Silicon Valley Funding News - Week of August 10 2020

The IPO market is on fire! 

When the IPO market shut down in March, assumptions were that IPOs would have to wait until everyone can travel again. Then, investment bankers realized investors are completely okay replacing the week-long in-person investor meetings with virtual roadshows.

According to Melissa Knox from Morgan Stanley, COVID became a catalyst for cloud adoption and digital transformation. This is fueling incredible growth for many technology companies. Today, the average software valuation is 12.5X forward revenue compared to the historical average of 5X.

The most anticipated IPO for 2020 will be Ant Financials. The world's most valuable startup is pegged at $150 billion. Ant Financials operate the world’s largest mobile wallet, the largest online payments platform, the largest money market fund, the largest credit rating systems, probably the world's largest wealth management platform plus insurance services.

Ant Financials will be dual-listed on both the Hong Kong stock exchange and Shanghai STAR Board. I think this will become a trend for all Chinese companies going forward.

Here is the list of funds invested in the Ant Group:

• Warburg Pincus
• The Carlyle Group
• Credit Suisse
• General Atlantic
• Temasek Holdings
• Wharton Alumni Angels
• Sequoia Capital 
• Khazanah Nasional
• Silver Lake
• CCB International
• China Development Industrial Bank
• Primavera Capital
• China Investment Corporation
• National Council for Social Security Fund

By the way, Alfred Chuang, my partner at Race Capital, will host our next Wartime Conversation with Bill Janeway, Special Limited Partner at Warburg Pincus this coming Thursday.  Join us. 

This week a total of 16 startups raised $358.5M in funding, 3 M&As:

• $92.9M goes to 6 Enterprise startups
• $10.5M goes to 1 FinTech startup
• $7M goes to 2 AI startups
• $145M goes to 1 HR startup
• $31M goes to 1 Education startup
• $5.3M goes to 1 Gaming startup
• $1.8M goes to 1 Video startup
• $50M goes to 1 Healthcare startup
• $15M goes to 2 BioTech startups