WXR Fund lands $5M to invest in women-led AR, VR, and AI startups
The WXR Fund, an investment firm with Seattle roots, landed $5 million for its first fund that will back seed-stage women-led startups building AR/VR and AI technologies.
Founded in 2019 by Amy LaMeyer and Martina Welkhoff, WXR bills itself as “the only venture firm at the intersection of the next wave of computing and female founders.” Its portfolio includes companies such as shoppable virtual store platform Obsess, and Wavely, a Seattle startup developing a smartphone app for ear infections.
“We started WXR Fund to establish a beacon for underrepresented founders in this growing XR community,” Welkhoff said in a statement.
Welkhoff is a Seattle startup vet, having founding companies including Zealyst and ConveneVR. LaMeyer is based in San Francisco and previously spent more than 15 years at Akamai.
WXR previously hosted an accelerator before launching its fund, accepting 26 startups across two cohorts.
Even as venture capital firms invested a record amount of cash in startups last year, funding to female-led and mixed-gender founding teams fell to 14.4% from 16.9%, according to AllRaise.