VC Deals Only: Avalanche Technology Raises $33M in Funding.

VC Deals Only: Avalanche Technology Raises $33M in Funding.: Avalanche Technology, a Fremont, CA-based MRAM technology platform, raised over $33M in funding. The round was led by Thomvest Ventures...

Avalanche Technology Raises $33M in Funding.

Avalanche Technology, a Fremont, CA-based MRAM technology platform, raised over $33M in funding.

The round was led by Thomvest Ventures.

The company will use the funds to accelerate the development of its P-SRAM™ memory devices for the Internet of Things, aerospace and defense markets and higher densities of persistent DRAM required for the next generation of machine learning architectures.

Led by Petro Estakhri, President and CEO, Avalanche Technology has developed Perpendicular STT-MRAM technology, which aims to replace traditional Flash and SRAM for unified memory architectures in future SOC systems, delivering high performance and low power at 55, 40 and 28nm with scalability to 22 and 14nm.

With a proven STT-MRAM portfolio at multiple geometry nodes combined with an intellectual property portfolio of over 280 patents and applications, Avalanche Technology aims to enable the next generation of scalable embedded unified memory architecture for use in GPUs, MCUs, DSPs, ASSPs and ASICs.

Source. FinSMEs, Staff, May 28, 2019

***

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the Canadian private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.

VC Deals Only: OpenSesame Raises $28 Million Series C to Add Work...

VC Deals Only: OpenSesame Raises $28 Million Series C to Add Work...: OpenSesame, a Portland, Ore.-based online corporate learning marketplace, has raised a $28 million Series C round of funding. FTV Capital l...

OpenSesame Raises $28 Million Series C to Add Workers for Corporate Learning Marketplace

OpenSesame, a Portland, Ore.-based online corporate learning marketplace, has raised a $28 million Series C round of funding. FTV Capital led the round with participation from Altos Ventures.

Founded in 2011, OpenSesame claims to host more than 20,000 courses, in subjects ranging from machine learning to leadership. These classes are hosted by third-party creators, who set the price and get to keep about 60 percent of the revenue, the rest going to OpenSesame, according to the company’s website. The company says it currently serves businesses like Siemens and Caterpillar.

OpenSesame’s co-founder and general manager, Josh Blank told The Oregonian that the company “began breaking even on its operations last all” and described the fundraise as “gasoline” to help it grow faster. It will use the money toward hiring about 60 employees, according to GeekWire, which will push its headcount to 140 by the end of the year.

The company has raised at least $45.1 million in total funding. Altos Ventures has also invested in Quizlet.

Source. Edsurge, May 28, 2019

***

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the Canadian private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.

VC Deals Only: India’s Ather Energy raises $51 million to grow it...

VC Deals Only: India’s Ather Energy raises $51 million to grow it...: By Manish Singh There’s more money racing into India’s increasingly competitive two-wheeler market after electric scooter maker Ather Ene...

India’s Ather Energy raises $51 million to grow its electric scooters business

By Manish Singh

There’s more money racing into India’s increasingly competitive two-wheeler market after electric scooter maker Ather Energy said today it has raised $51 million in new funding.

The round was led by early backer Sachin Bansal, the co-founder of Flipkart, who invested $32 million. The rest of the money was provided by Hero MotoCorp, which added $19 million in convertible debt, and venture debt VC firm InnoVen Capital, which put in $8 million. The deal means that the six-year-old startup has raised around $90 million to date. Ather Energy was valued at about $400 million in the new round, a person familiar with the matter said.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Tarun Mehta, co-founder and CEO of Ather Energy, said the startup will use the fresh capital to expand to new cities, and ramp up its manufacturing capacity and supply chain network. Ather’s scooters, currently available only in Bengaluru, will be launched in Chennai followed by other unspecified cities, he said.

Ather Energy will also attempt to produce 20,000 to 25,000 scooters a year through its own manufacturing plant in Bengaluru, Mehta revealed. The company is also keen to expand its product portfolio, which currently numbers just two scooter models — Ather 340 (priced at $1,600) and 450 ($1,770). By 2023, the startup is aiming to grow its presence to more than 30 cities, with over 6,500 charging stations — up from 38 currently — and production capacity of a million scooters in a year.

There’s some way to go before it can reach those lofty goals, but Ather has built a fan-following in the nation for its scooters in recent years. Its scooters sport high storage battery density (2.4 KWh Lithium-ion), a dashboard for navigation information, 75 km of mileage and take less than three hours to fully charge.

That’s led Mehta to call the Ather 450 “the most powerful smart scooter in the Indian market.”

Ather Energy offers its scooters to consumers in three ways: outright purchase, purchase with a subscription for value-added features and leasing, an option it only recently introduced.

The company’s competitors include Vogo, Bounce and Yulu, which earlier this month inked a deal with Uber to conduct a trial in the nation. Another big name is also involved: Uber rival Ola has invested about $100 million in startup Vogo, which operates in Bengaluru and Hyderabad.

Mehta said he thinks electric scooters are a good fit for ride-hailing giants, and that’s something he is open to exploring at a later stage. But for now, his startup will stick to its B2C (business to consumer) play.

In a prepared statement, Sachin Bansal, who has emerged as one of the most prolific VCs in India, said, “Their [Ather Energy’s] focus on end to end customer experience will open up new revenue opportunities and accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles in India. The future is electric and I am excited to be a part of this journey in shaping the future.”

Source. Techcrunch, Manish Singh,  May 28, 2019

***

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the Canadian private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.

VC Deals Only: U.S. smartphone financing tech startup PayJoy rais...

VC Deals Only: U.S. smartphone financing tech startup PayJoy rais...: By Anna Irrera, PayJoy, a startup that has developed smartphone technology to facilitate access to credit in emerging markets, has rai...

U.S. smartphone financing tech startup PayJoy raises $20 million

By Anna Irrera,

PayJoy, a startup that has developed smartphone technology to facilitate access to credit in emerging markets, has raised $20 million from venture capital firm Greylock Partners, the company said on Thursday.

Union Square Ventures, EchoVC and Core Innovation Capital also participated in the round, PayJoy said. The San Francisco-based startup said it will use the funding to expand, secure more partners and develop new technologies.

PayJoy enables consumers with no bank accounts or formal credit history to purchase smartphones on installment payments and get cash loans. It does so by turning the smartphone into collateral through software that locks the phone when payments have not been made.

It believes that making smartphones more affordable can be a stepping stone toward increasing financial inclusion since more financial services are now being provided digitally.

“We’re building technology to help people carve a path into the financial system,” Mark Heynen, the company’s co-founder and chief business officer, said in an interview.

Globally, 1.7 billion adults do not have a bank account, but two-thirds of them own a mobile phone which could help them access financial services, the World Bank said in a 2018 report.

It is launching in six more countries through new partnerships with local companies, Heynen said. These include Mutual in Brazil, Waynimovil in Argentina, MyBucks in South Africa, Panacredito in the Dominican Republic, Omnipagos in Honduras and COINFIN in Colombia.

PayJoy’s technology does not make underwriting reliant on traditional credit scores, but seeks to increase consumers’ willingness to pay by taking advantage of their desire to access the phone, which in turn can help keep default rates in check, Heynen said. He declined to disclose default rates.

“Customers like it because it makes the phone pay-as-you-go,” Heynen said. “In some cases, if they decide they can’t pay, they can send in the phone and have their contract canceled.” 

Source. Reuters, Anna Irrera, May 18, 2019

***

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the Canadian private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.

VC Deals Only: Biofourmis raises $35M to support AI-based digital...

VC Deals Only: Biofourmis raises $35M to support AI-based digital...: By Kevin Truong Singaporean startup  Biofourmis  has raised a $35 million Series B financing round led by to support the growth and comm...

Biofourmis raises $35M to support AI-based digital therapeutics for chronic disease

By Kevin Truong

Singaporean startup Biofourmis has raised a $35 million Series B financing round led by to support the growth and commercialization of its digital therapeutics platform and support hiring as the startup moves to its new Boston headquarters.

Sequoia India and MassMutual Ventures co-led the funding round, alongside EDBI, the investment arm of Singapore’s Economic Development Board, and Chinese online pharmacy Jianke. The company has a total of $40 million from investors including Openspace Ventures, Aviva Ventures and SGInnovate.

By the end of 2019, the company plans to have a workforce of more than 100 employees split across Boston and Singapore.

“Sequoia India is excited to lead this round investing in Biofourmis, an innovative health tech start-up with the potential to intuitively deliver improved patient outcomes,” Anjana Sasidharan, a principal at Sequoia Capital India Advisors, said in a statement.

“They have already aligned with credible, high-quality institutional partners to successfully transition digital therapeutics from concept to reality—and we are impressed with the team’s vision and ability to use technology to scale their products globally.”

Initially founded in 2015 by CEO Kuldeep Singh Rajput and Chief Privacy Officer Wendou Niu, Biofourmis is working on technology that uses machine learning algorithms, wearable medical biosensors and electronic patient records to build biomarkers that can predict potential health issues before they arise.

The company’s lead product known as BioVitals HF is a digital therapeutic offered post-discharge to patients suffering from cardiac disease. Using a combination of medical sensors and the company’s AI algorithms, BioVitals monitors a patient’s health, highlights potential problems and offers treatment options through its companion app.

By giving patients more real-time insight into their health status the hope is create better adherence to treatment regimens and improve efficacy of existing therapeutics. The company initially is looking to partner with pharma companies to pair specific medications with Biofourmis’ digital solutions.

Important to note is that the company does not yet have FDA approval for its products, but expects for a clearance decision in the coming months.

Going forward, Biofourmis said it will continue to develop its algorithms through the biopharmaceutical clinical trial and regulatory process.

“Our products would then have treatment claims akin to a drug, and they would need to be prescribed by a clinician,” Rajput said. “Insurance providers could then reimburse for the treatment just as they do with pharmaceuticals and therapeutic medical devices.”

Source. Medcity News, Kevin Truong, May 22, 2019

***

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the Canadian private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.

VC Deals Only: Houston-based AlloVir Raises $120 Million Series B...

VC Deals Only: Houston-based AlloVir Raises $120 Million Series B...: By James Rowley  Houston-based biopharmaceutical company AlloVir (formerly known as ViraCyte) recently announced $120 million in Series...

Houston-based AlloVir Raises $120 Million Series B For Virus-Targeting Immunotherapies

By James Rowley 

Houston-based biopharmaceutical company AlloVir (formerly known as ViraCyte) recently announced $120 million in Series B funding. Fidelity Management and Research Company led the deal. Participating investors include Gilead Sciences, F2 Ventures, Invus, Leerink Partners, Redmile Group, EcoR1 Capital, and Samsara BioCapital.

AlloVir is also the first venture to publicly join the portfolio of ElevateBio, a recently-launched Cambridge, MA-based company which aims to advise and assist cell and gene therapy upstarts throughout the discovery, development, and commercialization lifecycle. Earlier this month, ElevateBio announced it raised $150 million in venture funding led by UBS Oncology Impact Fund. AlloVir financiers Samsara BioCapital, Redmile Group, and EcoR1 Capital also back ElevateBio.

According to a press release published by ElevateBio on Wednesday, AlloVir “is a leading innovator in allogenic, off-the-shelf, multi-virus specific T-cell immunotherapies.” What does that mean?

Let’s break it down:

“Allogenic,” meaning, basically, that biological material used to create the company’s treatments are sourced from (compatible) donors, rather than from the patient themselves.

 

“Off-the-shelf,” in this specific case, means that AlloVir’s products could be integrated into a treatment regime immediately, sitting in storage in the meantime. In the context of T-cell therapeutics (which we’ll get to in a moment), a treatment wouldn’t be “off the shelf” if it required sampling, modifying, and culturing cells from the patient.

 

Jumping out of order a bit: T cells are a foundational part of the human immune system. There are many types of T cells, all of which play specific roles in responding to infection. Cancer patients, HIV positive people, transplant recipients, people with chronic infections, people with autoimmune diseases, or other immuno-suppressed populations have lower counts of these key cells. This makes them more susceptible to infection and illness.

 

According to AlloVir, its primary T cell therapy offering, Viralym-M (ALVR105), can target six different viral pathogens, including: BK virus (which can affect kidney transplant patients), cytomegalovirus, adenovirus, Epstein-Barr virus (which causes mononucleosis, aka “mono”), JC virus, and human herpesvirus 6.

Preliminary research findings on the company’s next therapy, ALVR106, which “targets four common and devastating community-acquired respiratory viruses” were published in the journal Haematologica last month.

So, basically, AlloVir is in the business of sourcing and training immune cells from healthy donors to fight viral infections in folks with compromised immune systems.

AlloVir’s therapies are still in clinical trials. The company published results from its Phase 2 study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, finding that 93 percent of treated patience "demonstrated a clinical response (or met clinical response criteria) following treatment with Viralym-M.” ElevateBio CEO David Hallal told Xconomy that AlloVir will start Phase 3 trials of Viralym-M in 2020.

AlloVir’s as-yet-unnamed ALVR106—targeting respiratory syncytial virus, influenza, parainfluenza virus, and human metapneumovirus—is expected to enter the first phase of clinical trials within the next 12 months, according to coverage in Biospace.

This latest funding round brings AlloVir’s total backing to at least $159 million. The company (which at the time was still called ViraCyte) filed a Form D with the SEC in September 2018. The regulatory filing disclosed the company closed at least $30 million out of a targeted $50 million funding round. It’s unclear whether ViraCyte has closed the remaining $20 million from that round.

Prior to that deal, the company raised $8.99 million in grant funding from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.

Note. The Crunnchbase News team are not doctors or medical researchers, and we don’t play them on the internet. If we got any part of this wrong, please email the author: jason@crunchbase.com

Source. Crunchbase, James Rowley, May 23, 2019

***

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the Canadian private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.

VC Deals Only: Weekend Edition: Salesforce Ventures Doubles Down ...

VC Deals Only: Weekend Edition: Salesforce Ventures Doubles Down ...: VC Deals Wild Earth, Inc. , a startup reinventing pet food with biotech, today announced it has closed its Series A with an investment of ...

Weekend Edition: Salesforce Ventures Doubles Down On Europe With A New $125M Fund

VC Deals

Wild Earth, Inc., a startup reinventing pet food with biotech, today announced it has closed its Series A with an investment of $11 million led by VegInvest, a venture capital firm supporting early-stage companies striving to replace the use of animals in the food system and other industries. This is VegInvest's second investment in Wild Earth; other current investors include Mark Cuban's Radical Investments, Felicis Ventures, Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, and Mars Petcare, bringing total funding to $16 million. More

Roughly $165 billion worth of wholesale produce is bought and sold every year in the U.S. And while that number is expected to go up to $1 trillion by 2025, the business of agribusiness remains unaffected by technology advancements that have reshaped almost every other industry. Now Silo, a company that recently raised $3 million from investors led by Garry Tan and Alexis Ohanian’s Initialized Capital and including Semil Shah from Haystack Ventures, angel investors Kevin Mahaffey and Matt Brezina and The Penny Newman Grain Company, an international grain and feed marketplace, is looking to change that. More

Urban Jungle, a digital insurance startup targeting so-called “generation rent” with a range of insurance products, has raised £2.5 million in a seed funding round. The round is said to be backed by a mixture of new and previous investors, including Rob Devey, the former CEO of Prudential UK, and Simon Rogerson, CEO of Octopus Group. Described as challenging traditional insurance providers by catering to U.K. renters who have historically been underserved by the insurance industry, Urban Jungle offers contents insurance, gadget insurance and tenant-liability policies.  More

As we swing into the summer tourist season, a company poised to capitalise on that has raised a huge round of funding. GetYourGuide — a Berlin startup that has built a popular marketplace for people to discover and book sightseeing tours, tickets for attractions and other experiences around the world — is today announcing that it has picked up $484 million, a Series E round of funding that will catapult its valuation above the $1 billion mark.  More

Ride Report, a Portland, OR – based solution for cities to integrate new forms of micromobility, like bikes, scooters, and small electric vehicles, raised $3.4m in seed funding. The round was led by Homebrew, with Urban Innovation and Better Ventures also participating. The company intends to use the funds to strengthen partnerships with mobility operators and expand to serve more cities around the world.  More

Palo Alto, California-based Cardinal Analytx Solutions, which develops and maintains predictive analytics software for health care payers and providers, today announced that it has secured $22 million in a series B round led by Kleiner Perkins chair John Doerr, with participation from strategic investors GuideWell Mutual Holding Corporation, Blue Shield California, and Premera Blue Cross. The capital infusion follows a $6.1 million series A round in 2017 and will enable the company to further invest in talent and technology, according to CEO Linda T. Hand.  More

Interplay Learning, an Austin, Texas-based provider of online training for skilled trades utilizing virtual reality (VR) and 3D simulations, secured $5.5M in Series A financing. The round was led by S3 Ventures, with participation from Shasta Ventures, Sierra Ventures, Holt Ventures, Wild Basin Investments, and Shelter Capital Partners. In conjunction with the funding, Charlie Plauche, Partner with S3 Ventures, will join Interplay Learning’s Board of Directors. The company intends to use the funds to onboard talent in its Austin offices and customer success team, while accelerating expansion into new markets and developing new platform features. More

Sponsor

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the Canadian private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa, and Halifax. 

Acquisitions

Cvent, a meetings, events, and hospitality technology provider, acquired Wedding Spot, a San Francisco, Calif.-based wedding venue sourcing platform. The amount of the deal was not disclosed. The acquisition of Wedding Spot enables Cvent to bring additional group business opportunities to the more than 260,000 hotels and venues that currently utilize its Cvent Supplier Network, further accelerating its product roadmap and global growth in the hospitality sector.  More

New Funds

To Jussi Lystimäki, the VP of Barcelona’s Adevinta Ventures, the challenge with starting a Europe-focused fund is that the region isn’t “harmonic.” “In Europe, you have very local markets, very local ecosystems,” he told Crunchbase News from his Barcelona office. Adevinta Ventures has put money into three marketplace startups, and it has also put money into supporting local seed-stage venture capital firms.  More

The Los Angeles ecosystem is $76 million stronger today as Fika Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital firm, announces its sophomore investment fund. Fika invests roughly half of its capital exclusively in startups headquartered in LA, with a particular fondness for B2B, enterprise and fintech companies. The firm was launched in 2017 by general partners Eva Ho and TX Zhuo, formerly of Susa Ventures and Karlin Ventures, respectively. The pair raised $41 million for the debut effort, opting to nearly double that number the second time around as a means to participate in more follow-on fundings.  More

IPOs

More than a month after reports emerged that Endeavor had begun preparing for an IPO, the marketing and entertainment colossus has filed to go public, with The Hollywood Reporter citing insiders who say the Los Angeles-based company will raise around $500 million at a valuation of at least $6 billion.  More

Exits

One of the bigger developments in customer services has been the impact of social media — both as a place to vent frustration or praise (mostly frustration) and — especially over messaging apps — as a place for businesses to connect with their users. Now, customer support specialist Zendesk has made an acquisition so that it can make a bigger move into how it works within social media platforms, and specifically messaging apps: it has acquired Smooch, a startup that describes itself as an “omnichannel messaging platform,” which companies’ customer care teams can use to interact with people over messaging platforms like WhatsApp, WeChat, Line and Messenger, as well as SMS and email.  More

5G Ñews

As 5G networks launch across the world, a word that was previously unknown to consumers — “spectrum” — has become critically important to next-generation wireless devices. Wireless spectrum is invisible, but you can visualize it as a highway divided up into narrow lanes so vehicles can safely travel in parallel between destinations. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the earliest radio signals were free to travel wherever they could, but subsequent wireless devices such as televisions, radars, satellites, and cellular phones required governments to allocate specific wireless frequencies (spectrum) for individual purposes, creating unseen multi-lane data highways in the air.  More

Regulatory News

Big data holds commensurately large promise for medtech and digital health companies building tools to analyze that information and develop programs to improve patient health. But these emerging technologies have run headlong into new privacy-oriented regulatory and legislative challenges.  More

VC Deals Only: Interplay Learning Secures $5.5M in Series A Finan...

VC Deals Only: Interplay Learning Secures $5.5M in Series A Finan...: Interplay Learning , an Austin, Texas-based provider of online training for skilled trades utilizing virtual reality (VR) and 3D simulation...

Interplay Learning Secures $5.5M in Series A Financing

Interplay Learning, an Austin, Texas-based provider of online training for skilled trades utilizing virtual reality (VR) and 3D simulations, secured $5.5M in Series A financing.

The round was led by S3 Ventures, with participation from Shasta Ventures, Sierra Ventures, Holt Ventures, Wild Basin Investments, and Shelter Capital Partners. In conjunction with the funding, Charlie Plauche, Partner with S3 Ventures, will join Interplay Learning’s Board of Directors.

The company intends to use the funds to onboard talent in its Austin offices and customer success team, while accelerating expansion into new markets and developing new platform features.

Interplay Learning develops and delivers scalable and effective training for the mechanical, electrical and industrial workforce using VR and 3D simulation.

The company has developed expertise over the last 8 years in simulation training in the HVAC, Electrical, Energy Auditing, Solar Install, Manufacturing, and Construction Codes industries.

The subscription-based solution offers monthly and annually pricing.

Source. FinSMEs, Staff, May 22, 2019

***

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the Canadian private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.

VC Deals Only: Israeli drone insurance startup VOOM raises $5 mil...

VC Deals Only: Israeli drone insurance startup VOOM raises $5 mil...: By Andrii Degeler Tel Aviv-based “specialised mobility” insurance startup VOOM has landed $5 million in a funding round led by Arbor Ve...

Israeli drone insurance startup VOOM raises $5 million

By Andrii Degeler

Tel Aviv-based “specialised mobility” insurance startup VOOM has landed $5 million in a funding round led by Arbor Ventures with participation from F2 Capital, Verizon Ventures, Kaedan Capital, and Plug and Play Ventures. This capital injection brings the total amount raised by the company to $7 million.

VOOM, which also incorporates SkyWatch.AI, offers insurance products for drones and “on-demand insurance for episodic usage mobility including e-scooters, powersports, motor boats, small planes, and other modes of transport,” the startup said in a press release.

The startup uses the telemetry-based risk analysis engine developed by SkyWatch.AI for commercial drones. VOOM’s platform collects mobility data points to provide real-time risk assessment in order to customise insurance policies.

“With the rise of on-demand mobility services such as e-scooters, we discovered that in most cases, riders are not covered in case of an accident,” said Tomer Kashi, CEO and Co-Founder of VOOM. “And much more importantly, they are not aware of this fact. VOOM will ensure that users of unique mobility platforms can grab insurance on-the-go from their mobile devices whether they ride, fly, or sail.”

Source. Tech.EU, Andrii Degeler, May 22nd, 2019.

***

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the Canadian private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.

VC Deals Only: DoorDash picks up $600M Series G as valuation soar...

VC Deals Only: DoorDash picks up $600M Series G as valuation soar...: By Ian Agar DoorDash, the on-demand food delivery service, cannot stop delivering funding rounds, either. The company has officiall...

DoorDash picks up $600M Series G as valuation soars

By Ian Agar

DoorDash, the on-demand food delivery service, cannot stop delivering funding rounds, either.

The company has officially gone parabolic with a $600 million Series G on a stunning $12.6 billion valuation, a nearly 78% surge from its $7.1 billion valuation in February. Newcomer investors Darsana Capital Partners and Sands Capital joined existing investors Coatue Management, Dragoneer, DST Global, Sequoia Capital, Softbank Vision Fund, and Temasek.

DoorDash said Thursday that in 1Q, it saw an astronomical 280% YoY increase in annualized gross merchandise value to $7.5 billion. It's unclear if this figure is compared with 2017's results or if that is a forecast for the rest of 2019. The company did not immediately respond to a request for clarification.

The delivery service also reported operations in over 4,000 cities in the US and Canada, with a goal of growing to 100 Canadian cities by the end of the year, up from around 50 currently. 

Perhaps most pivotal in this regard was the company's Series D in March 2018, which saw SoftBank's Vision Fund leading a massive $535 million round. This funding injection reportedly allowed DoorDash to grow from its comparatively tiny 600-city footprint to the enormous list it now oversees.

While DoorDash was happy to expand so quickly thanks to the windfall, SoftBank is also happy to diversify its food delivery bets. The Tokyo-based firm is Uber's largest shareholder, and in turn, has helped fund DoorDash's competitor, Uber Eats.

Profitability question

The topic of profitability is not mentioned in DoorDash's blog post, continuing a wider investment trend of turning a blind eye to blood-red profit/loss statements in favor of pursuing industry disruption.

In hindsight, such priorities were apparent in DoorDash's massive Series D round last year. In allocating the funds, geographical growth was favored over working toward a consistently profitable operation, allowing the company to uproot local, in-house delivery services at restaurants.

The company has also sought to achieve a presence through corporate partnerships and white-label services. For example, on May 2, Wyndham Hotels and Resorts announced a partnership to offer free DoorDash delivery services to guests staying in over 3,700 of the hotel company's locations. Such a partnership complements DoorDash's existing white-label services provided to dining chains such as Denny's and Wingstop.

If DoorDash can continue striking high-profile corporate partnerships while replacing traditional in-house delivery employees at restaurants, a profitable business model could be worked out later to take advantage of an enormous established network.

Source. Pitchbook, Ian Agar, May 23, 2019

***

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the Canadian private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.

VC Deals Only: Wild Earth Closes Series A with $11 Million from V...

VC Deals Only: Wild Earth Closes Series A with $11 Million from V...: Wild Earth, Inc., a startup reinventing pet food with biotech, today announced it has closed its Series A with an investment of $11 million...

Wild Earth Closes Series A with $11 Million from VegInvest, Bits x Bites, VECTR, P.O.V., and M Ventures

Wild Earth, Inc., a startup reinventing pet food with biotech, today announced it has closed its Series A with an investment of $11 million led by VegInvest, a venture capital firm supporting early-stage companies striving to replace the use of animals in the food system and other industries. This is VegInvest's second investment in Wild Earth; other current investors include Mark Cuban's Radical Investments, Felicis Ventures, Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, and Mars Petcare, bringing total funding to $16 million.

The investment is being used to accelerate Wild Earth's development of its no-meat food for dogs made from an eco-friendly and renewably sourced fungi, a complete protein containing all ten essential amino acids. The company expects the dry kibble formula to be available in the second half of 2019.

Wild Earth also announced it has moved into its new headquarters in Southwest Berkeley at Outermost House, significantly expanding its R&D and business facilities. Outermost House, located in a historic space of a former chocolate factory, was envisioned by VegInvest in 2017 as a global innovation hub for vegan food tech companies.

"Wild Earth and VegInvest share a foundation of values and innovation in this effort to achieve a food system that works better for people, the planet, and animals," said Wild Earth CEO Ryan Bethencourt. "Their experience helping future-of-food companies reach the market will absolutely increase our timeline for commercial availability of our dog food with fungi protein."

"Given the shocking amount of animal farming required for pet food, and the environmental strain caused by feeding companion animals, Wild Earth represents an important component of a more sustainable and humane food system," said Amy Trakinski, managing director of VegInvest, who joins Wild Earth's board of directors. "We're investing in Wild Earth not only to impact this market but because Ryan and his team can provide valuable leadership to other companies in the plant-based innovation space."

New York-based VegInvest provides early-stage capital and guidance to companies in industries like vegan food products and food technology, alternatives to animal testing, and restaurant chains. By replacing the use of animals, VegInvest sees financial opportunities as well as more sustainable and scalable solutions. Current investments include JUST and Veggie Grill.

Wild Earth also welcomed global investors in its funding round. Shanghai-based Bits x Bites is China's first future-of-food fund. VECTR is a leading private equity group based in Hong Kong. Berlin-based P.O.V. is one of Germany's leading food funds.

Wild Earth's fungi-based products require dramatically fewer resources than farming animals to produce the same nutritional value. In addition to a complete protein without animal ingredients, the veterinarian-developed formula offers omega fatty acids, digestion-boosting enzymes, and prebiotics to support gastrointestinal microbiomes. Since 25-30 percent of meat's environmental impact in the U.S. is attributed to pet food, Wild Earth believes its Koji protein is necessary if we hope to sustainably feed more than a billion pets expected by 2050. According to a recent study, 35 percent of pet parents would be willing to feed a vegan diet that meets their animal's nutritional needs.

Wild Earth treats are currently available online at WildEarth.com, Amazon.com, PupJoy.com, select brick-and-mortar retail stores, and wholesale to pet food retailers.

Source. PR Newswire, May 22, 2019

***

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the Canadian private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.

VC Deals Only: Bringing tech efficiencies to the agribusiness mar...

VC Deals Only: Bringing tech efficiencies to the agribusiness mar...: By Johnathan Shieber Roughly $165 billion worth of wholesale produce is bought and sold every year in the U.S. And while that number is ...

Bringing tech efficiencies to the agribusiness market, Silo harvests $3 million

By Johnathan Shieber

Roughly $165 billion worth of wholesale produce is bought and sold every year in the U.S. And while that number is expected to go up to $1 trillion by 2025, the business of agribusiness remains unaffected by technology advancements that have reshaped almost every other industry.

Now Silo, a company that recently raised $3 million from investors led by Garry Tan and Alexis Ohanian’s Initialized Capital and including Semil Shah from Haystack Ventures, angel investors Kevin Mahaffey and Matt Brezina and The Penny Newman Grain Company, an international grain and feed marketplace, is looking to change that.

Silo’s chief executive, Ashton Braun, spent years working in commodities marketplaces as a coffee trader in Singapore and moved to California after business school. As part of the founding team at Kite with Adam Smith, Braun worked on getting off the ground Kite’s software to automate computer programming, but he’d never let go of creating a tool that could help farmers and buyers better communicate and respond to demand signals, Braun says.

“I was a super young, green, bright-eyed potential entrepreneur,” says Braun. Eventually, Braun took the opportunity to develop the software that had been on his mind for four-and-a-half years.*

He’d seen the technology work in another industry closer to home. Growing up in Boston, Braun had seen how technology was used to update the fishing industry, giving ships a knowledge of potential buyers of their catch while they were still out in ocean waters.

“When you’re moving a product that’s worth tens of thousands of dollars and has a shelf life of a few days there’s literally no room for error and there’s a lot you need to do,” says Braun. It’s a principle that applies not only to seafood but to the hundreds of millions of dollars of produce and meat that comes from farms in places like California. “What we want to do is we want communication and data to live in the right places at the right time.”

Braun says there’s limited data coming in to farmers to let them know what demand for certain produce looks like, so they’re making guesses that have real financial outcomes with very little data.

Silo’s software vets and supports buyers and suppliers to give farmers a window into demand and potential buyers a view into available supply and quality.

“What Silo is building has the potential to make marketing and distribution of agriculture incredibly more efficient, which is a win both for the suppliers and buyers. We’re excited to support and assist this team as they work to move agriculture forward,” said Eric Woersching, general partner at Initialized Capital, in a statement.

Silo is using the new financing to make a hiring push and develop new products and services to support liquidity in its perishable goods marketplace.

While an earlier generation of agribusiness software focused on increasing productivity on farms, a new crop of companies is targeting the business of farming itself. Companies like AgriChain and GrainChain also offer supply chain management software for farming, and WorldCover is creating insurance products for small farmowners in emerging markets.

The penetration of technology through near ubiquitous mobile devices, coupled with sensing technologies and machine learning-enhanced predictive software, is transforming one of the world’s oldest industries.

“I’ve come across quite a few marketplace platforms attempting to serve different segments of the agriculture supply chain, and none of which have come close to impressing me to the degree Silo has in their tech-forward approach to reducing the friction that comes with managing all aspects of the supply chain on their platform. Silo’s deployment of machine learning streamlines the process, requiring little to no change in their users’ workflow, and removes many barriers of their platform reaching critical mass,” said Matthew Nicoletti, commodity trader at The Penny Newman Grain Company.

*An earlier version of this story referenced Kite’s sale to

Microsoft. The company remains independent.

Source. TechCrunch, Johnathan Shieber, May 21, 2019

***

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the Canadian private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.