Year in Review: 2024 Highlights from January Ventures
Portfolio Highlights
M7 Health, founded by Ilana Borkenstein and Eric Gruskin, closed a $4M seed round led by First Round Capital. M7 Health is modernizing nursing workforce management. Their first product is an operating system to maximize nurse efficiency and retention through dynamic, intelligent scheduling and utilization management.
Treefera closed a $12M Series A in a round led by AlbionVC with participation from January Ventures and Concept Ventures. Treefera has built an AI-enabled data management platform that can analyze, evaluate and report on nature-based assets, starting with trees. The company has seen incredible growth since their launch at New York Climate Week in September 2023, with customers across the finance, insurance and sustainability sectors quickly adopting it.
Guidewheel, a cloud-based manufacturing optimization platform, has announced $31M in Series B funding from BlackRock and Temasek’s Decarbonization Partners fund. Other investors include Rethink Impact, Greycroft, and Breakthrough Energy Ventures. This round fuels Guidewheel to take their AI-powered software platform to the next level and brings them one step closer to achieving their mission to help all of the world’s factories reach sustainable peak performance.
Clarity Pediatrics, a chronic pediatrics care startup led by Christina LaMontagne and Alesandro Larrazabal, announced $10M in seed funding led by Rethink Impact. Clarity has provided online care to thousands of families in California, and it plans to use $10M in seed funds it raised from Rethink Impact, with participation from January Ventures, Homebrew, and Maverick Ventures, to expand its services to other states in 2024.
Pano AI, a platform that employs deep learning AI and computer vision to automatically detect natural disasters in real time, was included in the 50 by 2050 list curated by Congruent Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank. Pano AI was founded by Sonia Kastner. The list showcased “innovative climate tech companies that are driving impactful solutions to reduce carbon emissions.”
Sorcero, an AI analytics and insights platform automating advanced knowledge bases for life sciences, was named to Fast Company’s annual list of the world’s most innovative companies of 2024 as well as one of the world’s Best Digital Health Companies by Newsweek. The honors highlight Sorcero’s ability to deliver huge results and demonstrate excellence across financial metrics and expertise of its leadership.
Sano Genetics added $11.4M in new funding led by Plural to fuel their mission of accelerating precision medicine research. Co-founded by Charlotte Guzzo, Patrick Short, and William Jones, Sano leverages AI to manage all aspects of precision clinical trials, from design to patient recruitment to genetic testing. Sano is experiencing huge demand for its product, experiencing 5x growth in ARR this past year and now serving four of the major pharmaceutical companies. Sano has also been named one of Bloomberg’s Startups to Watch for 2024.
Startups.co.uk named Unitary AI 1ST place amongst UK startups in the #Startups100 for 2024. Unitary was founded in 2019 by Sasha Haco and James Thewlis. “Unitary detects harmful content with a context-aware artificial intelligence so that brands and platforms can be increasingly safe online. Rather than subject human eyes to harmful and offensive internet content, the startup has found a way to leverage AI to create a seamless moderation process that can accurately judge huge volumes of media.”
Oula Health, a maternity care clinic founded by Adrianne Nickerson and Elaine Purcell that combines obstetrics and midwifery care using its technology-enabled and hybrid care approach, raised a $28M Series B round from Revolution, Maverick and Google Ventures. Early investors included Chelsea Clinton's fund Metrodora, January Ventures, the Collaborative Fund, Female Founders Fund and 8VC.
After closing a historic pre-seed round, Belong officially came out of stealth mode: Co-founders Avion Gray and Samantha Rosenberg have announced their £3M pre-seed raise for their innovative wealth-building platform “mak[ing] forms of wealth-building that have traditionally been the realm of a wealthy few, accessible to a wider demographic, focusing on professionally-employed millennials.”
Bloom Money, a financial platform enabling migrant communities to build wealth, was named one of the 51 Most Disruptive Startups by TechCrunch. Recognized because “Bloom is a clever example of blending a cultural tradition with fintech technology” and is committed to their mission of revolutionizing ROSCAs and empowering communities to be proud of their financial traditions.
Looking forward to 2025
January Ventures co-founder Maren Bannon published an article in Forbes with LP predictions for Venture Capital in the coming year.
Maren spoke with leading LPs across the US and Europe, including institutions, fund of funds and family offices, about their predictions for 2025. The question on most minds in the VC community: Will things change next year?
Despite the challenging market of the last couple years, there is optimism from LPs about certain strategies and investment areas. You can read the predictions here.