Silicon Valley investors have led a funding round of almost $1.5 million in Ann Arbor-based Akadeum Life Sciences Inc., a spinoff from the University of Michigan, to develop its technology for tissue, water and food testing. The lead investor, BioInfleXion Point Partners, specializes in early-stage life-science investments. The round was joined by other Silicon Valley [...]
OUR SPRINKLERS TURN on at six in the morning. We're usually still in bed at that time, so if it's raining when they sputter into action, somebody's getting up and getting wet to turn them off. Either that, or our yard ends up turning into a swamp. The Rachio Smart Sprinkler Controller ($250) helps makes [...]
Sight Machine Inc., the category leader for manufacturing analytics, today introduced the Digital Readiness Index (DRI), a methodology to evaluate a manufacturerâs readiness for digital transformation and identify the projects likely to deliver the most impactful returns. Sight Machine developed DRI based on insights from digital manufacturing projects with some of the worldâs largest manufacturers. [...]
Dan Rhodes, CEO at Strata Oncology, a tumor sequencing company, says genetic sequencing is âabsolutely the bottleneckâ in finding patients who will benefit from targeted cancer drugs. His company is giving away free testing to cancer patients to help match them to experimental treatments being studied in clinical trials (see âShould We Sequence the DNA [...]
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN (PRWEB) AUGUST 08, 2017 Each year, the top minds in cytometryâwhich refers to the methodology used to extract quantitative information from individual cellsâjoin together at ISACâs CYTO Innovation to present the industryâs new technologies in the technology showcase. This year, Ann Arbor-based Akadeum Life Science, Inc.âs microbubble technology rose to the top [...]
You could say Kris Lahiri, VP operations and chief security officer at enterprise file sharing platform provider Egnyte, was a bit of a skeptic when he first considered adding crowd-sourced penetration testing to the firmâs application security regimen. Indeed, the idea of giving permission for a bunch of unknown eyes to scour over their systems [...]
Imagine opening your bank app and asking questions about your checking account or making requests in a totally natural, conversational way. âWhen was the last time I was paid and can you transfer five-hundred bucks into savings?â That is an idea that Ann Arbor-based A.I. startup Clinc has implemented with its first product launch, Finie, a [...]
GRAND RAPIDS, MIâ(Marketwired â May 17, 2017) â Blue Medora, an IT enterprise cloud and datacenter management company, announced today that CRNÂź, a brand of The Channel Company, has named Jacqueline Esch, Blue Medora regional sales director, to its prestigious 2017 Women of the Channel list. The executives who comprise this annual list span the [...]
SiriusXM has acquired Automatic, the maker of the Automatic Pro and Automatic Lite connected car OBD-II port accessories. The deal is acknowledged by SiriusXM CFO David Frear to be worth a little north of $100 million, and SiriusXM and Automatic both note in releases announcing the news that the brand will remain separate, and Automaticâs [...]
Burlingame, CA - Aperia Technologies Inc. maker of the only tire inflation device for tractors and trailers, today announced that Brown Integrated Logistics has made its Halo Tire Inflator a standard specification on all new and existing power units. âProper tire inflation is extremely important when running wide-base single tires,â said Brian Kinsey, president and [...]
Featured in The Huffington Post on 03/01/2016: Read full article Akadeum Life Sciencesâ CEO (Brandon McNaughton) recently sat down for a discussion on Sirius XM with Steve Blank. Steve interviewed Brandon as part of Entrepreneurs are Everywhere. They discussed topics ranging from cell separation with microbubbles to figuring out how to move an idea from an idea to sales. See below [...]
Navya will deploy two of its driverless multi-passenger shuttles this fall at the University of Michigan, moving students autonomously between Michiganâs North Campus Research Complex and its Lurie Engineering Center across a two-mile route. The 15-passenger vehicles are being deployed in conjunction with Mcity, the University of Michigan-led partnership with autonomous private industry players thatâs [...]
Colon, pancreatic, stomach, or ovarian cancer; it increasingly shouldnât matter. In an era of precision medicine, the treatment approach should reflect the genetic makeup of the personâs tumor and the presence or absence of key biomarkers. That ethos was set in stone on Tuesday, with the landmark FDA approval of Merckâs checkpoint inhibitor, Keytruda (pembrolizumab), [...]
"Old digital Neanderthals like me talk about digital transformation on the manufacturing floor, but young digital natives talk about digital transformation of the plant floor," said Dennis Hodges, CIO of Inteva Products, a large, global automotive supplier, mostly serving vehicle manufacturers. "To us, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is connected stuffâmachines talking to machines, [...]
After spending two months with six smart irrigation controllers in a sunny South Carolina yard, weâre confident the Rachio Smart Sprinkler Controller (Generation 2) is the best choice for most people with an in-ground sprinkler system. Any smart controller will save you water and money compared with a simple timer, but the Rachio is the [...]
Fracking for Innovation While a politically sensitive topic, few can argue that hydraulic fracturing or âfrackingâ has moved the United States significantly toward energy independence. Many of us can remember sitting in long lines at the gas pump in the 1970s during the energy crisis and claims that the worldâs oil and gas supply would [...]
MobileForce Software is headed to ServiceNow's Knowledge 2017on May 8-11 in Orlando, Florida! At K17, we are excited to introduce our new ServiceVelocity Field Service Mobility Solution for ServiceNowâs vast customer base of IT and field service delivery organizations. ServiceVelocity delivers a âSingle Pane of Glassâ productivity dashboard for field service users that automatically integrates [...]
Clinc, a fledgling fintech startup that enables banks to bring artificial intelligence (AI) to their products, has raised a $6.3 million funding round led by Drive Capital, with participation from Hyde Park Venture Partners, Cahoots Holding, and Stuart Porter. Founded out of Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2015, Clinc is the brainchild of Jason Mars (CEO) [...]
Road gators could soon be on the endangered list. And thatâs a good thing. Theyâre not animals, of course. Theyâre those bits of truck tires strewn across Americaâs highways. They're often the tragic result of tires that werenât operating at optimal air pressure, which is hard to maintain on a tractor trailer carrying various loads [...]
âClinician-scientist John Younger went one step further than a leave of absence. After partially sidelining his 21-year career in emergency medicine at the University of Michigan (UM), Ann Arbor, in 2014 to develop a micro-bubble cell-capturing technology, he ended up leaving academia completely. â ⊠âThe initial idea was to use tiny spheres tagged with [...]
Caroline Wong, CISSP and VP of Security Strategy at Cobalt, which âmakes bug bounty programs and pen tests painless,â headed this engaging and fast-paced session at OWASP AppSec on crowdsourced security. It was her interest in diversity that led her to crowdsourced security, and in this session she went through the risks and benefits of [...]
This Earth Day, Rachio is proud to strengthen our commitment to the environment by announcing our new B Corp certification. We are thrilled to break ground as the first smart home company to earn this distinction, leading the way for others in the smart watering and smart home technology industries. To celebrate, weâre offering $30 [...]
How can tech startups grow in Michigan? Look to Grand Rapids-based Blue Medora LLC. Its founders and investors say it is a textbook example of how Michigan's high-tech startup ecosystem can work. Blue Medora makes software that monitors the performance of large IT companies' cloud-based applications. Customers include IBM, Oracle and VMware. Blue Medora made [...]
The digital boom has helped the United States maintain its status â for now â as the worldâs political and economic leader. But it has also increasingly created a divide within the U.S. â one of the themes that led to Donald Trumpâs election as president. âThis issue of people feeling left behind â itâs [...]
Some self-driving car makers are incorporating more and more extras like face-recognition and augmented reality displays. Bob Stefanski, managing director of eLab Ventures, said that this may be a winning approach for manufactures looking for an edge in the market. But, Stefanski told John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Mediaâs mobile live streaming studio, that one lone company [...]
MOUNTAIN VIEW â The Audi SUV crept through city streets, obeying speed limits, stopping short at signals and keeping neatly between lane markers during morning rush hour. The driverâs hands hovered above the steering wheel. The real driver was a system of sensors, processors and software made by auto supplier Delphi and tech company Mobileye. [...]
This is the first of NAVYA's ARMA vehicles to operate in North America. The shuttles are already on the road in countries all over the world. They're designed for use at a broad range of sites that need efficient, convenient and safe first and last mile transportationâplaces such as theme parks and large campus-like environments. [...]
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder picked the Automotive Hall of Fame in Dearborn as the backdrop to sign a group of bills today designed to position Michigan as a future leader in development and testing of self-driving cars. The location was picked to reinforce the state's historic role in the emergence of the global automotive industry as [...]
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.â(BUSINESS WIRE)âBlue Medora, a leading innovator in software for enterprise cloud and data center management, today announced the close of an $8.6 million Series B round led by St. Louis-based Lewis & Clark Ventures. Blue Medoraâs existing investors VMware, Inc., eLab Ventures, Start Garden and Grand Angels also supported the round, bringing Blue [...]
BURLINGAME, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aperia Technologies, a clean technology company focused on innovation to increase transportation efficiency, today announced the company has raised $16 million to fund expansion. This funding, along with the companyâs dedicated U.S. production facility and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule requiring fuel use reduction, provides significant traction for Aperia Technologies. âThe [...]
Hereâs a paradox of Americaâs highly automated, increasingly labor-independent manufacturing: While sophisticated, for the most part, it isnât all that high-tech. Picture metal-stamping machines in an auto-parts factory that can easily have a long useful life of up to 40 years. Now picture the assembly line just outside Austin, Texas, where Samsung Electronics Co. makes [...]
Reda Jaber could have gone in a few directions after graduating in 2014 from the University of Michigan with a trio of graduate degrees. But rather than go into medicine or clinical research, Jaber opted instead to pursue a career in the venture capital industry. Jaber, who has an MBA, connected with Birmingham-based IncWell LLC, a [...]
LANSING â Developers of a planned test bed for driverless cars at Willow Run in Washtenaw County won up to $17 million in state funding to build and operate the project, the state said Tuesday. The Michigan Strategic Fund, an arm of the Michigan Economic Development Corp., approved the funding for Willow Run Arsenal of Democracy Landholdings LLP, [...]
DETROIT â General Motors Chairman and CEO Mary Barra on Friday called on the worldâs auto industry to collaborate to develop cybersecurity standards to not only protect the physical security of vehicle owners, but also the personal data they increasingly transmit through the connected vehicle. âCybersecurity protects physical safety, privacy and data,â Barra said at [...]
Several years ago, Praveen Singh made a bet on Detroit. The Silicon Valley technology startup he founded decided to market the advanced wireless systems it developed to the automotive industry. As the market for the technology grew, Singh and his small team at Arada Systems Inc., found themselves spending more time on airplanes, flying from [...]
This startup that builds features and functionality onto VMware's vRealize cloud management platform got a boost last year when the virtualization giant participated in its $4.6 million Series A round. Around that time, Blue Medora also established its True Visibility Channel Program. The Grand Rapids, Mich.-based startup was founded in 2007, but an extension of [...]
Strata Oncology has raised $12 million and teamed up with Thermo Fisher Scientific ($TMO) to embark on a campaign to sequence the tumors of 100,000 cancer patients for free. The large-scale, no-cost tumor sequencing initiative is seen by Strata as a way to increase the number of cancer patients who are molecularly matched to clinical [...]
NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) â Strata Oncology said today that it has raised $12 million in a Series A financing to fuel its tumor sequencing operations. The financing was co-led by Arboretum Ventures and Baird Capital, and included existing investor Michigan eLab. Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Strata said it will use the funds to implement the Strata [...]
Ann Arbor, MI-based precision medicine startup Strata Oncology announced last week that it has raised a $12 million Series A round. Arboretum Ventures and Baird Capital led the financing, with participation from Michigan eLab, a returning investor. Strata is on a mission to make tumor sequencing for cancer patients more accessible. As personalized genetic therapies to treat cancer advance and increasingly make [...]
Dan Rhodes said he got good advice in August on launching his new company, Strata Oncology Inc., at a conference put on by eLab Ventures, an Ann Arbor-based venture capital firm and one of his eventual investors. Called Michigan eLab Insights and held over three days at the Hotel Walloon on Walloon Lake near Petoskey, eLab's partners gathered [...]
A startup called Strata Oncology says it plans to give away advanced genetic tests to 100,000 patients struggling with cancer. But there's a profit motive: it hopes to identify patients with specific rare DNA errors and steer them to drug companies. Strata, which was founded last year and has raised $12 million from investors, says it [...]
SAN FRANCISCO, March 22, 2016â Sight Machine Inc., leading the digital transformation of manufacturing, today announced it has raised $13.5 million in Series B venture capital. The round is led by Chicago-based Jump Capital and includes GE Ventures, Two Roads Group and Pritzker Group Venture Capital. âSight Machine is developing the technology that will bring [...]
After the holiday tinsel goes away, you're left with two piles of gifts: the ones that seemed cool, and the ones that are actually great. After reviewing hundreds of gadgets this year, we've made a list of stuff we'd actually buy for our loved ones- or even ourselves. Automatic... Read full article here... Â Â
12. The Automatic ($80) saves you money on gas by teaching you how to be a better driver. The Automatic adapter plugs into a vehicleâs standard diagnostics port (lol, did you even know that existed?) and pairs with a smartphone app that shows information like why the check engine light is on, feedback on how you can drive [...]
At the 2015 MVCA Annual Awards Dinner, the Michigan Venture Capital Association announced its 2016 executive committee and board of directors!  MVCA executive director, Maureen Miller Brosnan, commented, âMVCA is fortunate to have always had the right chairman at the helm of the organization at the right time.  MVCA Chairman Tony Grover, Managing Director with RPM Ventures, [...]
As the Western U.S. continues to face a drought, the startup Rachio Inc. has raised $7.1 million in Series A funding that aims to help people save water, Lora Kolodny reports for Dow Jones VentureWire. The companyâs sprinkler controllers are Wi-Fi connected and can be controlled through iOS and Android smartphones or a Web app.  Read more here...
"Cell isolation technologies are becoming more and more important. Everyone is looking for easy, simple, low cost, and this promises to take care of all three. As far as early-stage technologies go, this is as promising as I've ever seen" -Bill Hyun (Director of the Laboratory for Advanced Cytometry at the University of California, San [...]
Akadeum Life Sciences is doing something that most biotechs donât, says CEO Brandon McNaugton: practicing the lean startup method, which puts a heavy focus on customer discovery and feedback. It was this process of talking to customers that inspired Ann Arbor, MI-based Akadeum to develop the Application Discovery Program, a tool it uses to help customers with [...]
Detroit is considered by many to be the ultimate proving ground for social entrepreneurs, a place where they can test solutions to homelessness, lack of functioning public transit, and other major problems. Capitalizing on that reputation, the Urban Entrepreneurship Symposiumâheld Friday at Detroitâs College for Creative Studies and co-hosted by Michigan State University, Wayne State University, and the [...]
From blood to food to medicine, cells are all around us. However, the current methods of separating those cells from their surroundings for research, diagnostics, and cell therapy--also known as cell sorting--can be time-consuming, costly, and damaging to the cells. To address this, Ann Arbor-based startup Akadeum Life Sciences is developing a radically new product that uses [...]