PROVIDENCE – Slater Technology Fund on Wednesday announced a $50,000 investment in Vitae Industries Inc. as part of a $1.8 million seed funding round.
The early-stage funding round for Vitae Industries, a pharmaceutical manufacturing technology platform developer out of Brown University, was led by Lerer Hippeau Ventures, a New York City-based venture capital firm.
“Vitae Industries technology platform has the opportunity to inject some badly needed personalization at the edge of the pharmaceutical supply chain,” said Thorne Sparkman, managing director at Slater, a publicly funded venture capital firm in Providence.
Vitae Industries, founded by CEO Jeanine Sinanan-Singh and Chief Technology Officer Daniel DeCiccio, has garnered a fair amount of buzz in the local entrepreneurship community in the last year.
The Providence company, which develops automated robotic hardware to make personalized medications on demand, performed well at local startup competitions and most recently was awarded $50,000 through the state’s Innovation Voucher program.
The startup also participated in the Brown University Breakthrough Lab, or B-Lab, accelerator program. Brown Professor Anubhav Tripathi and Danny Warshay, executive director of the Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship at Brown, are among the company’s adviser group.
Vitae Industries now works with three Rhode Island companies, including Bay Computer Associates, Tedor Pharma and Phusion RX. Other investors in the round included Techstars, BoxGroup, Compound VC and Founder Collective.
“Slater is excited to be involved in supporting the company through its next stage of growth,” Sparkman said.
Eli Sherman is a PBN staff writer. Email him at Sherman@PBN.com, or follow him on Twitter @Eli_Sherman.
