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 at Rackspace as Chief Strategy Officer, the company’s revenue grew from $500 million to $2.5 billion, tripled its employment, and launched several new products.

Bradley has served as an advisor and board member to technology companies and worked as an analyst at Morgan Stanley. He earned a BS from the University of Virginia and an MBA from The Wharton School.

“Matt’s experience at Rackspace makes him a perfect fit for Cloudsnap’s future as a leader in the managed automation market,”  Pat Matthews, CEO and founder of Active Capital, said in a news release. “Large enterprises and growth companies are leveraging dozens or even hundreds of siloed software apps today. Cloudsnap is well-positioned to help these companies integrate their software apps so they can perform at their best.”

Cloudsnap makes it easy for companies to seamlessly integrate business applications. Through technology and human expertise, Cloudsnap keeps a company’s business application data in sync. Cloudsnap integrates with nearly 100 business applications. Cloudsnap has more than 350 customers including Spindrift and Acronis.

“I feel very lucky to lead Cloudsnap. We have an incredibly talented team and a marquee customer list full of modern companies that are automating manual business processes,” Bradley said in a news statement. “We have a unique do-it-with-you model because application integration is hard. We don’t sell you a software platform and leave you to figure it out on your own. Our automation engineers build with you.”

Rick Barkley, previously CEO, moves to become the company’s Chief Technology Officer.

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 with its first flavor, Bramble, inspired by the botanical gin cocktail of the same name that uses blackberry liquor and lemon and it just introduced its second flavor, Ranch Water, inspired by a Texas cocktail. All flavors are natural with no artificial sweeteners. Shotgun Seltzer is now being served in nearly 200 Texas bars, restaurants, venues, hotels and resorts.

Shotgun Seltzer competes with the popular White Claw Hard Seltzer and a slew of other low-calorie naturally flavored hard seltzers, which have become popular with Millennials and Generation Z. Sales for hard seltzer are expected to reach $1 billion this year and $2.5 billion next year.

And it is part of an overall trend to healthier drinks with sparkling water sales reaching $2.5 billion in 2018, according to Nielsen. In the last four years, sparkling water sales have risen 54 percent, Nielson reported.

 “With so many national brands focused on canned spiked seltzers, we knew bringing the experience on draft to the on-premise channel would be a way to stand out,” said Shotgun Seltzer Co-Founder Brad Foster. “We also know that our Texas craft seltzers allow consumers to experience more variety and unique flavors.”

The company is founded by the husband and wife team of Brad and Lori Foster. They have spent nearly 30 years in the alcohol industry.

 “Brad and Lori have deep knowledge of their industry, and they’ve proven through Shotgun Seltzer’s rapid growth that they have more than an idea and a polished presentation — they have a real business with real growth,”  Smith, Founding Contrarian of Unorthodox Ventures, said in a news statement. “We’re excited to roll up our sleeves and support Shotgun Seltzer’s continued success.”

For more on Unorthodox Ventures, listen to the Ideas to Invoices podcast with Silicon Hills News and Carey Smith.

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 director of Next Coast Ventures, said in a news release.

Next Coast Ventures focuses on funding early-stage ventures, primarily in Austin and Texas. The firm has nearly doubled the size of its team and its Entrepreneurs Council in the past six months.

Recently, Next Coast Ventures added Zaz Floreani to its deal team as a principal, Jonathan Kaplan as chief operating officer and Sarah Puil as entrepreneur-in-residence. It also added HomeAway Co-founder Brian Sharples, RetailMeNot Founder Cotter Cunningham and SaaS entrepreneur Julian Castelli to its growing Entrepreneurs Council to mentor and advise its portfolio leadership.

Next Coast Ventures announced its first investment out of NCV II in July, leading the $12.5 million Series C round in Austin-based software review platform, TrustRadius.

“We are very fortunate that our LPs have continued to invest in Next Coast Ventures, we’ve had big goals from the beginning and while we’ve already seen some indicators of success, we plan on continuing to keep our heads down, work hard and do everything we can to serve great entrepreneurs in Austin and other Next Coast markets,” Thomas Ball, co-founder and managing director of Next Coast Ventures, said in a news release. “We have seen incredible growth in these rising innovation hubs since we founded our firm in 2015 and know that cities like Austin will continue to be a prime example of what is possible outside the coasts.”

Next Coast Ventures’ first fund invested in over 30 portfolio companies located in Next Coast markets, including Texas, Montana, Utah, and Minnesota.

Next Coast Ventures’ portfolio includes Austin-based Phlur, EverlyWell, Tenfold, 101Commerce, AlertMedia, TrustRadius, and enboarder, ScaleFactor, OnRamp, LeanDNA, Dropoff, SeriesX, Rosso&Flynn, Dosh, Diligent Robotics, Swivel, Stoplight, Aceable, Osano, College Consortium, and Backtracks.

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 to use the additional funding to complete its nationwide expansion and to “broaden the availability of mortgage, insurance, escrow and other services it offers,” according to a news release.

REX now operates in 23 cities in 17 states. The company uses data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence to price homes and then target them to qualified buyers through Zillow, Google, Facebook, Trulia and other sites. It also only charges a total commission of 2 percent on sales, compared to the standard 6 percent for most real estate deals.

“REX is leading the transformation of an industry that remains stuck in the past and doesn’t provide the value for money that consumers expect,” REX board member Scott McNealy, co-founder and former CEO of Sun Microsystems, said in a news statement. “It’s shown impressive progress in building out its technology and services this year and we’re pleased with the way consumers are responding.” 

“REX offers buyers and sellers a less expensive, more effective and far easier way to conduct the most important transaction of their lives,” REX co-founder and President Lynley Sides said in a news release. “In contrast to the outrageously high charges levied by the MLS realtor cartel, REX helps families preserve their hard-earned savings.” 

Since launching in late 2015, REX has represented homes cumulatively valued at more than $2 billion. And it says it has saved customers more than $16 million in fees.

And for every 50 homes it sells, REX builds one new home for a family in need. 

REX’s investors include McNealy, Griffin, Dick Schulze, founder of Best Buy, Gordon Segal, founder of Crate and Barrel, Amit Singhal, former SVP of search at Google, Diana Nelson, chair of Carlson, Jack Greenberg, former CEO of McDonald’s, Jim Perry, co-founder of Madison Dearborn Partners, and Muneer Satter, chairman of Satter Investment Management. 

Flying a drone around a store to check for inventory is the big idea behind Pensa Systems.

The Austin-based startup this week announced it has raised $10 million in additional seed-stage funding. To date, Pensa Systems, founded in 2016, has raised a total of $17.2 million.

Existing investors Signia Venture Partners and ATX Venture Partners led the funding round with additional participation from Commerce Ventures, Capital Factory, and Revtech Ventures, and retail industry veterans David Ritter and James McCann. Existing seed investors include ZX Ventures, the investment arm of Anheuser-Busch InBev; Mick Mountz, the founder, and CEO of Kiva Systems; and others.

As part of the latest funding round, ATX Ventures managing director Chris Shonk has joined Pensa’s board of directors, and McCann and Ritter have joined the company’s advisory board.

Pensa Systems plans to use the money raised to “accelerate delivery and deployment of Pensa’s retail inventory visibility system, which uses advanced computer vision, patent-pending artificial intelligence and autonomous drones to see and understand what’s on store shelves.”

Pensa Systems’ technology can help stores do a better job of keeping stock of items to keep popular items in stock and increase revenue.

Pensa launched its products in January at the National Retail Federation conference. The company has completed pilots with Anheuser-Busch InBev and other major retailers and global brands.

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

“So we view Austin as a very key place for the future of our company,” Cook said in a statement at the event.

Apple is constructing a 3 million-square-foot campus on 133 acres that will initially have 5,000 employees with the ability to expand to 15,000 employees. It is expected to open in 2022.

 “Building the Mac Pro, Apple’s most powerful device ever, in Austin is both a point of pride and a testament to the enduring power of American ingenuity,” Cook said in a news release.

The 244,000-square-foot Mac Pro facility employs more than 500 people in a range of roles, including electrical engineers and electronics assemblers, according to Apple.

Already, Apple has 7,000 employees in Austin, up 50 percent in the last five years.

Apple said it is also working with Austin-based Bartlett Tree Experts to preserve trees on the site of its new campus. It is also designing the campus to maximize green space with a 50-acre nature and wildlife preserve that will be open to the public.

And the campus is slated to run on 100 percent renewable energy, including from on-site solar power generators.

Apple has also partnered with Austin Community College to offer app development with a Swift coding program.

During the visit to Austin, President Trump was asked about whether Apple should be exempt from Chinese tariffs. Apple imports components from China to make its computers in Austin.

“Well, we’re looking at that,” Trump said in a statement from the event. “And, you know, the problem we have is you have Samsung — it’s a great company, but it’s a competitor of Apple, and it’s not fair if — because we have a trade deal with Korea.  We made a great trade deal with South Korea, but we have to treat Apple on a somewhat similar basis as we treat Samsung.”

Samsung has a  fabrication plant in Austin which is one of the largest in the world.

“Now, with all of that being said, we’re doing very nicely with China, but I like it the way it is now, because we’re taking in billions and billions of dollars, and we’re giving some of that money to farmers and others,” Trump said.  “But we are looking at Apple.  When I wanted Apple to do, from day one — from before I got elected — I said, “Someday we’re going to see Apple building plants in our country, not in China.”  And that’s what’s happening.”

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 artificial intelligence and how can they use it, he said.

“AI is like mathematics, it’s like physics, it’s not a product – it’s a way of thinking,” Husain said.  

Husain gave the closing remarks at the end of the two-day AI and future tech summit, Time Machine, an annual conference put on by SparkCognition, at the Palmer Events Center in Austin.

Machine learning, which is a branch of AI, is only focused on identifying correlations, Husain said. It’s not magic, it’s a tool, he said.

Husain spoke about deploying AI in a talk on the model-based enterprise with lessons learned from working with large customers like Verizon, Boeing, State Street, and others. SparkCognition, an artificial intelligence technology company, makes applications for industries such as oil and gas, defense, utilities, aviation, and financial services.

SparkCognition also recently partnered with Boeing to form SkyGrid, a joint venture focused on delivering unmanned aircraft system traffic management solutions through AI and blockchain technologies.

The impact of AI is horizontal and applies to all industries including food service, construction, wholesale and retail, agriculture, social services, transportation and storage, Husain said. The magnitude of that impact is unignorable, he said.

During his presentation, Husain displayed a slide quoting various reports on the impact of AI on the global economy. “AI could boost average profit by 38 percent and lead to an economic impact of $14 Trillion by 2035,” according to Accenture.

AI also can be used to distribute resources more effectively, Husain said. It focuses everyone to ask questions about whether there is enough food and energy in the world for everyone and enough capital for everyone. With the application of AI, in many cases, the answer will be yes, Husain said.

“The question is will we make the choice to bring the world that allows everyone access to these opportunities that AI creates,” Husain said.

He acknowledged that there some fear and ethical concerns exist around the deployment of AI. Those things must be addressed, he said.

AI is about four things: perception, decision-making, acting, and learning, Husain said. The Japanese process of Kaizen or continuous learning and improvement is the result of machine learning and AI, he said. During his presentation, he gave examples of the application of machine learning in loan approval in the financial services industry, the military identifying a target, and utility industry using data from sensors to detect equipment failures.

In these scenarios, AI and machine learning have automated work done by human beings and created a workflow that continuously improves over time, Husain said. That way of thinking lets companies look at the workflows that drive their companies and automating ones that make sense to drive increased productivity and revenue, he said.

The modern driven enterprise is a bunch of these AI-driven workflows running together in parallel at scale, Husain said. Scale-up a million processes in different areas like sales, marketing, and human resources and suddenly a company that has one million virtual workers, he said.

“What I’m talking about is that when you move to a model like this you can create scale and capability the likes of which has never existed on planet earth,” Husain said. “So modern driven enterprises change the game. First of all, because these processes are digitized, they can be replicated.”

With AI, a company can have two million digital workers doing sales price comparisons autonomously across the inventory of the largest company in the world in a particular category of product, no problem, Husain said.

“If you’ve got the compute capacity to launch the AI pipeline running these models, you’re in business,” Husain said.

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 5 cohorts, 64 founders and 49 companies go through its 12-week program. It has also branched out into other programs such as Startup Sistas, empowering women of color, Champions of Change, an annual awards ceremony to recognize others in the community who are driving effective change around diversity and inclusion. It also has an alumni program in which it gives them access to investors, mentors, partners, and others who might help their business.

“We come together and make this a very diverse and equitable ecosystem,” James said. “Austin can thrive with everyone and not leave anyone behind.”

The majority of DivInc’s companies are still operating and several have gone on to participate in other programs in Austin like Sputnik Accelerator, Capital Factory Accelerator, MassChallenge Texas, and SKU.

“DivInc provides a place where our founders can be who they really are,” James said. “We give them the tools and resources to be successful and thrive.”

The latest cohort pitched Wednesday afternoon at the Robert B. Rowling Hall at the University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business.

First up, Leah Mayo, co-founder, and CEO pitched Found Experience, a virtual concierge for vacation rental properties.

Found Experience uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to find the best events, restaurants, bars, and other experiences in a city and then shares that information with vacation rental properties that subscribe to its service. Those vacation rental property owners then provide the information to their renters as a perk.

In the U.S., there are 2.5 million property owners, Mayo said. They are under-resourced and they are struggling to diversify, she said.

Found Experience can help them distinguish their properties, Mayo said.

Found Experience’s Software as a Service, SaaS platform raises the bar when it comes to concierge services and helps increase revenue, create brand loyalty and stand out from the competition, Mayo said.

To date, Found Experience has conducted beta tests with users in New York, London and Paris. It is launching with direct sales to property owners and property management companies. It is in two beta tests with business to business companies and is in negotiations with one of the largest property management companies in the U.S., Mayo said.

Next, Rahel Abraham, founder and CEO of ClimaGuard detailed the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Harvey in Houston.

Hurricane Harvey resulted in $5 billion in auto claim losses including Abraham’s vehicle.

“As an engineer, I knew I could create a better solution and I did,” Abraham said.

ClimaGuard makes a military-grade, waterproof car cover that sells for $299.  It’s made from tear-resistance waterproof material and it encapsulates a car from tires to top like a Ziplock bag.

Over 41 million Americans live in a flood zone, Abraham said. The U.S. has $10 billion annually from non-hurricane related flooding, she said.

ClimaGuard is selling directly to consumers and is on its way to selling out its first production order by the end of this year, Abraham said.

The third to pitch was Kanna, a marketplace for the gig economy in the fast-growing legal cannabis industry.

In the U.S., there are 296,000 cannabis-related jobs created, said Farhaj Mayan, Co-Founder and CEO of Kanna. But the 39,000 businesses in the legal cannabis industry struggle with hiring, he said.

So Kanna created a platform that connects legal cannabis businesses with employees. Kanna sources quality and trained cannabis workers, Mayan said. Gigs in the cannabis industry typically pay $15 as a starting wage, he said. Kanna does background checks on employees, business verification on employers, Mayan said. Kanna charges employers a per-employee fee.

Kanna launched in Oklahoma with 9 paid pilots live and 68 farms, Mayan said. The industry is growing quickly from $2.3 billion in 2019 to $8.2 billion by 2024, he said.

Right now, cannabis companies hire from staffing agencies like Vangst, FlowerHire, Hempstaff or job boards: Indeed, Budlist, Weedhire,  and Craiglist, Mayan said. Kanna differentiates itself from its competition by being a career development company offering employees a digital portfolio, online training, and certifications. It’s like LinkedIn for the cannabis industry.

“Our vision is to build a vertically integrated platform across hiring in cannabis, offer education, benefits, and banking for workers,” Mayan said.

Hirekanna.com

The fourth to pitch was KikuPal, a personalized employee support platform.

One in 4 employees are going through a life event which results in 30 days of lost productivity per life event or $100 billion in lost productivity annually, said Naomi Bourgeois, CEO, and founder.

She understands the problem firsthand. She had to return to work following the death of her husband, who died from cancer. She had two young children at home. She felt overwhelmed.

“This is where we saw an opportunity to help,” she said.

KikuPal, a personalized employee support platform, allows employees and colleagues to buy points for the employee they want to help. Those points can be redeemed for services such as lawn care, rideshare, food delivery or maid service.

Companies’ current benefit offerings do not meet needs, 91 percent want customizable programs, Bourgeois said. Already, companies spend $8.7 billion on employee wellness programs, she said.

KikuPal helps to support, acknowledge, and celebrate employees who are going through a life event whether that’s a new baby, illness, the death of a close relative or something else.

It’s a subscription-based model that charges $3 per employee per month, and it launched direct to consumers last year and has since expanded nationwide, Bourgeois said.

The fifth to pitch was Milly Fotso, founder and CEO of Peace of Home, a platform that streamlines the home finding, moving and decorating experience for consumers.

Sixty percent of Americans say moving is the most stressful life event, with divorce coming in second, Fotso said.

And corporate relocation still sucks, she said.

Moving costs 18 days of lost employee productivity when relocating resulting in $88 billion in lost productivity annually, said Fotso, a former Facebook employee who relocated from New York to Austin.

Every year, 40 million Americans move and $25 billion is spent on corporate relocation annually, Fotso said. It’s a highly fractured business, which Peace of Home aims to streamline, she said. Employees can go straight to the Peace of Home platform to coordinate a move and Peace of Home handles everything, coordinating with all the vendors, she said.

“We believe moving should feel less than a divorce and more like a stroll down the beach at sunset,” Fotso said.

“Today, we are excited to announce five employers and $225,000 in revenue in 2020,” Fotso said. “We are just getting started.”

The sixth to present, Frank Mendoza, founder and CEO of Detecting Talent, outlined the problem of attrition and his solution to proactively retain top talent.

Companies spend $1 trillion annually on attrition, Mendoza said. And 52 percent of those employees who quit say there is something their manager could have done to keep them from leaving, he said.

That’s where Detecting Talent comes in, Mendoza said. It has created a platform powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify and retain top talent with interactive dashboards, informed action plans to improve engagement and monitor movement, he said.

“Our solution is industry agnostic,” he said.

In the U.S. $6 billion with 124 million employees, but Detecting Talent is going to focus on the Texas market first, he said.

In the U.S., 87 percent of companies do not use artificial intelligence to identify at risk talent, Mendoza said.  It has monthly subscription plans and is working with IBM and Sono Bella as beta customers, he said.

Last year, Detecting Talent took third place in the IBM Watson competition, and the startup was invited to join the Capital Factory accelerator community, Mendoza said.

Lastly, Averett Barksdale, Co-Founder and CEO of Soko, pitched his mobile gaming loyalty app targeted at college students.

Every year, $130 billion is spent on digital advertising, Averett said. But increasingly it is becoming difficult to reach consumers and convert on those ads, he said. There is a 3.7 percent average conversion rate for digital ads across all industries, he said.

His solution is Soko, a platform that connects brands and consumers on a mobile gaming site.

Every month, mobile gamers spend 1.5 billion hours of time playing games on mobile devices. Soko’s solution is a mobile gaming, loyalty and rewards platform for gamers that allows them to play games, earn points and shop.

The loyalty market is worth $54 billion, he said.

In the U.S., there are  80 million college students and that equates to  $574 billion in spending power, and 42 percent play mobile games every day, Barksdale said.

Soko makes money by charging a monthly subscription, per user per interaction fee. Its competition is Dosh, drop, LevelUp, Shopkick, Flok, SpotOn, Foursquare, and LoopyLoyalty. But Soko’s Secret sauce is as the platform entertains, it creates a relationship that it can then convert, Barksdale said.

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 where Harmon and Mike Maples Jr., partner at Floodgate, a Silicon Valley-based VC firm, saw a sweet spot. They founded Swivel in Austin in late 2016 to deliver a short-term office leasing alternative for companies.

But it’s different from its competitors, New York-based Knotel, which leases office space directly to companies, and WeWork and Liquidspace, which target individuals and small teams with coworking and office space. Instead, Swivel targets middle tier, growing companies of 10 to 200 people looking to level-up from coworking spaces or expand into bigger private fully furnished offices, Harmon said.

Lately, Swivel has seen a lot of interest from companies that once worked out of WeWork and are uncertain about WeWork’s future since the withdraw of its IPO and the departure of its CEO,  Harmon said.

Swivel functions like Amazon Web Services for office space, Harmon said. Its platform provides a one-stop-shop for companies to search for space they need, easily lease it from one year to three-year leases and move in quickly. And if they outgrow a space, they can level up easily, without worrying about subleasing their old space, he said.

“There’s a well-known axiom in the real estate industry: “the most expansive real estate is space you don’t use,” Harmon wrote in a blog post. “Hands-down, the savviest business strategy to lease a workspace is to pay for it in shorter, incremental “chunks” after you are certain about the size of your workforce. That means one to three years for most teams.”

Harmon knows the problem first-hand. He has founded and scaled several tech companies in the Austin market including Motive in 1997 with Maples, which they took public and it was later acquired. He was also part of Tivoli Systems along with Maples, which IBM acquired. And he has led other companies including Noesis Energy and AlterPoint and served as an entrepreneur in residence at Austin Ventures.

Swivel also takes a lot of the pain away from companies that must move into larger spaces, by providing turnkey office space. Swivel allows the companies to lease furniture to outfit the space and move in quickly, Harmon said. And those companies can also personalize their workspace with artwork, plants, kitchen appliances, monitors, whiteboards and more.

Swivel takes a small percentage of the rent each company pays to lease space. It works with landlords like Capital Commercial Investments, Equitable Commercial Realty, Endeavor Real Estate Group, HPI, Kucera, PS Business Parks and leasing brokers such as Aquila, CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, JLL, LiveOak, Site Select Group and Transwestern.

Swivel is available in Austin, Dallas and Fort Worth, Denver, Houston and San Antonio. It plans to move into more markets next year.

Swivel has raised $6.6 million in seed-stage financing in three rounds, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It has also generated some buzz. CNBC first wrote about the company, which was then code-named Poquito, in June of 2017. And the Austin American-Statesman wrote a story in June of 2018.

And Swivel may soon become its own customer, Harmon said. The company, with 10 employees, plans to double in size in the next year and will be needing a bigger office, Harmon said. And it knows just where to go to find the space it needs in the Austin market, he said.

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 will assume the same title at Nautilus.

“Nautilus is the best and brightest science brand I know,” White said in a news release. “It’s also a love letter to the intersection of science, art, and culture. It will be an honor and privilege to help steward our team and mission. The editorial operation at Nautilus is world-class and will remain so. Our proposed plan will put the right growth team in place, which will allow us to deliver Nautilus to the wide audience it so clearly deserves.”

Other Austin-based investors include Ben Lamm, CEO of Hypergiant, and Josh Jones Dilworth, founder of JDI.

Other investors include Larry Summers, 71st Secretary of the Treasury, former Chief Economist of the World Bank, Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus, Harvard University and Alexander Falk, co-founder and CEO Altova and prominent angel investor. And Elisa New, Director of Poetry in America and the Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature at Harvard University, Drew Hamlin, software designer and Fraser Howie, author.

John Steele will remain as Nautilus’ Publisher and Editorial Director. Kevin Berger will take the helm as Editor-in-Chief and Michael Segal will be Editor-at-Large.

Notable contributors to Nautilus have included: Scott Aaronson, Amanda Gefter, Martin Rees, Lisa Randall, Robert Sapolsky, Hope Jahren, Nicholas Carr, Sylvia Earl, Carl Zimmer, B.J. Novak, Alan Lightman, and Cormac McCarthy.

“The proposed deal gives Nautilus the resources it needs to continue to support the same kind of vibrant, original writing and reporting that has differentiated it from the very beginning,” Steele said in a news release. “Like our staff, contributors, partners and advisors, our new ownership group will be in it for the long haul, and for all the right reasons. Together we will work even harder to expand the public’s knowledge and understanding of fundamental questions of scientific inquiry, as well as their connection to human culture.”

“Science needs all of the love it can get. It deserves everything we have to give,” Jones-Dilworth said in a news release. “We want everyone to understand the fundamental scientific questions of our day, and appreciate how advances both large and small positively impact daily life. All of us in the proposed ownership group share this drive. Nautilus is essential today. If you’re not already a subscriber, you really need to be.”

Nautilus is currently a project of NautilusThink, a New York not-for-profit corporation, which will continue to run programs to advance interest in the sciences following the proposed acquisition.