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| Here’s your daily VC briefing: - 🚀 VNV Global marked up French ride-hailing startup BlaBlaCar’s valuation by 43%
- 📉 VC investment inflow into mobility tech startups slumped in 2023
- 🎯 AI startup Cohere is aiming for a $5B valuation at the upcoming funding round
Thank you. Karan
p/karan-chafekar | |
| 1 | | VNV Global increased the value of its shares in French ride-hailing startup BlaBlaCar by 43%, pushing its implied valuation over the $2B mark. BlaBlaCar was last valued at $1.62B in 2021 when it raised a €97M ($104.6M) Series E funding round. More: - VNV invested €35M ($37.7M) in the Series E round in 2021.
- The Swedish VC firm purchased additional shares in BlaBlaCar worth €25M ($26.9M) through a secondary transaction in Q2 2023, increasing its total stake in the startup to 13.8%.
- VNV marked up BlaBlaCar's valuation after the company reported a 20% to 25% growth in active users, serving about 80M passengers in 2023.
- BlaBlaCar is reportedly profitable on an EBITDA basis.
- Last March, BlaBlaCar acquired commuting startup Klaxit for an undisclosed sum.
Zoom out: - Global mobility tech and ride-hailing startups bagged $26.6B in VC funding in 2023 through 914 deals, per Pitchbook.
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| 2 | | VC investment inflow into mobility tech startups, including electric vehicles, charging infrastructure, freight hauling, and logistics software domains, slumped for the second consecutive year in 2023, per data from a Pitchbook report seen by Axios. 
What the numbers say: Global mobility tech VC investment plunged by 43.1% from $43.1B in 2022 to $26.6B in 2023. Deal value declined by 38.7% QoQ in Q4, while deal count remained flat. Relevance: Deal value doubled for the fleet management and connectivity domain, thanks to Metropolis' $1.7B late-stage deal that closed in the last quarter of 2023. Meanwhile, VC funding plunged for the transportation hardware and software sector, with 2023's tally being just 28% of the record-high tally set two years ago in 2021. Where to see the impact: Mobility tech sector generated exits worth $19.8B in 2023, about a tenth of the record-high exit value of $222.5B seen in 2021. Exit value reached a five-year low in 2023. Notable exit includes Rockwell Automation's $615M acquisition of Clearpath Robotics. | | | |
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| 3 | | Matter Venture Partners closed its debut fund at $300M, crossing the initial target of $200M. The fund primarily invests in large seed, Series A, and Series B rounds. Matter aims to back startups in hard tech sectors, including semiconductors, robotization, generative AI, on-shore manufacturing, energy, and life science automation startups. More: - Matter was launched in 2023 by former Kleiner Perkins' investors Wen Hsieh and Haomiao Huang.
- Kleiner Perkins and Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC backed the fund.
- The firm has invested in six startups to date and also doubled down on portfolio startups, including Ambiq Micro.
- Matter expects to back 15 to 20 companies from the new fund.
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| 4 | | Cohere is in advanced negotiations with investors to raise $500M in fresh funding, sources informed Bloomberg. The Canadian AI startup is aiming for a $5B valuation at the upcoming round, more than double its last known valuation of $2.1B from last year when it raised a $270M Series C round. Canadian pension investment manager PSP Investments is reportedly set to co-lead the latest funding round, per the Information. More: - Former Google executive Aidan Gomez co-founded Cohere in 2017 and leads it as its CEO.
- The Toronto-based startup builds large language models for enterprises.
- Earlier this month, the firm debuted its new conversational AI model, Command R.
- Cohere was generating about $22M in annual revenue as of March.
- Inovia Capital led the firm's last Series C round, with additional backing from strategic investors Nvidia, Oracle, and Salesforce Ventures.
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| 5 | | Alteria Capital, founded by former executives from InnoVen Capital, secured $186M (15.5B rupees) in capital commitments towards its third venture debt fund. The firm expects to close the fund between $250M and $300M by the end of this year. Check sizes from the third fund will average $23.9M (2B rupees). More: - To date, Alteria has backed more than 180 Indian startups, including Zepto, Rebel Foods, Spinny, Dealshare, BharatPe, Dunzo, Cars24, and EarlySalary.
- Alteria expects to back 70 to 100 startups from Fund III.
- While the fund is sector agnostic, it will primarily invest in consumer, rural, healthcare, logistics, electric mobility, fintechs, and B2B startups.
- Alteria provides venture debt capital to Indian startups, often overlooked by larger banks and lenders.
- The firm wants to give startups the option to borrow capital for a few months, less than the typical two-year tenure.
- The new fund brings Alteria assets under management to $521.7M (43.5B rupees).
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| 6 | | Today's Funding: Biopharmaceutical - Clinical-stage biopharmaceutical startup Aeovian Pharmaceuticals secured $50M through a fresh funding round led by Hevolution. Existing investors Apollo Health Ventures, Sofinnova Investments, venBio, Evotec, and b2venure backed the funding round.
Cybersecurity - Cybersecurity platform Coro bagged $100M in Series D funding led by One Peak. Existing investors Energy Impact Partners and Balderton Capital participated in the round.
Healthcare - Pelago, a healthcare startup that helps employers reduce substance abuse in their workforce, raised a Series C funding round of $58M. Series B round investor Atomico led the latest funding round.
Manufacturing - Robovision, a startup developing AI-powered computer vision platform for machinery manufacturers and production lines, raked in $42M in Series A funding led by Target Global and Astanor Ventures.
Proptech - Furnished rental apartments provider Blueground raised $45M in Series D funding from Susquehanna Private Equity Investments and WestCap. Additionally, the firm secured a $40M venture debt facility from Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, and HSBC.
SaaS - SaaS observability startup Observe closed its Series B funding round at $115M. Sutter Hill Ventures led the round, joined by Capital One Ventures, Madrona, and Snowflake Ventures. The company's valuation surged by 10x compared to its Series A round four years ago.
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| 7 | | Quick Hits: - Want to reduce your AWS costs? Get your AWS cloud spend under control and maximize your AWS cost savings today.*
- Crypto VC firm 1kv raised $75M for its latest VC fund to invest in startups creating crypto applications for consumers. The fund received backing from Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, Accolade Partners, and Galaxy Digital.
- Data labeling startup Scale AI is set to witness an 80% surge in valuation to $13B at its upcoming funding round. Accel is reportedly set to lead the round.
- Climate tech VC firm Satgana closed its debut fund at €8M ($8.6M). The firm aims to back about 30 startups in Africa and Europe.
- VC firm S2G Ventures appointed Bala Nagarajan as the managing director of its energy team.
- Microsoft-backed cloud and data security startup Rubrik plans to file for an IPO listing as early as next week, sources informed Bloomberg. Rubrik intends to raise between $500M to $700M from the listing.
- Elevate your beauty brand on Amazon. Pattern's guide unveils this multi-billion dollar market.*
*This is sponsored content | | | |
 | Analyst | | Karan Chafekar is a Management Consultant, Business enthusiast, and Licensed Pilot. | | This newsletter was edited by Karan Chafekar | |
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