Wisconsin artificial intelligence startup receives $450,000 in funding

A Madison, Wisconsin startup that uses artificial intelligence to sift through data for potential construction projects has just secured nearly half a million dollars in funding, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. Curate, which mines through data logs from municipal meetings and then offers up that information to contractors who would be interested in building developments in a given area, was founded in May of 2016 but just raised $450,000 in investment from a team of investors led by Wisconsin’s own Idea Fund, the newspaper reported. That’s a major step up from the $90,000 total it had raised since its founding. In 2016, the startup mainly focused on Wisconsin-based infrastructure projects. Now, however, it has broadened its scope to include clients for other potential construction developments in Midwest locales like Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois. “My goal is to continue building this out throughout the Midwest and then expand nationally, to be the local expert in all markets for our customers,” Curate founder Taralinda Willis told the Wisconsin State Journal. Willis and her husband Dale Willis are half of the four-person team that operates Curate. According to the State Journal report, the investment from the Idea Fund venture capital is the first of its kind for the relatively new La Crosse-based VC. It was created as part of the larger Badger Fund of Funds project in 2015, in which the state of Wisconsin and large investors set aside $30 million in order to boost startups in the Badger State. In a report from Crunchbase last year, Madison ranked as the 11th best Midwest city for startups, in terms of the number of companies founded there since 2015.