Good day. Plaid’s $5.3 billion sale to Visa supports the idea that infrastructure rather than consumer apps is where it’s at when it comes to returns in fintech.

“Plaid, essentially, helped unleash an entire world of financial services innovation,” said Mo Koyfman, who led the seed round in Plaid in 2013, as a then-partner at Spark Capital. Plaid customers, such as startups Betterment and Chime, “could not deliver the kind of customer experience they wanted without an enabler like Plaid,” Mr. Koyfman said.

The Plaid deal is a win for Spark Capital, which led the seed round, at a pre-money valuation of about $10 million. In addition, NEA led the Series A round, and additional investors included Andreessen Horowitz, Goldman Sachs, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Digital Growth Fund and Norwest Venture Partners.

While Plaid focuses on infrastructure, the deal could be good news for the fintech sector generally, which has been in search of exits after a number of companies raised funding at high valuations.

And now on to the news...

Carbon impact fund. Venture firm Fifth Wall Ventures is planning a new sustainability fund that would help real-estate companies meet growing pressure to reduce carbon emissions from their buildings, WSJ Pro's Yuliya Chernova reports exclusively. 

• Fifth Wall, which is backed by real estate corporations, is preparing to raise roughly $200 million for its Carbon Impact Fund, said partner Tyson Woeste.
   
• The fund is a response to a series of local laws and demands from activist tenants, as well as requirements imposed by public investors with social responsibility mandates, that are pushing real-estate companies to address the carbon footprint of buildings.
   
• That is increasing demand for energy efficiency, water reuse, decarbonization, climate resilience and risk management products and services, Mr. Woeste said.
   
• Mr. Woeste is expected to run the fund alongside Brendan Wallace, Fifth Wall’s co-founder and managing partner.                                                      

Fintech deal. Visa said Monday it would buy Plaid for $5.3 billion, as part of an effort by the card giant to tap into consumers’ growing use of financial-technology apps and noncard payments, the Journal reports. More consumers over the past decade have been using financial-services apps to manage their savings and spending, and Plaid sits in the middle of those relationships, providing software that gives the apps access to financial accounts. Venmo, PayPal’s money-transfer service, is one of privately held Plaid’s biggest customers.

Strong VC year. Venture capital investing remained strong and valuations kept rising in 2019, according to PitchBook Data. Total U.S. venture capital deals by value dipped to $136.5 billion from 2018's record level of $140.2 billion. Total VC deals increased to 10,777 from 10,542 in 2018. Valuations rose across all stages. Angel and seed deals remained strong at $9.1 billion, compared with $9.2 billion in 2018, as did early stage deals, with $42.3 billion in total, compared with $43.3 billion in 2018. Late stage deals reached a record 2,597, but deal value fell to $85.1 billion from $87.7 billion in 2018. 

Cell therapy. Startup Kyverna Therapeutics has raised $25 million in venture capital and formed a partnership with biotech giant Gilead Sciences that could pay it nearly $588 million to pursue treating or curing autoimmune diseases using patients’ own cells. Kyverna raised the Series A from Gilead, Vida Ventures and Westlake Village BioPartners. Vida and Westlake led the financing. The startup also struck a collaboration and licensing agreement with Gilead in which Gilead will pay Kyverna $17.5 million initially and up to $570 million more if development and commercialization goals are reached. Several companies, including Gilead, are using cell therapy to stimulate an immune response to cancer, but Kyverna is taking a new approach by using cells to take on autoimmune diseases.

Funds

Obvious Ventures increased the amount raised in its third fund to $271.8 million, according to an amended regulatory filing. A July 2019 filing showed the firm raising $154 million for the fund. Obvious portfolio companies include Beyond Meat, Proterra and Diamond Foundry.

Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. launched Goodyear Ventures with $100 million to invest in mobility technology startups over the next ten years.

People

Icon Ventures named Preeti Rathi as general partner. Ms. Rathi joins from Ignition Partners, where she was a partner focused on business-to-business software investments.

Venrock promoted Ethan Batraski and Racquel Bracken to partner, and named Todd Graham to vice president in the Palo Alto office. Mr. Batraski invests in frontier tech and enterprise software, and previously held leadership positions at Facebook, Box and Yahoo! In addition to her position at Venrock, Ms. Bracken serves as chief executive of Federation Bio. Prior to Venrock, where she focuses on biotechnology, Ms. Bracken worked at Clovis Oncology. Mr. Graham joins Venrock to lead efforts in security and infrastructure. He was most recently at Cisco Systems, where he led corporate strategy for the security and collaboration businesses.

Lux Capital said retired 4-star general and former commander of U.S. Special Operations Command Tony “T2” Thomas joined the firm as a venture partner.

Exits

Publicly traded Teladoc Health Inc. agreed to acquire InTouch Health Inc., a provider of enterprise telehealth services for hospitals and health systems, for $600 million in cash and stock. Santa Barbara, Calif.-based InTouch's investors include Galen Partners, InvestCare Partners and Beringea.

Healthcare credential verification startup CredSimple acquired Glenridge Health, which manages provider networks, for an undisclosed amount. New York-based CredSimple raised a $14 million Series B round from Questa Capital, Windham Venture Partners and Primary Ventures in June 2019. Glenridge, of Columbia, Md., is backed by investors including Enhanced Healthcare Partners and Biomark Capital.

Technology infrastructure software provider LogicMonitor Inc. acquired AIOps company Unomaly for an undisclosed sum. Stockholm-based Unomaly is backed by EQT Ventures. LogicMonitor, of Santa Barbara, Calif., was acquired by private-equity firm Vista Equity Partners in 2018.

Thoma Bravo-backed healthcare supply chain technology platform Global Healthcare Exchange bought healthcare data and analytics provider Lumere for an undisclosed amount. Lumere counted Spectrum Health Ventures, Heritage Group, FCA Venture Partners and Jump Capital as backers.

Hesai, a Shanghai-based Lidar startup, closed a $173 million Series C round of funding. Robert Bosch GmBH and Lightspeed Venture Partners led the investment, which included participation from ON Semiconductor, Qiming Venture Partners, DT Capital Partners and Axiom Asia Private Capital.

Concerto HealthAI, a Boston-based precision oncology company, scored $150 million in Series B funding. Declaration Partners led the round, which included participation from Maverick Ventures, AllianceBernstein PCI and SymphonyAI Group. Andrew Goldfarb from Declaration and Leif Pedersen from SymphonyAI will join the company’s board.

Bigfoot Biomedical Inc., a Milpitas, Calif.-based developer of insulin dosing technology for diabetes patients, raised $45 million in Series C financing. Abbott Laboratories led the round, with participation from investors including Quadrant Capital Advisors, Senvest Capital, Janus Henderson and Cormorant Asset Management.

CareBridge, a Nashville, Tenn.-based startup aiming to improve care for individuals receiving long-term support service, launched with more $40 million in funding. Oak HC/FT led the investment, with participation from GV and others. Former U.S. Senator Bill Frist serves as chairman of CareBridge’s board.

Inflammatix Inc., a Burlingame, Calif.-based molecular diagnostics startup, picked up $32 million in Series C financing. New investors including Grey Sky Venture Partners provided the investment, along with existing backers Khosla Ventures, Northpond Ventures and Think.Health Ventures.

Vesta Healthcare, a New York-based provider of care management services for older adults, completed a $30 million Series A round co-led by Oak HC/FT and Deerfield Management. New investors Generator Ventures, CareCentrix, Epstein Partners and Nationwide Ventures also participated, along with previous backers Lux Capital and Kaiser Permanente Ventures. Bharath Ganesan, principal at Deerfield, joined the board.

DrChrono Inc., a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based provider of medical practice management software, landed $20 million in growth capital from ORIX Growth Capital.

Locale, an Austin, Texas-based provider of furnished apartments for short- or long-term stays, nabbed an $11 million Series A investment. Amplo Ventures led the round, and was joined by Susa Ventures, Malkin Holdings, Rogue Insight Capital and Metropolis Capital Partners.

Ringmaster Technologies, an Overland Park, Kansas-based workflow optimization provider for the healthcare sector, grabbed a $5 million growth investment led by Edison Partners. Partner Gregg Michaelson joined the board.

Abacode Inc., a Tampa, Fla.-based cybersecurity and compliance services provider, raised a $4.9 million Series A growth equity investment. Ballast Point Ventures led the round, with Sean Barkman joining the board.

Embodied Labs Inc., a Los Angeles-based startup using virtual reality for aging-care workforce training, was seeded with a $3.2 million investment. Ziegler Link-Age Funds led the round, which included contributions from Venture Reality Fund, SustainVC, WXR Fund and ETF@JFFLabs.

• A month after she said she'd step down as chief executive of online luggage seller Away, Steph Korey now says she is keeping her job.                     

• Inside Google’s quest for millions of medical records.     

• A leading medical society is calling on Myriad Genetics and other lab companies to share proprietary data from their genetic testing in a public database, to help the scientific community better assess the disease-causing risk of mutations.

• ‘We need to be a technology company.’ Wells Fargo struggles with aging systems.  

• Facebook may have a virtual reality hit on its hands. It’s about time.

• The next five things that will make your phone work better.

• How to invest in startups. (Sam Altman)
   
• Law firm startup Atrium lays off most of its lawyers. (Axios)
   
• App tracking alert in iOS 13 has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry (Apple Insider)
   
• Academic research finds five US telcos vulnerable to SIM swapping attacks. (ZDNet)
   
• Cloudera taps former head of the company it merged with to be its new CEO. (CNBC)

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

The Team: Tomio Geron, Yuliya Chernova, Brian Gormley, Heather Mack, Katie Roof and Marc Vartabedian.

Follow us on Twitter: @wsjvc, @tomiogeron, @ychernova, @BrianPGormley, @1heathermack, @katie_roof, @marcvarta.