1.
Nestlé acquires healthy meal startup Freshly for up to $1.5B
Nestlé USA just announced that it has acquired Freshly for $1.5 billion — $950 million plus potential earnouts of up to $550 million based on future growth. Founded in 2015, Freshly is a New York City-based startup that offers healthy meals delivered to your home in weekly orders, which can then be prepared in a few minutes in your microwave or oven. So you get the benefit of fresh, healthy meals but — unlike signing up with a meal kit startup — you don’t have to spend a lot of time cooking them yourself. If anything, this sounds even more appealing now, as so many of us are spending
most of our time at home, doing our best to cook for ourselves. According to Nestlé’s press release, Freshly is now shipping more than 1 million meals per week across 48 states, with forecasted sales of $430 million for 2020. [ Tech Crunch ]
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2.
LianBio nets $310M to bring medicines to Asia
Drug companies often face steep challenges when entering new markets for the first time, while certain markets struggle to access much-needed drugs in a timely fashion. LianBio is here to help. The company launched in August with offices in Shanghai and Princeton, New Jersey, and the rights to programs out of BridgeBio and MyoKardia. Now, it's raising $310 million in a round co-led by RA Capital and Venrock in the U.S. and CMG-SDIC in China to shepherd those programs forward in China and other Asian
markets. [ fiercebiotech ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
Special:
Twitter and a Supercell billionaire are backing a new A.I.-focused venture capital fund
Twitter and top executives from Google and video game company Supercell are among those backing a London venture capitalist’s new fund dedicated to investing in early stage startups with artificial intelligence at the heart of their business models. Air Street Capital, a boutique venture capital company founded and run by Nathan Benaich, said Friday that it had closed a new $17 million fund.
Benaich, Air Street’s founder and sole general partner, is a veteran early-stage investor who has previously worked for venture firm Playfair, in London, and Berlin’s Point Nine Capital. He was a seed investor in Mapillary, a Swedish company that collected street-level imagery to build highly detailed digital maps, which was acquired by Facebook in June for an undisclosed amount. [ Fortune ]
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3.
GetYourGuide closes $133M convertible note as travel startups continue to weather the COVID-19 storm
On the heels of Germany announcing another lockdown to try to contain the rapid rise in COVID-19 cases in the country, one of the hottest startups in its capital city is announcing the closing of a large convertible note to help it keep moving forward. GetYourGuide, which in brighter times runs a thriving and viral business curating, selling tickets for and running walks and other exploration
experiences for people touring different parts of the world — viral because it’s been taken up by a critical mass of people who love to share pictures of their experiences on social media — has now closed funding, in the form of a convertible note, of €114 million ($133 million). [ Tech Crunch ]
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4.
Online privacy company Kape raises $115 million in a share offering to the public
Kape, the Teddy Sagi Group cybersecurity and privacy protection company, has raised $115 million in a share offering to the public. According to the company, the offering, which had participation from large U.S. and European funds and investment bodies, was oversubscribed – five times the amount that was raised. Leading institutions in the U.S., Europe and Israel took part in the offering together with full support of all the existing major shareholders. The company said that Kape's success in the U.S. has led to major interest and expansion of the company's American investor base. [ calcalistech ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
5.
Intuitive Surgical debuts $100M venture capital fund focused on minimally invasive care
Robotic surgery giant Intuitive Surgical has launched its first venture capital fund, aimed at early-stage companies with a focus on delivering and supporting the field of minimally invasive procedures. With an inaugural $100 million fund, Intuitive Ventures has set out to build an international portfolio of players developing new digital tools and device platforms, as well as adjacent companies in diagnostics and therapeutics. “The future of minimally invasive care spans the patient journey from early diagnosis to treatment and beyond,” said Intuitive Ventures President Julian Nikolchev, who also serves as senior vice president of corporate development and strategy at the elder Intuitive. [ fiercebiotech ]
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6.
An automated trading firm turns its machine learning expertise to venture capital investing
XTX Markets doesn’t have any human traders. But it does have human venture capitalists. XTX is well known in the financial industry as an automated trading firm—it buys and sells some $250 billion of assets, from foreign-exchange to stocks and US Treasuries, each day. It’s the only company in the top ranks of currency trading that isn’t a global investment bank, according to annual polls of institutional investors by Euromoney. Much less is known about London-based XTX’s venture capital investments—XTX Ventures—which it hasn’t discussed publicly until now.
Alexander Gerko, a Deutsche Bank alum with a PhD in mathematics from Moscow State University, founded London-based XTX in 2015. Zar Amrolia, a fellow math whiz who also worked at Deutsche Bank, joined the same year as co-CEO. [ QZ ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
7.
Relievant Medsystems Announces $70M Financing to Accelerate U.S. Commercialization of Intracept Procedure
Relievant Medsystems, a privately-held medical device company transforming the treatment of Chronic Low Back Pain (CLBP), announced today the completion of a $70 million equity financing. The round was led by new investor Vensana Capital alongside Lightstone Ventures with participation from existing investors Endeavour Vision, New Enterprise Associates, Morgenthaler Ventures and Canaan Partners. "This oversubscribed financing round is a great vote of confidence in our team, product and mission to change the treatment paradigm for CLBP," said Art Taylor, President and CEO of Relievant Medsystems. "2020 will be a record year for Relievant and the commercialization of the Intracept Procedure. With the recent publication of our 5-year data showing
sustained improvements in pain and function, we expect even greater adoption in 2021 as more and more physicians make Intracept a core part of their CLBP patient care pathway. We are delighted to have such strong financial support to fuel this rapid commercial growth and to make this much-needed treatment available to more patients and physicians.” [ calcalistech ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
8.
Jiko raises $40 million to become a most unusual challenger bank
Jiko, a Berkeley-based financial technology or “fintech” firm, has raised $40 million in venture capital funding in a bid to take on Wall Street’s retail arm. The cash injection, led by Upfront Ventures and investment firm Wafra, follows an initial $7 million debt financing round, putting the company’s total raise at $47 million to date. Most existing fintech challengers
spent years acquiring customers with slick apps and no-hidden-fee promises, only later worrying about offsetting mounting costs of customer acquisition, partly by bringing deposit-taking in-house. Lending Club, an early fintech pioneer, bought Radius Bank for $185 million in February. Startup Varo received a national banking charter this year. Square and, more recently, SoFi got approvals to become banks too. [ Fortune ]
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9.
Pulumi raises $37.5M Series B for its cloud engineering platform
Seattle-based Pulumi, one of the newer startups in the ”infrastructure-as-code” space, today announced that it has raised a $37.5 million Series B funding round led by NEA. Previous investors Madrona Venture Group and Tola Capital
also participated in this round, which brings the total investment in the company to $57.5 million. The new investment follows the launch of Pulumi 2.0, which got the company closer to its vision of becoming what the team calls a “cloud engineering platform” and impressive growth over the last year, with a 10x growth in adoption in the last 12 months. [ Tech Crunch ]
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10.
LabGenius closes $15 million Series A extension led by Atomico, brings round to $25 million
London-based LabGenius, a biotech company using machine learning to develop new therapeutics, has secured a $15 million extension of its Series A, bringing the round’s total to $25 million. Atomico led the investment, and partner Irina Haivas will join the startup’s board. Other investors include those that participated in the first close of the round last year: Lux Capital, Obvious Ventures, Kindred Capital and Inovia Capital. The UK company’s platform, EVA, is designed to rapidly identify and test potential new drugs, which cuts down the cost and risk associated with drug development. By combining robotic automation, synthetic biology and machine learning, the team can systematically search through billions of protein designs and test those that are predicted to be high performing. [ tech.eu ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
11.
Wise raises another $12 million to double down on embedded business banking
Fintech startup Wise has raised a $12 million Series A round. The company offers business bank accounts with an interesting go-to-market strategy. Wise partners with other companies so that they can offer bank accounts to their own
customers. For instance, if you’re running a marketplace or an e-commerce platform that matches companies with individual customers, you can leverage Wise to offer bank accounts to your partner companies. RemoteTeam is using Wise to improve its payroll experience for… remote teams. [ Tech Crunch ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
12.
Ant's record-breaking IPO attracts $3 trillion in retail-investor bids
Ant Group aims to raise more cash in its initial public offering than any other in history, and the massive debut is fueling similarly unprecedented demand among retail investors. The financial-services company — a branch of Jack Ma's Alibaba empire — took in more than $3 trillion in orders from retail investors across its dual listings in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Roughly 19.1 trillion yuan ($2.9 trillion) worth of bids was raised in the Shanghai portion of the IPO, according to regulatory
filings. The sum was 872 times the exchange's supply of shares. [ Business Insider ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
13.
Robust.AI raises a $15M Series A to improve problem solving for collaborative robots
Robust.AI today announced that it has raised a $15 million Series A, led by Jazz Venture Partners. Existing partners Playground Global, Liquid2, Fontinalis, Jaan Tallinn and Mark Leslie also participated in the round, which brings the Bay Area-based robotics AI startup’s funding up to $22.5 million. Founded mid-2019, the company counts Rodney Brooks among its C-level executives. The
iRobot co-founder serves as the startup’s CTO, following the unexpected closure of the promising (but financially untenable) Rethink, which gave the world the Baxter and Sawyer robots. (Fellow iRobot co-founder Helen Greiner also notably landed at a new venture in recent months). CEO Gary Marcus, meanwhile, is also the co-founder of Geometric Intelligence, which was
acquired by Uber, back in 2016. [ Tech Crunch ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
14.
Superscript raises £8.5 million – plans to double workforce
After rebranding earlier this year, insurance “challenger” Superscript is ready for the next phase of its growth, including doubling its workforce – and it has huge financial backing to get there. The company has today announced an £8.5 million funding raise, led by existing investor BHL Holdings, as well as Seedcamp, the London Co-Investment Fund, Concentric and the Government’s Future Fund. Describing itself as an insurance provider “for the new normal”,
Superscript offers flexible insurance for businesses and, during COVID-19, has offered payment breaks for customers, as well as allowing businesses to add additional activities to their policy without extra fees. [ insurance business mag ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
15.
Canvass Analytics closes $6.5 Million Series A Funding Round Led by Yamaha Motor Ventures
Yamaha Motor Ventures & Laboratory Silicon Valley, Inc. (Yamaha Motor Ventures), the strategic business development and investment arm of Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. (Tokyo: 7272), today announced it led a USD$6.5 million funding round for Canvass Analytics (Canvass), a global leader in industrial Artificial Intelligence (AI) advanced analytics. Leveraging the $100 million Yamaha Motor Exploratory Fund, the Canvass investment represents Yamaha Motor Ventures’ strategic focus on innovative technologies that work to solve global,
societal challenges including increasing efficiency to reduce environmental impact. [ Businesswire ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
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