HearstLab is holding its first-ever pitch competition for female-led founders in San Antonio.

It is looking to fund high-growth, women-led startups in the South, said Lisa Gillespie, vice president of marketing and new business development at the San Antonio Express-News and HearstLab Scout.

“We’re not just a newspaper,” Gillespie said. “We’re interested in investing way beyond a newspaper.”

Hearst is a 134-year-old privately held New York-based media company with more than $11 billion in revenue from newspapers, magazines, television stations, and other ventures. William Randolph Hearst founded the company in 1887 and his family continues to run it.

HearstLab is looking to invest in pre-Series A stage companies led by women and located in the South, Gillespie said.

The deadline to apply is March 8^th at HearstLabTexas.

By April 15^th, HearstLab will select the semi-finalists and by May 18^th judges will select ten finalists to pitch live at an event on June 23^rd at the Tobin Center in downtown San Antonio.

HearstLab will select a minimum of three companies for a $100K investment and three months of support, Gillespie said.

Eve Burton, a senior vice president and general counsel at Hearst, started HearstLab 12 years ago in New York to invest in women-led companies.

“We’ve just expanded from there,” Gillespie said.

HearstLab mostly invested in companies in the Northeast, she said. But during the Pandemic, HearstLab decided to expand the HearstLab network across the country.

Lisa Burton, formerly founder of AdMass, a portfolio company of HearstLab, and now a vice president with HearstLab, moved to Austin last December.

After massive research, HearstLab decided to launch the first pitch competition in San Antonio, Gillespie said. She works with Mark Medici, CEO and Publisher of the San Antonio Express-News. Medici wanted to host HearstLab in San Antonio. In Texas, Hearst owns the San Antonio Express-News, Houston Chronicle, Beaumont Enterprise, Midland Reporter Telegraph, Laredo Morning News, and other newspapers.

HearstLab is working with Geekdom and other local organizations to get its message out, Gillespie said.

In addition to the pitch competition, HearstLab has teamed up with Project W The Artemis Fund, and Beam at SXSW to present the second “Founded in Texas” event showcasing on March 13th in Austin. It will feature 12 female founders of seed-stage technology companies based in Texas.

An artificial intelligence program has beat a human at chess, checkers, the game of Go, and Jeopardy.

Now GT Sophy, an AI agent has defeated some of the world’s best drivers of the PlayStation racing simulation game, Gran Turismo Sport.

Sony AI with Polyphony Digital and Sony Interactive Entertainment announced the breakthrough in artificial intelligence recently. And the achievement has ties to the University of Texas at Austin.

It’s a huge milestone for the advancement of robotics, said Peter Stone, professor of computer science at UT Austin and director of Texas Robotics.

Gran Turismo involves real-time strategic, tactical decision making and split-second reactions and GT Sophy mastered those capabilities, said Stone. He is also executive director of Sony AI America and is a core member of the team that worked on the project. He is one of the authors of a paper published in Nature titled “Outracing Champion Gran Turismo Drivers with Deep Reinforcement Learning.” Four of the authors are affiliated with UT Austin.

Gran Turismo is a very real simulation in the sense that it models the friction of real race cars and resistance, Stone said. In fact, real race car drivers use it for training, he said.

The robot has learned social navigation, Stone said. People do that smoothly and seamlessly. If there is a crowd that lets out after a football game at UT, people leave the stadium and cross the street without running into each other because they can use their senses, experience, and knowledge to navigate through the crowd. That is what the researchers have taught GT Sophy.

“What we’ve done is created a computer controller,” Stone said.

Right now, the AI technology is in the laboratory stage, but researchers are working closely to integrate it into a future version of Gran Turismo to enhance the gameplay experience, he said.

The focus of Sony’s work in AI is to enhance human creativity, Stone said.

“This is an example of that,” Stone said.

In 1997, the IBM supercomputer called Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov, the world’s best chess player, but that didn’t mean people quit playing chess, Stone said. It’s the same with AI in video games, he said. AI will enhance the game playing experience, but it will not replace humans, he said.

At UT Austin, Stone and his team are training robots to play soccer in a RoboCup, but those robots even if they defeat professional soccer players will not end the sport, Stone said.

“The same thing here,” Stone said. “Even if computers are better than people at driving race cars, the F1 will still remain a human sport.”

Austin has become one of the premier centers in the world for robotics research. In 2002, when Stone joined the faculty, there were only two roboticists on campus and today there are 16 faculty members. Texas Robotics has several industry affiliates including Amazon, Sandia, and Apptronix. It is also in talks about working with Tesla, Stone said.

The AI technology developed for GT Sophy does present new opportunities that may be used in areas such as autonomous racing, autonomous driving, high-speed robotics, and control, Hiroaki Kitano, CEO of Sony AI, said in a news release.

But right now, there are no plans to use the technology behind GT Sophy in autonomous cars, Stone said.

“Training a video game is different than training in real cars,” Stone said.

To perfect GT Sophy, Sony AI tested the AI agent by racing against four of the world’s best Gran Turismo drivers in two events on July 2, 2021, and Oct. 21, 2021. GT Sophy learns continuously by playing the game. The AI agent made improvements based on the results of the first race and then outperformed the human drivers in the second event in October.

GT Sophy was trained to master race car control, racing tactics, and racing etiquette to avoid at-fault collisions and respect opponent driving lines.

“One of the most exciting challenges of our time is how can we use AI to enhance what people do,” Stone said. “We are using AI to augment human capabilities rather than to replace them.”

The full press conference announcing the GT Sophy breakthrough is posted below.

[English] Gran Turismo Sophy – Race Together Media Event

The media event where Gran Turismo Sophy, a revolutionary racing AI agent jointly developed by Sony AI, Polyphony Digital, and Sony Interactive Entertainment, was first announced and presented on February 9th, 2022.

SourceDay, which makes supply chain management software, announced on Tuesday that it has raised $31.5 million in venture capital funding.

Austin-based SourceDay, founded in 2013, has raised $55 million to date. Norwest Venture Partners led the Series C round of funding with participation from existing investors ATX Ventures, Baird Capital, Draper Associates, Ring Ventures, and Silverton Partners.

SourceDay has seen a huge uptick in customer demand for its platform. The company broke records in 2021 with thousands of new customers. Today, more than 12,000 global manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors use SourceDay’s software and platform to manage supply chain issues. So far, SourceDay has processed more than $124 billion for its customers.

SourceDay plans to use the new funds for product development and to hire new staff. “The company plans to double its product and engineering teams and bring on a product leader to its executive team,” according to a news release. SourceDay has more than 80 employees and recently hired Sarah Scudder as its chief marketing officer.

“Procurement teams can expect more than half of their purchase orders to change—a level of unpredictability that can be detrimental to many organizations. Procurement teams—and their suppliers—need user-friendly solutions in response to the supply chain’s erratic nature,” Tom Kieley, CEO and co-founder of SourceDay, said in a news release. “Maintaining healthy supply chain performance is more important today than ever. Our emphasis on streamlining a company’s first mile enables teams to increase on-time deliveries, eliminate pricing discrepancies with suppliers, minimize inventory issues and drive predictability with last-mile receiving. This investment will have a tremendous impact on our services and digital platform as we embark on another year of record growth and creating resilient supply chains for our customers.” 

In addition to leading this round, Norwest partner Sean Jacobsohn will take a seat on SourceDay’s board of directors.

“Tom, Clint and the SourceDay team have impressed us with their deep domain experience and ability to scale the business at a time when supply chain performance software couldn’t be more critical,” Sean Jacobsohn, Partner at Norwest said in a news release..”

Amber Gunst is stepping down as the Chief Executive Officer of the Austin Technology Council in September.

Gunst has served in that role since May of 2018. She took over as interim CEO when Barbary Brunner left the organization to join an Austin-based tech company. Gunst had previously served as head of sales and membership services at ATC.

ATC, founded in 1992, has begun the search for a new CEO. The non-profit organization has locally founded companies and global organizations with Austin-based offices as its members. It currently has more than 200 members.

“When ATC was founded 30 years ago, Austin technology companies needed a voice in Austin. But today, Austin tech companies are the main driver of Austin’s economic miracle,” Scott Francis, CEO and Founder of BP3 Global and chair of the ATC executive committee, said in a news release. “ATC’s next CEO will help us re-imagine our organization’s role and responsibility in an era where tech companies are the mainstream drivers of our economy rather than the underdogs.”

Membership dropped 10 percent during the pandemic. But ATC pivoted to online programming in March of 2020.

As CEO, Gunst also oversaw the evolution of the CEO Summit and the expansion of membership benefits.

“It was important for me to give our board the time they needed to find my successor,” Gunst said. “The affection I have for ATC is abundant and my greatest wish is for whoever follows me to have a successful start to their tenure. It is not only best for them, but for our team, our board, and especially our members, who count on strong leadership to keep them involved.”

ATC will celebrate its 30^th anniversary in September with a battle of the bands event and tech awards.

“We are so grateful for Amber’s leadership and proud to support her in her next chapter,” Robert Alvarez, CFO at BigCommerce and member of the ATC executive board said in a news release. “The next phase of our journey will be the best one yet. We are excited to bring in our next CEO with the purpose and passion to help the Austin tech ecosystem thrive in the years ahead.”

For people who want to book a house near Joshua Tree National Park and get away from it all but still have ultra-fast Wi-Fi, Wander has a place.

Wander allows people to get lost in the desert but still have all of the amenities of a smart home for the perfect work-from-home vacation.

Austin-based Wander launched just nine months ago and raised a seed round of funding six months ago. Last week, the company announced it has raised a $20 million round.

QED Investors led the Series A round with participation from Redpoint Ventures, Authentic Ventures, Fifthwall, Susa Ventures, Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman’s Thirty Five Ventures, Packy McCormack, Sahil Bloom, Todd & Rahul’s Angel Fund, Alumni Ventures, Vibe Capital, al16z and others.

To date, Wander has raised $27 million. It plans to use the funding to expand its portfolio of properties, hire more employees, and product development.

 The company is focused on catering to the more than 20 million professionals whose jobs in the U.S. are projected to become fully remote by the end of 2022.

The number of people worldwide who can work fully remotely continues to grow and they need infrastructure to support them especially when they travel. And that’s where Wander comes in.  The company owns all of the homes on its platform which means it can deliver high-quality, smart technology in great locations.

When guests check in to one of Wander’s smart homes, they can control everything through the mobile phone app including opening the door and turning on the lights.

And each Wander home comes with a Tesla. It can also be accessed through the mobile phone app.

“Our goal is to build the infrastructure to experience the world,” John Andrew Entwistle, founder and CEO of Wander, said in a news release. “We’re scaling rapidly to meet the demand of our more than 30,000 community members, with dozens more properties coming soon. We’re already seeing our vision for the future take shape.”

Wander currently offers stays at its California properties in Joshua Tree, Lake Tahoe and Mendocino County and Oregon properties in Port Orford and Bandon Dunes, with dozens more coming across the United States this year. In addition to its growing waitlist, the company also has the support of more than 2,000+ Founding Members, many of whom participated in the latest funding round as angel investors.

“While we hopefully return to ‘normal’ in 2022, flexibility and remote work seems to be a common theme,” QED Partner Chuckie Reddy said in a news release. “After two years of being restricted from travel and exploring new places, it has become clear how important it is to have a change of scenery from time to time. Blending those two things together in one extraordinary experience is exactly what Wander is all about. People are living busier lives than ever — when they spend time to travel, it should be perfect.”

Enboarder on Wednesday announced it has raised $32 million in additional funding.

NewSpring led the Series B round with participation from previous investors Greycroft and Next Coast Ventures and new investors Golub Capital, Escalate Capital Partner, Alumni Ventures, and Gaingels.

In June of 2019, Enboarder raised $8 million and made Austin its U.S. headquarters. The company, founded in 2015, is based in Sydney, Australia.

“Enboarder’s mission is to help HR teams drive action on their programs and initiatives by better engaging with their employees and creating more personalized experiences,” Brent Pearson, founder and CEO of Enboarder, said in a news release. “In a time when employees are more overwhelmed and disconnected than ever before, and uncertainty in hybrid work plans continues, ensuring workers are connected and engaged is crucial. This investment will power Enboarder’s next stage of growth and is critical to helping Enboarder lead the global people activation revolution.”

Enboarder plans to use the new funds for international expansion. It also plans to double its staff in the next year and invest in additional infrastructure and systems to accelerate its growth and expansion.

“The key to any successful business is a happy, engaged and connected workforce and Enboarder ensures organizations can do just this by putting their people first,” Hart Callahan, NewSpring Partner, said in a news release. “We’re excited to partner with Enboarder at this pivotal moment in the company’s history and look forward to supporting its continued growth and the wider people activation revolution.”

Last year, Enboarder also created a new platform aimed at engaging employees in the workplace. The company also reported it doubled its revenue and increased its customer base by 130 percent. Its customers include more than 400 companies including Deloitte, Dolby, Eventbrite, Hugo Boss, ING, McDonald’s, Shopify, and Wyndham Destinations, Enboarder also doubled its staff in 2021.

The company also recently hired Laura Lee Gentry as Chief People Officer and Andrea Dumont as Chief Marketing Officer.

“Employees are more overwhelmed than ever before and hybrid work environments are leading to increasingly disconnected workforces. In fact, Enboarder’s own research supports this: in a recent survey of global employees, 69% of the workers we surveyed worldwide don’t feel a very strong sense of connection to their co-workers and 67% would use the phrase ‘burnt out’ to describe work over the past 12 months,” said Pearson. “It’s clear that HR initiatives are still failing to drive change and engagement. Enboarder is poised to help HR teams transform their processes and programs to create a more engaged, connected and successful workforce during this critical juncture of the future of work.”

In 2018, Trust Ventures closed on its first venture capital fund of $35 million in Austin.

The next year, it closed on a second $70 million fund.

And on Tuesday, Trust Ventures closed on its third and largest fund yet, targeting $200 million.

To date, Trust Ventures has invested in 22 companies including Sana Benefits, ICON and Oklo. The VC fund is focused on investing in startups with disruptive technology.

Salen Churi and Brian Tochman lead Trust Ventures. Previously, Churi worked as a law professor and founded the Innovation Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. He also practiced law at Kirkland & Ellis and Sidley Austin.

Tochman was the co-founder, president, and chief operating officer of Kasita, an Austin-based startup that builds modular homes and apartments. Previously, he worked as vice president of mergers and acquisitions for Platinum Equity, a Beverly Hills, CA-based private equity fund.

“We founded Trust Ventures on the belief that the obvious is not the inevitable: solutions to many of society’s greatest challenges are already out there, but many are being held back because of outdated or unnecessary policy barriers,” Churi, general partner of Trust Ventures, said in a news release. “We help our companies overcome those barriers and bring those barriers and bring those solutions to those who need them most.”

Trust Ventures is focused on highly regulated markets such as clean energy, affordable housing, and quality healthcare.

“There are huge opportunities for innovation in these industries, but unfortunately innovations are being held back due to barriers put in place generations ago in a very different environment from today, or by industry insiders looking to protect the status quo,” according to a news release.

That’s where Trust Ventures sees an opportunity in working with startups to remove regulatory barriers. The fund takes an active and operational approach when working with its portfolio startups and founders.

“We’re looking to invest in startups where we can add tangible value,” General Partner Tochman said in a news release. “We are an investor who has the best interests of the entrepreneur in mind. We’re invested in their success and we’re with them every step of the way as they grow and navigate around barriers.”

The fund takes an active and operational approach to work with startups and help founders to understand their policy barriers and determine the right strategy to overcome those barriers.

“Every success from one of our portfolio companies unlocks tremendous growth not just for the company itself, but for the customers whose lives will be materially improved by their product or service, and for society at large,” Churi said.

When consumers install residential solar panels, they are often left in the dark throughout the process, said Scott Nguyen, founder and CEO of Bodhi.

After they sign the contract, they don’t know how long the installation is going to take and what the various steps are, he said.

“You can buy $30 worth of takeout food and track when it goes into the oven, when it goes into the delivery vehicle and when it’s delivered to your front door,” Nguyen said. “You buy a $30,000 solar system and you have no idea when it’s going to be installed, and what the next steps are in the process.”

That’s what happened to Nguyen when he put solar panels on his house in Austin. And it sparked the idea to create Bodhi, which makes a customer experience software platform for solar installation companies.

Bodhi integrates with a solar companies’ customer relationship management software to personalize the homeowner’s solar installation. And once the system is working, Bodhi’s smartphone app sends homeowners information on its performance.

Nguyen founded Bodhi in 2018 and has gone through the Mass Challenge accelerator program. Bodhi has customers nationwide and has been growing steadily as the demand for solar installations has skyrocketed in the last few years, Nguyen said.

When the pandemic struck in March of 2020, Bodhi shut everything down and Nguyen didn’t know when the market would return. But it did return after about three months with a vengeance, he said. Consumers, many stuck at home, decided to go forward with home improvements like solar installations, and demand shot up almost overnight, Nguyen said.

The Texas Blizzard in February of 2021 and the resulting power outages statewide also contributed to a spike in demand in Texas from consumers wanting a home solar system with battery storage, Nguyen said.

To keep up with demand, Austin-based Bodhi last week announced the closing of $4 million in financing led by Clean Energy Ventures, a venture capital firm funding early-stage climate tech innovation.

With the new funding, Nguyen plans to hire more engineers, sales and marketing, and operations staff. Bodhi currently has six full-time employees and two part-time employees. It plans to double by the end of the year, Nguyen said. Bodhi is also developing new products.

 “Over the decades, hard costs facing the solar industry have dropped tremendously, but what we’ve noticed is that customers are still hesitant about making the leap to solar,” Daniel Goldman, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Clean Energy Ventures, said in a news release. “Our investment in Bodhi is premised on the potential to make consumer solar purchases seamless, hassle-free, and end-to-end. Bodhi’s platform is designed to alleviate all customer pain points in the installation process and post-installation monitoring, removing the last remaining barriers to greater solar adoption.”

Texas ranks second in installed solar capacity, which makes up less than 3 percent of the energy generated in the state, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. California ranks first with nearly 25 percent of the state’s electricity generated from solar.

“Texas is poised to become a nationwide leader in solar energy, with more than 4 GW of capacity expected to be installed over the next 5 years, with appropriate state policy that removes market barriers and recognizes solar’s benefits,” according to SEIA.

Texas has more than 137,000 solar installations and solar investment has exceeded $14.4 billion, according to SEIA. Its report shows Texas has 86 solar manufacturers, 201 installers and developers, and 225 other companies involved in the solar industry.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, some solar companies have experienced supply chain problems particularly with solar batteries, Nguyen said. Solar panels are still available and have not been largely impacted, he said. Labor shortages are also a problem for installation companies, he said.  Despite those issues, pricing is coming down, he said.

Prices for solar systems in Texas have fallen 11 percent during the last five years, according to SEIA.

Nguyen says Bodhi’s work in solar is just the start. The company plans to expand into other areas like homebuilding and house buying.