions. Developers often tackle this with analytics queries running on the transactional database, which are not designed for the task. MotherDuck uses DuckDB to provide a better solution.
“We looked at various OLAP platforms that could serve our broad and demanding data platform that serves the modern CFO as we were hitting scale limits (price and performance) with Postgres on RDS. MotherDuck with DuckDB was by far the fastest – both in the cloud and run on our developer’s machines – bridging price and performance and greatly increasing productivity. We feel we have partnered with the future of Cloud and desktop-based OLAP providers with MotherDuck.” – Jim O’Neill, CTO & Co-Founder, SaaSWorks.
MotherDuck’s ecosystem also continues to grow. Following their initial product launch in June, the company announced 16 integrations with the platform. Today, MotherDuck is announcing 11 more: Cube, dltHub, Evidence, GoodData, Kestra, Metabase, InfinyOn, LlamaIndex, Sling, Streamlit, and Voltron Data. Airbyte will be available to users today, while integrations with Fivetran and Tableau are both underway.
“We are excited to partner with Jordan and the MotherDuck team as they build a platform designed to seamlessly blend speed and user-friendliness, thereby simplifying and making analytics widely accessible. Analysts clearly need the speed of working with data at the edge, as well as the flexibility to query cloud-based data. The era of serverless data analytics is here.” – Viviana Faga, General Partner, Felicis.
MotherDuck’s funding announcement and product updates come as DuckDB prepares for its latest release, 0.9.0, which will also be available to MotherDuck users. Learn more, at https://duckdb.org/.
About MotherDuck MotherDuck makes analytics fun, frictionless, and ducking awesome. In partnership with the team building open source database DuckDB, MotherDuck was founded by former leaders at some of the most innovative companies in data. It is on a mission to combine the elegance and speed of DuckDB with the collaboration and scalability of the cloud to provide a serverless, easy to use analytics platform for data small and large.
Led by Resolve Growth Partners, the investment will accelerate Cecilian’s growth and market share among U.S. land developers and home builders
NEW HOPE, Pa., Sept. 20, 2023 — Cecilian Partners, a leading proptech firm providing end-to-end digital solutions for home builders and land developers, today announced that it has raised $11 million in its first institutional equity round led by Resolve Growth Partners. Cecilian plans to use the growth funding to accelerate product innovation, expand headcount in critical areas, and continue developing the most client-centric customer success team in the industry.
“Being an entrepreneur is difficult. Growing the firm out of the basement of my house four years ago to thriving and growing in this current market is thrilling ¾ and receiving that term sheet from Resolve Growth Partners was a moment of validation and excitement for me and my team,” said company co-founder and CEO John Cecilian, Jr. “This investment transitions us from a ‘scrappy start-up’ to a focused organization positioned to win. We are grateful to the team at Resolve and ready to accomplish meaningful growth and customer expansion.”
The investment comes despite a long slump in early-stage funding, with Q2 2023 seeing the lowest quarterly total investment in North American firms in more than three years. After examining hundreds of SaaS companies and conducting rigorous due diligence, Resolve chose Cecilian Partners based on Cecilian’s explosive revenue growth, proven business model and clear path to profitability.
“We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to partner with John and the rest of the team at Cecilian Partners to build the category-leading platform for land developers and home builders,” said Resolve co-founder and Managing Partner Chris Rhodes. “This market has traditionally been underserved by technology. Cecilian offers a first-of-its-kind solution to help its customers transform their businesses through digitization and a true partnership approach.”
History of rapid growth
Since its founding in 2019, Cecilian Partners has focused on new homes, the fastest-growing segment in residential real estate. The firm’s unique software suite digitizes the entire land and property development process ¾ consolidating data, automating manual processes and delivering a better customer experience across the homebuying journey.
Cecilian tripled its revenue in the last 12 months, far outpacing the typical growth rate for early-stage SaaS companies, while its client base grew 65%. The company now has a national footprint of builders and developers across multiple states, including more than 75 clients in Texas and Florida alone, where nearly a third of all new homes in the US are built.
Cecilian will increase the pace of product innovation and talent acquisition, while leveraging Resolve’s financial acumen and SaaS company-building expertise to accelerate growth. This strategy includes restructuring the company’s Board of Directors and investing in four critical business areas.
Resolve co-founder Chris Rhodes and principal Rocco Natalicchio will join the board, bringing deep leadership and investment experience in vertically integrated SaaS markets. Two current members will continue to serve: Stephanie McCarty, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer at Taylor Morrison, and Ned Moore, co-founder and CEO of Clutch. McCarty is a leading brand and marketing expert in real estate development, and Moore is a SaaS expert with a successful track record as a serial entrepreneur.
“New home construction is an industry so ripe for innovation,” said McCarty. “And while this industry has stubbornly resisted innovation and new technology, I believe much of that thinking is behind us. Cecilian Partners, with their expansive suite of products, is poised to step in and solve many archaic processes and longstanding pain points that exist today and, in turn, provide a better, more positive experience for customers, builders and developers.”
Resolve’s investment enables Cecilian to rapidly expand its team, adding key roles and functions to support four growth drivers: business development, in-house technology and R&D, customer success and marketing. Adding to an already outstanding team, the new hires will help capture new opportunities for growth and innovation, enhance client support and increase brand visibility across the country.
Cecilian plans to increase its employees by 50% over the next 12-15 months, growing its head count in Chicago; Dallas, Texas; Raleigh, N.C.; and company headquarters in New Hope, Pa.
About Cecilian Partners
Since 2019, Cecilian Partners has sought to bridge the digital divide between homebuilders, community developers, and home buyers with its patented technology platform. The firm’s property development software, 3D mapping technology, and data management solutions simplify the complexities of placemaking for builders and developers while offering interactive experiences that transform the home buying experience. Cecilian Partners collaborates with land developers and homebuilders across the U.S. who aspire to modernize their digital footprint and ease everyday pain points associated with building and buying homes. For more information, visit https://cecilianpartners.com/ or the Linkedin Company Page.
About Resolve Growth Partners
Resolve Growth Partners is a growth equity firm focused on investing in B2B software companies and enabling passionate, committed entrepreneurs to accelerate growth. Resolve provides expertise and repeatable best practices across talent, go-to-market, and operations. For more information on Resolve, visit http://www.resolvegrowth.com.
Company’s AI-Driven ‘Right Care at the Right Time’ Triage Methodology Optimizes Clinical Outcomes
CHICAGO, Sept. 20, 2023 — Vivante Health, the leader in digital digestive health, today announced the closing of $31 million in Series B funding led by new investor Mercato Partners. The round also includes new capital from Health Catalyst Capital as well as returning investors 7wireVentures, Intermountain Ventures, Distributed Ventures, Human Capital, and SemperVirens, reflecting the proven ability of Vivante’s GIThrive platform to improve patient outcomes at scale and reduce medical costs in an area that typically ranks among an organization’s top five healthcare expenses.
The latest investment brings the total capital raised by Vivante to date to $47 million, following a $16 million Series A round in late 2021.
The new funding comes on the heels of recent GIThrive enhancements that spotlight the platform’s unique ability to provide the right care at the right time. In addition to food and symptom logging, online educational resources and 24/7 access to dietitians, health coaches and nurses, users now receive AI-driven personalized care plans that dynamically adjust to their symptoms and other variables; access to a nationwide network of internists and gastroenterologists for diagnosis, treatment, lab test orders and prescriptions; and other new services that help bridge the gap between virtual and real-world care.
The Series B capital will support continued technology upgrades designed to predict the onset and progression of GI conditions and provide complete virtual care for digestive disorders. It will also be applied to ongoing expansion of the company’s commercial and client support teams along with onboarding support for new employers, health plans, and channel partners seeking better solutions for reducing the personal and financial toll of digestive disease.
“We are thrilled to have the support of industry-leading capital partners as we execute on our vision at Vivante,” said Bill Snyder, Vivante Health CEO. “One in four Americans suffers from a digestive disorder or undiagnosed digestive symptoms that affect their quality of life as well as their healthcare costs. We have proven that our scalable technology platform paired with our comprehensive care team results in better health, lower costs, and a much better experience for the members we serve.”
GIThrive uniquely provides care across the digestive disease spectrum, from common yet often debilitating conditions like IBS and GERD to complex conditions such as Inflammatory Bowel Disease needing high levels of care coordination.
More than 90% of GIThrive users report that the platform’s digital resources and 24/7 human support help them relieve digestive symptoms and improve their quality of life. Employers that have adopted GIThrive have seen decreases of 15% or more in digestive-related healthcare spend due to increased medication adherence and behavior modification that reduce emergency room visits and inpatient admissions. Employers also benefit from claims filing handled by Vivante and a fees-at-risk structure based on a reduction in medical claims.
These benefits are driving Vivante’s strong growth in the highly competitive health benefits space, including adoption by Fortune 500 and other enterprise clients representing millions of covered lives as well as partnerships with leading health plans and benefits solution providers that have selected GIThrive as their preferred digital digestive health platform.
“Vivante is reinventing the management of chronic gut conditions through its ‘right care at the right time’ triage methodology,” said Joe Kaiser, a Managing Director at Mercato Partners. “This approach to patient-centric, digital GI management bridges the gap that exists between generalist and specialist care, giving patients back time, money, and quality of life lost to gastrointestinal issues as well as delivering a compelling ROI to employers.”
About Vivante Health Vivante Health is an innovative digital healthcare company reinventing the way chronic conditions are managed, gut first. Vivante’s virtual GI care delivers the right care at the right time by pairing data-driven technology with a coordinated team of experienced physicians, registered dietitians and health coaches. For more information, visit the company website or email [email protected].
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 20, 2023 — Steadily, America’s top-rated landlord insurance company who recently raised a Series B round in July, has chosen Ascend, the industry-leading financial operations automation platform, to enhance operational efficiency and accelerate its mission to make landlord insurance fast, easy, and affordable.
Steadily Chooses Ascend to Automate Financial Operations, Accelerate Growth
Ascend’s platform streamlines online invoicing, premium financing, and carrier payables, and directly updates the status of all payments received and payables owed and completed back into the agency management system, allowing full visibility into the state of all policies.
“Not only does Ascend automate all the previously manual work dedicated to manage invoicing, financing, and carrier payables, its integration with our agency management system allows for a seamless and easy workflow for our team,” said Datha Santomieri, COO at Steadily. “This increased efficiency saved us countless hours wasted on back office tasks and allowed us to reinvest into growing our business.”
Ascend’s technology modernizes the accounts receivable (AR) and accounts payables (AP) process for agency billed policies. By automating the invoicing, premium financing, and carrier payable workflows, Ascend can remit commissions directly to a brokerage whenever a policy is sold and manage all the related workflows around funding carriers and collecting premiums from insureds. Ascend is also able to connect directly to an AMS to keep servicing teams updated on the payment status of policies.
“We are thrilled to have been selected by Steadily to help automate all the administrative burdens post policy placement,” said Andrew Wynn, co-CEO of Ascend. “Our shared goal is to maximize efficiency so teams can focus on revenue-generating tasks instead of being bogged down with repetitive and time intensive back office tasks typically associated with agency bill.”
About Ascend Ascend is the industry-leading provider of financial operations automation software, dedicated to modernizing the insurance industry’s financial infrastructure. Ascend is the only solution designed to enhance agency management systems by streamlining the insurance life cycle for agency bill processes. By eliminating manual back office accounting tasks, improving cash collection cycles, and providing a best-in-class customer experience, Ascend significantly increases the productivity, efficiency, and profitability of agencies and brokerages. To learn more about how Ascend can transform your business, please visitwww.useascend.com.
About Steadily Steadily was founded by a veteran team of insurance experts and rental property investors to offer modern, high-quality insurance to rental property owners. The company is dual headquartered in Austin, TX, and Overland Park, KS, and is backed by investors including Zigg Capital, Matrix Partners, Koch Ventures, Clocktower Technology Ventures, Nine Four Ventures, Peak State Ventures, Vesta Ventures, and SV Angel. Learn more at https://www.steadily.com and stay in touch @SteadilyInsure and Facebook.com/SteadilyInsurance.
Commitments from THOR Industries, Ridgeline, Greycroft and Tiger Global among other new and continuing investors underscore demand for innovative electrified mobility solutions.
Partners commit to transforming medium-duty commercial and specialty vehicles through Harbinger’s electrified chassis, powertrains and battery technologies
Leading global RV manufacturer THOR Industries and its investment partner TechNexus Venture Collaborative amplify their partnership with Harbinger through a co-led investment that accelerates the development of electrified RVs
The Coca-Cola System Sustainability Fund, managed by Greycroft, joins Series A round in addition to new investors Riverstone Holdings and Squarepoint Capital, among others
Acequia Capital’s investment comes from the firm’s newly dedicated strategy for reindustrialization, partnering with New Industrial companies at the nexus of decarbonization and capital efficiency as they reinvent the global industrial base
Returning investors include Ridgeline, Tiger Global, Maniv Mobility, Kalyani Mobility, Ironspring Ventures and Overture
GARDEN GROVE, Calif. , Sept. 20, 2023 — Harbinger Motors, a Southern California-based automotive manufacturer, has secured $60 million in Series A funding from a diverse consortium of investors led by Ridgeline and THOR Industries. Each of these investors shares a commitment to sustainability through mobility transformation.
Harbinger CEO John Harris, pictured. Harbinger announced today it has secured $60 million in Series A funding from a diverse consortium of investors led by Ridgeline and THOR Industries.
Harbinger Motors, a Southern California-based automotive manufacturer, announced today it has secured $60 million in Series A funding from a diverse consortium of investors led by Ridgeline and THOR Industries.
“The convergence of support from diverse industries underscores our broader vision and the impact Harbinger Motors aims to achieve,” said John Harris, CEO and Co-Founder, Harbinger Motors. “This collective endorsement reaffirms our unwavering commitment to building sustainable transportation solutions and revolutionizing both commercial and specialty vehicles.”
The investment will accelerate progress toward the production of the company’s innovative electric stripped chassis designed from the ground up to address the unique performance, durability, and lifespan expectations required of Class 4 to Class 6 vehicles. In addition, the company plans to double its workforce over the next year to 120 employees at its recently announced headquarters in Garden Grove, California.
“Rarely do early-stage companies execute on hard problems the way the team at Harbinger has through this milestone,” said Ryan Clinton, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Ridgeline. “Ridgeline is proud to co-lead this round with THOR. The commitment of the larger strategic investors is an incredible signal that Harbinger is on the cusp of electrifying a key market segment in logistics and transportation. We have complete conviction in the team to continue to execute through volume production.”
Electrifying the Future of RVs
THOR Industries and its investment partner TechNexus amplified their joint commitment to electrification by joining the Series A round as a co-lead investor, extending the previously announced partnership between THOR and Harbinger. The THOR family of recreational vehicle (RV) companies, combined, represent the world’s largest manufacturer of RVs. Through this investment, THOR deepens its collaboration with Harbinger to provide electrification solutions for their motorized RVs.
“Harbinger’s focus on the medium-duty chassis market uniquely situates it to be a key partner to THOR,” shared Todd Woelfer, THOR Chief Operating Officer. “THOR is focused on offering a best-in-class solution for electric RVs, and Harbinger’s chassis will be a key component to our integrated solution. Harbinger’s proprietary technology sets it apart from other manufacturers. Their electric chassis offers game-changing driver experience, safety and vehicle operation. Harbinger is an important partner not only to our electrification strategy but also on our journey to net zero emissions which is an important element of our overall corporate strategy. At THOR, we are very excited about this partnership and what it means for our RV users and for our future.”
“THOR’s investment enables Harbinger to expand its focus beyond electrifying commercial applications into specialty vehicles,” said Harris. “We are excited to grow our relationship with THOR and present a sustainable option for recreational vehicles and the owners who seek quieter, environmentally-friendly alternatives.”
Advancing Sustainability Initiatives
Greycroft, which manages the $137.7 million Greycroft Coca‑Cola System Sustainability Fund, joins a list of notable sustainability, transportation and infrastructure investment companies in committing to Harbinger’s Series A round.
“We’re excited to collaborate with Harbinger Motors in their mission to deliver immediate, meaningful change through sustainable transportation solutions,” said Dana Settle, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Greycroft. “Harbinger’s dedication to innovation aligns with the new fund’s vision, and we look forward to partnering with the team as they aim to revolutionize the commercial and specialty vehicle landscape.”
“Harbinger was built from the ground up to help reduce the carbon footprint of last-mile delivery services,” said Harris. “Greycroft’s investment through the Greycroft Coca-Cola System Sustainability Fund further validates our focus, reinforcing our commitment to transforming the medium-duty industry with sustainable solutions that make an impact today.”
In addition to Greycroft, Harbinger is excited to welcome new investors Riverstone Holdings, Acequia Capital and Squarepoint Capital as contributors to Harbinger’s Series A through deeply-rooted energy, sustainability, transport and infrastructure-focused investment funds.
Recommitting to Harbinger
Further investment includes return investors Tiger Global, Kalyani Mobility, Maniv Mobility, Overture and Ironspring Ventures. In conjunction with Ridgeline’s investment in Harbinger’s Series A funding round, Ridgeline General Partner and Co-Founder Ryan Clinton will join Harbinger’s Board of Directors on behalf of the Series A investors.
About Harbinger Harbinger is an electric vehicle (EV) company on a mission to transform an industry starving for innovation. Harbinger’s best-in-class team of EV, battery, and drivetrain experts have pooled their deep experience to support the growing demand for medium-duty EVs. Leveraging a foundation of proprietary, in-house developed vehicle technologies designed specifically for commercial and specialty vehicle applications, Harbinger is bringing a first-of-its-kind EV platform to market, priced for zero acquisition premium. Harbinger: familiar form, revolutionary foundation.
About THOR Industries THOR Industries is the sole owner of operating companies which, combined, represent the world’s largest RV manufacturer. For more information on the Company and its products, please visithttps://www.thorindustries.com/.
About TechNexus Venture Collaborative TechNexus helps leading corporations and ambitious entrepreneurs develop mutually beneficial relationships that accelerate growth opportunities. A first-of-its-kind Venture Collaborative, we invest capital, incubate, and collaborate to create new growth opportunities. For over a decade, TechNexus has initiated hundreds of positive outcomes between mature corporations and early-stage companies to create new business models, revenue streams, and products. For more information, please visit technexus.com.
About Ridgeline Ridgeline is an early-stage, venture capital firm founded by Ryan Clinton, Ben Walker, and Andrew McMahon. The firm’s thesis is fundamentally rooted in a geopolitical view and the belief that technology is central to securing a prosperous future for America and its national security interests. Ridgeline leverages its expertise and deep network to surround founders with the resources and relationships they need to navigate the fraught terrain between product potential and product market fit.
About Greycroft Greycroft is a seed-to-growth venture capital firm that partners with entrepreneurs of all backgrounds to build category-defining companies. We have deep experience investing in consumer, enterprise, health tech, and fintech sectors around the globe and work as a team to support and advise entrepreneurs, empowering them to execute on their visions. Greycroft has raised over $3 billion in capital and has made over 400 investments since inception. For more information, please visit https://www.greycroft.com.
About Tiger Global Tiger Global Management, LLC is a global investment firm investing in private and public companies across the global Internet, software, consumer, and financial technology industries. Our mission is to generate world-class returns for our investors over the long term and to do so in a way we feel proud.
About Riverstone Holdings Founded in 2000, Riverstone is an investment firm focused on executing private equity and credit investments in energy, power, decarbonization and infrastructure. To date, the Firm has raised approximately $43 billion of capital, which it has deployed across its platform to over 200 portfolio companies since inception. For more information about Riverstone, please visit www.riverstonellc.com.
About Squarepoint Squarepoint is a global investment management firm that utilizes a diversified portfolio of systematic and quantitative strategies across financial markets that seeks to achieve high quality, uncorrelated returns for our clients. Squarepoint has investment strategies in both public and private markets. We have deep expertise in trading, technology and operations and attribute our success to rigorous scientific research. Squarepoint has invested in a variety of early and late-stage companies in the areas of healthcare, technology and beyond. With offices around the globe, we emphasize true, global collaboration by aligning our investment, technology and operations teams functionally around the world.
About Acequia Capital Acequia Capital is a leading early-stage global investment platform. Founded in 2010 by Microsoft senior executive Hank Vigil, Acequia has invested in over 350 companies across the full technology stack and has achieved more than a decade of consistent, top quartile returns. Acequia Capital centers a global innovation ecosystem that sources and attracts best-in-class founders working to build the next wave of enduring businesses. The firm is organized to harvest and execute on our network’s collective intelligence in areas such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, software and knowledge worker tooling, new infrastructure, industry reinvention and New Industrials.
About Maniv Mobility Maniv Mobility is a leading venture investor partnering with early-stage transportation technology startups around the world. Focused on the decarbonization of the transportation and logistics sectors as well as the comprehensive digitization of those value chains, Maniv has built a portfolio of nearly forty companies accelerating the cleaner, safer, more efficient and more accessible movement of people and goods. Maniv has over USD $300m under management and is backed by world-class institutional investors alongside a broad consortium of strategic partners from relevant industries including major carmakers, tier-1 suppliers, the world’s largest fleets, energy and infrastructure giants, and more.
About Ironspring Ventures Ironspring Ventures is an early stage, sector focused venture capital firm specializing in digital industrial innovation. Based in Austin, TX, the fund leads and co-leads early stage investments across four core focus areas: construction, manufacturing, transport & logistics, and alternative energy. Ironspring Ventures is committed to partnering with world-class founders who are changing the way we design, build, distribute, and operate across the industrial supply chain and adds differentiated value through its network of premier industrial operating companies and subject matter experts.
About Overture Overture is an early-stage venture fund devoted to visionary founders building the sustainable economy of the future. We specialize in helping our portfolio companies win government support and navigate regulatory complexity.
Company’s Application Security Posture Management Platform Expands Capabilities to Address AI’s Threats to Applications
PALO ALTO, Calif., Sept. 20, 2023 — Legit Security, a cyber security company with an enterprise Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) platform that enables secure application delivery from code to cloud and protects an organization’s software supply chain from attack, has successfully closed a $40 million venture capital round investment led by CRV with participation from existing investors Cyberstarts, Bessemer Venture Partners, and TCV.
Legit Security’s ASPM platform continuously reduces application risk through discovery, analysis, correlation, and remediation of application vulnerabilities from code development all the way to cloud deployment. The platform provides real-time visibility and security control across changing development environments and provides a unified application security control plane that consolidates vulnerabilities from different sources, enforces security policies, and prioritizes risk to help focus on what’s most important. Security teams uses the platform to identify security gaps in real-time and leverage unparalleled context to streamline developer collaboration and remediation, enabling application security to be more efficient, effective and productive.
Gartner predicts that by 2026, more than 40% of organizations creating custom applications will embrace ASPM. Gartner also recommends that organizations with diverse development teams and a wide assortment of security tooling should prioritize ASPM and describes it as a “transformational” technology that will drive major shifts in the application security industry.
Legit Security’s rapid customer growth includes a roster of prominent enterprise brands such as Google, NYSE, Kraft Heinz and Takeda Pharmaceuticals. Additional Fortune 500 customers include some of the largest enterprises in the world that are Top 5 global leaders in their respective industries including insurance, banking, consumer products, and cybersecurity. Further contributing to this growth, Legit’s platform deployments across all customers have nearly doubled in size within the first year of implementation.
“We were highly impressed with the Legit Security team and amazed by the breadth and depth of their Fortune 500 customers in such a short time,’ said James Green, General Partner, CRV. “We fully expect the Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) category to forever change the established Application Security market. What Wiz did for Cloud Security Posture Management, we think Legit can do for ASPM. We couldn’t be happier to invest in the best company in the space to disrupt that market.”
“Cyberstarts is excited to continue backing the talented, hard-working team at Legit Security as they continue to lead a significant and rapidly growing category called Application Security Posture Management,” said Gili Raanan, Founder, Cyberstarts. “Since the beginning, Legit has listened closely to their enterprise customers and developed an easy-to-operate, market leading platform that has demonstrated strong product-market fit. Legit has the team, product and market opportunity aligned, and it’s time to further accelerate growth with additional resources.”
The Series B funds will be used to expand Sales, Marketing and R&D, as well as address the emerging threat of Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models (LLMs) in the development of new applications. Software development teams are increasingly leveraging AI-generated code and embedding LLMs in their applications to accelerate innovation, but these AI technologies are also introducing a rapidly expanding class of new security threats that the company will address with the additional resources.
“We founded Legit Security with the mission to secure the world’s software with a platform that continuously manages application security from code to cloud,” said Roni Fuchs, co-founder and CEO of Legit Security. “We are honored to work closely with our customers to solve these challenges, and their insights have pushed us to develop a holistic approach to modern application security that brings security and development closer together for greater speed, efficiency and collaboration. With this investment our mission gains additional traction and speed, including new capabilities to extend visibility, security and governance to AI-generated code and embedded Large Language Models (LLMs) in applications.”
More information about Legit Security can be found on the company’s website at www.legitsecurity.com.
About Legit Security Legit Security provides application security posture management platform that secures application delivery from code to cloud and protects an organization’s software supply chain from attacks. The platform’s unified application security control plane and automated SDLC discovery and analysis capabilities provide visibility and security control over rapidly changing environments and prioritize security issues based on context and business criticality to improve security team efficiency and effectiveness.
About CRV CRV is a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage enterprise and consumer startups. Since 1970, the firm has invested in more than 400 startups at their most crucial stages, including DoorDash, Airtable, Patreon, Drift and Iterable. Founders need more than capital to build a great company. It takes a partner who understands the entrepreneurial journey and knows what it takes to win. From founding to IPO and beyond, CRV is there every step of the way. Founders rely on CRV to be trusted, long-term, committed partners, which has helped make CRV into one of the longest-running venture capital firms in the world.
HAMBURG, Germany, Sept. 20, 2023 — XCharge Group, a global leader in battery-integrated charging solutions, has secured a new investment from Shell Ventures. This marks the second successive investment from Shell Ventures, following a successful Series-B funding round in 2021. The latest funding round is set to propel XCharge’s ambitious expansion plans, reinforcing its position in the competitive EV charging industry.
The battery-integrated Net Zero Series has been deployed at the XCharge North America manufacturing facility in Texas, US., it provides over 200kW output and allows to store up to 233kWh of electricity.
Founded in 2015, XCharge Group has been at the forefront of EV-charging technology, specializing in battery-integrated fast charging solutions. With a track record of delivering over 40,000+ chargers to business partners worldwide and an impressive net profit in 2022, XCharge has solidified its status as an industry leader in the competitive industry and plans to double its workforce within the next two years.
XCharge Group’s strategic use of funds from this new investment includes three key initiatives:
Global Product Line Expansion: XCharge plans to enhance its battery-integrated product line, catering to the increasing demand for fast-charging solutions in the EV market.
Research and Development Facility in Hamburg: The company will establish a cutting-edge R&D facility at its headquarters in Hamburg, Germany, reinforcing its commitment to technological innovation.
US Manufacturing Facility in Texas: XCharge has established a new manufacturing facility in Texas, US., focused on producing EV charging solutions designed for U.S. grid, and aiming to delivering improved return on investment for customers.
“We are happy to further expand our presence in North America and achieve our goals of optimizing our products for NA markets.” Said Aatish Patel, President and Co-founder of XCharge North America. “In addition to the flexible input levels and bidirectionality of our Net Zero Series, we are working to integrate PV solar power into our next gen systems for greater flexibility & energy distribution capability. We design our products with all factors in mind, including the ease of installation, power grid stability, and safety. We will continue to focus on sustainable strategy of operations to drive the world’s transition to a low-carbon, clean energy powered future.”
As part of this expansion, XCharge Group will also establish a dedicated facility in Hamburg for R&D, product testing, and high-power charging technologies. This move will involve hiring skilled engineers and product experts to ensure the highest levels of effectiveness, efficiency, and quality in their labs. XCharge has recently launched a new 400 kW high-power charger that allows clients to complete a charging session within 10 minutes.
About XCharge Group
Founded in 2015, XCharge Group is a pioneer in battery-integrated charging solutions deployed in over 25 countries globally. With a strong focus on technology and product innovation, XCharge Group’s Net Zero Series marks a significant milestone towards more sustainable and efficient charging infrastructures. XCharge Group remains committed to creating a green future by providing innovative and efficient EV charging solutions.
