Every day, Global University Venturing rounds up the smaller investments from across the university innovation ecosystem in its deal net.
Amira Learning, a US-based early-years reading assessment tool developer based on Carnegie Mellon University, University of Texas and University of Houston inventions, has obtained $5m in a series A round led by VC fund Owl Ventures, EdSurge reported on Wednesday. The round involved textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt – one of Amira’s distribution partners – as well as GSV Accelerate and Rethink Education. Founded in 2018, Amira markets a speech recognition-powered software product that helps primary school children develop their reading skills by listening and evaluating as they read from course texts. Amira’s underlying algorithms were licensed from Carnegie Mellon, while the assessment criteria came from University of Houston and University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. The company previously secured $3m in a September 2018 seed round led by Vertical Venture Partners.
CroíValve, an Ireland-based Trinity College Dublin (TCD) medical device spinout targeting defects in the tricuspid…
