Robinhood's wild ride, another NFT marketplace nabs funding, and the surprising beauty of moths

August 4, 2021
Top News
 
The U.S. and many of its allies have restricted the use of 5G cellular equipment made by China’s Huawei. Now Beijing is doing the same to Huawei’s Western rivals. More in the WSJ.
 
Robinhood shares soared again today, with trading halted for volatility several times. It's unclear exactly what is driving the stock higher, says CNBC, but it notes that ARK Invest’s Cathie Wood purchased 89,622 shares, a position worth roughly $4.2 million based on Robinhood’s closing price of $46.80 (and this atop the approximately 3.15 million shares Wood has bought of Robinhood since the company’s public debut last week, says the outlet). More here.
 
Uber beat analyst estimates in its second-quarter earnings report today, but it also revealed that its core business lost $509 million in the second quarter. CNBC has more here.
Sponsored By ...
 
Punk's not dead. Has the NFT bubble burst? Data might say otherwise. CryptoPunks daily volume surged 1,270% in the last week—quite the flex. But digital art is still small potatoes compared to the real life art market, estimated to be worth a gargantuan $6 trillion. What’s more, contemporary art has appreciated at 14% on average per year from 1995 to 2020. This art investing platform has fractionalized $1 million to $30 million artworks so everyone can afford to invest. Skip the waitlist. *See disclosures.
Massive Fundings
 
FullStory, a nine-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based digital experience analytics platform, has raised $103 million in Series D funding led by Permira, with participation from earlier backers Kleiner Perkins, GV, Stripes, Dell Technologies Capital, Salesforce Ventures, and Glynn CapitalThe company has now raised $170 million to date, and is valued at $1.8 billion. TechCrunch has more here.
 
Human Interest, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based company that provides full-service 401(k) plans for small and mid-size businesses, has raised $200 million in Series D funding led by The Rise Fund. Other participants include SoftBank Vision Fund 2, NewView Capital, Glynn Capital, U.S. Venture Partners, Wing Venture Capital, Uncork Capital, Slow Capital, Susa Ventures, and others. The company has now raised $305 million altogether and is valued at $1 billion, it says. Forbes has more here.
 
Superhuman, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based subscription email service, has raised $75 million in Series C funding led by IVP. Other participants include Tiger Global and numerous notable individual investors, including Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, Discord CEO Jason Citron, and Thrive CEO Arianna Huffington. The company has now raised $126 million altogether. More here.
 
Yellow.ai, a five-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based conversational automation platform, has raised $78.15 million in Series C funding, led by WestBridge Capital, with participation from Sapphire Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, and earlier backer Lightspeed Venture Partners. The company has now raised $102.15 million altogether. More here.
 
Titan, a Bangalore-based company that has developed a suite of professional email services for small and medium businesses and was founded by serial entrepreneur Bhavin Turakhia, has raised $30 million in funding from Automattic, the parent of self-publishing and blogging platform WordPress. The deal values Titan at $300 million. The Economic Times has more here.
 
Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings
 
Buildots, a three-year-old, Tel Aviv- and London-based construction management company, has raised $30 million in Series B funding. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round, joined by earlier backers TLV Partners, Future Energy Ventures, Tidhar Construction Group and Maor Investments. The company has now raised $46 million in total funding. TechCrunch has more here.
 
Ispace, a six-year-old, Denver-based lunar exploration company, has raised $46 million in fresh Series C funding led by the Japanese venture firm Incubate Fund, with additional investment from partnerships managed by Innovation Engine, funds managed by SBI Investment Co., Katsunori Sago, Aizawa Investments and funds managed by HiJoJo Partners and Aizawa Asset Management. Ispace’s total funding now stands at $195.5 million. TechCrunch has more here.
 
MakerSights, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based predictive analytics platform that aims to help retailers anticipate the right assortment of products to sell each season to reduce waste and increase margins, has raised $25 million in Series B funding led by G2 Venture PartnersThe company has now raised $37 million altogether. More here.
 
MakersPlace, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based non-fungible token marketplace, has raised $30 million in a Series A funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Pantera Capital. ArtNet News has more here.
 
Reserve Trust, a six-year-old, Denver, Co.-based financial services startup that partners with companies that need to embed domestic and cross-border payments, has raised $30.5 million in Series A round led by QED Investors. FinTech Collective, Ardent Venture Partners, Flywire CEO Mike Massaro and Quovo founder and CEO Lowell Putnam also participated in the round, which included $17.9 million in secondary shares. It brings the startup’s total funding to $35.5 million. TechCrunch has more here.
 
Suma Brands, a year-old, Minneapolis, Mn.-based company that buys up what it sees as some of the more interesting and successful brands selling their products on Amazon (it's another roll-up play), has raised $12.5 million in equity funding from Pace Capital and Material. The company also secured a $137.5 million in debt funding led by i80 Group. TechCrunch has more here.
 
Third Wave Automation, a three-year-old, California-based company that's building forklift automation systems using machine learning and shared autonomy, has raised $40 million in Series B funding led by Norwest Venture Partners, including participation from prior investors Innovation Endeavors and Eclipse Ventures, along with Toyota Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
 
Zeni, a two-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based fintech company providing real-time financial services data to venture-backed startups, has raised $34 million in Series B funding led by Elevation Capital. The company has now raised $47.5 million in total since it was co-founded by twin brothers Swapnil Shinde and Snehal Shinde. TechCrunch has more here.
 
Smaller Fundings
 
YELA, an eight-month-old, London-based startup that's similar to Cameo (where celebrities send video messages to paying fans), has raised $2 million in funding to support its launch. The round was led by Tinder cofounders Justin Mateen and Sean Rad. TechCrunch has more here.
New Funds
 
Agent Capital, a 4.5-year-old, Waltham, Ma.-based healthcare-focused venture firm, has raised roughly $60 million in capital commitments from 14 investors, per an SEC filing that shows a $100 million target. More here.
 
Baleon Capital, a one-year-old, Miami-based venture capital firm started by investment veteran Jon Kaiden, is looking to raise a second fund with up to $100 million in capital commitments. Kaiden closed Baleon's debut fund with $10 million. The outfit is funding pre-Series A and Series A companies focused on health and medical care in the U.S. TechCrunch has more here.
 
Foothill Ventures, a four-year-old, Los Altos, Ca.-based seed-stage venture-capital firm previously named Tsingyuan Ventures, has raised a $100 million fund that it will use to double down on its strategy of investing in North American startups founded by immigrant entrepreneurs. The firm said the strategy allows it to capitalize on technical talent that has been overlooked by many mainstream Silicon Valley investors. The WSJ has more here.
 
Work-Bench, a nine-year-old, New York-based early-stage venture firm that's focused on enterprise tech, has closed its third fund with $100 million in capital commitments. The outfit had closed its second fund with $47 million in late 2018. Forbes has more here.
Going Public
 
FinAccel on Monday agreed to go public through a merger with a blank-check firm, valuing the parent company of Indonesian buy-now-pay-later platform Kredivo at about $2.5 billion, a further sign of consolidation in the fast-growing sector. The deal follows Square's move to purchase the buy-now-pay-later pioneer Afterpay for $29 billion. The SPAC's sponsor is Victory Park Capital. Reuters has more here.
 
Indonesia’s Traveloka is in talks with potential investors to raise as much as $400 million as part of its plan to go public through merging with a blank-check company backed by billionaires Richard Li and Peter Thiel, according to Bloomberg's sources. The fundraising, a so-called private investment in public equity (PIPE), would reportedly be part of a deal to merge the Jakarta-based online travel startup with Bridgetown Holdings as soon as this year at an expected combined value of $5 billion. More here.
People
 
Eclipse Ventures has brought aboard two new partners: Aidan Madigan-Curtis and Jay Knafel. Madigan-Curtis formerly held senior positions at Apple and Samsara, while Knafel served as a research analyst at Fidelity. More here.
 
The Boston-based CRM company Hubspot announced today that its co-founder and CEO Brian Halligan will be stepping into the executive chairman role and that CMO Yamini Rangan will be taking over as CEO next month. TechCrunch has more here.
 
Weeks after poaching Facebook’s Fidji Simo as CEO, Instacart has hired Carolyn Everson as president. Everson spent more than 10 years at Facebook, serving as the face of the company for major advertisers as the vice president of its global business group. CNBC has more here.
 
Blizzard president J. Allen Brack isn’t the only executive leaving the company after presiding over a culture now accused of fostering “constant sexual harassment.” Jesse Meschuk, the company’s head of global human resources, is also "no longer with the company," a spokesperson tells The Verge. More here.
 
Bert Navarrete has joined ZX Ventures (AB InBev’s Investment group) as general partner from Bullpen Capital, where he was a venture partner. Navarrete will lead growth equity investments and manage a global investment team focused on D2C, B2B, fintech and circular economy investments.
Sponsored By ...
 
SaaStr, the world's largest non-vendor B2B software community, is back - in person! Don't miss this year's Annual on Sept 27-29 at the San Mateo County Event Center. The three-day conference will bring together more than 10,000 global SaaS founders, executives, and venture capitalists for a series of high-quality content sessions and networking opportunities. Across five stages more than 300 SaaS leaders will share their hard-earned learnings and actionable insights to help you scale up and grow your company faster. Readers can grab 20% off tickets with code StrictlyVC. 
Essential Reads
 
Google fired dozens of employees between 2018 and last year for abusing their access to the company's tools or data, with some workers potentially facing allegations of accessing Google user or employee data, according to an internal Google document obtained by Motherboard. More here.
 
Facebook shut down accounts belonging to two academic researchers late yesterday, cutting off their ability to study political ads and misinformation on the world’s biggest social network. The company accused the academics of engaging in “unauthorized scraping” and compromising user privacy on the platform, but many Facebook critics see the claims as a thin pretense for killing the transparency work. TechCrunch has more here.
 
Dating app maker and Tinder parent Match Group says it's bringing audio, video chat, and other live-streaming technologies to several of its brands over the next 12 to 24 months.
 
It’s not a ghost. It’s a half-dozen vulnerabilities in a digital automation system.
Detours
 
Why everyone is decamping to Hudson.
 
The 20 best cycling roads in America.
 
Oh, hello, never mind my completely unobtrusive personal air purifier.
 
Moths in slow motion.
Retail Therapy
 
Holy lightsabers. Disney's new Star Wars hotel costs anywhere from $4,809 to $6,000 for two nights - and that's for the cheapest packages.
 
Vollebak's black algae-dyed T-shirt that’s crafted from sustainably and ethically sourced pulped eucalyptus and beech, and, reader, it hasn't even "dropped" yet and there's a waitlist, according to the company. (Again, we dare you to find a company whose marketing department is on a par with this one.)
Sponsored By ...
 
Think you have a great product? Can you prove it? Here’s one way to quickly find out: ask your customers to review it over video. If it goes well, you may have just stumbled on your most under-leveraged marketing asset: your customers. Capsule is a new startup that’s helping everyone from VC firms to the Fortune 100 grow their businesses by empowering their customers and employees to produce marketing content
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