BREAKING:
Scoop: Alexis Ohanian leaves VC firm Initialized
Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian is moving on from Initialized, the venture capital firm he co-founded in 2012, Axios has learned. What happened: Ohanian has become more interested in "pre-seed" investing, which is often little more than a business plan and a founding team, whereas Initialized focuses on traditional "seed-stage" investing. Why now: Initialized, led by Garry Tan, is beginning to raise its fifth
flagship fund, as its $225 million fourth fund was raised two years ago. - Don't be surprised to see Ohanian also raise a fund for his pre-seed efforts, although no word yet on how much he'll target.
- Ohanian also plans to remain involved with existing Initialized portfolio companies but won't make any new Initialized investments. [ Axios]
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1.
Oscar’s health insurance platform nabs another $225 million
The direct-to-consumer health insurer Oscar has raised another $225 million in its latest, late-stage round of funding as its vision of tech-enabled healthcare services to drive down consumer costs becomes more and more of a reality. In an effort to prevent a patient’s potential exposure to the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, most healthcare practices are seeing patients remotely via virtual consultations, and more patients are embracing digital health services voluntarily, which reduces costs for
insurers and potentially provides better access to basic healthcare needs. Indeed, Oscar now has a $2 billion revenue base to point to and now a fresh pile of cash from which to draw. [ Tech Crunch ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
Base10’s New $250M Fund To Help Startups Approaching ‘Automation For The Real Economy’
Base10 Partners on Friday unveiled its $250 million BaseFund II, which not only brings its assets under management to more than $400 million, but makes Base10 the largest Black-led VC fund, Adeyemi Ajao told me in an interview this week. Ajao wrote a Medium post about the new fund, so I won’t go into the nitty-gritty of the philosophy, but I do want to highlight our conversation about the San Francisco-based early-stage venture capital firm’s mission to invest in companies that are “automating the real economy,” and how Base10’s second fund will do that. [ Crunchbase ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
2.
Edinburgh entrepreneur's software company Eggplant sold for $330 million
Scottish entrepreneur George Mackintosh's software testing platform Eggplant has been acquired by California based Keysight Technologies for $330 million. London-headquartered Eggplant had been majority owned by investment
firm The Carlyle Group since 2016. Santa Rosa-based Keysight Technologies, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange with a market capitalisation of $18.25 billion, was formed as a spin-out from Hewlett Packard. Eggplant’s Digital Automation Intelligence platform uses artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics to test any technology on any device, operating system or browser at any layer, from the user interface (UI) to application programming interfaces
(APIs). [ Insider ]
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3.
Venture Fund Manager Has $100 Million for Startups Run by Women
Ingrid Teigland Akay was once told she was “brave” to speak out at investor gatherings dominated by men. Now, she wants her venture capital firm to target women who might not be as bold as their male peers when it comes to fighting for investor cash. The managing partner of Hadean Ventures AS is looking for startups that develop treatments for unmet medical needs. Her firm has more than doubled in size since its first close in late 2017, and now has almost $100 million in capital. Its
debut less then three years ago was the biggest of its kind in Europe. [ Bloomberg ]
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4.
Poseida Therapeutics Raises $110M To Advance Gene Therapeutics
5.
SevenRooms raises $50M to double down on reservations, ordering and other tools for hospitality businesses
Restaurants, hotels and other public venues where we spend leisure and business time have started to reopen in many parts of the world after a period of going dark to try to slow down the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. Now, a startup called SevenRooms, which builds software to help those venues with their guest management, is announcing a growth round of $50 million — to double
down on providing tools for venues that now have to handle a whole new layer of management to implement social distancing and more. The funding, a Series B, is coming from a single investor, Providence Strategic Growth, the company tells me. SevenRooms has some notable backers on its cap table already: Amazon (which invested via its Alexa Fund and directly),
Comcast (via Comcast Ventures) and BoxGroup, along with a number of individuals. [ Tech Crunch ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
6.
Sana Biotechnology Snags $700 Million in Initial Financing Round
Sana Biotechnology, which launched last year, raised $700 million in initial financing that will be used to advance the company’s discovery and development programs that create and deliver engineered cells as a treatment for different disease types. Founded by Hans Bishop, the former chief executive officer of Juno Therapeutics, Seattle-based Sana’s programs include gene delivery, immunology, stem cell biology, and gene modification and control. In 2019, Sana was initially supported by investments from Flagship Pioneering, ARCH Venture Partners & F-Prime Capital. That financial support has continued in 2020 with the latest funding for the company. In addition to those three investors, the company has been supported by Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Baillie Gifford, Alaska Permanent Fund, the Public Sector Pension Investment Board, Bezos Expeditions, GV, Omega Funds, Altitude Life Science Ventures, and multiple unnamed institutional
investors. [ biospace ]
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7.
Enterome completes €46.3 million ($52.6 million) financing to progress the clinical development of its therapeutic pipeline
A clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company leveraging its unique knowledge of the microbiome-immunoinflammation axis to develop next-generation therapeutics, today announces a new financing totaling €46.3 million ($52.6million) to progress the clinical development of its therapeutic pipeline, including the first clinical trials of EO2401, a novel ‘OncoMimic’ cancer immunotherapy. As part of this financing, Enterome has closed a Series E round with new investors including SymBiosis, LLC, a microbiome-focused investment vehicle, and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited. Existing
Enterome investors – Seventure, Health for Life Capital, Principia, Omnes Capital and Nestlé Health Science – also participated in the round. In addition, Enterome has made a first drawdown from a loan facility provided by the European Investment Bank (EIB) under a 2018 agreement. [ pharmi web ]
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8.
Chamath Palihapitiya: Why Bitcoin Will Be 'the Category Winner'
When you read about A.I. in this newsletter, you usually don't bat an eye. A.I. is "artificial intelligence," that decades-old discipline in the field of computer science that's (finally) showing some real promise lately. [ Fortune ]
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9.
The Year Ahead Revisited with TPG's Jim Coulter
While many in Silicon Valley might prefer to forget about investor Mike Rothenberg roughly four years after his young venture firm began to implode, his story is still being written, and the latest chapter doesn’t bode well for the
36-year-old. While Rothenberg earlier tangled with the Securities & Exchange Commission and lost, it was a civil matter, if one that could haunt him for the rest of his life. [ Tech Crunch ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
10.
Social network Valence wants to link Black founders with venture capitalists
A new platform launches today to make connections between Black founders and a select group of top-tier venture capitalists, two groups that too rarely find themselves on the same term sheets. Driving the news: It's part of Valence, a LinkedIn-type social network for Black professionals. Valence today also will announce a new CEO: Guy Primus, founder and former CEO of The Virtual Reality Co. Backstory: Kobie Fuller, a partner
with LA-based Upfront Ventures, says that his firm began putting diversity clauses into their funding agreements, but quickly realized that startups often didn't have adequate networks to find the best candidates. [ Axios ]
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11.
Schwarzman on China, Recovery, and Investing
Pavel Durov’s grand cryptocurrency dreams for his Telegram messaging service are ending with an $18.5 million civil settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and a pledge to return the more than $1.2 billion that investors had put into its TON digital token. The settlement ends a months long legal battle between the company and
the regulator. In October 2019 the SEC filed a complaint against Telegram alleging the company had raised capital through the sale of 2.9 billion Grams to finance its business. The SEC sought to enjoin Telegram from delivering the Grams it sold, which the regulator alleged were securities. In March, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York agreed with the SEC and issued a preliminary injunction. [ Tech Crunch ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
12.
Newzoo: games to generate $160 billion in 2020
This year, gamers will spend $159.3 billion on games. This is up 9.3% from last year. The main growth drivers are the pandemic and the upcoming launch of new consoles.
These figures are reported by Newzoo in their latest report . The company is predicting an increase in the market’s revenue and the number of gamers. Here is the most important stats from the document:
Revenues by segment - The largest segment is mobile games. They will have generated $77.2 billion by the end of the year (an increase of 13.3%).
- The console segment will grow 6.8% to $45.2 billion.
- The PC segment will grow to $33.9 billion, which is 6.7% more than last year’s revenue.
- Revenues for browser games will drop 13.4% to $33.9 billion. Newzoo notes that more and more players are switching from browsers to smartphones. [ game world observer ]
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13.
Virtual events startup Hopin raises $40M to scale up its platform during pandemic
Virtual events platform startup Hopin Ltd. said today it has raised $40 million in new funding to scale up its platform to meet soaring demand driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Series A round was led by IVP and included Salesforce Ventures, Accel, Northzone, Seedcamp and Slack Fund. Founded in 2019, Hopin offers an all-in-one live online events platform
designed to connect distributed communities. The company’s platform differs from other videoconferencing services in that it’s designed from the ground up to provide support for conferences including the management of stages, networking, breakout sessions, sponsors, tickets and analytics. [ siliconangle ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
14.
Chamath Palihapitiya wants to be the Warren Buffett of tech investing
Social Capital CEO Chamath Palihapitiya has high ambitions. He wants to be the tech generation’s Warren Buffett. The former Facebook executive is no stranger to turmoil. In recent years, his venture capital fund, Social Capital, closed to new funding amid an internal
shakeup that led to the exit of several major investing partners—but despite the turnover, Palihapitiya has lofty goals. “I think Social Capital is stronger than ever,” he told Term Sheet, when asked if he plans to build up his fund again. “I don’t think [Social Capital] will be a venture capital firm. I think eventually what I’ll do is I’ll take Social Capital public: My ambition is to be our generation’s Berkshire Hathaway.” As part of that, Palihapitiya, who has invested in the likes of Slack, has turned his attention to later-stage companies through his Special Purpose Acquisition Companies, or so-called blank check companies that allow the investor to acquire a private company to take it public. Palihaptiya last took space tourism company Virgin Galactic public by partnering with Richard Branson in 2019. [ Fortune ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
15.
Aye Finance Raises Another $27.5M Amid Pandemic
Bucking the coronavirus-driven economic downturn, Indian FinTech Aye Finance on Wednesday (June 24) said it had raised $27.5 million from a group of investors led by the private equity arm of Alphabet, Google’s corporate parent. The Gurgaon-based startup, which has built a digital lending platform for small businesses, took to Twitter to announce the news of the cash infusion by Alphabet’s CapitalG, as well as current investors A91 Partners, MAJ Invest, LGT Lightstone and Falcon Edge Capital, who also chipped in. [ Pymnts ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
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