HomeX Raises $90M to Provide Physical and Virtual Home Repair Services

On Tuesday, Chicago-based home services platform HomeX announced the close of a $90 million capital raise led by New Mountain Capital.

There are plenty of advantages to owning your own home: it gives you the freedom to do what you want with your space, it’s a proven way to build wealth and it means you don’t have to deal with landlords.

But there are drawbacks, and one of them is that you’re on the hook when something goes wrong. This can be intimidating for early homeowners who may not know what to do in these scenarios. What do you do if a pipe bursts? Or if your ceiling caves in? Most homeowners will call an expert like a plumber, electrician or other contractor. But doing so could easily result in a bill worth hundreds of dollars, if not more.

 HomeX wants to change the way we do home maintenance and repairs by blending the traditional with technology. Instead of “rolling a truck” to a person’s home every time a homeowner needs to address an issue, HomeX can use technology like natural language processing, machine reasoning and knowledge engineering to help diagnose what the problem is and how to solve it. From there it can determine whether a professional needs to be sent in, or if they can virtually guide the homeowner through the repair process.

The company says its platform can change the home services industry the same way telehealth changed healthcare. By adding virtual diagnoses, HomeX believes it can save professionals time and save customers money — and both parties benefit from the extra convenience.

“Home services is a $500 billion market, but it remains highly fragmented and needs meaningful innovation,” CEO and founder Michael Werner said in a statement. “This new partnership allows us to rapidly expand our offerings and reach new audiences, continuing to alleviate the headaches of homeownership, while helping contractors secure operational efficiencies and qualified appointments, not just leads.”

And just like telehealth services, the company’s virtual home service solutions saw a huge bump in demand during the COVID-19 pandemic. It says that its HomeX Remote Assist virtual diagnostic and repair solution grew more than 400 percent in less than a year.

This new funding will help HomeX expand its business and offer its services in more parts of North America.

“We are excited to support the growth of HomeX, a business that is primed to reshape the home and commercial services industry,” New Mountain Capital managing director Harris Kealey said in a statement. “The market is massive and the need for change and innovation is substantial — HomeX is at the forefront of this opportunity and we are eager to partner with the management team to help position the Company for continued success.”

Source. Built In Chicago, Gordon Gottsegen, April 13, 2021

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LanzaTech Raises $50M, Launches New Sustainable Aviation Fuel Spinout

LanzaTech, a renewable energy startup out of Skokie, announced Tuesday it will be launching a new spinout company called LanzaJet to produce sustainable aviation fuel in an effort to decarbonize in the industry.

According to SKYNRG, planes currently account for about 2 or 3 percent of all man-made global emissions. That number is predicted to reach 22 percent by 2050 if we don’t intervene soon. Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is meant to be a greener alternative to the fossil jet fuel currently being used. Instead of petroleum, it is made from sustainable materials like biological waste oils, agriculture residue or non-fossil carbon dioxide. The hope is that, by using a more sustainable fuel, the company can clean up this environmentally harmful industry.

The company also announced it has raised $50 million in investments from Canada-based Suncor Energy, Japanese investment firm Mitsui & Co. and Japanese airline All Nippon Airways, as well as a $14 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. The money is being used in the construction of a biorefinery plant in Soperton, Georgia, which is projected to produce 10 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel for the commercial market annually. Production is expected to begin early 2022, according to LanzaTech.

“This partnership demonstrates our continuing commitment to improving the sustainability of the aviation industry and supports our ambition to be the first in Japan to produce SAF on a commercial scale,” Mitsui COO and Managing Officer Toru Matsui said in a statement. “The SAF produced by LanzaJet will support the development of a global SAF supply chain, which has the potential to significantly reduce emissions from aviation and help to create a low carbon society.”

LanzaTech was founded in 2005 by Richard Forster and Sean Simpson and is currently led by CEO Jennifer Holmgren. Over the years, the company has become a leader in using methods like gas fermentation, reactor design, machine learning and synthetic biology to develop commercially used carbon recycling processes and sustainable fuels. Last year, LanzaTech closed on a $72 million Series E round, bringing its total funding raised to $350 million. 

At the helm of the new LanzaJet will be Jimmy Samartzis, who has spent decades in the industry working for companies like United Airlines, Airlines for America and the International Air Transportation Association. He is also the former managing director at consulting firm Slalom and a current director on the board of Fermilab, a U.S. Department of Energy lab in Batavia. 

“The launch of LanzaJet marks a historic milestone in the clean energy transition that is underway globally. I’ve been a part of many renewable energy and sustainability firsts over the decade, and this one is the most exciting,” Samartzis said in a statement. “The commercialization of LanzaJet — built on the shoulders of LanzaTech, Suncor, Mitsui, ANA and with the support of the U.S. Department of Energy — gives our world, and aviation in particular, an important solution in shaping a cleaner future.”

Source. Chicago Startups, Ellen Glover, June 3, 2020

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Kitchen United Raises $40M for Its Ghost Kitchen Network, Expands East

Kitchen United, which operates a growing network of shared kitchen spaces for restaurants around the U.S., announced today it has closed a Series B round for $40 million. The round was co-led by RXR Realty and GV (formerly Google Ventures), with participation by funds managed by Fidelity Investments Canada ULC, DivcoWest and G Squared. Existing investors and founders John Miller, Harry Tsao, and others participated, too. This brings KU’s total funding raised to $50 million.

The popularity of ghost kitchens — also known as “virtual kitchens,” “kitchen as a service,” and a slew of other monikers — has skyrocketed in recent months as restaurants large and small try to meet the demands of this delivery-crazed era we live in.

Kitchen United, which launched in 2017 in Pasadena, CA, has been at the forefront of this movement with its growing network of facilities that can house between 10 and 20 ghost kitchens per location and are home to brands like The Halal Guys, Wetzel’s Pretzels, Canter’s Deli, and others.

In October 2028, Kitchen United got a $10 million investment from Google’s parent company and CaliBurger CEO John Miller.

With the new investment, KU will be moving into more locations — the NYC market in particular. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, part of the deal with RXR Realty involves opening ghost kitchen facilities on RXR properties in the city as well as the tristate area. Such a partnership is wise on KU’s part as the company looks to expand into cities known for astronomical rents when it comes to large spaces. KU will expand to several RXR properties, starting with Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Stamford, CT.

The company currently operates a facility in Chicago as well as its original one in Pasadena. As the press release noted, locations for Scottsdale, AZ and Austin, TX will open soon. And the company is also looking to expand to other major metropolises like San Francisco, Boston, and Los Angeles — also cities where a deal with a real estate company might not be a bad idea.

In New York, at least, Kitchen United will compete with the newly opened Zuul Kitchens, who just opened their first location in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood and is focusing on that market for further expansion.

Source. The Spoon, September 19, 2019

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On-demand parking startup SpotHero raises $50 million

SpotHero, the Chicago-based company that has developed an on-demand parking app, has raised $50 million in a Series D round led by Macquarie Capital.

Union Grove Venture Partners participated in the round, along with existing investors, including Insight Venture Partners, Global Founders Capital, OCA Ventures, AutoTech Ventures and others, according to the company. SpotHero has raised $118 million to date.

The new capital will be used to expand its reach in the 300 U.S. and Canadian cities where it is already operating, build out its digital platform and strengthen partnerships with mobility companies, CEO and co-founder Mark Lawrence told TechCrunch.

SpotHero, which has operations in San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C. and Seattle, initially set out to develop software that connects everyday drivers to parking spots in thousands of garages across North America.

Its secret sauce is its software, which can sit on top of the 40 or so different point-of-sales systems used by parking garages. This acts as a single protocol, allowing SpotHero to bring some kind of standardization to an otherwise fragmented system. From this single protocol, SpotHero can add features that will allow for automated parking services, such as license plate recognition.

“We’ve built the pipes, so to speak, and this powers our consumer app,” Lawrence said in a recent interview. Now the company focus is on building out partnerships, features in the software and services, he added.

Capital will also be used to hire talent to support these new endeavors. SpotHero has 210 employees, and is working on hiring 50 more engineers this year.

In the eight years since its founding, SpotHero has expanded beyond its core consumer-focused competency. The company has added other services as urban density has increased and on-street parking has become more jumbled and confused thanks to an increase in traffic, ride-hailing and on-demand delivery services that take up valuable curb space. It has locked in more than 900 distribution partnerships and integrations, including Google Assistant for voice-enabled parking and Waze in-app navigation to parking. Other partners include Hertz and car2go for fleet parking, WeWork for commuter parking and Moovit for multi-modal parking.

Most recently, SpotHero launched a new service dubbed “SpotHero for Fleets” that targets shared mobility and on-demand services.

The service aims to be a one-stop shop for car sharing and commercial fleets to handle all that goes into ensuring there is access and the right number of designated parking areas on any given day within SpotHero’s large network of 6,500 garages across 300 cities. That means everything from managing the relationships between garage owners and the fleet companies to proper signage so car-sharing customers can find the vehicles, as well as flexible plans that account for seasonal demands on businesses.

Under the new service, customers are able to source and secure parking inventory in high-traffic areas across multiple cities and pay per use across multiple parking facilities on one invoice to streamline payments. 

The company has signed on car-sharing companies and other commercial fleets, although it’s not naming them yet.

Source. Techcrunch News, Kirsten Korosec, August 22, 2019

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Snapsheet Raised $29m in Series E Funding

Snapsheet, a Chicago, IL-based provider of virtual claims solutions, raised $29m in Series E funding.

The round, which brought total funding to $71m, was led by Tola Capital, with participation from new investors Nationwide, Sedgwick, and State Auto Labs and existing investors Liberty Mutual Strategic Ventures, F-Prime Capital, OCA Ventures and an affiliate of USAA.

The company intends to use the funds to accelerate the delivery of its SaaS claims platform for all lines of property and casualty, further invest in advanced analytics capabilities and expand the team to serve clients globally.

Led by Jamie Yoder, president, and Brad Weisberg, CEO and founder, Snapsheet delivers a customer-first claims process with an intelligent, proprietary platform combining technology, data and people.

The company, which proactively leverages internal and external data to make every interaction in the claims journey efficient, currently serves more than 75 clients around the world.

Source. FinSMEs, May 20, 2019

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Collective Health raises $205M Series E led by Softbank to reduce healthcare’s complexity

Employee health benefits platform company Collective Health has raked in a massive $205M Series E funding round led by mega-investor Softbank as it looks to boost its nationwide growth and build on momentum with its employer customers.

The San Francisco-based company serves around 200,000 members across more than 45 self-funded employer clients with care navigation tools and healthcare resources that make benefits easier to access and understand, stripping away administrative burden and lowering healthcare spending in the process.

A large part of the company’s value proposition in is updating and unifying the range of technology systems into one streamlined platform. The company largely functions as a third-party administrator for self-funded employers and works to effectively administer benefits and negotiate provider networks.

Collective Health was founded in 2013 and has raised a total of $435 million. Over the past year the company said it seen 85 percent membership growth.

On the employer side, Collective Health’s platform gives companies visibility into their total range of healthcare costs, which can be used to inform more efficient resource allocation and benefit offerings.

“There’s no question about the scale of the problem, we spend $1.2 trillion on healthcare and the industry still operates in the fax era of technology,” said Collective Health co-founder Rajaie Batniji.

“Softbank sees the same opportunity we do in taking healthcare payments and coverage into the modern era we need to employer employers to take control over their own healthcare spend.”

The capital injection will help the company expand its range of enterprise customers, as well as bring new healthcare partners onto its platform including new local and national medical networks and integrated digital health products.

Collective’s customer base – which includes clients like Zendesk, Pinterest and Activision Blizzard – has been largely limited to technology companies.

“One of the biggest changes we’ve been focused on is moving firmly out of the early adopter phase and into mainstream with clients in nursing, retail and CPG.” Batniji said.

“We’re really moving into a diversity of sectors because if we’re going to transform healthcare we have to prove that this is a solution that works for everybody.

Investment dollars will also go toward continuing development of the company’s tech stack with faster payment systems, faster fraud detection and machine learning-based technology that can better personalize and guide member health recommendations.

Additionally, the company is focused on growing its 500-person headcount across its San Francisco headquarters and its satellite offices in Chicago and Lehi, Utah.

“The complexity around healthcare coverage is making us sick and we see the opportunity here to make the member experience better and fundamentally improve the healthcare system. We firmly believe that this will lead to improved health outcomes and people being healthier,” Batniji said.

The investment into Collective Health represents a major healthcare bet from Softbank’s Vision Fund, which has backed companies like Slack, Uber and Nvidia.

In healthcare, Softbank has invested in a number of mainly biotech-focused companies including Relay Therapeutics, Roivant Sciences and Zymergen. Also participating in the funding round were investors including DFJ Growth, PSP Investments, Founders Fund and NEA. Softbank will be receiving a board seat as part of the deal.

“With US healthcare costs at $3.65 trillion in 2018, Collective Health is reinventing the healthcare experience for companies and their employees,” SoftBank Investment Advisers Senior Managing Partner Deep Nishar said in a statement.

“Their innovative business model and technology platform are not only helping employers understand and optimize their healthcare spend, they are also providing employees with a better healthcare experience.”

Source. Medcitynews, Kevin Truong, June 17, 2019

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The Small Exchange Raises $10M in Funding

The Small Exchange, a Chicago, IL-based new futures exchange, raised $10m in strategic funding.

Backers included Citadel Securities and Jump Capital, who have both made a $5m investment.

The company intends to use the funds to continue to enhance its development efforts.

Led by Donnie Roberts, President and CEO, The Small Exchange focuses on creating a customer-centric futures exchange, seeking to bridge the futures product gap for investors and participants of all sizes through an individual subscription offer that provides reduced exchange and market data fees, as well as uniform proprietary cash settled indices.

The company aims to facilitate the trading of exchange-created proprietary products for all types of market participants including, but not limited to market makers/liquidity providers, Introducing Brokers (IBs), Futures Commission Merchants (FCMs), proprietary trading firms and hedge funds, all with a primary focus on the public retail customer.

The exchange seeks to become a registered Designated Contract Market (DCM) with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

Source. FinSMEs, May 16, 2019

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