Good day. The deepening selloff of tech stocks in the public market is hurting the valuation of late-stage venture-backed startups, but companies in earlier funding stages aren’t feeling the pain just yet, according to venture-capital and equity-market analysts.

“The very top of the market…is going to see a big shift,” said Kyle Stanford, senior analyst at data provider PitchBook.

Equity markets have been buffeted by the Federal Reserve’s aggressive plan to raise interest rates to fight inflation and by a worsening global economic outlook. Investors have rotated out of tech stocks as rates have risen, causing values to fall. That prompted grocery-delivery service Instacart Inc. to slash its valuation, and other startups say they have had to cut costs to stretch out their funding.

Last week, the Softbank- and e.ventures-backed app service Cameo, which allows celebrities to sell personalized videos and messages to fans, announced it was cutting almost a quarter of its staff. Last year, the company’s value rose to more than $1 billion.

Shares of venture-backed companies that went public in 2021 were down an average 56% from their IPO prices as of May 6, according to research firm Renaissance Capital. Non-VC-backed IPOs were down 30%. 

So far, however, the damage has been limited to later-stage companies, said PitchBook’s Mr. Stanford.

There have been more than $73 billion of fund closings in the first quarter of this year, more than half the $129 billion raised for all of 2021, and the capital should keep washing into early-stage investments, he said.

Companies that are close to going public are being revalued lower as share prices of comparable public companies fall. Early-stage companies, however, should still be able to tap some of the capital that was raised because the venture funds need to put money to work, he said

“There’s a ton of capital,” he said. “While valuations will come down, there will be deals that can get done.”

And now on to the news...

Supply chain. Logistics startup Stord Inc. has raised an additional $120 million, bringing its total funding to $325 million and valuing the company at $1.3 billion, WSJ Pro’s Isaac Taylor and Marc Vartabedian report.

• Atlanta-based Stord has developed a cloud-based logistics platform that aims to let businesses better compete with Amazon.com Inc. on fulfillment and shipping. Stord offers supply-chain services including freight, warehousing and fulfillment in an integrated platform.
• The $120 million in additional funding comes seven months after Stord’s initial Series D round in September, which brought the company unicorn status. This investment is Stord’s fourth in 16 months.
• Many supply-chain technologies focus on addressing individual pain points such as booking freight, tracking shipments, connecting sales channels or managing a warehouse. Stord looks to set itself apart by helping clients with each step.

Email security company Abnormal Security Corp. has raised $210 million in a Series C funding round led by Insight Partners, WSJ Pro’s James Rundle reports. San Francisco-based Abnormal uses machine learning and other forms of artificial intelligence to detect potential cyberattacks launched through cloud-based email systems such Microsoft Corp.’s Office 365 or Alphabet Inc.’s Gmail. These include targeted and social-engineering attacks and business email compromise attempts. They also include supply-chain infiltrations in which hacker emails might not include typical nefarious elements, such as malware attachments or malicious links.

Arcadia has privately raised $200 million from investors including J.P. Morgan Asset Management to scale its climate-data and software platform, The Wall Street Journal reports, according to company officials.

Companies such as Ford Motor Co. use Arcadia to view aggregated data on energy usage and pricing across the U.S., find customers for their clean-energy products and manage their electricity usage. Arcadia also connects consumers in states such as New York to large solar projects through their utility companies.

Five years after its kickoff, SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund is being battered by the tech selloff, making for an embarrassing performance that lags behind the overall stock market since its launch, WSJ reports.

Started with a goal of funding a whole generation of future tech giants, the fund raised roughly 30 times more cash than the next largest venture-capital fund at the time.

Funds

Unusual Ventures said it has raised $485 million for its third fund. The firm plans to lead investments in seed-stage software companies across infrastructure, software as a service, fintech and consumer applications. With this new fund, Unusual said it has crossed $1 billion in assets under management.

Cybersecurity-focused YL Ventures raised $400 million for its fifth fund to continue backing early-stage companies in Israel that seek growth in the U.S. and beyond. With offices in Tel Aviv, San Francisco and New York, the firm will lead seed rounds in approximately 10 startups and will also participate in follow-on rounds through the new fund. YL Ventures’ portfolio includes agentless cloud security and compliance startup Orca Security, software supply-chain security company Cycode and connected-device protection provider Karamba Security.

 WizeHire, a recruiting platform, secured $30 million in Series B financing, giving the company a $250 million valuation. Lead investor Tiger Global Management was joined by Amplo and Mercury Fund in the round.

• Uber to cut back on spending, treat hiring ‘as a privilege’
   
• Biden, internet providers seek to boost adoption of subsidized broadband
   
• Apple’s China engineers keep products flowing as Covid shuts out U.S. staff
   
• The tech industry’s epic two-year run sputters

This newsletter was compiled by Matthew Strozier and Zachary Cole.

WSJ Pro Venture Capital is a premium service of The Wall Street Journal. We cover venture capital and the global startup ecosystem. Share your tips, comments and questions: vcnews@wsj.com

The Team: Matthew Strozier, Yuliya Chernova, Brian Gormley and Marc Vartabedian.

Follow us on Twitter: @wsjvc, @ychernova, @BrianPGormley, @marcvarta.