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December 7, 2020
Hello! Hope your week is off to a fine start.
Ours was insanely busy, so we're missing some sections; more tomorrow.:)
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Top News
It's official: Aurora Innovation, the autonomous vehicle startup backed by Sequoia Capital and Amazon, has reached an agreement with Uber to buy the ride-hailing firm’s self-driving unit in a complex deal that will value the combined company at $10 billion. Aurora is not paying cash for Uber ATG, a company that was valued at $7.25 billion following a $1 billion investment last year from Toyota, DENSO and SoftBank’s Vision Fund. Instead, Uber is handing over its equity in ATG and investing $400 million into Aurora, which will give it a 26% stake in the combined company. TechCrunch, which reported last month that this deal was coming together, has more here.
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Wish Wants to Be the Amazon for the Rest of Us; Will Retail Investors Buy It?
Most people know Wish as a site that sells throwaway doodads from China, but in anticipation of its impending IPO, the ten-year-old, San Francisco-based company has begun portraying itself as a kind of Amazon for the rest of us.
Judging by what we've read and heard from sources in recent months, Wish wants to paint itself as a patriotic alternative to the trillion-dollar juggernaut and is positioning itself as the better option for the estimated 60% of families in the U.S. without enough liquid savings to get through three months of expenses. Such cost-conscious customers can't afford Amazon Prime and are -- at least in Wish's telling -- willing to wait an extra week or three for a product if it means paying considerably less for it.
We'll know soon enough if public market investors buy the pitch. Wish registered plans this morning to sell 46 million shares at between $22 an $24 per share in an offering that's expected to take place next week. The current range would value Wish at up to $14 billion, up from the $11.2 billion valuation it was last assigned by its private investors.
Wish has a lot of reasons to feel optimistic about its story heading into the offering.
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Massive Fundings
Catawiki, a 12-year-old, Amsterdam-based online marketplace for collectibles, has raised €150 million ($182 million) in growth funding led by Permira, with participation from Accel. Tech.eu has more here.
Fetch Rewards, an eight-year-old, Madison, Wis.-based savings app, has raised $80 million in Series C funding at a post-money valuation of $600 million. Iconiq led the round, joined by DST Global and earlier investors Greycroft and e.ventures. The company has now raised $118 million altogether. More here.
Immedis, a four-year-old, Dublin, Ireland-based maker of payroll software, has raised $50 million in funding led by Lead Edge Capital. The Independent has more here.
Luko, a four-year-old, Paris-based startup that sells home insurance products to home owners and renters, has raised $60 million in Series B funding funding (€50 million) led by EQT Ventures, with participation from earlier investors Accel, Founders Fund and Speedinvest. TechCrunch has more here.
Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings
Finn.auto, a less-than-year-old, Munich, Germany-based startup that invites customers to subscribe to their car instead of own it, has raised $24.2 million in Series A funding round. White Star Capital and Zalando co-CEOs Rubin Ritter, David Schneider and Robert Gentz provided the capital along with previous investors. TechCrunch has more here.
Tecton.ai, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that was founded by three former Uber engineers and which says it enables data scientists to turn raw data into production-ready features, just raised $35 million in Series B funding, just seven months after announcing their $20 million Series A. As with their Series A, the new round was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital. The company has now raised $60 million. TechCrunch has more here.
Wonder, a less than one-year-old, Berlin, Germany-based startup that has built a platform for people to come together in video-based groups to meet up, network and collaborate, has raised $11 million (€9 million) in seed funding led by EQT Ventures, with participation from earlier investor BlueYard Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
Smaller Fundings
Jeli.io, a 16-month-old, Bay Area-based incident analysis platform, has raised $4 million in seed funding led by Boldstart Ventures, with participation by Harrison Metal and Heavybit. TechCrunch has more here.
Quell, a seven-month-old, London-based startup trying to turn home fitness into a game, has raised $3 million in seed funding from Twitch co-founders Kevin Lin and Emmett Shear; AngelList founder Naval Ravikant; WikiHow founder Josh Hannah; Tencent Holdings; Khosla Ventures; Heartcore; Social Impact Capital; and JamJar Investments. TechCrunch has more here.
The Skills, a young, L.A.-based online education platform where courses are taught by pro athletes like Michael Phelps and Maria Sharapova, has raised $5 million in seed funding. Will Ventures led the round, joined by Global Founders Capital, 8VC, Maveron, Hack VC, and Correlation VC. TechCrunch wrote about the company in September.
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New Funds
Active Capital, a 3.5-year-old, San Antonio, Tex.-based venture firm that says it's focused on leading seed rounds for B2B SaaS companies outside of Silicon Valley, has closed its second fund with $25 million in capital commitments, says founder Pat Matthews. He tweeted about the fundraising process. More here.
Highland Europe, an eight-year-old, London and Geneva-based tech growth fund best known for backing high profile late-stage startups like GetYourGuide, Huel, WeTransfer, Wolt and Zwift, says it has closed its fourth fund with €700 million in capital commitments. TechCrunch has more here.
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Exits
Cisco’s WebEx division today announced that it is acquiring Slido, a seven-year-old, Bratislava, Slovakia-based company that lets people moderate questions and interactions from a larger group participating in virtual conferences as well as in live events. Terms of the deal are not being disclosed; Slido had only raised about $40,000 in outside funding since being founded in 2013, according to Pitchbook. TechCrunch has more here.
Cisco has also agreed to buy the 20-year-old, London-based cloud communications software firm IMImobile for $730 million. The company traded publicly until now on the London Stock Exchange. ZDNet explains the tie-up here.
Only eight months after getting acquired for $180 million, Avira, a German security firm, is changing hands again or double the value: NortonLifeLock today announced that it will acquire Avira for around $360 million in an all-cash deal. Avira had been bootstrapped until April, when Investcorp Technology Partners, the PE division of Investcorp Bank, acquired a majority stake in the business that gave it an enterprise valuation of $180 million. TechCrunch has more here.
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Going Public
Airbnb plans to boost the proposed price range of its IPO, says the WSJ. According to its sources, Airbnb is boosting the range to between $56 and $60 a share, from $44 to $50, which would give the home-rental company a valuation of as much as $42 billion on a fully diluted basis and including proceeds from the offering. More here.
Home-selling firm Opendoor plans to begin trading its stock on Nasdaq on Dec. 21, the company said today. The listing is pending the approval of shareholders in Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. II, the shell company that is merging with Opendoor. The Information has more here.
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Data
Investors in at least two mature yet active Sequoia Capital funds will see 11-fold returns on paper, after fees, according to performance data reviewed by Bloomberg. The data did not show returns for the firm's more recent funds, which include bets on Instacart and DoorDash. More here and here.
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Essential Reads
According to the WSJ: In the span of a year, Ant Group originated loans to half a billion people in China, turning Jack Ma’s fintech giant into one of the country's biggest originators of unsecured loans to individuals. It reportedly worked with 100 banks, matching them with users of Alipay, despite the banks' own poor risk management capabilities. The WSJ says the systemic risk is largely why Chinese authorities last month stopped Ant from raising more than $34 billion in record-breaking IPOs in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Regulators "now want Ant to eat more of its own cooking by supplying $30 for every $100 in loans it originates in partnership with banks," reports the outlet. More here.
The FCC today published the results of its Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Phase I auction, which involves distributing billions of dollars to broadband providers that bring solid internet connections to under-served rural areas, and it shows $885 million earmarked for SpaceX's Starlink satellite service. TechCrunch has more here.
Venture investors often bid up prices on hot startup deals with little regard for the price they’re paying. Sometimes these companies live up to the hype. But not always.
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