StartVirginia: Heard Around Virginia

Bricklayer AI announced a pre-seed investment of $2.5 million to advance product development of its autonomous AI security analyst solution on May 2. The pre-seed round had participation from Sovereign’s Capital; Dreamit Ventures; Virginia Innovation Partnership Corp.’s Virginia Venture Partners fund; BlueWing Ventures; and Blu Ventures, as well as cybersecurity industry leaders. Bricklayer AI has built an autonomous security platform that combines multiple AI agents to form a team of AI specialists that collaborate with human peers on cybersecurity. (News release)

The Dominion Energy Innovation Center was awarded $150,000 from the Department of Energy in April through the Office of Technology Transitions’ Energy Program for Innovation Clusters (EPIC) round 3. It will fund efforts to accelerate and support startups doing work around data centers, including an accelerator program for startups focused on improving data center energy usage. The 11-week Hyperscaled program will be modeled after DEIC’s Accelerate program and will run from Sept. 9 through Nov. 22. (News release)

Richmond senior services startup Naborforce is expanding again in North Carolina, this time to Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point and the greater Wilmington area. The company, led by CEO Paige Wilson, announced in February a return to the Raleigh and Charlotte areas. Naborforce expanded into those North Carolina cities in 2021, but later pulled back. Naborforce currently operates in nine other markets — Richmond; Charlottesville; the Norfolk-Virginia Beach area; Northern Virginia; Washington, D.C.; Bethesda, Maryland; Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia; and Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas. (Richmond Inno)

A company working to derive cancer therapies from milk is the Roanoke-Blacksburg Technology Council’s top entrepreneur of the year. The council selected The Tiny Cargo Co. and its leader, Spencer Marsh, for its Hart of the Entrepreneur Impact Award during its May 8 TechNite 2024 celebration. The council also added Virginia Western Community College’s president, Robert Sandel, to its hall of fame. Marsh and Tiny Cargo are corralling milk exosomes — which serve as cells’ cargo delivery system — to carry drugs to humans dealing with radiation’s effects in cancer treatment. The exosomes might also treat other diseases. The Hart award honors the late Roanoke tech businessman Bonz Hart. (Cardinal News)

Over the past year, the Washington, D.C., metro area outpaced most of the nation in new job creation tied to artificial intelligence. That’s according to data compiled by UMD-LinkUp AI Maps — a joint effort from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business and LinkUp, a global labor market tracking firm. From March 2023 to March 2024, 1.77% of all job postings in Washington, D.C., were tied directly to roles involving AI, the research found, compared with 1.46% for Virginia. When looking at the Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia region as a whole, the region accounted for 11.7% of the nation’s 14,023 new AI job postings in March. (DC Inno)

PEOPLE

Joe Benevento will remain the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corp.’s president and CEO permanently after serving in the role on an interim basis since September 2023, VIPC announced April 24. Benevento took over as interim CEO when Bob Stolle announced he was stepping down. A not-for-profit corporation created in 1985 by the General Assembly as an economic development organization for the tech sector, VIPC provides strategic commercialization and funding support to Virginia-based tech startups. (VirginiaBusiness.com)