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April 22, 2021
Hello! It was busy today in our world, but relatedly we have a solid podcast and story for you tomorrow.:)
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Top News
President Joe Biden will propose almost doubling the capital gains tax rate for wealthy individuals to 39.6% from the current base rate of 20% to help pay for a raft of social spending, according to Bloomberg's sources. For those earning $1 million or more, the new top rate, coupled with an existing surtax on investment income, means that federal tax rates for wealthy investors could be as high as 43.4%, reports the outlet. The proposal could reverse a long-standing provision of the tax code that taxes returns on investment lower than on labor, it adds. more here.
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Sponsored By ...
The Fed has committed to printing $120 billion every month and over $2.9 trillion in the next two years. Add in $1.9 trillion of fiscal stimulus and a $2 trillion infrastructure program, and it's easy to see why many investors are looking to protect their portfolio from inflation by investing in real, tangible assets, like art. Masterworks is an exclusive community of art investors who are looking to take advantage of a historically inefficient market. From 1995 to 2020 contemporary art prices rose 13.6%, had a lower loss rate than gold, and only a 0.01 correlation factor to equities. StrictlyVC subscribers can skip the 12,500 person waitlist to start investing in artists like Basquiat and Banksy today. (See important information).
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Massive Fundings
Bux, a seven-year-old, Amsterdam-based startup that invites people invest in shares and exchange-traded funds without paying commissions, has raised $80 million in funding co-led by Prosus Ventures and Tencent, with participation from ABN Amro Ventures, Citius, Optiver, Endeit Capital and earlier investors HV Capital and Velocity Capital Fintech Ventures. The company has also appoint Yorick Naeff, formerly Bux's COO, as CEO, with founder Nick Bortot stepping away from the role. TechCrunch has more here.
Cherre, a five-year-old, New York-based real estate data management and analytics platform, has raised $50 million led by Trustbridge Partners, with participation from Glilot Capital Partners, former Goldman Sachs Vice Chairman Mark Schwartz, Intel Capital, Navitas Capital, and Carthona Capital. Calcalist has more here.
Deep Instinct, a six-year-old, New York-based cybersecurity startup, has raised $100 million in Series D funding led by BlackRock, with participation from Untitled Investments, The Tudor Group, and Anne Wojcicki. The company had raised $43 million in Series C funding last year led by Millennium New Horizons. The Times of Israel has more here.
Empyrean, a 13-year-old, Woburn, Ma.-based maker of financial risk management and compliance software for banks and credit unions, has sold a minority stake in its business for $74 million to Spectrum Equity, which was joined in the deal by Information Venture Partners. More here.
Kandji, a three-year-old, San Diego, Ca.-based Apple device management platform for use by enterprise IT teams, has raised $60 million Series B funding led by Felicis Ventures, with participation from SVB Capital, Greycroft, Okta Ventures, and The Spruce House Partnership. The company has now raised $88.5 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.
Kyligence, a five-year-old, San Jose, Ca.- and Shanghai, China-based data analysis company, just raised $70 million in Series D funding. SPDB International led the round, joined by Alpha Square Group, CICC, Gopher Asset Management, Shanghai Growth Capital, PUXIN Capital, and Jumbo Sheen Group. CRN has more here.
Overtime, a five-year-old, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based sports brand and media company, has raised $80 million in Series C funding. Sapphire Sport and Black Capital led the round, joined by investors including Bezos Expeditions, Drake, Micromanagement Ventures (the family of the late NBA commissioner David Stern), Morgan Stanley Counterpoint Global, Blackstone Strategic Partners, PROOF, and Gaingels. Overtime initially posted high-school game highlights and other sports videos on social platforms; it later expanded to long-form original shows, merchandising and live events. Now it plans to create a new basketball league featuring top male high-school players -- Overtime Elite -- that will also function as a high school for roughly 30 rising juniors and seniors who will live in one location and earn at least $100,000 per year as they work toward their degrees. The WSJ has the story here.
Productboard, a 6.5-year-old, San Francisco- and Prague-based product management platform company, has raised $72 million in Series C funding. Tiger Global led the round, joined by Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, and Bessemer Venture Partners. VentureBeat has more here.
Ruangguru, a six-year-old, Jakarta, Indonesia-based outfit that says it's the largest edtech company in Southeast Asia, has raised $55 million in funding led by Tiger Global Management, with participation from earlier backer GGV Capital. The company last raised $150 million in Series C funding in December 2019 led by General Atlantic and GGV. Tech in Asia has more here.
Sift, a 10-year-old, San Francisco-based fraud prevention platform that was formerly known as Sift Science, has raised $50 million in funding values the company at more than $1 billion. Insight Partners led the financing, which included participation from Union Square Ventures and Stripes. The company has now raised $157 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.
Tamara, a year-old, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia-based payments firm offering buy-now-pay-later terms to users, has raised $110 million in both debt and equity for its Series A round led by London company Checkout.com. The startup had raised a $6 million seed round just a few months ago. The deal (for now) represents one of the Middle East’s largest-ever startup investments. Bloomberg has more here.
Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings
Alto Solutions, a six-year-old, Nashville, Tn.-based platform that automates the process for investing in alternatives with IRA savings, has raised $17 million in Series A funding. Unusual Ventures led the round, joined by Moment Ventures, Acrew Capital, and Alpha Edison, along with Carta, Coinbase Ventures, Franklin Templeton, New York Life Ventures, and Stone Ridge Holdings Group. More here.
BigID, a six-year-old, New York-based privacy-focused data intelligence company, has raised $30 million in extended Series D funding from Advent International after originally closing the round with $70 million in December. The company was valued then, and remains valued, at $1.25 billion. Calcalist has more here.
CluedIn, a six-year-old, Denmark-based data management platform, has raised $15 million in Series A funding. Dawn Capital led the round, joined by Collibra cofounder and CTO Stijn Christiaens. Tech.eu has more here.
CoinSwitch Kuber, a three-year-old, Bangalore, India-based startup that allows young users in India to invest in cryptocurrencies, has raised $25 million in new funding entirely from Tiger Global Management. The round brings the company's total funding to $41.5 million to date and its post-money valuation to $500 million. TechCrunch has more here.
Current Health, a six-year-old, Boston-based remote care management platform, just raised $43 million in Series B funding. Northpond Ventures led the round, joined by LRVHealth, OSF HealthCare, Section 32, and Elements Health Ventures. HIT Consultant has more here.
DataRails, a six-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based developer of financial planning and analysis tools, has raised $18.5 million in a Series A round led by Zeev Ventures Fund, with participation from earlier backers Vertex Ventures Israel and Innovation Endeavors. To date, the company has raised $28.5 million. Tech.eu has more here.
Higharc, a three-year-old, New York-based SaaS-based all-in-one homebuilding platform that says it handles design, sales, and construction, has raised $21 million in Series A funding led by Spark Capital. Other new investors to participate include MetaProp, Montage Ventures, Tectonic Capital, and PlanGrid cofounder Ralph Gootee, among other individual investors. Earlier backers Pillar Ventures, Javelin Venture Partners, Lux Capital and Vertex Ventures also joined the round. More here.
Hypr, a seven-year-old, New York-based company whose authentication technology secures traditional passwords and also biometrics like fingerprints, faces and voices, has raised $35 million in Series C funding led by Advent International in a round that brings its total funding to $72 million. VentureBeat has more here.
Innoveo, a 13-year-old, Zurich, Switzerland-based New York-based no-code platform helping companies create enterprise applications, raised $15 million in Series A funding. Paulson & Co. and former Bear Stearns exec Michael Tennenbaum invested alongside Everstone Capital. More here.
Muncher, a two-year-old, Bogotá, Colombia-based ghost kitchen startup, has raised $22 million in Series A funding co-led by TMT Investments and Copernion Capital Partners, with participation from Femsa Ventures, MGM Innova and Amador Holdings. Forbes has more here.
Ophelia, a two-year-old, New York-based startup that uses telemedicine to provide medication-assisted treatment (the use of medicine plus counseling) to treat opioid addiction, has raised $15 million in Series A funding. Menlo Ventures led the round, joined by Y Combinator, General Catalyst, and Refactor Capital. The WSJ has more here.
Outlier.org, a nearly three-year-old, New York-based online education platform focused on student debt (it was founded by MasterClass cofounder Aaron Rasmussen), has raised $30 million in Series B funding. GV led the round, joined by Unusual Ventures, GSV, Harrison Metal, and Gaingels. TechCrunch has more here.
Percent, a four-year-old, New York-based alternative investing platform that was formerly known as Cadence, has raised $12.5 million in Series A funding. White Star Capital and B Capital led the round. More here.
Seqster, a five-year-old, San Diego-based healthcare data tech company focused on helping patients bring all their health information into one place, has raised $12 million in Series A funding. OmniHealth Holdings led the round, joined by Takeda Digital Ventures and 23andMe's CEO and founder, Anne Wojcicki. FierceBiotech has more here.
Universal Hydrogen, a year-old, L.A.-based startup aiming to develop hydrogen storage solutions and conversion kits for commercial aircraft, has raised $20.5 million in Series A funding. Playground Global led the round, joined by Fortescue Future Industries, Coatue, Global Founders Capital, Plug Power, Airbus Ventures, Toyota AI Ventures, Sojitz Corporation and Future Shape. TechCrunch has more here.
Smaller Fundings
Authzed, a nine-month-old, New York-based API services company startup that wants to make it easier for developers to build permissions in their applications, has raised $3.9 million in seed funding. Work-Bench led the round, joined by Amplify Partners and Y Combinator. TechCrunch has more here.
CreatorPlus, a four-month-old, San Francisco- and L.A.-based film studio and streaming platform that aims to “finance, produce and distribute feature-length films from today’s top creators and emerging storytellers," has raised $12 million in funding led by Petra Group and Freestyle Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
Nhost, a 1.5-year-old, Stockholm, Sweden-based startup that says its tech allows companies to automate their entire backend development and cloud infrastructure, spanning file storage, databases, user authentication, APIs, and more, has raised $3 million in a round of funding led by Nauta Capital, with participation from earlier backer Antler. Numerous prominent angel investors also joined the round, including GitHub founders Scott Chacon and Tom Preston-Werner and Netlify founders Christian Bach and Mathias Biilmann Christensen. VentureBeat has more here.
Riverside.fm, a year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based audio-video platform for podcasts and broadcast media interviews, has raised $9.5 million in Series A funding led by Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six, with participation from Zeev-ventures.com, Casey Neistat, Marques Brownlee, Elad Gil and other individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.
Thistle Technologies, a year-old, San Francisco-based startup that's building tools that help connected device makers build security resiliency into devices (and whose founder is Window Snyder, who formerly served as chief security officer at Square, Mozilla, and Fastly, and was chief software security officer at Intel), has raised $2.5 million from True Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
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New Funds
Basis Set Ventures, a 3.5-year-old, San Francisco-based early-stage venture fund that invests in the "future of work" as enabled by AI, just closed its second fund with $165 million in capital commitments -- slightly more than the $136 million the firm collected for its debut fund. TechCrunch has much more here.
Congruent Ventures, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based early-stage climate tech investor, says it has raised $175 million in capital commitments for its second fund. The outfit now has $300 million in assets under management. TechCrunch has more here.
Endeavour Vision, a 21-year-old, Geneva-based growth stage investor, has raised $375 million in capital commitments for second fund that is focused explicitly on growth-stage medtech and digital health innovations. The first fund of its kind launched in 2016 with $275 million. Mass Device has more here.
Versant Ventures, the 22-year-old, healthcare-focused investment firm with offices in San Francisco, New York, Toronto, and Basel, Switzerland, has closed on $950 million in capital commitments across three new vehicles. These included Versant Venture Capital VIII, a $560 million primary global biotech fund; Versant Voyageurs II, a $140 million booster fund (to back breakout Series A opportunities from the firm's portfolio); and Versant Vantage II, a $250 million later-stage opportunity fund. More here.
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Exits
The newly public buy-now-pay-later company Affirm say it is acquiring Returnly, 6.5-year-old, San Francisco-based company focused on online return experiences and post-purchase payments. Under the terms of the agreement, Affirm will acquire Returnly for total cash and equity consideration of approximately $300 million. According to Crunchbase, the startup had raised roughly $30 million from investors, including Craft Ventures and (notably) Affirm founder and CEO Max Levchin. More here.
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Going Public
Canadian chip firm Alphawave is set to list on the London Stock Exchange, shunning New York’s tech-focused Nasdaq stock market in the process. The four-year-old company, which makes chip technology that can help data flow through networks faster, announced today that it intends to raise around $500 million in an IPO on the main market of the London Stock Exchange. CNBC has more here.
Confluent, a seven-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based startup that develops open-source data processing software, said today it has filed confidentially for an IPO without disclosing any details about its listing. The company, backed by Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures, among others, was valued at $4.5 billion last year during its most recent round, which brought the total amount of capital it has raised to $456 million. Reuters has more here.
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People
An Earth Day chat between X Prize Foundation founder Peter Diamandis and a barefoot Elon Musk.
Chris Poole, who founded the controversial online community 4chan at age 15 and who joined Google in 2016 -- a move that some employees and industry workers criticized at the time - has left the search giant. CNBC has more here.
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Detours
How to watch all the movies nominated for this Sunday's Oscar awards.
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