Fundings and Exits

Today Salt Security, a startup that helps companies protect APIs, announced that it has closed a $20 million Series A. The Palo Alto-based company secured the new funds from Tenaya Capital, bringing its total capital raised to around $30 million. The Salt round caught TechCrunch’s eye as it fits reasonably well into a growing trend

If you were hoping for Q3 SaaS IPOs, here’s some good news Alex Wilhelm 8 hours The domestic stock market is advancing today on the back of some better-than-anticipated economic recovery data in the United States. While retail spending is still lower compared to the year-ago period, gains in May from April were better than

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday, our short-form week-starter in which we go over the weekend, look to the week ahead, talk about some neat funding rounds, and dig into what is stuck on our minds. So, by section then:

When 2020 began, the year seemed set to include another year of record-setting venture capital investment and, perhaps, some long-awaited IPOs. All that quickly faded when COVID-19 spread globally, shutting economies, undercutting swaths of the business world and rearranging the working life in countries around the globe. Here at TechCrunch we’re navigating the changing landscape,

Startups need money. State and local governments need startups and the employment growth they offer. It should be obvious that the two groups can work together and make each other happy. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. Each year, governments spend tens of billions of dollars on economic development incentives designed to attract

Sinch said on Monday it has agreed to buy Indian firm ACL Mobile for £56 million (roughly $70 million) in what is the third acquisition deal the Swedish mobile voice and messaging firm has entered into at the height of a global pandemic. The Swedish firm said acquiring ACL Mobile will enable it to leverage

Peppy, the U.K. employee healthcare benefits platform focusing on family support, female health and mental well-being, has raised £1.7 million in seed funding. Leading the round is Outward VC, with participation from Seedcamp, Hambro Perks, Form Ventures and various unnamed angel investors. The London-based startup says the new funding will support the next stage of

Extra Crunch Live, TechCrunch’s chat series for Extra Crunch members, is tacking toward founders after bringing on a host of investors: on Thursday, June 18, Plaid CEO Zach Perret will join us for a conversation. Plaid, known for APIs that connect fintech applications with users’ bank accounts, came to prominence in late 2018 when it

The unicorns are still at it, Vision Fund 2 or no Vision Fund 2. This week, Instacart announced that it has raised fresh capital at a valuation north of $13 billion. And, on the tail of that news item, DoorDash is looking to add more cash at a valuation that could stretch to a pre-money

Food delivery takes a big step toward consolidation, Amazon announces a moratorium on providing facial recognition tech to law enforcement (but there are loopholes) and Twitter tests a way to scold users for tweeting an article they haven’t read. Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 11, 2020. 1. Just Eat Takeaway confirms it’s gobbling up

Enterprise automation startup JIFFY.ai announced today it has raised $18 million in Series A funding for product development and expansion into new markets around the world. The round was led by Nexus Venture Partners, with participation from Rebright Partners and W250 Venture Fund. A roster of executives from tech companies also invested, including AssetMarket chief

Alkemics, the Paris-based platform that lets brands collaborate and launch products with retailers, has picked up €21 million in a Series C funding. It follows €20 million raised in 2016. Backing the round is growth-stage fund Highland Europe. Existing investors Cathay Innovation, Index Ventures, SEB Alliance and Serena Capital also participated. The new investment comes

Planck, an AI-based data platform for insurance underwriting, announced today that it has raised a $16 million Series B led by Team8 Capital. All of the startup’s existing investors—Viola FinTech, Arbor Ventures and Eight Roads—also participated, while Nationwide and Hannover Digital Investments joined as strategic investors. Based in New York, Planck provides large insurance companies

Today M1 Finance, a Chicago-based fintech startup focused on consumer finance, announced that it has closed a $33 million Series B. Left Lane Capital led the round, with participation from Clocktower Technology Ventures and Jump Capital. The firm has raised around $54.5 million to date. M1 Finance caught TechCrunch’s attention earlier in the year when

It’s a winner-takes-all economy. More and more labor markets act as lotteries, where a couple of “superstar” workers make extremely outsized returns relative to their peers — who may well have started from the exact same starting line. In the tech world, two JavaScript engineers can potentially earn billions of dollars in differential compensation by

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This time around we’re recording what we call an Equity Shot, a single-topic show that we pull together whenever there’s a news item of sufficient weight that it demands we break our regular cadence and record a little

Yesterday evening, Vroom, a digital used car retailer, priced its IPO at $22 per share, a figure that was a full $7 above the low end of its first proposed IPO price range. The venture-backed firm first proposed a $15 to $17 per-share IPO price range, which it later raised to $18 to $20 per

Every founder’s biggest fear is dilution — investors constantly carving off chunks of their equity in round after round of venture financing. Founders collectively own 100% of their companies in the beginning, but it isn’t uncommon for them to own single digits after years have gone by and millions of VC dollars have flowed into

Lemonade, a heavily-backed startup that sells renters and homeowners insurance to consumers, filed to go public today. The company (backed by SoftBank, part of the Sequoia empire, General Catalyst and Tusk Venture Partners, among others) releasing its financial results helps shed light on the burgeoning insurtech market, which has attracted an ocean of capital in

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Here at Equity Monday we look at what happened over the weekend, what’s ahead, and a few recent funding rounds. As you’ll hear, we’re heading back into our normal cadence and topics, but if you do want to

Earlier this week, TechCrunch covered a grip of earnings reports showing that some companies helping other businesses move to modern software solutions are seeing accelerated growth. Inside the Software as a Service (SaaS) world, this is known as the digital transformation. Based on how many software companies are talking about it, the pace of change

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. ZoomInfo went public yesterday. After pricing its IPO $1 ahead of its proposed range at $21 per share, the company closed its first day’s trading worth $34.00, up 61.9%, according to Yahoo Finance. Then the

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. The ZoomInfo IPO slipped through our fingers in the last news cycle, so we’re going to catch up. Founded in 2000, the company has had a somewhat complicated history. ZoomInfo raised a Series A in

Lili, a startup building banking products to meet the needs of freelance workers, is announcing that it has raised $10 million in seed funding. The startup takes its name from its founders, CEO Lilac Bar David and CTO Liran Zelkha, who previously founded Israeli challenger bank Pepper. Bar David told me that while many neobanks have

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Used-car marketplace Vroom continued its march towards going public yesterday with the release of an updated IPO filing. The documents it filed provides pricing information for a somewhat odd public offering. As a business, the heavily

Overjet, a startup focused on using AI to help dentists and insurance companies understand dental scans, today announced that it has raised $7.85 million in what it describes as a seed round. According to Overjet’s CEO Wardah Inam (an MIT PhD in electrical engineering and computer science), the company raised the funds from Crosslink Capital,

Danggeun Market, the startup behind Karrot, South Korea’s largest neighborhood marketplace and networking app, announced today that that it has raised a $33 million Series C. The round was led by Goodwater Capital and Altos Ventures. The funding brings Danggeun Market’s total raised so far to $40.5 million. Its list of investors also include Kakao

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. This week will see two richly valued SaaS businesses share their Q1 earnings reports: CrowdStrike and Zoom. Both are 2019 IPOs, but these relatively young public companies have enjoyed a strong run in the public

Stringr, a video-focused startup that says it can help news organizations adapt to the challenges of COVID-19, is announcing that it’s raised $5.75 million in new funding. When I wrote about the the company at the end of 2015, it was creating a marketplace that connected news organizations with videographers who could provide them with news

Caraway, a direct-to-consumer startup selling ceramic pots and pans, is announcing that it has raised $5.3 million in seed funding. Founder and CEO Jordan Nathan (previously a brand manager at e-commerce holding company Mohawk Group) told me that he became interested in cookware after burning a Teflon pan and learned more about the dangers of