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TripActions Lays off Hundreds of Employees; Partner Therapeutics' Clinical Trials for Coronavirus
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Good day. The travel sector has been one of the hardest hit due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Wall Street Journal has previously reported on the troubles of Airbnb, which had planned to go public this year. Now, corporate travel startup TripActions, which was last valued at $4 billion, has laid off hundreds of employees, Yuliya Chernova reports. Other travel-related startups could be in for a similar shock as global travel has collapsed.
Meanwhile, a number of companies are trying to test drugs that were originally approved for other conditions for treatment of the new coronavirus. The latest is Partner Therapeutics, Brian Gormley reports, which is launching clinical trials in Belgium.
And now on to the news...
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TripActions has laid off hundreds of employees. PHOTO: DANIEL SLIM/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
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Travel sector troubles. Corporate-travel startup TripActions Inc. laid off hundreds of employees to save cash because its business has slowed due to the coronavirus pandemic, Yuliya Chernova reports, citing a person familiar with the situation.
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The layoffs represent roughly one-quarter to one-fifth of the startup’s employees, the person said.
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“We’ve cut back on all non-essential spend and made the very difficult decision to reduce our global workforce inline with the current climate,” a TripActions spokeswoman wrote in an email.
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Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, the startup, which offers a software system to manage corporate travel, had been hiring aggressively and roughly doubled its headcount to more than 1,000 over the past year, according to LinkedIn data.
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The Palo Alto, Calif., company raised $250 million last June that valued TripActions at $4 billion. Andreessen Horowitz led, with existing investors Zeev Ventures, Lightspeed and Group 11 participating.
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Partner Therapeutics Inc. is launching clinical trials in Belgium of its drug, Leukine, as a treatment for the new coronavirus, part of a wider effort to test existing medicines’ ability to subdue the pathogen, Brian Gormley reports. Several companies aim to speed development of drugs for Covid-19, the respiratory illness the new virus causes, by turning medicines approved or being developed for other conditions against this threat. They also include startup Celularity Inc., which intends to test an experimental cancer medication as a treatment for Covid-19. Startups are also working on an array of other strategies to address Covid-19. Some are deploying AI to identify drugs to be used
against the virus, while others are using large anonymized data sets of patients to aid in the search for drug treatments.
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Fintech deal. Financial-technology company iCapital Network Inc. raised $146 million from new investors led by China’s Ping An Insurance Group Co. and including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Hamilton Lane Inc., as well as previous backers, WSJ Pro’s William Louch reports. The latest funding round valued the company at more than $860 million, a person familiar with the matter said. Previous iCapital investors that participated in this round included BlackRock Inc. and Blackstone Group Inc. The growth funding round closed as investors grappled with the spreading fallout associated with the coronavirus
pandemic.
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The Securities and Exchange Commission prevailed Tuesday in a key stage of its cryptocurrency enforcement crackdown, as a federal judge issued an injunction halting Telegram Group Inc. from distributing its digital coins, WSJ's Dave Michaels reports. U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel wrote the SEC had shown a “substantial likelihood of success” in prevailing against Telegram, which was accused of breaking investor protection laws when it sold $1.7 billion in cryptocurrency. Dubai-based Telegram and other startups pushed forward with lucrative, unregulated fundraisings despite the SEC’s warnings in 2017 that they were subject to rules restricting how companies raise capital.
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Funds
Collaborative Fund is raising $500 million for its Collaborative Growth LP fund, according to a regulatory filing. Earlier this year, the San Francisco- and New York-based firm participated in funding rounds for patient billing startup Inbox Health Inc.
People
April Underwood joined Obvious Ventures as a venture partner. She was previously chief product officer at Slack Technologies Inc. Earlier this month, Obvious participated in mobile banking startup One’s $17 million Series A round.
Exits
Brex Inc., a startup that issues corporate credit cards to other startups, acquired three companies. Terms weren’t disclosed. Neji builds blockchain and networking technologies for businesses, Compose Labs powers next-generation video experiences, while Landria develops internal knowledge databases for companies. Brex closed a $100 million investment in June 2019 from Kleiner Perkins Digital Growth Fund, Y Combinator Continuity, Ribbit Capital, DST Global, Greenoaks Capital and IVP. Neji was backed by ZMT Capital. All four companies are based in San Francisco.
Publicly traded SS&C Technologies Holdings Inc. agreed to acquire print-to-digital data capture platform Captricity for an undisclosed amount. Oakland, Calif.-based Captricity is backed by White Mountains Capital, Social Capital and Accomplice.
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RigUp Inc., an Austin, Texas-based operator of a marketplace for contract workers in the energy sector, raised $28.7 million of a targeted $78.7 million equity round, according to a regulatory filing. In October 2019, RigUp raised a $300 million Series D round from investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Founders Fund that valued the company at $1.9 billion.
Iaso Biotherapeutics, a Chinese startup developing cell therapies for cancer, completed a $60 million Series B round of funding led by GL Ventures.
mPower Technology, an Albuquerque, N.M.-based solar cell maker, added $1.8 million in Series A funding, bringing the round total to $4.4 million. The new investment came from Cottonwood Technology Fund, NMA Ventures and others.
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Jeff Bezos sold $3.4 billion in Amazon stock in the first week of February, shortly before the market peaked. PHOTO: JOSHUA ROBERTS/REUTERS
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We cover venture capital and the global startup ecosystem. WSJ Pro Venture Capital is a premium service of The Wall Street Journal. Share your tips, comments and questions: vcnews@wsj.com
The Team: Tomio Geron, Yuliya Chernova, Brian Gormley and Marc Vartabedian.
Follow us on Twitter: @wsjvc, @tomiogeron, @ychernova, @BrianPGormley, @marcvarta.
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