|
Twitter is finally rolling out an edit button, but it's not free and experts warn it could be misused.
General Motors's driverless-car unit, Cruise, has issued a recall related to the software in some of its robotaxis.
|
|
|
|
|
Alloy, a seven-year-old, New York fintech that says it helps banks and fintechs make better identity and risk decisions and also automates transaction monitoring and credit underwriting, has raised $52 million in fresh funding (after announcing $100 million in funding 11 months ago). Lightspeed Venture Partners and Avenir Growth co-led the round; earlier backers Canapi Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Avid Ventures and Felicis Ventures also chipped in. TechCrunch has more here.
Bridger Photonics, a 15-year-old, Bozeman, Mt.-based LiDAR tech company that works with the oil and gas industry to help detect, locate, and quantify methane emissions, has raised $55 million in funding. Madison Valley Partners and Next Frontier Capital, both based in Bozeman, participated in the round, along with Carica Sustainable Investments, a sustainability and climate-action focused firm. More here.
JenaValve, a 16-year-old startup based in Irvine, Ca., that has developed artificial heart valves to maintain normal blood flow from the heart to the rest of the body, raised a $100 million Series C round led by Bain Capital Life Sciences; additional investors included Pictet, QIA, Innovatus Capital Partners, Peijia Medical and insiders Andera Partners, Valiance Advisors, Gimv, Cormorant Asset Management, RMM, and Venture Incubator. The company has raised a total of $299.1 million. FierceBiotech has more here.
OneSignal, a 7.5-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based platform that powers notifications for mobile apps and more, has raised $50 million in Series C funding led by BAM Elevate, with participation from SignalFire and other existing investors. The infusion brings OneSignal’s total raised to $80 million. TechCrunch has more here.
Planted, a nine-year-old New York startup that combines alternative proteins with biostructuring and fermentation processes to create vegan meat such as plant-based chicken, raised a $71.6 million Series B. L Catterton led the round. TechCrunch has more here.
Solid, a three-year-old startup based in San Mateo, Ca., that works with fintech and vertical SaaS companies and offers banking, payments, cards, and cryptocurrency products via easy-to-integrate APIs, raised a $63 million Series B round led by FTV Capital, with Headline also pitching in. The company has raised a total of $80.8 million. TechCrunch has more here.
|
|
|
|
| Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings |
|
|
|
|
98point6, a seven-year-old Seattle startup that has developed a virtual communications platform linking patients and health providers, raised over $20 million. L Catterton and Activant Capital were the deal leads. GeekWire has more here.
Billogram, a 12-year-old Stockholm startup that offers an invoicing platform for businesses with recurring payments, such as firms in the telecom, energy, mobility, finance, and security industries, raised a $15 million round. Swisscom Ventures led the financing. The company has raised a total of $71.3 million. PYMNTS.com has more here.
Caju Benefícios, a three-year-old Sāo Paulo startup that has developed a human resources platform for Brazilian businesses, raised a $25 million Series B round led by K1 Investment Management, with additional participation from Valor Capital Group, Caravela Capital, Clocktower Ventures, and FJ Labs. The company has raised a total of $36.1 million. FinTech Global has more here.
Everphone, a six-year-old Berlin startup that allows companies to rent smartphones, tablets, and laptops, raised over $32 million in a Series C extension round, bringing the total size of its Series C to $97 million. Cadence Growth Capital was the deal lead. More here.
Fairmarkit, a five-year-old, Boston-based sourcing platform that aims to help organization more efficiently purchase the goods and services they need, has raised $35.6 million in fresh funding led by OMERS Growth Equity, with participation from HighlandX, ServiceNow and earlier backers GGV Capital and Insight Partners. TechCrunch has more here.
Falkon, a two-year-old, Seattle-based sales analytics platform that uses AI to attempt to show where successful product sales are occurring in an organization, says it has raised $16 million in a funding round led by OMERS Ventures, with participation from Greylock Partners, Trilogy Financial, Flying Fish Partners and Madera Partners. The outfit has now raised $20 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.
Learnsoft, a 34-year-old, San Diego-based, enterprise learning technology platform for organizations in highly regulated industries, has raised $16.7 million in a Series A round led by Elsewhere Partners. TechCrunch explains here why this company that's been around a while is just now raising outside funding.
OpenStore, a one-year-old Miami startup that is rolling up Shopify merchants (it was founded by VCs Keith Rabois and Jack Abraham), raised a $32 million round led by Lux Capital, Axios Pro Rata reports. The company has raised a total of $137 million. More here.
Neutral Foods, a three-year-old, Portland, Ore.-based maker of organic milk products that calls itself the "first carbon neutral food company in the United States" (it says it works directly with farmers to reduce the carbon footprint of their dairy products), has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures. The company has now raised $18 million altogether, including from Darco Capital, Global Brain, Craig Shapiro of Collaborative Fund and others. More here.
VRGL, a one-year-old Dallas startup that is building an automated data and analytics platform for wealth management firms, raised a $15 million Series A round co-led by MissionOG and FINTOP Capital; additional investors included Sallyport Investments, Checchi Capital, Dynasty Financial Partners, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, Flyover Capital, Fin Capital, and The Compound Capital. Dallas Innovates has more here.
Zilla Security, a three-year-old Boston startup that has built an identity management platform, raised a $13.5 million Series A round co-led by Tola Capital and FirstMark Capital, with Pillar VC also chipping in. The company has raised a total of $18.6 million. TechCrunch has more here.
|
|
|
|
|
Clockwork, a four-year-old San Francisco startup that aims to rewrite automation tooling that exists on the cloud service providers and make it work for decentralized blockchain applications, raised a $4 million seed round co-led by Multicoin Capital and Asymmetric, with Solana Ventures and El Cap Ventures also pitching in. CoinDesk has more here.
FX HedgePool, a three-year-old New York startup that operates a peer-to-peer matching platform for mid-market execution of foreign exchange swaps, raised an $8 million Series A round led by Information Venture Partners, with additional investment provided by FISV and National Bank of Canada. More here.
Luabase, a Philadelphia startup that claims to enable blockchain developers and data analysts to setup, query, and build on top of on-chain data through a single API, raised a $4.5 million seed round. Investors included Costanoa Ventures and 6th Man Ventures. Grit Daily has more here.
OVO Automotive, a three-year-old Tel Aviv startup that provides car fleet businesses full and remote control over their connected vehicle screens, raised a $3.5 million round led by Regah Ventures. Cacalist has more here.
PsycApps, a six-year-old, London-based digital platform focused on emotional health (it describes one of numerous games it makes, eQuoo, as an “evidence-based gamified mental health game for teens and young adults”) has raised $1.7 million in seed funding from Morningside Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
Puna Bio, a two-year old, Buenos Aires-based biotech startup that's using extremophiles – microorganisms that are 3.5 billion years old and sourced from La Puna, the highest and driest desert on Earth – to develop biological inputs for agriculture, has raised a $3.7 million seed round. At One Ventures and Builders VC co-led the financing, joined by SP Ventures, Air Capital, and earlier investors IndieBio, GLOCAL and Grid Exponential. TechCrunch has more here.
StepFunction, a three-year-old Palo Alto startup that helps SaaS companies gain insights into their sales funnels by analyzing customer intent, raised a $5 million post-seed round led by Dallas Venture Capital, with additional investment from Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Inventus Capital Partners, and Z5 Capital. The company has raised a total of $7.3 million. More here.
Thalamos, a four-year-old London startup that is building a platform to manage mental health care patients, raised a $1 million seed round; investors included Ascension, Syndicate Room, and a Seedrs crowdfund. TechFundingNews has more here.
Willow Servicing, a one-year-old San Francisco startup whose cloud-based mortgage servicing platform aims to automate routine servicing tasks and compliance, raised a $6 million seed round led by Thomvest Ventures. More here.
|
|
|
|
|
The next recession isn’t just coming – it's already here. With investor confidence declining across the board, 67% of top financial advisors just revealed that they are trading their exposure to public equities for exposure to alternative investments. What makes art an attractive alternative? It’s a $2 trillion asset class that's appreciated more than 3x the S&P in the last 25 years. Masterworks allows you to join this once-exclusive club. Just follow today’s special link to skip the waitlist. See important Regulation A disclosures.
|
|
|
|
|
Instacart is acquiring Eversight, a nine-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based AI-powered pricing and promotions platform for consumer packaged goods brands and retailers, the company announced on Thursday. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed; Oversight had raised $24.2 million from investors. TechCrunch has more here.
Reddit’s acquisition spree is continuing this morning with news that the company is bringing the five-year-old, San Francisco-based audience contextualization company Spiketrap’s technology in-house. Deal terms were not disclosed, but Reddit says Spiketrap’s AI-powered contextual analysis and tools will help Reddit to improve in areas like ad quality scoring and will boost prediction models for powering auto-bidding. Spiketrap raised $3.5 million in a seed round in 2020 but did not disclose a valuation, a Reddit spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch. More here.
|
|
|
|
|
Sam Blond, who has spent the last four-plus years as the chief revenue officer at Brex (and, before that, was a VP of Sales at Zenefits), has joined Founders Fund as its newest partner. We're told he'll be a generalist but that he's probably most interested in early-stage enterprise deals. Blond will join the firm's Miami office in a couple of weeks. Forbes has more here.
Lawyers for Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes failed in a long-shot attempt to get her fraud conviction thrown out by telling the judge who oversaw her trial a version of events that highlighted her company’s accomplishments. Holmes’s bid to get the judge to overturn the verdict was a gamble that almost all white-collar criminal convicts make, and rarely win, says Bloomberg.
Starbucks today named Laxman Narasimhan as its next CEO. Narasimhan most recently served as CEO of health and hygiene company Reckitt, which owns brands such as Lysol, Durex and Mucinex. CNBC has more here.
Samir Shah has stepped down as COO of Pantera Capital after just two months in the job. He's previously spent almost 13 years with JPMorgan. The Block has the story here.
Jefferies Financial Group asked staffers to come back to the office on a more consistent basis as it looks to work through its investment-banking backlog. The company has “no issue” when employees need to work from home from time to time, though it wants senior bankers to be coming in to motivate their junior counterparts, according to a memo to staff yesterday. Bloomberg has the story here.
|
|
|
|
|
Single women without children are getting richer, with an average of $65,000 in wealth in 2019, compared with $57,000 for single, child-free men, says new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. For single mothers, the figure was only $7,000. Bloomberg has more here.
VCs aren't just losing interest in board meetings; pre-seed checks are also scarce right now, per AngelList data. (It's a stark difference compared with February, when VCs talked enthusiastically about investing in people who hadn't even left their jobs yet and didn't have a startup idea. (See "No Company . . .No Problem?")
|
|
|
|
|
In a future of hybrid work, Zoom itself sees the office more like an off-site. Writes the WSJ journalist who visited its HQ in San Jose for this story, "It was a supposedly busy day at Zoom, but I saw more people in a coffee shop across the street."
Snap is sunsetting efforts focused on building products for the generation of the internet known as web3, according to a former R&D manager at the company who talked with Bloomberg. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel has long questioned the hype around the metaverse, which he called "ambiguous" and "hypothetical" back in April.
Google has blocked Truth Social from its Play Store, but the social media app is alive and well in the App Store in spite of the same dangerous content. TechCrunch takes a look here.
|
|
|
|
|
Morgan Stanley at Work can help transform equity compensation plans into a powerful driver of employee motivation, productivity and loyalty. With Shareworks’ modern technology and personalized service, Morgan Stanley at Work can help build a culture of ownership, so everyone feels invested in a company’s success. Learn more at morganstanley.com/StrictlyVC.
|
|
|
|
|
