Good day. Jobber, a Canadian startup that makes operations-management software for home-services businesses, said Tuesday it has raised $100 million in a Series D round led by venture investing firm General Atlantic, a new investor.

Returning investors in the round include Summit Partners, Version One Ventures and Tech Pioneers Fund, the startup said. Jobber didn’t disclose its post-money valuation.

The 12-year-old startup, based in Edmonton, Alberta, said it would use the new capital to support research and development and marketing, among other areas. Since its last funding round, in January 2021, Jobber said it surpassed $100 million in revenue in 2022 and this year is on pace to reach $175 million.

Jobber’s software helps small home-service providers—in areas like house cleaning, electrical or plumbing repairs, painting and landscaping—to manage orders, as well as scheduling, billing, marketing and other business operations. It has roughly 200,000 business customers who, to date, have served a combined 27 million households in more than 60 countries, the company said.

Jobber was well-positioned during the Covid-19 pandemic, when lockdowns and other restrictions forced many companies to quickly shift to remote work—an operating model Jobber was built on from the start, its investors say.

Aaron Goldman, managing director and head of enterprise technology at General Atlantic, said the investing firm was impressed by Jobber’s focus on helping home-services entrepreneurs “build their own businesses and spend more time serving clients.”

And now on to the news ...

3-D printing startups. Venture capitalists invested a record amount of capital into 3-D printing startups last year despite a slower market where investors broadly curbed investing, WSJ Pro's Marc Vartabedian reports.

• Investors are drawn to these companies because they are on the precipice of being able to use their technology to manufacture components at scale for critical sectors such as semiconductors and aerospace. For many, that would mean transforming from being a niche product manufacturer to being a mass producer, investors say.
   
• Some of these startups say that a White House initiative launched in May that encourages legacy industrial companies to use 3-D printing startups as suppliers is providing a boost.

Corporate travel-and-expense software startup TripActions on Tuesday rebranded itself as Navan, with plans to integrate OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot capabilities across its online platform, The Wall Street Journal reports. With ChatGPT capabilities built in, the Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup said its travel-booking chatbot will be able to learn a user's preferred airlines, hotels and restaurants, and incorporate these options into a proposed itinerary, while leveraging natural-language models to respond to voice commands. “It’s kind of like this weird anomaly where consumer travel changed a lot and business travel stayed the same,” Ben Horowitz, co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, said of the startup's goal of building a user-friendly travel-expenses app.

Alphabet Inc.'s Google is rolling out a new conversational artificial-intelligence service to a select set of testers, and plans a broader public launch in coming weeks, part of the company’s effort to play catch-up with challengers such as OpenAI, creator of the popular chatbot ChatGPT, WSJ reports. 

• The new experimental service, called Bard, generates textual responses to questions posed by users, based on information drawn from the web, Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said in a blog post published Monday.
• Google’s new products come amid a flurry of announcements by rival Microsoft Corp. about its use of AI technologies developed by OpenAI. Microsoft said last month it is making a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment in the San Francisco AI startup.

Pandemic-era darlings like Carvana Co., Coinbase Global Inc. and Peloton Interactive Inc. are back on top of the stock market’s leaderboard, all more than doubling to start the year, as traders pile back into speculative stocks in some of the riskiest corners of the market, WSJ reports. After a punishing 2022 when investors dumped shares of speculative stocks, they are now betting the Federal Reserve’s work to cool inflation is nearly done and the central bank will pivot to cutting interest rates as soon as later this year.  

People

Climate-focused PowerPlant Partners promoted Kathryn Cicoletti to chief operating officer and Jigar Majmundar to vice president. Ms. Cicoletti joined the firm in 2021 as head of investor relations and marketing. Mr. Majmundar was an investor at Touchdown Ventures before joining PowerPlant.

Transeo, a platform for connecting work-based learning opportunities to K-12 schools, named Cecilia Retelle Zywicki as chief executive. She was most recently chief operating officer of PresenceLearning and SRC. Transeo counts Osage Venture Partners, Wintrust Ventures and SSC Venture Partners as investors.

StarTree Inc., whose software enables business customers to derive advanced insights from data, appointed Jeff Miller as chief revenue officer. He most recently served as CRO of Cockroach Labs. Last year, Mountain View, Calif.-based StarTree raised a $47 million Series B round from GGV Capital, Sapphire Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures and CRV.

Deals

Online fraud prevention startup SEON acquired anti-money laundering startup Complytron for an undisclosed amount. SEON is backed by investors including IVP, Creandum and PortfoLion.

Magic.dev, a San Francisco-based startup that is developing an artificial intelligence-powered software engineer, landed $23 million in Series A funding. CapitalG led the round, which included participation from Amplify Partners and Elad Gil. CapitalG Partner Jill Chase will join the company’s board.

Byborre, an Amsterdam-based textile supply chain software developer, raised €16.9 million ($18.3 million) in Series B funding. Led by Invest-NL and VP Capital, the round included contributions from Shift Invest, Amsterdams Klimaat en Energiefonds and others.

Liminal, an Emeryville, Calif.-based battery technology startup, collected a $17.5 million Series A2 round led by ArcTern Ventures. New investors Northvolt and Ecosystem Integrity Fund also joined in the funding, alongside previous backers Chrysalix Venture Capital, Good Growth Capital, University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners, Volta Energy Technologies, Impact Science Ventures and Helios Climate Ventures. Mira Inbar, a partner at ArcTern, will join the board. Liminal was founded in 2015 and focuses on providing data and analytics in electric vehicle battery manufacturing.

Riot, a cybersecurity platform for employee protection, picked up a $12 million investment. Led by Base10 Partners, the round included contributions from Y Combinator, Funders Club and Founders Future.

Slingshot Biosciences, an Emeryville, Calif.-based startup developing synthetic cells for a range of applications in diagnostics and therapeutics, closed an $11 million Series A3 round. ARCH Venture Partners and Northpond Ventures led the investment, which included additional support from Anterra Capital.

Elementus, a New York-based blockchain data intelligence platform, secured $10 million in Series A2 financing led by ParaFi Capital. The company is also backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Velvet Sea Ventures, Pomp Investments, Morgan Creek Digital Assets and Avon Ventures. 

Peggy, a Toronto-based contemporary art marketplace, snagged a 10.8 million Canadian dollar (about $8 million) investment from Real Ventures, Z Venture Capital, GarageCapital, Portage and others.

Simple HealthKit Inc., a Fremont, Calif.-based provider of end-to-end diagnostic and digital health services, nabbed $8 million in Series A funding. Lead investor Initialized Capital was joined by Kleiner Perkins, Kapor Capital and Quest Venture Partners in the round.

Medihive, an Ireland-based health technology platform, secured a €7 million investment (about $7.5 million) from ResMed and VentureWave Capital, valuing the company at €62 million.

Cenoa, a fintech startup helping users access dollar-based products in emerging markets, was seeded with a $7 million investment. Quiet Capital and Underscore VC led the round, which saw participation from Human Capital, Ulu Ventures, Acrew Capital, CollectiveSpark and others.

cellvie Inc., a cell-derived medicine startup with offices in Houston and Switzerland, completed a $5.5 million investment. Taiho Ventures led the round and was joined by Kizoo Technology Capital.

Latys, a Montreal-based startup whose drop-in antenna extends wireless signals without interference, was seeded with a $3 million investment led by Rhapsody Venture Partners.

• Dell to lay off more than 6,500 workers or 5% of workforce
   
• Judge releases decision approving Meta’s virtual-reality deal
   
• When does Elon Musk sleep? Billionaire speaks of limits to fixing Twitter and his back pain
   
• Tesla nudges up Model Y prices
   
• How Sam Bankman-Fried’s psychiatrist became a key player at crypto exchange FTX

• Seattle venture fund Fuse has eyes on Portland (The Business Journals)
   
• Could venture builders be the key to building successful startups in a downturn? (Sifted)

This newsletter was compiled by Angus Loten and Zachary Cole.

WSJ Pro Venture Capital is a premium service of The Wall Street Journal. We cover venture capital and the global startup ecosystem. Share your tips, comments and questions: vcnews@wsj.com

The Team: Matthew Strozier, Yuliya Chernova, Brian Gormley, Angus Loten, and Marc Vartabedian.

Follow us on Twitter: @wsjvc