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December 11, 2020
Friday!
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Hello! Hope you have a wonderful weekend, despite the terribleness out there. If you're looking for a weekend listen, check out this week's StrictlyVC Download with guest Deena Shakir of Lux Capital, who is, in keeping with the rest of Lux's partners, a brainiac.
Shakir put herself through both Harvard, then Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, before interning for the BBC and, while covering a White House speech on its behalf, deciding she'd rather work for the White House. After spending more than two years at the State Department, she headed home to her family in Silicon Valley, landing at Google for seven years before she was lured to Lux, where she has already led a handful of wide-ranging deals.
We talked with Shakir about where Lux is shopping (from cryogenic storage to manufacturing in space); we also talked about the firm's new SPAC and why frontier tech is going mainstream.
Enormous thanks to this week's sponsor, Acquity Realty, which develops commercial properties located in Qualified Opportunity Zones like this one.
Stay safe, people; more Monday.:)
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Top News
The FDA authorized Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use today, clearing the way for millions of highly vulnerable people to begin receiving the vaccine within days. The authorization is a historic turning point in a pandemic that has taken more than 290,000 lives here in the U.S., observes the New York Times.
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Oracle Says It's Moving to Texas, Too
Austinites, watch out; another tech company is headed into town.
Just days after Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed during an interview that he has moved to Texas, and less than two weeks after HP Enterprise, a spin-out of the iconic Silicon Valley company Hewlett-Packard, announced that it is separately moving to Texas, yet another of the Bay Area’s best-known brands — Oracle — is pulling up stakes and headed east to Texas, too.
The news was first reported by Bloomberg. Oracle confirmed the move in a statement sent to us, saying that along with a “more flexible employee work location policy,” the company has changed its corporate headquarters from Redwood Shores, California, to Austin. “We believe these moves best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work.”
A spokeswoman declined to answer more questions related to the move, but Oracle says that “many” of its employees can choose their office location, as well as continue to work from home part time or full time.
HPE and Oracle aren’t the first major tech companies to plot such moves in recent times. Late last year, the brokerage giant Charles Schwab said it was leaving the Bay Area for Texas as it was announcing its $26 billion merger with TD Ameritrade, though it chose Dallas, about 200 miles away from Austin.
Tech giants Apple and Google have also been expanding their presence in the state. Apple announced in 2018 that it was building a $1 billion campus in Austin. Meanwhile, Google, which opened its first Austin office 13 years ago, said last year that it was beginning to lease far more space in the city.
Taxes, a more affordable cost of living for employees, a lower cost of doing business and less competition for talent are among the top drivers for the companies’ moves, though there is also a growing sense that culture is a factor, as well.
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Massive Fundings
LendingHome, a seven-year-old, San Francisco-based lender to both professional and first-time real estate investors, says it has raised $75 million in Series E funding led by Benefit Street Partners. More here.
Rani Therapeutics, an eight-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based biotech at work on a robotic pill that’s designed to replace injectable drugs like insulin, has raised $69 million in Series E funding from undisclosed investors. The company has now raised $211 million altogether. Endpoints News has more here.
Tempus, the 5.5-year-old, Chicago-based company founded by serial entrepreneur Eric Lefkofsky that says it's applying AI to to precision medicine, has raised $200 million in new funding at a post-money valuation of $8.1 billion. The company has now raised a little more than $1 billion altogether. (Lefkofsky knows how to raise money.) Investors in the newest round include Baillie Gifford, Franklin Templeton, Google, Novo Holdings, and T. Rowe Price. Forbes has more here.
Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings
Boast.ai, a nine-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose software automates the process of claiming R&D tax credits, has raised $23 million in Series A funding. Radian Capital led the round. VentureBeat has more here.
Gorillas, a 10-month-old, Berlin-based grocery delivery startup that operates its own hyper-local fulfillment centers, has raised $44 million in Series A funding led by Coatue. TechCrunch has more here.
Orbex, a 5.5-year-old, U.K.-based developer of reusable rockets, has raised $24 million in funding co-led by BGF and Octopus Ventures. Other backers in the round include High-Tech Gründerfonds, Heartcore Capital and Elecnor S.A. TechCrunch has more here.
Scale Computing, a 13-year-old, Indianapolis, In.-based edge computing company, has raised $30 million in funding led by Elevate Ventures, says Fortune. More here.
Smaller Fundings
Cosmos Video, a five-month-old, London-based maker of virtual rooms for social gatherings, has raised $2.6 million in seed funding led by LocalGlobe. Other investors in the deal include Entrepreneur First, and numerous angel investors, including the former president of Citymapper, Omid Ashtari. TechCrunch has more here.
HomeLister, a five-year-old, Los Angeles-based digital brokerage for homeowners to list and sell their properties online, has raised $4.5 million in seed funding led by MetaProp and Homebrew. The Real Deal has more here.
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New Funds
The eight-year-old, London-based fintech company Checkout.com has quietly launched a venture division, its CEO, Guillaume Pousaz, tells Sifted. Checkout, which is itself valued by its investors at $5.5 billion and which made its name by powering online commerce for Deliveroo and others, is looking to invest $150 million into Series B-stage fintechs, Pousaz tells the outlet. More here.
A new venture capital firm is taking shape in Seattle called Cloud City Venture Capital. Founded earlier this year by former Microsoft exec Jim Brisimitzis and by Kevin Ober, a longtime Vulcan Ventures investor, the outfit is in the process of raising its debut fund, says GeekWire. More here.
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Going Public
AbCellera Biologics, an eight-year-old, Vancouver-based drug discovery company that's working with Eli Lilly & Co. currently on its Covid-19 drug, had a very solid first day of trading today after an offering raised $483 million. After pricing 23 million shares between $17 and $18 and opening trading at $20, the startup's shares shot as high as $70 each before closing the day at $58.90. Viking Global and Peter Thiel back the firm, though DCVC is its biggest outside shareholder, according to its S-1. (Heading into the offering, DCVC Bio and AbCellera founder Carl Hansen were the only investors holding a stake greater than 10%). It was the only investor in AbCellera's $10 million Series A round in September 2018 and it co-led the company's $105 million Series B round back in May. The firm is co-developing a monoclonal antibody treatment that U.S. regulators authorized last month as a therapy for people with mild-to-moderate Covid-19. Bloomberg has more here.
Shares of the 3D printing company Desktop Metal slipped as much as 14% yesterday after it went public via SPAC. Backer Chamath Palihapitiya tweeted it's a "really important company in fighting climate change." Business Insider has more here.
Innoviz Technologies, a 4.5-year-old, Israel-based lidar startup backed by two of the world’s largest automotive suppliers, is going public in a $1.4 billion reverse merger with Collective Growth Corp, says Bloomberg. The SPAC provided $150 million in cash and raised $200 million from investors in the deal that gives the combined company a $1.4 billion equity value. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of next year. It's the fourth lidar-focused firm to go public through a blank-check company in 2020. More here.
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Exits
Today, Twitter announced that it is acquiring the five-year-old, New York-based screen-sharing social app Squad for undisclosed terms. Squad’s co-founders and their team will be joining Twitter’s design, engineering, and product departments; what isn’t coming aboard is the actual Squad app. TechCrunch has more here.
Gilead Sciences, the biopharmaceutical giant, has acquired MYR, a Bad Homburg, Germany-based company with a new hepatitis drug, for about $1.4 billion. The WSJ describes the deal as an effort for Gilead to jump start its own revenue growth.
Next Insurance, a 4.5-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based startup that sells insurance to the self-employed, has acquired Juniper Labs, a two-year-old Denver-based underwriting technology firm focused on small businesses. Financial terms weren't disclosed. Juniper looks to have raised just $225,000 in seed funding. Next Insurance raised $250 million in Series D funding in September, a round that brought its total funding to date to $631 million. Business Insider has more here.
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People
At a virtual event earlier today, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink today urged caution on the ebullient environment for IPOs, saying some are being priced at levels that are ultimately “unsustainable.”
The venture firm Benchmark has brought aboard a fifth general partner: 29-year-old Miles Grimshaw, a Yale graduate who joins the outfit from Thrive Capital, where he similarly joined a team of four other partners back in 2013. We wrote about it here.
Gretchen Hayes, a venture partner for the several years with Sandbox Industries in New York, has been named a managing director with the outfit. Hayes previously spent 25 years at the global insurance organization AIG, leaving as an executive vice president.
Elon Musk says the U.S. is still "great" about fostering entrepreneurship, but warns against the "cautious creep of regulations and bureaucracy," liking them to the "slow boil of the frog." (Video.)
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Random Data
The celeb-filled California town of Montecito has "seen 46 closings in the last 30 days alone, compared with only nine closings for the same period one year ago,” or a 411% increase, Ashley McGowan, a third-generation Montecito real-estate agent, tells the WSJ.
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Essential Reads
The venture capital offices around Silicon Valley remain largely empty, but their coffers will soon be brimming after what has shaped up to be a surprisingly resilient year for technology startups. The WSJ looks at the biggest winners.
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