Refinery Ventures closes $36M fund Refinery Ventures closed its second fund with $36 million, which is two times more than its first fund. Backers included  Cintrifuse, Great American Insurance, Western and Southern Insurance and The Cleveland Foundation. SaaS Capital closes $128M fund SaaS Capital announced that it has closed its fourth fund with $128 million in [...]

Cincinnati Innovation District covered in Forbes Innovation districts provide a great way to attract entrepreneurs, startups and business incubators. This article in Forbes, which talks about how they are now popping up in cities outside of Silicon Valley, cites the Cincinnati Innovation District (CID) as one enclave that is making good progress. CVG robots deliver [...]

VC money leaving Bay Area is coming to Cincy For the first time in more than a decade, the proportion of seed- and early-stage capital invested in Bay Area startups is on pace to drop below 30%. That’s one of the big discoveries from data collected by Revolution and PitchBook. In that report, Cincinnati made [...]

VNDLY to be acquired Workday announced plans to acquire Mason, Ohio-based VNDLY, a provider of cloud-based workforce management tech, for $510 million. The California-based tech company has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire VNDLY before Jan. 31, 2022. Ohio's VC so far this year more than double of 2020 The Buckeye State startup scene [...]

Cincy cultivates its biotech landscape New York-based preclinical drug investment and development firm Orange Grove Bio and the University of Cincinnati announced a partnership intended to cultivate the Cincinnati biotech landscape by expanding entrepreneurship, education, and scientific translation of promising technologies coming out of the Cincinnati Innovation District (CID). UC's 1819 Innovation Hub will be the location for [...]

UC student gets grant for brain tumor research A second-year medical student at the University of Cincinnati, has received grant funding for an ongoing collaborative brain tumor research project. The grant was awarded to Rohan Rao for his summer research project on treatment for glioblastomas, highly malignant and deadly brain tumors. Building sustainable-tech startups Miami University is teaming [...]

CinCor's $143M funding round CinCor has completed a $143 million Series B financing round, which will support the continued development of a treatment for hypertension, primary aldosteronism, and chronic kidney disease. The financing was led by General Atlantic, with participation from new investors Perceptive Advisors, BVF Partners, venBio Partners, Adage Capital Management, Omega Funds, Rock Springs Capital, [...]

GE Aviation partners with NASA NASA has chosen GE Aviation as one of the companies to develop electric propulsion technologies for aircraft. GE Aviation and Redmond, WA-based MagniX were awarded $253.4 million to do ground and flight test demonstrations as well as collaborate with NASA on other projects. GE Aviation received $179 million of the money. Amazon Air [...]

FC Cincinnati goes high tech  FC Cincinnati partnered with Aruba to outfit the team's 26,000-seat TQL Stadium with its edge services platform network. The facility is fully digitized and designed to be entirely cashless, leveraging various wired and wireless Aruba products. PatientPoint platform wins silver award PM360, a publication for pharma marketing decision-makers, has named PatientPoint's Wait-Time Communication [...]

FinTech Frontier's annual pitch competition FinTech Frontier has announced the official kickoff of its annual Pitch Competition by inviting early stage startups to showcase their fintech innovations on Oct. 28. The focus will be on data & privacy, supply chain, increasing access, and green fintech. Kroger partners with Instacart  Kroger Co. announced that it has partnered with Instacart to launch [...]

Halo Health acquired Halo Health, which was founded in 2014 by two Cincinnati oncologists, will join symplr, a provider of enterprise health care solutions. The acquisition was backed by Clearlake Capital Group, L.P. and Charlesbank Capital Partners. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. GE Aviation invests in emissions tech  The Federal Aviation Administration [...]

UC prof's work used in renewable energy system Research by a University of Cincinnati microbiologist has been used by AZO CleanTech to develop an eco-friendly, economical and large-scale system for storing renewable energy. Annette Rowe, assistant professor of biology in UC’s College of Arts and Sciences, identified genes in one type of bacteria responsible for taking electrons into its metabolism and [...]

Rumpke uses robots to pull plastics There’s been a considerable increase in demand for recyclable materials such as No. 5 plastics, the kind of plastic used in food storage like margarine and yogurt. Rumpke Waste & Recycling is using AI robots to pull No. 5 plastics off the plant line at its St. Bernard facility. Rumpke will begin installing [...]

A robot for moving furniture In the Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Systems Lab of the University of Cincinnati, student researchers developed artificial intelligence to train robots to work together to move a couch — or in this case, a long rod that served as a stand-in — around two obstacles and through a narrow door in computer simulations. [...]

Amazon Air Hub opens at CVG Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) has opened the Amazon Air Hub after four years of planning and construction. The hub will be equipped with robotics technology that helps move and sort packages, including robotic arms and mobile drive units that transport packages across the building. Thermal energy technology at the zoo [...]

$160M more for 80 Acres Farms 80 Acres Farms has secured $160 million in a funding round led by General Atlantic and joined by Siemens Financial Services, Inc. The company intends to use the capital for continued expansion and product development. Read the interview we did with 80 Acres Farms just a couple of weeks [...]

Sense Neuro lands $2.4M military contract Sense Neuro Diagnostics is being awarded $2.43 million to advance technology to diagnose and monitor traumatic brain injury (TBI) in a field environment. TBI is a signature wound of recent wars, with roughly 420,000 documented incidents of service members sustaining at least one TBI in the last two decades. The [...]

Machine learning to prevent falls According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 36 million older adults fall each year. A duo of researchers at the University of Cincinnati used machine learning to identify and approve methods for a fall detection system for the elderly. A mobile app for nonprofits DonorDrive, makers of an enterprise digital [...]

P&G helps produce first paper bottle Procter & Gamble continues to show how a top company innovates. Toward its goal of reducing its use of virgin plastics by 50% by 2030, P&G has unveiled its first paper bottle in partnership with Paboco. The bottle is being described as the first of its kind to be produced at scale, both [...]

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 [...]