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Broadcom is reportedly in talks to pay around $60 billion for VMware in what would be one of the biggest takeover deals of the year. The two technology companies are aiming to announce a cash-and-stock deal worth about $140 a share, says the WSJ, adding that the price isn’t yet set and could still move around, per its sources. More here.
Snap shares plunged 30% in extended trading today after CEO Evan Spiegel warned in a note to employees that the company will miss its own targets for revenue and adjusted earnings in the current quarter. The social media company will also slow hiring through the end of the year as it looks to manage expenses. CNBC has more here.
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| Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings |
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1K Kirana, a four-year-old startup based in Gurgaon, India, that operates neighborhood-based shopping networks, raised a $25 million Series B round. The deal was co-led by Alpha Wave Global, Info Edge Ventures, and Kae Capital. The company has raised a total of $25.7 million. TechCrunch has more here.
BUD, a seven-year-old London metaverse startup that lets users create 3D characters, virtual assets, and experiences through a drag-and-drop interface, raised a $36.8 million Series B led by Sequoia Capital India, with additional participation from ClearVue Partners, NetEase, and Northern Light VC, as well as previous investors GGV Capital, Qiming Venture Partners, and Source Code Capital. The company has now raised more than $60 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.
Equipifi, a one-year-old startup based in Scottsdale, Az., that provides banks and credit unions with a white labeled buy-now-pay-later service, raised a $12 million Series A round co-led by Curql Collective and PHX Ventures. The company has raised a total of $15 million. Seeking Alpha has more here.
Fairtility, a three-year-old Tel Aviv startup that uses AI to help medical professionals make better recommendations about in vitro fertilization procedures, raised a $15 million Series A. Gurnet Point Capital led the round, while Nacre Capital also participated. The company has raised a total of $18.5 million. More here.
Meter, a seven-year-old San Francisco startup that provides businesses with hardware, software, and operations support to run their internet networks, raised a $38 million Series B round co-led by Sequoia Capital and Lachy Groom. The company has raised a total of $50 million. More here.
NextBillion.ai, a two-year-old, Singapore-based startup that says it offers tailored spatial software and services to help its clients scale and manage their own spatial data ecosystems, has raised $21 million in Series B funding led by Mirae Asset Capital. Earlier backers Lightspeed, M12, and Alpha Wave Global also joined the round. VC Circle has more here.
SwipeRx, an eight-year-old, Singapore-based jobs, education and purchasing platform for pharmacists in Southeast Asia, says it has raised $27 million in Series B funding led by Indonesia’s MDI Ventures. Other backers in the round include Gates Foundation, Johnson & Johnson Impact Ventures, Susquehanna International Group and earlier investors. TechCrunch has more here.
Sylndr, a five-year-old Cairo startup that is building a used car marketplace for Egyptian buyers, raised a $12.6 million pre-seed round led by RAED Ventures; Algebra Ventures, Nuwa Capital, 1984 Ventures, and Global Founders Capital also chipped in. TechCrunch has more here.
Torch, a five-year-old San Francisco startup that has built a platform focused on helping clients retain and grow their talent through leadership development and coaching, raised a $40 million Series C led by 137 Ventures, with additional participation from Initialized Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, and Obvious Ventures. The company has raised a total of $87.8 million. More here.
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Amaryllis, an 11-year-old, West Palm Beach, Fla.-based payments company, has raised $10 million in funding led by Fintop Capital. More here.
Hyfé Foods, a year-old, Chicago-based sustainable food-tech company that produces low-carb, protein-rich mycelium flour, has raised $2 million in pre-seed funding led by The Engine, the venture firm spun out of MIT. Other backers in the round include Blue Horizon, Caffeinated Capital, Supply Change Capital, Lifely, Gaingels, Hack Ventures, and angel investors. Food Business News has more here.
Tranch, a one-year-old London startup that combines credit risk modelling and open banking data to make BNPL payments more accessible to its customers, raised £3.5 million from Global Founders Capital, Flash Ventures, Y Combinator, and Columbia Lake Partners. The company has raised a total of $3 million. The Fintech Times has more here.
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01 Advisors, the four-year-old, San Francisco-based early-stage venture fund led by former Twitter execs Adam Bain and Dick Costolo, is raising $325 million for its third fund, per an SEC filing. (The firm had wrapped its second fund with the same amount early last year, per a separate SEC filing that we'd written about at the time.) More here.
Craft Ventures, the five-year-old, San Francisco-based early-stage venture firm cofounded by serial entrepreneurs David Sacks and Bill Lee, is raising both its fourth flagship fund and second growth fund, per SEC filings first flagged by Axios. More here
Great North Ventures, a five-year-old, Minneapolis, Mn.-based early-stage venture firm, says it has closed its second fund with $40 million in capital commitments. More here.
The months-old, New York-based venture fund of Sir Martin Sorrell, the British businessman and founder of the advertising and PR group WPP, has closed on $71 million in capital commitments for a debut fund that is targeting $100 million, per a regulatory filing. The outfit, S4S Ventures, is being run by Sanja Partalo, a former EVP with WPP. More here.
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Conan O’Brien has sold his hit podcast "Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend" and its network of 10 podcasts to satellite company Sirus XM Holdings for an estimated $150 million, reports the WSJ. The deal comes with a five-year talent agreement with O’Brien, reports the outlet. (A major highlight for us during the worst of the pandemic was the chance we had to talk with O'Brien about his podcast empire.) More here.
The crypto exchange FTX has been on the hunt to buy brokerage start-ups as it expands into stocks. In addition to the stake its founder and CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, just took in Robinhood, FTX has reportedly approached at least three privately held trading start-ups about an acquisition, including Webull, Apex Clearing and Public.com. CNBC has the skinny here.
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FWD Group Holdings, the Asian insurer backed by Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li, has won approval for its planned IPO in the city, according to Bloomberg. The outlet reports that the company is looking to raise about $1 billion in its Hong Kong offering. FWD originally filed for an IPO in the U.S. that could have raised as much as $3 billion.
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Ore Adeyemi, a top dealmaker in HSBC Holdings's corporate venture capital arm, is leaving to start his own investment firm with two others from the bank, reports Bloomberg. Adeyemi has been at the bank about 16 years, most recently as managing director and global head of strategic innovation investments based in the San Francisco area; he's reportedly teaming up with Tom Bussey, an investment director in the HSBC venture capital group.
Zilingo has fired co-founder and CEO Ankiti Bose, "deepening a dispute that’s plunged the once high-flying startup into crisis and sent shockwaves through Singapore’s technology industry," observes Bloomberg. Zilingo ousted Bose after an investigation led by an independent forensics firm into complaints of serious financial irregularities, the company said Friday. More here.
Andy Bromberg, CEO of the a16z-backed startup Eco, today claimed quite publicly that Pebble, another fintech startup that came out of stealth this morning, “plagiarized” Eco’s materials and business model. TechCrunch has more here.
Bill Gates said he doesn't own any cryptocurrency in a Reddit Ask Me Anything session late last week. Wrote Gates: "I like investing in things that have valuable output. The value of companies is based on how they make great products. The value of crypto is just what some other person decides someone else will pay for it, so not adding to society like other investments."
SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell defended Elon Musk in an email to employees last week responding to sexual misconduct allegations directed at the company’s CEO, reports CNBC.
“Personally, I believe the allegations to be false; not because I work for Elon, but because I have worked closely with him for 20 years and never seen nor heard anything resembling these allegations,” Shotwell wrote.
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The Westly Group, a sustainability-focused venture firm based in Menlo Park, is hiring a principal.
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Airbnb is reportedly closing its domestic business in China and planning to take down all its mainland listings. The company will continue to provide listings to Chinese travelers going abroad. Airbnb formally launched its mainland China business in 2016 and has faced mounting competition from domestic players, with just 1% of its revenue over the last few years coming from the country, reports CNBC.
Amazon, stuck with too much warehouse capacity now that the surge in pandemic-era shopping has faded, is looking to sublet at least 10 million square feet of space and could vacate even more by ending leases with landlords, reports Bloomberg.
The Swedish buy-now-pay-later company Klarna is about to lay off 10% of its workforce, according to the CEO and cofounder Sebastian Siemiatkowski. LinkedIn shows that the company has over 6,500 employees. “We are strongly influenced by the outside world. When we set our goals for 2022 in the autumn, it was a very different world than the one we have today,” he said in a pre-recorded message sent to Sifted. More here.
EBay is wading into NFTs with a partnership with OneOf, an NFT marketplace focused on music, sports and lifestyle. Its new “Genesis” collection will feature 3D and animated interpretations of iconic athletes featured on Sports Illustrated covers over the years, starting with Wayne Gretsky.
Need customer service from Facebook? Good luck (unless you buy an Oculus headset).
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The former San Francisco home of late Secretary of State George Shultz was just put up for sale. (It isn't the same home where he famously told his grandson to put a sock in it -- that was another home on the Stanford campus owned by Shultz.) Located in the city's Russian Hill neighborhood, the newly listed pad is quite a stunner.
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