Houston-based workforce solutions platform closes series B round

money moves

A Houston SaaS company has announced a fresh round of funding. Photo via Innovapptive.com

A Houston software-as-a-service company has closed an undisclosed amount of funding in a series B round.

Innovapptive Inc., which has its global headquarters in Greenway Plaza, has announced it's closed a series B investment round led by Austin-based Vista Equity Partners with support from existing investor Tiger Global Management. The fresh funding will be deployed to "accelerate product innovation and reach new regional markets," according to the company.

“We look forward to this next phase of growth as we continue to define the emerging connected worker software category,” says Sundeep Ravande, founder and CEO of Innovapptive, in the news release. “Vista has significant experience scaling enterprise software businesses and emerging technologies."

Innovapptive serves customers across industries, including energy, materials, utilities, chemicals, industrial manufacturing, and moree. The suite of software allows for users to improve productivity, training, safety, and compliance.

"We are thrilled to have them lead our Series B investment and work alongside our team to advance and scale our vision, product innovation and go-to-market efforts," Ravande continues. "This partnership will enhance our platform capabilities to integrate with enterprise systems, capture actionable insights, make recommendations for productivity and safety, and close the loop between assets and people.”

The investment was made from Vista’s Endeavor Fund, and along with the money, Vista's senior vice president, Ben Benson, will join the company's board of directors.

“Sundeep and his team possess the vision, talent and deep institutional knowledge to shape the future of connected worker solutions; we look forward to our partnership and helping them achieve their goals,” says Benson.

Last year, HighRadius became Houston's first unicorn — a privately held startup valued at over $1 billion. Now, the fintech company has raised more funds. Image via HighRadius.com

Houston fintech unicorn raises $300M in series C

money moves

Houston's first "unicorn," fintech company HighRadius, is growing up fast.

On March 30, HighRadius, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) business, reported it raised a $300 million Series C round of funding that values the company at $3.1 billion. D1 Capital Partners and Tiger Global Management led the round, with participation from existing investors ICONIQ Growth and Susquehanna Growth Equity. Also contributing to the round were four high-profile entrepreneurs:

  • Frank Slootman, chairman and CEO of Snowflake, a cloud-computing company based in San Mateo, California. Both D1 Capital and Tiger Global invested in Snowflake, which went public in September.
  • Michael Scarpelli, chief financial officer of Snowflake.
  • Tooey Courtemanche, CEO of Carpinteria, California-based Procore Technologies, which produces software for management of construction projects. D1 Capital and Tiger Global are investors in Procore.
  • Howie Liu, co-founder and CEO of Airtable, a cloud-based collaboration platform based in San Francisco. D1 Capital is among Airtable's investors.

In a news release, HighRadius says it will spend the money to fuel product development and expand its global reach.

The $300 million funding round comes nearly 15 months after HighRadius announced it raised $125 million in a Series B round that catapulted it to unicorn status. In the fundraising world, a unicorn refers to a startup valued at $1 billion or more.

HighRadius, based in West Houston, was founded in 2006. It employs more than 1,000 people around the world. The HighRadius website listed 16 job openings as of March 30, with 10 of them in Houston.

HighRadius' AI-powered SaaS offering streamlines accounts-receivable and cash-management processes. For instance, HighRadius' Cash Application software relies on AI to comb through documents like emails and invoices to automatically match incoming payments with customer accounts. The company has over 600 customers, including more than 200 of the Forbes Global 2000.

"Our goal has always been to build a long-lasting business that outlasts all of us," Sashi Narahari, founder and CEO of HighRadius, says in the news release. "I look forward to working with [our] high-quality, long-term investors, who share a common vision of transforming the office of the CFO using a combination of artificial intelligence built on top of connected-finance workspaces and embedded analytics."

In the news release, Daniel Sundheim, founder of New York City-based D1 Capital, says CFOs and their teams have historically relied on antiquated methods to handle accounts receivable and cash management.

"HighRadius is in the opening innings of defining the next big software market for the office of the CFO," John Curtius, a partner at New York City-based Tiger Global, says in the news release. "HighRadius bears all of the signs of being a category-defining business for order-to-cash automation."

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MD Anderson makes AI partnership to advance precision oncology

AI Oncology

Few experts will disagree that data-driven medicine is one of the most certain ways forward for our health. However, actually adopting it comes at a steep curve. But what if using the technology were democratized?

This is the question that SOPHiA GENETICS has been seeking to answer since 2011 with its universal AI platform, SOPHiA DDM. The cloud-native system analyzes and interprets complex health care data across technologies and institutions, allowing hospitals and clinicians to gain clinically actionable insights faster and at scale.

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has just announced its official collaboration with SOPHiA GENETICS to accelerate breakthroughs in precision oncology. Together, they are developing a novel sequencing oncology test, as well as creating several programs targeted at the research and development of additional technology.

That technology will allow the hospital to develop new ways to chart the growth and changes of tumors in real time, pick the best clinical trials and medications for patients and make genomic testing more reliable. Shashikant Kulkarni, deputy division head for Molecular Pathology, and Dr. J. Bryan, assistant professor, will lead the collaboration on MD Anderson’s end.

“Cancer research has evolved rapidly, and we have more health data available than ever before. Our collaboration with SOPHiA GENETICS reflects how our lab is evolving and integrating advanced analytics and AI to better interpret complex molecular information,” Dr. Donna Hansel, division head of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at MD Anderson, said in a press release. “This collaboration will expand our ability to translate high-dimensional data into insights that can meaningfully advance research and precision oncology.”

SOPHiA GENETICS is based in Switzerland and France, and has its U.S. offices in Boston.

“This collaboration with MD Anderson amplifies our shared ambition to push the boundaries of what is possible in cancer research,” Dr. Philippe Menu, chief product officer and chief medical officer at SOPHiA GENETICS, added in the release. “With SOPHiA DDM as a unifying analytical layer, we are enabling new discoveries, accelerating breakthroughs in precision oncology and, most importantly, enabling patients around the globe to benefit from these innovations by bringing leading technologies to all geographies quickly and at scale.”

Houston company plans lunar mission to test clean energy resource

lunar power

Houston-based natural resource and lunar development company Black Moon Energy Corporation (BMEC) announced that it is planning a robotic mission to the surface of the moon within the next five years.

The company has engaged NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Caltech to carry out the mission’s robotic systems, scientific instrumentation, data acquisition and mission operations. Black Moon will lead mission management, resource-assessment strategy and large-scale operations planning.

The goal of the year-long expedition will be to gather data and perform operations to determine the feasibility of a lunar Helium-3 supply chain. Helium-3 is abundant on the surface of the moon, but extremely rare on Earth. BMEC believes it could be a solution to the world's accelerating energy challenges.

Helium-3 fusion releases 4 million times more energy than the combustion of fossil fuels and four times more energy than traditional nuclear fission in a “clean” manner with no primary radioactive products or environmental issues, according to BMEC. Additionally, the company estimates that there is enough lunar Helium-3 to power humanity for thousands of years.

"By combining Black Moon's expertise in resource development with JPL and Caltech's renowned scientific and engineering capabilities, we are building the knowledge base required to power a new era of clean, abundant, and affordable energy for the entire planet," David Warden, CEO of BMEC, said in a news release.

The company says that information gathered from the planned lunar mission will support potential applications in fusion power generation, national security systems, quantum computing, radiation detection, medical imaging and cryogenic technologies.

Black Moon Energy was founded in 2022 by David Warden, Leroy Chiao, Peter Jones and Dan Warden. Chiao served as a NASA astronaut for 15 years. The other founders have held positions at Rice University, Schlumberger, BP and other major energy space organizations.

Houston co. makes breakthrough in clean carbon fiber manufacturing

Future of Fiber

Houston-based Mars Materials has made a breakthrough in turning stored carbon dioxide into everyday products.

In partnership with the Textile Innovation Engine of North Carolina and North Carolina State University, Mars Materials turned its CO2-derived product into a high-quality raw material for producing carbon fiber, according to a news release. According to the company, the product works "exactly like" the traditional chemical used to create carbon fiber that is derived from oil and coal.

Testing showed the end product met the high standards required for high-performance carbon fiber. Carbon fiber finds its way into aircraft, missile components, drones, racecars, golf clubs, snowboards, bridges, X-ray equipment, prosthetics, wind turbine blades and more.

The successful test “keeps a promise we made to our investors and the industry,” Aaron Fitzgerald, co-founder and CEO of Mars Materials, said in the release. “We proved we can make carbon fiber from the air without losing any quality.”

“Just as we did with our water-soluble polymers, getting it right on the first try allows us to move faster,” Fitzgerald adds. “We can now focus on scaling up production to accelerate bringing manufacturing of this critical material back to the U.S.”

Mars Materials, founded in 2019, converts captured carbon into resources, such as carbon fiber and wastewater treatment chemicals. Investors include Untapped Capital, Prithvi Ventures, Climate Capital Collective, Overlap Holdings, BlackTech Capital, Jonathan Azoff, Nate Salpeter and Brian Andrés Helmick.

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This article originally appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

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