Top tech startup news stories you need to know this Tuesday, November 13

Good morning! Here are some of the top tech startup news stories for today, Tuesday, November 13.

Sustainable clothing startup For Days secures $2.8 in seed funding to eliminate clothing waste. For Days, a zero waste, closed-loop startup company that aims to revolutionize the way you buy T-shirts, has closed $2.8 million seed round led by Rosecliff Ventures and joined by Collaborative Fund, with participation from Congruent Ventures, Third Prime Capital, Closed Loop Ventures, Bleu Capital, Gramercy Fund, and Ride Ventures. The 6-month old startup is the first fully closed-loop clothing line. Founded in May 2018 by Kristy Caylor and Mary Saunders, For Days is a new operating system for manufacturing and commerce. For Days is a basics apparel business designed for circularity. The company aims to drive positive impact by changing relationship with those pesky essentials that have an inherently limited lifespan and save the planet with clothes. For Days is committed to eliminating clothing waste. Their closed loop system means that your For Days tees are recycled into fresh new For Days products.

Emotion AI startup Looxid Labs grabs $4 million Series A.  Looxid Labs, Seoul, South Korea-based AI startup that develops biometric information-based emotion AI, has secured $4 million in Series A funding to accelerate the launch of its VR user analytics solutions.  The round was led by Hastings Asset Management, Daesung Private Equity, Sejong Venture Partners and Samsung Venture investment. Looxid will also be using the fresh capital to further acquire AI experts for strengthening research and development capabilities, to expand ongoing biometric information-based marketing and mental care solutions using emotion AI, and especially to infiltrate the US market by building a number of global partnerships and sales with US companies by strengthening the competitiveness of the US branch. Founded in 2015 by Brian Chae and Jaehyun Nam, Looxid Labs is a tech start-up to seamlessly integrate an emotion recognition system with VR using an eye and brain interface.

Robotics startup Micropsi raises more than $6 million to accelerate growth. Micropsi Industries, a Berlin-based robotics software startup, has closed $6.08 million (5.28 million euros) in Series A funding to fuel growth and launch its artificial intelligence technology in the U.S. and European markets. The latest round was led by Project A, a leading Berlin-based investor with more than €260 million in assets under its management. Previous investors Coparion and Vito Ventures as well as experienced business angels also participated in this round. Micropsi is the creator of  of Mirai, a control system that applies artificial intelligence technologies to create flexible, real-time controlled robotic applications for use in dynamic environments and execute complex tasks.

Stealthy fintech startup Billd Raises $8.4 million in funding. Biild, a fintech company focused on re-engineering supply chain finance in the construction industry, has raised $8.4 million in equity funding and other options. According to the company SEC filing on its Form D that the funding is made in connection with acquisition of assets of Atlas44, which is an Arizona-based credit supplier for the construction industry. The three-month old startup was founded by Christopher Doyle. Billd offers quick, easy payment solutions to contractors looking to grow their business in a predictable way. By partnering with suppliers, we are able to offer an integrated payment method, which means no delays with ordering and receiving material.

AI startup Knowtions raises $5M in Series A funding to grow its AI/ML team of scientists and engineers. Knowtions Research, a Toronto, Canada-based provider of solutions to enable health insurers to adopt artificial intelligence, raised $5m in Series A funding to scale the deployment of Lydia and grow the Knowtions team of machine learning scientists and platform engineers over the next 12 months. The round was led by Information Venture Partners with participation from Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund. Founded in 2013 by Anthony Lee, Christina Cai, Fedor Suprychev, and Kresimir Bojcic, Knowtions builds AI that accelerate our understanding of healthcare by automating the analysis of big and ugly global health data. Knowtions helps health insurers be more effective, reliable and affordable for everyone by transforming data into predictive insights in our enterprise AI platform.

Social media use increases depression and loneliness, study finds. According to study conducted by a group of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, cutting back on Facebook or Snapchat will make you less depressed. In the first experimental study of Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram use, psychologist Melissa G. Hunt showed a causal link between time spent on the platforms and decreased well-being. The study finds that students who limited their daily use of Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat to 10 minutes each per day experienced significant declines in depressive symptoms. This is the first study that shows a direct causal link between cutting back on social media use and improvements in loneliness and depression.