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First Off Announcements and the like. Erin: It's almost Friday, y'all. I'm heading down to St. Augustine tomorrow for some much-need beach time, so taking all restaurant recommendations if you've been!
Alright, let's hit the Beat and get to the weekend. The Big One A breakdown of the day's biggest Inno story. Erin: Atlanta technology leaders have long called the lack of venture capital firms in the city a weakness for the innovation ecosystem, but that landscape is changing.
Eight Georgia venture capital firms raised funds totaling $439M in the first half of 2021, according to a PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association’s Venture Monitor report for the second quarter. PitchBook defines venture capital funds as pools of capital raised for investing in startup equity and does not include growth-stage firms, which it considers private equity.
That amount of funds is a record for the city. In 2019, seven funds were raised. The number of venture capital firms in Atlanta is growing alongside massive growth in startup funding.
Georgia companies have raised almost $2B of venture capital in the first half of this year, already surpassing the total amount of money raised in 2020, according to the PitchBook report. That’s the most companies have raised since the report started in 2006. As Atlanta emerges as a tech hub, continued growth in venture money is a key component to a health technology ecosystem, said John Yates, a technology attorney at Morris, Manning & Martin.
Nine Atlanta venture capital firms are raising or have closed first funds this year, according to our reporting.
First funds emerging in 2021 is a national trend, according to the PitchBook report. There were 67 new funds totaling $3.6B in the first half of the year, which is on track to surpass last year's new funds.
More firms in Atlanta means more companies have an incentive to grow locally, Yates said. Those firms also provide startups with connections to growth-stage capital coming from other markets, such as Boston or New York.
Atlanta has historically lacked seed to Series A institutional investors, Yates said. Eight of the new funds target this growth point for startups.
The dot-com bubble in the late ‘90s could serve as a lesson for these new firms, Yates said. A hot tech market with high startup valuations and lots of capital resulted in a crash where new investment firms had portfolios of stagnant companies. Yates says the market isn’t at that point, but these new funds need to be deliberate about investing.
“They don’t have a track record yet,” Yates said. “They need to be careful and cautious about how they deploy capital so they can build that record.”
Many of the new early-stage firms are led by experienced entrepreneurs who understand the operational side of building a company, which will help the founders in their portfolio and the success of the firm, Yates said.
“They’re not just pure investors,” Yates said. “They have the value of knowledge and the capital. That’s vital.”
Read the list of Atlanta firms that are raising or have closed their first fund in 2021 on Atlanta Inno. Making Moves Inside the people, companies and organizations making moves in Atlanta. Equifax's new acquisition Atlanta financial technology company Equifax announced it will acquired alternative credit data company Teletrack from CoreLogic. The purchase aims to help Equifax DataX have other data sources to decide credit score for unbanked, underbanked and credit-rebuilding people. Teletrack's database has information from rent-to-own businesses, furniture financing companies, auto financiers and subprime credit card issues. All Teletrack employees will join Equifax. The deal is expected to close in the second half of the year. CEO switch ParkMobile CEO Jon Ziglar is moving to the top seat of Atlanta-based RentPath, a digital rental marketing company owned by RedFin. Ziglar will start the position Aug. 16. His experience in growing the ParkMobile customer base and connecting to a vast consumer network contributed to the appointment, according to the announcement. Seattle-based real estate brokerage RedFin bought RentPath in February for $608M. ParkMobile Chief Marketing Officer Jeff Perkins will replace him at ParkMobile. Read more on Atlanta Business Chronicle. Auto loan startup raises $9.6M Carputty, an Atlanta startup innovating the auto loan market, raised $9.6M, according to an SEC filing. Carputty, led by CEO Patrick Bayliss, is a direct lender for auto financing that says its technology allows it to offer affordable rates and help people understand the car market. Bayliss has an automotive background and also owns County Line Auto Group in Connecticut. Carputty was founded in 2020 and has 21 employees on LinkedIn. Featured Jobs Below are featured jobs from our Careers Directory. To feature a job in this newsletter, read more.
In the Know The local startup and innovation stories you need to read today.
Elsewhere in Inno Stories from around the Inno network we think you'll dig.
In the Quad A spotlight on campus innovation. Georgia Tech and the Georgia Research Alliance will host three of the 11 new artificial intelligence institutes from the U.S. National Science Foundation. The institutes are focused on how AI-based technology can advance different industries, such as healthcare, agriculture and education. The NSF partnered with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Google, Amazon, Intel and Accenture to fund the $220M investments in these institutes across the country.
Georgia Tech will led two institutes: AI Institute for Collaborative Assistance and Responsive Interaction for Networked Groups (AI-CARING), which will use AI systems to study human behavior in caregiving settings, and the AI Institute for Advances in Optimization, which aims to create career pathways in AI. Amazon, Google and Intel partially funded those $40M institutes. Georgia Tech says it will hire 100 researchers in the next five years to advance its expertise on AI and machine learning.
The Georgia Research Alliance will host the AI Institute for Adult Learning and Online Education to enhance continuing education in STEM and AI. Accenture partially funded this $20M institute.
Read more on Georgia Tech's website. In the Community The events and happenings to know in the ecosystem
For more upcoming events, be sure to check out this month's Inno-approved events calendar or browse the Inno events directory. AUGUST 16-27 Opportunities Do you know when to open the door?
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