As we head into the final week of 2015, venture investment is pouring into some traditional areas of strength in New England tech. Namely, speech recognition, artificial intelligence, and robotics:
—Stealthy speech-recognition startup Semantic Machines[1], based in Newton, MA, has raised about $12.4 million in equity funding, according to an SEC filing[2]. The document lists investors from General Catalyst Partners and Bain Capital Ventures. Xconomy’s Curt Woodward wrote the first story about the company back in January[3]. Semantic Machines is led by veterans of Apple and Voice Signal Technologies (which was acquired by Nuance in 2007).
—Prosthetics maker BionX Medical Technologies,[4] formerly known as iWalk, has raised an additional $17 million in equity and debt financing, according to an SEC filing[5]. By my count, BionX has raised well over $60 million to date. It has developed a powered prosthetic foot and ankle[6] for amputees, and is working on other robotic systems as well. The company is led by CEO Charles Carignan and founder Hugh Herr, an MIT Media Lab professor.
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References
- ^ Semantic Machines (www.semanticmachines.com)
- ^ SEC filing (www.sec.gov)
- ^ first story about the company back in January (www.xconomy.com)
- ^ BionX Medical Technologies, (www.bionxmed.com)
- ^ SEC filing (www.sec.gov)
- ^ developed a powered prosthetic foot and ankle (www.xconomy.com)
