| Tuesday! |
| Top News |
| Industrial giant GE is getting booted from the Dow, to be replaced by Walgreens. Global markets convulsed today after Donald Trump called for further tariffs against China. |
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| New Fundings |
| Bainbridge Health, a two-year-old, Philadelphia, Pa.-based company whose data analytics platform aims to help clinicians better monitor patient safety and reduce medication errors, has raised $1.6 million in seed funding. BioAdvance, Chestnut Street Ventures and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia led the round. More here. Brex, a year-old, San Francisco-based startup that’s offering startups a kind of credit card that they can use without having to personally guarantee the card, has raised $57 million in funding from investors, including the Y Combinator Continuity fund, Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, Yuri Milner, Ribbit Capital and former Visa CEO Carl Pascarella. TechCrunch has more here. Crate.io, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based developer of CrateDB, an open source SQL database for real-time machine data and IoT applications, has raised $11 million in Series A funding. Zetta Venture Partners and Deutsche Invest Equity co-led the round, with participation from Momenta Partners and numerous individual investors, along with earlier backers like Draper Esprit. More here. CrowdStrike, a seven-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based endpoint protection cybersecurity startup, has raised $200 million in fresh funding, at a $3 billion valuation. The round was co-led by General Atlantic, Accel, and IVP; previous investors March Capital and CapitalG also participated in the round. TechCrunch has more here. Decibel Therapeutics, a three-year-old, Boston-based company working on medicines to protect and repair hearing, has raised $55 million in Series C funding from earlier backers Third Rock, GV, SR One and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, along with new new investors Foresite Capital, Bessemer Trust, Schroder Adveq, SCubed Capital, and Longevity. We’d written about the company (which we still find interesting) last year. Embodied, a two-year-old, Pasadena, Ca.-based robotics platform for care and wellness, has raised $22 million in Series A funding led by Calibrate Ventures, with participation from Jazz Venture Partners and earlier backers Osage University Partners, Intel Capital and Grishin Robotics. More here. Emulate, a Boston-based startup that has developed small laboratory chips intended to replace the animal tests used in pharmaceutical research, has raised $36 million in Series C funding led by Founders Fund. The funding also includes additional new investors including ALS Investment Fund, SciFi VC, members of GlassWall Syndicate Association, as well as several existing investors. Xconomy has more here. Ethos, a nearly two-year-old, San Francisco-based life insurance startup, has raised $11.5 million in new equity and debt funding. Sequoia Capital led the equity piece of the deal; SVB provided the credit. More here. ezCater, an 11-year-old, Boston-based nationwide marketplace for business catering, has raised $100 million in new funding led by Wellington Management Company, with participation from earlier backers ICONiQ Capital and Insight Venture Partners, among others. The round brings ezCater’s total funding to around $170 million. TechCrunch has more here. Fabric, a three-year-old, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based life insurance startup, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners. More here. Falkonry, a six-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based company that markets a ready-to-use machine learning system for direct use by manufacturing engineers or process engineers, has raised $4.6 million in Series A funding. Presidio Ventures led the round, and was joined by investors including Fortive Corporation, Basis Set Ventures, Polaris Partners, Start Smart Labs and Zetta Venture Partners. More here. Jane.ai, a year-old, St. Louis, Mo.-based artificial intelligence platform that says it makes all of a company’s information accessible through chat, has launched with $8.4 million in funding from a Midwest network of private and angel investors. The company was founded by former Answers.com CEO David Karandish. More here. Micrima, a 12-year-old, Bristol, England-based breast imaging company, has raised £4.4 million ($5.8 million) in funding, including from Technology Venture Partners, The Angel CoFund, and Venture Founders. More here. Peek, a seven-year-old, San Francisco-based startup aiming to digitize the travel activities industry, has raised $23 million in Series B funding led by Cathay Innovation, with participation from numerous individual investors. The company has also announced a tie-up with Google that will see its inventory added to Google Search, Google Maps, and Google Trips. Peek has now raised $40 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here. Prifender, a three-year-old, Bellevue, Wa.- and Tel Aviv, Israel-based maker of identity-aware technology, has raised $5 million in seed funding led by Firstime VC, with participation from Shaked Ventures and iAngels. More here. Pulse Q&A, a year-old, San Francisco-based peer-to-peer platform that aims to offer bias-free business strategy and innovation advice for C-level executives, has raised $4 million in seed funding led by True Ventures. Y Combinator and angel investors including Steve Norall, former CPO at Survey Monkey, also participated. More here. Scratchpay, a 2.5-year-old, L.A.-based company that uses mobile tech to match pet owners with affordable veterinary care by aggregating and analyzing different providers, has raised $6.4 million in Series A funding. Companion Fund, a $100 million pet-centered venture capital fund, led the round, with participation fromStruck Capital, TTV Capital and SWS Venture Capital. L.A. Business Journal has more here. SigFig, an 11-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that provides wealth management tech to financial companies, has raised $50 million in new funding led by General Atlantic, with participation from UBS Group AG, Eaton Vance Corpand Bain Capital Ventures. TechCrunch has more here. SmartAsset, a seven-year-old, New York-based personal finance startup, has raised $28 million in Series C funding, bringing its total raised to more than $51 million. The new round comes from Focus Financial Partners, Javelin Venture Partners, TTV Capital, IA Capital, Contour Venture Partners, Citi Ventures, founder-investor Fabrice Grinda and others. TechCrunch has more here. SpinLaunch, a four-year-old, Silicon Valley startup that wants to catapult rockets into space, has raised $35 million in Series A funding from GV, Airbus Ventures, and Kleiner Perkins, bringing the company’s total funding to $40 million. Business Insider has more here. Talentry, a six-year-old, Munich, Germany-based startup that has developed a social recruitment and marketing platform, has raised €6 million (roughly $7 million) in Series A funding. Leading the round is Nauta Capital, a pan-European venture firm that’s focused on SaaS, with participation from Rocket Internet’s Global Founders Capital, Allgeier SE, and numerous angel investors. TechCrunch has more here. Veriff, a three-year-old, Estonia- and Mountain View, Ca.-based startup whose software aims to make it easy for companies like banks to easily verify a person’s identity online, has raised $7.7 million in Series A funding. Mosaic Ventures led the round, with participation from SV Angel, ACE Ventures, Superangel and numerous individual investors, including Paul Buchheit. TechCrunch has more here. |
| New Funds |
| George Arida, a Madison, Wi.-based investor, is raising a $15 million venture capital fund called 30Ventures Fund I L.P., according to a new SEC filing. 30Ventures is based at the University Research Park in Madison. The Milwaukee Business News has more here. Not a new fund exactly but a program that might interest some of you: Highland Capital Partners, the early-stage venture capital firm, has opened up a summer accelerator for security startups called the Cybersecurity Factory 2018. Startups will receive a $35,000 investment and participate in the 10-week mentoring program at Highland’s office near the Harvard and MIT campuses. More here. MetaProp, a three-year-old, New York-based seed-stage, real-estate focused venture fund, has closed its second fund with $40 million in capital commitments. The fund will be used to invest from $150,000 to $2 million in up to 40 property-management software, IoT, hardware and tech-enabled services startups. More here. Redpoint Ventures, the 19-year-old, Bay Area-based early-stage venture firm, has closed a new fund with $400 million in commitments. TechCrunch has more here. |
| Exits |
| F-Secure, a Finnish cybersecurity company, is paying £80 million (€91,6M) in cash to purchase all outstanding shares in MWR InfoSecurity, a privately held cyber security company with numerous offices, including in the U.S. and the U.K. As TechCrunch notes, that move underscores the shift in the cyber security industry from defensive, reactive actions towards pro-active detection and response. More here. Leanplum, a venture-backed mobile engagement platform, has acquiredConnecto, a Sofia, Bulgaria-based conversational marketing company. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. LeanPlum has raised nearly $100 million from investors since its founding six years ago. GameStop, a publicly traded, Grapevine, Tex.-based video game and equipment retailer, is in talks with private equity firms about being acquired, says Reuters. More here. PayPal just announced that it’s acquiring Hyperwallet, an 18-year-old, San Francisco-based company behind an online worker payment platform. According to Crunchbase, Hyperwallet had raised at least one round of venture capital (though the amount wasn’t disclosed) from Raymond James and Primus Capital. PayPal is buying it for $400 million in cash. More here. |
| IPOs |
| BrightView, a 79-year-old, Plymouth Meeting, Pa.-based company that’s among the largest providers of commercial landscaping services in the U.S., says it plans to sell 21.3 million IPO shares at between $22 and $25. The company’s biggest outside shareholders include KKR and MSD Capital. Nasdaq has a bit more here. Forty Seven, a three-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based immuno-oncology firm, said it plans to raise $101 million in an IPO of 6.7 million shares priced between $14 to $16. Its biggest shareholders include Lightspeed Ventures Partners, Sutter Hill Ventures, Clarus Lifesciences, Wellington Management Company andAlphabet. Nasdaq has more here. |
| People |
| Apple CEO Tim Cook is the latest business leader to condemn the Trump administration’s new “zero tolerance” policy that has resulted in immigrant children being separated from their parents at the US border. Others to publicly slam the policy include Airbnb’s founders. More here. VC Tim Draper, an early and prominent Theranos investor, appeared on the Cheddar network earlier today, where he continued to defend Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, saying Holmes was “doing good work” before Theranos was “attacked” by the WSJ and “forced to sort of fail.” More here. |
| Data |
| Social media is still growing in emerging markets, but it is stalling elsewhere. |
| Essential Reads |
| Facebook is launching a gameshow platform with interactive video. Amazon just rolled out a version of Alexa for hotels that are interested in putting Echo speakers in their rooms. IBM‘s new AI supercomputer can argue, rebut and debate humans. |
| Detours |
| How Facebook’s latest machine learning research could save a lot of bad photographs. The 11 best foods for your immune system. Inside the binge factory. |
| Retail Therapy |
| Five cheap-ish things for bike commuting bliss. |