SiliconHills

Sana Benefits moved to Austin a year ago from the San Francisco Bay area with a focus on disrupting the insurance industry and providing healthcare coverage for small to medium-sized businesses.  “We had this idea for how to fix small business health insurance and the barriers to starting it California were really high,”  said Will […]

Connectivity is not new, said Bob Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet and professor of innovation at the University of Texas at Austin. It harkens back to rivers and roads. The Chinese expression is “If you want to get rich, first build a road,” he said. His ancestor, Blind Jack Metcalf, built the first 180 miles of […]

Infinitum Electric, an electric motor maker, announced Thursday that is has raised $12.5 million in funding. The Austin-based startup, founded in 2016, closed the Series B round of funding led by Cottonwood Technology Fund with participation from Chevron Technology Ventures and AJAX Strategies and other investors. The latest funding follows a $1.8 million Series A […]

Cerebri AI, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve customer relations for companies, announced Wednesday that it has raised $7 million in venture capital funding. The Austin-based startup raised the funds from new investor Arcris Capital Partners and existing investors. Cerebri AI has raised $16.4 million to date. The company, founded in 2016, develops […]

Techstars Austin announced its 2020 class this week, including five Austin-based startups among the ten participating in the program. Another startup comes from Dallas and the remaining ones from New York, Florida, Ohio, and India. Also, this is the 10th Techstars program in Austin since it kicked off in 2014 and the fifth being run […]

The lights are twinkling bright in Austin and there’s still a lot to do in December as the technology community celebrates another stellar year. Be sure to check out Mozart’s Christmas Light Show daily from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. through Jan. 5th. And Dec. 10th – Austin’s Trail of Lights kicks off at Zilker […]

Austin-based Cloudsnap announced recently that it has closed a $1.8 million funding round. In addition, Matt Bradley, a former Rackspace Chief Strategy Office, was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Cloudsnap. Active Capital, based in San Antonio, led the investment round along with Houston-based Mercury Fund. To date, Cloudsnap has raised $4.1 million. When Bradley worked […]

Shotgun Seltzer, Austin’s first craft spiked seltzer, announced recently that it has received a $1 million investment from Unorthodox Ventures. It is the second investment since Unorthodox Ventures moved to Austin. The firm, founded by Carey Smith, founder of Big Ass Fans, has also invested and acquired GoFish Cam. Austin-based Shotgun Seltzer launched in July […]

Next Coast Ventures announced this week it has closed on its fund of $130 million. The Austin-based venture capital firm previously raised an $85 million fund in March of 2017. “Next Coast Ventures’ progress is a direct result of the hard work and dedication of the founders in our portfolio,” Michael Smerklo, co-founder and managing […]

REX, a home buying startup that uses big data and artificial intelligence, announced this week that it has raised $40 million in a Series C funding round. The company, founded in 2014 in the Los Angeles area, moved to Austin a year ago. To date, REX has raised $110.5 million in total funding. REX plans […]

Apple has begun building its new campus in Austin. And on Wednesday afternoon, Apple CEO Tim Cook and President Donald Trump flew into town to tour Apple’s Mac Pro computer production facility. The Mac Pro facility is near where Apple is investing $1 billion to build its largest campus outside its headquarters in Cupertino, California […]

Technology is the instrument that can lead to a brighter future, according to Amir Husain, founder, and CEO of Austin-based SparkCognition. SparkCognition is doing significant projects with partners all over the world to build and deploy technology to shape the future, Husain said. But the biggest question he gets asked from companies is what is […]

Ten years from now, if DivInc, an accelerator program aimed at helping women and founders of color, didn’t exist, then it would have achieved its goal, said Preston James, founder, and CEO. “We set out to transform the ecosystem by making it more authentically inclusive,” James said. Austin-based DivInc launched in 2016 and has had […]

Fast-growing startup tech companies outgrow office space quickly. That’s led to the popularity of co-working sites like WeWork but the WeWork model comes with shared space with others and doesn’t include company branding, said Scott Harmon, Founder, and CEO of Swivel, an Austin-based office leasing platform. “It’s like working at the mall,” Harmon said. That’s […]

An investor group including several Austin founders have joined together to buy Nautilus, a literary science magazine founded in 2013. The New York-based magazine has 10,000 paying subscribers and has an online reach of more than 10 million. Daily Dot co-founder and CEO Nicholas White is leading the investment group that is acquiring Nautilus. He […]

November is jam-packed with lots of fun events to attend. Silicon Hills News is hosting its first SpaceATX event on Wednesday, Nov. 6th. We hope to see you all there. And Silicon Hills News is currently taking photos for our 2020 Austin Tech Calendar. There is only one spot left for a startup to be featured. […]

Rainmaking, a corporate innovation and development firm, has opened an office in downtown Austin. The organization, founded in 2006 in Denmark, runs Startupbootcamp accelerator programs throughout Europe. It launches impact-focused startups, builds them into successful companies and eventually exits them. To date, Rainmaking has scaled more than 700 ventures in 15 different industries, which collectively […]

Brands have worked with influencers to sell products through social media for a long time. But it’s been more difficult for them to engage with regular customers who might like their products. And that’s where LoudCrowd saw an opportunity. The Austin-based startup sells software directly to brands that allow them to reward customers who promote […]

Sana announced Tuesday that it has received an additional $3.6 million in seed funding, bringing its total seed funding raised to date to $6.3 million. The Austin-based healthcare insurance startup reported that the seed funding was led by Gigafund and Trust Ventures. Other investors include Greenlight Re and Mark VC as the other major institutional […]

Instead of seeking venture capital, Joyce Durst, Co-Founder, and CEO of Growth Acceleration Partners decided to bootstrap the software development company. Growth Acceleration Partners, known as GAP,  offers analytics, cloud, mobile and QA services. Before co-founding GAP, Durst served as CEO of venture-backed startup Pinion Software, a security software company. At that company, she raised […]

In the modern era, every company is a global company, said Arlo Gilbert, CEO, and Co-Founder of Osano. Today, more than 65 laws exist worldwide governing how companies handle customers’ data online and privacy laws, Gilbert said. Most notably, the General Data Protection Regulation, known as GDPR, went into effect in May of 2018. It […]

Shipwell, which makes an online platform for any business to ship and track freight easily, announced Thursday that it has raised $35 million. Georgian Partners, based in Toronto, Canada, led the Series B round. Other investors include Fifth Wall, Global Founders Capital, Box Group and Aspect Ventures. To date, Shipwell, founded in 2016, has raised […]

Literati, a children’s subscription book service, announced Wednesday that it has received $12 million in new funding. Nikhil Basu Trivedi at Shasta Ventures led the Series A round. Jessica Ewing and Kelly Carroll founded Literati in 2016. Literati is a children’s book club aimed at children from birth to 12 years old. The company plans […]

Hypergiant announced Wednesday a new partnership with Dynetics to develop space mission solutions for government and commercial customers. The companies plan to use Amazon Web Services and its cloud for artificial intelligence, machine learning, analytics, Internet of Things and AWS Ground Stations to deliver mission and payload on-demand services. “These services will support the current […]

Opcity plans to double in size hiring 600 more employees in the next couple of years, said Ben Rubenstein, the company’s CEO and Co-Founder. Already, Opcity has 660 employees. It grew from zero to 660 in less than four years, he said. Opcity plans to hire 500 new employees next year, he said. Opcity is […]