Missouri Innovation Center invests $125,000 in local startups 

Chris Harbert didn’t expect to choke up during his business pitch at the Missouri Tech Challenge on Wednesday night at the Blue Note. In August, Harbert turned down a six-figure income at a Fortune 1000 company to focus on his business, Testery. Testery supports companies in running their own testing on web-based applications at an […]

Microsoft Ventures, Madrona and others launch $3.5M AI startup competition 

The firm is partnering with Madrona Venture Partners, Notion Capital and Vertex Venturesto host this competition, which is looking for (very) early-stage AI startups in North America, Europe and Israel. The Innovate.AI competition will award $1M in funding to one startup per region (North America, Europe and Israel), in addition to a $500,000 “AI for Good” prize. All prizes also come […]

Vertex Ventures raises $210 million for Southeast Asia, India start-ups

Vertex Ventures, the venture capital arm of Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings, said it has raised a $210 million fund to invest in Southeast Asian and Indian startups, exceeding its original target size of $150 million. Vertex plans to continue its strategy of investing in early-stage technology companies in Southeast Asia and India across enterprise technology, financial technology and consumer internet, it […]

MTRAC awards spark biomedical innovation at Wayne State University 

Three Wayne State University (WSU) research teams were recently awarded funding from Wayne State’s Michigan Translational Research and Commercialization (MTRAC) program. The goal is to accelerate the translation and commercialization of their innovative biomedical technologies by providing the resources to validate technical and market opportunities. The MTRAC projects will be supported by $1.1 million in […]

Mayo Clinic, Oxford to collaborate on research and innovation 

Mayo Clinic is partnering with the University of Oxford, and Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to boost medical research and patient care in all areas of innovation. The institutions will collaborate on research, teaching and clinical care to drive advances in medicine. “This transatlantic partnership will bring together leading researchers and clinicians from around […]

NMSU’s Arrowhead Center Receives $300,000 From U.S. EDA For Seed Capital Fund

The U.S. Department of Commerce recently announced that Arrowhead Center, the entrepreneurship and innovation hub at New Mexico State University, has been awarded a $300,000 grant through the Economic Development Administration’s Regional Innovation Strategies program to support the Arrowhead Innovation Fund, an early stage seed capital fund for promising New Mexico startup companies. “This investment […]

Local North Carolina universities go full-steam searching for investments

One firm that is a Triangle company in every sense of the word is 410 Medical. Its founder and chief medical officer, Mark Piehl, a pediatric critical care physician at WakeMed, works at both Duke University and the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Medicine, where he earned his medical degree. And the company’s product, LifeFlow, designed to improve life-saving fluid […]

Tucson Entrepreneurs Launch Venture Capital Fund Dedicated to University of Arizona

Founders of UAVENTURE CAPITAL, LLC today announced the launch of a new venture capital fund designed to support the commercialization of University of Arizona science, services and intellectual property.  UAVC has been formed by Fletcher J. McCusker, the business driver behind the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy spin out SinfoníaRx, Inc., and the founder of the public company Providence […]

Duke University startups to get access to the star power of Contrary Capital venture firm

Move over, Shark Tank. There are new investors in town, and they’re looking to Duke to fund entrepreneurs. Contrary Capital, a university-focused venture capital fund, launched last Monday. The fund is decentralized, employing 100 investors who are current students at universities around the country, including Duke. The four student partners at Duke—MD/MBA candidate Tracy Han, […]

Northwestern alumnus bets big on nanomedicine through awards 

David Kabiller wanted to pursue a career in medical research when he showed up at Northwestern University in the early ’80s on a tennis scholarship. The Deerfield native ended up studying economics and finance, getting an MBA at the Kellogg School of Management en route to a successful career on Wall Street. But he never […]