Every day, Global University Venturing rounds up the smaller investments from across the university innovation ecosystem in its deal net.

Rios, a US-based robotics developer spun out of Stanford University, has emerged from stealth with $5m of capital co-led by Valley Capital Partners and Morpheus Ventures, TechCrunch reported yesterday. Imaging technology producer Fujifilm and industrial product maker NGK Spark Plug provided backing, and were joined by Grit Ventures, Motus Ventures, MicroVentures and Alumni Ventures Group. Founded in 2018, Rios has devised a robot for automating industrial tasks like bin picking and conveyer belt operations, powered by perception AI software and tactile sensors mounted on the robot’s hand. Rios will market its product as a subscription service, also incorporating maintenance, monitoring and updates.
Cambridge Enterprise, the TTO for University of Cambridge co-led a £1.8m ($2.2m) seed round for UK-based drug discovery spinout PharmEnable on Monday together with its co-investment vehicle University of Cambridge Enterprise Fund VI. A syndicate of institutional and angel investors helped close the round, including KQ Labs, a subunit of Francis Crick Institute, and Martlet Capital, the corporate venturing arm of aerospace, defence and property group Marshall of Cambridge. PharmEnable combines medicinal chemistry with AI-enabled technology to design highly complex and specific drug molecules. Proceeds will go to evolving its business model and building out its drug discovery pipeline across disease areas including cancer and neurodegenerative disease.
6 Bit Education, a UK-based automated schoolwork marking software spinout of University of Birmingham, has secured seed funding from an undisclosed investment fund. 6 Bit has created a marking system that learns maths, physics and statistics feedback from teachers in both handwritten and digital formats in order to mark future student answers automatically. The system emerged from the work directed by faculty including Nicola Wilkin, director of education at University of Birmingham’s College of Engineering and Physical Sciences.