Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

From Birmingham, AL:

Thanks to a lead investor from the city, Tampa-based Allison Fintech Co. is moving its headquarters to Birmingham. The company is a Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform that enables community banks to incorporate fintech products into their traditional payment remittance and banking service offerings. Alabama Futures Fund, a seed stage-focused firm, has made an investment in Allison which prompted the relocation. Click here to learn more.

From Atlanta, GA:

We recently reported that Wellstar Health System was launching Catalyst by Wellstar, a $100 million venture fund to shape the future of healthcare by creating better care and market value. Just days later, Atlanta Inno reports that the healthcare provider will be opening an innovation center in Tech Square to house Catalyst. According to the report, the building houses the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), a technology incubator affiliated with Georgia Tech, and Engage, an organization of Atlanta-based corporations focused on fostering innovation in the city.

From Charlotte, NC:

Less than 18 months after its launch, CivicEye is making great progress on its goal of modernizing law enforcement and prosecution agencies’ old-fashioned data infrastructure. That’s according to an article in Charlotte Inno that quoted Khristian Gutierrez, the start-up’s Chief Executive Officer.

It helped that CivicEye closed $12.4 million in a Series A funding round in July of 2022. As a result, its cloud-based software solution is now available in 14 states, with seven others expected to have access to its platform soon.

Gutierrez says that agencies’ inability to comply with increasingly complex state and federal requirements is driving growth. His team has accelerated integrations, data conversions, and other innovations to make the software accessible in new markets.

From Wilmington, NC:

A local fintech firm is expanding with the help of an infusion of $3 million. APPROVE, a company that offers a financing platform for equipment sellers, will bring as many as 50 new tech jobs to Wilmington in the coming months as part of an expansion fueled by the $3 million Series A funding round recently completed with support from Cofounders Capital, Live Oak Ventures, and VentureSouth, according to this news release.

APPROVE has seen rapid growth in the adoption of its fintech-embedded finance platform for equipment sellers since its launch in early 2022. According to Chief Executive Officer Robert Preville, the new capital “enables the company to pursue an aggressive customer acquisition and product innovation strategy that will bring APPROVE’s industry-disrupting software to more equipment sellers in food service, construction, manufacturing, and many other industries.”

From Tallahassee, FL:

A pilot program launching this fall will allow students in the Florida State University College of Business to learn in virtual reality, guiding avatars of themselves in digital replicas of the college’s classrooms and spaces — specifically those of Legacy Hall, its future home. 

Students will be selected for three courses: undergraduate courses in marketing and accounting and a graduate or undergraduate course in management. To provide a high-tech experience, the college is partnering with Victory XR, a provider of augmented and virtual reality content for educational institutions, and Meta, the owner of Facebook and a leader in social technology.

Click here to read the news release.

From Durham, NC:

There’s a new online site that we just found titled GrepBeat that focuses on technology news from the Research Triangle region. For our technology transfer readers, we thought this article about Jeff Welch, Director of New Ventures for Duke University’s Office of Translation and Commercialization, might be of interest.

“We want to continue to get better at finding projects that have commercial potential as early as possible inside the University,” he says. “By the time they get to the tech transfer office that can be too late, so we want to again shape these things as early as possible. We want to continue to expand our network of investors, both inside the state and outside of the state in all fields. If we don’t know investors that can fund these projects into a good state, it will be difficult for the projects to make it.”

From Greensboro, NC:

Revolution Mill was the first flannel mill in the South when it was opened in 1898 by Moses and Ceasar Cone. That cemented Greensboro as an important hub of North Carolina’s textile manufacturing economy. After almost a century in business, the mill closed its doors, and the campus sat vacant for nearly two decades before Self-Help Credit Union, one of the nation’s largest community development financial institutions, invested in the property and began early redevelopment.

Today, the nearly 475,000-square-foot facility is described as a destination campus that includes more than 100 businesses, meeting and conference facilities, 150 loft apartments, outdoor performance spaces, public art galleries, restaurants and coffee shops, and greenway trails. More than one-half of the facility is Class A office space, including The Grove which provides shared workspace designed for new businesses, entrepreneurs, and freelancers.

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