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November 5, 2020
It's Thursday! (In case you are losing track of the days this week.)
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Top News
The Department of Justice has filed an antitrust lawsuit challenging Visa’s proposed $5.3 billion acquisition of Plaid. News of the DOJ’s investigation first broke last month. “By acquiring Plaid, Visa would eliminate a nascent competitive threat that would likely result in substantial savings and more innovative online debit services for merchants and consumers,” the DOJ wrote in its lawsuit. Plaid, built to serve as the middleman between the big financial firms that have consumer data and the start-ups that need it, sold itself to Visa for $5.3 billion back in January rather than stage an IPO. TechCrunch has more here.
Despite surging delivery demand, Uber’s third-quarter ultimately failed to meet investor revenue expectations in the third quarter. TechCrunch has more here.
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Flying Taxis in Florida? Stranger Things Have Happened
Florida is renowned for its strange news stories. In recent weeks alone, one resident reported an alligator in her garage that turned out to be a pool floatie; another discovered a python in her washing machine; and a horse needed to be pulled out of a septic tank by firefighters.
Still, don’t dismiss Orlando residents who report seeing flying taxis overhead because they may just be coming. Lilium Aviation, a five-year-old, Munich, Germany-based venture-backed startup that designs and makes electric vertical take-off and landing jets, is reportedly seeking tax incentives from the city to build a 56,000-square-foot transportation hub with the promise that it will create 100 high-wage jobs in return.
According to the Orlando Business Sentinel, the proposed facility — a takeoff and landing area that would be part of Lilium’s first transportation network in the U.S. — would represent a $25 million investment and, according to the city’s own estimates, generate $1.7 million in economic impact in a 10-year period. (Lilium in September began separately exploring with Germany’s Düsseldorf Airport and Cologne Bonn Airport how to turn the two airports into regional air mobility hubs.)
It’s seemingly a smart time for Lilium — whose planes aren’t expected to be up and running until 2025 — to be talking with cities about additional airport revenue.
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Massive Fundings
ByteDance, the eight-year-old, Beijing, China-based company behind TikTok, is in talks to raise another $2 billion before an IPO of a large chunk of its international businesses on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, according to a Bloomberg, which says that earlier backer, Sequoia Capital, is likely to participate. More here.
Vimeo, the 16-year-old, New York-based video platform and community, has raised $150 million in new equity funding, announced in conjunction with the third quarter earnings of its parent company IAC. In a letter to shareholders, IAC CEO Joey Levin said the company has “begun contemplating spinning Vimeo off to our shareholders.” IAC acquired Vimeo in 2006. TechCrunch has more here.
Zhiketong, a six-year-old, China-based company that sells direct marketing services to high-end hotels and tourist spots through WeChat, has raised $50 million in funding led by Vision Capital and CYTS Hongqi Fund. Other participants in the round include Axiom Asia, Sequoia Capital, Shunwei Capital, and Yijing Capital. Tech in Asia has more here.
Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings
Ayar Labs, a five-year-old, Emeryville, Ca.-based company that has done pioneering work in converting electrical signals to optical signals, to move bits from processors into fiber-optic links — has raised $35 million in Series B funding co-led by Downing Ventures and BlueSky Capital. ZDNet has more here.
Koa Health, a Barcelona, Spain-based digital mental health care provider that spun out last month from a moonshot factory run by the telecommunications company Telefónica, has raised $16.5 million in Series A funding from Ancora Finance Group and Wellington Partners. Fierce Healthcare has more here.
Kobiton, a four-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based mobile testing platform that allows developers and QA teams to test their apps on both on their own desks and through the company’s cloud-based service, has raised $14 million in extended Series A funding from Fulcrum Equity Partners and earlier backer BIP Capital. (The company had initially raised $5.2 million in related funding.) It's using the new capital in part to acquire a rival service in Atlanta called Mobile Labs. TechCrunch has more here.
Ushur, a six-year-old, Santa Clara, Ca.-based micro-engagement SaaS platform for automating service workflows, has raised $25 million in Series B funding led by Third Point Ventures (the fund founded and led by activist investor and hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb), with previous investor 8VC also participating. The company has now raised $36 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.
Vivid Money, a year-old, Berlin, Germany-based mobile banking startup launched in June with backing from Russia's Tinkoff Bank -- which is where Vivid's two cofounders previously spent 14 and 5 years, respectively -- has raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Ribbit Capital. FinExtra has more here.
Voltus, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based distributed energy resources platform, has raised $25 million in Series B funding. NGP Energy Technology Partners led the round, joined by earlier investors Prelude Ventures and Ajax Strategies. PV Magazine has more here.
Smaller Fundings
Chargery, a 3.5-year-old, Berlin, Germany-based startup focused on mobile charging, along with other infrastructure software, that it sells to shared mobility businesses, has raised 5 million euros led by Lead Ventures in Budapest, and the Helvetia Venture Fund of the Swiss insurance company Helvetia, which is an earlier investor the startup. Electrive.com has more here.
Juggle, a nearly six-year-old, London-based online platform for companies to find, onboard, pay and manage flexible workers, has raised $2.1 million in funding from numerous angel investors, along with Oxford Capital, Social Capital and 7percent Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
Not-Saying-How-Much Fundings
Broncus Holding Company, an eight-year-old, Hangzhou, China-based company that's been developing diagnostic and therapeutic technology for lung disease, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series C funding led by Lake Bleu Capital, with participation from Baidu Capital, Ascendum Capital, CNCB Capital and DCP Capital, along with previous investor Qiming Venture Capital. More here.
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Going Public
Kuaishou, one of the largest short video platforms in the world, has filed for IPO in Hong Kong today, and the offering could deliver another monster exit for the cross-border firm DCM, which led the company's Series B round. Even after taking some money off the table, it owns 9.23% of the company, and assuming a $50 billion market cap (which is expected), the firm's stake is worth around $4.6 billion. The South China Morning Post has more here.
Upstart, an eight-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based lending platform founded by former Google exec Dave Girouard, has filed to go public. According to Crunchbase, the company had raised $144 million over the years, including from First Round Capital, Third Point Ventures, Khosla Ventures, the asset management firm Stone Ridge, and Rakuten, each of which owns more than 5% of the company sailing into the offering. TechCrunch has more here.
Airbnb plans to make its IPO registration public next week, putting it on course for a New York stock market debut in December, says Reuters. More here.
A blank check company headed by headed up by Dixon Doll — the co-founder of Accel Partners, Doll Capital Management (later renamed DCM) and Impact VC — and Donald Basile, who previously ran Violin Memory and FusionIO, just lowered the amount it plans to raise in an IPO by about 20%. As notes the Silicon Valley Business Journal, the SPAC joins a number of lowered blank check offerings during what has been a record year, with more than $62 billion raised in 169 IPOs by such companies this year -- more than in the previous 10 years combined.
Petco’s owners, CVC Capital Partners and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, had been exploring an IPO that would value the company at $6 billion, including debt, according to Bloomberg's sources. More here.
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Exits
GoPuff is making a big acquisition less than a month after it announced a $380 million SoftBank-led round that valued it $3.9 billion. The seven-year-old, Philadelphia-based company is acquiring the 26-year-old, U.S. alcoholic beverage chain BevMo for $350 million. GoPuff originally delivered smoking paraphernalia and snacks in under 30 minutes but evolved to deliver all kinds of everyday products. More here.
Lightspeed, a publicly traded point-of-sale software company, is spending $440 million to acquire ShopKeep, a New York-based cloud commerce platform that had raised $137 million from firms like Tribeca Venture Partners, New Ground Ventures, First Data, Salesforce Ventures, and Activant Capital Group, according to Crunchbase. Pymnts has more here.
Drug giant Merck has agreed to buy VelosBio, a San Diego-based developer of antibody drug conjugates to treat cancers, for $2.75 billion in cash. VelosBio earlier this year raised $137 million in Series B funding co-led by Matrix Capital Management and Surveyor Capital. Fierce Biotech has more here.
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People
Opendoor is shaking up its C-suite — again — ahead of its closely watched transition to a publicly traded company. On the heels of naming its first chief investment officer, it just brought aboard GoDaddy executive Andrew Low Ah Kee as president, replacing former Amazon and Airbnb exec Julie Todaro, who joined just a year ago and is taking early retirement, says Opendoor. The Real Deal has more here.
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Essential Reads
As U.S. president, Donald Trump receives special treatment from Twitter when he violates the company’s rules around offensive or misleading content. That exemption will end in January if he loses the presidency.
Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, which has this year invested $1.5 billion in Mukesh Ambani’s telecom venture Jio Platforms and more than half a billion dollars in his fiber-optic business, is now investing $1.3 billion in Reliance Retail -- the largest retail chain in India -- for a 2.04% equity stake. The investment values Reliance Retail, which was founded in 2006, at $62.4 billion, says the firm.
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