Fundings and Exits

Lily AI, a startup focused on using deep learning to help brands better convert customers through emotionally tailored recommendations, announced this morning that it has raised a $12.5 million Series A led by Canaan Partners. Prior investors NEA, Unshackled and Fernbrook Capital also took part in the funding event. Prior to its Series A, Lily had

Bux, the Amsterdam-based fintech that wants to make investing more accessible, has acquired the European “social” cryptocurrency investment platform Blockport. Terms of the deal remain undisclosed, although Bux says the move paves the way for the company to launch its own branded cryptocurrency investment app. Dubbed “BUX Crypto,” it will be available in the 9

Shares of Chicago-based food delivery service Grubhub are sharply higher in regular trading today after The Wall Street Journal reported that the company has hired external advisers to explore its “strategic” options, inclusive of a possible sale. Investors, heartened by the news, bid its equity up 17% as of the time of writing, valuing the

Changing from the highest-flying conglomerate and most famous capital vehicle to troubled icons of misplaced exuberance, it’s tough to be SoftBank and its Vision Fund today. Despite the occasional good story, it’s been a tough run for the pair. But lost in the continuous drip of bad news concerning the Japanese firm and its globally

According to newly released third-party data, TikTok has reason to dance. The famous short-video application saw its in-app purchase revenue rise 310% on a year-over-year basis, according to Apptopia, a startup that tracks mobile app revenue and usage. (The Boston-based startup has raised $8.2 million to date and competes with AppAnnie.) TikTok’s revenue gains are impressive

One Medical, a San Francisco-based primary care startup with tech-infused, concierge services filed for an IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission today. Internal medicine doctor Tom Lee founded the startup, now valued at well-over $1 billion dollars, in 2007. Lee exited his company in 2017, leaving it in the hands of former UnitedHealth group

Hello and welcome back to our regular moning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Today we’re digging into the One Medial S-1 IPO filing. The company, popular in Silicon Valley and known for an investment from Alphabet, intends to debut this year on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol

The recovery in value of several high-profile electric car companies could help move yet-private EV manufacturers out of the pit lane and onto the IPO track. On the heels of NIO’s shocking value appreciation after its recent earnings report, and Tesla’s own public market run, China-based Lixiang Automotive is reported to have filed privately for

Cloudflare announced that it has acquired S2 Systems, a browser isolation startup started by former Microsoft execs. The two companies did not reveal the acquisition price. Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO at Cloudflare, says that this acquisition is part of a new suite of products called Cloudflare for Teams, which has been designed to protect

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Today we’re digging into seed-stage companies, the vanguard of the venture market. In particular, we’re trying to understand why the ratio of seed deals now favor enterprise startups over their consumer-focused brethren. The fact that

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Today we’re peeking at what’s gone on in the world of altcoins recently, the other cryptocurrencies aside from bitcoin. As 2016 came to a close, altcoins like ether and XRP saw their value soar. Toward

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Today, something short. Continuing our loose collection of look backs of the past year, it’s worth remembering two related facts. First, that this time last year SaaS stocks were getting beat up. And, second, that

MasterCard announced today that it is acquiring RiskRecon, a Salt Lake City startup that uses publicly available data to build security assessments of organizations. The companies did not share the purchase price. It’s become increasingly important for financial services companies like MasterCard to help customers navigate cyber security and RiskRecon will give customers an objective

One odd thing in 2019 has been Slack’s falling share price contrasted against the rising value of the Nasdaq composite, a tech-heavy index that many use as shorthand for the US tech market. Why one of tech’s hottest, and fastest-growing companies was losing altitude while tech stocks themselves broadly rose has been interesting to unpack.

Ripple has raised a $200 million Series C funding round. Tetragon is leading the round, with SBI Holdings and Route 66 Ventures also participating. According to Fortune, the company is now valued at $10 billion. “We are in a strong financial position to execute against our vision. As others in the blockchain space have slowed

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the grey space in between. Today, we’re weighing a standard bit of startup wisdom that recently reemerged against some surprising, contrasting evidence. Does too much money hurt a startup more than it helps, or is that standard view actually mistaken?

Now that the final technology IPOs of 2019 have touched down, it’s a good time to start looking back at what happened during the year. We’re hunting for trends as the clock winds down. Here’s one that’s obvious: Hardware startups are still struggling. It’s cliché to note in startupland that hardware is hard. Everyone knows

Spain’s Glovo, an on-demand delivery app platform which operates in Europe, LatAm and Africa delivering food but also other urban conveniences from groceries to pharmaceuticals, has bagged another €150 million (~$166M) in a fast-following Series E round led by Abu Dhabi state investment company, Mubadala. The raise follows a €150M in Series D that was

Leapfin, a startup selling corporate finance tooling, announced a $4.5 million round this morning. The funding event was led by Bowrey Capital, and included dollars from a number of former technology executives. Before its newly announced investment, the company had raised just a small seed round. The small capital amounts may seem inconsequential, but they’re

NYC had a record-breaking VC year, and one investor says Boston is ‘Goldilocks’ for startups Alex Wilhelm 8 hours Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the grey space in between. Today, we’re digging into a host of data concerning the East Coast venture capital scene, specifically

Speechly, a startup out of Helsinki that boasts an experienced team of speech recognition and “natural language understanding” experts, has raised €2 million in seed funding to make it easier for developers to add a voice UI to their products. The round is led by Berlin’s Cherry Ventures, with participation from Seedcamp, Quantum Angels, Joyance

Smartly.io, a company helping advertisers automate their campaigns across Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest, has sold a majority stake to Providence Equity Partners for €200 million (approximately $223 million). Helsinki-headquartered Smartly.io says it automates ad production, ad buying “and everything in between.” Founded in 2013, the company has more than 350 employees across 16 global offices,

Ran Ben-Tzur Contributor Ran Ben-Tzur is a corporate partner at Fenwick & West. Ran’s issuer-side initial public offerings include Facebook, Fitbit, Upwork, Zuora and Peloton Interactive. Jamie Evans Contributor Jamie Evans is the co-chair of Fenwick & West’s Capital Markets & Public Companies group. Jamie’s representative initial public offerings include Smartsheet, Redfin, Fitbit and Facebook.

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the grey space in between. Today we’re looking into Uber’s bike bet and what the push could mean for Lime and other micromobility companies working to find a sustainable business model. As profitability comes back into vogue among investors at

Hugging Face has raised a $15 million funding round led by Lux Capital. The company first built a mobile app that let you chat with an artificial BFF, a sort of chatbot for bored teenagers. More recently, the startup released an open-source library for natural language processing applications. And that library has been massively successful.

In the wake of WeWork’s embarrassing IPO rout, you might imagine that startups working in similar markets would cool it for a bit. Perhaps they could work on cutting spending, improving their gross margins, and, say, shooting for profitability. Not so, at least in one case. Instead of doing those things, China-based Ucommune filed to go

The world of healthcare has notoriously been described as “broken” — plagued with high-friction workflows, sky-high costs and convoluted business models. Over the past several years, a long list of innovative startups and salivating venture investors have pinned their focus on repairing the healthcare industry, but its digital transformation still appears to be in the

Singapore’s fashion startup Zilingo has acquired Sri Lanka’s SaaS startup nCinga in a $15.5 cash and stock deal, the two said today. nCinga, founded in 2013, offers an IoT platform to enable real-time production monitoring on factory floors and data analytics tools. Its acquisition is one of Sri Lanka’s largest tech exits in recent times,

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the grey space in between. Today we’re digging into unicorns: how many will find an exit through an acquisition (selling themselves to a larger company) or an IPO (starting to trade as a public company) before the market turns? When

Bluespace.ai, a new autonomous driving startup focused on mass transit, announced today that it has raised $3.5 million in seed funding led by Fusion Fund. Other investors include YouTube co-founder Steve Chen; UMC, the Taiwanese semiconductor foundry; Kakao Ventures; GDP Ventures; Atinum; Wasabi Ventures; Blue Ivy Ventures; Plug n Play; and SLV Capital. The startup