Seattle Health Care Prediction Startup KenSci Raises $22 Million

The Seattle Times | Seattle Times Staff | February 7, 2019

“KenSci, a Seattle company with ambitions to use artificial intelligence to help deal with some of the health care system’s biggest challenges, received a $22 million cash infusion from investors, it said Thursday…The company aims to find patterns across broad swaths of health care data, looking at hundreds of variables to predict who is likely to get sick or readmitted to hospitals, providing the opportunity for early intervention and cost savings.

The funding, which follows an $8.5 million investment raised in 2017, will support tighter integration with KenSci’s health system customers, product development and expansion, the company said.”

Learn more about local job opportunities at WTIA member company KenSci.

A CRM for Landlords: Knock Raises $10M to Double Headcount by Year’s End

Built In Seattle | Quinten Dol | March 7, 2019

“For a relationship fraught with so many opportunities for miscommunication, it’s surprising that nobody has formalized channels between renter and landlord before. Ballard-based Knock believes that it’s the startup for the job, announcing $10 million in Series A funding this morning to help it get there.

Not to be confused with a New York real estate startup of the same name, Knock’s CRM platform allows apartment property managers to communicate with potential renters and existing residents through their desired medium of communication — phone calls, text messaging, emails and even Facebook messaging — and schedule appointments to digital calendars from a single dashboard.

The company will use the funding to scale its go-to-market efforts and build out its product, engineering and data science teams.”

Learn more about local job opportunities at Knock.

GM Cruise Snags Dropbox HR Head to Hire at Least 1,000 Engineers by End of Year

TechCrunch | Kirsten Korosec | March 11, 2019

“GM Cruise plans to hire hundreds of employees over the next nine months, doubling its engineering staff, TechCrunch has learned…Cruise has grown from a small startup with 40 employees to more than 1,000 today at its San Francisco headquarters. It has expanded to Seattle, as well, in pursuit of talent. Cruise announced plans in November to open an office in Seattle and staff it with up to 200 engineers. And with the recent investments by SoftBank and Honda, which has pushed Cruise’s valuation to $14.6 billion, it has the runway to double its staff.”

Learn more about local job opportunities at GM Cruise.

Ex-NSA, Microsoft Execs Raise $3.5M for Stealthy Seattle-Area Cybersecurity Startup Cyemptive

GeekWire | Taylor Soper | March 12, 2019

“Cyemptive on Tuesday announced a $3.5 million investment round from undisclosed investors. The company’s executive team includes founder Rob Pike, who was previously an executive at Hitachi; Jim DuBois, who was formerly chief information officer at Microsoft; and Gary Zelanko, who spent 30 years at the NSA, most recently as chief computer architect.

Cyemptive describes its cybersecurity software as an ‘automatic self-repairing reliable platform.’ It sells products including an endpoint protection service and advanced perimeter firewalls, among others.”

Learn more about local job opportunities at Cyemptive.

Toyota Among Investors Backing Airbiquity with $15M for Vehicle Tech

Xconomy | Jeff Buchanan | March 12, 2019

“Airbiquity, a Seattle-based developer of connected vehicle systems powering navigation, entertainment, and other software in cars, has raised $15 million in new financing from three Japanese automotive corporations, the company announced Monday…Airbiquity is one of the companies developing software that lets drivers access applications that, for example, provide traffic alerts and parking information. The Seattle firm’s products can also download updates and patches for some of the software systems installed in cars, similar to how users can set smartphones to automatically upgrade to the latest version of an app.

Airbiquity is also developing cloud-based technology for smart transportation services, part of the effort to establish a global infrastructure for networked vehicles.”

Learn more about local job opportunities at company Airbiquity.