Every day, Global University Venturing rounds up the smaller investments from across the university innovation ecosystem in its deal net.
Heriot-Watt University has formed UK-based spinout Alana AI with £570,000 ($694,000) in seed funding to commercialise voice-activated interfaces that meet hygiene concerns over touching amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the Herald reported today. Alana’s voice assistant software is billed as facilitating longer conversations than existing equivalents which often only support a single question and answer. Having more substance means Alana can learn about the user and make personalised suggestions, fulfilling potential use-cases in healthcare, finance and education. The funding forms part of a $1.2m round expected to close by the end of March 2020. University of Edinburgh currently owns a 15% stake, with the remainder owned by Alana’s management.
Swedish Algae Factory, a Sweden-based sun-resistant material supplier spun out of University of Gothenburg, has raised SEK53m ($5.4m) today in a round featuring Chalmers Ventures, the venture and incubation arm of Chalmers University of Technology, and sustainable aquaculture-focused investment firm Aqua-Spark. Founded in 2013, the company extracts diatom algae shells from the sea to produce porous silica materials that block out ultraviolet rays in applications such as solar panels and skin protection. The spinout most recently raised an undisclosed sum in mid-2018 from Walerud Ventures, private investor Jan Svärd and unnamed additional backers, after a $400,000 round in 2017 featuring Chalmers Ventures, Almi Invest and EU-backed innovation program InnoEnergy, according to media reports. The funding will help scale Swedish Algae’s operations by ramping up its production capacity. Swedish Algae Factory is based on research led by Angela Wulff, a professor of marine ecology at University of Gothenburg who took part in Chalmers-run accelerator Encubator.
