CB Insights - making sense of a crazy 6 months

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September 17, 2020

Frozen in time

Hola,

Last Friday, I returned to our office for the first time since it closed down for Covid-19. We're still almost exclusively working from home, so our big open-floor office was empty, exactly the way we left it 6 months ago.

It was frozen in time, like a tech-company Pompeii: the white boards hadn't been erased, the same knick-knacks and sticky notes cluttered the desks, deflated birthday balloons and hoodies still dangled on the backs of chairs.

The visit really brought home how these 6 months have reshaped how we work and live. To take stock, we thought we'd review the research that has been most popular with CB Insights clients since mid-March. You'll see the top links below.

They offer a good view into the key themes of the last 6 months, and what lies ahead:

Reports and lists
Covid-19 and the workplace
- Out Of Office: 65+ Startups Helping You Work From Home
- Reopening: The Tech-Enabled Office In A Post-Covid World
Exclusive client-only research

The research above offers a mix of insights on healthcare, logistics, and private companies.

What articles or research have you found particularly helpful in navigating the pandemic and uncertainty? Share links with us and we'll share the best in a future newsletter.

THE RESEARCH

Bulking up

Fitness tech startups have been on a roll as gyms close, with massive deals including Tonal's $110M raise today and Lululemon's $500M acquisition of Mirror in June.

We take a look at how at-home fitness will persist even after the pandemic subsides.

Source: Peloton

Health across the world

Digital health companies are poised to surpass 2018’s record-breaking funding levels this year.

We map out the 10 most well-funded digital health companies in the world in this graphic.

Changing it up

On September 29, our principal insurance analyst Mike Fitzgerald & Ted Stuckey, chief growth officer at Arrowhead Insurance Group and a CBI client, will be discussing how the insurance industry is being transformed by tech, including:

Robotic process automation: repairing broken processes
Geospatial and hyperlocal weather analytics: underwriting to the millimeter
Sensor data: pricing avoided risks
The partnerships, competitors, and leaders in each space

Register for the briefing here. Even if you can't make it, sign up anyways and we'll send you the deck and the recording after.

THIS WEEK IN DATA

$650M: Sweden-based fintech company Klarna closed a $650M funding round at a valuation of $10.65B. The e-commerce payments company — which is featured in this year’s Fintech 250 — is one of the most valuable fintech companies in the world. Read about the emerging trends shaping the space and see the other most valuable fintech unicorns in our latest State Of Fintech report.

100M users: TikTok says that it surpassed 100M users in Europe. The announcement comes about a month after the company, which is facing government pressure to sell its US operations over privacy concerns, said it passed the same milestone in the US. We break down how TikTok’s owner ByteDance used the app to become the most valuable unicorn in the world in this report.

+112%: Cloud data company Snowflake’s stock price increased by almost 112% to end its first day of trading with a market cap of about $70B. We identified Snowflake as one of the companies with the most momentum for going public this year in our Tech IPO Pipeline. See the rest of our picks here.

1,000 qubits: IBM said that it plans to build a 1,000-qubit quantum computer by 2023. If successful, the machine would mark a major milestone for the tech — IBM currently only has a 65-qubit computer. We discuss the quickening pace of quantum tech commercialization in our 2020 Tech Trends To Watch report and explain how a quantum computer equivalent of Moore’s Law may be emerging in our report on 8 Laws Driving Success In Tech.

1,000 warehouses: Amazon is reportedly planning to open 1,000 small warehouses across the US. The move reflects a trend of retailers turning to micro-fulfillment to deliver orders more quickly and efficiently. We explain how micro-fulfillment works here. Clients can check out more

trends reshaping supply chain and logistics in this NExTT report.

$185M: Online collaboration platform Airtable closed a $185M mega-round at a valuation of $2.59B. We featured the unicorn in our market map of companies helping to enable remote work.

50 miles: Walmart announced a pilot program with drone startup Zipline. The trial is due to begin next year and could see some products being delivered in under an hour within a 50-mile radius of a Walmart store. Delivery isn’t the only application where the tech is gaining traction. Read about 38 ways drones could impact society in this analysis.

$30M: Medigate, which offers a platform for medical device security, raised $30M in fresh funding. The company is one of our 2020 Cyber Defenders — a list of high-momentum startups with the potential to reshape cybersecurity. See all the featured companies and the tech they’re working on in this report.

One More Thing

Source: The Atlantic Philanthropies

A billionaire who aspired to go broke is now finally...broke, according to Forbes.

Former billionaire Chuck Feeney made his wealth by co-founding airport retailer Duty Free Shoppers. Over the last 4 decades, he gave away $8B in secret: $3.7B of that went to education; more than $870M to human rights and social change; and $700M to health-related causes.

Have a great rest of the week.

Marcelo

@ballve

P.S. The Future of Health (September 23-25) is just 6 days away. Save $300 on your ticket with code 6moredays.

P.P.S. We're looking for a director of sales development. Check out the job here

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