Texas's troubles boil over, Vlad Tenev apologizes to Congress, and remastering the internet's favorite song

February 18, 2021
 
Thursday! 
Twitter captures the zeitgeist. See more in "Detours."
Top News
 
Power was restored to nearly 2 million homes in Texas over the past day, officials said today, but hundreds of thousands of residents remain without electricity and nearly half the state still can't access safe drinking water. More in the Washington Post. 
 
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev offered an apology today for the company’s decision to curb trading in some stocks on January 28, including GameStop. “Despite the unprecedented market conditions in January, at the end of the day, what happened is unacceptable to us,” he said at a congressional hearing.
 
Lawmakers also questioned Ken Griffin, the CEO the hedge fund Citadel and market-making giant Citadel Securities, about Citadel paying Robinhood to execute its users’ orders.  As reports the WSJ: "Rep. Brad Sherman (D., Calif.) repeatedly pressed Mr. Griffin over whether Robinhood’s customers get worse execution on their trades than customers of Fidelity Investments, which doesn’t take payment for order flow on stock trades. Mr. Griffin declined to answer the question directly, leading Mr. Sherman to remark, 'You are doing a great job of wasting my time.'" More here
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Massive Fundings
 
Eden Health, a five-year-old, New York-based primary care company, has raised $60 million in Series C funding led by Insight Partners, with participation from Amigos Health, Aspect Ventures, Company Ventures, Flare Capital, Flexcap Ventures, Max Ventures and PJC. MedCity News has more here.
 
Highland Electric Transportation, a three-year-old, Hamilton, Ma.-based company that provides electric vehicles that are owned, powered, and maintained by the company as a subscription service to school districts and fleet managers, has raised $253 million in funding. Vision Ridge Partners led the round, joined by Fontinalis Partners and existing investors. More here.
 
Personetics, an 11-year-old, Israel-based data-driven platform that uses AI to help banks issue personalized advice and insights to customers, has raised $75 million in funding from private equity firm Warburg Pincus. VentureBeat has more here.
 
Photomath, a six-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based popular mobile app that helps you solve equations, has raised $23 million in Series B funding led by Menlo Ventures. GSV Ventures, Learn Capital, Cherubic Ventures and Goodwater Capital also participated in the round. TechCrunch has more here.
 
Professional Fighters League, a four-year-old, New York-based MMA fighting league, has raised $65 million in funding led by Ares Capital, Elysian Park Ventures, and Knighthead Capital. ESPN has more here.
 
Sentry, a nine-year-old, San Francisco-based application performance monitoring company, has raised $60 million in Series D funding at at post-money valuation of $1 billion. The round was led by earlier backers Accel and New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Bond. TechCrunch has more here.
 
Varo Bank, which last year became the first U.S. neobank to be granted a national bank charter, has raised another $63 million in fresh funding. The round was led by NBA star Russell Westbrook (through his Russell Westbrook Enterprises); other participants included other unnamed VCs, family offices and individuals. Varo raised $241 million in Series D funding last year; the company, whose earlier backers include Warburg Pincus, The Rise Fund, Gallatin Point Capital, HarbourVest Partners and funds managed by BlackRock, has now raised $482.4 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.
 
Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings
 
Abound, a four-year-old, New York-based online marketplace that helps independent retailers stock their shelves with new products from up-and-coming brands, has raised $22.9 million in its first institutional round of funding.  Left Lane Capital led the round, joined by RiverPark Ventures, All Iron Ventures and branding firm Red Antler. TechCrunch has more here.
 
Census, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that helps businesses sync their customer data from their data warehouses to their various business tools like Salesforce and Marketo, has raised $16 million in Series A funding led by Sequoia Capital. Other participants in this round include earlier investor Andreessen Horowitz and several notable angel investors, including Figma CEO Dylan Field, GitHub CTO Jason Warner, Notion COO Akshay Kothari and Rippling CEO Parker Conrad. TechCrunch has more here.
 
Grip, a six-year-old, U.K.-based event networking startup, has raised $13 million in Series A funding led by the London-based growth equity firm Kennet Partners. TechCrunch has more here.
 
Kalshi, a three-year-old, New York-based online trading startup that will next month invite people to wager on questions about future events, from economics to the weather and public health, has raised $30 million in Series A funding from Sequoia Capital, Charles Schwab, Henry Kravis, and  SV Angel. The WSJ has more here.
 
Knock, a nearly seven-year-old, Seattle-based startup whose software tools aim to give property management companies a competitive edge (think virtual tours and the like), has raised $20 million in funding led by Fifth Wall Ventures. Earlier backers Madrona Venture Group, Lead Edge Capital, Second Avenue Partners and Seven Peaks Ventures also joined the round, which brings the company’s total capital raised to $47 million. TechCrunch has more here.
 
Recogni, a four-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based developer of vision recognition chips for autonomous driving, has raised $48.9 million in Series B funding from WRVI Capital, BMW i Ventures, Toyota AI Ventures, Robert Bosch Venture Capital and Continental. VentureBeat has more here.
 
Smaller Fundings
 
Cambridge GaN Devices, a five-year-old, U.K.-based transistors and integrated circuits maker that spun out of Cambridge University, has raised $9.5 million in Series A funding led by IQ Capital, Parkwalk Advisors and BGF, with Foresight Williams, Cambridge Enterprise, Martlet Capital, Cambridge Angels and Cambridge Capital Group also participating. Business Insider has more here.
 
Magical, a 14-month-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup that wants to turn the calendar experience into more of a team collaboration tool, has raised $3.3 million in seed funding. Resolute Ventures led the round; it was joined by Ibex Investors, Aviv Growth Partners, ORR Partners, Homeward Ventures, Fusion LA, and numerous angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.
 
Pipe17, a two-year-old, Seattle-based platform that helps online retailers tie together various e-commerce software systems related to inventory, order flow, fulfillment, and more, has raised $8 million in seed funding led by GLP Capital Partners. GeekWire has more here.
 
Reflaunt, a four-year-old, U.K.-based fashion resale software company that connects brands to secondary marketplaces, has raised $2.7 million in funding led by the investment arm of MadaLuxe Group, with Textile Innovation Fund, Piquadro, Bluebell Group and sustainable fashion accelerator Fashion For Good participating along with numerous individual investors. WWD has more here.
 
Torii, a four-year-old, New York-based startup focused around automated SaaS management (to reduce bloat), has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Wing Venture Capital, with participation from prior investors Entree Capital, Global Founders Capital, Scopus Ventures and Uncork Capital. The company has now raised $15 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.
New Funds
 
Earlybird Digital East Fund — a fund associated with Germany’s Earlybird VC, but operating separately — has launched a €200 million ($242 million) successor fund. The fund’s focus is on seed- and Series-A stage startups that are located in “emerging Europe" --  in other words, countries stretching from the Baltics to Central and Eastern Europe, and Turkey. TechCrunch has more here.
 
HighGear Ventures, a nearly four-year-old, San Francisco-based secondaries outfit that invests solely in the secondary shares of companies in the enterprise and SaaS space (meaning it buys shares from existing shareholders like founders, former employees and early investors), has closed its second vehicle with $43 million in capital commitments. More here
 
Volta Energy Technologies, a four-year-old, Naperville, Il.-based energy investment firm that looks to fund startups across the battery and power management supply chain while providing its four strategic investors (Equinor, Albermarle, Epsilon and Hanon Systems) the chance to fund and possibly acquire these companies, has closed on nearly $90 million of a targeted $150 million investment fund, according to TechCrunch; it notes that the fundraising comes at a time when interest in energy storage technologies is high.
Exits
 
CrowdStrike, a 10-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based endpoint protection company that went public in 2019, has agreed to acquire Humio, a five-year-old, U.K.-based provider of cloud log management and observability technology, for about $400 million. According to Crunchbase, Humio had raised around $32 million from investors. The deals follows a deal two weeks ago in which SentinelOne announced it was acquiring high-speed logging platform Scalyr for $155 million. TechCrunch has more here.
Going Public
 
Volkswagen is considering a separate listing of its Porsche sports-car unit in a deal that could boost its valuation and bring in a significant amount of cash, according to Bloomberg, which says it's talking with advisors about both an IPO or a spin-off of Porsche. More here.
 
Chinese grocery app Dingdong Maicai is considering an IPO in the U.S. as soon as this year to bankroll its expansion in the competitive fresh food delivery market, says Bloomberg. The four-year-old, Sequoia Capital China-backed company is working with advisers on the offering, which could raise at least $300 million, according to the outlet.
 
The SPAC bubble is about to burst, warns INSEAD professor Ivana Naumovska, who observes the same pattern seen a decade ago with another controversial M&A practice: reverse mergers.
People
 
When Wendell Brooks stepped down as managing partner and head of Intel Capital last August, Anthony Lin  -- who was formerly head of mergers and acquisitions and international investing at the firm -- was named to replace him on an interim basis. Now Lin's role has been made permanent. TechCrunch has more here.
 
Former SEC Chair Jay Clayton, who stepped down from his role in December, has two new gigs, according to the WSJ. He was just appointed to the newly created role of lead independent director on the board of Apollo Global Management, which is in transition following the recent revelation that CEO Leon Black had closer ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein than previously known. Clayton is also returning to the law firm he left before entering government -- Sullivan & Cromwell -- as a senior policy adviser and of counsel. More here.
 
Terence Lee, KKR & Co's managing director for the Asia-Pacific, has resigned from the buyout firm after 10 years, according to The Business Times. Lee, based in Singapore, led the firm's technology, media, and telecommunications private equity and growth equity investments in Southeast Asia. Neither KKR nor Lee has made a statement about the move.
 
Controversial engineer Anthony Levandowski just closed the AI church you maybe didn't realize he'd opened. TechCrunch has more here.
 
Why did Tesla buy $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and not Dogecoin, the cryptocurrency that began as a joke in 2013 and has been soaring since December? Elon Musk answered that question today on Twitter, writing: "Having some Bitcoin, which is simply a less dumb of liquidity than cash, is adventurous enough for an S&P 500 company." He added: "When fiat currency has negative real interest, only a fool wouldn’t look elsewhere.” Bloomberg has more here.
 
Chloe Steinberg has joined Sapphire Sport as a partner. Sapphire Sport is focused on early-stage startups that are "shaping the future of consumption." Steinberg was previously an investor and operator with the Equinox Group, a collective of community-based lifestyle brands. More here.
Data
 
Social audio app Clubhouse has now topped 8 million global downloads, according to new data released today by mobile data and analytics firm App Annie. TechCrunch has more here.
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Essential Reads
 
California’s Department of Motor Vehicles is warning of a potential data breach after a contractor was hit by ransomware.
 
NASA’s Perseverance rover successfully touched down on the surface of Mars today, setting the stage for a years-long journey to scour the the planet's Jezero Crater for ancient signs of life. (You can watch the landing here.)
 
In its bid for TikTok, Oracle was supposed to prevent data from being passed to Chinese police. Instead, it’s been marketing its own software for their surveillance work, says The Intercept.
Detours
 
Rick Astley in 4K.
 
Whisky the dog.
 
Sailing Holland.
 
Ted Cruz's Cancun trip gets the meme treatment.
Retail Therapy
 
Monster shoes.
 
A handwritten and signed job application, by Steve Jobs.
Sponsored By ...
 
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