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Today saw a veritable cornucopia of earnings reports, with Alphabet reporting better-than-expected quarterly earnings; Microsoft reporting a slowdown in growth of
parts of its business; and Snap reporting its second straight decline in quarterly sales as it continues to struggle with bringing in more advertising.
Federal Reserve policymakers are poised to hike interest rates to the highest level in 22 years.
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| Goodwater Snags $1B Across Two New Funds, Despite Cooling Interest in Consumer Tech |
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Goodwater, one of comparatively few firms to focus exclusively on consumer tech investments, has closed on $1 billion in capital commitments across its fifth early-stage fund and its third opportunity-style fund, we're first to report. The bulk of the capital — 60% — will be invested in early- and seed-stage outfits.
The Burlingame, Calif., firm, which now has $3.3 billion in assets under management, has seen a handful of notable exits over its nine-year history. It invested in the lip-syncing app Musical.ly, which reportedly sold for upwards of $1 billion in 2017 to Bytedance (which then shut it down and combined it with TikTok). It also backed the Croatian math app Photomath, which Google agreed to acquire last year for an unknown amount; it bet on the cash-back offers startup DOSH, which sold to the digital advertising platform Cardlytics for $275 million
in cash and stock in 2021; and it invested in the personalized vitamin company CareOf, the majority of which Bayer snapped up in 2020 for an undisclosed amount that valued the company at $225 million.
Founded by veteran VCs Chi-Hua Chien, formerly of Kleiner Perkins, and Eric Kim, long of Maverick Capital, Goodwater has now backed 79 early and growth-stage startups altogether across 19 countries. Some of its most highly valued portfolio companies currently include the grocery delivery company Getir in Turkey, which has been gobbling up the competition in Europe as its money-losing rivals are forced to consolidate; Toss Bank, in South Korea, which was reportedly looking to raise funds at a $3 billion valuation a few months ago; and the so-called neobank Monzo in the U.K., which has been through a few tumultuous years but continues to grow.
Somewhat astonishingly, Goodwater has also issued checks to 600 seed-stage startups across 50 countries through a platform it has
developed called Genesis that features “master class” level programming via pre-recorded modules by the likes of Tinder co-founder Sean Rad and former Amazon exec Jeff Wilkie, who also happens to be a limited partner in Goodwater.
To gain admission, teams need only apply online; Goodwater’s minimal threshold for startups is that they have tens of thousands of users and tens of thousands of dollars in initial revenue. There is no cut-off period. Kim uses the term “open enrollment” to describe how the process works, then pokes fun at himself for using language that comes up at others of Goodwater’s portfolio companies.
More here.
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Ossium Health, a seven-year-old San Francisco startup whose mission is to develop the world's first bank of on-demand bone marrow, raised a $52 million Series C round. CPMG led the transaction, while Vivo Capital, First Round Capital, Manta Ray Ventures, and Alumni Ventures also contributed. The company has raised a total of $76.9 million. More here.
Solink, a 14-year-old Ottawa security company that provides video monitoring services that are hosted in the cloud, raised a $60 million Series C round. Goldman Sachs was the deal lead, while OMERS Ventures and BDC IT Ventures also took part. The company has raised a total of $94.1 million. TechCrunch has more here.
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| Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings |
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A-Alpha Bio, a six-year-old Seattle startup whose machine learning platform analyzes protein-protein interactions, raised a $22.4 million Series A extension. The deal was led by Perceptive Xontogeny Ventures, with additional capital provided by Madrona and Breakout Ventures. The company has raised a total of $27.2 million. GeekWire has more here.
Akooda, an enterprise AI startup that says it helps its customers analyze their internal software stack to better understand their organizations' inner workings, has raised $11 million in seed funding from NFX, Atlassian Ventures, Village Global, and Founder Collective. The Cambridge, Ma.-based outfit was founded in late 2020. More from TechCrunch here.
Brevel, a seven-year-old Israeli startup that is developing microalgae into an alternative protein for use in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, raised a $18.5 million seed round. NevaTeam Partners was the deal lead, while EIC Fund also invested. The company has raised a total of $21.6 million. TechCrunch has more here.
Giraffe, a two-year-old New York startup that provides a platform enabling companies, employees, and individuals to invest in S&P 500 companies that align with their personal values, raised a $10.5 million seed round. Group 11 led the deal, with Altair also chipping in. More here.
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Adaptive Shield, a four-year-old Tel Aviv startup that specializes in monitoring security practices in cloud environments, raised about $10 million from Blackstone. CTech has more here.
️Etch, a Baltimore startup that focuses on eliminating carbon from natural gas in order to produce both clean hydrogen and solid carbon, announced that it raised a $7.5 million seed round last year led by Emerald Development Managers. More here.
Inspectify, a four-year-old Seattle startup that provides inspection software and a booking platform for home, property, and rental inspections, raised a $5.76 million round. Fundrise was the deal lead. The company has raised a total of $17.3 million. GeekWire has more here.
K4Connect, a ten-year-old company based in Raleigh, NC, that provides software for senior living operators, raised an $8.9 million round. Bryce Catalyst and AXA Venture Partners were the co-leads, with additional participation from Intel Capital, Forté Ventures, Topmark Partners, and the Ziegler-Linkage Fund. The company has raised a total of $39 million. More here.
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Main Sequence, an Australian venture capital firm, says it has secured $450 million AUD (approximately $303 million) for a first close of its third fund. Founded by Australia’s national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, the outfit says that backers in the new fund include LGT Crestone, NGS Super, Daiwa Securities Group and the Grantham Foundation, as well as returning backers Hostplus, Temasek, Australian Ethical Investment and Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. TechCrunch has more here.
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ChatGPT creator OpenAI quietly unplugged its AI detection tool, AI Classifier, last week because of “its low rate of accuracy,” the firm said in an addendum to the blog post that first announced the tool back in January. Decrypt has more here.
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Kamran Ansari has joined the global venture outfit Headline as a venture partner in New York focused on fintech and other software startups. Ansari was previously a venture partner with Greycroft and also spent three years leading corporate development at Pinterest. More here.
Anjney Midha, Discord’s vice president of platform ecosystem, has joined Andreessen Horowitz as a general partner to oversee its AI efforts. Midha previously logged time at Kleiner Perkins, where he founded Edge, the firm’s joint engineering and frontier investing team. More here.
Ruth Porat will step down as Alphabet chief financial officer and take a new role as president and chief investment officer, the company announced today. More here.
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During Spotify’s second-quarter earnings call this morning, CEO Daniel Ek teased a few ways the streaming service could introduce additional AI-powered functionality, including to create personalized experiences, summarize podcasts and generate ads. TechCrunch has more here.
Amazon is rolling out its palm payment technology to all of its more than 500 Whole Foods Market stores in the U.S. Finextra has more here.
The cycle begins anew, with state-backed news outlets from Russia and other authoritarian governments reportedly rushing to join Meta Platforms's new Threads microblogging service, posting propaganda such as a fake video purporting to show President Biden in a store perusing books on dementia.
Apple is reportedly considering releasing a foldable iPad in the future.
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"I am Kenough" merch.
A renovated Gramercy Park triplex owned by WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann.
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