Blog Archive

Saturday, July 27, 2019

VC Deals Only: Weekend Edition: As Didi Raises $600M From Toyota, A Reminder Of Its Epic Fundraising History

VC Deals

Business travel SaaS startup, TravelPerk, has announced it’s more than doubled the $44M Series C round — taking in a further $60M from its existing investors, which brings the round to $104M, and the business’ total raised to date to $134M. Investors increasing the size of their Series C commitment are Kinnevik, partners of DST Global, Target Global, Felix Capital, Sunstone, and LocalGlobe. More

Rival Technologies, a voice, video, and chat marketing solution based in Vancouver, has raised $8.5 million CAD, claiming to have doubled its venture capital funding target. The startup said funds from the investment will be used to continue developing the company’s platform and expanding Reach3 Insights, Rival’s sister company, under the umbrella of the Reid Campbell Group.  More

Promethera Biosciences has raised €39.7 million ($44.4 million) to put its liver disease cell therapy through clinical trials. The series D round comes as Promethera prepares to start testing its lead drug in end-stage NASH patients.  More

TurnKey Vacation Rentals, Inc., an Austin, Texas-based vacation rental management company for luxury and premium properties, secured $48m in funding. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate market expansion and develop new vacation rental offerings and technologies for individual owners and small property managers.  More


Unless you were some hotshot finance person in the 1980s, you probably only recently started using your mobile phone to place trades. Today your broker is probably an API which wears a user interface to work in a mobile app to do your bidding.  Robinhood makes one of these apps. Based in San Francisco, the company is among the leading contenders looking to unseat established online brokerages by offering commission fee-free trading, asset classes including options and cryptocurrencies, and other features largely aimed at new investors.  More

Investors have poured boatloads of cash into liquid biopsy companies promising that their technology is the solution for non-invasive screening of early-stage cancer. In the latest mega funding round, South San Francisco company Freenome has raised a $160 million in a Series B led by RA Capital Management and Polaris Partners to launch its pivotal trial for its blood-based test to screen for colorectal cancer. Polaris Partners and RA Capital will join Freenome’s board as part of the deal. More

Didi, the China-based ride-hailing giant, has raised fresh capital from a corporate investor. The $600 million investment from Toyota further pads Didi’s coffers as some of its global rivals are flush with IPO-related proceeds; Uber and Lyft, key ride-hailing players, raised billions each in their 2019 IPOs. More


HipCamp, a San Francisco, CA-based online marketplace for campsites, raised $25m in Series B funding. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz’s Cultural Leadership Fund with participation from return backers Benchmark Capital, August Capital and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and new investor Yes VC. More


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New Funds

European life sciences investment firm has closed its latest fund, worth nearly half of $1 billion. Medicxi said Friday that it had closed the fund, Medicxi III, with a value of 400 million euros, or about $449 million. The firm has locations in London, Geneva and Jersey, and the new fund’s investors include U.S.-based Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC and Swiss drugmaker Novartis, along with previous limited investors in Medicxi funds and new investors.  More



Flare Capital Partners, a Boston, MA-based healthcare technology venture capital firm, closed its second fund, at $255m. Flare Capital Partners II, L.P., will continue to follow the firm’s focus on transformational technologies and services that enable value-based healthcare, leveraging mobile solutions, big data analytics technologies, and secure infrastructure.  More

Partnerships

On Monday, Microsoft announced an “exclusive computing partnership” and a $1 billion “investment” into OpenAI, the non-profit artificial intelligence research company co-founded by Elon MuskIlya SutskeverGreg Brockman, and former Y Combinator president Sam Altman, who now serves as the organization’s CEO. More

Indianapolis-based insurer Anthem has tapped primary care startup K Health to launch a new co-branded app to help Anthem members determine potential diagnosis and text with doctors for medical advice. As part of the collaboration, Anthem is making a major multi-million dollar investment in the New York-based company, bringing its total funding to more than $50 million. More

Acquisitions

Continental, a Michigan-based food management company, acquired Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Northern Vending Company. As part of the acquisition, the entire Northern Vending staff will join the Continental team. According to Steve LaPorte, president of Continental’s refreshment services group, Northern Vending expands Continental’s client base with a solid roster of loyal, long-term customers. More

Legal News

Equifax will pay at least $575 million in a settlement for a mammoth 2017 data breach that impacted more than 140 million people. According to an announcement by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), this penalty could rise to as much as $700 million. The Atlanta-headquartered consumer credit reporting company hit the spotlight back in September 2017, when it announced that personal details— such as the names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, addresses, and more — of up to 147 million U.S. consumers were exposed to hackers between May and July of that year. More

Fund News

SoftBank’s second Vision Fund is coming into sharper focus as we learn that Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and SoftBank are possible investors. After indicating that the Vision Fund could be only the first of similar capital vehicles, it seems that SoftBank’s dream of having more than one enormous investment fund is inching closer to reality.  More

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