Raleigh, North Carolina-based Plexus Capital secured $204M in commitments toward its inaugural private equity fund. The company has been providing capital to small businesses in the nation since its founding in 2005 and has since invested $1.5B in over 140 organizations from its five credit-led funds. The company will continue to focus on lower middle market organizations with the Plexus Equity Fund I. More: - Plexus will focus its equity investments in organizations with up to $100M in revenue and $12M in EBITDA.
- The firm is led by its 36-member team, including six partners.
- The company has raised $1.7B in capital to date, with its last credit-led fund, Plexus Fund V, securing $502M in commitments.
- Its predecessor fund secured $400M in commitments, with the firm’s debut fund garnering $80M in financing.
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Pyramid Analytics raised $120M in Series E funding led by H.I.G. Growth Partners. Clal Insurance Enterprises Holdings and General Oriental Investments participated in the funding along with existing investors Jerusalem Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, and Voila Growth. The firm provides an advanced business intelligence platform, called decision intelligence, to help businesses extract insights from data. More: - Pyramid’s AI-powered no-code platform is used by over 2,450 worldwide companies, including Deloitte, Dell, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and Volkswagen.
- The current fundraise brings the firm’s total funding secured to date to $211M.
- TechCrunch estimates its valuation to be around the $1B mark.
- Incoming funds will be used to boost growth, develop added functionality, expand global reach, and hire talent.
- The Netherlands-based company has offices across New York City, London, and Tel Aviv.
- Pyramid reported a 100% YoY increase in its revenue.
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Machine learning repository platform Hugging Face secured $100M in financing. The financing will enable the firm to scale its operations and expand its reach. The recent fundraising valued the firm at $2B. The Series C funding round was led by Lux Capital. Other participants in the funding round include Coatue, Sequoia, A.Capital Ventures, and Addition Capital. More: - The company was founded as an AI-assisted chatbot with natural language processing capabilities.
- The platform now consists of over 100,000 machine learning models developed by the community and 108 pretrained models.
- Hugging Face’s machine learning code is leveraged by over 10,000 organizations worldwide, including Google, Microsoft, Intel, and eBay.
- Per a Forbes report, the startup made less than $10M in revenue last year.
- It last raised $40M in funding from Lux Capital, Betaworks, and NBA athlete Kevin Durant.
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Endeit Capital, a German-Dutch growth capital firm, closed its third information and computer technology fund with $320.2M (€303M) in commitments. The fund launched with $264M (€250M) in capital last year. KFW Capital participated in the funding. More: - Endeit has already made investments in four companies: Parcellab, Sharpest, Stravito, and Amberscript.
- Endeit is seeking to invest across seven European countries and recently opened an office in Stockholm.
- It already has offices in Germany and the Netherlands.
Zoom out: - In the last few weeks, many European VC firms launched technology-focused funds.
- Last week, Seaya Ventures raised $315.5M (€300M) for its sustainable technology fund. Read more about it here.
- German growth capital investor Cipio Partners closed its Cipio VIII fund at $213M (€202M). More details on it here.
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 A message from ADOBE MARKETO Done right, metrics and analytics can strengthen trust, build budget, and increase business impact for marketing teams. But according to Forrester, 77% of global B2B decision-makers say that using data and analytics to guide decisions is one of their top weaknesses. Our fact sheet, Metrics That Make a Big Difference, covers helpful tips for measuring — and proving — the value of your marketing content and campaigns. A few tips to get you started: - Tip #1: Don’t fixate on costs.
- Tip #2: Define your metrics —and how you’ll measure them—upfront.
- Tip #3: Choose a marketing attribution model.
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Indian accelerator fund 9Unicorns announced the fifth closing of its debut fund. The fund — set up by incubator and accelerator Venture Catalysts — received $100M in commitments and has the option to extend financing to $130M. To date, the fund has invested in more than 110 firms, including Vendantu, ShipRocket, and ShopKirana. More: - With the added funding, the firm will continue to invest in early to growth-stage startups with a focus on deeptech, enterprise SaaS, web3, fintech, insuretech, healthtech, edutech, and D2C domains.
- 9Unicorns has earmarked $500,000 to $1M for potential opportunities in the seed stage and up to $2M for Series C and above startups.
- 9Unicorns firm intends to deploy all the funds by mid-next year, following which it will launch its second fund.
- It aims to double its number of investments from 101 deals in 2021.
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AI and computer vision-powered touchless self-checkout system maker Mashgin raised $62.5M. The NEA-led Series B financing will enable the company to grow its workforce and expand globally, beginning with Europe. The company received a $1.5B post-money valuation. More: - The recent financing brings the company’s total venture capital secured to date to $74.7M.
- Its last raise came in the form of an $8.2M Matrix Partners led Series A in Nov. 2017.
- Matrix Partners participated in the current funding round.
- Mashgin reported $14M in revenue in 2021.
- The startup has completed over 35 million transactions worth $310M.
Zoom out: - According to a Juniper Research report, the smart checkout technology sector is forecasted to be worth $400B by 2025.
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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*
- Israel’s seed-stage venture capital firm Hetz Ventures closed its third fund at $123M. The firm will invest in startups working in the developer tools, open-source software, enterprise software, fintech, and cybersecurity domain.
- San Diego, California-based autologous cell therapy developing biotech company Aspen Neuroscience Inc. raised $147.5M from a Series B funding round. GV, LYFE Capital, and Revelation Partners co-led the financing.
- Brightseed received $68M from a Series B funding round led by Temasek with participation from S2G Ventures, CGC Ventures, Germin8, and AgFunder. The company is developing an AI-powered platform that identifies and categorizes hidden plant compounds.
- ConvaTec led a $64M Series B financing into Part City, Utah-based BluWind Medical. The firm is developing an implantable tibial neuromodulation device.
- Egypt-based digital payments fintech Paymob secured $50M in Series B funding led by PayPal Ventures, Kora Capital, and Clay Point.
- South Korea-based crypto data and research platform CrossAngle Pte. Ltd closed a $17M Series B funding round led by KB Investment, Shinhan Capital, Premier Partners, and IMM.
- Same old marketing automation not cutting it these days? Get our eBook and power up your customer experiences*
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 |  | Karan Chafekar is a Management Consultant, Business enthusiast, and Licensed Pilot. | | | | 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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