| |
| Here's your daily VC briefing: - 💰 VCs may get liquidity from secondary transactions in 2024 as the IPO window is expected to remain closed.
- 💸 Japanese investment firm SoftBank is interested in backing French AI startup Mistral AI.
- ⚠️ Cryptocurrency exchange Binance spun off its venture capital arm into an independent entity.
Thank you. Karan
p/karan-chafekar | |
| 1 | | Secondary market transactions are expected to total $138B in 2023, according to preliminary estimates by Industry Ventures. Due to the shuttered IPO market, investors are opting to liquidate their holdings in the secondary markets to generate some liquidity. TechCrunch expects the trend to continue this year as very few major IPO listings are lined up, suggesting that the IPO window may remain shut even this year. More: - The market conditions are still not favorable for IPO listings as interest rates remain high and startup valuations remain much lower than their highs of 2021.
- Amongst the biggest startups expected to go public this year, Stripe, Databricks, and Plaid have either directly or indirectly implied that they have postponed plans.
- In such unfavorable market conditions, secondary markets allow investors to ease off some pressure and avoid a premature exit from a promising portfolio startup by liquidating part of their stakes.
- Secondary market transactions rose from $35B in 2017 to $105B in 2021.
- Stripe facilitated a $1B secondary market sale in February, allowing investors and existing employees to sell their stakes.
- The company held the secondary share sale at a valuation of $65B, which was down from Stripe's peak valuation of $95B but still better than its 2022 figure of $50B.
|     | |
| 2 | | VCs deployed $568M in late-stage and beyond global startups this week between March 9 and March 15, per Crunchbase data. Autonomous vehicle startups raked in 51% of the funding this week. Fintech, cybersecurity, and AI startups nabbed 18%, 18%, and 11% of the financing, respectively. 
Here are the top five largest rounds announced this week: - Applied Intuition, an automotive startup developing software for vehicles used in the automotive, trucking, construction, and mining sectors, increased its valuation to $6B at its $250M Series E funding round led by existing backers Lux Capital, Elad Gil, and Porsche Investments Management. Other investors participating in the round include Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, BOND, Human Capital, and Human Capital.
- Industrial cybersecurity Nozomi Networks raised $100M in Series E funding from Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and Schneider Electric SE.
- Ontario Teachers' Pension Plans' late-stage growth investment arm, Teachers' Venture Growth, invested $80M in Indian credit underwriting fintech startup Perfios. The new funding round will supposedly raise Perfios' valuation above the $1B mark.
- Bear Robotics, a startup making autonomous AI-powered server robots for restaurants and other venues, raised $60M in Series C funding exclusively from LG Electronics. The investment makes LG the single largest shareholder in the firm.
- EACON, a startup creating autonomous driving technology for mining purposes, closed its Series C++ funding round at $44.5M. The fresh funding was led by the global mining group Zijin Mining.
| | | |
| |
|
| 3 | | Japanese investment firm SoftBank has expressed interest in investing in French AI startup Mistral AI, sources informed Bloomberg. While the deliberations are ongoing, sources believe the deal could value Mistral AI at more than $2B, a milestone it achieved when it raised a $415M funding round from Salesforce, Nvidia, and other investors in December. Today, data infrastructure company Databricks forged a partnership with Mistra and invested an undisclosed amount, adding to its Series A round. More: - Last month, Mistral AI bagged a €15M ($16M) investment from Microsoft.
- Per Crunchbase, the AI startup has raised €505M ($549.5M) in total funding to date.
- Mistral AI was founded by former Google DeepMind and Meta engineers in 2023.
- SoftBank has been eyeing AI startups after missing out on funding rounds for booming generative AI startups, including OpenAI.
- SoftBank Vision Fund's co-CEO Alex Clavel said the firm is "looking very carefully" at generative AI firms but will place its bets wisely, having learned from its recent losses.
Zoom out: - SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son is also looking to raise as much as $100B to create a new AI chip startup.
| | | |
| 4 | | Crypto exchange Binance Group spun out its venture capital and incubator arm, Binance Labs, into an independent entity earlier this year, per Bloomberg. The news comes just four months into new CEO Richard Teng's tenure as a CEO, succeeding Changpeng Zhao, who resigned after the digital asset company pleaded guilty to U.S. agencies and agreed to pay a $4.3B penalty. More: - Binance Labs has backed more than 250 crypto projects to date and has about $10B worth of assets under management.
- Notable companies in its portfolio include Sky Mavis, Aptos Labs, LayerZero, Polygon, and The Sandbox.
- Binance Labs was primarily funded by the exchange's profits.
- The firm raised its $500M fund last year, its first fund backed by external investors.
- However, due to the prevailing economic headwinds, the company has reportedly started returning unused capital to investors.
| | | |
| |
|
| 5 | | Ballistic Ventures closed the second fund at $360M, higher than its initial target of $300M, founder Ted Schlein told TechCrunch. The firm will invest in early-stage cybersecurity startups working on safeguarding AI, mitigating disinformation, and developing applications to secure code, connected devices, data, identity, and SaaS services. More: - The firm completed the fundraising in just four months since formally registering the plans last November, which is surprising given the challenging fundraising environment.
- Ballistic often takes board seats and closely guides portfolio startups, helping them generate initial revenue and hire first engineers.
- The firm already has one successful exit after portfolio company Talon Cyber Security was acquired by Palo Alto Networks for $625M last November.
- Schlein, a former B2B investor at Kleiner Perkins, launched Ballistic Ventures two years ago with a $300M debut fund to invest in cybersecurity startups.
- The firm has backed 18 startups from the first fund and expects to back two more.
- The firm is led by general partners Jake Seid, Roger Thornton, Kevin Mandia, and Barmak Meftah.
| | | |
| 6 | | Today's Funding: Blockchain - Blockchain platform Berachain achieved unicorn status with a $69M funding round co-led by Brevan Howard Digital and Framework Ventures. The firm was valued at $1.5B.
Consumer research - Customer journey mapping startup TheyDo bagged $34M in Series B funding led by Blossom Capital. Arches Capital and Innovation Quarter participated in the round.
Fashion - Insulated apparel startup Oros Labs has raised over $21M in fresh funding, per SEC filings seen by Business Journals.
Fintech - British payments startup PPRO bagged €85M ($92.5M) in fresh funding from Eurazeo, HPE Growth, Sprints, PayPal Ventures, J.P.Morgan, Citi Ventures, and BlackRock.
Software - Realtime engineering simulations startup Luminary Cloud emerged from stealth mode with a $115M funding round led by Sutter Hill Ventures.
| | | |
| 7 | | Quick Hits: - Meowtel is where convenience meets quality cat care. Personalized, in-home cat sitting for true cat enthusiasts.*
- BDC Capital's website confirmed its exit from DarwinAI, which Apple acquired earlier this year for an undisclosed sum.
- European VC firm DeepTechXL closed its first fund at €110M ($119.7M) to invest in startups working on photonics, complex mechanical engineering, semiconductors, and quantum computing.
- 87% of the exit value since 2015 in Southeast Asia has been generated by just six exits over $1B, per Pitchbook data cited by Tech in Asia.
- Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund ADIA is looking to invest in Indian audio-storytelling startup PocketFM, two sources informed TechCrunch. The startup recently secured $100M from Lightspeed Venture Partners.
- Jump start DevOps with DoiT & AWS. Accelerate your workloads & release pipelines while increasing automation & reliability. Get started.*
*This is sponsored content. | | | |
| Upcoming Events | | MAR
27 | | Join DTC industry leaders and CEOs at the pivotal virtual roundtable event 'Shaping the Future of DTC in 2024.' | | | | | | * This is a sponsored event | | | |
 | Analyst | | Karan Chafekar is a Management Consultant, Business enthusiast, and Licensed Pilot. | | This newsletter was edited by Vibha Chapparike | |
| |
 | Ortto is a complete platform for powerful marketing automation. Start your 14-day free trial today. | |
|
 | Fellow is the all-in-one AI meeting transcription and management software for remote and hybrid teams. | |
|
| |
Comments
Post a Comment