Hi Inside.com Community, We are extending our Republic raise timeline, and we hope readers and investors love the reason. Inside.com Founder and CEO Jason Calacanis shared full details (and a video preview of our social news site) on our Republic campaign page. These are the key details: - Our social news site’s invitation-only beta will open up on Feb. 28, 2022, with early access for all investors, Inside PRO members, and longtime readers.
- The full site launch is slated for the end of March 2022.
- If you want to get in early, we’ll share more soon — so be on the lookout.
For everyone participating in our Republic campaign, we want this extended investment period to allow our members to experience the social site before investing in Inside.com’s future. In the meantime, enjoy the preview of the new site in our video update, and we hope you will be among the first to try it out. Thanks for being readers and investors. - The Inside.com Team
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SoftBank’s attempt to sell its chip producer Arm to Nvidia has officially collapsed. The $66B deal fell under pressure from antitrust authorities from the U.S., the U.K., and the EU SoftBank announced that it will seek an IPO for the company. More: - The offering will come before the end of SoftBank’s fiscal year in March 2023.
- Despite Arm’s status in the U.K. as a strategic national asset, SoftBank said it would rather list Arm in New York.
- Whether an IPO will come close to the value of the acquisition remains to be seen.
- Under the conditions of the scrapped deal, SoftBank will receive a break-up fee of up to $1.25B.
- The consolation prize is far from the windfall SoftBank expected when it announced the deal back in Sept. 2020.
- Given the cash-and-stock terms, Nvidia’s soaring share price in the months after the announcement pushed the initial value from $40B up by $26B.
- The deal’s demise also brought some personnel shakeups at Arm: Simon Segars is leaving his post as CEO and will be replaced by Rene Haas, the president of Arm’s IP group.
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GoCardless, an open banking platform in the U.K., raised $312M at a $2.1B valuation led by Permira. BlackRock Private Equity Partners participated in the Series F round, which brought GoCardless’ total raised to date up to around $530M. More: - GoCardless provides transaction processing for fintech companies such as challenger bank Klarna and contracts automation platform DocuSign.
- Former Klarna executive Michael Rouse and current CTO Koen Koppen joined GoCardless’ board of directors.
- The company counts Y Combinator, Accel, SV Angel, GV, Salesforce Ventures, and others as previous investors.
- It reported that its platform moved over $25B worth of total transaction volume last year, which was over a 50% increase YoY.
- Permira’s investment came from its $4B Growth Opportunities II fund, which closed in December last year.
- That fund had an initial target of $2.5B, which was already well above the total capital commitments secured for its $1.7B maiden Growth Opportunities fund from 2019.
- Founded in 1985, Permira manages about $65B in assets and has increasingly turned to high-growth tech companies in recent months, following a trend amongst big money managers.
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 Reddit is reportedly exploring a partnership deal with ad agency WPP as it ramps up for its IPO. The company was most recently valued at $10B, a figure it hopes to boost by $5B through its offering. More: - The latest valuation came after a funding round in August led by Fidelity, which brought the free-speech-first platform’s total war chest to date to $1.2B.
- Reddit will have to perform a tight-rope dance to convince investors that it is a good bet. Its platform has been riddled by hate-speech scandals in recent years and saw pushback from its users when the administration attempted to crack down on particularly offensive forums.
- Moreover, its user base in the U.S. is much smaller than other social media companies.
- Still, it is estimated to have boosted its ad revenues from $161M in 2020 to $305M in 2021 and forecasts that turnover will grow almost 40% this year to $424M. According to eMarketer, that figure could reach $522M by 2023.
- The forum’s value proposition for ad companies is that its users spend 34 minutes per day on average on its site. Because its forums are content-specific, advertisers can expect to reach their target audience with relative ease.
- To cement this point, Reddit set up a proprietary create agency KarmaLab and launched a new ad product that can be embedded within its conversation threads.
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Singapore-based Livspace raised $180M Series F led by KKR with participation from Ingka Group Investments, Jungle Ventures, Venturi Partners, and Peugeot Investments. The now-unicorn provides an online home interior decoration platform for Southeast Asian households. More: - Having focused on India and Singapore until now, Livspace will look to expand to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, and additional Southeast Asian countries.
- Currently, 80% of Livspace’s revenues come from India.
- Its balance sheet has been boosted by pandemic-induced growth in time spent at home, giving many consumers an impetus to redesign their living quarters.
- To expand its footprint, it will pursue acquisitions in target markets.
- It recently took a majority stake in Qanvast, a Singapore-based home remodeling and design platform, and formed a partnership with Middle Eastern Ikea-subsidiary Alsulaiman Group.
- KKR has taken an interest in Southeast Asia as of late. Its bets include ride-hailing giant Gojek, online real estate marketplace PropertyGuru, and KiotViet, a merchant platform for SMEs.
- Southeast Asia’s internet economy is projected to double to $363B by 2025, making it one of the world’s fastest-growing digital markets.
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 Today’s Funding 💸 Agtech - Elicit Plant (Moulins-Sur-Tardoire, France), water resistance crop and phytosterol-based solutions: $18.3M A led by Sofinnova Partners, participation from ECBF, Bpifrance, Aquiti Gestion-NACO, et al.
Biotech/Health - Numan (U.K.), digital platform for men’s health: $60.1M B led by White Star Capital, participation from Novator, VNV Global, Anthemis Exponential. The company also raised $20M in debt.
- Koneksa (New York, N.Y.), design and validation platform for digital biomarkers: $45M led by AyurMaya, participation from Takeda Ventures, Velosity Capital, et al.
- 1859 (San Diego, Calif.), AI/pico-scale screening data platform to discover new small molecule medicines:...
Want to read about all of today’s funding in one place? The funding roundup is only available to free users on Mondays and Fridays. Upgrade to Inside VC Premium for either $10/month, or $100 billed annually, to receive the full list in every issue! For a limited time, we are offering a 14-day free trial. Click here to sign up! | | | |
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- Peloton CEO and co-founder John Foley will step down and become the company’s executive chair. The move comes as internal calls for a sale grow louder and interest in the company from Amazon and others mounts.
- Intel has launched a $1B fund to support early-stage companies operating in the foundry ecosystem.
- Apple has bought London-based AI Music, which uses artificial intelligence to generate tailor-made music, for an undisclosed sum.
- Crunchbase dug deep into the latest startup naming trends: misspellings (Atlys, Breakr), combos/puns (DisPatch, Starchive), heavy suffixes use (Humanly, Cloverly), and first names make up the biggest trends.
- If you think time in the market outweighs timing the market, this finance app is for you.*
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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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