Tech giant Intel’s move to acquire automotive tech firm Mobileye created a new billionaire on Monday. Intel announced a $15.3 billion bid for Mobileye on Monday morning, causing the Israeli company’s share price to jump 28% to $60.62 a share. That turned Shmuel Harlap, an Israeli businessman in the car importing industry and an early investor in Mobileye, into Israel’s newest billionaire. Harlap has a 7.2% stake in the company, according to a January filing with to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, worth $953 million at the close of trading Monday. He sold 3.6 million shares of Mobileye during 2016, filings show, netting at least $65 million after taxes, FORBES estimates. Harlap could not be reached for comment. [ Forbes ] It's a well-documented fact that female founders receive less venture capital funding than their male counterparts. What is perhaps more surprising is that things haven't improved—and have actually worsened—over the past year. Venture capitalists invested $58.2 billion in companies with all-male founders in 2016. Meanwhile, women received just $1.46 billion in VC money last year, according to data from M&A, private equity, and venture capital database PitchBook. That massive disparity is due both to the differences in the number of deals and the average deal size by gender. [ Fortune ] For upcoming Disrupt New York in May, 8 pitches took place on March 13th at 7pm at the Knotel space at 22 West 38th Street, 4th Floor. In order to win two Disrupt New York ticket Following startup were pitched on BandHub, OLIKA, VenturePulse, Workshop, Flytechnista, Adventurely, StyleKist and Reefill. [ Venture Pulse ] LATEST FUNDING Japanese financial conglomerate SBI Holdings Inc and a subsidiary of German media company Bertelsmann SE & Co KGaA have backed Berlin-based solarisBank AG, a fully licensed startup bank that enables businesses to offer digital financial services to their customers, solarisBank executives said on Monday. They said the bank has raised 26.3 million euros ($28 million) from investors including SBI Holdings, the former investment arm of Japans e-commerce company SoftBank Group Corp , and Arvato Financial Solutions, Bertelsmann's financial services group. Existing investors including German technology company builder FinLeap and venture firm yabeo Capital also participated in the new
round. [ CNBC ] Packed Food delivering startup iD Fresh, has raised Series B funding of $25 Million (Rs.166 Crore) from the investment arm of Wipro billionaire Azim Premji and gains 25% stake in the startup. Previously, in October 2014 the startup raised Series A funding of Rs 35 crore from Helion Venture Partners. [ Indian Ceo ] The deadline to file taxes is coming up, meaning accountants will have a pile of work in the coming weeks. Canopy, a startup that provides the software tax professionals use to streamline their work, announced today a new round of $20 million. Certified public accountants (CPAs), enrolled agents, and tax attorneys use Canopy for various purposes. “Canopy is a hybrid of fintech and regtech,” wrote founder and chief executive Kurt Avarell in an email to VentureBeat. From smart tax analytics to online invoicing and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) transcript reporting, the software is versatile. [ Venture Beat ] Pitching a “codeless” user interface that allows anyone in a business to develop applications for business intelligence, Skuid has raised $25 million in new financing. Based in Chattanooga, Tenn., Skuid is indicative of the type of startup that is cropping up outside of the traditional innovation hubs of Silicon Valley and San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles and New York. In some ways, the company is an example of the “reverse gold rush” that investors predicted on this site as early as three years ago. [ Tech Crunch ] Global research platform Streetbees has raised $5.1m in a Seed round led by BGF Ventures. Existing backers Octopus Ventures, an investor in Kabbee and Swiftkey; and LocalGlobe also participated in the round. Streetbees leverages AI and mobile geolocation technology, along with social media, to gather data from consumers and give brands insights into real-time consumption. [ Tech City News ] EXITS It looks like Snap’s (at least perceived) successful IPO has officially opened the window: Following Yext officially filing for an IPO this afternoon, identity management software company Okta just dropped its official filing for an IPO. After much hand-wringing about whether or not 2017 would avoid last year’s fate of an IPO drought, we’ve seen three IPOs all within the span of about a month and a half. Okta, like Yext, is looking to raise up to $100 million as of the Securities and Exchange Commission filing today. With Cisco snapping up AppDynamics right before it went public, investors and companies were waiting to see if there was actually some appetite for IPOs — which, apparently, there is plenty. [ Tech Crunch ]
FUND RAISED Notation Capital, a Brooklyn, NY-based pre-seed venture capital firm, is seeking to raise its $25m second fund. Per an SEC filing, Notation Capital II, LP, the fund has not raised any sum, yet. Co-founded by partners Nicholas Chirls and Alex Lines, Notation Capital focuses on pre-seed stage and pre-product-market fit startups based in NYC helping them with team and product building, customer development and fundraising. The firm invests in Internet infrastructure companies adding Computer Vision and/or Machine Learning components and companies that are building technology driven solutions to fundamentally change how old industries function. [ Miami Herald ] Curated by Venture Pulse Team. Find us on : [ Venturepulse.org, CrunchBase, AngelList ] |