After a busy week at SXSW, catch up on the latest funding announcements and tech news happing in Silicon Hills. Read up on how tech companies are coming together after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, or catch up on Captain Experiences’ $2 million funding raise. This is the Built In Austin Weekly Refresh.
Tech companies banded together during the SVB collapse. Tech companies across the country were affected by the sudden fall of Silicon Valley Bank. While the FDIC worked to help, several tech companies, VC firms and accelerators offered monetary assistance to businesses that were impacted by the bank’s fall. [Built In]
Captain Experiences got $2M. Launched in 2020, Captain Experiences helps people find and book fishing cruises. Last week, the company raised new funding in a round led by Bullish, an early-stage investment firm. The funding will help the Austin-based company double its team and add more outdoor activities to its platform. [Built In Austin]
Austin Tech Quote of the Week
“If you think about animation, it’s breaking down the script in the story to discrete movements that you then have to control frame by frame, and that’s why it takes so long to get to a minute of a scene. With Aquifer, all you’re inputting is audio or text, and it generates a very good first version of the scene.” — Chen Zhang, CEO and co-founder of Aquifer
Aquifer was featured in the Built In Future 5 series. Aquifer is a video animation platform that can generate and animate an entire scene using a speech or text prompt. The platform is used by brands looking to create original content with low turnaround times. Aquifer was founded in 2018 by Chen Zhang and Matt Udvari. [Built In Austin]
Entre raised seed funding. Entre is a networking platform for Web3 professionals, and it features over 70,000 members. The company raised $1.6 million in seed funding last week. Entre was founded in 2019 and has since raised $2 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. [Business Wire]
