Didi’s board has voted to delist its shares from the NYSE, ending a saga that put it at odds with the Chinese government and caused its valuation to collapse. During a vote yesterday, 96% of shareholders, including founders Will Cheng and Jean Liu, approved a motion to exit U.S. public markets. More: - The company will file a delisting notification with the SEC on or after June 2, with trading halting 10 days later.
- Didi is currently waiting for a cybersecurity review in China, which the government has made a condition of its ability to operate within the country.
- It is also a hurdle the company will have to jump in order to list shares in Hong Kong, where it had always intended to trade in an initially planned dual-listing.
- The company’s American depositary receipts have fallen precipitously from its IPO price of $14 less than a year ago.
- Its New York-listed ADRs closed at $1.44 a share on Monday, down 4% from Friday.
- While the company will not prevent continued over-the-counter trading of its stock at this point, it notes that such a market would be beyond its control and could leave investors stuck with shares and no practicable means of recouping their investment.
The wider lens: - While the SEC has announced that over 100 Chinese companies face delisting in the U.S. based on new auditing requirements, the Chinese equivalent of that agency claimed that Didi’s decision to exit the U.S. stock market had nothing to do with conflicts between the two countries.
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The investment arms of crypto companies including Coinbase, FTX, Avalanche, and Solana have joined forces on a $70M Series A round for chartered crypto bank Protego Trust Bank. The round also reportedly saw participation from Algorand, Cardano, Ripple, Digital Currency Group, NYCA Partners, and Reciprocal Ventures. More: - Protego’s Series A valuation was not disclosed.
- However, sources claim that it has already started talks for a Series B follow-up that could peg it at almost $2B, though the timeline for that round is undetermined.
- Founded in 2017 by CEO Greg Gilman, Protego recently appointed U.S. comptroller of the currency Brian Brooks to its board after he stepped down from his regulatory position.
The wider lens: - While crypto stocks are collapsing, digital currency startups targeting the institutional use of blockchain tech for financial purposes are gaining ever more traction.
- Just last week, Elwood Technologies, provider of a crypto-focused market access and trading platform, also raised $70M Series A co-led by Goldman Sachs.
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 The Nordic VC ecosystem saw a total of $12.75B (€11.9B) invested across 1,220 deals in 2021, according to PitchBook data. That made it the first year for the region to surpass $10.5B (€10B). The analysis comes as Klarna, the Swedish BNPL giant, announced a 10% personnel cut across the board. More: - So far this year, companies in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland have pulled in $3.75B (€3.5B) over 344 deals, putting those countries on track for a strong year.
- While Sweden has long been the most popular Nordic country for venture investment, Finland and Denmark, which respectively saw $1.7B (€1.6B) and $2.14B (€2B) in capital invested last year, have seen their ecosystems grow substantially.
- A long-term trend defining the entire ecosystem has been the steady percentual increase of deals coming from late-stage rounds.
- As recently as 2018, the largest rounds made up around 24% of all funding rounds, while angel/seed rounds accounted for 33%.
- Now those figures are 38.4% and 24.7%.
- Of the 13 Nordic unicorns, Klarna’s previous valuation of $45.6B made up half of their combined value.
- However, the company recently raised a massive down round, bringing in around $1B in fresh capital at the cost of about 30% of its estimated market value.
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TransferMate, a purveyor of a SaaS B2B payments API, raised $70M in fresh capital. The round brought the company’s total raised to date up to $130M and cemented it as a unicorn. The only known investor was Railpen, one of the largest U.K. pension funds. More: - TransferMate offers cross-border payments in more than 201 countries and 141 currencies.
- Its platform is designed to replace the traditional SWIFT system for international bank transfers, making cross-border interactions as simple as domestic payments.
- The company is a subsidiary of CluneTech, a Dublin-based conglomerate of financial services founded in 1996.
- TransferMate itself was founded in 2010 by Terry Clune and is currently headed by Sinead Fitzmaurice.
- The new valuation makes TransferMate the first Irish unicorn with a female CEO.
- Based in Kilkenny, Ireland, the company also has offices in San Francisco, New York, and Sydney.
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 Today’s Funding 💸 Biotech/Health - SwipeRx (Singapore), platform for pharmacists: $27M B led by Indonesia’s MDI Ventures, participation from the Gates Foundation, Johnson & Johnson Impact Ventures, Susquehanna International Group, et al.
Blockchain - CyberConnect (Palo Alto, Calif.), decentralized social graph protocol for Web3 connections: ...
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Quick Hits - Bubbles, with users from around the world, encourages teams to decline meetings-that-should-have-been-emails.*
- Great North Ventures closed its second early-stage fund with $40M in capital commitments. It will target companies using AI to solve labor problems.
- Singapore-based fintech operator MatchMove will buy domestic e-commerce operator Shopmatic for $200M.
- eToro, an Israeli investment platform, is seeking to raise between $800M-$1B at a $5B-6B valuation after its SPAC merger at a $10.3B valuation fell apart.
- MainStreet, a tax credit platform, is reportedly raising an undisclosed sum at a $200M valuation. The company’s previous round was at a $500M valuation, and today’s round comes on the heels of MainStay laying off 30% of staff.
- With $300B in cash between them, the FAAMG companies are expected to benefit from any possible recession in terms of the M&A possibilities. The companies acquired a combined 100 smaller entities during the two years following the Great Recession.
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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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