Tag: Robinhood

02 August 2021 – Rhiti Group and Kanodia Launch VC Firm Deep Pockets Capital Venture

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Story 1

While immediate attention is on China’s latest crackdown of sectors, such as tech and education, and the ability for foreign investors to back them or even if they can make profits, there is greater optimism in another rising economic power: India.

India-based sports-focused Rhiti Group has collaborated with local cement maker Kanodia Group to launch venture capital firm Deep Pockets Capital Venture.

“India is on the cusp of a revolution in technology, including artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain, which are set to revolutionise agriculture, finance and entertainment in coming years,” according to Rhiti Group Chairman Arun Pandey in the Economic Times of India.

Venture capital funding for Indian firms hit a six-year high of $12.1bn in the first six months of 2021, according to Venture Intelligence, many of them by foreign investors.

Tiger Global has struck almost 170 deals in India since 2006 with 29 so far this year, according to PitchBook data, under a strategy by key executives such as Lee Fixel, alongside other corporate investors, such as Naspers (now called Prosus), and Chinese peers, such as Xiaomi, Tencent and Alibaba.

In 2014, Tiger and Prosus helped lead a $1bn investment in Indian ecommerce group Flipkart, at a valuation that represented a three to four times multiple of the company’s sales, according to the Financial Times in its profile of Tiger.

And exits are starting to flow following the seminal $16bn acquisition of a majority of Flipkart by US peer Walmart three years ago. The successful listing of food delivery service Zomato and expected bumper initial public offerings of payments provider Paytm, insurance aggregator Policybazaar, bueaty retailer Nykaa and delivery company Delhivery. Even Flipkart could reportedly come to the public markets as soon as this year after its latest $3.6bn round.

But India’s regulators favour incumbents and the risks remain that a change in approach to international investment could collapse sentiment in the way the FT reported that SoftBank Vision Fund’s bet on China-based ride hailing service Didi Chuxing had fallen $4bn into the red after the past few weeks since its US listing was subsequently attacked by the authorities.

The Economist this week warned these investors might struggle. Local corporate investors, however, are waking up to the possibilities.

Story 2

A week ago, US-based stock exchange Nasdaq said it would separate its existing marketplace for private company shares into a new unit. With Wall Street giants Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup alongside California ingenue Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) buying into the new division it “will prove exceptionally difficult to compete against”, according to the Financial Times.

There is already $30bn traded on private exchanges, such as Carta and EquityZen, the FT added. But the potential market is vast, and growing.

After raising an almost $6.7bn fund in March, hedge fund Tiger Global had invested the vast majority of the capital by June, according to a letter to investors seen by the FT. Its new $10bn fund will begin accepting capital as soon as October and, in marketing documents, Tiger Global said it had “consistently underestimated” the market for private tech companies. Six months earlier, data suggested a $3tn market opportunity. It was now closer to $5tn, the firm said, as it looked to purchase billions of dollars of shares in ByteDance, the owner of social media application TikTok, through secondary sales at prices valuing the company between $400bn and $450bn, according to the FT.

But with even more liquidity to venture potentially surging in from retail and other investors will come tighter bid-ask spreads and effectively little to choose for an entrepreneur whether the business has to sell or float at all.

Alex Lazovsky, managing partner and co-founder of venture capital firm Scale-Up VC, in an article for Forbes thinks this is the biggest change for VCs.

“Perhaps the biggest change is just now emerging on the horizon, and it could dissolve the entire concept of ‘exit’ from below. The secondary market looks set to go retail, which might largely erase the difference between the public and private equity markets.

“If anyone with some extra income and a smartphone can invest in startup equity, does that make everyone a VC? Will existing VCs be priced out of their own market? If startups have access to unlimited public finance while still in the garage, what would ‘exit’ mean? Where is the gap? Will Sequoia meet the same fate as the once-mighty record company EMI?”

Probably not. As the Economist noted in its obituary for Yang Huaiding – China’s “first shareholder”, known as “Yang Millions” – it is “no good treating the market like a casino. You had to study it constantly, the companies, the conditions, the mood, before you jumped.”

The winners, therefore, are rarely the Robinhood traders but those with an edge – inside information on the likely future performance of a business.

And here, SVB is likely to be far more disruptive to the traditional investment banks as a result of the Nasdaq spinout.

SVB has the financials for the main VC firms and hence which ones to support as well as many of the entrepreneurs.

Throw in SVB’s work with corporations to help them partner these entrepreneurs as a customer and the future revenues it can bring then this is an unprecedented edge.

The only surprise is the big banks have yet to buy SVB before it reached this stage.

Story 3

Potential exciting news by the Wall Street Journal as US-based Form Energy recently initiated a $200m funding round, led by a strategic investment from Luxembourg-based steelmaking group ArcelorMittal, which is also one of the world’s leading iron-ore producers.

Form could use iron to store energy for days, which is helpful for utilities grappling with the intermittent supply of electricity from renewable power – check out the Global Energy Council’s latest report with a focus on the electricity grid.

The deal is also part of the so-called cleantech 2.0 movement. The first wave of cleantech startups before 2009 struggled for years with a number of high-profile flameouts, such as Solyndra.

Now, a wave of liquidity through special purpose acquisition companies (Spacs) is targeting many of the survivors and promising new companies with an eye on the disruption and opportunities to affect the business world as it tackles climate change and the move to net zero carbon emissions.

Paul Holland, managing director and VC-in-residence at Mach49, will discuss with Scott Gale, executive director at Halliburton Labs, and Grégoire Viasnoff, vice-president for incubation business at Schneider Electric, on how multinationals can tackle the world’s most pressing problems through venture building and investing in cleantech, energy transition, circular economy and mobility.

Halliburton Labs, the clean energy accelerator from one of the world’s largest providers to the energy industry, this month announced the second cohort of startups.

Schneider Electric, another Mach49 partner focused on sustainability and the circular economy, has been incubating new companies, such as eIQ Mobility, Clipsal Solar and Dash Energy, and investing in external startups through its $600m SE Ventures fund since 2018.

“Mach49 was founded on the belief that through venture building and venture investing, global businesses can solve the world’s most pressing problems, including climate change, water, poverty, health, and education,” said Linda Yates, founder and CEO of Mach49. “Embracing a Silicon Valley mindset is the first step. With a nimble, startup and VC mindset, large global corporations are leveraging their talent, assets, and innovation to create a growth engine fuelled by a pipeline and portfolio of new ventures.”

Reduce, reuse and recycle was a helpful way to think about limiting personal impact on the planet (along with the handy advice to take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints).

And it seems corporations are taking up the mantra as their venturing units increasingly focus on sustainable development goals.

Most recently, Germany-based consumer technology subscription platform Grover has raised $1bn in debt financing to add to April’s series B equity round from Samsung Next among others.

The company offers users consumers electronics, such as Samsung phones, to rent and then reuse saving about 1,400 tonnes of waste.

Meanwhile, Amazon Climate Pledge Fund has reinvested in the battery recycling services provider Redwood’s $700m round at a reported $3.7bn post-money valuation and UK-based all-inclusive electric vehicle (EV) subscription service Onto has raised $175m in a combined equity and debt series B round including from oil major TotalEnergies, industrial group Vlerick Group and Netherlands-based insurer Achmea’s Innovation Fund.

And more such deals are likely to come. Private equity firm TPG has raised $5.4bn for its TPG Rise Climate fund with a hard cap of $7bn and existing commitments from 20 or so corporations, including Alphabet, Bank of America, Dow, General Motors and Nike.

Earlier in the month, private market investor General Atlantic created a strategy focused on climate change that is reportedly looking to raise about $4bn.

According to Pitchbook, investors around the world have already closed as many climate-focused funds, such as $7bn for Brookfield Asset Management’s carbon neutrality fund, as were raised in the past five years.

These impact, environmental and sustainability strategies will be discussed around the COP26 meeting in November as part of the www.GCVsymposium.com

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

05 July 2021 – CMR Surgical Raises $600m in Round Led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2

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The Big Ones

SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 co-led a $600m series D round for UK-based surgical robotics technology developer CMR Surgical with healthcare investment group Ally Bridge, while Cambridge Innovation Capital, the patient capital fund formed with the support of University of Cambridge, also participated. GE Healthcare, a subsidiary of power and industrial technology conglomerate General Electric, also took part in the round, which valued the company at $3bn, as did internet group Tencent. RPMI Railpen and Chimera filled out the consortium together with existing backers including LGT and its Lightrock affiliate, Watrium, and PFM Health Sciences.

BMW i Ventures, the US-based venture capital firm formed by Germany’s automotive manufacturer BMW, launched a $300m fund that will focus on sustainability. BMW i Ventures has accumulated a portfolio of some 50 companies including Chargepoint, the vehicle charging network set to list at a $2.4bn valuation, and manufacturing services marketplace Xometry, which floated in a $302m IPO this past week. The latest vehicle will operate alongside the unit’s $500m first fund and will target early and mid-stage companies concentrating on sustainability, transportation, manufacturing and supply chain technologies.

Didi Global, the China-based ride hailing service backed by SoftBank, Alibaba, China Life, Tencent, Apple, Booking Holdings, Ping An, eHi and Sina Weibo, went public in a $4.44bn initial public offering. The company increased the amount of shares in the offering from 288 million American Depositary Shares, with four ADSs equalling one class A share, to approximately 317 million. They were priced at the top of the IPO’s $13 to $14 range and it floated on the New York Stock Exchange.

Duolingo, the US-based language learning app developer spun out of Carnegie Mellon University, has filed for an initial public offering yesterday that would enable Alphabet to exit. The offering is slated to take place on the Nasdaq Global Select Market and the company has set a $100m placeholder target. The company had raised a total of $183m as of November 2020, when it secured $35m from Durable Capital Partners and General Atlantic at $2.4bn valuation, with Union Square Ventures (USV) selling shares through the deal.

Deals

UK-based low earth orbit satellite technology developer OneWeb secured $500m from Bharti Enterprises, which exercised a call option from a shareholder’s agreement to increase its stake to 38.6%. OneWeb is developing a constellation of 650 low earth orbit satellites through which it intends to offer global broadband connectivity. The company had filed for bankruptcy in March 2020 after failing to secure new funding in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic. Bharti and the UK government then bought OneWeb’s assets for $1bn in July that year. The UK government’s investment was reportedly motivated by a desire to build a competitor to the global positioning system Galileo, created by the EU and to which the country has lost access following its decision to abandon the union. OneWeb’s satellites would be in too low an orbit to enable such functionality, however.

SoftBank led a $415m series C round for Kitopi, the United Arab Emirates-headquartered provider of a cloud kitchen software platform, through its Vision Fund 2. Diversified conglomerate Dogus Group also took part in the round, along with B Riley Financial, Chimera Investment, DisruptAD, Next Play Capital and Nordstar. The cash was secured at a valuation above $1bn.

Olive, a US-based healthcare management software producer backed by internet and technology group Alphabet, completed a $400m funding round yesterday valuing it at $4bn. The round was led by Vista Equity Partners and also featured Base10 Partners’ Advancement Initiative. It took the overall funding raised by the company to $902m.

Zipline, a US-based medical consumables logistics service backed by Alphabet, secured $250m from investors including Fidelity, Baillie Gifford, Emerging Capital Partners, Intercorp, Katalyst Ventures, Reinvent Capital and Temasek. The cash was secured at a $2.75bn valuation.

US-based corporate wellbeing services provider Gympass raised $220m from investors including SoftBank today at a $2.2bn valuation. General Atlantic, Kaszek, Moore Strategic Ventures and Valor Capital Group also participated in the round. Founded in Brazil, Gympass operates wellness programmes on behalf of corporate clients, offering access to gyms, personal trainers, meditation classes and therapists, and said it had signed up more than 1,000 new corporate customers during the pandemic.

Goat Group, a US-based streetwear marketplace operator backed by Foot Locker, has secured $195m in a series F round that valued it at $3.7bn. Hedge fund manager Park West Asset Management led the round, which included Ulysses Management, Franklin Templeton and Adage Capital Management, and funds and accounts advised by T Rowe Price Associates.

Funds

US-based enterprise software supplier Infragistics has formed a $50m corporate venture capital vehicle dubbed Infragistics Innovation Fund and Lab. The fund will target intrapreneurs from within the organisation who are developing innovation technologies related to Infragistics’ user interface and user experience (UX) design software products.

Exits

SentinelOne, a US-based cybersecurity technology producer backed by Qualcomm and Samsung, has raised more than $1.22bn today in an upsized initial public offering. The IPO consists of 35 million shares issued on the New York Stock Exchange, increased from an initial allocation of 32 million, priced at $35.00 each, above its $31 to $32 range. Existing SentinelOne investors Tiger Global Management, Insight Partners, Third Point Ventures and Sequoia Capital agreed to acquire $50m more shares through a concurrent private placement. The IPO price values it at approximately $8.92bn.

US-based security screening technology producer Clear Secure went public in a $409m initial public offering representing exits for Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Union Square Hospitality Group and Liberty Media. The company issued 13.2 million class A shares on the New York Stock Exchange priced at $31.00 each, above the IPO’s $27 to $30 range. The shares closed at $40 on their first day of trading.

InnoVid, a US-based video marketing technology provider backed by Cisco and Deutsche Telekom, has agreed a reverse takeover at an implied valuation of roughly $1.3bn. The company is joining forces with SPAC Ion Acquisition Corp 2, which floated on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in a $253m initial public offering in January 2021. Phoenix Insurance and Fidelity Management and Research are co-leading a $150m PIPE financing in connection with the deal that includes Baron Capital Group, Vintage and funds affiliated with Ion.

MissFresh, a China-based online grocery retailer backed by Lenovo and Tencent, raised $273m in an initial public offering on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. The company priced 21 million American depositary shares, each representing three ordinary shares, at $13 each, at the low end of the $13-$16 range it had set last week. They opened at $10.65 and closed at $9.66 at the end of its first day of trading, giving it a market capitalisation of roughly $2.5bn.

US-based online trading platform developer Robinhood filed for an initial public offering that would score exits for Alphabet and Roc Nation. Founded in 2013, Robinhood runs Robinhood Financial, an online platform where users can buy and sell stocks without a minimum investment level, in addition to Robinhood Crypto, which allows them to do the same with cryptocurrencies. The company has set a $100m placeholder target for the offering, and sources familiar with its plans told the Financial Times it is targeting a $40bn valuation.

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

22 March 2021 – Stripe Raises $600m with a $95bn Valuation

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The Big Ones

Payment processing software provider Stripe has raised $600m from investors including Axa and Allianz X, but the key element to the story is its valuation, which has rocketed from an already huge $36bn less than a year ago to $95bn in the latest round. It’s another symptom of the surging fintech sector, even though Stripe has not mentioned IPO plans. Its earlier corporate investors are Alphabet unit CapitalG, Sumitomo Mitsui Card Company, Visa and American Express.

The drama surrounding Ant Group’s failed IPO late last year combined with Donald Trump’s exit as US president may well have served to pull more China-based tech companies to the latter country for their IPOs. Tencent-backed internet-of-things technology provider Tuya has reportedly priced its IPO above the range and will bag $915m when it floats on the New York Stock Exchange. Tencent itself has expressed interest in buying some $100m of shares in the offering.

South Korea-based conglomerate SK Group has teamed up with Chinese automotive manufacturer Zhejiang Geely Holding Group to establish a mobility technology fund with a $300m target for its final close. The corporates are each putting in $30m and will look to harness European banks and Asian pension funds among other external backers in order to raise the rest of the capital.

Crossover

Vaccitech, the UK-based developer of vaccines for infectious diseases and cancer spun out of University of Oxford famous for co-inventing the covid-19 vaccine with AstraZeneca, closed a $168m series B round backed by Oxford Sciences Innovation, Future Planet Capital, Tencent, Gilead Sciences and Monaco Constitutional Reserve Fund. The round was led by M&G Investment Management. Vaccitech actually started out with the aim of developing a universal flu vaccine, and its clinical pipeline now includes assets aimed at chronic hepatitis B infection, persistent, high-risk human papillomavirus infection and prostate cancer. It will use the series B capital to advance each of these three assets through phase 1/2 trials. Vaccitech’s earlier backers include GV, which did not return for the series B round, however.

Deals

Gene, cell and regenerative therapy developer ElevateBio has raised $525m in a series C round that found space for SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2, Itochu and an unnamed insurance provider. The round was led by investment management firm Matrix Capital Management and it pumped ElevateBio’s overall funding up to $845m since it publicly launched less than two years ago.

Robert Bosch, SAIC Motor and Toyota have co-led a $500m series C round for another Chinese tech company, autonomous driving software developer Momenta. The transaction also featured Tencent and Mercedes-Benz and it’s one of several huge rounds for mobility and transport technology developers so far in 2021, a sign that investors expect the sector to continue to progress in the coming years.

GV and SoftBank Investment Advisers, which manages over $100bn in capital for SoftBank’s Vision Funds, have contributed to a $400m series C round for drug discovery technology provider Insitro. The round boosted Insitro’s funding to more than $640m and it is emblematic of the new breed of tech-enhanced drug developers getting investment right now, with GV among the most fervent backers.

PatSnap, the operator of a cloud platform that collates investment and innovation data, is a company with a business model which has benefitted from the general rise in the market, and has pulled in $300m through a series E round co-led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Tencent. Both are of course among the most active corporate venture capital investors, which implies a strategic element to their participation in the round, which reportedly valued PatSnap at over $1bn.

Airtable has more than doubled its valuation to $5.77bn, raising $270m in series E funding from investors including media holding company WndrCo. The database software producer plans to channel the proceeds into improving its platform and strengthening its sales and marketing activities. Its overall funding is now around the $620m mark.

SecurityScorecard completed its $180m series E round, snatching up funding from investors including Intel Capital, Axa Venture Partners and GV – all existing backers – at a valuation reportedly just short of $1bn. The round boosted the cybersecurity ratings provider’s total funding to $290m, and at a time when data management software providers are raising big money, it shows the importance of securing that high-grade data in the first place.

Unite Us on the other hand has reached the unicorn stage, raising $150m in series C funding from investors including Optum Ventures and Salesforce Ventures at a valuation topping $1.6bn. The company provides a cloud platform that enables healthcare providers to coordinate treatment more effectively, and it has now received more than $195m altogether.

Identity verification software provider Socure has also breached that unicorn barrier, in a $100m series D round backed by Synchrony Financial, Citi Ventures and Wells Fargo Strategic Capital that valued it at $1.3bn. Socure has so far been mainly focused on customers in the financial services sector but will use the proceeds from the round to expand into other fields.

Funds

Andre Maciel, former managing partner at telecommunications and internet group SoftBank’s $5bn Latin America-focused fund, has extended the first close of his independent venture capital firm’s first fund to $80m. Maciel, along with Gregory Reider and Milena Oliveira, set up Brazil-headquartered Volpe Capital in 2019 with SoftBank’s backing. Its first fund also has investment bank BTG Pactual and digital bank Banco Inter as limited partners, according to TechCrunch. Maciel led an investment by SoftBank in Banco Inter he said delivered about $1bn in profits for the corporate.

Canada-based biotechnology product maker Natural Products Canada (NPC) plans to raise C$50m ($39.5m) for a cleantech corporate venturing fund called NPC Ventures. The company has secured a non-binding term sheet with an undisclosed anchor investor for the vehicle, which will invest in producers of natural alternatives to synthetic products such as plastics and preservatives. NPC Ventures aims to complete its first close in autumn 2021.

Exits

Robinhood may have had much of the publicity in recent months but it’s far from the only big player in the online share trading world. Competitor eToro has more than 20 million registered users and has agreed to list on the Nasdaq Capital Market through a reverse takeover with special purpose acquisition company FinTech Acquisition Corp V in a deal that will value it at about $9.5bn pre-transaction, and the combined company at approximately $10.4bn. It last disclosed primary funding three years ago when it raised $100m at an $800m valuation, following a $39m round featuring corporate VC units CommerzVentures, Ping An Ventures and SBT Venture Capital in 2015. That’s some exit.

Megvii has filed to go public, and the computer vision and deep learning software producer could reportedly raise up to $923m in the offering, slated to take place on Shanghai Stock Exchange’s Star Market, after fees. Its investors include Alibaba, Foxconn, Legend Star and SK Group, and its largest rival, SenseTime, closed a round described as pre-IPO funding two months ago.

Olo, the developer of a software platform that helps restaurants accept online orders, is going public in a $450m initial public offering that follows roughly $65m in equity funding. Some of that cash came from PayPal, a participant in a $5m round in 2013, and the now profitable company was boosted by a big 2020 that saw it almost double revenue. The offering was priced above a range that had been increased earlier this week.

Digital banking software provider Alkami has also filed for an initial public offering, setting a placeholder figure of $100m. The move comes six months after the company raised $140m from backers including investment and financial services group Fidelity, and a Reuters report earlier this year suggested it would seek a $3bn valuation when it looked to go public.

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

08 February 2021 – Robinhood Raises $3.4bn

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The Big Ones

Few VC-backed companies have had as busy a week in the mainstream media as Robinhood. The share trading platform developer has been ground zero for the GameStop rush as well as increased activity for other “meme” stocks like AMC, Nokia and BlackBerry. But those increased trading levels means more cash required to meet SEC requirements, and the Alphabet and Roc Nation-backed company first raised $1bn from existing investors along with some $500m to $600m in debt financing a week ago Friday and then another $2.4bn over the weekend to come out with $3.4bn last Monday.

Kuaishou went public in Hong Kong this Friday morning in a hugely oversubscribed initial public offering in which it raised $5.4bn, only to see its shares open at a price nearly three times that of its IPO. The short-form video app developer had secured $4.35bn in funding from investors including Tencent and Baidu prior to the offering and now has a market cap that stands around the $160bn mark.

US-based printing technology producer Xerox plans to launch innovation and corporate development divisions through a reorganisation involving the formation of a $250m corporate venturing arm. Xerox’s Corporate Development group will engage in investments and merger and acquisition deals as well as deploying the recently announced $250m fund. The unit is yet to be launched but will invest in mid-sized, growth-stage companies aligned with Xerox’s strategic interests. It will be led by executive vice-president Louie Pastor, who has also been appointed chief corporate development officer and chief legal officer.

Crossover is an exit this week. Stem cell immunotherapy developer Sana Biotechnology –based on research at Harvard, UCSF and University of Washington, and co-founded by former executives of Juno that was acquired by Celgene for $9bn a couple of years ago – has floated in an offering that netted it nearly $588m (more than four times as much as its $150m original target), reputedly representing the largest IPO yet for a preclinical biotech company. Shares surged 40% on the first day (from $25 to $35.10) so that greenshoe option seems likely, which could push proceeds to nearly $676m. It comes about eight months after Sana Bio disclosed $700m in early-stage funding from investors including GV, the Alphabet subsidiary formerly known as Google Ventures. Its current share price gives it a market cap of about $7bn.

Deals

It’s interesting that after the Ubers and Airbnbs of the world have gone public, a wave of new companies in more coronavirus-resistant sectors have stepped up to fill that void at the top of the VC-backed valuation heap, and quickly too. Data engineering software producer DataBricks has received $1bn from investors including Microsoft, AWS, CapitalG and Salesforce Ventures in a series G round valuing it at $28bn. That’s a more than fourfold increase from its series F, just over a year ago.

UiPath’s valuation is even higher, the automation software provider having pulled in $750m in series F funding at a $35bn post-money valuation. Corporate investors Tencent and CapitalG weren’t identified as participants in the round, which more than tripled UiPath’s valuation from its July series E, and it’s going to be interesting to see how much higher that valuation can go when it executes the IPO for which it confidentially filed in December.

Online food delivery has been heavily boosted in the past year and Good Eggs combines several different areas – prepared food and meal kits, farm-to-table produce, alcohol and flower delivery – in a single offering. It’s also managed to raise $100m from investors including GV and Rich’s despite operating mainly in the San Francisco Bay Area. The capital will support its expansion into Southern California, with wider movement surely on the horizon.

Tealium, developer of a management software tool for customer data, has secured $96m in series G financing at a $1.2bn valuation, increasing its overall funding to $160m. Its earlier funding came from investors including Sumitomo’s Presidio Ventures unit, ABN Amro Digital Impact Fund, Citi Ventures and Parkwood, though none were named in the latest round, which was co-led by Georgian and Silver Lake Waterman.

Mobile Premier League, the developer of an online gaming platform focused on the South and Southeast Asian markets, was founded about three years ago and has already notched up its fourth funding round, raising $95m from investors including Susquehanna International Group, Go-Ventures and Telstra Ventures. The series D round valued it at $945m post-money and the proceeds will go to bolstering its esports offering.

Funds

Telecoms and internet group SoftBank is launching a $100m fund to invest in companies based around the Miami, Florida area of the United States. The vehicle has already chosen its first portfolio companies, including cybersecurity software developer Lumu Technologies. It will invest in locally-founded startups as well as those willing to move to the area.

Exits

Genetic testing service 23andme has chosen to go the reverse merger route for a public listing, joining with VG Acquisition Corp, a special purpose acquisition company sponsored by conglomerate Virgin Group in a deal that will value the merged business at about $3.5bn. It had received more than $870m in funding pre-IPO from an investor base that includes GV (which is scoring some huge exits right now), WuXi AppTec, Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline, Roche and Illumina.

Astra is set to become the first private space launch services provider to hit the public markets, having agreed a reverse merger with special purpose acquisition company Holicity at an implied valuation of $2.1bn. The deal was agreed a year after Astra emerged from stealth having secured over $100m from investors including Airbus Ventures, which is slowly growing a significant presence in the spacetech sector, and two months after it launched its first rocket into space.

Drizly’s investors, which include Vayner/RSE, are heading for an exit of a different kind after the alcohol delivery service agreed to be acquired by Uber for $1.1bn. The company had disclosed approximately $85m in funding and will join an expanding range of Uber delivery services spearheaded by its Uber Eats subsidiary. It also stands as a sign of growth in the on-demand service sector, and perhaps forthcoming consolidation.

Roblox has had an extremely busy couple of months, filing for and then postponing its initial public offering, changing over to a direct listing, raising $520m from investors including Warner Music Group at a hugely increased $29.5bn valuation and now reportedly putting its plans to go public on hold. The game creation platform developer, which also counts Tencent among its investors, is postponing the listing due to regulatory scrutiny on how it classifies revenue from sales of its Robux currency on the platform.

Shared workspace provider Knotel was valued above $1bn just 18 months ago but has now filed for bankruptcy, a reminder that while some business models have thrived during the coronavirus pandemic, others have been far unluckier. Knotel had raised roughly $560m from investors including Mori Trust, Rocket Internet, Itochu, Bloomberg Beta, The Sapir Organization, Raiffeisen, Wolfson Group, Moinian Group and Wainbridge Capital.

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

28 September 2020 – Roche Pays $448m to Buy Inflazome

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The Big Ones

Congratulations to Mike Cavanagh at Comcast for taking up the reins of its ventures unit after Amy Banse’s decision to retire next year. Thanks goes to Banse for her support to the community over the past decade and glad she’s staying engaged through Comcast to deliver on sustainability, gender equality and mentorship.
My thanks to Ken Gatz, CEO at deal management software platform Proseeder, for running the past two days’ pitch events covering sustainability and mobility on September 22 and financial and deep technology yesterday. The GCV Connect powered by Proseeder platform reviewed the applications thanks to the expert corporate venturing judges and then showcased the finallists with the recordings edited and showreeled at the GCV Digital Forum next week, 29th.

Sweden-listed investment holding company Kinnevik’s history is one of pivots. From its initial switch from pulp and paper into telecoms and media in Sweden in the 1990s and then into online companies such as Avito, Rocket Internet and Zalando in the 2010s now comes the push into privately-held startups as it sells its $2bn stake in telecoms asset Tele2.

Exits

Roche has paid $448m to buy Inflazome, the Novartis-backed developer of treatments for chronic inflammatory conditions ranging from Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, hepatitis B, Crohn’s disease and many others. Inflazome was spun out of University of Queensland just four years ago and also commercialises research from Trinity College Dublin. Novartis had contributed to its two only rounds that brought in a total of just over $62m.

TriNetX had raised $102m in funding from investors including Merck & Co, Mitsui and Itochu before agreeing to a purchase by Carlyle.

You may have all but forgotten about WeWork, the beleaguered co-working space provider, and in a world struggling to keep a pandemic at bay, sharing an office with strangers is hardly appealing. Yet, Trustbridge seems confident there is money to be made still and has acquired a majority stake in WeWork China for… $200m. Not only had WeWork China raised $1bn from investors including SoftBank and its Vision Fund, but was also once valued at $5bn. A source told TechCrunch layoffs had already started and “many things” remained uncertain, so we’ll see how this one pans out. In any case, it’s hardly an exit to celebrate for the investors, but they were likely prepared for that already anyway.

Even if you don’t drive an electric car, you have likely come across the term range anxiety – the fear that the battery’s charge will not last all the way to the driver’s destination. It is often considered a significant barrier to large-scale adoption of EVs, so seeing ChargePoint – which operates an international charging network – agreeing to a reverse merger with SPAC Switchback Energy Acquisition can only be good news. The deal values ChargePoint at $2.4bn and will, once it closes in Q4, net the business $683m in fresh funding. That’s a smidgeon more than the $667m it had raised in equity financing from backers such as AEP, BMW, Chevron, Constellation Energy, Daimler, Siemens, The Hartford and Toyota.

Speaking of the transportation sector: Ninebot – best known for the Segway brand – is looking to go public in China through a $295m IPO on Shanghai’s Star Market. The Xiaomi and Intel-backed company’s move is intriguing not so much for the IPO’s target size (though that is notable, too) but because it’s the first company with a variable interest entities (VIE) structure that’s been approved to list using Chinese Depository Receipts. VIE is a framework that enables foreign investment in companies that are restricted from accepting overseas capital due to their sensitive nature. Typically, the structure is employed by China-based companies undertaking a listing elsewhere and up until now Beijing made companies unwind this structure if they sought to list at home – but rising tensions with the US have seemingly provoked some flexibility from the central government.

Tencent-backed low-cost retailer has put a $100m placeholder figure in its filing for an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, more than a year after its plans first emerged.

Compass Pathways, a UK-based depression medicine developer backed by pharmaceutical group Otsuka Pharmaceuticals’ McQuade Center for Strategic Research and Development, achieved a different kind of exit as it went public in an upsized IPO worth more than $127m on Friday. The company is working on something rather unusual: a synthetic version of psilocybin, the psychedelic compound in magic mushrooms, to treat mental health disorders that have proven resistant to other therapies. McQuade had backed an $80m series B round in April 2020 and its bet paid off, as shares in Compass shot up to $29 on the first day of trading.

If you were looking forward to whatever blockbuster terms Grail was going to set for its IPO when it first filed with a $100m placeholder amount earlier this month, you’ll be sorely disappointed with today’s news. However, the $8bn put down by Illumina (though when accounting for its existing stake it’s closer to $7bn) to acquire its cancer diagnostics spinoff is impressive in its own right – particularly considering that Grail raised just under $2bn, so Illumina could have saved a decent chunk of cash if it had kept the development internal – but that’s the nature of these things. WuXi AppTec, Tencent, Amazon, Alphabet, Varian Medical Systems, BMS, Celgene, Merck & Co, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Johnson & Johnson and McKesson are all among the corporates celebrating an exit.

Speaking of China: Zhonggu Logistics, a container logistics services provider backed by liner operator Zhonggu Shipping and telecommunications group SoftBank, is targeting a $218m initial public offering after pricing its shares at $3.28 a pop. It will list on the main board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, and Zhonggu Shipping will remain a majority shareholder at 63.1%, with a tiny slice (2.2%) also left for SoftBank. CICC is the lead underwriter.

The Washington State University neurological drug developer has gone public after issuing 12 million shares priced at $17 each.

Deals

News continues coming in at a rapid pace, proving that the summer lull – however much there was one, considering the flurry of IPO filings as discussed earlier – is well and truly over. If you live in the west, you’d be forgiven for thinking Tesla is the only real contender in the EV space but there are other noteworthy companies in the east. One of these is WM Motor, which has picked up $1.47bn in a series D round backed by SAIC Motor – adding to some $1.8bn in funding previously raised from investors such as Baidu, Tencent and China Minmetals. The money has been allocated to R&D, marketing, sales and branding activities.

There really is no stopping Robinhood, the US-based share trading app developer backed by Alphabet and Roc Nation: the company has now pushed its series G round to $660m thanks to a $460m extension supplied by D1 Capital Partners (which had provided the $200m initial tranche last month), a16z, Sequoia, DST, Ribbit and 9Yards. The extension has moved Robinhood’s valuation up to $11.7bn from $11.2bn a few weeks ago – that seems like a marginal increase hardly worth mentioning but in July the company was actually worth “only” $8.2bn when it closed its $600m series F. It’s now collected some $2.36bn in funding altogether.

Challenger bank Chime has become the most valuable American fintech aimed at retail consumers after raising $485m in a series F round that pushed its valuation to $14.5bn – a good chunk of change more than previous leader Robinhood, which attained an $11.2bn valuation last month. If $14.5bn seems a lot – and it is – consider this: Chime claims it has been adding hundreds of thousands of customers per month as the pandemic has made people less inclined to go into a physical bank branch. Consider this, too: the company was worth a mere $1.5bn just 18 months ago. Access Industries returned for the latest round but Chime’s early investors, which include Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, will also all be in for a phenomenal exit at this rate.

Munich Re has returned for a $250m series D round raised by online insurance platform Next Insurance, while CapitalG led the round. Next Insurance has grown to more than 100,000 customers across all 50 US states and will use the money to improve its existing offering, add more products and hire an additional 200 employees. Next has now raised $631m in total – Munich Re previously injected $250m in series C financing a year ago – and its investors also include Nationwide (the US insurer, not the UK financial institution), Markel and American Express Ventures.

Apple’s silicon in iPhones and iPads is notably because the chips manage to squeeze an astounding amount of processing power out of small real estate at low power usage. The team that led the development of these chips left last year to found Nuvia in an effort to bring their expertise to semiconductors in data centres. While its technology is still very much in development, it clearly has done enough to entice investors for a $240m series B round that featured returning backer Dell Technologies Capital.

Children’s debit card provider Greenlight is valued at $1.2bn after raising $215m in a funding from a host of investors, though none of its corporate backers participated this time.

Xingyun has picked up $200m in a series C round co-led by Taikang Insurance, Shanghai United Media Group and Highlight Capital, while GLP and C&D Group also invested.

There was a $133m series C round secured by Beyond Limits, an AI technology developer based on research at Caltech’s Nasa-aligned Jet Propulsion Lab that is notable not only because it’s repeatedly convinced BP Ventures to invest but also because it actually managed to attract BP Ventures’ Meghan Sharp as COO about a year ago (as long-time subscribers will remember). Another corporate, Group 42, joined BP for the series C round.

SoftBank’s Latin America Fund and General Atlantic have co-led a $107m series B round for Accesso Digital, a facial recognition technology developer that will use the money to scale.

Digital Garage has helped launch mobile gaming platform Playco with a $100m series A round and a valuation of more than $1bn.

Recycling electronics is big business – rare earth minerals needed to build devices such as laptops or smartphones are expensive to mine, but old gadgets too often just end up in that junk drawer we all have in our houses. This is where Wanwu Xinsheng – né Aihuishou – comes in: it runs an online and brick-and-mortar recycling service for consumers to sell their second-hand devices. The company’s now raised $100m in series E-plus financing from JD.com, its JD Logistics unit and others, to accelerate growth and seek additional partnerships internationally. The round brings the company’s overall funding to more than $1bn, and JD.com is a repeat investor.

Another nine-figure sum was revealed by Nucarf, a China-based logistics fleet refuelling management platform that has collected $100m in combined series A and A-plus capitalfrom investors including Xiamen C&D. The cash has been allocated to accelerating the development of its digital infrastructure, and it comes after multiple rounds of undisclosed size in 2017 and 2018.

Foot Locker-backed sneaker marketplace Goat Group has completed a $100m round from D1 Capital Partners, bringing its overall financing to almost $300m in five years.

University

UW mental health spinout Owl Insights secured funding to advance its product development and distribution.

Funds

The website development tool provider’s Wix Capital subsidiary will invest in early-stage startups that are developing AI, e-commerce, web design and automation technologies.

Pureos Bioventures has backed five spinouts so far from its inaugural biotech-focused fund, which has reached its final close.

Unnamed corporates have provided capital for Panlin’s $148m fund that will focus on healthcare, digital transformation and smart hardware.

Legal & General is among the limited partners for Kindred Capital’s second fund, which also attracted University of Chicago and will invest in early-stage European startups.

Alsa Ventures is targeting a $150m final close for its inaugural biotherapeutics fund, which has already backed university-linked companies.

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

24 August 2020 – SpaceX Raises $1.9bn

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The Big Ones

SpaceX has been one of the most fervent fundraisers among private companies in recent years and it shows no signs of stopping. A securities filing indicates the spacecraft manufacturer and launch services provider has secured $1.9bn from undisclosed investors, with recent media reports putting the valuation of the round at $46bn. Its earlier backers include Google, which invested $900m at a $12bn valuation five years ago, and that valuation looks set to keep on rising for now.

Consumer electronics manufacturer Konka Group has teamed up with the Chinese city of Yancheng to put together an industry fund that will begin investing from a base of about $435m. The fund will be sized at up to $1.45bn and Konka is providing 40% of the capital. Its areas of interest include AI, semiconductors, the internet-of-things, new machinery and advanced materials.

Airbnb has announced it has confidentially filed for its long-awaited initial public offering. People were talking about an Airbnb flotation before the last downturn in the IPO markets in 2018. The rebound last year wasn’t enough to tempt it, but now, while they’re rallying for tech stocks, seems to be the right time despite a coronavirus-related hit to Airbnb’s business that saw it lay off 25% of its staff in May. The CapitalG-backed company had been valued at $26bn, down from $31bn, when it raised $1bn in debt and equity the previous month.

We have finally hit that summer lull on GUV, but there were still a few big stories. Most notably, Mission Bio, a US-based DNA analysis technology spinout of University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), has raised $70m in a series C round led by pharmaceutical firm Novo’s Novo Growth unit. Agilent Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of laboratory equipment and diagnostics services provider Agilent Technologies, also took part in the round, as did Cota Capital, Mayfield Fund and Soleus Capital. The round took the company’s total funding to more than $120m, it said, and Robert Ghenchev, head of Novo Growth, has joined its board of directors. Founded in 2014, Mission Bio has created a system called Tapestri which enables researchers and medical professionals to analyse single-cell RNA sequencing data to help develop precision medicines. The spinout leverages genomics technology from UCSF’s Abate Lab.

Deals

E-commerce group JD.com”s pharmaceutical product and medical services spinoff JD Health raised $1bn at a $6.9bn valuation last year, and now it’s agreed to add series B funding from investment manager Hillhouse Capital. The deal is set to be finalised next month and JD Health expects to get upwards of $830m from Hillhouse, an investor in its parent company since its 2012 series C round.

Last week we talked about reports that Chinese online medical insurance and crowdfunding service Waterdrop had raised $200m at a $2bn valuation, but a subsequent announcement places the size of the round at $230m. Tencent and Swiss Re co-led the round, which sources told Reuters valued Waterdrop just short of $2bn. Swiss Re has been relatively quiet in the corporate venturing space in recent years but reportedly put up $100m of the capital in this round.

Online share trading has made a big jump as the stock markets rally, and RobinHood is getting a lot of business in the US market. It has accordingly increased its valuation from $8.3bn to $11.2bn in the space of just four weeks, its latest move being to raise $200m in series G financing from investment firm D1 Capital Partners. It has now secured a total of $1.7bn and its earlier investors include Roc Nation’s Arrive subsidiary as well as Alphabet units GV and CapitalG.

Palfish is one of several Chinese online education providers to have experienced growth during Covid-19 lockdowns, and it has raised $120m in a series C round that included quantitative trading firm Susquehanna International Group. The company specialises in English tutoring and claims to have some 40 million users. It will put the funding towards improving its big data technology.

BlockFi has been one of the more frequent fundraisers in the startup space having closed five rounds in just over two years as it expands its range of digital currency services. The latest is a $50m series C round that included subsidiaries of CM Group and Siam Commercial Bank. The company has now secured more than $160m and its earlier backers include Consensys, SIG, Recruit and SoFi.

There are several VC-backed companies operating under the moniker of Element but the latest to raise money is the Germany-based bespoke insurance software provider, which has added funding from investors including Sony Financial Ventures and SBI Investment to a series A round that now stands at $46.5m. The earlier tranches featured Signal Iduna and Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance.

Funds

MDI Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of Indonesian state-owned telecommunications firm Telkom, has closed a $500m fund entirely financed by the company. It will invest between $5m and $30m in domestic digital technology developers that will get access to a range of government-owned corporations, which in turn will be able to leverage the technology required to form a digital ecosystem in the country.

Russian conglomerate Sistema may not be the most active participant in the corporate venturing space but it does have one of the largest ranges of investment, having closed a series of funds focusing on different regions and sectors. Its Sistema Asia Capital subsidiary closed a $120m India fund in 2015 and is in the midst of raising the same amount for a vehicle concentrating on Southeast Asia. Areas of interest include cybersecurity, computer vision, smart cities, urban mobility and the internet-of-things.

Exits

Pharmaceutical companies Juno Therapeutics (itself a spinout of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre, Seattle Children’s Research Institute and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre) and WuXi AppTec founded cancer immunotherapy developer JW Therapeutics in 2016 and now it has filed for an initial public offering in Hong Kong. Recent reports suggested JW would target $250m to $300m in the IPO having already raised more than $200m in venture funding. Juno retains a 26% stake in the company while WuXi AppTec owns about 14% of its shares.

Biologic drug developer Inhibrx has gone public, raising $119m having floated at the midpoint of its range. Inhibrx had received some $135m in equity and debt financing from investors including Eli Lilly and WuXi Biologics, and its share price followed recent trends by rising post-IPO. It’s been a bumper time for newly public companies of late, the question is how much of a bubble this represents and whether latecomers to the party could end up missing out.

Nano-X Imaging is working on a medical imaging system intended to function as a more affordable alternative to X-ray machines, and the Israeli company has set terms for an initial public offering in the US that will raise almost $106m if it floats at the top of its range. A big impetus is that existing investors including corporates Foxconn, SK Telecom and iA Financial have expressed interest in buying up to $80m of shares in the offering, which is a more than decent vote of confidence.

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

20 July 2020 – 5G & IoT Provider Jio Platforms Gains $4.5bn from Google

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The Big Ones

Jio Platforms was spun off by Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries late last year to build a mobile network tailored for 5G and the internet of things, and everyone seems to want a slice. The latest is Google, which is paying $4.5bn for a 7.7% stake in Jio, the deal coming in the wake of parent company Alphabet’s recent pledge to invest some $10bn in India over the coming years. Qualcomm Ventures and Intel Capital had supplied a total of $350m for it earlier this month – Qualcomm’s actually came only a few days before Google’s investment. Meanwhile Facebook paid $5.7bn for a 10% stake in April.

Alphabet announced that it intends to channel up to $10bn into India through a newly formed vehicle dubbed Google for India Digitization Fund. That commitment will include equity funding for domestic companies, though as yet it’s unclear whether that will be deployed through the corporate’s investment subsidiaries. One of them, CapitalG, has already invested in several Indian companies but GV is yet to establish a presence in the region.

There’s been more IPO action this past week, beginning with electric vehicle battery producer Farasis Energy, which raised approximately $486m in an offering on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s Star Market. It raised a reported $193m from investors including strategic partner Daimler earlier this month, and the corporate venturing arm of another carmaker, BAIC, is also among its shareholders.

On GUV, Paige, a US-based cancer pathology software spinout of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, extended its series B round to $70m with commitments from Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division and Healthcare Venture Partners. Both were returning investors from previous tranches. The initial series B close last year had also featured Brey Capital, private investor Kenan Turnacioglu and undisclosed funds. Leo Grady, chief executive of Paige, told GUV: “The past year has underscored the need for pathology to adopt a digital workflow. As hospitals and labs look for solutions, they are seeing Paige as uniquely positioned: providing an enterprise solution for digital pathology images across sites and scanners while leveraging advanced cancer detection and characterisation solutions to provide additional information to the pathologist during diagnosis.”

Deals

RobinHood has seen demand for its share trading platform skyrocket during the Covid-19 lockdown, so much so it’s delayed the app’s UK launch. It has added 3 million new accounts and has followed that by adding $320m to a series F round that now stands at $600m. The company, which is backed by Alphabet unit CapitalG and Roc Nation, secured the capital at an $8.3bn valuation and has now raised a total of nearly $1.5bn in venture funding.

UiPath, a developer of robotic process automation technology that facilitates the automation of repetitive tasks like data entry, can also be said to be a company with a lockdown-relevant product. It has pulled in $225m through a series E round featuring Tencent that boosted its valuation from $7bn in May 2019 to $10.2bn post-money. CapitalG is also among UiPath’s investors, having first backed it in a 2018 series B round.

In Japan, ride hailing platform Mobility Technologies (MoT) has agreed up to $211m in corporate funding, with the lion’s share to come from mobile network operator NTT Docomo. The round included Dentsu and Tokyo Century and it shows the benefits of pivoting when the time is right. MoT began life as a taximeter software producer but has raised money from investors also including Toyota and Kakao Mobility since it switched tack.

Another Salesforce-backed company, Auth0, is also valued at $1.9bn, following a $120m series F round led by corporate VC vehicle Salesforce Ventures. Telstra Ventures also took part in the round, as did Deutsche Telekom’s DTCP unit, and the user authentication software provider intends to leverage Deutsche Telekom’s resources as it expands internationally. It has now secured more than $330m altogether.

Qumulo, developer of a cloud-based data management system, has completed a $125m series E round led by BlackRock that took its total funding above $350m. The cash was secured at a valuation of more than $1.2bn and it comes roughly two years after a series D round featuring disk drive manufacturer Western Digital. The cash will support product development and international growth.

Funds

We already had one huge fund but there was another last week: 23 biopharmaceutical companies have provided a total of almost $1bn in capital for AMR Action Fund, a vehicle tasked with helping to combat antimicrobial resistance by investing in companies developing new antibiotics. Those backers include Pfizer, Merck & Co and Johnson & Johnson, which are each supplying $100m. AMR Action Fund is slated to begin operations in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Exits

Small molecule cancer drug developer Relay Therapeutics has bagged $400m from its initial public offering, increasing the number of shares by more than a third and floating above its range. Its shaves have also risen post-IPO, providing a success story that’s badly needed for its largest investor, SoftBank Vision Fund. Although Vision Fund’s consumer-facing investments have been somewhat patchy, its life sciences deals seem to be paying off.

Banking software provider nCino has raised $250m in a flotation that saw it float a full $7 above its range. Its shares then nearly tripled in their first day of trading yesterday to give it a valuation of more than $1.9bn. The IPO is also a success for Salesforce, which owns a 12% stake having invested $72m in nCino between 2016 and late last year.

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

11 May 2020 – Intel picks up Moovit for $900m

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Big Stories

Korys, the family office behind the France and Belgium-based retailer Colruyt Group, and Mérieux Equity Partners, the asset management arm of the Institut Mérieux holding company, have set up joint funds targeting companies in the healthcare and nutrition sectors in Europe and North America.

OMX Europe Venture Fund has raised more than €60m from Korys and Mérieux and third party subscribers and is targeting a final close at €90m. OMX Europe will be managed by Mérieux Equity Partners in Europe, with the operational support of Korys’ Life Science team as a key advisor to the fund.

The value of Intel’s acquisition of Israel-based urban mobility app developer Moovit for a $900m enterprise value lies almost as much as what it says about the ecosystem developed there over the past 30 years since Russian immigration after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Israel had always battled its neighbours and developed a strong military but the influx of people needing jobs helped catalyse a startup ecosystem and funding of venture capitalists to enable it.

The integration of corporate research and development and venturing units has catalysed this trend even further over the past decade, as identified in the latest GCV Israelconference in February.

We have seen some big deals so far this year in the financial services sector, with Visa acquiring Plaid and Mastercard joining AvidXchange, but while payments remains localised in many cases the opportunities to join up the global commerce world beckons.

Hence the after-market performance of Australia-listed Afterpay, which surged following China-based Tencent’s acquisition of a 5% stake. Alibaba had its purchase of Western Union’s spinout MoneyGram turned down by US authorities but is also trying to become the global payments provider of choice given Chinese blocks on Visa and Mastercard’s expansion in the world’s second-largest economy.

We live in a world of seemingly the very large and the very small.
An exabyte of data is the equivalent of a stack of DVDs about 255.3 kilometres high. Each transistor in a state-of-the-art chip measures only 5 nanometres (nm) — the length a human fingernail grows in five seconds.
The world increasingly turns around data and processing power and if data is the new oil the 21st century wars could see as many wars fought over control of the ones and zeros as were fought over black gold in the last century. In which case Taiwan becomes an important centre to watch.
In last month’s Global China, Saif Khan and Carrick Flynn argued for maintaining China’s dependence on democracies for advanced computer chips through export controls. These democracies, particularly Taiwan, the US and South Korea, lead the development of the most advanced chips – those with transistors of between 5nm and 16nm.

Japan has struggled to keep up and so it was little surprise in the past week to seeDealStreetAsia report Japanese venture capital firm Jafco has made the final close of its debut Taiwan venture fund at NT$2bn ($67.1m) with limited partners including the National Development Fund of Taiwan.

Funds

Kurma sets the stage for $175m fund

Some areas may not be an obvious choice for investment in the time of lockdown but it seems the automotive sector is well and truly alive with Autotech Ventures announcing that it has closed its second fund at more than $150mthanks to a long list of corporate LPs – though only Lear, Stoneridge, Bridgestone and Volvo were identified. The firm now has more than $270m under management and will, apart from the obvious areas of connectivity, automation and electrification, also explore more niche investments, such as junkyard inventory management technologies.

University

Shift hits play on $70m fund

Fitz Gate seals second Princeton-focused fund

Edinburgh sparks food science incubator

Deals

It is easy enough to forget, with the world’s focus on coronavirus, that other diseases are costing countless more human lives. Chief among these is cancer, some forms of which have become easier to treat but prognoses are still significantly better the earlier the disease is caught. Illumina spun out Grail four years ago to make that early detection a reality through a blood test that can not only detect the presence of more than 50 different cancer indications but can also tell the oncologist where in the body the cancerous tissue is – all while boasting an almost negligible false positive rate of less than 1%. But developing such a test costs a lot of money, so it is heartening to see that Illumina and others have doubled down on the company and backed a $390m series D round that brought Grail’s total funding to some $2bn.

Another company that has done well out of people asked to stay at home is Byju’s, the online education provider backed by Prosus and Tencent, which is looking to add $400m to an ongoing funding round that reportedly already stands at $300m to $350m. Better news for the company still: it is set to push its valuation from $8bn just three months ago to more than $10bn. That seems fast, and it is, but consider that Byju’s added six million users in March alone and India’s lockdown was only implemented in the last week of that month.

Octopus Energy, a British renewable energy supplier that has steadily grown to more than 1.3 million customers since it was launched five years ago, has attracted its first external funding thanks to a $327m commitment from Origin Energy in return for a 20% stake. Origin made the investment specifically to secure a licence for Kraken, Octopus’ cloud-based software platform to interact with customers and enable functionality such as wholesale market trading and consumption forecasting. With Australia increasingly feeling the impact of global warming (even if the catastrophic fires earlier this year already seem like a distant memory), partnering with a green energy supplier is a welcome move.

Another sector that is doing well out of reduced human contact are financial services providers and N26 has wasted no time in adding $100m to a series D round that now stands at $570m. Notably, the additional capital was raised at a flat valuation of $3.5bn. That may not be too unusual for a third tranche, but the company had managed to increase its valuation by $800m between the first and second tranche, backed by Tencent and Allianz X. Consider, however, that N26 actually pulled out of market between the first and second extension, as the UK’s exit from the European Union just caused too much of a headache for the digital bank that relies on an EU-wide banking licence for its business.

Robinhood captures $280m series F

SoftBank and its Vision Fund may have been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately, but that doesn’t mean there is no support left for portfolio companies. Indeed, new and used car trading platform operator Chehaoduo has secured an additional $200m from the Vision Fund and Sequoia Capital to add to a $1.5bn initial series D tranche – supplied in full by the corporate – in February last year. It may not be an obvious candidate to raise money in the current climate, but with trouble brewing elsewhere in the fund’s portfolio, an automotive marketplace and after-sales services provider seems like a decent bet.

SoftBank also hasn’t had the best experience dealing with Mexico’s regulator the Federal Economic Competition Commission (Cofece), having been sanctioned recently because it failed to notify Cofece that it had acquired a larger stake in WeWork. You can understand then that the corporate treaded a bit more carefully with its lead investment in US-based digital lending platform AlphaCredit’s $125m series B round through the Vision Fund. AlphaCredit, which targets customers in Mexico and Colombia, had initially announced the deal in January, but it took until last week for Cofece to give the all-clear. That timing is good news not just for SoftBank and AlphaCredit, but also for the consumers and SMEs that are in desperate need of loans right now to weather the crisis.

Ninja Van picks up $279m in funding

Asapp accesses $185m series B

Flint Hills Resources, the chemicals and biofuel subsidiary of conglomerate Koch Industries, is not a corporate backer we come across often on GCV – in fact, it has seemingly only taken part in half a dozen deals since 2010 – but as the world battles an ever-increasing mountain of plastic polluting the environment, the need for a commercial-scale biodegradable alternative is becoming imperative. Enter RWDC Industries, which is working on just such a material and has secured $133m in a series B round backed by Flint Hills Resources to scale up its US operations by repurposing an idle factory in Athens, Georgia.

Back Market certifies $120m round

ASR processes $119m round

Praxis Precision was co-founded four years ago by faculty from Columbia University and University of Melbourne, but the gene therapy developer – targeting neurological and psychiatric disorders – remained quiet about its business until now, emerging from stealth with more than $100m in funding raised to date from investors including Novo Holdings. All of that money has clearly been put to good use: Praxis already has two assets in phase 2 clinical development, one for major depressive disorder and one for essential tremor.

Enflame lights up $98.7m series B

Exits

Kingsoft Cloud to claim IPO throne

University

Abiomed absorbs Breethe

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

20 April 2020 – Stripe Raises $600m in Series G Plus Audio from our Industrial Sector Webinar

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The Big Ones

Digital payment processor Stripe is one of the companies that has seen demand for its product skyrocket in recent weeks as more and more commerce moves online. It has also raised another $600m from investors including GV to meet that demand, taking a series G round valuing it at $35bn pre-money to $850m. The company’s earlier backers include Visa and American Express- both of which invested at a $5bn valuation – and Sumitomo Mitsui Card Company.

There’s been no respite for SoftBank over Easter, as the telecoms giant revealed in its annual report that it expected to book a $16.8bn loss on investments from its Vision Fund in the fiscal year that just closed. That figure, which encompasses a huge loss in value for WeWork along with the disintegration of investments in the likes of OneWeb and Brandless, is staggering, and SoftBank has reportedly frozen its second Vision Fund, which was in the fundraising stage. But with most of its consumer-facing portfolio facing trouble right now, what will happen to that portfolio if those companies find their largest investor has suddenly closed their wallet?

Zomato acquired Uber Eats in a $350m all-share deal in January and now the restaurant listings and food delivery platform is reportedly in talks to buy online grocery delivery service Grofers in a similar deal that will value the latter at $750m. The transaction could hypothetically be sweetened by an investment of $100m to $200m from Grofers’ largest shareholder, SoftBank Vision Fund, though it’s unclear whether that will still stand in light of news SoftBank is freezing its second Vision Fund.

Identity verification seems to be a hot sector all of a sudden (we’ll have more in a minute for you). Onfido, which emerged out of the software incubator of University of Oxford’s tech transfer office Oxford University Innovation eight years ago, has raised $100m. The round featured M12 and Salesforce Ventures, as well as unnamed backers, and was led by TPG Growth. Onfido allows companies to biometrically verify a user’s identity by algorithmically comparing a picture of an ID document, such as a passport, with a selfie. It’s used by more than 1,500 organisations, such as digital bank Revolut. Its early backers include the Seed Fund of Oxford’s Saïd Business School Entrepreneurship Centre.

Deals

Despite suffering several outages in early March, share trading app developer Robinhood has emerged as one of the tech-based companies that have seen demand for their product intensify during the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, the company, whose backers include Alphabet units CapitalG and GV as well as Roc Nation’s Arrive vehicle, is reportedly closing in on $250m in funding. The round looks set to be led by existing backer Sequoia Capital, and to lift Robinhood’s valuation from $7.6bn to $8bn pre-money.

Elsewhere in the fintech world, cross-border remittance service Airwallex has closed a $160m series D round that included Tencent and corporate venturing units Salesforce Ventures and Anzi Ventures at a reported $1.8bn valuation. Airwallex is one of that rare breed of successful Australian startups that have elected to remain in their home country instead of moving to Silicon Valley, and it’s a useful example that you don’t necessarily have to move where the most action is in order to reach those high valuations.

China-based drug developer MabWorks has collected $160m in a two-tranche series C round featuring an investment vehicle for industrial park operator Beijing E-Town Biomedical Park. MabWorks has some 15 assets in clinical trials in China or the US, many of which are targeted at cancer, and is focusing on a monoclonal antibody approach.

As promised, more identity verification for you with BioBatch, which has netted $145m in a series C featuring CreditEase and American Express Ventures. Both corporates took part in BioBatch’s last round – a $30m series B two years ago – and that jump suggests demand for its behavioral biometrics technology has grown sharply during that time.

Consumer finance platform Paidy has raised another $48m from trading group and existing backer Itochu that it added on to the $143m in series D funding it closed in November, bringing the round to $191m. Itochu had contributed to that close, as did fellow corporate investors Visa and PayPal Ventures, and it has now committed a total of $91m to Paidy, which has received $281m in debt and equity financing to date.

Ninja Van has racked up $124m in series D funding over the past year, according to data sourced from DealStreetAsia. Corporates GeoPost, Grab, Carmenta and Intouch Holdings provided a total of $50m while GeoPost has supplied a further $79m in convertible note financing since September 2018. The series D reportedly valued the Southeast Asian last-mile delivery service at about $590m.

Cloud kitchen operator Rebel Foods also operates in India’s food delivery sector and has raised $50m from hedge fund manager Coatue Management. Rebel counts Gojek, Sistema and Northwest Industrial Logistics as early investors but while the Coatue deal may seem an endorsement, it’s worth noting that reports in February suggested it was going to come as part of a round sized at up to $150m, at a $1bn valuation. This is a space that could definitely see some more consolidation in the coming months.

Cerevance, a spinout of Rockefeller University, has created technology that helps it assess post-mortem brain tissue in order to develop treatments for brain diseases like Alzheimer’s. It has also secured $45m in a series B round that included corporate VC units GV and Takeda Ventures. The latter had already taken part in Cerevance’s 2016 series A round but its contribution to this one came in the wake of a December 2019 research agreement between Cerevance and its parent company, pharmaceutical firm Takeda.

Funds

China-based, Southeast Asia-focused venture capital firm ATM Capital has closed a fund backed by corporates Alibaba and 58.com at about $100m, DealStreetAsia reported citing sources privy to the development. Founded in 2017, ATM Capital aims to bring Chinese expertise to bare helping Southeast Asia-based startups grow. The fund is its first and it had set a $200m target for its final close, but sources told DealStreetAsia the Covid-19 crisis had impacted fundraising activities.

Corigin Ventures, the venture capital firm sponsored by US-based real estate developer Corigin, has closed its second fund at approximately $36m. The firm targets consumer and property technology developers in the US and Canada. It invests $100,000 at pre-seed stage and provides between $500,000 and $1.25m for seed-stage deals, with additional capital reserved for follow-on investments. Corigin Ventures began raising the capital in mid-2018 and the fund had a $50m target according to securities filings. It is the first to include contributions from external limited partners, according to TechCrunch.

China-based early-stage venture firm Qiming Venture Partners has closed its seventh fund at $1.1bn with investors including Princeton University Investment Company, the manager of the institution’s $26bn endowment. The fund’s other limited partners include unnamed endowments, foundations, family offices and private pensions. Princeton’s been an investor in Qiming funds since its very first US dollar-denominated vehicle.

Exits

Verizon has agreed to acquire video conferencing software provider BlueJeans for a price reported to be below (but reportedly not that far below) $500m, in a deal that will allow Deutsche Telekom’s DTCP subsidiary to exit. BlueJeans had raised about $175m, its most recent funding coming in a 2015 series E round.

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

04 November 2019 – Greensill Raises $655m from SoftBank

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The Big Ones

Greensill, a UK-based company that taps the capital markets in order to provide working capital for businesses, received one of this year’s biggest investments in May when it secured $800m from SoftBank Vision Fund. Now it’s added a further $655m from the same investor at a valuation reportedly nearing $4bn.

Singapore-based venture capital firm Jungle Ventures has closed its latest fund at $240m, securing the capital from LPs including, according to DealStreetAsia, Cisco Investments and Bualuang Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Bangkok Bank, as well as Temasek, the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, development finance institutions DEG and FMO, and Kuok Khoon Hong, chief executive of agribusiness Wilmar International.

Wag raised $300m from SoftBank Vision last year but the petsitting service has been among the vehicle’s less successful bets, after a series of management changes, layoffs and (perhaps we need a trigger warning here) reports that users’ dogs have died while in the custody of its walkers. The company is now pursuing a sale and is in talks with Petco, though things might be complicated by the fact the latter is an investor in Wag rival Rover. Any sale is also likely to be for less than the $650m valuation at which Vision Fund invested.

Finally, in a nice crossover story (and ongoing one, since several of the corporates were returning investors) we have Tmunity Therapeutic, a developer of T-cell immunotherapy treatments for cancer and autoimmune diseases, has boosted its overall funding to $231m with a $75m series B round featuring Gilead Sciences and Be The Match BioTherapies as well as University of Pennsylvania, of which Tmunity is a spinout.

Deals

Trading app developer RobinHood has added $50m to a series E round that now stands at $373m, and which values it at $7.6bn. The extra cash came from existing investor DST Global and it increased the total raised by RobinHood, which also counts Roc Nation’s Arrive unit and Alphabet subsidiaries CapitalG and GV among its past investors, to more than $910m.

Vacasa has notched up its own nine-figure round, raising $319m from investors led by Silver Lake. It operates a peer-to-peer holiday accommodation booking platform that incorporates property management services, allowing owners of properties where they are often not present to garner extra income with minimal effort.

Mobile game publisher Scopely is on the growth trail and plans to follow up its acquisition of collaborator Digit Games earlier this year with additional M&A deals. They will be financed with $200m of series D funding the company just raised at a reported $1.7bn valuation, with NewView Capital leading the round.

Japanese online consumer credit provider Paidy has raised $143m in debt and equity financing that included an $83m extension to its series C round. That extension included PayPal Ventures and followed on from a $55m first tranche featuring corporates Itochu and Visa.

And after-sales automotive services provider CassTime has secured $80m in a series C1 round co-led by Sequoia Capital China and Source Code Capital that boosted its overall funding to some $175m.

Pollinate has officially launched its digital banking technology offering having secured $77.8m in funding from investors including Mastercard and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) as well as Motive Partners and EFM Asset Management.

Funds

Qualcomm Ventures has announced an investment vehicle called the 5G Ecosystem Fund which will fund developers of 5G technologies as parent company Qualcomm looks to move more significantly into the area. The unit will look to invest up to $200m through the vehicle, the launch of which follows the formation of a $100m AI Fund almost a year ago.

Exits

Phathom Pharmaceuticals has gone public, securing nearly $182m in an initial public offering in which the gastrointestinal disease therapy developer floated in the middle of its range. Phathom has licensed its core product from pharmaceutical firm Takeda, which has already successfully marketed the drug in its home country of Japan, and which has seen its stake rise from 9.1% to 24.7% in connection with the IPO as part of the licensing agreement.

Fertility benefits management platform Progyny has also floated, in a $130m offering in which Merck Group sold almost $4.9m of shares. That divestment was made as part of nearly $43m of sales from existing shareholders, while Progyny reaped more than $87m. Its other investors include GlaxoSmithKline’s corporate venturing unit, SR One.

Xiaomi-backed podcasting platform Lizhi has filed for an initial public offering in the US and is targeting $100m. Lizhi is yet to finalise its choice of a market for its listing (it’s a choice between NYSE and Nasdaq Global Market) and it’s going to be interesting to see the timeline of the proposed offering, considering the IPO market is slowing down and relations between its home country and the US continue to be, well, let’s just say uneven.

Chinese apartment rental platform Danke Apartment has also filed for an initial public offering in the US, having raised $875m from investors including Ant Financial, UCommune and Bertelsmann Asia Investments. The company was valued at more than $2bn as of a $500m round led by Ant Financial in March, and has set a placeholder amount of $100m for the IPO. Expect that to rise substantially.

And another one: I-Mab Biopharma has also opted for the US, having filed for a $100m initial public offering on the Nasdaq Global Market. The company is developing several drug candidates to treat cancer or autoimmune diseases and its largest investors include Tasly and Genexine.

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