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Faire, an e-commerce marketplace for independent brands, raised $416M in an extension of its Series G round with a post-money valuation of $12.59B. That latter figure is just $200M greater than the valuation the company secured during the original Series G round in November, which was co-led by Durable Capital Partners, D1 Capital Partners, and Dragoneer Investment Group. More: - A total of $196M of today’s funding came from Sequoia and Y Combinator, while another $200M came from other investors.
- The additions brought the Series G’s total up to an astounding $816M. That bumped Faire’s total raised to date up to $1.4B.
- While extension rounds tend to be flat, today’s announcement is interesting due to its reflection of the increasingly difficult funding environment faced even by decacorns like Faire.
- The company, which bills itself as an "Indie Amazon," would probably have raised an entirely separate round at a much higher valuation if conditions were still as opportune as they were in 2021.
- The company reported 3x YoY growth and had reached over $1B in annual revenue in its five-year history.
- It recently expanded to 15 markets in Europe, as well as the U.K., where it managed to reach $150M in sales volume in six months, a feat that took three years in North America.
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 PitchBook data shows a collapse of European exit activity in the first quarter of 2022. From an estimated total deal value in 2021 of $132B (€125.7B), this year has only seen a scant $8.1B (€7.7B). More: - The IPO count in Q1’22 was a meager 16 compared with 44 in the same period in 2021.
- They made up a mere 7.55% of all exit deals, compared with 17.2% for all of 2021.
- The flip side is that falling valuations make M&A activity a more attractive option for VC investors looking for an exit and larger companies/investors looking for bargain buys.
- In Q1, a total of 144 M&A deals took place worth a combined $5.5B (€5B).
- They made up a solid 67.9% of all exit activity based on the deal count, slightly up from the 64.3% for all of 2021.
- Buyouts saw the biggest bump in terms of their portion of exit deals from 18.5% in 2021 to 24.3% in Q1’22.
- The continent is plagued by the same set of conditions that have brought the U.S. public markets into a tailspin and effectively halted all new entries.
- Interest rates, inflation, and geopolitical concerns with Russia and Ukraine sent investors fleeing high-growth tech stocks into lower-risk assets.
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Chainalysis, a company offering crypto fraud detection services, reportedly raised $170M at an $8.6B valuation. The Series F more than doubled the company’s valuation from $4.2B, which it garnered in a $100M round in June of last year. More: - Coatue Management led the previous round, while GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, reportedly spearheaded the latest injection.
- GIC is a previous inverter in Chainalysis, along with Benchmark, Accel, Addition, Dragoneer, Durable Capital Partners, 9Yards Capital, Altimeter Capital Management, Blackstone, Sequoia Heritage, and SVB Capital.
- With the $366M Chainalysis had previously pulled into its coffers and today’s round, the company has raised around $550M to date.
The wider lens: - The round comes in tandem with Bitcoin falling to $30,000 on Monday night, a 10-month low, reinforcing fears that crypto could be heading for a long-term down spell.
- Still, an observer could not be blamed for seeing it the other way around. Over $13B has been funneled into global crypto startups so far this year, close to half the roughly $30B invested in all of 2021.
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Felicis Ventures led an $80M Series B round for Supabase, which claims to replace Google’s Firebase with an open-source mobile/web dev platform. Coatue and Lightspeed participated in the round, bringing the company’s total funding to date to $116M. More: - CEO and co-founder Paul Copplestone claims that the platform is now used by 80,000 developers who have created over 100,000 databases on the service.
- That represents a growth of 1,900% in the last year.
- With the fresh funding, Copplestone plans to double the company’s team and develop a go-to-market strategy to accelerate user growth, which has been organic up to this point.
- While Supabase cannot match Firebase in its variety of features, it offers the basics, including database, storage, and authentication service.
- It recently added Edge functionality and a functions-as-a-service offering.
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 Today’s Funding 💸 Agtech - Sencrop (France), platform to help farmers mitigate crop risks: $18M B from JVP.
Biotech/Health - Invetx (Boston, Mass.), protein-based therapeutics for animal health: $60.5M led by F-Prime Capital, Novo Holdings, GV, Eight Roads, participation from Anterra Capital, Casdin Capital, Tekla Capital Management, et al.
- Domain Therapeutics (Strasbourg, France), drugs targeting G Protein-Coupled Receptors in immuno-oncology: ...
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! | | | |
Quick Hits - From 5x to 10x, VC growth stage revenue multiples have doubled in the past year, according to the 2022 Pepperdine Private Capital Markets Report.*
- Flow, originally developed by Dapper Labs, raised an Ecosystem Fund with $725M to invest in companies building on its protocol. a16z, Coatue, Union Square Ventures, Greenfield One, Coinfund, Digital Currency Group, and others participated.
- Archetype, an early-stage crypto VC outfit, announced plans to close its second fund at $150M this month. The new vehicles come scarcely a year after the firm’s first.
- EV startup Canoo has sued one of its largest backers, DD Global Holdings, for selling shares and generating short-swing profits. It demanded that DD Global pay back $61M.
- Tiger Global has seen $17B in losses as its public portfolio is pummeled by tech stock sell-offs. That is one of the biggest dollar declines for a hedge fund in history and nixed 66% of its gains since launching in 2001.
- Salesforce acquired Troops.ai, a bot-based data retrieval service that integrates with Slack, for an undisclosed sum.
- Same old marketing automation not cutting it these days? Get our eBook and power up your customer experiences*
*This is a sponsored post.
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- June 23 - The Future of Open-Source Software Security (Register Here)
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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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