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December 9, 2020
Wednesday! (Just?!)
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Top News
Shares of DoorDash, the food delivery company, started trading on the NYSE today at $182 per share and closed at $189.51, giving the unprofitable company (though its losses are narrowing) a valuation of $60.2 billion. It was priced at $102 per share last night. CNBC has more here.
Shares of the software company C3.ai leaped as much as 174% today during its first day of public trading on the NYSE. The company raised $651 million in its IPO yesterday, selling shares at $42 each. C3.ai previously expected to price its stock between $36 and $38. Business Insider has more here.
Airbnb meanwhile has priced its shares at $68 apiece, according to the WSJ. The price far exceeds the target range of $56 to $60 a share the company established earlier this week, which was higher than an even earlier range and sets a valuation for Airbnb of about $47 billion based on a fully diluted share count and including proceeds of the offering, which is set to raise about $3.7 billion. Shares begin trading tomorrow.
The Federal Trade Commission and more than 40 states accused Facebook today of buying up its rivals to kill the competition, and they're calling for the deals to be undone. More here and here.
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Massive Fundings
Bitso, a six-year-old, Mexico City, Mexico-based company offering a platform for trading of Bitcoin with Mexican pesos, closed on $62 million in funding to capitalize on the cryptocurrency boom investors expect to hit Latin America. The capital came from QED Investors and Kaszek Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
Chai, a year-old, South Korea-based payment tech startup that enables companies to accept over 20 payment systems through its API, has raised $60 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Hanhwa Investment & Securities, with participation from SoftBank Ventures Asia, SK Networks, Aarden Partners and other strategic partners. Chai has now raised $75 million altogether, including a $15 million Series A in February. TechCrunch has more here.
DataRobot, an eight-year-old, Boston-based company whose machine learning platform for data scientists of all skill levels helps then build and deploy accurate predictive models more quickly, has raised $50 million in extended Series F funding that brings the round total to $320 million and values the company at $2.8 billion. Strategic investors Snowflake, Salesforce Ventures, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise provided the new capital; VentureBeat has more here.
Pear Therapeutics, a seven-year-old, Boston-based digital therapeutics company that boasts three FDA-cleared products, including digital therapeutics for substance use disorder, opioid use disorder, and most recently, insomnia, has raised $80 million in Series D funding. SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 led round, joined by several of Pear's earlier backers, including Novartis. More here.
SingleStore, a nine-year-old, San Francisco-based company provides a SQL-based platform to help enterprises manage, parse and use data that lives in silos across multiple cloud and on-premise environments, has raised $80 million in Series E funding. Insight Partners led the round, joined by Dell Technologies Capital, Hercules Capital, Accel, Anchorage, Glynn Capital, GV and Rev IV. TechCrunch has more here.
Wiz, a months-old, Tel Aviv, Israel- and Palo Alto, Ca.-based cloud security company, has raised $100 million in Series A funding, including from Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, and Cyberstarts. The company was founded by the same team that founded Adallom, sold it to Microsoft for $320 million in 2015, then led Microsoft's Cloud Security Group. Globes has more here.
Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings
ArthurAI, a 2.5-year-old, New York-based model monitoring platform meant to give companies the confidence that their AI deployments are performing as expected, has raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Index Ventures, with help from newcomers Acrew and Plexo Capital, along with previous investors Homebrew, AME Ventures and Work-Bench. The round comes almost exactly a year after its $3.3 million seed round. TechCrunch has more here.
Brightflag, a six-year-old, Dublin, Ireland-based legal spend management platform, has raised $28 million in growth equity led by One Peak, with participation from Sands Capital Ventures and Frontline Ventures. More here.
GetAccept, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based maker of sales automation software for small and mid-size businesses, has raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners, a round that brings the company's total funding to $30 million. TechCrunch has more here.
Kevel, a nine-year-old, Raleigh, N.C.-based adtech company whose software helps brands run ad formats like sponsored listings and native ads on websites and apps, has raised $11 million in Series A funding. Fulcrum Equity led the round, joined by Commerce Ventures, Mathcapital and Food Retail Ventures. Business Insider has more here.
Squire, a 5.5-year-old, a five-year-old, New York-based barbershop management and point of sale software maker, has raised $45 million in new equity funding led by Iconiq Capital, along with l $15 million in debt financing. Squire closed its $34 million Series B round led by CRV just five months ago. TechCrunch takes a look here.
Sunday, a 1.5-year-old, Boulder, Co.-based subscription-based startup that sells environmentally friendly lawn-care products, has raised $19 million in Series B funding led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from earlier backers Tusk Ventures and Forerunner Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
WorkRamp, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose platform helps organizations build their own training materials, then distribute them to their workforce and to partners, has raised $17 million in Series B funding. OMERS Ventures led the round, joined by Bow Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
Smaller Fundings
Einblick, a year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based visual data computing company, has raised $6 million in seed funding led by Amplify Partners, with participation from Flybridge and Samsung Next. SiliconAngle has more here.
FLEx Lighting, a 12-year-old, Chicago-based maker of ultra-thin display light technology that's being used primarily used in consumer electronics, signage, wearable devices, and medical devices, has raised $9 million in funding led by Anzu Partners. Chicago Inno has more here.
HealNow, a two-year-old, New York-based ordering and payments platform for pharmacies, has closed a $1.3 million round of funding from SoftBank Opportunity Fund and Alabama Futures Fund. TechCrunch has more here.
Metafy, a months-old, Pittsburgh, Pa.-based platform for one-on-one coaching from champion-level gamers, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by Forerunner Ventures, with added participation from Tekton Ventures and M25. CityBizList has more here.
MyInterview, a five-year-old, Sydney, Australia-based job recruitment platform that allows candidates to upload video responses to questions, has raised a $5 million in seed funding. Aleph led the round, joined by earlier backers Entrée Capital and SeedIL Ventures. MyInterview previously raised $1.6 million in pre-seed funding. TechCrunch has more here.
Pair Team, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based operations platform for primary care providers and patients, has raised $2.7 million in seed funding, including from Kleiner Perkins, Craft Ventures, and YCombinator. HIT Consultant has more here.
Smartvid.io, a 5.5-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based mobile application focused on construction site safety, has raised $5 million in funding led by Sony Innovation Fund and IA Capital Group. More here.
Stuf, a new, New York-based startup that's transforming basements and other unused spaces into self-storage locations, has raised $1.8 million in seed funding led by Wilshire Lane Partners and Harlem Capital. Co-founder and CEO Katharine Lau previously led the real estate team at the co-working company Industrious. TechCrunch has more here.
Voodle, a months-old, Seattle-based startup whose TikTok-like app for remote teams aims to replace long video calls or text-based notes with short, selfie-oriented video clips, has raised $6 million in funding. Madrona Venture Group and Vulcan Capital led the round, joined by M12, Cisco Investments, and Hearst Ventures. GeekWire has more here.
Not-Saying-H0w-Much Fundings
Richpanel, a 2.5-year-old, San Jose, Ca. and India-based customer service platform for the e-commerce industry, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Sequoia Capital India.
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New Funds
Forbion, a 14-year-old, Netherlands-based life science venture capital firm that's among the beneficiaries of a growing willingness to bet on European biotechs, has raised €460 million ($558 mllion) for its fifth fund. FierceBiotech has more here.
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Going Public
Stock trading app Robinhood has picked Goldman Sachs to lead preparations for an IPO that could come next year and value it at more than $20 billion, according to Reuters. Robinhood was valued at $11.7 billion in its last private fundraising round in September. More here.
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Exits
Hyundai Motor is acquiring Boston Dynamics for upwards of $1 billion, says The Robot Report, which says the deal will be finalized at a Hyundai board meeting this week. Bloomberg reported early last month that SoftBank Group was in talks to sell the robot maker to the South Korean automaker.
The 3.5-year-old, venture-backed virtual health company Ro is making its first acquisition, and it's of a five-year-old software company, Workpath, that enables healthcare companies to offer on-demand, in-home care and diagnostic services. As FierceBiotech explains it, it enables healthcare companies to dispatch phlebotomists and other providers to perform services ranging from blood draws to vaccinations from a patient's home. Terms of the deal aren't being disclosed. Ro has raised $376 million from investors since its launch. More here.
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People
Investor Bill Gurley -- who is famously fed up with the traditional IPO process -- expressed frustration again today by DoorDash's IPO, saying its underwriters mispriced the offering at the company's expense.
Sandhya Hegde has joined the Menlo Park, Ca., venture firm Unusual Ventures as a partner focused on early-stage enterprise SaaS startups. She was most recently an executive vice president at the product analytics company Amplitude. More here.
Elon Musk saw his fortune fall $8.9 billion today, as Tesla stock plunged following a bearish outlook from JPMorgan JPM analysts. In a new report, the bank’s analysts warn investors not to add Tesla stock to their portfolios before it is added to the S&P 500 Index on December 21. Tesla shares are “not only overvalued, but dramatically so,” wrote one.
Anna Palmer has joined the Boston and New York-based seed-stage firm Flybridge as general partner. She is the first woman to hold the title at the 19-year-old firm. We talked with her here.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai apologized today for the company's handling of the departure of AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru and said he would investigate the events and work to restore trust, according to an internal memo sent companywide and obtained by Axios.
Nutanix announced today that it is bringing in former VMware executive Rajiv Ramaswami as president and CEO. Ramaswami replaces co-founder Dheeraj Pandey, who announced his plans to retire in August.
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Data
Consumers will have downloaded 130 billion apps in 2020 across iOS and Google Play, up 10% year-over-year, according to mobile data and analytics firm App Annie’s year-end forecast.
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Essential Reads
SpaceX is one explosive step closer to replacing its Falcon line of active duty spacecraft. TechCrunch has more here.
Cruise, the autonomous vehicle subsidiary of GM that also has backing from SoftBank Vision Fund, Honda and T. Rowe Price & Associates, has started testing what it describes as fully driverless vehicles on public roads in San Francisco.
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