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December 17 , 2020
Thursday!
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Top News
Tomorrow, the U.S. is set to add dozens of Chinese companies, including the country’s top chipmaker SMIC, to a trade blacklist that already includes 275 companies, reports Reuters. In total, the United States is expected to add around 80 more companies and affiliates to the so-called entity list, nearly all of them Chinese. More here.
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Massive Fundings
Aceable, an eight-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based startup that offers online, state-accredited education courses, has raised $50 million in Series C funding led by private equity firm HGGC. TechCrunch has more here.
BigID, a four-year-old, New York-based privacy compliance platform, has raised $70 million in Series D funding. Salesforce Ventures and earlier investor Tiger Global Management co-led the round, joined by Glynn Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Scale Venture Partners and Boldstart Ventures. The company has now raised $165 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.
Brainly, an 11-year-old, Krakow, Poland-based peer-to-peer learning platform for students, parents, and teachers to ask and answer homework questions, has raised $80 million in Series D funding. Previous backer Learn Capital led the round, joined by other earlier investors, including Prosus Ventures, Runa Capital, MantaRay and General Catalyst. TechCrunch has more here.
GoCardless, a 10-year-old, London-based company that processes direct debit payments — recurring transactions withdrawn directly from a customer’s bank account for things like subscriptions — for its business clients, has raised $95 million in Series F funding led by Bain Capital Ventures. The company has now raised $240 million altogether and is valued at nearly $1 billion. TechCrunch has more here.
H1, a three-year-old, New York-based startup that helps pharmaceutical and medtech companies understand which doctors in a database of more than nine million physicians would be interested in their products and clinical trials, has raised $58 million in Series B funding co-led by Menlo Ventures and IVP. Other investors in the round include Lux Capital, Transformation Capital, Lead Edge Capital, Novartis dRx Capital, and Y Combinator. More here.
Oscar Health, the eight-year-old, New York-based tech-enabled insurer, has raised $140 million in new funding led by Tiger Global Management, with participation from Dragoneer, Baillie Gifford, Coatue, Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Lakestar, and Reinvent. The funding comes just five months after Oscar closed on a separate, $225 million round. FierceBiotech has more here.
Paxos, a 6.5-year-old, New York-based cryptocurrency infrastructure platform, has raised $142 million in Series C funding led by Declaration Partners. Other investors include Mithril Capital, PayPal Ventures, RIT Capital Partners, Ken Moelis, Alua Capital, Senator Investment Group and earlier investors RRE Ventures and Liberty City Ventures. Fortune has more here.
Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings
Bambee, a 4.5-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based maker of HR management software, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by QED Investors, with participation from Alpha Edison and Mucker Capital. Dot.LA has more here.
Cargo.one, a three-year-old, Berlin, Germany-based digital booking platform for air cargo, has raised $42 million in Series B funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Earlier backers Index Ventures, Creandum, Point Nine, and Next47 also joined the round. More here.
Diameter Health, a seven-year-old, Farmington, Cn.-based health data interoperability startup, just raised $18 million in Series B funding. Centene Corp. led the round, joined by earlier investors Optum Ventures, LRVHealth, Connecticut Innovations and Activate Venture Partners. More here.
Lyte, a seven-year-old, San Francisco-based live event ticketing startup, has raised $33 million in Series B equity and debt funding from Social Capital, Quincy Jones, Rocketship VC and earlier backers Jackson Square Ventures, Accomplice and Correlation Ventures. Digital Music News has more here.
Ramp, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based corporate spend management startup, has raised $30 million from D1 Capital Partners, Coatue and earlier investor Founders Fund. TechCrunch has more here.
Rec Room, a four-year-old, Seattle, Wa.-based social gaming platform, has raised $20 million in Series C led by Madrona Venture Group, with participation from earlier backers First Round Capital, Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital and DAG Ventures. The company has now raised a little less than $50 million to date. TechCrunch has more here.
Vivace Therapeutics, a six-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based oncology-focused portfolio-based drug discovery and development company, has raised $30 million in Series C funding from Boxer Capital, RA Capital Management and Canaan Partners. FierceBiotech has more here.
Yoshi, a 5.5-year-old, San Francisco-based gas delivery and car care servicing for the home or workplace, has raised $23 million Series B investment led by General Motors Ventures. The company has now raised $38 million altogether. CNBC has more here.
Zoomin, a five-year-old, New York-based technical documentation development platform, has raised $21 million from Bessemer Venture Partners, Salesforce Ventures and Viola Growth over the last couple of years, the company revealed today in VentureBeat. More here.
Smaller Fundings
Better Dairy, a 1.5-year-old, London-based startup that's using fermentation and biology to produce products that are molecularly identical to traditional dairy, has raised £1.6 million in seed funding led by Happiness Capital, with participation from CPT Capital, Stray Dog Capital and Veg Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
Enveda Biosciences, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based medicinal plant database, has raised $4.9 million in seed funding. True Ventures led the round, joined by Wireframe Ventures, Village Global and Recursion Pharmaceuticals cofounder and CEO Chris Gibson. Crunchbase News has more here.
Gr4vy, a months-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based cloud payment orchestration platform, has raised $1.1 million co-led by Activant Capital and Global Founders Capital. Crunchbase News has more here.
Orbit Fab, a two-year-old, Silicon Valley, Ca.-based startup that bills itself as the company focused on creating “gas stations in space,” has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Munich Re Ventures in a round that brings its total funding to $6 million. TechCrunch has more on the company here.
Presso, a two-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based robotics startup that has developed a kiosk that it says is capable of dry cleaning a garment in five minutes, has raised $1.6 million from Pathbreaker, AME Cloud Ventures, SOSV, 1517 Fund and YETI Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
SnapNurse, a five-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based nurse staffing platform, has raised $2 million from Pivotal Group. More here.
Umba, a 2.5-year-old, Lagos, Nigeria-based digital bank for emerging markets, including in Africa, has raised $2 million in seed funding from former Stripe exec Lachy Groom, Ludlow Ventures, Frontline Ventures, and Act Venture Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
Whatnot, a year-old, L.A.-based startup that hosts live-streamed video sales and auctions of Pokemon cards and other collectibles, has raised $4 million in seed funding from Scribble Ventures, Operator Partners, Wonder Ventures, Y Combinator and numerous angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.
Not-Saying-How-Much Fundings
Truyo, a Chandler, Az.-based data privacy rights management software startup, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Intel Capital. The newly formed offshoot of an 18-year-old company is reportedly focusing on developing a privacy-first approach to temperature and wellness checks through the next year as companies figure out how to bring employees back to the workplace. The Phoenix Business Journal has more here.
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New Funds
Imaginary Ventures, the venture capital firm led by Net-a-Porter Natalie Massenet and investor Nick Brown, has raised a $160 million fund to back early-stage concepts. The two launched Imaginary Ventures in 2018 with $75 million, taking stakes in a range of startups including Glossier, Skims and Daily Harvest. They've more recently backed the textured-hair care line Bread, the plant-based “chicken” nuggets brand Nuggs, and the used clothing service Goodfair. Business of Fashion has more here.
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Going Public
Digital currency exchange Coinbase is going public as bitcoin reaches all-time highs. The company announced earlier today that it has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the SEC. The form is expected to go into effect after the SEC completes its review process. CNBC has more here.
UiPath, the robotic process automation startup that has been growing like gangbusters, filed confidential paperwork with the SEC today ahead of a potential IPO. TechCrunch has more here.
OpenDoor's merger deal with Social Capital Hedosophia II is on the cusp of being completed; it will begin trading Monday.
BarkBox, a startup best known for its monthly subscription service for dogs, is merging with a blank-check company in a $1.6 billion deal, says the WSJ. The acquisition by Northern Star Acquisitions Corp. is expected to raise $454 million and to capitalize on a pandemic-fueled rise in pet adoptions and pet-related spending. More here.
(Fwiw: we were in touch with VC Mike Hirshland of Resolute Ventures today, and he noted that both OpenDoor founder Eric Wu and BarkBox founder Matt Meeker were venture partners at the start of Resolute, which was founded in 2007 and is an early investor in both of their companies.)
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Exits
Cazoo, an 2.5-year-old online used car retailer that became the UK’s fastest ever unicorn earlier this year (its founder, Alex Chesterman, previously founded Zoopla), has acquired car rental service Drover. Terms of the deal aren't being disclosed, but four-year-old Drover had raised £30 million altogether, two-thirds of it in July. Sifted has more here.
Alphabet’s Google won EU antitrust approval on Thursday for its $2.1 billion bid for Fitbit after agreeing restrictions on how it will use customers’ health related data. Among them: Google will store Fitbit user data separately from Google data used for advertising, and will not use data from Fitbit and other wearable devices for Google Ads. Users can decide whether to store their health data in their Google or Fitbit account. Reuters has much more here.
Rubrik, a Palo Alto, Ca-based cloud data management startup that's been valued at more than $3 billion, has acquired technology and IP assets from Igneous, a seven-year-old, Seattle startup that laid off staff last month. Founded by veterans of Isilon Systems and NetApp, Igneous’ platform provides visibility and storage for unstructured data, or information that isn’t easily categorized, both in the cloud or on-premise. GeekWire has the story here.
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People
Ned Desmond, a longtime publishing executive who was most recently the COO of both TechCrunch and Engadget for more than eight years, has joined the investment firm SOSV as a senior operating partner. More here.
Ousted Black Google researcher Timnit Gebru: "They wanted to have my presence, but not me exactly."
Victor Yang has been promoted to principal at CSC Upshot Ventures. Yang had joined the early stage venture fund in 2018. He was previously a senior analyst with Xerox.
Autonomous vehicle company Aurora Innovation sent job offers today to more than 75% of employees at Uber Advanced Technologies Group, just a week after announcing plans to acquire the self-driving subsidiary, reports TechCrunch. But Uber ATG Toronto, which employs about 50 people where the subsidiary conducted its R&D work, reportedly did not not made the cut. More here.
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Sponsored By . . .
Secureframe helps companies get enterprise-ready by streamlining SOC 2 security compliance. Secureframe allows companies to get secure within weeks, rather than months and monitors 25+ services, including AWS, GCP, and Azure. Customers save an average of 50% on their audit costs. Schedule a demo and learn how!
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Essential Reads
Jeff Bezos and his company’s New Glenn reusable rocket, which hasn’t yet flown, received the nod today from NASA to potentially carry scientific payloads later this decade.
Here's where tech workers are *really* moving.
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Sponsored By . . .
Acquity Realty, which develops multi-family and office projects with partners like Apple and Cigna Realty Advisors, is looking for individuals and institutions interested in tax efficiently growing their capital. It’s developing a Qualified Opportunity Zone project just two blocks from Google’s new 80-acre campus in San Jose. Over its last $1.2 billion of projects, Acquity has generated an IRR of 49.9%. Visit Acquity or email Greg Ovalle at ov@acquityrealty.com to learn more.
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