It was a busy week for Seattle tech startups. Heading into Labor Day weekend, some companies closed deals, while others continued innovating. Catch up on Vilya’s $50 million raise or read up on the latest startups to hit tech unicorn status with the Built In Seattle Weekly Refresh.
Vilya launched with $50M. Vilya launched last week with $50 million in Series A funding led by ARCH Venture Partners. Vilya is looking to use the funding to create new medicines that are tiny enough to move the body and stop protein activity caused by diseases. The company was founded by David Baker, ARCH Venture Partners and other scientists from the Institute of Protein Design. [Built In Seattle]
Falkon gained $16M. Launched in 2019, Falkon analyzes data from different platforms to help companies optimize their go-to-market strategy. The latest raise was led OMERS Ventures and puts the company’s total amount raised at $20 million. [Business Wire]
Seattle tech Quote of the week
Included was featured in Built In Seattle’s Future 5 series. Included was founded in 2020 and develops software to help companies analyze and meet their DEI initiatives. The company’s software can track employees’ race or ethnicity by department, show what stage employees leave a company and provide actionable steps for companies to be more inclusive. The company has raised $5.4 million in funding since launching. [Built In Seattle]
Five Seattle companies raised $860 million last month. The current state of of the economy has caused a slowdown in tech investment, but many tech companies in Seattle still closed deals last month. In August, RISC Zero raised $12 million, Avalanche Energy got $23.3 million, Monod Bio raised $25 million in seed funding, Vilya launched with $50 million and TerraPower raised $750 million. [Built In Seattle]
These Seattle startups reached unicorn status this year. Four Seattle companies have reached a valuation of more than $1 billion this year. In January, the recruiting platform SeekOut was the first company to hit unicorn status. Other companies to hit the valuation include Temporal, a database optimization startup; fabric, an e-commerce software company; and Felxe, a logistics company. [Built In Seattle]
