VC Deals Only. Weekend Edition. In-home fitness platform Mirror raises another $34M

VC Deals 

Digital media startup Brut is announcing that it has raised $40 million in Series B funding. The money will be used, in part, to finance its launch in the United States. CEO Guillaume Lacroix said that he and his co-founders all come from the French TV industry, where they were all “frustrated not to be able to follow up the conversation” on social media. So they created Brut as a way to deliver video news that felt conversational and authentic, hoping to spark viewer conversation, then take advantage of that commentary to find future stories. More

Oliver Space, a San Francisco, CA-based startup furnishing homes with monthly subscription, raised $6.8M in seed funding.The company intends to use the funds to accelerate multi-city expansion after that the service has officially launched in the San Francisco Bay Area. More 

A startup that aims to provide a software-as-a-service platform to allow genomic sequencing as a standard of care has raised its latest round of financing.St. Louis-based PierianDx said Monday that it had closed a $27 million Series B funding round, led by ATW Partners and SJW Ventures, along with existing investors Health Catalyst Capital, Inova health Systems, RTI International and ARUP Laboratories. More

Benevity, a global leader in corporate social responsibility and one of the largest startups in the Prairies, has raised $40 million in a Series C round of funding. According to The Globe the latest funding round puts the companies value close to $400 million USD. The Globe also noted that Benevity generates around $100 million in annual revenue, which would make it one of Canada’s largest early-stage tech companies.More

Shipwell, the software platform for managing trucking logistics, has raised $35 million and is expanding its suite of services to become a full-service hub for logistics management.The new round led by Georgian Partners comes as the company has just expanded its suite of tracking and management tools to integrate with FedEx’s parcel shipping services. The company also is planning an expansion into ocean shipping in the coming months, according to chief executive Gregory Price. More

Mirror, a fitness content streaming device that users can hang and use like a traditional full-length mirror, has raised $34 million more in a Series B-1 funding round headed by Point72 Ventures. These new investments nearly double the a New York City-based company’s funding to date, which now sits at $72 million. With it also comes the appointment of Point72 CEO and chairman Steven Cohen to Mirror’s board.  More

This morning FundamentalVR, a digital health company that uses virtual reality to help train clinicians, closed a $5.67 million Series A round. Downing Ventures led the round with participation from Tern PLC, Epic Private Equity and Brighteye Ventures. Approximately $600,000 of that funding came in the form of a convertible loan note. More

Sponsor

myCareBase™is a platform for seniors and their families to find, evaluate, hire and manage home support services, to improve the seniors’ ability to remain living safely in their current home for as long as possible. The caregiver marketplace currently offers candidates in Greater Toronto and Greater Vancouver.

To compliment this platform the company also offers an innovative care management app that centralizes communication and task management among family members and the caregiver, along with a Care Concierge service to help family members with administrative, navigational or organizational tasks.

New Funds

KKR & Co. has gathered more than $2 billion to invest in fast-growing technology companies as it further expands beyond the mega-deals that made its reputation.The firm is raising its second fund dedicated to growth-equity investments in technology, media and telecommunications, according to a person familiar with the matter. The fund, which is expected to close by year’s end, is about triple the size of the debut vehicle: the KKR Next Generation Technology Growth Fund raised $714 million in 2016. More

IPOs

Phoenix Tree Holdings, which operates an online marketplace for residential rentals in China, filed on Monday with the SEC to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering. However, the deal size is likely a placeholder for an IPO that we estimate could raise closer to $300 million. More

Russian search engine Yandex NV’s ride-hailing unit, part-owned by Uber Technologies Inc., is in talks to hire Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to manage its initial public offering, according to a person familiar with the matter. More

Exits 

Fortinet has announced the acquisition of enSilo with the aim of improving the firm's endpoint cybersecurity solutions. On Monday, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company said the deal, now complete, will result in enSilo's endpoint detection and response (EDR) technology merging with Fortinet's existing FortiSIEM platform. More

Google owner Alphabet Inc has made an offer to acquire U.S. wearable device maker Fitbit Inc, as it eyes a slice of the crowded market for fitness trackers and smartwatches, people familiar with the matter said on Monday. More

The dog-walking and pet-sitting startup Wag has been exploring a sale to potential buyers, such as the pet giant Petco, Recode has learned.Petco and Wag, which is almost majority owned by the investment firm SoftBank, have had talks over the last few weeks about a possible deal, according to people familiar with the matter. The two companies already struck a partnership deal just a few months ago, but Wag, last valued at $650 million, has reportedly stumbled with scaling its business and could be the latest company backed by SoftBank to struggle. More 

Sponsor 

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