These 10 early startups you've never heard of made the biggest buzz among VCs last quarter and raised hundreds of millions of dollars

San Francisco startup Redaptive snagged $20 million in venture capital funding in April 2018 from real estate services and investment firm CBRE Group, as well as ENGIE New Ventures and GXP Investments.

So what does it do? Redaptive helps make corporate clients' facilities more energy efficient, billing itself as a "leading provider of commercial Efficiency-as-a-Service."

"What makes our program unlike any other is that Redaptive makes the investment in your facilities, takes on all project execution and technology performance risk and covers maintenance costs, it says on its website. "Once we have designed and installed efficiency upgrades, you only pay for actual metered savings at a level that ensures you see immediate operating savings on day one."

It was cofounded in 2013 by Goldman Sachs veteran John Rhow, its co-CEO, and Ryan Martineau, SVP, Channel Sales.

Medici Technologies is building an app that lets patients message their doctors from their smartphones — calling itself the "WhatsApp of Healthcare."

Based in Austin, Texas and founded by medical industry exec Clinton Phillips in 2016, Medici raises $22 million from a suite of private investors in June 2018.

KaiOS builds an operating system for budget feature phones that aren't capable of running full-fledged smartphone software like the Android OS. KaiOS has its own app store and is targeted at emerging markets, and aims to be on 100 million phones worldwide by the end of 2018.

Its pitch has earned it the support of Google, which sunk $22 million into the San Diego startup in late June. It started in 2017, and is led by Sebastien Codeville, a veteran of the mobile industry who previously worked at Nokia and Alcatel.

Aclima uses sensors to to monitor and quantify pollution and air quality, letting businesses and organizations map their emissions and act on the environmental data.

"Aclima’s methods, grounded in strong science and peer-reviewed research, achieve up to 100,000 times greater spatial resolution than traditional EPA practices, with comparable data quality," it claims.

The San Francisco company vacuumed up $24 million in Series A funding in June 2018 from investors including Social Capital, The Schmidt Family Foundation, Emerson Collective, and Kapor Capital. It was founded back in 2010.

CTRL-Labs wants to let people control computers with their brains.

The New York startup, founded in 2015, is working on neural interface technology — that is, hardware that allows people to interact with computers and machines using only their minds, including a wrist-worn prototype that aims to replace keyboards.

In May, it raised a cool $28 million in venture capital funding, with investors including GV (Google's venture capital arm), Amazon's Alexa Fund, and Founders Fund.

One of its cofounders, Thomas Reardon, also created Internet Explorer for Microsoft back in the day.

Perch is a startup that aims to streamline the house-selling process, promising its users they wil "receive a market-price offer for your home in 24 hours at no cost or obligation to you."

It works by directly buying customers' homes itself, then re-selling them. It currently operates in one market — San Antonio, Texas — and raised $30 million in May 2018 to fuel its expansion.

CEO Court Cunningham previously worked as CEO of marketing startup Yodle between 2007 and 2016.

SpinLaunch is a far-out startup that wants to fling objects into space — literally.

It wants to build "space catapults" (as Fortune put it) that will throw satellites into space, eliminating the need for the expensive propulsion systems needed today to escape earth's gravitational pull.

In June 2018, it was thrown $35 million in Series A funding from some top-tier investors including GV, Kleiner Perkins, and Airbus Ventures. The first launch is penciled in for 2022.

It was founded in 2014 by CEO Jonathan Yaney, and for much of its life it has operated in "stealth" mode, avoiding all publicity.

Figure, founded by ex-SoFi CEO Mike Cagney, aims to use the blockchain to speed up home equity loans.

Based in San Francisco, it has yet to launch, but that hasn't stopped it raising a cool $50 million from investors including Ribbit Capital, DCM Ventures, and Peter Thiel's Mithril Capital, Bloomberg reported in April 2018.

AutoLab AI is seriously under-the-radar — but it's managed to bring in some serious cash.

What little information there is about the "stealth" Palo Alto, California startup comprises a few corporate and trademark filings, and a report from Axios detailing some its massive funding, and the fact it has 400 employees and a focus on "manufacturing."

There are varying figures quoted on its total funding raised: Axios quotes it as $200 million, while IEEE Spectrum cites an SEC filing with a $163 million figure, and CB Insights pegs it at $153.4 million. Whatever the exact amount, it has clearly managed to quietly bring in a boatload of cash.

Its CEO is Amar Hanspal, formerly co-CEO at Autodesk. Cofounder and board member Lior Susan describes it on LinkedIn only as "the future of autonomous manufacturing."