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November 16, 2020
Monday! Welcome back. Also, apologies for misstating the current number of Covid cases here in California in Friday's newsletter. One in 40 people in the state has had the virus since March; we wrote that they have it currently (big difference).
By the way, you can check out your own U.S. county's current risk level here.
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Top News
Bird, the 3.5-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based electric scooter company, is reportedly working with Credit Suisse to strike a deal with a blank-check company. According to Bloomberg, the outfit has held discussions with prospective special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, but hasn’t reached an agreement. Bird has raised $623 million altogether, according to Crunchbase. Its investors include Sequoia, Accel and Index Ventures, among others. More here.
Tonight, four astronauts arrived at the International Space Station inside SpaceX's Crew Dragon spaceship, teeing up what could be a record-breaking stay in orbit.
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Massive Fundings
AliveCor, a nine-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based company behind an FDA-cleared personal electrocardiogram technology that uses AI and machine learning to detect the most common arrhythmias, has raised $65 million in Series E funding from earlier backers OMRON, Khosla Ventures, WP Global Partners, Qualcomm Ventures and Bold Capital Partners. More here.
Form Energy, a 3.5-year-old, Somerville, Ma.-based developer of battery systems for long-term storage of wind and solar energy, has raised $70 million in Series C funding. Earlier backers include Breakthrough Energy Ventures, The Engine and Prelude Ventures. In an interview with Reuters, the company's CEO did not name investors but said they would be released in a couple of weeks. The company has now raised $120 million altogether. More here.
MindTickle, an eight-year-old, Pune, India-based SaaS platform that helps enterprises prepare their customer-facing teams to interact with their customers through programs such as onboarding, ongoing learning, role-playing, upskilling, and coaching, has raised $100 million in new equity and debt funding. SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led equity piece, joined by Norwest Venture Partners, Accel, Canaan, NEA, NewView Capital, and Qualcomm Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
Strava, the 11-year-old, San Francisco-based activity and fitness tracking platform, has raised $110 million in Series F funding led by TCV and earlier backer Sequoia Capital, and including participation by Dragoneer Investment Group, and other earlier investors, including Madrone Capital Partners, Jackson Square Ventures and Go4it Capital. The company has now raised around $180 million to altogether. TechCrunch has more here.
Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings
Chooch.ai, a 5.5-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that hopes to bring computer vision more broadly to companies to help them identify and tag elements at high speed, has raised $20 million in Series A funding. Vickers Venture Partners led the round, joined by 212, Streamlined Ventures, Alumni Ventures Group, Waterman Ventures and several other unnamed investors. The company has now raised $25.8 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.
Gretel, a 1.5-old, San Diego, Ca.-based startup that wants to make it faster and easier to anonymize data sets, has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Greylock. The company has now raised $15.5 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.
Harbr, a 3.5-year-old, London-based startup that has built a secure platform to enable big data exchange, just raised $38.5 million in Series A funding co-led by Dawn Capital and Tiger Global Management, with added participation from previous investors, including Boldstart Ventures, Crane Venture Partners, and Seedcamp. TechCrunch has more here.
PassiveLogic, a four-year-old, Salt Lake City, Ut.-based company that's developing a building controls platform, has raised $16 million in Series A Funding co-led by Keyframe Capital and Addition. More here.
Zeotap, a 6.5-year-old, Berlin-based customer identity platform that is built around a company’s own first-party data and pulls in other data to provide a more complete picture of users and what they do, has raised $18.5 million in extended Series C funding. The new capital, entirely from SignalFire, brings the round total to $60.5 million. TechCrunch has more here.
Zilliz, a three-year-old, China-based startup that builds open-source software for processing unstructured data, has raised $43 million in Series B funding, a round that brings its total funding to $53 million. Hillhouse Capital led the round, joined by Trustbridge Partners, Pavilion Capital and earlier investors 5Y Capital (formerly Morningside) and Yunqi Partners. TechCrunch has more here.
Smaller Fundings
Arrikto, a nearly six-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based startup that wants to speed up the machine learning development lifecycle by allowing engineers and data scientists to treat data like code, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Unusual Ventures. The company originally launched out of Athens, Greece. TechCrunch has more here.
Lila Games, a year-old, Santa Clara, Ca.- and Bangalore, India-based game studio looking to craft a new subgenre of mobile shooter game and cofounded by Joseph Kim, a former chief product officer at Sega, has raised $2.8 million in seed funding. Bitkraft Ventures led the round, joined by Galaxy Interactive and game industry angel investors. VentureBeat has more here.
Undock, a two-year-old, New York-based Chrome extension that allows users to see mutual availability across a group -- whether or not all users in the group have Undock -- from within their email, has raised $1.6 million in seed funding from Lightship Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Lerer Hippeau, Alumni Ventures Group, Active Capital, Backstage Capital and numerous individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.
X-Cor Therapeutics, a 3.5-year-old, Boston-based startup developing an extracorporeal carbon dioxide removal device to treat acute respiratory failure, has raised $2.6 million in seed funding. Alira Health Ventures led the round, joined by Good Growth Capital, PiSA Biopharm, Flybridge Partners’ Graduate Syndicate and other angel investors. MassDevice has more here.
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Going Public
PubMatic, a 14-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based digital ad company, has registered plans to go public in an offering whose lead underwriters are Jefferies and RBC Capital Markets. As AdWeek notes, just a handful of ad tech companies currently trade on the public market (aside from the 800-pound gorilla that is Google): The Trade Desk, Magnite, Criteo and LiveRamp.
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Exits
Internet giant Baidu is acquiring Joyy’s live streaming service YY Live in China for $3.6 billion in all cash as it pushes to diversify beyond its core search business. Baidu shared the news during an quarterly earning call and, as TechCrunch notes, it's the "Chinese firm’s biggest foray into the growing market of video streaming" and "comes at a time when the company has been struggling to fight new comers such as ByteDance." More here.
After weeks of rumors, Huawei today confirmed it is selling its budget phone brand, Honor, to a consortium of companies, including government-backed firms, Honor’s distribution partners and suppliers. The move is an effort to save the business, which has been under "enormous pressure" following U.S. sanctions that prevent Huawei from doing business with American companies. TechCrunch has more here.
Reliance Retail, the largest retail chain in India, has essentially acquired the 7.5-year-old furniture and decor platform Urban Ladder, paying $24.43 million for a 96% stake in the startup, according to a local filing. It's a good deal for Reliance, if not for Urban Ladder's investors. The young company, which sells home furniture and decor products online, as well as operates a chain of physical retail stores in several Indian cities, had raised about $115 million from Sequoia Capital, SAIF Partners, Steadview Capital, MIT and other investors. TechCrunch has more here.
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People
Jay Clayton will step down as chairman of the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission at year-end, he said in a statement; he wants to return to New York, says CNBC. More here.
Atlas Venture, the Cambridge, Ma.-based early stage venture firm investing in biotech startups, has named Raj Devraj a venture partner. Devraj most recently co-founded and served as chief scientific officer of Disarm Therapeutics, an Atlas company that was acquired earlier this year by Eli Lilly for up to $1.36 billion, including $135 million upfront.
Gregg Lemkau, a top deal maker at Goldman Sachs, is leaving to run MSD, the investment firm of Michael Dell, says the WSJ.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was forced to miss his firm’s historic rocket launch after testing positive for Covid-19. One Twitter user dubbed him "Space Karen" owing to his attitude toward the pandemic, fears over which he called "dumb" earlier this year.
Twitter just named reknowned hacker Peiter Zatko, known widely by his hacker handle, Mudge, as its head of security. The position is a new one, notes Reuters.
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Essential Reads
Scientists and medical researchers are increasingly examining the role of location in prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease.
Internal data at Facebook shows that its labels on President Trump’s false election claims decrease reshares by just 8%.
Unless it can come up with a powdered version, the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine may well wind up running a distant second to Moderna's candidate. More here.
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