 PitchBook reports that secondary and mega-rounds are heating up as SPACs and IPOs freeze. According to investors, stakes in businesses that commanded premium prices last year can now be bought at a discount, sometimes as high as 40% YoY. More: - The pace of investment in previously rare private mega-rounds ($100M+) has surpassed public offerings.
- The gap borders on the absurd: Whereas there were 85 mega-rounds to 53 IPOs in 2016, mega-rounds totaled 763 in 2021, a much higher count than the 298 IPOs in the same time frame.
- Andrea Walne, a GP at secondaries-focused investment firm Manhattan Venture Partners, said that punters are placing orders of $50M for shares at prices well below a company's previous valuation.
- Average prices have fallen 20% in recent weeks.
- The importance of secondary markets as an exit opportunity grows for early-stage investors when public options are not readily available.
- Moreover, says finance professor Jay Ritter, the median time to IPO of 11 years means that the standard 10-year fund structure can no longer rely on public offerings to cash out LPs.
- Unless LPs sign off on 14-year structures, particularly early-stage fund managers will be forced to seek liquidity from secondary markets despite taking a haircut on valuations.
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Salt Security, an enterprise API vulnerability and protection platform, raised $140M Series D led by Alphabet’s CapitalG growth fund. Sequoia Capital also participated in the round, which brought Salt’s valuation up to $1.4B. More: - Palo Alto-based Salt’s platform is used by companies including Equinix and Telefónica.
- Its platform targets the type of APIs that enable companies to scale login authentication across multiple apps without requiring bespoke code for each new instance.
- It begins by taking inventory of the APIs a company is using, many of which could still be active despite no longer serving a purpose. These are often unprotected, exposing sensitive login information to malicious actors.
- The company claimed a 500% growth in revenue, 300% growth in customer count, and 250% growth in employees last year.
- Prior to today’s round, Salt had raised a total of $131M from Y Combinator, Advent Technologies, Tenaya Capital, and others.
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The SEC has introduced broad new disclosure rules for private funds. The increased requirements would mean that PE and hedge funds must provide basic disclosures to their investors and guard against conflicts. The proposal was approved by a 3-to-1 vote, meaning the chances for a final version to take effect are very high. More: - SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has moved since April 2021 to aggressively tighten rules on Wall Street intermediaries. The goal is to save money for investors and companies raising capital.
- After years of looking mostly at mutual funding and publicly traded stocks, the rise of private capital funds, which now encompass $18T of gross assets, has brought intense scrutiny from the SEC.
- If the rules go into effect, private funds will, for the first time, have to provide quarterly statements detailing fund performance, fees, and expenses, as well as manager compensation.
- They will also be required to undergo annual audits.
- Top funds such as Blackstone and KKR are expected to mobilize their lobbying machines against the regulation.
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Marketing tech provider Branch raised $300M at a $4B valuation led by prior investor NEA. The company provides a cross-platform linking and attribution platform to offer solutions unifying user experience and measurement. More: - Branch was founded in 2014 and claims that 3 billion monthly users across the globe have engaged with its links.
- It has been used by over 100,000 brands since 2014, including NBC, Under Armour, Airbnb, Adobe, BuzzFeed, Reddit, and Yelp.
- Prior backing has come from Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Andy Rubin’s Playground Global.
- Its most recent funding round came in late 2019, when it raised $125M at a $1B valuation.
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 Today’s Funding 💸 Biotech/Health - Atommerce (Seoul, South Korea), platform allowing users to connect with mental health professionals: $16.7M B led by Hashed, participation from E&Investment, K2 Investment, Samsung Next.
- 1000Farmacie (Italy), e-pharmacy marketplace: $15M from P101 SGR, HBM Healthcare Investments, participation from Corisol Holding, Club Degli Investitori, IAG, LIFTT, Healthware Ventures.
- Odaia (Toronto, Canada), AI-powered commercial insights SaaS platform for pharmaceutical companies: $13.8M A led by Flint Capital, participation from Innospark Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Graphite Ventures, et al.
Blockchain - PDAX (Philippines), cryptocurrency exchange: $50M B led by Tiger Global.
Consumer - Balanced (New York, N.Y.), digital fitness platform for older adults: $6.5M Seed led by Founders Fund, Primary Venture Partners, participation from Lux Capital, Stellation Capital.
Cybersecurity - Sardine (San Francisco, Calif.), fraud and compliance platform for fintechs: $19.5M A from Andreessen Horowitz, NYCA, Experian Ventures.
Enterprise - 7Shifts (Canada), team management platform for restaurants: $80M C led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, participation from Ten Coves Capital, Enlightened Hospitality Investments.
- DeepDub (Tel Aviv, Israel), automated dubbing for foreign TV shows: $20M led by Insight Partners.
- KnowledgeNet.ai (Frederick, Md.), knowledge intelligence platform provider: $9.4M A from undisclosed sources.
- LandscapeHub (Chicago, Ill.), wholesale marketplace that connects landscape and nursery buyers with a network of suppliers: $9M A led by Klaff Realty, Hyde Park Venture Partners, participation from Hersch Klaff, Open Prairie Rural Opportunities Fund, Concentric Equity Partners, et al.
- Birdie (Palo Alto, Calif.), SaaS platform that delivers actionable insights for product lifecycle management and optimization: $7M Seed led by SoftBank Latin America Fund, Illuminate Ventures, participation from Fusion Fund, Astella, Endeavor Catalyst.
- Allure Security (Boston, Mass.), online brand abuse detection and protection solution: $6.8M Seed led by Gutbrain Ventures, participation from PBJ Capital, Impellent Ventures, et al.
Fintech - Neo.Tax (Mountain View, Calif.), ML-based tax processing platform: $10M A led by Infinity Ventures, participation from Google Ventures, Acrew Capital, Fin Venture Capital, et al.
- Micruity (San Francisco, Calif.), platform that powers annuities inside 401(k) plans: $5.1M Seed led by SixThirty Ventures, participation from Allianz Life Insurance, Franklin Templeton, Pacific Life, et al.
Foodtech - Elo (San Francisco, Calif.), monthly smart supplement membership using blood testing, activity metrics from wearables, and AI: $5M Seed from Will Ventures, Re:food, Petteri Lahtela Robin Thurston, et al.
Industrial Robotics - Micropsi Industries (Berlin, Germany), robotics software company: $30M B led by Metaplanet, VSquared, Ahren Innovation Capital.
Telecom - Cognifiber (Rosh HaAin, Israel), in-fiber photonic processing systems: $6M A led by Chartered Group.
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Quick Hits - 3D technology is changing the future of eCommerce. Threedium has just launched the most powerful low-code 3D & AR engine in the world.*
- James Murdoch’s Southeast Asia-focused VC firm Bodhi Tree landed a $1.5B investment from Qatar Investment Authority.
- DataRobot CEO Jeremy Achin launched two new seed-stage AI ventures: NeoCybernetica and hOS. He also is leading a new $50M VC outfit, Cortical Ventures, and will rely heavily on Ukrainian talent.
- Estonian tech investor Specialist VC announced the first close of a new $57M (€50M) fund at $47M (€42M). Specialist’s second fund will continue betting on Baltic region startups.
- Paris/San Francisco-based Lauxera Capital Partners closed its maiden fund at $300M (€260M) to bet on European healthtech companies.
- Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, will invest $200M in Forbes as the 102-year-old publisher prepares to merge with a SPAC. Binance will become one of the two largest stakeholders in the company.
- Web performance/security platform Cloudflare will purchase Vectrix, a provider of enterprise one-click visibility and control across all SaaS applications, for an undisclosed sum.
- Hundreds of thousands of investors are automating their money with this fintech platform.*
*This is a sponsored post.
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 |  | Inside VC's writer/curator Stephen currently lives in Berlin and is pursuing a Master's degree in philosophy. He otherwise spends his time trying his hand at recipes from India and Southeast Asia, escaping it all at the kickboxing gym, and offending aural sensibilities with his band. |  | | Editor | Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 Ford. | |
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