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Instacart valuation rockets to $13.7B with new funding
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Jen Valencia shops for an Instacart customer in Clark, N.J. The company has doubled its number of freelance workers.
(Michael Loccisano/Getty Images) |
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Grocery delivery provider Instacart has raised $225 million at a $13.7 billion valuation—a jump from its $7.9 billion value in late 2018. DST Global and General Catalyst led the funding round.
Instacart has experienced "an unprecedented surge in customer demand" during the coronavirus outbreak, the company said in a statement. As a result, it has doubled the number of shoppers—Instacart's term for freelance workers who fulfill customer orders—to more than half a million in North America.
Rival grocery delivery services, such as those offered by Walmart and Amazon, have also hired thousands of workers to meet new demand. But Instacart has surged ahead in recent months, claiming more than half of the US weekly market share of grocery delivery, according to Second Measure data reported by The Information.
The rapid expansion amid a pandemic has led to resistance from gig workers, who have listed demands such as hazard pay and safety gear. Before a strike by workers in late March, the company announced temporary bonuses and extended its sick pay policy for workers diagnosed with COVID-19, among other changes.
More coronavirus news: Continuing coverage from PitchBook |
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Pandemic speeds up digital transformation in construction
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| The construction industry has been slow to adopt digital tools. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images) |
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As lockdowns ease around the US, the construction industry is among those cleared to resume work, yet in an environment fundamentally changed by the coronavirus outbreak.
- "The current pandemic has been an accelerator in moving the construction industry through digital transformation faster than most had planned," said Darren Bechtel of Brick & Mortar Ventures
- For the first time, startups are being approached by construction companies to solve issues arising as work in the industry resumes under new restrictions
- Construction tech startups are responding quickly by modifying existing tools that can help monitor compliance with social distancing and other rules
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88% of wealth managers recommend investing in art
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SPONSORED
And it makes sense: Blue-chip art has outperformed the S&P by over 180% since 2000, according to industry benchmarks. Beyond that, a Citibank study concluded that art had the lowest correlation to public equities of any of the 10 major asset classes.
But the doors to the art market won't be open for long—surging demand from the ultra-wealthy and dwindling supply have sent prices for famous works of art skyrocketing.
One company has turned the 276-year-old art market on its head by acquiring acclaimed paintings and taking them public. Masterworks lets you invest directly in multimillion-dollar works, similar to trading stocks in a public company. Trade your shares on the secondary market, or hold until the painting sells and receive your portion of the proceeds.
To learn more about how you can invest in art, sign up for an account today.*
*Important disclosures here. |
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Postman's valuation soars to $2B with latest round
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Postman co-founder and CEO Abhinav Asthana
(Courtesy of Postman) |
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Postman has raised $150 million in a Series C that values the startup at $2 billion, over five times its previous valuation.
Insight Partners led the round for the San Francisco-based company, which is the creator of a platform that helps application programming interface developers collaborate on projects. Existing investors CRV and Nexus Venture Partners also participated in the financing.
The funding marks the ninth-largest valuation jump for a VC-backed company in the US so far this year, ranking below companies including Stripe, Snowflake and SpaceX, according to PitchBook data. Postman was previously valued at $365 million in June 2019, when CRV led a $50 million Series B for the business, also according to PitchBook data.
Founded in 2014, Postman has around 500,000 customers, including UiPath, Shopify and Twitter. The global API management market is expected to grow to $5.1 billion by 2023, according to a March 2019 report by market research firm ReportLinker.
"From our view, investors are looking for companies with real business momentum and solid economic fundamentals," Postman co-founder and CEO Abhinav Asthana said in an emailed statement. "Companies that have demonstrated product-market fit and show a clear path to profitability are more likely to be funded." |
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Coming soon: The newest issue of our magazine
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The latest edition of the quarterly PitchBook Private Market PlayBook will be released in early July, featuring articles on the pandemic's impacts on investment trends, a profile of an NBA star and his approach to VC, an essay on the responsibility of investors in the fight for social justice, and more.
If you'd like to start receiving the magazine or want your copy mailed to a different address, register here: |
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In case you missed it:
• Against a backdrop of protests, the venture capital industry has been forced to face its significant lack of diversity. Here's a look at what some VCs are doing to take a stand.
• Public anger over injustice has led to questions about what rank-and-file employees, marketers, CEOs and other individuals besides investors can do to make things right.
• Meanwhile, amid declarations of solidarity and support for the black community, black investors and founders are searching for genuine signs of commitment and follow-through. |
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| Isa Watson, founder of Squad, said she'll consider investors' reactions to the current crisis. (Photo by Kwaku Alston) |
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• As the coronavirus crisis has left 13% of people in the US unemployed, some startups like Headspace are offering their services for free. Could what began as a sense of moral duty become brand loyalty as the economy recovers?
• Just Eat Takeaway is planning a $7.3 billion takeover of Grubhub in what would create the world's largest online food-delivery business outside of China.
• Shares of online car marketplace Vroom doubled in their first day of trading on the Nasdaq. |
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Wondering how the economy reopening will affect your segment of the private markets? Looking for insight into which industries are likely to bounce back faster than others? Curious about what's driving a new trend you've noticed?
Email us at ask@pitchbook.com, and the news team will choose a question and track down the answer. |
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First, Wes Edens co-founded Fortress Investment Group. Then, he teamed with another Wall Street tycoon to buy the Milwaukee Bucks. His next act? A $9 billion bet on high-speed rail. [Forbes]
Golf is in the midst of a social distancing-inspired renaissance. And investors are taking note. [Bloomberg]
Even for people with a stunningly impressive autobiographical recall, the gray days of the pandemic lockdown are all running together. [The Wall Street Journal] |
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Since yesterday, the PitchBook Platform added:
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3
VC valuations
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1405
People
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441
Companies
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14
Funds
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2014 Global Venture Funds with less than $250M
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Audrey Gelman steps down at The Wing
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| Audrey Gelman has reportedly resigned from her position as CEO at The Wing, a co-working and community-building startup for women that has raised well over $100 million in venture funding, according to PitchBook data. The New York Times reported earlier this year on concerns from more than two dozen current and former employees about The Wing's company culture. Workers at The Wing reportedly staged a digital walkout in the wake of Gelman's resignation to push for additional changes. |
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DoorDash closes in on new funds
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| DoorDash is close to getting more funding that would value it at over $15 billion before the new capital, according to The Wall Street Journal. The meal delivery company reportedly plans to sell equity to existing backers T. Rowe Price, Fidelity and others. SoftBank's Vision Fund is also reportedly weighing whether to participate. DoorDash filed for an IPO in February before the coronavirus pandemic shook up the financial markets. |
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Verve Therapeutics secures $63M
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| Verve Therapeutics has raised a $63 million Series A2 round led by GV, with participation from Arch Venture Partners, F-Prime Capital and Biomatics Capital. Founded in May 2019, Verve is developing therapies to treat patients suffering from cardiovascular diseases. The company plans to use the funding in part to advance Phase 1 clinical trials of its lead program. |
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Headspace adds $47.7M to Series C
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| Mental health app maker Headspace has raised $47.7 million, adding to the $53 million in equity it raised in February. Blisce led the extension, with participation from existing investors including Waverly Capital and Spectrum Equity. The Santa Monica, Calif.-based startup, which has seen a surge in demand amid the pandemic, is offering its app to unemployed people and healthcare workers for free during the crisis. |
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Sentropy launches with $13M
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| Insight Partners has led an $8 million Series A for Spike, a provider of digital collaboration tech for workplaces. Existing backers including Wix, NFX and Koa Labs also participated in the round. Founded in 2014, the Israeli startup helps users combine their emails, chats, notes, calendar items and video calls into one inbox. Insight Partners vice president Daniel Aronovitz will join Spike's board. |
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Astrobotic wins $200M NASA contract
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| Space tech startup Astrobotic has received a $199.5 million contract to deliver NASA's VIPER rover to the south pole of the moon in 2023. The rover will help look for ice deposits that could be used as a resource for future manned missions. The Pittsburgh-based company reportedly raised $2.5 million in seed funding led by Space Angels in 2016 and was awarded a $10 million grant from NASA in 2018. |
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Sofinnova, others exit Corvidia for $2.1B
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| Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk has acquired Corvidia, a developer of therapies for cardio-renal diseases, in a $2.1 billion deal that includes an upfront payment of $725 million. Sofinnova Partners is the biggest shareholder of Corvidia, which is a Massachusetts-based spinoff from AstraZeneca. The company raised a $60 million Series B in 2018 that was led by Venrock and included participation from several other firms. |
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Facebook set to form VC arm
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| Facebook has made multiple hires for a new corporate venture unit that will operate a multimillion-dollar fund from within the company's experimental apps team, according to Axios. One of those hires was reportedly Shabih Rizvi, a former Kleiner Perkins investor who most recently worked at Gradient Ventures, an early-stage corporate venture fund under the Alphabet umbrella. |
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"For nontraditional investment, especially at the late stage, the overall participation levels will rely heavily on the need for these deals to get done. With the IPO market stalled for the foreseeable future, many ultra-late-stage companies that would look toward an IPO exit for their next round now find themselves in trouble. This could become an opportunity for nontraditionals to invest in distressed companies that are still seen as viable businesses on the other side of the pandemic."
Source: PitchBook's Q1 2020 US VC Valuations Report |
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