1.
Self-driving trucks startup TuSimple raises $350M from US rail, retail and freight giants
Self-driving trucks startup TuSimple has closed a $350 million funding round from a diverse consortium of strategic investors that include major U.S. corporations in rail, retail and freight, according to sources familiar with the deal. The round, which was oversubscribed, was led by VectoIQ LLC, confirming a report by TechCrunch in September. VectoIQ is the consulting and investment company founded by Steve Girsky, the former GM vice chairman, consultant and investor whose special
purpose acquisition company merged with hydrogen electric startup Nikola Corp. this summer. [ Tech Crunch ]
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2.
Silicon Valley start-up Carta to launch private stock market in new year
The $3.1bn Silicon Valley software start-up Carta will launch its long-awaited private share-trading market in the new year, following months of delays as it addressed regulatory concerns. The company said on Wednesday that its private stock market, CartaX, will begin listing companies in January. Carta will be the first group to offer its shares for trading, followed by three others that it declined to name. Carta’s announcement had been eagerly anticipated in Silicon Valley, where tensions have emerged between ageing start-ups and employees who hold large chunks of their wealth in stock. This has fuelled private secondary markets, where an estimated $30bn in shares change hands annually, according to Sacra, a start-up providing research on private
companies. [ Financial Times ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
Special:
SoftBank Bets on Logistics Startup at $500 Million Valuation
SoftBank Group Corp.’s Vision Fund 2 is leading a $113.5 million investment round in a California-based startup seeking to change the way goods get trucked around the U.S. Flock Freight, a company that is applying advanced algorithms to the freight business, closed on the investment last week. The deal values Flock at close to $500 million, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private information. The startup is seeking to rethink the widely used hub-and-spoke system in trucking, in which networks of trucks shuttle goods via intermediary locations. Hub-and-spoke trucking has become the main way to ship less than a full truckload of freight. That segment is worth more
than $40 billion annually, the company said, and remains highly fragmented. [ Bloomberg ]
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3.
Despite Covid conference freeze, Israel’s Bizzabo completes $138 million funding round
Event planning startup Bizzabo Inc. announced Wednesday it has completed a $138 million series E investment round. The round was led by Insight Partners with the participation of Viola Growth, Siemens AG investment arm Next47, and OurCrowd. Part of the round includes the secondary purchase of shares from existing investors. Bizzabo declined to address the size of the secondary portion of the deal but noted that it was open to prior investors and veteran employees in addition to the founders. The company also failed to note the number of employees who could realize their stock options. One of the reasons for the substantial size of the round, alongside the desire to grow the company, is the desire of many investors to take part in the round and the
purchase of employee and founder’s shares. [ calcalistech ]
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4.
Microsoft's venture arm M12 leads series A investment in Andor Health
With the boom in virtual care, Andor Health is seeing rapid growth as its technology platform supports remote patient care. Andor Health's ThinkAndor platform uses artificial intelligence to provide support for functions such as virtual clinical visits. The Orlando, Florida-based company just landed an investment from Microsoft's venture arm to help expand into new markets. Microsoft's M12 venture fund led Andor Health's series A fundraising round with an undisclosed investment. [ fierce healthcare ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
5.
Seattle startup Flexe raises $70M as e-commerce rise fuels demand for flexible warehousing platform
Flexe is raising more capital ahead of schedule as the pandemic-driven e-commerce boom spurs faster-than-expected growth for its warehousing technology platform. The Seattle startup announced a $70 million Series C round led by new investor T. Rowe Price, with participation from existing backers Activate Capital, Tiger Global, Madrona Venture Group, Redpoint Ventures, Prologis Ventures, and others. Total funding to date in the 7-year-old company is $134 million. Flexe originally planned to raise another round sometime next year. But
investors were ready to put more fuel into the business given its recent metrics. [ geek wire ]
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6.
Virta Health Raises $65 Million Series D to Scale Type 2 Diabetes Reversal Treatments
Virta Health, the first company dedicated to reversing type 2 diabetes without medications or surgery, today announced that it has raised $65 million in Series D funding. Led by Sequoia Capital Global Equities, the financing will support the growing demand for Virta’s reversal treatments for type 2 diabetes and other chronic metabolic conditions. Virta’s approach—to restore metabolic health and eliminate the need for costly medications like insulin—has led to over 150%
year-over-year growth while attracting more than 100 large payers from all parts of industry and government. "We partnered with Virta for their ability to deliver unmatched health improvement and cost savings—two clear differentiators from other offerings on the market,” said William Ashmore, CEO of the State Employees’ Insurance Board of Alabama. “Especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic, it's vital that we provide our members the life-changing results Virta is known for delivering, through expert, virtual care delivered right to their home." [ calcalistech ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
7.
A Genentech-partnered Vijay Pande favorite nabs $52M to advance an AI pipeline
Evan Feinberg could have picked a better time to launch his AI biotech, Genesis. He announced a $4.1 million round last November; by March, South San Francisco, California was under lockdown. Still, a year later, he can look back at his early tenure with a certain degree of satisfaction. “To see the things we’ve accomplished, all from my couch?” Feinberg told Endpoints News. “It’s really bizarre.” As with most early-stage biotechs, it’s difficult to verify precisely what they’ve accomplished, but Genesis Therapeutics has managed to check some key boxes: They’ve expanded the team from 5 members to 12. In October, James Sabry and Aviv Regev at Genentech tapped them to help discover new molecules. And with
some internal proof-of-concept data to show investors, they announced today a $52 million Series A round to help them land more big-name partners and advance an internal pipeline of small molecule drugs. [ endpts ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
8.
Facebook And Celebrities Like Justin Timberlake Join $50 Million Series B For FinTech Startup Step
Silicon Valley FinTech startup Step has raised $50 million in a Series B funding round, the company announced Wednesday (Dec. 2). The funding round was led by new investor Coatue Management, a slew of celebrity backers and Big Tech executives. Founded in 2018 and launched in October, the all-in-one banking app has a half-million users and is geared toward teenagers and young adults to help them gain financial independence. Additional new investors included celebrities like Justin Timberlake, The
Chainsmokers, Eli Manning, Charli D’Amelio, Kelvin Beachum, Larry Fitzgerald and Andre Iguodala. Participating tech investors included executives from Facebook, Square, Venmo, Visa and others. To date, Step has raised more than $75 million from investors, including $22.5 million in a June Series A funding round led by Stripe. Stripe invested in this round as well, as did returning investors Crosslink Capital, Collaborative Fund and Will Smith’s Dreamers VC. [ pymnts ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
9.
Israel's Mitrassist Medical raises $50 million for medical valve development
Israeli medical device startup Mitrassist Medical announced on Wednesday that it has raised $50 million at a valuation of $300 million. Investors in the company include China's Fosun Pharma and insurance company Ping-An. Four large Chinese funds also joined the current round. The company had previously raised approximately $35 million. The startup has developed a medical valve that is inserted into a catheter for symptomatic patients with primary or secondary mitral regurgitation, who are at high risk for surgery or with prevention of surgery. It began successful human trials about a year ago, and plans to hit the market in about two years. [ calcalistech ]
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10.
STORD’S $31M SERIES B SHOWS STRENGTH OF ATLANTA’S SUPPLY CHAIN ECOSYSTEM
When Stord co-founders Sean Henry and Jacob Boudreau pivoted into the warehouse logistics space in 2017, they knew fixing supply chain problems for brands of all sizes was an important problem. What they didn’t know was that a global pandemic would show the world just how important fixing the problem would be. From its Midtown Atlanta headquarters, Stord has built a ‘Cloud Supply Chain’ and distribution network that helps brands gain visibility into their inventory through
their software. [ hypepotamus ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
11.
Spanish startup Jeff nabs $21 million for its platform that allows people to offer day-to-day services
Valencia-based Jeff, a tech startup that enables aspiring micro-entrepreneurs to offer home-delivered laundry and dry cleaning, hairdressing, beauty, fitness and wellness services to others, has scored $21 million in funding as it prepares to enter the US market. Jeff was created in 2015 by a trio of Spanish entrepreneurs – Eloi Gómez, Adrián Lorenzo and Rubén Muñoz – as a home laundry and dry-cleaning app, but it has since expanded on the number of services people can
offer (under the business lines of the Jeff umbrella brand). It now aims to be known as “the ultimate platform for entrepreneurs with the ‘business in a box’ concept”, offering business management, data intelligence, analytics and training tools to help people kickstart a micro-services business under the Jeff brand. Needless to say, it hopes the turmoil caused by the coronavirus pandemic will lead to a lot more people needing extra or new income. [ tech.eu ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our
platform.
12.
Israel’s Databand raises $14.5 million series A, led by Accel, to develop unified data monitoring platform
Israeli startup Databand, which develops a platform that enables data engineers to monitor the health of their pipelines, has raised a $14.5 million series A round, led by Accel with participation from Blumberg Capital, Lerer Hippeau, Ubiquity Ventures, Differential Ventures, F2 Venture Capital, and Bessemer Venture Partners. Founded in 2019 by Josh Benamram, Victor Shafran and Evgeny Shulman, Databand has developed a unified data pipeline observability solution that’s purpose-built for data engineers. Data engineers, which is the most in-demand role in tech according to the 2020 Dice report, are responsible for making sure that pipelines are stable and data is delivered on time. Databand’s platform works by ingesting pipeline metadata, including
logs, runtime info, and data profiles. It synthesizes this information from multiple tools, such as Airflow, Spark, and Snowflake, into one platform to help users understand bottlenecks, errors, and anomalies in real-time. When a problem is detected, Databand can drill in across layers of tools and point users to the root cause. [ calcalistech ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
13.
Space Perspective raises $7M for its plan to ferry tourists to the edge of space
Space tourism startup Space Perspective has raised a new $7 million in seed funding from investors including Prime Movers Lab and Base Ventures . The company, founded by Jane Poynter and Taber MacCallum, who previously founded stratospheric balloon company World View, is focused on developing Spaceship Neptune, a pressurized passenger capsule that is meant to be carried by an ultra-high altitude balloon to the very edge of space to provide passengers with an unparalleled view. [ Tech Crunch ]
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14.
It's Supposed to Be Hard. You're Changing the World
“It’s the Finals. It’s hard. It’s supposed to be hard.” After Game 2 of the NBA Finals Steve Kerr said this to Steph Curry as they walked through the tunnel to the locker room after a loss. What’s true for basketball is also true for startups - at least in this case. With all the news of unicorns and IPOs and acquisitions driven by the broader market, teams can fall into a trap to think building a startup into a success is easier for others. But I can tell you more
than 12 years into my career as a venture capitalist, it’s hard. It’s always hard. Even for the ones that make it look easy from the outside. We’ve had the privilege to partner with some iconic companies. Let me pull back the curtain: all of them have had their tough days. Missing a quarter. Failing to close a key hire. Receiving a rejection, or 20 nos, from potential financing partners. Struggling to re-energize after a derailed acquisition process. Fearing the rise of a competitor. Cutting costs to reduce burn and buy time to get the product right. Rebuilding trust after arguments amongst founders. Managing the
psyche of a team throughout the rollercoaster of everyday startup life. [ Tomasz Tunguz ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
15.
Floww raises $6.7M for its data-driven marketplace matching founders with investors, based on merit
Floww — a data-driven marketplace designed to allow founders to pitch investors, with the whole investment relationship managed online — says it has raised $6.7 million (£5 million) to date in seed funding from angels and family offices. Investors include Ramon Mendes De Leon, Duncan Simpson-Craib, Angus Davidson, Stephane Delacote and Pip Baker (Google’s head of Fintech U.K.) and multiple family offices. The cash will be used to build out the platform designed to give startups access to more than 500 VCs,
accelerators and angel networks. [ Tech Crucnh ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
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