Team

Compound Foods announced $4.5 million in seed funding to give it total funding of $5.3 million to date. Backers of the company include Chris Sacca’s climate fund Lowercarbon Capital, SVLC, Humboldt Fund, Collaborative Fund, Maple VC, Petri Bio and angel investors like Nick Green, CEO of Thrive Market.

The day before Robinhood goes under the the Congressional hammer, domestic rival Public.com announced this morning that it has closed a $220 million funding round at a $1.2 billion valuation. News of the round was first broken by TechCrunch. Further reporting colored in the lines concerning the investment’s size and valuation range.

The New York-based startup, founded in 2017, announced a $15 million Series B round of funding. The round was co-led by venture-capital firms Accel and Greycroft, with participation from Dreamers VC, founded by Will Smith and Japanese soccer star Keisuke Honda; NFL star J.J. Watt; Shari Redstone’s Advancit Capital; Sophia Amoruso, founder and CEO of Girlboss (now owned by Attention Capital); YouTube creator and entrepreneur Casey Neistat; Scott Belsky, founder of Behance and Adobe chief product officer; Blavity founder and CEO Morgan DeBaun.

TBH (To Be Honest), a new sustainability-focused snacking brand that promises more protein and hazelnut than Nutella, and is made without palm oil, will officially launch online via DTC in November.

The venture-backed startup is the latest creation of ‘Stranger Things’ lead actor Noah Schnapp, and its launch coincides with the completion of filming of the sensational science fiction’s fourth season.

MeliBio is turning the 9,000-year-old method of honey production on its head, taking out the bee and injecting precision fermentation and plant science.

Darko Mandich, a former bee-honey industry executive, and Aaron Schaller, a scientist and amateur chef, started the San Francisco-based company in 2020 with the goal of bringing sustainability to the $10 billion global honey market, which Mandich described as “one of the most unsustainable agricultural sectors with broken supply chain and quality issues.”

And his Culver City start-up, Cove, has the backing of some environmentally woke business leaders, including Salesforce Chief Executive Marc Benioff and former News Corp. executive James Murdoch, who has invested a tiny but undisclosed portion of the approximately $2 billion he netted when his family sold most of 21st Century Fox to Walt Disney Co.

Despite the recent popular coverage of finance applications such as Robinhood or investing groups like Reddit’s WallStreetBets, there are still many Millennials and Gen-Zers on the investing sidelines. While student debt and poor job prospects are most likely to blame for younger generations not having spare capital to purchase stocks with, even if they did, these two groups don’t know where to begin in the first place. 

Public.com, the social stock-investment app startup, tapped more celebrity backers for its $65 million Series C funding round.

Among those are pro skateboarder Tony Hawk and EDM-pop duo the Chainsmokers, through their Mantis VC fund. Venture-capital firm Accel led the round for the third consecutive time, joined by Lakestar and prior investors Greycroft and Shari Redstone’s Advancit Capital.

Other individual investors in Public.com’s Series C are Dick Parsons, former head of Time Warner, and NYU business professor Scott Galloway, who invested seven figures in the company earlier this year.

Founded in 2019, Public is an investing platform that allows users to buy shares of stocks and promotes financial literacy and awareness about the stock market. The company said it raised $310 million, and investors include venture capital firms Accel, Greycroft and entertainer Will Smith’s Dreamers firm. Public is privately valued at $1.2 billion, according to Pitchbook.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Seeds (formerly ‘Seeds Investor’)—a fintech company enabling advisors to create a personalized investing experience and streamline portfolio operations—today announced the successful completion of a $10 million Series A funding round led by Portage, with continued participation from investors Social Leverage and Blank Ventures. This investment highlights growing demand for advisors to provide customized investing at scale without compromising the personal touch that makes them unique.

Founded by financial advisors driven to provide client-centric investing experiences, Seeds has raised more than $15 million to date. This latest round allows the firm to accelerate product advancements, support strategic growth with high-impact hires, and solidify its market position as a leading investment experience platform for registered investment advisors (RIAs).

Seeds’ vision to create broad impact through values-aligned investing. Actor, activist, and entrepreneur Adrian Grenier, best known for his leading role in the television series “Entourage,” joined the board to support Seeds’ mission to shift trillions of dollars in retail assets to more sustainable and socially conscious investments. “Creating wealth shouldn’t be at the expense of what we believe in as global citizens, and these days it really doesn’t have to.

On top of the six new brands, NorCal revealed it will be introducing an additional brand and product line in partnership with comedian, entrepreneur, author and activist Chelsea Handler. The brand will be curated by Handler herself and focus on the needs of female marijuana consumers “Given the diversity of California and its nearly 40 million residents, NorCal believes multiple brands are both key to best serving consumers across the state and unlocking its maximum value,” said Doug Cortina, CEO of NorCal. “With the largest consumer delivery platform of any operator in the state, NorCal can deliver these six new brands across our network and reach 25 million consumers in 60 minutes or less.

Today, Alinea Invest—a Gen Z-focused wealth management platform—announced a $10.4 million Series A round led by Play Ventures, with participation from GFR Fund, Y Combinator, Gaingels, FoundersX, F7, and Visible Ventures. With fresh capital in hand, the team is rolling out AI Allie, an AI-powered financial coach that acts like a “money best friend,” according to Lakhani. Designed to remove friction from the investing journey, the founders told me Allie can recommend next best actions, align users with cause-based investments, and personalize guidance based on a user’s income, goals, and experience level.

 Vessel, the new at-home wellness tracker that helps you to access, understand, and optimize your health and wellness from the comfort of home, today announced a $8M funding round, bringing its total seed funding to $14.5M. The round is being led by Monogram Capital Partners, a leading consumer growth firm. Additionally the round includes participation from Able, BFG, Cove and Sidekick; alongside angel investors Dave Asprey (Bulletproof 360 Founder), Jared Leto (actor), Jarret John "JJ" Thomas (pro snowboarder) and Kelly Slater (pro surfer). Vessel launched in November 2020 and has sold over 100,000 test cards.

MeliBio makes Mellody using microbial fermentation, pollinating plants without the use of honeybees to produce honey that shares the molecular structure of the real thing. The company also believes that it offers a solution to saving bees around the world. Although honey bees themselves are not in danger, MeliBio argues that they affect bee biodiversity by pushing out other native and wild bees from their habitats, which has contributed to rapid population decline.  Mellody has found a particularly receptive audience in Europe, where it’s already for sale in 75,000 stores. The company says that it generated more than $1 million in its first year, and the total value of the distribution deals it made in 2023 will equate to more than $10 million over the course of four years.