Sourcery (11/22-11/26)
MoonPay, PayHawk, Resilience, TruePay, Fractional, ORIGYN, Sword Health, Luma, Rescale, Fuzzy, Niantic, Deliverr, Verbit, Vercel, Bitrise, Jina AI, Render, Attio, AutoCloud, Impossible Foods, Arc...
Last Week (11/22-11/26):
Relevant deals include the 60+ deals across stages below.
I've categorized the deals below into four categories, Fintech, Care, Future of Work, and Sustainability, and ordered from later-stage rounds to early-stage rounds. Highlighted deals include MoonPay, PayHawk, Resilience, TruePay, Fractional, ORIGYN, Sword Health, Luma, Rescale, Fuzzy, Niantic, Deliverr, Verbit, Vercel, Bitrise, Jina AI, Render, Attio, AutoCloud, Impossible Foods, Arc, Juicy Marbles; Athenaheatlh, Tile; Manscaped
Final numbers on PE stocks > S&P 500 at the bottom.
Deals
Sources: TS, Pro Rata, FinSMEs, Pitchbook, StrictlyVC
Fintech:
- MoonPay, a Miami-based "PayPal for crypto," raised $555 million in first round funding at a $3.4 billion valuation co-led by Tiger Global and Coatue. http://axios.link/fqIk
- Benitago Group, a New York-based startup that creates and acquires e-commerce brands, raised $325 million in Series A funding. CoVenture led the round and was joined by investor HSBC.
- Payhawk, a London-based provider of business financial management software, raised $112 million in Series B funding at a $570 million valuation. Greenoaks led, and was joined by insiders QED Investors and Earlybird Digital East. http://axios.link/Bd5g
- Resilience, the San Francisco-based cyber insurance company, raised $80 million in Series C funding. General Catalyst and cybersecurity company Rapid7’s CEO Corey Thomas led the round. Lightspeed Venture Partners, Founders Fund, Charles River Ventures, Shield Capital, and Intact Ventures invested as well.
- TruePay, a Sao Paulo-based B2B “buy now, pay later” platform, raised $32 million in Series A funding. Addition led the round and was joined by existing investors Global Founders Capital and ONEVC.
- Fractional, an S.F.-based real estate ownership platform, raised $5.5 million at a $30 million valuation. CRV led, and was joined by YC, Will Smith, Kevin Durant, Goodwater Capital, Unusual Ventures, Global Founders Capital, On Deck, Contrary Capital and Soma Capital. http://axios.link/O3Ay
- Fonoa, a Dublin, Ireland-based startup focused on tax automation for online businesses, has raised $20.5 million in a Series A round that was led by OMERS Ventures, and included participation from Index Ventures, FJ Labs, and Moving Capital.
- ORIGYN Foundation, a Swiss nonprofit specializing in NFT authentication, has raised $20 million of strategic funding. Investors included in the raise were Bill Ackman's Table Management, Polychain Capital, Paris Hilton, Coinko, Vectr Ventures, Carter Reum, Div Turakhia, GD10 Ventures, among others.
- Vesttoo, an Israeli company that operates a financial risk-management platform, raised $15 million in a Series B funding round that was led by Mouro Capital and included participation from MS&AD Ventures.
- Crowdcube, an Exeter, U.K.-based crowdfunding platform for startups, raised $13.5 million in funding. Circle led the round and was joined by existing investors Balderton Capital and Molten Ventures.
- Z1, a neobank based in Brazil, has raised $10 million in Series A funding from Maya Capital, Homebrew, Clocktower, and The Chainsmokers. Kaszek Ventures led the round.
. . .
Care:
- Sword Health, a New York-based maker of physical therapy hardware, raised $163 million in Series D funding at a $2 billion valuation. Sapphire Ventures led, and was joined by insiders General Catalyst, Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, Bond, Transformation Capital and Green Innovations. The company also secured $26 million in secondary funding. www.swordhealth.com
- Luma Health, a patient engagement platform company based in San Francisco, has raised $130 million in a Series C round led by FTV Capital.
- Rescale, an S.F.-based developer of compute infrastructure for scientific research simulations, raised $55 million in new Series C funding (round total now $105m) from Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, Fort Ross Ventures, Gaingels, Gopher, Hitachi Ventures, Initialized Capital, Keen Venture Partners, M12, Nautilus Venture Partners, NVIDIA, Prometheus Capital, Republic Labs, Samsung Catalyst Fund, Solasta Ventures and Yield Capital Partners. http://axios.link/XbK5
- Fuzzy, the digital pet care company based in San Francisco, has raised $44 million in a round led by Icon Ventures. Other investors who participated were Greycroft, Matrix, and Crosscut.
. . .
Future of Work:
- Niantic, an S.F.-based maker of augmented reality games like "Pokémon Go," raised $300 million from Coatue at a $9 billion valuation. This is about the metaverse that Meta isn't interested in building. Niantic previously raised $480 million, most recently in 2019 at a $4 billion post-money valuation. Existing backers include Alsop Louie Partners, Javelin Venture Partners, CapitalG, IVP and Spark Capital.
- Deliverr, a San Francisco fulfillment company specializing in e-commerce, raised $250 million in Series E funding. Tiger Global led the round, which included additional investments from 8VC, Activant, GLP, Brookfield Technology Partners, and Coatue.
- Verbit, a New York-based company that uses artificial intelligence for trascription and captioning purposes, has closed a $250 million Series E funding round. Led by Third Point Ventures, the round included additional investments from Sapphire Ventures, More Capital, Disruptive AI, Vertex Growth, 40North, Samsung Next, and TCP.
- Vercel, the San Francisco-based company that created open-source development framework Next.js, has raised $150 million in Series D funding at a valuation of $2.5 billion. The round was led by GGV Capital, and included participation from Accel, Bedrock Capital, CRV, Geodesic Capital, Greenoaks Capital, GV, 8VC, Flex Capital, Latacora, Salesforce Ventures, Tiger Global, and SV Angel.
- Peek, a San Francisco-based travel and tourism booking marketplace, raised $80 million in Series C funding. WestCap led the round and was joined by investors Goldman Sachs Asset Management, 3L, Cathay Innovation, I2BF Global Ventures, Manta Ray, and Apeiron.
- Bitrise, an S.F.-based mobile DevOps startup, raised $60 million in Series C funding. Insight Partners led, and was joined by insiders Partech, Open Ocean, Zobito, Fiedler Capital, Y Combinator and H14. http://axios.link/6mUC
- Jina AI, a neural-search startup based out of Berlin, has raised $30 million in a Series A that was led by Canaan Partners. Other investments in the round came from Mango Capital, as well as existing investors GGV Capital, SAP.iO, and Yunqi Partners.
- Conduktor, which runs an enterprise Apache Kafka platform based in Jackson, Wyoming, raised $20 million of Series A funding. Led by Accel, the round also included investmetns from Frontline Ventures and Aglaé Ventures.
- Render, the San Francisco-based cloud company, has closed a $20 million Series A round that was led by Addition and included investments from General Catalyst and South Park Commons.
- Slope, an S.F.-based supply chain management startup, raised $8 million in seed funding led by Global Founders Capital. http://axios.link/E5HU
- Attio, a London-based CRM startup, raised $7.7 million in seed funding. Point Nine Capital led, and was joined by Balderton Capital, Headline and insider Passion Capital. www.attio.com
- AutoCloud, a Chicago-based cloud visibility platform for dev-ops, raised $4 million in seed funding. Animo Ventures led, and was joined by B Capital Group and Moxxie Ventures. www.autocloud.dev
. . .
Sustainability:
- Impossible Foods, the plant-based meat company based in Redwood City, Calif., has closed on a $500 million funding round that was led by Mirae Asset Global Investments.
- Arc, a Los Angeles-based manufacturer of electric boats, raised $30 million in Series A funding. Greg Reichow led the round and was joined by existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Lowercarbon Capital, and Abstract Ventures.
- Juicy Marbles, a Slovenian plant-based steak company, raised $4.5 million led by Ecosia. http://axios.link/0K0Q
Acquisitions & PE:
- Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman have inked a $17 billion definitive agreement to acquire healthcare-technology company Athenahealth from Veritas Capital and Evergreen Coast Capital.
- Life360 plans to acquire finding-technology company Tile, which raised $40 million in debt from Capital IP earlier this year, in a deal valued at $205 million.
- Outbrain (Nasdaq: OB) agreed to acquire Video Intelligence, a Swiss contextual video tech platform for digital and connected TV media, for around $55 million in cash and stock. VI raised over $4 million from firms like Creathor Ventures. http://axios.link/SdYr
- Similarweb (NYSE: SMWB) acquired Embee Mobile, an S.F.-based provider of mobile insight solutions that had raised funding from firms like Qualcomm Ventures. www.embeemobile.com
. . .
SPACs:
- Manscaped, a San Diego-based men’s grooming startup, plans to go public via a merger with Bright Lights Acquisition Corp., a SPAC. A deal values the company at around $1 billion. Channing Tatum, Endeavor Group, Signia Venture Partners, Saban Capital Group, and Guggenheim Investments back the firm.
Funds:
- Eclipse Ventures raised $510 million for its first "early growth" fund. www.eclipse.vc
- Edge Investments, a London-based VC firm focused on the creative economy, held an £85 million first close for its second fund (£100M total target). www.edge.vc
Final Numbers: PE stocks > S&P 500
Source: Pitchbook analyst report. Data through 9/30/21.
PitchBook says: "In this Goldilocks period for large alternative asset managers, everything seems to be going right. Yet the valuation gap among these five is widening, with some trading down to a lower distributable earnings multiple."
The material presented on Molly O’Shea’s website are my opinions only and are provided for informational purposes and should not be construed as investment advice. It is not a recommendation of, or an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy, any particular security, strategy, or investment product. Any analysis or discussion of investments, sectors or the market generally are based on current information, including from public sources, that I consider reliable, but I do not represent that any research or the information provided is accurate or complete, and it should not be relied on as such. My views and opinions expressed in any website content are current at the time of publication and are subject to change. Past performance is not indicative of future results.