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Omega Gets $85 Million in Funding; Sports-Focused SPAC Launched; TransferWise Valued at $5 Billion
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Good day. Shared moped startup Revel has shut down its New York City operations after two people were killed in separate incidents riding the vehicles.
A 32-year-old man was killed after 3 a.m. Tuesday while riding in Queens. On July 18, a reporter with the local CBS television station was killed while riding on the back of a Revel scooter in Brooklyn.
Revel, which first launched in New York in 2018, has raised about $38 million from investors including LaunchCapital, Maniv Mobility, Toyota AI Ventures and Ibex Investors, according to PitchBook. The mopeds had grown popular during the pandemic as people sought to avoid subways and buses.
In a tweet Tuesday announcing the New York shutdown, Revel said it is “reviewing and strengthening our rider accountability and safety measures.”
Other venture-backed mobility startups providing scooters have also come under scrutiny for safety issues.
And now on to the news...
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Omega is also developing drug programs in genetic, autoimmune, inflammatory and metabolic diseases, Chief Executive Mahesh Karande said. PHOTO: OMEGA THERAPEUTICS
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Genomic medicine. Omega Therapeutics Inc., a biotechnology startup founded by Flagship Pioneering in 2017, has secured $85 million in Series A and B funding to test its new strategies for treating disease at the genomic level in clinical trials, WSJ Pro’s Brian Gormley reports.
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Most drugmakers develop compounds that interact with disease proteins. Omega is instead looking upstream to the controls on genes that produce proteins, an approach it hopes will yield new treatments for cancer, rare genetic diseases, metabolic disorders and other illnesses.
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Omega’s drugs would dial gene activity up or down, depending on the disease. The company expects to begin its first clinical trials in 2021, but hasn’t yet revealed which disorder it will target first.
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Sports SPAC. Private-equity firm RedBird Capital Partners is teaming up with Oakland Athletics executive Billy Beane to launch the first-ever special purpose acquisition company dedicated to sports, The Wall Street Journal reports. The SPAC, which will be known as RedBall Acquisition Corp., has set out to raise $500 million to focus on businesses in sports, and sports-related media and data analytics, according to a regulatory filing Tuesday. Possible targets could include professional sports franchises or leagues, according to the filing.
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Secondary deal. Payments company TransferWise was valued at $5 billion in a secondary deal in which existing shareholders sold $319 million worth of shares. New investor D1 Capital Partners and existing shareholder Lone Pine Capital led the deal.
London-based TransferWise said that despite the coronavirus pandemic and global recession, the company added customers and increased payments volumes.
That is in contrast to predictions for the overall payments industry by some analysts. Bain & Co., for example, noted in April that it expected companies with high exposure to cross-border payments to record a decline of about 30% in 2020 revenue due to the drop in international travel and related factors.
TransferWise said it currently serves 8 million customers world-wide, up from 5 million in May 2019 when it was valued at $3.5 billion in a prior secondary transaction. The company serves 2,500 currency exchange routes and 54 currencies.
The company also said it is processing $5 billion in cross-border payments monthly. TransferWise said that’s an average figure but declined to specify the period of time for which the average is calculated. Theresa McCartney, a spokeswoman for TransferWise, also declined to specify how much payments volumes changed over time.
The company said it is profitable. TransferWise “built a unique model of making a modest profit on every transaction. This laser focus on building a pricing model that’s sustainable, with zero cross-subsidisation between products, has given us the strength to survive and grow in the midst of economic uncertainty,” Ms. McCartney said. TransferWise has more than 2,200 employees.
Existing shareholders Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Investments and LocalGlobe increased their share count in the deal. Prior investors also include Vitruvian, IVP, Merian Chrysalis Investment Company Ltd., Andreessen Horowitz, and Valar Ventures.
TransferWise has been adding new products, such as consumer and business foreign-currency digital accounts, in addition to its one-off cross-border payments. The company said it has issued a million debit cards since 2018.
—Yuliya Chernova
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8 Million
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The number of customers world-wide served by TransferWise, up from 5 million in May 2019.
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Data
New data will allow founders and venture investors to compare terms of their deals with industry standards. The National Venture Capital Association has partnered with analytics company Aumni to show how frequently certain provisions in term sheets are being used in the venture industry. The information is based on data from 35,000 financing transactions.
The NVCA’s Enhanced Model Term Sheet shows, for example, that the average percentage of a Series A round purchased by a lead investor was about 57% in transactions in 2018 to 2019. Other benchmarks include those on liquidation preferences, convertible note discounts, and legal fee caps.
“This kind of analysis brings a new level of transparency to both parties when negotiating venture financing,” said Kelsey Chase, president and co-founder of Aumni. The company will also be tracking how terms change in the current environment.
The enhanced term sheet is part of several new updated standard legal documents used by venture firms and startups that NVCA released on Tuesday. They include investor-rights agreement, stock purchase agreement, and the limited partner agreement insert language for compliance with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS.
—Yuliya Chernova
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Sema4, a health intelligence company, said it raised a $121 million Series C financing at a post-money valuation of more than $1 billion. New investors included BlackRock, Deerfield and Moore Capital. Sema4’s Series C financing follows its first round of external financing, a Series B, in which it raised just more than $120 million. Each investor from Sema4’s first external funding round participated in this second round, including Blackstone, Section 32, Oak HC/FT, Decheng, and the Connecticut Innovation Fund. Stamford, Conn.-based Sema4 spun out of the Mount Sinai Health System in June 2017.
Eargo, a San Jose-based medical-device company seeking to improve quality of life for people with hearing loss, closed a $71 million financing, led by new investors Gilde Healthcare and Longitude Capital, with existing investors New Enterprise Associates, the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, and Nan Fung Life Sciences, also participating. Geoff Pardo of Gilde Healthcare and Juliet Bakker of Longitude Capital will join Eargo’s board.
Density, a San Francisco-based anonymous-people counting tech startup, raised $51 million in Series C funding led by Kleiner Perkins. 01 Advisors, Upfront Ventures, Founders Fund, Ludlow Ventures, Launch and others participated in the deal.
Conexiom, a Vancouver-based sales order and invoice automation startup, raised $40 million from ICONIQ Capital, joining existing investor Luminate Capital, which will retain a majority stake.
RangeForce, a Manassas, Va.-based cloud-based cybersecurity training startup, raised a $16 million Series A round led by Energy Impact Partners. Paladin Capital Group, Trind and Cisco Investments also participated in the deal.
Aquicore Inc., a Washington D.C.-based artificial intelligence property tech startup, raised $14 million in capital led by Keyframe Capital Partners with additional participation by A/O Proptech and The Westly Group.
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Reels is an Instagram feature that, like TikTok, allows users to share short-form video.
PHOTO: FACEBOOK
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