 The U.K. government has shelved plans to build a technology hub to rival Silicon Valley around Oxford and Cambridge. The Oxford-Cambridge Arc was a priority plan of multiple Conservative governments until last year when it took second fiddle to increased spending on Northern England. More: - The plan would have connected the two universities and the manufacturing and logistics center of Milton Keynes by building east-west transport links.
- In its most ambitious form, the Arc would have added 1 million extra homes and 700,000 jobs while boosting the average annual productivity of workers in the region by $8,000 (£6,000) by 2050.
- The housing target has been dropped, though the Varsity railway line, central to the plan, will be reopened.
- Prime Minister Boris Johnson reportedly dropped the initiative from the national government's agenda in lieu of his "leveling-up" agenda for Northern England following his Tory party's loss in Chesham and Amersham last year.
- According to sources, while aspects of the plan have been delegated to local governments, Johnson wants to distance the national government from plans that highlight support for London and Southeast England.
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Fabric, which provides composable API tech for digital commerce, raised $140M Series C at a $1.5B valuation. The round was led by SoftBank and was joined by Forerunner Ventures, Glynn Capital, and existing investors Redpoint Ventures, Norwest Ventures, and Stripes. More: - Seattle-based Fabric has now raised $293M in total funding to date. It most recently raised a $100M Series B round last year that valued it at $850M.
- It offers 300 commerce APIs and an associated framework, centralizing companies' sales channels to one place.
- Fabric's target market consists of B2B brands of $50M+ revenue, which cannot operate well on platforms such as Shopify.
- CEO Faisal Masud justified this strategy by noting that larger companies frequently still operate with outdated proprietary digital commerce platforms.
- While re-platforming may not be an option for these companies, they should be "peeling off commerce domains in pieces" and moving to a microservice approach.
- Fabric has grown from two customers in 2020 to over 60 currently.
- It grew its headcount six times during the same period, from 45 to 280, and experienced 4.5x YoY revenue growth in 2021.
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Zip, Australia's largest BNPL operator, acquired U.S.-based competitor Sezzle for $355M (A$491M). The all-stock deal will give the combined business a customer base of 13 million. Zip will raise $144M (A$200M) through a discounted share placing to fund the deal. More: - Zip's long-term plan is to push into the U.S. and compete with Jack Dorsey's Square, which entered Australia last year with the $28.1B (A$39B) acquisition of BNPL platform Afterpay.
- The deal was the largest takeover in Australia's history and left Zip the largest BNPL company listed on Australian markets.
- Australian BNPL has suffered since then as investors took notice of high levels of cash burn and bad debts.
- Zip stock lost 80% of its value in the last year.
- It claims to be on track for cash flow and earnings positivity by the end of its 2024 fiscal year.
- In the U.S., BNPL only accounts for 2% of transactions, much lower than in Australia.
- Prior to the deal, Sezzle had raised just over $300M and debuted on the Australian Stock Exchange in 2019.
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Climatetech startup Project Canary raised $111M led by Insight Partners, with participation from Brookfield Growth, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and Carica Sustainable Investments. The Series B funding will be used to bolster Project Canary’s environmental assessment platform. More: - With a special focus on methane, Project Canary’s SaaS data analysis infrastructure enables companies to reach net-zero emissions.
- The Denver-based company further assists financial markets to differentiate environmental performance.
- Previous backers Quantum Energy Partners, Energy Impact Partners, and Frontier Venture Capital also participated in the round.
Dig Deeper: - As climatetech moves from the fringes to become a mainstay of VC investing, round sizes for climate tech startups have quadrupled, with more than 600 investments totaling over $40B last year.
- TechCrunch asked 14 climatetech investors about their expectations and strategies for the first half of 2022. Check out the interviews here.
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 Today's Funding 💸 Adtech/Martech - Good-Loop (New York, N.Y.), charitable ads: $6M A led by Quaestus Capital Management, participation from Scottish Enterprise, SIS Ventures, First Party Capital, et al.
Aerospace - Xplore (Redmond, Va.), space data as a service: $16.2M from Alumni Ventures, Brightstone Venture Capital, KittyHawk Ventures, et al.
Biotech/Health - Story Health (San Jose, Calif.), health technology and services company: $22.6M A led by Northpond Ventures, B Capital Group, participation from LRVHealth, Define Ventures, General Catalyst.
Blockchain - InfStones (Palo Alto, Calif.), blockchain infrastructure provider: $33M B from Susquehanna International Group, Dragonfly Capital, Qiming Venture Partners, DHVC, A&T, INCE Capital, et al.
- Fast Break Labs (San Francisco, Calif.), player-owned sports game: $6M Seed led by Patron, participation from Pantera Capital.
Edtech - Tutored by Teachers (New York, N.Y.), small-group virtual instruction for high-need, under-served students: $10M A led by GSV Ventures, participation from TMV, A-Street Ventures, et al.
Enterprise - Valoreo (Mexico City), e-commerce holding company: $80M B led by L Catterton.
- Cortina (New York, N.Y.), software solution for retailers to expand their business: $6M Seed led by Point72 Ventures, participation from AlleyCorp, Primary VC, Blue Watch, Lorimer.
Fintech - Standard Metrics (San Francisco, Calif.), investor relations platform for private capital markets: $23M A led by 8VC, participation from Alpha Edison, January Capital, First Trust Capital Partners, et al.
- OpenComp (San Francisco, Calif.), compensation intelligence solutions: $20M A led by K5 Global, J.P. Morgan.
- Siteline (San Francisco, Calif.), billing solution for commercial trade contractors: $15M A led by Menlo Ventures.
- Savvy (New York, N.Y.), wealth management platform: $7.3M A led by Index Ventures, Thrive Capital, participation from the founders of ICONIQ, Plaid, Instacart, Figma, Opendoor, et al.
- Ternary (San Francisco, Calif.), FinOps platform provider for Google Cloud Platform: $6.7M Seed led by FinVC, NEVA SGR, participation from Oceans Ventures, Operator Partners, Great Oaks Venture Capital, et al.
Foodtech - De La Calle (Los Angeles, Calif.), probiotic beverage: $7M led by KarpReilly, HERE Studio, DrinkPAK.
Transportation - Beam (Singapore), micromobility operator: $93M B led by Affirma Capital, participation from Sequoia Capital India, Hana Ventures, ICT Capital, EDB Investment, AC Ventures, et al.
- Ev.energy (Palo Alto, Calif.), EV charging software: $12.8M A led by ArcTern Ventures, participation from Energy Impact Partners, Future Energy Ventures, et al.
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- Chinese EV producer NIO will undertake a secondary listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to supplement its NYSE-listed shares. After a 50% decrease over the last year, NIO had a market value of about $34B.
- Hack VC launched a $200M fund for seed-stage DeFi, web3 infrastructure, DAOs and their tooling, and NFT infrastructure. The fund is backed by Sequoia Capital, Fidelity, a16z’s Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon, Accolade Partners, Digital Currency Group, and more.
- Liquid 2 Ventures, known for its seed-stage investment strategy, closed its third flagship fund with $80M to deploy.
- Ukrainian startups, including Grammarly and Readdle, have developed crisis contingency plans to keep operating throughout the Russian invasion. Check out this article to see what sort of steps they have taken.
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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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