Sourcery (9/21-9/25)
Robinhood, Next Insurance, Petal, NextCapital, Bright Health, Outschool, Papa, Attentive, Spectrum Labs, Laika, Silo, Ecomedes. Quibi, Aaptiv, Grail, UiPath, GoodRx, Freshly.
Last Week (9/21-9/25):
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 Robinhood, Next Insurance, Petal, NextCapital, Bright Health, Outschool, Papa, Attentive, Spectrum Labs, Laika, Silo, Ecomedes. Highlighted exits include Quibi, Aaptiv, Grail, UiPath, GoodRx, Freshly.
Final numbers on Founders by Undergrad School at the bottom.
Deals
Sources: TS, Pro Rata, FinSMEs, Pitchbook, StrictlyVC
Fintech:
- Robinhood, the stock trading app, raised an additional $460 million in Series G funding on top of the $200 million announced in August. The funding, which values the firm at $11.7 billion, comes from Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, DST Global, Ribbit Capital, 9Yards Capital, and D1 Capital Partners.
- Next Insurance, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based insurance tech startup, is in talks to raise $250 million in funding led by CapitalG. The round would value Next at $2.25 billion. Read more.
- SpotOn Transact, a San Francisco-based software and payments company, raised $60 million in Series C funding. DST Global led the round.
- Petal, a New York-based credit card fintech, raised $55 million in Series C funding. Valar Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Rosecliff Ventures, Afore Capital, RiverPark Ventures, Great Oaks Venture Capital, GR Capital, Nelstone Ventures, Abstract Ventures, Ride Ventures, The Gramercy Fund, Adventure Collective, Starta Ventures, and NFL star Kelvin Beachum.
- MineralTree, a Cambridge, Mass.-based payments automation provider, raised $50 million in Series D funding. Investors included Great Hill Partners, .406 Ventures, and Eight Roads Ventures. MineralTree also acquired Inspyrus and Regal Software.
- Ripjar, a British developer of AI that detects financial crimes, raised £28 million in Series B funding. Long Ridge Equity Partners led, and was joined by Winton Capital and Accenture. http://axios.link/Y1CP
- NextCapital, a Chicago-based digital service for retirement planning, has raised $30 million in Series D funding led by FP Credit, with Oak HC/FT and IA Capital Group also participating. www.nextcapital.com
- Uncapped, a London-based startup offering revenue-based financing, raised $26 million in debt and equity. Mouro Capital led the round and was joined by investors including All Iron Ventures and existing investors Global Founders Capital, Seedcamp, and White Star Capital.
- Marco Financial, a Miami-based financial platform aimed at helping small businesses in Latin America finance their trades to the U.S., raised $26 million in debt and equity. Struck Capital led the equity round and was joined by investors including Antler.
- TrueLayer, a London-based fintech, raised $25 million from existing investors. Investors have included Tencent, Temasek, Northzone and Anthemis. Read more.
. . .
Care:
- Bright Health, a Minneapolis-based health plan startup, has raised $500 million in Series E funding from T. Rowe Price, Tiger Global, NEA, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Greenspring Associates. http://axios.link/CVfI
- Willow, a Mountain View, Calif.-based maker of a wearable breast pump, raised $55 million in Series C funding. Investors included NEA as well as Meritech Capital Partners, Lightstone Ventures, and Perceptive Advisors.
- Outschool, a San Francisco, Calif.-based K-12 education marketplace, raised $45 million in Series B funding. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round and was joined by investors including Reach Capital, Union Square Ventures, SV Angel, FundersClub, and Y Combinator.
- Papa, a Miami-based senior services provider, raised $18 million for its Series B round. Comcast Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Canaan, Initialized Capital, Sound Ventures, Pivotal Ventures and Magnify Ventures.
- Netdata, a San Francisco-based maker of a health-monitoring solution for systems and applications, raised $14.2 million in additional Series A funding. Bessemer Venture Partners led the round and were joined by investors including Bain Capital Ventures and Uncorrelated Ventures.
- Osso VR, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based VR surgical training platform, raised $14 million in Series A funding. Kaiser Permanente Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including SignalFire, GSR, Scrum Ventures, Leslie Ventures, and OCA Ventures.
- Art of Sport, a Los Angeles-based personal care brand aimed at athletes, raised an undisclosed amount of funding. CircleUp Growth Partners led the round and was joined by investors including Mark Cuban, Lightspeed Venture Partners, BAM Ventures, Darco Capital and NBA veteran Wilson Chandler.
. . .
Future of Work:
- Mirakl, a Boston-based platform for launching enterprise marketplaces, raised $300 million. Permira Advisers led the round and was joined by investors including 83North, Bain Capital Ventures, Elaia Partners, and Felix Capital.
- Attentive, a New York-based marketing mobile messaging platform, raised $230 million in Series D funding. Coatue led the round and was joined by investors including Tiger Global, Wellington Management Company, D1 Capital Partners, Atomico, and Sozo Ventures.
- Scopely, a Los Angeles-based mobile game developer, is seeking $200 million in funding that would value it at about $3 billion. Wellington Management and NewView Capital are reportedly leading the round. Read more.
- Salsify, a Boston-based commerce experience platform, raised $155 million in Series E funding. Warburg Pincus led the round.
- Rappi, a Colombia-based delivery company, raised $155 million of a targeted $350 million, per an SEC filing. Investors have included SoftBank, Andreessen Horowitz, and Sequoia. Read more.
- Beyond Limits, a Los Angeles-based A.I. company focused on industrial sectors, raised $113 million in Series C funding. Group 42 led, and was joined by investors including BP Ventures. Read more.
- Goat Group, an online marketplace for sneakers, raised $100 million in Series E funding. D1 Capital Partners led the round and values the firm at $1.75 billion.
- Common, a New York-based co-living company, raised $50 million in Series D funding. Kinnevik led, and was joined by Wilshire Lane Partners, Hanaco, and return backers Norwest Venture Partners, 8VC, and Maveron. http://axios.link/m849
- Ionir, a New York-based storage and data management platform for cloud, raised $11 million in funding. Jerusalem Venture Partners led the round and was joined by investors including C5 Capital.
- EasySend, an Israel-based maker of no-code tools for businesses, has raised $16 million in funding after completing an $11 million in Series A funding round led by Hanaco, with Intel Capital also participating. www.easysend.io
- Spectrum Labs, a provider A.I. and services to help consumer brands recognize and respond to toxic behavior online, raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Greycroft and was joined by investors including Wing Venture Capital, Ridge Ventures, Global Founders Capital, and Super{set}.
- Laika, a New York-based information security company, raised $10 million in funding. Canapi Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Bain Capital, NYCA Partners, and Third Prime.
- Blueboard, a San Francisco-based rewards and recognition platform to engage employees, raised $9.3 million in Series A funding. Origin Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Greycroft, Bullpen Capital, Gaingels, and Martin Babinec (founder of TriNet).
- Attunely, a Seattle-based machine learning platform for debt collectors, raised $9 million from Framework Venture Partners, Anthos Capital, and Vulcan Capital. http://axios.link/3dS3
- DeepCube, a Tel Aviv-based A.I. company, raised $7 million in Series A funding. Awz Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Koch Disruptive Technologies and Nima Capital.
- RedTeam, an Orlando-based construction management platform for commercial contractors, raised $5 million in funding from JettyCove.
- Jina AI, a Berlin-based open-source neural search startup, raised $5.4 million in pre-Series A funding. GGV Capital led the round and was joined by investors including SAP.io and Yunqi Partners.
- WhyLabs, a Seattle based company spinning out of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence to provide a platform for running A.I. models, raised $4 million. Madrona Venture Group led the round and was joined by investors including Bezos Expeditions and Defy Partners.
- Data Gumbo, a Houston-based maker of a industrial blockchain network, raised $4 million in Series B funding. L37 led the round and was joined by investors including Equinor Ventures and Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures.
- Fulcrum, a Minneapolis-based provider of manufacturing operations SaaS, raised $3.1 million in seed funding. Motivate Ventures led, and was joined by Battery Ventures, Schematic Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Matchstick Ventures, Bread & Butter Ventures, VitalizeVC, Social Starts, and SpringTime Ventures.http://axios.link/BfrE
- Vurbl, a Los Angeles-based platform for audio streaming, raised $1.3 million in seed funding. AlphaEdison led the round and was joined by investors including Halogen Ventures, TEN13, and Angellist.
- Ahana, a San Mateo, Calif.-based self-service analytics company for Presto, raised an additional $2.3 million in seed funding. Lux Capital led the round and was joined by investors including GV.
- Kognos, a San Francisco Bay-based cybersecurity firm, raised $1.8 million in seed funding. Investors included Tim Eades (CEO of vArmour) and Joe Eandi (Co-Founder and former CEO, BrightPoint Security).
. . .
Sustainability:
- Turntide Technologies, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based maker of an electric motor, raised $33 million. Investors included Amazon Climate Pledge Fund.
- Silo, a San Francisco-based supply chain logistics platform for the perishable food system, raised $9 million in Series A funding. Andreessen Horowitz led, and was joined by Initialized Capital and Haystack Ventures. www.usesilo.com
- Nori, a Seattle-based startup developing a marketplace for carbon removals, raised $4 million. Placeholder led the round and was joined by investors including North Island Ventures, and Tenacious Ventures.
- Cloud Paper, a Seattle-based maker of tree-free paper products, raised $3 million in seed funding. Greycroft led the round.
- Aqua Membranes, an Albuquerque, N.M.-based developer of a water filtration system, raised $2.1 million in funding. Investors include Clean Energy Ventures and Pentair.
- Ecomedes, a San Francisco-based platform for finding sustainable building materials, raised $1.5 million in seed funding. Investors included Saint-Gobain NOVA and existing investor PivotNorth.
Exits:
- Quibi, the streaming service founded by former Disney exec Jeffrey Katzenberg, is considering a potential sale or raising more funding, per the Wall Street Journal. Read more.
- Aaptiv , a New York-based mobile fitness startup backed by Insight Partners and the Amazon Alexa Fund, is exploring a potential sale. Read more.
- Illumina agreed to acquire Grail, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based cancer detection startup it helped found, for $8 billion in cash and stock. Investors included Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.
- PagerDuty agreed to acquire Rundeck, a Redwood City, Calif.-based IT incident reporting tool, for about $100 million in cash and stock.
- KKR is in talks to acquire 1-800 Contacts, a Draper, Ut.-based eye contacts company, for over $3 billion from AEA Investors, per Bloomberg. Read more.
- CrowdStrike Holdings (Nasdaq: CRWD) agreed to acquire Preempt Security, a cybersecurity firm for about $96 million. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
. . .
IPOs:
- UiPath, a New York-based robotics startup, is gearing up for a 2021 IPO that could value it at $15 billion, per Reuters. Read more.
- GoodRx, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based company for discount drugs, raised $1.1 billion in an IPO of 34.6 million shares priced at $33 a piece. Silver Lake, Francisco Partners, and Spectrum back the firm. Read more.
- Mission Produce, a California-based distributor of fresh avocados, plans to raise $150.4 million in an offering of 9.4 million shares priced between $15 and $17 apiece. Read more.
- Freshly, a ready-made meal delivery company, is planning to go public as soon as 2021 and is targeting a valuation of over $1 billion, per Bloomberg citing sources. Read more.
. . .
SPACs:
- ChargePoint, a Campbell, Calif.-based provider of electric car-charging stations, agreed to go public via a reverse merger with Switchback Energy Acquisition (NYSE: SBE), a SPAC formed by Natural Gas Partners. The deal implies a $2.4 billion valuation for ChargePoint, which recently raised $127 million in Series H funding from American Electric Power, Chevron Technology Ventures, Clearvision, and Quantum Energy Partners. http://axios.link/At9R
- Social Capital’s Chamath Paihapitiya and Hedosophia’s Ian Osbourne plan to raise $2 billion across three new SPACs seeking to acquire tech businesses: Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings IV, which plans to raise $350 million; Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings V, which plans to raise $650 million; and Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings VI, which plans to raise $1 billion.
- FirstMark Horizon Acquisition, a blank check company formed by FirstMark Capital, filed to raise $300 million. The firm is targeting a tech company. Read more.
Funds:
- Blue Sage Capital raised $300 million for its third fund.
- Shine Capital, a new VC firm led by Mo Koyfman (ex-Spark Capital) and Josh Mohrer (ex-Uber, Tusk Ventures), is raising $118 million for its debut fund, per SEC filings.
- GGV Capital is raising $1.2 billion for its seventh flagship fund, plus $300 million for a new overage fund and $500 million for a Series A fund, per the WSJ. http://axios.link/f4xb
Final Numbers: Founders by undergrad school
Source: PitchBook 2020 report on universities. Data for founders of companies that received a first round of venture funding between Jan. 1, 2006, and Aug. 31, 2020
Pitchbook also broke out undergrad rankings for female founders.
Stanford still led, followed by Harvard, UC Berkeley, U Penn, and Cornell. MIT fell to seventh.