| Here’s your daily VC briefing: - 💰 Lightspeed stands to get good returns from Rubrik IPO
- 🚀 European cleantech VC funding is on track to set a new record this year
- 💵 Decarbonization Partners closed its debut fund at $1.4B
Thank you. Karan
p/karan-chafekar | |
| 1 | | Rubrik's early investor, Lightspeed Venture Partners, stands to gain significantly from its IPO, having incubated the company. At the time of the IPO, Lightspeed held a 24% stake in the firm. Rubrik's share prices surged 16% on the first day of trading, giving the cybersecurity company a market capitalization of $6.6B. More: - Rubrik's shares debuted at $32 each and touched $37 at the end of the trading day on Thursday.
- The shares were oversubscribed by over 20 times.
- Lightspeed led Rubrik's Series A funding round, investing $9.4M at a $25M post-money valuation.
- Eventually, the VC firm ended up investing $362M over the firm's nine-year tenure.
- Using the closing price from Thursday, Lightspeed's share is estimated to be worth about $1.44B.
- Other investors set to benefit from Rubrik's IPO include Greylock Partners and Khosla Ventures.
- Greylock led Rubrik's Series B round at a $136M post-money valuation, while Khosla led its Series C round at a post-money valuation of $311M.
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| 2 | | VC funding for European cleantech startups surged 467% YoY, reaching €6.8B ($7.3B) in Q1 2024 per Pitchbook. 
What the numbers say: So far this year, funding has already crossed last year's tally and is on track to set a new record by the end of this year, surpassing the previous high of €12B ($12.8B) set in 2022. The surge was driven by Swedish green steel producer H2 Green Steel's €4.75B ($5.1B) funding round. Other notable funding rounds to close in the quarter include Electra's €304M ($326M) Series B and electrolyzer manufacturer Sunfire's €215M ($230M) Series E fundraisers. What happened: Despite the VC funding downturn, investor interest in cleantech startups remains robust, fueled by growing environmental awareness and a pressing need to combat climate change. Europe announced favorable regulations, including their Net-Zero Act, to further boost the funding available for cleantech sector startups. | | | |
| 3 | | Decarbonization Partners closed its debut fund at $1.4B, higher than the firm's initial target of $1B. The fund will back about 15 to 20 late-stage and venture growth startups that are accelerating the transition to a net-zero economy. More: - Investment firm BlackRock and Singapore's sovereign wealth fund Temasek jointly created Decarbonization Partners in 2022 to tackle the climate crisis.
- The VC firm has already backed seven startups so far, including battery recycler Ascend Elements, silicon battery materials maker Group14, hydrogen producer Monolith, biotech startup MycoWorks, and thermal energy storage startup Antora.
- Over 30 institutional investors contributed capital to the fund, including Allstate, BBVA, KIRKBI, Mizuho Bank, MUFB Bank, and TotalEnergies.
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| 4 | | Norwest Venture Partners secured $3B in capital commitments towards its 17th fund. The firm will invest in early- and growth-stage startups across North America, Israel, and India. Norwest will primarily invest in enterprise, consumer, and healthcare startups with the latest fund. More: - The latest fund's size is the same as its predecessor, which closed in December 2021.
- Senior managing partner Jeff Crowe highlighted that investment was robust in the healthcare sector and certain geographies like India despite the global VC funding downturn.
- Norwest bolstered its healthcare practice with the addition of a biotech team.
- In addition to biotech, the healthcare team also invests in startups working on medical devices and diagnostics, healthcare services, healthcare software, and tech-enabled services.
- The latest fund brings Norwest's total capital under management to $15.5B.
- The firm has backed over 230 startups to date, the most notable of which are Vuori, Gong, Monogram Health, and Five Star Finance.
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| 5 | | Seed-stage VC firm Eniac Ventures secured $220M capital for two new funds, per TechCrunch. $160M of the capital is earmarked for Eniac VI and the remaining $60M for Select 1. Enaic plans to make about 40 investments from both funds. While the new fund is sector agnostic, it is eyeing investment opportunities in the machine learning and AI sector. More: - The Select 1 fund was created to double down on promising portfolio startups.
- The firm has already made 11 investments from the Select 1 fund.
- While the average initial check size is $1.5M, the firm has invested as high as $6M into a single startup.
- Eniac has backed about 250 startups to date, including 1up Health, Anchor, Embrace, Ghost, Hinge, Hive, Level.ai, Maestro, and Vungle.
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| 6 | | Today's Funding: AI - Conversational AI platform Parloa raised $66M in Series B funding led by Altimeter Capital. EQT Ventures, Newion, Senovo, Mosaic Ventures, and La Familia Growth participated in the round.
Blockchain - Blockchain startup Movement Labs raised $38M in Series A funding led by Polychain Capital. Investors participating in the round include Hack VC, Placeholder, Archetype, Maven 11, Robot Ventures, Figment Capital, Nomad Capital, OKX Ventures, and others.
Biotech - Biotech startup Xaira Therapeutics secured $1B in fresh funding. The San Francisco-based startup is leveraging machine learning, data generation, and therapeutic product development to build a drug discovery platform.
- Precision novel therapeutics startup Cerevance extended its Series B-1 funding round by $47M. Agent Capital, Bioluminescence Ventures, and Double Point Ventures led the round, with additional backing from Gates Frontier, GV, and Lightstone Ventures.
DevOps - AI-powered coding assistant Augment emerged from stealth mode with a $252M Series B funding round at a post-money valuation of $977M. Augment is backed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Index Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Innovation Endeavors, and Meritech Capital.
Healthcare - Women's health startup PinkDx secured $40M in Series A funding co-led by Catalio Capital Management and The Production Board.
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 | Analyst | | Karan Chafekar is a Management Consultant, Business enthusiast, and Licensed Pilot. | | This newsletter was edited by Karan Chafekar | |
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