FUNDING
Abbot’s Butcher of Costa Mesa on Oct. 21 closed a $7 million Series A round led by Melitas Ventures and joined by celebrities Owen Wilson and Woody Harrelson.
Founded in 2017, Abbot’s Butcher offers a line of plant-based meat alternatives, including ground beef, chorizo and chopped chicken. Its products are free from soy, canola, and artificial substances.
“We are reframing the conversation around plant-based proteins, where it’s not just about taste and mouthfeel. It’s about quality, and celebrating the power of exceptional ingredients, showing that food can be both healing and satisfying,” Chief Executive of Abbot’s Butcher Kerry Song said.
“We’re fortunate to have such outstanding investors that share this mission.”
The capital raise will support the startup’s expansion into food service and retail sectors, as well as product development, the company said.
“Abbot’s Butcher is paving the way for the next generation of plant-based meat alternative products. The company’s products are uniquely positioned as premium plant-based meat alternatives which are attracting strong interest from grocery and food service,” said Alex Malamatinas, managing partner at N.Y.-based Melitas, which invests in early-stage food and beverage companies.
BOARD APPOINTMENTS
Irvine-based SkyThread, a blockchain startup for aviation stakeholders, on Oct. 21 has established a senior advisory board to provide an “unbiased, outside perspective.”
SkyThread, launched earlier this year, said it focuses on helping commercial aviation stakeholders unleash over $30 billion in value by accelerating error-free data exchange among participants through a system it calls “data for the life of the aircraft.” The company said the system is compatible with existing IT infrastructure and requires no capital investment from stakeholders.
“It is vital to have a sounding board that allows the company to access additional expertise, test our own strategic thinking, help identify potential roadblocks and explore new opportunities,” CEO of SkyThread Mark Roboff said late last month.
“As a stakeholder-driven company, we recognize the value and importance of gaining insight from a diverse set of aviation-industry experts who provide perspective looking through a different lens.”
Also last month, SkyThread partnered with SAE International, a Pennsylvania-based organization in the transportation sector, to “support the aerospace industry’s digital transformation.”
Thus far, the company has raised a total of $350,000 from a round ended in March, per Crunchbase data.
PARTNERSHIPS
Irvine-based Swarm Engineering said on Oct. 19 it has achieved “co-sell ready status” with Microsoft. The partnership will allow the two firms to promote a “disruptive and robust solution” for logistical challenges within the farming supply chain, the company said.
Swarm, launched in 2015, is a software platform that uses AI to solve problems within farming supply chains, including pricing, waste and environmental matters, the company said.
“Swarm is excited to join the Microsoft co-sell program and offer Agri-Food businesses a joint solution for optimizing supply chain challenges, reducing costs, and improving operational efficiency,” Andy Mouacdie, chief revenue officer for Swarm, said in a statement.
The Microsoft co-sell program reported it has generated north of $15.6 billion in contracted partner revenue since its launch in 2017. It provides online access to 78 million buyers, 36,000 corporate customers and 13,000 enterprise customers.
“As an AI focused technology platform, we are committed to providing an easy way for business users to define problems, and rapidly match them to advanced solutions without any knowledge of AI, software coding, or machine learning,” Cliff Currie, VP of business development. “Becoming a co-sell partner with Microsoft increases our reach and distribution ability tremendously while combining the technologies and expertise of our respective organizations.”
LAUNCH
Telev8.TV, a San Clemente-based TV-as-a-service platform, on Oct. 18 released its inaugural app, the LiveTV, at the Dallas-based hospitality show, the Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition and Conference (HITEC).
Telev8 was founded by hospitality and television industry veterans. It delivers TV content to hoteliers in a secure, simple, bandwidth-efficient manner, offering a more compatible cost structure that also allows free-to-guest television services.
LiveTV is a purpose-built app described by the company as a “turnkey” platform designed to reduce the overall cost of delivering TV content. The app is available to all major hospitality TV platforms supporting tvOS, Android and WebOS operating systems, the company said.
“This has been a longtime coming. The industry has been dominated for years by a few legacy players whose proprietary, complex and expensive content distribution networks are well overdue for disruption,” company co-CEO Charles Siemonsma said. The app “is the future of content delivery and follows the rapid consumer adoption of streaming video applications.”
The company’s team is starting “real-world” proof of concepts this quarter, said Siemonsma, who previously served as CEO of technology companies FetchitTV and Interact Solutions.
San Clemente-based Medify Inc. on Oct. 22 released its inaugural medical device, the Titan-IR, and said it will have FDA clearance to hit the market by the end of the year. It’s also close to closing its first seed round, according to founder and CEO Ray Harrington III.
Medify, founded in 2020, is developing wearable devices that use photobiomodulation (PBM), a type of light therapy that creates biochemical relief for people suffering with mental health disorders.
The Titian-IR, short for infrared, is a wearable headpiece that uses PBM to promote ATP in cells, the company said. It’s clinically proven to treat stress, affect hormones and balance mood.
“It’s not something you can taste, see or smell,” Harrington told the Business Journal. “It’s light. It’s the specifics of the light therapy, the minutiae and details, which are so vast; it’s billions of wavelengths that create a chemical impact. We want to show it to the world.”
Harrington has 15 years of experience in medical devices. He most recently served as Director of Business Development for Pennsylvania-based medtech firm Neuronetics Inc. (Nasdaq: STIM), which developed the first FDA-approved transcranial magnetic therapies to treat Major Depressive Disorder.
“When this opportunity came along, it just felt right,” he said. “Medify’s technology takes what Neuronetics did and makes it wearable, so people can treat their symptoms on their own time and not in several sessions at a medical practice.”
Medify is working on two other devices as well, Harrington said.
“We will have three at three different levels available to people, depending on where they’re at on their mental health journey.”
INCUBATORS
Irvine startup AG Tools has been selected to participate in the UC Irvine Beall Applied Innovation’s “Born in California” demo days.
The event, which will be held Nov. 17 to 18, features the University of California’s most “investment-worthy” Series A-ready startups in the Life Sciences, Digital Health, Technology, Consumer, and Sustainability sectors. The 44 selected startups will be eligible to receive $9.85 million in soft commitments from investors.
AG Tools, founded in 2017 in UCI’s Wayfinder incubator, is a SaaS platform intended to help farmers improve their yield and reduce food-chain supply waste by providing real-time, critical data.
It offers over 71 million records of market data plus 25 years on a national and global scale, the company reported.
“The reality is that the supply chain has been impacted all along for the last 40, 50 years,” CEO and founder of AG Tools Martha Montoya told Yahoo Finance. “Those of us who have been in the farming world have known this. It was just a matter of time as the world will realize it.”
Montoya was one of the winners of the Business Journal’s Innovator of the Year Awards in 2020.
The Beall Applied Innovation reports it has impacted investments to the sum of $26.5 billion in returns from UCI startups; 59% of the investments have remained in California.
