Reproductive telehealth company launches in Arizona

Twentyeight Health, a women’s telehealth company from New York, will launch today in Arizona, which means the platform can officially serve Arizona residents.   The Brooklyn-based company aims to increase access to birth control for women in underserved communities. Twentyeight Health co-founder Amy Fan told AZ Tech Beat that there are at least 450,000 “contraceptive deserts,” … Read more

ASU joins Sierra Space, Blue Origin, Boeing and others to build commercial space station

Arizona State University is joining the charge to commercialize space. The school is now one of the organizations working toward building a commercial space station.  The private station is called Orbital Reef and will be a “mixed-use business park” for national governments, private industry and space tourists to lease and use. The effort is led … Read more

Early stage EdTech startup raises $1.9 million in seed money

ActiveClass, an early stage education technology company designed to help increase student engagement, has raised $1.9 million in seed money. The Scottsdale-based startup will use the money to hire more employees to support  growth, improve customer service and speed up product development.  “We are beyond excited for what this means not just for us at … Read more

Digital Air Strike named leader in six different consumer technology categories

Digital Air Strike, a Scottsdale-based startup designed to help car dealers improve marketing and  customer engagement, has received awards in six different consumer technology categories as part of the 17th annual Dealers’ Choice Awards program from Bobit Media. This is a record number of awards for Digital Air Strike (DAS), and the company was one … Read more

GitKraken acquires Git extension, the company’s second acquisition in a month

GitKraken (formerly Axosoft), a Scottsdale-based Git productivity and collaboration company,  has acquired GitLens, a Git extension for Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code (VS Code). The acquisition is GitKraken’s second in less than a month, as it acquired Git integration for Jira in September. GitLens was created by Eric Amodio in 2016. It’s a free, open source … Read more

And the winners of Venture Madness 2021 are…

Venture Madness, an annual conference put on by Invest Southwest, happened this week and we’ve got the winners of the Venture Madness competition.  Venture Madness brings together investors and some of Arizona’s stand out startups for two days of networking and pitching. Earlier this year, Invest Southwest announced 25 finalists — five companies in five … Read more

September roundup: The weather might be cooling down, Arizona tech is not

It’s fun to see all the exciting wins for many Arizona tech companies. We continue to see more investments, more national attention and more semiconductor and EV activity.  Here’s just some of what happened last month:  Botco.ai launches AI chat and live agent support solution BotcoLive with major urgent care franchise Botco.ai, a HIPAA-compliant chatbot … Read more

Genetic sequencing startup raises $20M in growth equity capital

Genetic sequencing startup Tesis Labs has announced a $20 million of growth equity financing, marking the company’s first external raise since it was founded in early 2020.  This financing put the company at a post-money valuation of $520 million. The round began and ended in September of this year and it was led by Xcellerant … Read more

AI chatbot startup Botco.ai raises $3.6M in seed funding round led by LA-based VamosVentures

Botco.ai, a Scottsdale-based artificial intelligence chatbot platform designed to support enterprise healthcare organizations, closed a $3.6 million seed round led by VamosVentures, a venture capital firm based in Los Angeles.  This win is another in a string of achievements this year for botco.ai. Botco.ai will use the funds to speed up the company’s product development … Read more

Third annual Don Pierson III Memorial Classic builds scholarship fund for budding entrepreneurs

The third annual Don Pierson III Memorial Classic, a golf tournament hosted by the StartupAZ Foundation, on behalf of the Don Pierson Memorial Fund, will take place Monday, Oct. 4. The tournament is designed to raise money to provide scholarships and resources for entrepreneurs across Arizona.  The fund was set up in honor of Don … Read more