The states of Florida, North Carolina, and Texas defied the global venture funding downturn of 2022. Florida and North Carolina saw $9.1B and $4.9B VC funding deployed, respectively, up 25% and 24% from 2021. VC funding deployed in Texas stayed level compared to 2021, with both years rounding off at $10.3B each. More: - The funding increase in Florida was driven by the crypto, space, gaming, and cybersecurity startups in the region, with Fanatics, Yuga Labs, and Citadel Securities fetching most of the funding.
- North Carolina's funding uptick was helped massively by Sony and KIRKBI's $2B investment into Epic Games. The state has also seen a rise in research, biotech, enterprise software, deeptech, AI, and fintech firms.
- Texas — which had seen VC funding double from $5B in 2020 to $10.3B in 2021 — remained a key region for investment due to the thriving healthcare IT, fintech, and enterprise software ecosystem. The state's 2022 tally saw a massive boost from Securonix's $1B funding round and Elon Musk's The Boring Company's $675M fundraiser.
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Israeli freight booking platform Freightos is looking to go public via a SPAC merger with Denver-based Gesher Acquisition Corp. The firm is poised to net $80M from the transaction, giving the firm a valuation of $500M. The company's investors were in no hurry to exit their investments, which made SPAC the right choice for them rather than a traditional Initial public offering listing, per CEO Zvi Schreiber. More: - British firm M&G Investments is one of the investors that picked up shares of the company during the current listing.
- Some investors agreed to a two-year lockup on their investments, while others have agreed to between six months to 18 months of a lockup.
- To date, the firm has $118M in equity funding from investors, the most notable of which are Qatar Airways, FedEx, Singapore Stock Exchange, Aleph, and MoreVC.
- The company will trade under the ticker name "GIAC" on the Nasdaq.
- Freightos garnered $20M in revenue in 2022 and expects to oversee $1B in gross bookings in 2023.
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SoftBank Group backed eight startups in Q4 2022, the firm's lowest quarterly funding round participation on record since the launch of Vision Fund, per Bloomberg. In Q4 2022, the firm participated in funding rounds totaling $2.1B, which is nearly 15 times less than the $30B worth of funding rounds it participated in at its peak. The firm invested less than $350M in the quarter. More: - SoftBank's founder Masayoshi Son had previously hinted at curbing investments until the market recovers.
- The drop in valuations of portfolio startups resulted in huge losses for the firm.
- SoftBank's Vision Fund lost $17B in Q2 2022, followed by $7.2B in the next quarter.
- In Q4, SoftBank made share buybacks worth $4B (532B yen), which helped its stock prices surge by 15% in the period.
Zoom out: - Investors are holding off on startup investments assuming that valuations will drop further.
- 80% of early-stage founders anticipate running out of money by the end of the year, while late-stage startups are looking to raise down rounds to ensure their company survives the downturn, according to a survey by January Ventures of startups in the U.S. and Europe.
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Israeli venture capital firm Disruptive AI is moving funds from its bank account out of Israel, citing the nationwide protests over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's overhaul of the country's judicial system. The firm affirmed that it is not moving operations out of Israel, just the bank accounts. More: - The VC firm was joined by unicorn startup Papaya Global, which also moved its funds overseas.
- Papaya CEO Eynat Guez believes that the changes proposed by Netanyahu's administration are set to "harm democracy."
- Disruptive AI's foreign investors showed concern over their ability to invest in Israel if the reforms pass.
Zoom out: - Netanyahu's proposed reforms include stringent oversight of judicial appointments and reducing the influence of the Supreme Court over government decisions.
- Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich addressed economic instability concerns by saying that their economy is "strong and profitable and investors are smart."
- Israel's economy is expected to slow below 3% this year, half last year's growth rate of 6%.
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Canadian VC firm Pender Ventures has received commitments up to $50M for its Fund II, half of the targeted $100M. The fund has a 10-year investment horizon and expects to invest half in the first five years, with the rest to be kept in reserve. Fund II will primarily target health tech and vertical SaaS companies. More: - Pender has backed three startups, namely DistillerSR, Traction Rec, and Traction Complete, with the fresh funds.
- The firm intends to back 10 to 14 companies from the entire fund.
- Limited partners in the fund include Export Development Canada, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Bank of Montreal Capital Partners, Vancity, and Kinsted Wealth.
- Pender's Fund I closed at $25M in 2018, which the firm used to back nine companies.
- Two of the investments — Copperleaf Technology and Jane Software — helped the fund net returns above its initial annual target of 25% to 30%.
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European venture capital firm Atomico has promoted Hillary Ball and Andreas Helbig to partner roles. Ball is the partner in the growth stage team and is tasked with leading the firm's investment in growth-stage consumer internet and enterprise companies across the U.S. and Europe. Helbig will oversee the firm's B2B software investments, including SMB SaaS, vertical SaaS, and B2B marketplaces. More: - Ball joined Atomico as an associate, before which she did a four-year stint at Goldman Sachs.
- She is a board member of a number of Atomico's portfolio companies, including Gympass and Framer.
- Helbig led Atomico's participation in Kry, Voi, Sennder, Dixa, and most recently, Digitail's $11M Series A round.
- He has focussed on investing across the Nordic and Baltic regions during his tenure at Atomico.
Zoom out: - Last April, Atomico promoted Terese Hougaard, Sasha Vidiborskiy, and Luca Eisenstecken to Partner roles.
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- U.S. federal prosecutors alleged that Sam Bankman-Fried's hedge fund and Alameda Research invested $400M into relatively unknown venture firm Modulo Capital, likely using criminal proceeds or misappropriated funds from FTX.
- Bank of America invested in Capitalize VC's debut $10M fund, which will focus on backing e-commerce infrastructure and consumer startups led by Black and Latino founders.
- European deep tech startups raised $17.7B in venture funding in 2022, down 22% from 2021. Valuations of deep tech startups were down 9%, compared to the industry-wide totals of 45%.
- British biotech firm Grey Wolf Therapeutics secured $49M in Series B funding led by Pfizer Ventures and Earlybird Venture Capital.
- French online job search and recruitment startup HelloWork has earmarked €50M ($54.3M) for the M&A budget for the next four years.
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- January 29 - Inside Interview with Lacework - 4 Common Attack Paths in Cloud Security (Register Here)
- January 30 - Inside Coffee Break (Register Here)
- January 31 - Inside Startups Coffee Break (Register Here)
- April 18 - Human Resources Summit'23 (Register Here)
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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 and 1972 Fords. | |
OneSchema, the embeddable CSV importer for SaaS. Load cleaned customer data in minutes, not weeks. | |
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