BioBot was founded at MIT by a biologist and an architect with the belief that sewage offers a unique opportunity to make public health more data-driven and effective. It believes that wastewater contains valuable information about the health of communities and by collecting it and analyzing it, it leads public officials to make better decisions about how to keep their residents safer.

Its first product—a monitor placed inside a sewer—measures opioids and other drug metabolites in sewage to estimate consumption in neighborhoods in an effort to establish harm reduction. Cary, North Carolina and Boston have been the cities where BioBot has done its most extensive work to date.

The company’s technology could also be used to discover whether there’s a spike in lead levels or whether a neighborhood is experiencing certain food deficiencies. It’s now working to help public health officials deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.

BlocPower uses machine learning to provide energy efficiency retrofit recommendations to owners of small to medium-size buildings in the core of metropolitan areas in the United States.

These are offered in partnership with state and municipal governments that have legal mandates to reduce emissions. BlocPower believes it can reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2-3% in the next five years.

Learn why we invested in BlocPower

After building a national children’s literacy nonprofit with a strong base of evidence, our founder launched BookNook out of the believe that only through technology can rigorous programs truly scale.

Following a small pilot in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2016, BookNook has quickly spread across hundreds of schools and after-school programs throughout dozens of states.

Edquity is the first-of-its-kind college financial-planning app for high-school and college students, ensuring students are supported through the complex financial inflection points when both planning for and navigating college.

The Edquity platform, powered by research and technology, offers reliable and quick emergency financial assistance to a college student that is at-risk of withdrawing because they don’t have enough money.

One Concern is a Palo Alto, California-based benevolent artificial intelligence company with a mission to save lives and livelihoods before, during, and after disasters. Its built a powerful platform enabling communities and companies to identify, quantify and manage their risk to natural disasters.

Learn why we invested in One Concern

Paladin envisions a world where everyone has access to legal and other vital services.

Statistics show more than 80% of people in America who need legal help don’t get it. Simultaneously, even as corporate law firms and other lawyers complete five million hours on pro bono work, a significant amount is spent on manual administrative work. Paladin’s platform streamlines the process connecting those in need of help with those who have the skills to help. Mark Cuban is a leading investor.

The justice tech company recently signed a deal with the American Bar Association, the largest trade organization for lawyers in the country, to create an online portal for lawyers to help people affected by COVID-19 and other natural disasters.

Pigeonly is a low-cost communication platform that makes it easy for people to support and connect with an incarcerated loved one.

Its mission is to improve communities by building products that reduce the destructive impact of incarceration. In addition to providing low-cost jail calls, families and their incarcerated relatives can easily share photos, letters, and more.

Learn why we invested in Pigeonly

StormSensor was founded in 2015 by Erin Rothman with the goal of creating smarter urban watersheds. It provides a cloud-based stormwater monitoring platform designed to offer real-time data and insights to track how stormwater is flowing through systems including municipal sewers, private sewers, and commercial sites.

So, it’s basically like Google traffic maps for sewers. Sewers are society’s last unmetered utility with municipalities often not knowing how much water is in their system and how fast it’s moving. StormSensor works with major cities to identify where sewers overflow to prevent urban flooding.

Vincere Health is a Boston-based company looking to convince people to make healthier choices by giving them money to stop smoking.

Over time, its incentive-based program aspires to be a platform that addresses the full range of known problems and behaviors associated with chronic cardiovascular disease (e.g. obesity, lack of medication adherence, limited exercise and fitness).

X2AI is a company that focuses on the development of artificial intelligence-based coaches to provide mental health support, self-care/burnout prevention and professional coaching through texting on your cell phone.

Its mission is to provide affordable, quality mental health care, regardless of income or location and the company has given numerous people access to care for the first time in their lives.