1.
Chinese EV startup Xpeng Motors raises $1.5 billion in US public market debut
Chinese electric vehicle startup Xpeng Inc. raised $1.5 billion through an initial public offering in the U.S. as investor interest in EVs and clean energy outstripped concerns over escalating tensions between the U.S. and China. The automaker, which is headquartered in Guangzhou, China and has offices in Silicon Valley and San Diego, said in a filing that it sold 99.7 million shares for $15 each, raising about $1.5 billion. The automaker had originally planned to sell 85 million shares with a price guidance of between $11 and $13. Shares of Xpeng began trading Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol XPEV. [ Tech Crunch ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
2.
Delivery Hero buys Dubai grocery app InstaShop for $360m
The German food ordering group Delivery Hero has acquired the Dubai-based groceries app InstaShop for $360m, as it seeks to further benefit from the boom in online shopping due to Covid-19 lockdowns. InstaShop, a five-year-old start-up that boasts half a million users across the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Egypt and Lebanon, offers deliveries of products including fresh fruit and vegetables, pharmaceuticals and flowers within an hour. The purchase is part of a push by Delivery Hero, which on Monday joined Germany’s blue-chip Dax 30 index, to expand into the so-called quick commerce market. The company expects the sector to be worth close to €450bn by the end of the decade. Rivals such as
Uber have also introduced grocery delivery in recent weeks. The ride-hailing company began offering the service in certain cities in Latin America, Canada and the US last month, while DoorDash announced last week that it would vastly expand its groceries service across America. [ Financial Times ]
Delivery Hero to Buy Mideast Grocery Service InstaShop
Delivery Hero picks up InstaShop in $360M deal to expand in groceries in the Middle East Delivery Hero CEO Ostberg on $360 Million Deal to Buy InstaShop Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
Special:
NYSE’s Plan for New IPO Alternative Wins Green Light From SEC
Regulators have approved a proposal from the New York Stock Exchange to let companies raise capital through direct listings, a decision that creates a less-expensive alternative to the traditional initial public offering. In an order posted online Wednesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission approved the plan for the NYSE to create a new type of direct listing, in which companies can issue new shares. Previously, companies had only been permitted to use the process for existing investors to sell shares. [ WSJ ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
3.
Warby Parker, valued at $3 billion, raises $245 million in funding
Warby Parker, the optical e-commerce giant, has today announced the close of a $245 million funding round from D1 Capital Partners, Durable Capital Partners, T. Rowe Price and Baillie Gifford. A source familiar with the company’s finances confirmed to TechCrunch that this brings Warby Parker’s valuation to $3 billion. The fresh $245 million comes as a combination of a Series F round ($125 million led by Durable Capital Partners in Q2 of this year) and a Series G round ($120 million led by D1 Capital in Q3 of this year). Neither of the two rounds was previously announced. [ Tech Crunch ]
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4.
Restream Raises $50M to Help Livestreamers Take It to the Next Level
If you ask a group of kids what they want to be when they grow up, a number of them might say YouTube creator or Twitch streamer. Content creation and streaming are becoming a more popular way to grow an online audience and earn money. And because of COVID-19 restrictions, organizations outside of technology are turning to livestreaming for their events. Restream wants to provide these individuals and organizations with the tools to reach a wider audience. On Thursday,
Restream announced that it raised $50 million in a Series A funding round led by Sapphire Ventures and Insight Partners. [ Built In Austin ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
5.
How Jay-Z And Will Smith Helped This Glamping Startup Go Global
Picture this. Miles away is a tiny house nestled in the woods on a lake with farm fresh eggs in the kitchen awaiting your arrival. There are llamas to pet, berries to pick, and fireflies dancing at dusk. At bedtime, you can stargaze into the infinite dark sky. The vibe is chill and for $50 a night you can help farmers, ranchers and vinters find a sustainable way to conserve their land and protect the environment. Such a place exists and finding it has been made possible by a handful of celebrities, A-list venture capitalists, a Shark Tank winner, an internet pioneer, and a social impact filmmaker turned self-taught computer programmer who in 2013 had a dream of creating a comprehensive database of campgrounds that could be mined by machine learning
algorithms to enable campers to find the perfect surf spot. [ Forbes ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
6.
‘Shopify For X,’ COVID Startups Rule At Virtual YC Demo Days
Y Combinator’s Summer 2020 batch was the first to be completely virtual from interview to Demo Day. And as the pandemic has shaped the world around us over the past few months, it’s also shaped many of the companies presenting at the two-day Zoom pitch event on Monday and Tuesday. There were plenty of virtual events platforms, telemedicine, edtech startups, and various delivery services and platforms, and they made note of the pandemic and how their company fits into a COVID-19 world.
Shopify for X Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
7.
What’s a Palantir? The Tech Industry’s Next Big I.P.O.
About a month before he became president, Donald J. Trump met with the leaders of the country’s top technology companies at Trump Tower in Manhattan. The meeting included the chief executives of Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and other household names like Tesla and Oracle. And then there was Alex Karp, chief executive of a company, called Palantir Technologies, that few outside Silicon Valley and government circles had heard of. Palantir, the only privately held company represented in the
room, had become a major player among government contractors. And, indicative of its growing prominence, one of its founders, the venture capitalist Peter Thiel, had supported Mr. Trump during the 2016 election and had helped set up the meeting. Now, as Palantir prepares to
go public in what could be the largest stock market listing of a tech start-up since Uber last year, many are wondering: What exactly does this influential but little-known company do? [ NY Times ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
8.
Kinnate Biopharma Closes $98 Million Series C Financing
Kinnate Biopharma Inc., a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of small molecule kinase inhibitors for difficult-to-treat, genomically-defined cancers, today announced that it has raised $98 million in a Series C financing. The financing was led by RA Capital Management with participation from additional new investors: Viking Global Investors; Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners; Fidelity Management & Research Company, LLC; Janus Henderson Investors; Surveyor Capital (a Citadel company); Boxer Capital of Tavistock Group; Logos Capital; and an investment fund associated with SVB Leerink. Existing investors Foresite Capital, OrbiMed, Nextech Invest, and Vida Ventures also participated in the round. In December 2019, Kinnate
closed a $74.5 million Series B financing. [ Business Wire ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
9.
Asana, Snowflake lead tech company rush to public markets in landmark day
A slew of Bay Area software companies with multibillion-dollar valuations filed for public listings on Monday, adding to a recent rush in a sign that markets are welcoming aspiring public companies with open arms. It also marked one of the IPO market's single busiest days to witness so many filings at once.
Asana, the workplace productivity startup led by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, filed for a direct listing rather than a traditional IPO. Asana had reportedly been trading on the secondary market at around a $5 billion valuation. In late 2018, it was worth $1.5 billion, according to PitchBook data. The San Francisco-based company's filing showed its losses more than doubled to $35.8 million for the three months ended April 30 vs. a loss of $15 million in the year-earlier period. But its revenue for the same period also grew 70% to $47.7 million from $28 million. Asana also reported having over 75,000 paying customers at the end of
January. [ Pitchbook ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
10.
LA gets a big SaaS exit as Fastly nabs the Culver City-based Signal Sciences for $775M
Los Angeles was always more than a one-industry town, even when it comes to technology startups, as media and entertainment (and social networking) were always the big draws in Tinseltown. Now the city’s enterprise tech scene can claim a really big winner with Signal Sciences, the security monitoring and management company that is getting bought by Fastly, a provider of content delivery networking services, for $775 million. “Our team couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity to join Fastly to continue to drive forward security protections that empower developers. But we also believe this is a great moment to showcase the diversity of the LA technology scene,” wrote Signal
Sciences chief executive Andrew Peterson, in a direct message. “Being the largest enterprise tech outcome ever here, we’re just one of so many great deep technology companies who are paving the way for the next generation of SoCal based start ups. We’re thrilled to help lead the way for the broader tech community in Los Angeles.” [ Tech Crunch ]
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11.
Fondeadora closes US$14 million Series A to keep at the top of user ratings
12.
ACTO Closes $11.5M Series A Round to Accelerate Virtual Transformation for Life Sciences Companies
ACTO, the omnichannel education and engagement platform for life sciences, today announced the closing of a $11.5 million Series A round led by Resolve Growth Partners, a Baltimore-based growth equity firm focused on software entrepreneurs. The round also includes strategic funding from new investor Salesforce Ventures, as well as follow-on investment from existing investor Panache Ventures. ACTO is a category-defining technology that uses AI-powered mobile experiences to educate and engage key stakeholders in the life sciences ecosystem, while giving senior commercial and clinical leaders real-time
business insights. For sales reps, medical sciences liaisons and clinical research associates, ACTO combines mobile microlearning, digital briefcase, remote coaching, virtual training, and live events in one intuitive app to help them achieve field excellence. Founded in 2014, ACTO is relied upon by over 50 global life sciences leaders such as AstraZeneca, Teleflex, and Philips Respironics, and is used daily by tens of thousands of field reps in more than 90 countries. [ PR News Wire ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
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13.
Berbix raises $9 million to verify IDs with AI
Berbix, a startup developing an “automated” identity verification platform, today closed a $9 million funding round. A spokesperson told VentureBeat the new capital is being earmarked for team and customer growth. According to McKinsey, the “ID-verification-as-a-service” market will grow from $10 billion in 2017 to between $16 billion and $20 billion in 2022. This boom is
driven in part by an uptick in fraud. In 2017, 6.64% of U.S. consumers became victims of identity fraud. The following year, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission estimated that such fraud caused over $1 billion in losses. [ Venture Beat ]
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14.
Narrative raises $8.5M as it launches a new data marketplace
Narrative has raised $8.5 million in Series A funding and is launching a new product designed to further simplify the process of buying and selling data. I’ve already written about the company’s existing marketplace and software for managing data transactions. With the
new Data Streams Marketplace, the process should be simpler than ever — not much different than buying products on Amazon. “Essentially, the idea was to take the best parts of the e-commerce and search models and apply that to a non-consumer offering to find, discover and ultimately buy data,” founder and CEO Nick Jordan (pictured above on the left) told me. “The premise is make it as easy to buy data as it is to buy stuff online.” [ Tech Crunch
] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
15.
Asana S-1 Analysis - Comparing One Productivity Powerhouse to Another
Asana filed their S-1 this week. Asana builds productivity and task management solutions. When they launched, their vision of eliminating email through task management made big waves in the market. Today, the company is a massively successful SaaS business and another example of the flywheel business model that creates demand at the individual user and leverages that interest to sell department and company-wide contracts. Asana competes with SmartSheet, another publicly traded productivity company. In this analysis, I’ve compared the metrics of the two companies at the time of IPO. Also, I’m trying a new
format for these analyses that you might call a baseball card analysis, rather than a series of charts. Let me know which you prefer. [ Tomasz Tunguz ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
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