Image courtesy 80 Acres Farm Mike Zelkind and Tisha Livingston, the founders of 80 Acres Farms, knew that food wasn’t what it used to be. So they launched a new kind of farm, one that operates completely indoors using renewable energy and zero pesticides. Recently, the farm started selling to Kroger in Cincinnati, [...]

H Ventures Partners closes on debut fund H Venture Partners closed on its debut venture capital fund. The female-founded, owned, and controlled VC firm raised over $10 million. Founder and managing partner Elizabeth Edwards said in a statement that the fund will look to transform the way people live: “We do that by putting money in the [...]

Nick Rabin, Homeshake founder, CEO & principal broker Real estate is the No. 1 industry in the American economy, with residential home sales as its largest segment. But unlike other industries such as travel and insurance, there hasn't been as much innovation or disruption to the residential real estate market. A company in [...]

Physna closes another funding round Just five months after raising $20 million, Physna has raised $56 million in a Series B funding round. The company plans to use the capital to grow Physna Enterprise, its deep-learning platform and Thangs, its free geometric search engine that allows users to search, store, share and collaborate on 2.5 million 3D models. [...]

Jarrod Easterwood, Director of Marketing & Partner Relations, AVUITY AVUITY equips organizations with custom tools and software to give them access to meaningful data on how to enhance their spaces and save money. Cincinnati Future spoke with Jarrod Easterwood, AVUITY's director of marketing & partner relations about the company's beginning and what its [...]

Improving drone safety Never underestimate the role of kites in innovation (right, Benjamin Franklin?). Engineers at University of Cincinnati (UC) have developed a semi-autonomous drone that is moored to the ground. It can be operated more safely and has a longer battery life. The drone is connected to the ground, making it more stable in [...]

Richard Zriek, CIO, and Rita David, CEO, innoVationGirls innoVationGirls is a company founded under the belief that we can prevent the cliff effect in adolescent girls by getting them interested in the STEM field between the ages of nine and 15. Cincinnati Future spoke with innoVationGirls CIO Richard Zriek, who launched the company [...]

Kurome Therapeutics raises $15M in funding  Kurome Therapeutics closed on a $15 million series A financing round. The round was co-led by Medicxi and Affinity Asset Advisors, with participation from founding investor CincyTech and other existing seed investors. The fund will go toward developing therapies that target adaptive resistance mechanisms in cancer cells. STACK makes an acquisition  [...]

Maribel Cortes Maribel Cortes, IT Technical Project Manager at GE Aviation, understands what it’s like to be a Hispanic female in a male-dominated industry. She also understands that in order to get more Hispanics involved in STEM careers, the community has to take an intentional approach. Cortes is also a member of the [...]

NYC firm invests in local lawtech company  SurePoint Technologies offers a cloud-based platform designed to help law firms improve workflows, gather data-driven insights and maximize profitability. The company announced a strategic investment from New York-based Aquiline Capital Partners, which invests in businesses across financial services, business services and healthcare. Accelerator program for environmental sustainability  Flywheel, Cintrifuse, HCDC, and Green Umbrella are [...]

Michael Arens, co-founder, Clean Earth Rover Clean Earth Rovers is a startup located in Cincinnati that is developing a prototype that will help clean near-shore waterways of pollution. If you’re surprised that such a company isn’t located on the coasts, then you might be more surprised that it was co-founded by a recent [...]

Stick a needle in my eye Not sure about you, but we’re not totally comfortable with the current way doctors treat some eye diseases: injections through the wall of the eye. Researchers at University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, and Ohio State University have received a four-year, $1.6 million grant from the National Institutes of [...]

Treatment for liver damage There’s a ton of research going on at Cincinnati Children’s. Researchers may have a potential treatment for obesity-driven liver damage, which is the primary cause for liver transplants in children and adults. The treatment involves blocking a molecular “pathway” of ihTh17 cells to the liver. Preventing obesity Cincinnati Children’s is also researching a [...]

Steve Hileman, TOGO Group Get yer motor runnin'! TOGO Group is a company that focuses on road-based travel. In 2018, they bought Cincinnati-based Roadtrippers, which makes a web app that helps travelers plan road trips. We spoke to Steve Hileman, Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Togo Group, about their travel tech. [...]

Moulay Essakalli, co-founder Zid Zid Zid Zid is a play-based membership platform for preschoolers to learn languages. The company is a 2016 graduate of The Brandery. We spoke with Moulay Essakalli, co-founder of Zid Zid about what the company does and how it came to be. Tell us about Zid Zid. Essakalli: We [...]

BAAM produces monolithic 3D object Cincinnati Incorporated has used its Big Area Additive Manufacturing (BAAM) machine to produce one of the largest monolithic multi-material 3D objects to date. The demonstration proved that large-scale 3D printing can be done effectively with recycled composite materials. Sustainable refrigeration and food insecurity To help address food insecurity in downtown Dayton, Emerson [...]

Mark Jeffreys, 4Sight 4Sight is a company that “makes Big Data small” by mining businesses’ unfiltered, real-time user-generated content (such as social media, reviews, blogs) to identify competitive vulnerabilities, trends, and unmet needs. The company's CEO is Mark Jeffreys, who was a former employee at Procter & Gamble. Cincinnati Future spoke with Jeffreys [...]

TriHealth partners with Olive Integrated health system TriHealth is partnering with Olive, a company developing healthcare innovation through AI. Olive has started in TriHealth's revenue cycle department by optimizing processes like claims status checks. Fighting water pollution Clean Earth Rovers develops tech to fight the plastic pollution crisis in oceans, highways, and water systems. Two [...]

The team at SavrPak after winning last year's P&G Innovation Challenge Procter & Gamble employs a great many people in the Cincinnati area. Its workforce is close to 10,000 in the Greater Cincinnati area, with 4,000 workers based in its downtown headquarters alone. But P&G’s effect on the city’s ecosystem is not just [...]

Kroger to begin testing drone delivery Drone Express and Kroger have partnered to test autonomous drone deliveries within the Greater Cincinnati area. The Drone Express technology will include package delivery to the location of a customer’s smartphone, not just to a home address. UC teams tackle futuristic cars Six teams at UC are seeking to redefine [...]