Silicon Valley Funding News - Week of September 6, 2021. Databricks Raised $1.6B Series H

Congrats to Databricks for closing $1.6B Series H funding led by Morgan Stanley with participation from us - Race Capital! 

My partner Alfred first met Ion Stoica and Ali Ghodsi in 2013 while they were still working on the idea of Spark - data analytics in the cloud. Alfred was so impressed by their vision and ambition that he became an early angel and believes that cloud-based services of all kinds are getting a boost as the Covid-19 pandemic has pushed many businesses to improve their data and information technology infrastructure.

DeFi, short for decentralized finance, has exploded over the past 12 months with total value locked (TVL) growing from $2 billion to $150 billion in May of 2021.  Defi uses blockchain technology to execute financial services without an intermediary.  Race Capital really like this space and my partner Chris wrote this DeFi Infrastructure 101.

Partnering with SCMP, my fourth annual China Internet Report is finally out!  Published annually, the report covers the biggest trends in China tech for the last year, including deep dives on the impact of Beijing’s tech crackdown, changing demographics and more on the biggest digital sectors: 5G, artificial intelligence, blockchain, e-commerce and fintech are all covered, among others. Click to download here.

This week a total of 34 startups raised $2.95B in funding, 5 M&As:

• $1.98B goes to 7 Enterprise startups
• $174.5M goes to 4 FinTech startups
• $8M goes to 1 Education startup
• $100M goes to 1 Real Estate startup
• $6.2M goes to 1 InsurTech startup
• $4.5M goes to 1 FoodTech startup
• $10.7M goes to 1 Food Delivery startup
• $30M goes to 1 Retail startup
• $34.8M goes to 3 Gaming startups
• $38M goes to 1 Hardware startup
• $5.5M goes to 3 Travel startups
• $178M goes to 2 BioTech startups
• $105M goes to 2 Healthcare startups
• $85M goes to 1 Autonomous Vehicle startup
• $40M goes to 1 IoT startup
• $21M goes to 1 Renewable Energy startup
• $120M goes to 2 Other startups