This is a monthly column that highlights five interesting deals each month that you may not know about. See last month’s entries here.
Autumn is here and a lot of things are happening. School is in full swing, the air is chilly, and you can buy anything pumpkin spiced.
Many interesting startups raised funding in September. If you missed a few, here’s a list.
seedless blackberry
Almost everyone prefers some type of fruit, but let’s be honest, it’s better without seeds.
Enter Pairwise Plants, a gene editing company aiming to improve the breeding of specialty and commercial crops. The Durham, North Carolina-based startup completed a $40 million Series C led by Deerfield Management this month, along with other investors including Bayer’s Leap and agricultural science giant Corteva Agriscience.
The company plans to use the new funding injection to expand Pairwise’s innovative product pipeline, including seedless berries and cherries, including a new variety of seedless blackberries announced in June.
But Pearwise isn’t the only one developing seedless fruit. The company’s gene editing technology also makes crops more resilient and adaptable. This is necessary as the effects of climate change take hold.
As part of the investment, Corteva and Pairwise entered into a five-year joint venture partnership focused on accelerating gene editing technology.
As the world changes, our food must follow.
better diagnosis
If a biopsy is required, the hope is that the diagnosis is clear and to the point.
However, in practice, there is a shortage of pathologists, and 85% of pathological biopsies are still performed on glass slides. This means their ability to share information and opinions is limited.
PathPresenter, a startup image-sharing platform, has secured $7.5 million in funding led by Avant Bio to change that. The Montville, New Jersey-based company has developed an enterprise pathology workflow solution that digitizes these slides and creates an opportunity to democratize access to the world’s pathology knowledge. The platform also leverages new artificial intelligence algorithms and underlying models to improve patient outcomes.
The platform already has a rapidly growing digital pathology community with more than 50,000 users in 172 countries.
No one wants to be diagnosed with cancer, but it’s best to get the diagnosis correct so that you can develop the right treatment plan.
AI for pets
Pets are frequently in the news for a variety of reasons.
We also recently wrote about the decline in startup funding.
Well, pet startups received funding this month as Scribenote, an AI platform for veterinarians, secured an $8.2 million funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Now, startups that help doctors take notes and ease the burden of spending hours writing medical records are nothing new for doctors who examine humans, but companies doing it for veterinarians are This is the first time I’ve heard of the story.
The Ontario-based startup aims to alleviate the burnout faced by the veterinary profession. In fact, 86% of veterinarians report severe stress levels. One reason is the need to keep accurate and complete medical records, even though some veterinarians see up to 30 patients a day.
Everyone wants what’s best for their pet. That of course includes veterinarians who are not overworked or stressed.
chips and cells
What do microchips and cells have in common? Probably not much, but one might tell us more about the other.
At least that’s what CytoTronics is trying to find out. The Boston-based startup, which just raised $13.5 million in Series Seed 2 led by Anzu Partners and Lyfe Capital, is developing a chip platform for cell biology discovery.
The company plans to use the new funding to accelerate the market entry of its Pixel semiconductor-to-living cell interface for cell biology applications. This platform allows for high-resolution, real-time assessment of properties of living cells, allowing researchers to better understand how chemical or genetic deviations affect cellular function.
Pixel allows researchers to leverage electrochemical and electrophysiological capabilities for high-level data collection that can be used for drug development and other pharmaceutical needs.
For centuries, technological innovations have helped us better understand our bodies. Currently, chips help us understand the smallest parts of them.
reversible power plant
There are so many carbon-related startups out there that it can be difficult to separate them.
But Reverion’s technology appears to be enabling it, as the company raised $62 million in Series A led by Energy Impact Partners this month.
The Germany-based startup aims to build reversible carbon-negative power plants. The company’s fuel cell-based plants can double the power output of traditional gas engines while operating reversibly to produce and preserve renewable natural gas or green hydrogen in times of power surplus. .
Finally, Reverion’s plants can also capture the CO₂ produced during power generation, making the process of power generation from biogas carbon negative.
The company plans to use the new cash to start production on the power plant and fill more than $100 million in advance orders from customers, but it got off to a bad start.
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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