Rhapsody Venture Partners
Canvas Category Consultancy : Company : Venture Capital
Software is eating the world, but we’re eating hard tech. Universities and the surrounding ecosystems are full of brilliant, inspired scientists who are inventing our future. They are graduate students, post-docs, undergrads and professors. And they are grinding. Material science innovations don’t arise from weekend hackathons. Novel biochemical pathways aren’t discovered by instinct. In our space, inventions arise from countless failures and require unrelenting tenacity, deep expertise and fortitude. When luck, timing and entrepreneurial courage come together, scientific breakthroughs are startup opportunities. Inventions are often born out of years of research (funded by government and industry grants), yet as startups they must start new journeys. The importance of innovation in applied science and engineering cannot be overstated. We believe the next decades will be shaped by critical progress in hard tech. Growing populations and natural resource constraints demand it. We are optimistic that our scientists and a culture of entrepreneurship, combined with smart policy, can deliver a prosperous future. VC funds are structurally a mismatch for early-stage hard tech startups, and so are angel networks. Understanding and investing in scientific innovations is specialized, time-consuming, expensive, and often requires access to insights in opaque industries. Our aspiration and structure are different from those of other VCs. We are the scientific founder’s partner.
Assembly Line
Cnergreen Secures $2M Investment from Rhapsody Venture Partners
Cnergreen, a Calgary-based startup manufacturing stable foams for CO2 injection in enhanced oil recovery (EOR), has secured a $2M Seed funding round led by Rhapsody Venture Partners, a US-based venture capital firm that specializes in hard-tech investments.
Cnergreen’s patent-pending ArmorFoamTM technology, developed at the University of Calgary, enables underground foams to remain stable for months at high pressures, temperatures, and salinities. The first application is improving CO2 enhanced oil recovery (CO2 EOR) in the oil and gas industry. For years, oilfield operators have seen an opportunity to use CO2 injection as a way to enhance oil recovery in active wells, while also permanently sequestering CO2 in geologic reservoirs. Because of the large volumes of CO2 required, CO2-EOR provides a near-term pathway for scaled carbon sequestration, while lowering the carbon footprint of produced oil.
Polaris Electro-Optics, Inc. Raises Seed Round to Revolutionize Optical Interconnects
Polaris Electro-Optics, Inc., a Colorado-based company, announced the successful completion of its over-subscribed Seed financing round, resulting in an investment of $3M. Polaris leverages patented material and design innovations to offer the highest speed, most energy efficient integrated photonics products to the communications and computing industries. The funding round was led by Rhapsody Venture Partners and garnered support from new investor Buff Gold Ventures as well as pre-seed investor, M Ventures. As part of this milestone, Bernard Lupien of Rhapsody Venture Partners will join Polaris’ Board of Directors.
Finnish startup SpinDrive raises €3.8M Series A for affordable, energy-efficient industrial bearings
SpinDrive, a Finnish company providing affordable active magnetic bearings for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), has secured a €3.8 million Series A funding round. The round was led by US-based, hardware companies-focused investor Rhapsody Venture Partners, with existing investors Innovestor from Finland and Born2Grow from Germany also participating.
SpinDrive’s frictionless bearings are smaller, more energy efficient, and more affordable than its competitors. The bearings work through magnetic levitation, where there is no contact between rotating and stationary parts. No friction means no bearing maintenance for up to 20 years, even in high-speed applications, meaning high rotational speeds and energy efficiency without the risk of equipment downtime or maintenance breaks.