17 September 2018 – Smart Car Producer Banma Completes $2.3bn Funding Round

Deals

Banma, the smart car producer formed by carmaker SAIC and e-commerce group Alibaba, has completed a $2.3bn funding round that included SAIC investment vehicle Shangqi Capital.

Restaurant listings platform Zomato is in the process of expanding into food delivery and is raising some $400m to do so. Online travel agency Ctrip is reportedly in talks to put up $100m of that funding and will invest alongside Ant Financial at an expected valuation of $1.8bn to $2bn.

Lithia Motors has led a $140m series D round for automotive sales service provider Shift Technologies that consisted of debt and equity financing, as part of a strategic partnership deal.

Atreca is developing therapeutics based on immune response, and has just raised $125m in a series C round that increased its overall funding to more than $225m. An undisclosed healthcare-focused fund led the round, but Atreca’s earlier investors include GlaxoSmithKline, which took part in its $56m series A three years ago.

Benson Hill Biosciences, developer of a crop design platform, has raised $60m in a series C round led by GV that boosted its total funding to more than $94m since it was founded in 2012.

Advanced heart monitor developer InfoBionic has received $50m from investors including health insurers Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, the latter through its Zaffre Investments vehicle. Zaffre also took part in the company’s last funding, an $8m series B1 round that closed in 2015.

Fosun has co-led a $50m series C round for distributed database software provider PingCap, with the proceeds set to go to product development and international growth.

Alexandria Venture Investments, the VC arm of life sciences real estate investment trust Alexandria Real Estate Equities, has also backed a $40m series B round for immuno-oncology therapy developer OncoResponse that included Helsinn Investment Fund, a corporate venturing vehicle for Helsinn Group.

Atreca, a US-based immune-focused medicine developer based on research at Stanford University, completed an oversubscribed $125m series C round today led by an undisclosed existing investor described as a healthcare-focused fund.

Funds

US-based healthcare provider Cigna has launched a corporate venturing vehicle called Cigna Ventures with $250m of capital. Cigna provides both healthcare and health insurance but formed Cigna Ventures in order to access innovative technology that can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of its services.

US-based insurance firm State Farm has formally launched a $100m corporate venture capital fund known as State Farm Ventures.

Australia-based fund manager Main Sequence Ventures has raised an additional A$132m ($94.8m) for its Csiro Innovation Fund 1 from investors including University of Melbourne, aerospace and defence company

Nanoelectronics research institute Imec announced the close of its early-stage and growth fund Imec.xpand at €117m ($135m) today, above the initial target of €100m set in June 2017. Apart from Imec itself, LPs also include several unnamed universities as well as the Flemish government and its investment company PMV, state-owned regional development agency BOM and Belgian government-owned investment firm SFPI-FPIM.

Luxembourg not only launched a space agency last week but is also seeking to launch a €100m ($117m) venture capital vehicle, called Luxembourg Space Fund, to invest in space technology developers. The money will come from the state and from private investors.

Exits

Local services platform Meituan Dianping has gone public in Hong Kong, floating toward the upper end of its range at a reported $52bn valuation and raising $4.2bn in the process.

China-based smart electric carmaker Nio has gone public in the US, raising a sliver over $1bn. As with Meituan Dianping, Tencent is the largest investor in Nio, but its other backers include Baidu, Lenovo, JD.com and Temasek as well as Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC, and in contrast to the larger company, Nio floated almost at the foot of its range, having initially targeted $1.8bn in the offering.

Augmenix, a radiation oncology technology producer backed by corporates Varian Medical Systems and Ascension Health, has been acquired by medical devices maker Boston Scientific. Boston Scientific will pay $500m in upfront cash and up to an additional $100m if Augmenix reaches sales-based milestones.

Westwing, an online home furnishings retailer backed by Rocket Internet, Tengelmann Ventures and Access Industries, plans to raise up to $139m in an initial public offering slated for Frankfurt. The company has raised some $262m in funding so far.

Eventbrite, the event ticketing platform backed by payment services provider Square, has set the price range for its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange at $19 to $21.

ViraTherapeutics, an Austria-based immuno-oncology spinout of Medical University of Innsbruck, was acquired by its existing shareholder, pharmaceutical firm Boehringer Ingelheim for $245m, also allowing European Molecular Biology Laboratory to exit.


“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

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