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Top News
U.S. stock futures were largely flat tonight after concerns over the U.S. economy and the market’s overall valuation sparked another sell-off in equities earlier in the day. Meanwhile, international markets fell, after cautious comments from U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell added to concerns about the global economy.
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Massive Fundings
Expel, a four-year-old, Herndon, Va.-based managed security platform, has raised $50 million in Series D funding. CapitalG led the round, joined by Battery Ventures, Greycroft, Index Ventures, Paladin Capital Group, and Scale Venture Partners. TechCrunch has more here.
Kriya Therapeutics, an eight-month-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based gene therapy startup focused on highly prevalent chronic diseases like diabetes, has raised $80.5 million in Series A funding from QVT, Dexcel Pharma, Foresite Capital, Bluebird Ventures, Narya Capital, Amplo, Paul Manning, and Asia Alpha. FierceBiotech has more here.
Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings
Anna, a three-year-old, London-based, mobile-first banking, tax accounting and financial service assistant aimed at small and medium businesses and freelancers, has raised $21 million in funding from a single investor, the ABHH Group. TechCrunch has more here.
Anyfin, a three-year-old, Stockholm, Sweden-based digital lending platform focused on consumer refinancing, has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by the EQT Ventures. Other participants in the round include earlier investors Accel, Northzone and Global Founders Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
Dathena, a four-year-old, Singapore-based company that software scans and organizes data stored on premise or in the cloud, identifies sensitive information, then monitors access and potential security risks, has raised $12 million in Series A funding. Jungle Ventures led the round, joined by Caphorn and SEEDS Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
FortressIQ, a nearly three-year-old, San Francisco-based startup focused on imitation learning for process automation, has raised $30 million in Series B funding. M12 and Tiger Global Management co-led the round, joined by earlier backers Boldstart Ventures, Comcast Ventures, Eniac Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. TechCrunch has more here.
MemVerge, a three-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based maker of memory storage convergence software, has raised $19 million in funding led by Intel Capital, and was joined by Cisco Investments, NetApp and SK hynix, and earlier investors Gaorong Capital, Glory Ventures, Jerusalem Venture Partners, LDV Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Northern Light VC. AIThority has more here.
Modulus Discovery, a nearly four-year-old, Tokyo-based computational platform for drug discovery, has raised $25.5 million in Series B funding. Investors in the round include SBI Investments, Mizuho Capital, JAFCO, Keio Innovation Initiative, SMBC Venture Capital, Dai-ichi Life Insurance, UTokyo Innovation Platform, Mobile Internet Capital, Medifuture, Essential Pharma, and earlier backer Fast Track Initiative. More here.
Morning Consult, a seven-year-old, New York-based market research startup known for its surveys and for modernizing political polling, has raised $31 million in Series A funding co-led by Lupa Systems and Advance Venture Partners. Bloomberg has more here.
Mos, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based financial aid accessibility platform for students, has raised $13 million in Series A funding. Sequoia Capital led the round, joined by NBA star Steph Curry, Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan, Emerson Collective, and Lux Capital. More here.
Pillar Biosciences, a six-year-old, Natick, Ma.-based cancer diagnostics company, has raised $29.7 million in Series C funding led by ORI Healthcare Fund. More here.
Quizlet, a San Francisco-based learning platform that says its study tools are powered by AI, has raised $30 million in Series C funding led by General Atlantic. The company tells TechCrunch that the round values the business at $1 billion -- more than five times where it was valued in 2018 when it closed its Series B round. The company has raised more than $60 million to date. TechCrunch has more here.
QurAlis, a four-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based biotech company focused on new therapies for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and genetically related frontotemporal dementia (FTD), has raised $42 million in Series A funding. The round led by Polaris Partners, Mission BioCapital, INKEF Capital and the Dementia Discovery Fund. FierceBiotech has more here.
Semperis, a seven-year-old, New York-based enterprise identity protection company, has raised $40 million in Series B funding led by Insight Partners. More here.
Travecta Therapeutics, a three-year-old, Singapore-based developer of products designed to cross the blood-brain barrier to treat disorders of the central nervous system, has raised $15 million in Series A funding. The round was led by a fund that is co-managed by SPRIM and Tikehau Capital. DealStreetAsia has more here.
VanMoof, an 11-year-old, Amsterdam-based e-bike company, has raised €12.5 million from Balderton Capital and SINBON Electronics, a Taiwan-based electronics manufacturer that is its bike assembly partner. TechCrunch has more here.
Workvivo, a three-year-old, Cork, Ireland-based employee communications platform, has raised $16 million in a Series A funding led by Tiger Global Management, with participation from earlier backers Frontline Ventures and Enterprise Ireland. The company has raised $17.5 million altogether, including from Zoom CEO Eric Yuan. TechCrunch has more here.
Smaller Fundings
Blockdaemon, a three-year-old, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based blockchain deployment facilitator, raised $5.5 million from Hashkey, CoinShares, Blockchain.com, Kenetic, SPiCE VC and Fenbushi Capital, along with earlier backers Comcast Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, Boldstart, and Heavybit. More here.
ConverseNow Technologies, a two-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based startup that automates and personalizes restaurants orders on their high volume voice channels, such as phone calls, drive-thru stations, self-service kiosks, and voice-assisted chat on mobile, has raised $3.25 million in seed funding. Bala Investments led the round, with participation from LiveOak Venture Partners, Tensility Venture Partners, and Knoll Ventures, among others. More here.
FeaturePeek, a 16-month-old, San Francisco-based startup whose technology enables teams to review front-end designs throughout the development process instead of waiting until the end when the project has been moved to staging, just announced $1.8 million in funding led by Matrix Partners. TechCrunch has more here.
GrowFlow, a nearly four-year-old, Seattle, Wa.-based developer of compliance, inventory management and other software to the cannabis market, has raised $8.4 million in Series B funding led by TVC Capital. More here.
Hypersonix, a two-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based provider of an AI-driven autonomous analytics platform, has raised $11.5 million in Series A funding led by Intel Capital, with participation from existing investors. More here.
Intello Labs, a four-year-old, Gurgaon, India-based software startup that helps food businesses with quality assessment of their commodities using computer vision and AI, has raised $5.9 million in Series A funding. Saama Capital led the round, joined by earlier backers Omnivore and Nexus Venture Partners. LiveMint has more here.
Intricately, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based company that captures spend and product usage data for cloud sales and marketing teams, has raised $4 million in Series A funding. Counterpart Ventures led the round, joined by earlier backers Bloomberg Beta, Singtel Innov8, and Susa Ventures. More here.
Malbek, a three-year-old, Somerset, N.J.-based maker of contract lifecycle management software, raised $3 million led by Osage Venture Partners. More here.
Meru Health, a four-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based online platform that connects licensed therapists with patients, recently closed on $8.1 million in Series A funding, it tells Forbes. Foundry Group led the funding, joined by Slack and Bold Capital. The company had raised $4.2 million in seed funding last year. More here.
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New Funds
Redstone Digital, a Berlin-based venture capital firm, is raising a 200 million-euro fund ($217 million), led by SBI Holdings for a fund that will invest into startups focusing on the so-called fourth industrial revolution. The Future Industry Ventures Fund will invest as much as 10 million euros per company in later growth phases, Samuli Siren, a managing partner at Redstone, tells Bloomberg. The fund is still raising cash and could raise as much as 250 million euros, he added. More here.
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Exits
VMware said today that it intends to buy early-stage Kubernetes security startup Octarine and fold it into Carbon Black, a security company it bought last year for $2.1 billion. The company did not reveal the price of today’s acquisition. Octarine was founded in 2017 and had raised $9 million according to Pitchbook data. TechCrunch has more here.
Rakuten, the Japanese company with extensive holdings in e-commerce and streaming media, say it is acquiring Innoeye, an engineering company based in Herndon, Va. that builds cloud-based software that helps carriers and enterprises to manage networks and deploy services across them. Deal terms weren't disclosed, but Innoeye doesn't appear to have raised outside funding. TechCrunch has more here.
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People
In recent weeks, Bill Gates and his aides have discussed plans to possibly pool voluntary donations from over 200 billionaires and direct the money on their behalf toward the coronavirus crisis, Recode has learned from people familiar with the matter. More here.
Jessica Jackley, co-founder of nonprofit microlending platform Kiva, has become a general partner at SparkLabs Global Ventures. Jackley was previously a venture partner at the firm, which focuses on seed-stage investments in the United States, Asia and Europe. TechCrunch has more here.
VC Chamath Palihapitiya argued on CNBC yesterday that Jeff Bezos is a better investor than even Warren Buffett because of the his history of reinvesting in the business. More here.
Luckin Coffee, which grew from one shop in Beijing to the largest coffee chain by store count n China in just over two years, has fired its CEO and founder, Jenny Zhiya Qian, amid an ongoing internal investigation into fabricated sales figures. Qian was formerly an auto executive. CNBC has more here.
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Layoffs
Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter is the latest company to resort to layoffs during the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The company filed a regulatory notice in New York last week revealing it had laid off 25 employees, or about 18 percent of its workforce. But Kickstarter tells The Verge its workforce reduction is more than twice that, as 30 employees decided to take voluntary buyouts as negotiated between the company’s management and Kickstarter’s employee union. More here.
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Data
Online sales in the U.S. have surged in recent weeks, after shelter-in-place measures enacted in March shuttered brick-and-mortar stores throughout the country. The biggest winner, according to data from Earnest Research, is Instacart. The New York Times has more here.
Estimating many San Francisco restaurants the coronavirus will permanently close. [Sigh.]
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Essential Reads
Tesla's HR boss warned the company’s California employees today that if they are called back to work but choose to stay home due to Covid-19 concerns, they could lose unemployment benefits. She suggested that decision would be up to the state of California and not Tesla. CNBC has more here.
Houseparty, the video chat app that’s seen a surge of growth during quarantine, is preparing to expand its service in a new direction: co-watching live video with friends. TechCrunch has more here.
Epic Games today announced the next iteration of its game engine, a "quantum leap" that is says is coming out next year.
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