How These Boston Tech Companies are Growing and Connecting to the Community

Boston has a lot of firsts. 

Boston Commons was the first public park in the United States. Harvard was the first college not only in the country but in all of North America.  

In terms of scientific and technological advances, Boston became the home of the first subway system in the United States. Also, the telephone was invented while Alexander Graham Bell was living in Boston. 

Tech advances in Boston have only snowballed with the roll of time. Cambridge was where the first RNA vaccine for Covid-19 was invented by Moderna. Cambridge was even where Margaret Hamilton first created the term “software engineering” to describe the programming she oversaw for the Apollo missions. 

Boston is a city that has a history of coming in “first.”

Built In Boston peeled away from the tech history books to find nine local tech companies that are drawn to the city’s long lineage of discovery — and want to hire some fresh tech talent to do it. 

 

Imprivata is a cybersecurity company focused on digital identity management. 

Awards and Accolades: Imprivata, in May of 2024, announced that it won three awards from Cyber Defense Magazine for achievements in biometrics, healthcare IoT security and passwordless authentication.

Product News: Also earlier this year, Imprivata launched Enterprise Access Management Analytics. The release will help the company improve the experience for clinicians. “This is a key step in adapting Imprivata’s vision to meet the evolving operational and security needs of the healthcare industry,” the company’s website noted. 

 

 

AutoStore, founded in 1996, is a warehouse robot technology company. 

Awards and Accolades: AutoStore has a new trophy to add to the shelf. The global warehouse tech company created an automation system that uses modular storage and was named the Order Fulfillment Solution of the Year by the 2024 SupplyTech Breakthrough Awards. 

Expanding Globally: AutoStore announced in June 2024 that the company would open a new assembly factory in the Rayong Province of Thailand. The company’s website notes, “The new robot factory in Thailand will help get the company’s automated storage and retrieval system into U.S. warehouses faster and more efficiently.” The article also noted that, in the United States alone, the company has 17,000 robots already in operation to fulfill orders for brands like Puma, Gucci and Best Buy.

 

 

Nasuni is a hybrid cloud storage solution to help power business growth.

Celebrating Individuality: When there is something to celebrate at Nasuni, the company doesn’t shy away from it. Nasuni is known for employee recognition programs — including one called the UniAward, which is given out quarterly. “It’s special because it feels as though my contributions are making an impact and are appreciated,” said Senior Professional Services Engineer Mark Sliozis, who is a previous UniAward winner. 

Ready to Grow: Nasuni recently received an investment from Vista Equity Partners, bringing the company’s value to $1.2 billion. The company provides data management and cloud services in over 70 countries. This investment will help expand those services and offer customers scalable data-management solutions. 

 

 

MacPaw develops and distributes software for macOS and iOS that simplifies the lives of Mac users. 

Boston and Ukraine Strong: Launched in Kyiv, Ukraine, MacPaw now sees both its hometown and Boston as its headquarters. “We work from anywhere, but we have our ways to stay a community,” the company’s site notes. “Seriously, we made a whole Together App just to stay connected.” The company has never lost its connection to place and home by going global, though. It formed the MacPaw Foundation to help support aid and rebuilding in Ukraine due to the ongoing war. The company even wrote a book about the tech history of Ukraine called “Innovation in Isolation.”

Partnerships: MacPaw is a sponsor of the Mac Admins Foundation, a nonprofit organization supporting people who manage Apple products in the workplace. MacPaw organizes foundation meetups for networking and knowledge sharing. 

 

 

Wasabi provides simple and affordable hot cloud storage for businesses all over the world. 

Community Home Run: Wasabi partners regularly with the Boston Red Sox to help bring events and classes to the neighboring community. The Wasabi Fenway Bowl, STEM Day, music therapy and more are all on the list of programs that the two entities have gifted to the area.  

Sustainable-minded: Wasabi partnered with Zero Circle to develop cloud storage solutions that can help businesses assess data with the goal of lessening the company’s environmental impact. For example, Wasabi customers can upload an invoice into Zero Circle’s carbon calculator. The result is a better insight into the company’s ESG targets and estimated CO2 footprint.  

 

Immuta helps organizations unlock value from their data by providing an integrated platform for sensitive data discovery, activity monitoring and access control.  

Award Winner: Immuta was named the 2024 Data Cloud Product Data Security Partner of the Year by Snowflake, an AI data company. This is the second time in as many years that Immuta was given the award. “We’re committed to collaborating on seamless product advancements, controlling enterprise-scale AI efforts and providing data teams with the most accessible and secure data to drive business growth and outcomes,” said Matthew Carroll, co-founder and CEO, in a press release.  

Adding Automation: Immuta recently released Immuta Discover, a new product that automates the tagging and classification process within cloud data platforms. The product gives teams visibility into sensitive data and the ability to better monitor who has access to it. This release joins the product suite with Immuta Detect and Immuta Secure to offer scalable data solutions. 

 

 

Geode Capital Management is a global systematic investment manager.

Location, Location, Location: Geode is an investment management company, which puts the office location right at home in Boston’s financial district. Less than a 10-minute walk to the harbor and half that to a T stop make coming into the office an easy choice. 

Going for Growth: Financial Times reports that Geode Capital Management surged to $1 trillion in assets in 2021. Geode started as an offshoot of Fidelity Investments. The company’s website notes that “with a robust infrastructure and experienced investment professionals, Geode offers the scale of a large asset management firm with the benefits of a smaller organization.” 

 

Asimov builds tools to program living cells by integrating mammalian synthetic biology, computer-aided design and machine learning.

10x Better: In April, Asimov announced the expansion of its LV Edge System with the launch of a “fully stable cell line development service.” This will allow Asimov to improve lentiviral production tenfold. 

“We developed the LV Edge System to address the rising demand for scalable lentiviral production,” said Alec Nielsen, co-founder and CEO of Asimov. “Today’s launch expands the LV Edge portfolio, allowing therapeutic developers to choose between an off-the-shelf single plasmid packaging system they can use in their own lab or a plasmid-free cell line development service performed by Asimov, achieving industry-leading titers in both cases. These advances were made possible by integrating mammalian synthetic biology, computational models and our design software (Kernel), furthering our goal of democratizing state-of-the-art genetic design capabilities to our partners.”

In Print: Asimov Press recently published its inaugural book. The press focuses on scientific progress in biology. The first issue focuses on the “origins” of scientific discoveries.  

 

 

Stride Funding is a venture-based, mission-driven fintech company that provides access to education financing.

Learning and Growing: Stride Funding is listed on the 2023 Forbes Fintech 50 list and was named 2022 Startup of the Year by Startup Boston. The company offers innovative forms of financing, like income share loans, deferred tuition agreements and employer-sponsored programs. On its website, the company notes that it has previously closed the “largest Income Share Loan fund in history” and brought in $105 million to support students in bootcamps. The site also notes that the team has tripled in the last few years. 

New Digs: In November of 2023, the company relocated from Washington Street to a larger space on School Street. The new location has over 7,000 square feet. 

“The Stride team is thrilled to grow into our new home,” said David Kafafian, chief operating officer of Stride Funding, to the New England Real Estate Journal. “The space will enable us to foster even more cross-functional collaboration, with more meeting and multipurpose spaces, while staying in the heart of downtown Boston and everything it has to offer. We are on a mission to increase economic mobility through our innovative, access-driven financing platform — and our new homebase will empower us to charge forward.”