Austin-based sustainability and logistics company Smarter Sorting has secured $17 million in Series A funding, according to company database Crunchbase, topping the city’s recent funding headlines. The cash infusion was announced Sept. 20 and financed by RTP Ventures.

According to its Crunchbase profile, "Smarter Sorting is a purpose-driven company committed to increasing sustainable options for unsold or damaged products. Our cutting-edge machine learning technology enables cost-effective, compliant decisions for all unsold products, and our process advances our partners’ zero-waste goals. As a collective group of machine learning experts, successful serial entrepreneurs, data scientists, sustainability experts, and national account program managers, our passion for data-driven sustainability drives us toward a singular goal: to reduce waste through the salvation of unwanted items."

The four-year-old startup has raised four previous funding rounds, including a $4.6 million convertible note round earlier this year.

The round brings total funding raised by Austin companies focused on sustainability over the past 90 days to $19 million. That's an increase of $9.7 million from the previous three-month period. The local sustainability industry has seen 15 funding rounds over the past year, yielding a total of $51 million in venture funding.

In other local funding news, customer service company Tethr announced a $15 million funding round on Sept. 18, led by IAG Capital Partners.

According to Crunchbase, "Tethr enables the enterprise to make smarter business decisions based on the true Voice of the Customer, with an AI-driven communications intelligence platform that listens to and analyzes every customer conversation, and surfaces contextual understanding and insights from the data. Based on over a decade of best-practice CX research, Tethr gives organizations the ability to measure what matters and share voice of the customer insights across the organization to directly impact sales results, customer loyalty, operating costs, compliance and risk."

Founded in 2013, the company has raised three previous rounds, including a round in 2018.

Meanwhile, commercial real estate and crowdfunding company Realized raised $6 million in Series A funding, announced on Sept. 10.

From the company's Crunchbase profile, "The Realized FinTech/WealthTech platform is powered by an online Marketplace that is the missing link between tax-conscious investors and seasoned real estate owner/operators seeking attractively priced programmatic capital. With domain expertise in institutional real estate, tax optimization, technology, and structured finance, Realized is creating the World's first scalable solution for Tax-Optimized Real Estate Investing."

Realized last raised seed funding in 2015.

---

This story was created automatically using local investment data, then reviewed by an editor. Click here for more about what we're doing. Got thoughts? Go here to share your feedback.