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Top News
Palantir, the Palo Alto, Ca.-based data-analytics company known for taking on controversial work for the U.S. government, filed paperwork today indicating its intent to go public. Revealed in its S-1: the 17-year-old company has never a turned a profit. Even still, its cofounder and CEO, Alex Karp was paid $12 million last year, along with $2.8 million in other compensation, including for personal security services. The company's president, Stephen Cohen, separately made $16 million, and its COO, Shyam Sankar, made $25 million. (No wonder the company is so secretive.) Palantir separately took swings at Silicon Valley as it heads to Wall Street.
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Massive Fundings
Connect Biopharma, an eight-year-old, Suzhou, China and San Diego-based developer of therapies for autoimmune diseases and inflammation, has raised $115 million in Series C funding led by RA Capital Management. Other participants in the round include Lilly Asia Ventures, Boxer Capital, HBM Healthcare Investments and earlier investor Qiming Venture Partners. FierceBiotech has more here.
iSpace, a 4.5-year-old, Beijing, China-based startup that last year became the first Chinese private rocket company to achieve orbit, has raised $172 million in Series B funding led by Beijing Financial Street Capital Operation Center, CICC Alpha, and Taizhonghe Capital, with added participation from earlier shareholders. iSpace previously raised $104.5 million, bringing its total funding to date to $276.5 million. TechCrunch has more here.
Kinnate Biopharma, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based precision oncology company, just raised $98 million in Series C funding. RA Capital Management led the round, joined by Viking Global Investors, Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Janus Henderson Investors, Surveyor Capital, Boxer Capital of Tavistock Group, Logos Capital, and an investment fund associated with SVB Leerink. More here.
Kymeta, an eight-year-old, Redmond, Wa.-based company that has developed a new type of smart, powered, flat-panel antenna that can be used to improve satellite and cellular connection signal strength, has raised $85.2 million in sixth round funding led by earlier investor Bill Gates. TechCrunch has more here.
Lyra Health, a five-year-old, Burlingame, Ca.-based provider of mental health care benefits for employers that was founded by former Facebook CFO David Ebersman, has raised $110 million in Series D funding at a $1.1 billion valuation. Lee Fixel's new fund, Addition, led the round. Other participants included Adams Street Partners and earlier investors Howard Schultz, Casdin Capital, Glynn Capital, Greylock Partners, IVP, Meritech Capital Partners, Providence Ventures, and Tenaya Capital. Forbes has more here.
Mural, a nine-year-old, San Francisco-based visual collaboration startup provides a whiteboard-like digital environment, has raised $118 million in Series B funding. Insight Partners led the round, joined by Tiger Global, Slack Fund, World Innovation Lab, and earlier investor Gradient Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
Prelude Therapeutics, a four-year-old, Wilmington, Del.-based clinical-stage precision oncology company, raised $50 million in Series C funding from earlier backers OrbiMed Advisors and Fidelity Management & Research Company. More here.
Redis Labs, a nine-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based open source database company, has raised $100 million in Series F funding co-led by Bain Capital Ventures and TCV co-led, with added participation from earlier investors Francisco Partners, Dell Technologies Capital, Goldman Sachs, and Viola Ventures. The company has now raised $250 million altogether and is valued by its investors at $1 billion. Forbes has more here.
ReliaQuest, a 13-year-old, Tampa, Fla.-based cybersecurity managed service and intelligence platform, has raised more than $300 million in growth funding led by KKR, with participation from Ten Eleven Ventures and company founder Brian Murphy. CRN has more here.
Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings
ReViral, a nine-year-old, London and Research Triangle, N.C.-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing novel antiviral therapeutics that target respiratory syncytial virus, has raised $44 million in Series C funding led by CR-CP Life Science Fund. Additional investors participating in the financing include Andera Partners, Brace Pharma Capital, and Green Sands Equity, among any others. More here.
Songtradr, a six-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based music licensing platform, has raised $30 million in Series C funding led by the family office of Australian businessman Trevor St. Baker, with participation from other prominent Australian family offices and several existing Songtradr investors. The round brings Songtradr’s total funding to date to $51.5 million. Billboard has more here.
SparkMeter, an eight-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based company that makes grid management software and hardware for utilities in developing countries, has raised $12 million in Series A funding. Clean Energy Ventures and Breakthrough Energy Ventures co-led the round, joined by Goodwell Investments, Alitheia Capital and Total Energy Ventures. VentureBeat has more here.
Split, a five-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based feature delivery platform, has raised $33 million in Series C funding. Comcast Ventures led the round, joined by 01 Advisors, M12, Atlassian, ServiceNow, and earlier backers Accel, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Harmony Venture Partners. The company has now raised $60 million altogether. More here.
Turing, a two-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based company that helps source, vet and connect developers with tech companies for either short- or long-term engagements, has raised $14 million in seed funding led by Foundation Capital, with participation from numerous individuals, including Quora cofounder Adam D’Angelo and Cyan Banister of Banister Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
XYZ Robotics, a two-year-old, Boston-based company that makes pick-and-place logistics robots, has raised $17 million in extended Series A funding from Source Code Capital, Gaorong Capital and Morningside Capital and brings the company's total capital to date to $27 million. TechCrunch has more here.
Fibronostics, a five-year-old, New York- and Singapore-based tech platform for the assistance of diagnosis, screening, and monitoring of chronic conditions across multiple organs, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by AT Capital. More here.
Grain, a three-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based startup that provides users with a line of credit based on their income and spending, has raised $2.8 million in seed funding from the Urban Innovation Fund, with participation from Y Combinator and individual investors, including YC CEO Michael Seibel. More here.
RNAimmune, a months-old, Gaithersburg, Md.-based developer of mRNA-based therapeutics and vaccines (it was spun out of another biotech company called Sirnaomics), has raised $2.4 million in seed funding from Terra Magnum Capital Partners. More here.
Stratify, a months-old, Seattle, Wa.-based provider of automated budgeting tools, raised $4.9 million in seed funding. Stratify is led by Brian Camposano, the former CFO at Docker who was later an entrepreneur-in-residence at Madrona Venture Labs, the startup studio backed by Madrona Venture Group. Madrona led the round, joined by Coatue. GeekWire has more here.
Verta, a two-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based company that helps enterprise data science teams standardize fragmented workflows to ship models faster, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Intel Capital. General Catalyst, which led Verta's seed round, also participated. TechCrunch has more here.
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New Funds
Scribble Ventures, a six-month-old, Los Altos, Ca.-based pre-seed-stage fund founded by Elizabeth Weil, who was most recently a managing director with 137 Ventures, is looking to raise $35 million for its debut fund, shows an SEC filing first flagged by Axios. Annelies Gamble, formerly a principal with Western Technology Investment, is a partner with the firm; Weil's husband, Kevin Weil, a former Twitter SVP who is now a Facebook VP, is an operator-in-residence. More here.
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Exits
The Brooklyn, N.Y.-based technology startup ConsenSys has acquired JPMorgan's blockchain platform Quorum, the companies said today. As part of the deal, JPMorgan also made a strategic investment in ConsenSys, but the companies declined to disclose financial terms of the relationship, which will remain ongoing. Reuters has more here.
Mastercard acquired and shut down IfOnly, an eight-year-old San Francisco-based experiences marketplace that had raised around $46 million in funding over the years, including from Mastercard itself, NEA, American Express, Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, Sotheby’s, Hyatt, and TriplePoint Capital. IfOnly was founded by Trevor Traina, who was appointed two years ago by the Trump administration to serve as the ambassador to Austria. TechCrunch has more here.
Napster, the early file-sharing company, is changing hands once more. Today, a U.K. startup called MelodyVR that creates immersive live music experiences that you watch either through VR headsets or phones, says it has acquired Rhapsody International — the company that owns Napster — for $70 million in a cash-and-share deal that MelodyVR is describing as a reverse takeover. TechCrunch has more here.
Smartsheet, a publicly traded collaborative work management platform, will pay approximately $155 million in cash and stock to acquire Brandfolder, an eight-year-old, Denver, Colo.-based startup that sells digital asset management software. Brandfolder had raised roughly $10 million from investors. GeekWire has more here.
SugarCRM, a 16-year-old company currently owned by KKR, announced this morning it has acquired the six-year-old customer intelligence startup Node. The companies didn't reveal the purchase price, but Sugar "gains a ton of AI expertise" and also "adds a customer prediction element to the platform, such as figuring out the customers most likely to convert or most likely to leave," notes TechCrunch. Node had raised $43 million from investors. More here.
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IPOs
Ant Group, the Chinese fintech giant controlled by billionaire Jack Ma, revealed how highly profitable its business has been as it gears up for what may be a record-breaking IPO. In listing documents, Ant said it made 21.2 billion yuan ($3 billion) in net profit for the six months to June 2020 on revenue of 72.5 billion yuan ($10.5 billion). That implied a net profit margin of around 30%. The WSJ has more here.
Google’s cloud division is investing $100 million in Amwell, formerly known as American Well, a company that builds technology for virtual doctors’ visits. The company has filed to go public, and Google’s investment will be a concurrent private placement at the IPO price, reports CNBC. It adds that as part of the partnership, Amwell will move parts of its business from Amazon Web Services, which it currently uses, to Google Cloud. "All of the major technology companies are vying to sign health-care customers, including insurance plans and hospitals, as they slowly shift from on-premise systems to the cloud," notes the report. More here.
Metacrine, a six-year-old, San Diego-based biotech focused on NASH, has filed for a $100 million IPO, revealing plans to list on the Nasdaq. The company, which originally filed confidentially two years ago, has raised over $130 million from investors. Its biggest outside shareholders include VenBio, Arch Venture Partners, Polaris Partners and NEA. Renaissance Capital has a bit more here.
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People
Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs COO who served as an economic advisor to Donald Trump before leaving in 2018 amid a dispute with the administration over its plan to impose steep trade tariffs, is doing a SPAC, too. Cohn Robbins Holdings Corp., a blank check company, filed for an IPO today, revealing plans to offer 60 million shares valued at $10 each. Reuters has more here.
Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is stepping down after 21 years at the helm. Kedar Deshpande, COO at the company, has assumed the role of CEO, according to an internal email obtained by Footwear News. More here.
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Essential Reads
Triller, an app that functions similarly to TikTok, has inked a strategic partnership with a platform owned by India’s richest man to cash in on the Chinese app’s ban in his country. The New York-based firm says it has partnered with Reliance’s JioSaavn music app to embed Triller videos into the stream “front and center.”
New information has surfaced in a lawsuit involving Google's data collection and location tracking practices, including admissions by the company's own engineers that its privacy settings were confusing to both users and employees.
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