Midwest Startup Funding for the week ending July 24 2025

Funding across the Midwest ticked along nicely this week, no huge deals... but that's ok because we also thankfully have much less smoke locally.

Here are the Midwest startup funding investments from Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin that we’ve been able to track and verify this week, ending July 24 2025.

***While you’re here: If you’d like to make sure you’re notified about any funds raised from the six states we cover, then make sure you’re subscribed to our newsletter***

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Empirical Security

Location: Chicago, Illinois

Business Type: Cybersecurity

Amount Raised: $25 million

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What they do: 

Develops AI‑driven predictive models for exposure management, monitoring thousands of exploited CVEs to forecast threats, and provides custom predictive engines tailored to each organization’s environment.

Read more here. 

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Emergent Software

Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota

Business Type: SaaS

Amount Raised: Undisclosed

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What they do: 

Specializes in data modernization, AI deployment, cloud transformation, application development, and managed services across the Microsoft ecosystem, offering solutions like Fabric, Azure, Copilot, and modern data platforms.

Read more here. 

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1872

Location: Cincinnati, Ohio

Business Type: Manufacturing

Amount Raised: $15m 

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What they do: 

Develops AI-driven factory automation, integrating software that understands physical environments with robotics to coordinate material sourcing, cost estimation, production planning, and real-time adaptive welding.

Read more here.

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N-Zyme Biomedical

Location: Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Business Type: Biotech

Amount Raised: $4.6m

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What they do: 

Develops pepsin‑targeting therapies for reflux diseases, advancing Phase 2 clinical programs and a pepsin inhibitor platform to treat laryngopharyngeal reflux and PPI‑refractory GERD.

Read more here. 

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Estrignenix Therapeutics

Location: Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Business Type: Biotech

Amount Raised: $2m

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What they do: 

Develops selective estrogen‑receptor‑beta therapeutics for women’s health and neurodegenerative diseases, advancing pre‑clinical optimization and IND‑enabling studies with recent $2 M seed financing.

Read more here.

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Fly.io

Location: Chicago, Illinois

Business Type: SaaS

Amount Raised: $2m

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What they do: 

A global JavaScript cloud platform that allows you to deploy applications close to users and build your own CDN.

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Read more here.

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Want to know more?

Read the latest quarterly funding reports for each state here:

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Illinois startup funding - Q2 2026

Indiana startup funding - Q2 2026

Ohio startup funding - Q2 2026

Michigan startup funding - Q2 2026

Minnesota startup funding - Q2 2026

Wisconsin startup funding - Q2 2026

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***While you’re here: If you’d like to make sure you’re notified about any funds raised from the six states we cover, then make sure you’re subscribed to our newsletter***

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