1.
Israeli HR tech platform Hibob hauls in $70 million Series B
Hibob, the Tel Aviv-born HR tech startup behind the people management platform bob, has landed $70 million in Series B funding led by investors SEEK and Israel Growth Partners (IGP). The company has raised a total of $124 million since its launch in late 2015. The startup, which says it has seen triple-digit year-over-year growth every year including 2020, serves over a thousand clients across Europe, the US and the Middle East, including fast-growing companies such as Monzo, Revolut, Cazoo, Happy Socks and Fiverr. [
tech.eu ]
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2.
Bitso Leads Latin America into the Future of Currencies with a $62-million Investment from Kaszek Ventures and QED Investors
Bitso, Latin America’s leading crypto platform, founded in 2014, today announced that it closed a $62 million Series B round led by distinguished investment firms Kaszek Ventures and QED Investors. This reunites two of the most successful venture funds in the fintech industry and in Latin America who have successfully worked together on market leaders including Nubank, Creditas, QuintoAndar and Kavak and expect to add Bitso to that list as well. Nigel Morris from QED and Nicolas Szekasy from Kaszek have joined the board. Existing shareholders Coinbase Ventures and Pantera Capital also joined the round. [ Business Wire ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our
platform.
Special:
SoftBank Vision Fund turns $680 million DoorDash investment into $11.5 billion based on Wednesday’s opening price
The SoftBank Vision Fund has taken its share of lumps over the past year, but it can count its DoorDash investment as a huge success. The $100 billion Vision Fund invested in DoorDash four times, pumping $680 million into the company in Series
D, F, G and H rounds. Based on DoorDash’s Wednesday opening price of $182 per share, that investment is now worth $11.5 billion — an almost 17x gain. Rajeev Misra, the head of the SoftBank Vision Fund, told CNBC in March the fund would show major improvements in the next 18 to 24 months after more than a dozen of the portfolio’s investments went public. The Fund
made more than 80 investments over the past three years and is in line for several other significant paper gains when companies including ByteDance (owner of TikTok), Didi and Paytm go public. [ CNBC ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
3.
Squire, a barbershop tech startup, triples its valuation to $250M in latest round
Squire, a startup that sells software to barbershops, has raised $59 million in a round led by Iconiq Capital. The raise is $45 million in equity capital, and $15 million in debt financing. The round comes just months after Squire closed its $34 million Series B, led by CRV. With
the new financing, Squire has nearly tripled its valuation, up from $85 million in June to $250 million today. Other investors in the company include Tiger Global and Trinity Ventures. What happened? Squire’s revenue went from zero in March, when all barber shops closed, to between $10 million to $20 million in ARR just 10 months later, TechCrunch has learned. The growth indicates how the next wave of barbershops will be built atop digital technology, instead of offline processes. [ Tech Crunch ]
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4.
MTG acquires Hutch for an expected $375 million
Modern Times Group has announced the acquisition of London-based mobile studio Hutch for an expected $375 million. Of the total, $275 million is an up-front consideration, while the rest will stem from earn-out payments at an expected value of $100 total. Hutch officially will be acquired by GamingCo, a holding company formed by MTG with InnoGames announced yesterday to manage the entirety of MTG's gaming business, including Kongregate. [ gamesindustry ]
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5.
Solactive, a German fintech, takes a $60.4M growth investment from Summit Partners
German fintech Solactive, a technology-enabled provider of indices and index solutions to the global financial services industry, has taken a $60.4m / €50 million minority investment from growth investor Summit Partners. Widely regarded as
something of a disruptor in the global indexing industry, Solactive is benefitting from the ongoing and significant shift of active to passive investment strategies. Although Europe-based, it has more than 400 clients worldwide, including major investment banks, ETF providers and hedge funds, with more than $200 billion of global assets linked to more than 17,000 Solactive indices. [ Tech Crunch ]
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6.
TikTok mega-star Josh Richards pivots to VC investing
Josh Richards is joining Remus Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm, as a Venture Partner, Axios has learned. The backdrop: Richards, 18, has more than 22 million followers on TikTok and is an angel investor and chief strategy officer at Triller. Remus invests in startups that cater to Gen-Z, like boutique fitness app ClassPass. Why it matters: So much of being a good early-stage investor is about having a unique network
to find hot companies early — so it’s no surprise a VC firm sees value in an influencer like Richards, who, along with his TikTok following, has already ventured into podcasts and is working for Triller. - Equally unsurprising is that young TikTok stars like Richards want to use their fortunes to become professional tech investors.
- They’ve grown up with smartphones and have been exposed to the culture of investing through collaborations with even bigger
stars and celebrities.
- They live in Los Angeles, which has a local tech industry of its own right (not to mention tech role models like Snap’s Evan Speigel). [ Axios ]
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7.
Uber sells its flying taxi business
The air taxi business is at least a couple of years from taking off, but it’s already seeing consolidation among start-ups. California-based Joby Aviation, which is developing all-electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, is acquiring Uber Elevate, the aerial ride-hailing division of Uber. The move will allow Joby to use Uber’s app to offer air taxi rides when the company’s aircraft eventually enters service, which could be as soon as 2023. While terms of the transaction were not
released, Uber has agreed to invest $75 million in Joby Aviation. Earlier this year, Uber invested $50 million in Joby as part of the company’s Series C financing round. [ CNBC ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
8.
Seoul-based payment tech startup CHAI gets $60 million from Hanhwa, SoftBank Ventures Asia
Demand for contactless payments and e-commerce has grown in South Korea during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is good news for payment service operators, but the market is very fragmented, so adding payment options is a time-consuming process for many merchants. CHAI wants to fix this with an API that enables companies to accept over 20 payment systems. The Seoul-based startup announced today it has raised a $60 million Series B. The round was led by Hanhwa Investment & Securities, with participation from SoftBank Ventures Asia (the early-stage venture capital arm of SoftBank Group), SK Networks, Aarden Partners and other strategic partners. It brings CHAI’s total funding to $75 million, including a $15 million Series A in February. [ Tech
Crunch ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
9.
Airbnb seeks $47 billion valuation, prices shares at $68 in IPO
Airbnb, the company that allows users to book short-term rentals and experiences while traveling, sold shares in its IPO at $68, pricing above its range, according to people familiar with the matter. The offering on Thursday values the company at $47 billion on a fully diluted basis. The company previously
said it expected to sell shares at between $56 and $60. Based in San Francisco, Airbnb makes money by charging short-term rental managers, or hosts, and guests a service fee for bookings made through the company’s service. Airbnb made $219 million in net income on revenues of $1.34 billion last quarter. That was down nearly 19% from $1.65 billion in revenue a year prior. Despite primarily turning net losses, the company has had other occasional quarters of profitability, including the second and third quarters of 2018 and the third quarter of 2019. [ CNBC ]
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10.
Cleo, the AI-powered ‘financial assistant’, raises $44M Series B led by EQT Ventures
Cleo, the London founded “financial assistant” that takes the form of an app and chatbot and now counts the U.S. as its largest market, has raised $44 million in Series B funding. Leading the round, which I understand actually closed earlier this year, is EQT Ventures. Also participating are existing
investors Balderton Capital, LocalGlobe and SBI. They join much earlier investors such as Entrepreneur First, Taavet Hinrikus, Matt Robinson, Errol Damelin, Niklas Zennstrom, Alex Chesterman, and Ian Hogarth — all well-known names in London’s tech investment community. Targeting “Gen Z” and with a rather lofty sounding mission to “fight for the world’s financial health,” Cleo’s AI/machine learning-powered app connects to your bank accounts and gives you proactive advice and information on your finances, including timely nudges, to help you stay on top of your spending. Over time, the idea is that Cleo can help change your financial behaviour for the better. [ Tech Crunch ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our
platform.
11.
Wholesale Cannabis Platform LeafLink Raises $40 Million
LeafLink, a tech-enabled wholesale marketplace for the cannabis industry, announces today the close of a $40 million Series C investment round, led by Founders Fund. Additional participants include Thrive Capital, Nosara Capital and Lerer Hippeau. This latest round of investment brings the company’s venture funding to over $90 million and marks Founders Fund’s largest technology investment in the cannabis space. With the latest round of funding, LeafLink will continue to accelerate growth beyond its current $3 Billion of annualized
Gross Merchandise Value (GMV). The $40 million will be used to expand in current markets by bringing on new brands and retailers, as well as capitalizing on new markets that legalized cannabis following the 2020 election. LeafLink will also continue to expand its offerings around payments, delivery, and data & analytics. [ new cannabis ventures ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
12.
Firebolt launches with $37 million in funding to redesign the cloud data warehouse experience
Firebolt, the world's fastest cloud data warehouse, purpose-built for high performance analytics, today unveiled a new class of cloud data warehouse as a service and announced $37 million of financing. Firebolt delivers the fastest analytics performance – up to 182 times faster than other data warehouses – for the most challenging data requirements at the multi-terabyte and petabyte scale, enabling higher performance with fewer cloud resources. Firebolt, thanks to its groundbreaking technology, allows companies to analyze
much larger volumes of data than previously possible. This dramatically improves the ROI of collecting data and enables a myriad of new data-driven use cases with real business impact. [ PR Newswire ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
13.
Graphiant Raises $33.5M in Series A Funding
Graphiant Inc., a Palo Alto, CA-based computer networking company, raised $33.5m in Series A funding. The round was co-led by Sequoia Capital and Two Bear Capital with participation from Atlantic Bridge. The company intends to use the funds to continue to expand operations and its business reach. Co-founded by CEO Khalid Raza and CTO Stefan Olofsson, Graphiant is a stealth startup working on next generation networking technologies. Raza was the co-founder and CTO of vIPtela and a Distinguished Engineer at Cisco. Olofsson
was a key technologist at vIPtela and a Global Solutions Architect at Cisco. Graphiant’s Board of Directors includes Bill Coughran from Sequoia Capital and Mike Goguen from Two Bear Capital, both of whom were Board members at vIPtela. [ finsmes ]
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14.
UK space launch startup Orbex raises $24 million for its reusable rockets
UK-based Orbex has raised a new $24 million funding round, led by BGF and Octopus Ventures, and including participation from existing investors High-Tech Gründerfonds, Heartcore Capital, and Elecnor S.A. This new investment help “secure the roadmap” that Orbex was already working towards regarding its launch vehicle development and deployment, which is currently targeting 2022 for its first commercial launches. Orbex is set to launch its Orbex Prime rocket from the
new Space Hub Sutherland spaceport in Scotland, and has six launch contracts on the books already. Its debut launch vehicle is a small payload rocket, which is unique in the industry in that it makes use of bio-propane, a fuel source that offers 90% emissions reduction vs. the traditional kerosene-based rocket fuels generally used for liquid rockets, and which is a renewable fuel source. Orbex also aims to reduce its impact in other ways, including through recoverability and reusability, and says that Prime’s design is intended to leave no post-launch debris either in the ocean on Earth, or even in orbit. [ Tech
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15.
Boast.ai Raises $23M Series A to Revolutionize R&D Tax Credits with AI-Powered Approach
Boast.ai, a software innovator whose flagship product automates the complex process of claiming R&D tax credits in the US and Canada, today announced raising $23 million in a Series A round led by Radian Capital, a growth-stage fund specializing in enterprise software. With this investment, Boast.ai will further develop their AI-powered platform to better serve their nearly 1,000 customers, launch new products to help companies leverage their eligibility for innovation incentives, and accelerate expansion into new markets.
"R&D is the engine of the modern economy, and innovative companies should be able to access the tax credits they're entitled to," said Alex Popa, co-founder, and CEO of Boast.ai. "We've spent almost a decade honing our craft to help customers get more money, faster and with less risk, compared to any other solution in the market. We empower companies from startups to large enterprises to quantify the value of their R&D efforts, then leverage that asset through a successful R&D tax credit application which allows them to grow their business without unnecessary outside capital." [ PR Newswire ]
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