1.
Healthcare process automation startup Olive AI lands $1.5B valuation
It’s been a busy year for Olive AI, the Cleveland-based startup that automates routine administrative tasks for hospitals. Not long after raising $106 million in funding, the company closed a $225.5 million round led by Tiger Global
Management, giving it a $1.5 billion valuation. Since the start of 2020, the company has raised a total of $385 million, with backers including General Catalyst, Drive Capital and GV. CEO Sean Lane, a former NSA agent, founded the company in 2012, after realizing that most systems in healthcare often aren’t connected. Traveling between hospitals, he noticed a “sea of cubicles” with employees doing the same tasks over and over again. “In reality, it was like an assembly line,” he said in a previous interview. “Humans were under this mountain of work that they never could get done because of that.” [ med city news ]
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2.
Voi, the European ‘micromobility’ rental company, raises $160M additional equity and debt funding
Voi, the Stockholm-headquartered micro mobility company known for its e-scooter rentals, has raised $160 million in new funding. The round, about two thirds equity and one third debt, is led by The Raine Group. Others participating include VNV Global, Balderton, Creandum, Project A, Inbox, and “sustainability-focused investor” Stena Sessan, along with individual backers with links to tech companies such as Delivery Hero, Klarna, iZettle, Zillow, Kry/Livi and Amazon. Voi co-founder and CEO Fredrik Hjelm says the company — which
competes with the likes of Bird, Tier, Bolt and Lime — has secured an “asset-backed” debt facility tied to the scooters and e-bikes it will have on its books in 2021. [ Tech Crunch ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
Special:
DoorDash targets valuation of nearly $30 billion in IPO
DoorDash on Monday revealed more details about its upcoming initial public offering in a new filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The food delivery service is seeking to raise up to $2.8 billion in its IPO, which could give it
a valuation of nearly $30 billion. DoorDash plans to list 33 million shares at a price between $75 and $85 apiece. The past few months have been booming for DoorDash, as the coronavirus pandemic has caused people around the world to shelter in place and stay indoors. The company has gained millions of customers who avoid going to restaurants and instead order their meals through the platform. [ cnet ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
3.
Flock Freight raises $113.5 million to consolidate truck freight shipments with algorithms
Flock Freight today closed a $113.5 million round to accelerate developments of its algorithmic pooling technology for truckload shipping and logistics. The injection of capital comes after Flock Freight reached 12,000 in pooled shipments across thousands of shippers, a 296% increase between 2018 and 2019. Roughly 80% of all cargo in the U.S. is transported by the 7.1 million people who drive flatbed trailers, dry vans, and other heavy lifters for the country’s 1.3 million trucking companies. The trucking industry generates $726 billion in revenue annually and is forecast to grow 75% by 2026. Even before the pandemic, last-mile delivery was fast becoming the most profitable part of the supply chain, with research firm Capgemini pegging its share of the pie at 41%. [ Venture Beat ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform
4.
Curio Wellness launches $30M fund to help women and minorities own a cannabis dispensary
“We think of diversity as a keystone issue for the cannabis industry,” said Curio WMBE Fund managing director Jerel Registre in a conversation with TechCrunch. Registre’s conviction around this program is obvious as he explains the problem the fund is addressing. The new fund, started by the Maryland-based medical cannabis company Curio Wellness, aims to help underserved entrepreneurs entering the cannabis market. With $30 million to invest, the Curio WMBE Fund is looking to invest in up
to 50 women, minority and disabled veterans seeking to open and operate a Curio Wellness franchise with a path to 100% ownership in three years. [ Tech Crunch ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
5.
Salesforce to Acquire Slack for $27.7 Billion
6.
Materialize scores $40 million investment for SQL streaming database
Materialize, the SQL streaming database startup built on top of the open-source Timely Dataflow project, announced a $32 million Series B investment led by Kleiner Perkins, with participation from Lightspeed Ventures. While it was at it, the company also announced a previously
unannounced $8 million Series A from last year, led by Lightspeed, bringing the total raised to $40 million. These firms see a solid founding team that includes CEO Arjun Narayan, formerly of Cockroach Labs, and chief scientist Frank McSherry, who created the Timely Dataflow project on which the company is based. Narayan says that the company believes fundamentally that every company needs to be a real-time company, and it will take a streaming database to make that happen. Further, he says the company is built using SQL because of its ubiquity, and the founders wanted to make sure that customers could access and make use of that data quickly without learning a new query language. [ Tech Crunch ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
7.
Amit Avner and partners establish $40 million fund to invest in startups
Veteran entrepreneur Amit Avner and three partners have founded a new investment fund that will focus on startups, a source told Calcalist under the condition of anonymity. The fund, named Operator Partners, is estimated to be currently managing $40 million and is expected to grow to between $50-70 over the next year. Operator Partners has already invested in a massive 57 early-stage companies in the six months since it was founded. The fund participates in pre-seed, seed and series A round investments and is completely funded by the capital of its partners. Operator Partners is a global fund and other than Avner, who is based in Tel Aviv, the rest of the partners are in New York. Nevertheless, the fund has already made five investments in Israeli
companies, including BridgeCrew and Unit. [ calcalistech ]
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8.
London-based fintech startup Primer secures €15.5 million Series A to scale up internationally
UK fintech startup Primer, the low-code payments infrastructure and online checkout API, today announces an approx. €15.5 million Series A funding round led by Accel. Existing investors Balderton, SpeedInvest and Seedcamp also participated, and were joined in the round by RTP Global. The investment brings Primer’s total funding to around €19.7 million, coming just weeks after the initial launch of the company’s platform, and 10 months since the company’s founding. Primer
will use the funds to expand business development efforts internationally, and to scale its remote-first product and engineering organisation. As stated by the startup themselves, merchants have increasingly sophisticated needs from a payments sector that is fragmented and complex. Described as a ‘Zapier for payments’, Primer enables e-commerce merchants and online payments facilitators to connect and maintain their entire payments ecosystem through a unified, best-in-class payments API and checkout. These connections can include payment service providers (PSPs), payment methods, fraud providers, chargeback services, subscription billing engines, BI tools, loyalty and rewards platforms. [ eu-startups ]
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9.
Vivenu, a ticketing API for events, closes a $15M Series A round led by Balderton Capital
Vivenu, a ticketing platform that offers an API for venues and promoters to customize to their needs, has closed a $15 million (€12.6 million) Series A funding round led by Balderton Capital. Previous investor Redalpine also participated. Historically speaking, most ticketing platform startups took a direct to consumer approach, or have provided turnkey solutions to big event promoters. But in this day and age, most events require a great deal more flexibility, not least because of the pandemic. So, by offering an API and allowing
promoters that flexibility, vivenu managed to gain traction. Venues and event owners get a full-featured ticketing, out-of-the-box platform with full real-time dynamic control over all aspects of selling tickets, including configuring prices and seating plans, leveraging customer data and insights and mastering a branded look and feel across their sales channels. It has exposed APIs enabling many different custom use cases for large international ticket sellers. Since its seed funding in March, the company says it has sold more than 2 million tickets. [ Tech Crunch ]
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10.
Solar Software Provider Aurora Raises $50 Million in Series B
Startup Aurora Solar raised $50 million in its latest funding round, a significant chunk of change for the solar software space. Investment firm Iconiq Capital led the Series B round. Energize VC and Pear Ventures, funders that pitched in on Aurora’s Series A, supplemented Iconiq’s funding, along with real-estate-focused venture capital firm Fifth Wall. Many of the solar industry’s biggest names, such as SunPower and Vivint Solar, use Aurora’s software to design rooftop solar
systems. Remote imaging, which was already a standard for many solar projects, become even more integral during the coronavirus pandemic when stay-at-home orders slowed inspections and permitting. In recent months, residential solar companies have shifted more of their work online. [ green tech media ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
11.
Behind Unorthodox Ventures, one of venture capital's most unique firms
Carey Smith founded a company, sold it for a ton of money and became a full-time venture capitalist. Pretty standard evolution. But that's where the ordinary ends. The intrigue: Smith, who runs Austin-based Unorthodox Ventures, doesn't invest in software. He doesn't think entrepreneurs should give up much equity, and that they should seek to become profitable as soon as possible. He doesn't have return expectations, nor does he have interest in managing anyone else's money. - In short, he's an iconoclast in an industry that worships at the altar of pattern matching.
"I'm not a finance guy," says Smith, who bootstrapped Kentucky-based Big Ass Fans before selling it for $500 million to private equity firm Lindsay Goldberg. - "With the fan company we always said we had to make money to
stay in business, but that wasn't our primary interest." [ Axios ]
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12.
Salesforce CEO: Buying Slack Is 'Marriage Made in Heaven'
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