StradVision Nets $27M For Skeleton Detection And Emergency Braking Software For Autonomous Vehicles

VC Deals

Levelset, a 13-year-old, New Orleans, La.-based platform that helps contractors get paid faster and eliminate cash stresses, has raised $30 million in new funding led by Horizons Ventures, with participation from S3 Ventures, Altos Ventures, Operating Venture Capital, and Brick & Mortar Ventures, among others. The company has now raised $47 million to date. More

StradVision, a Seoul, South Korea-based company at work on vision processing tech for autonomous vehicles, has raised $27 million in Series B funding. Posco Capital led the round, joined by IDG Capital, Industrial Bank of Korea, Lighthouse Combined Investment, LSS Private Equity, Mirae Asset Venture Investment, Neoplux, and Timefolio Asset Management. More

Coral, is two-year-old, Bay Area-based company at work on a device that can automate manicures (it requires that customers buy nail polish made by the company, too), has raised $4.3 million in funding. Investors include CrossLink Capital, Root Ventures, Tandem Capital and Y Combinator.

Osano, a 1.5-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based data privacy transparency platform, has raised $5.4 million in Series A funding co-led by LiveOak Venture Partners and Next Coast Ventures. More

Ripple, a somewhat controversial, seven-year-old, San Francisco-based company that uses cryptocurrency to move money across borders, has raised $200 million in Series C funding. The investment firm Tetragon led the round, joined by SBI Holdings and Route 66 Ventures. More

Exits

Facebook has acquired PlayGiga, a Madrid-based company that specializes in cloud gaming, for what a Spanish business newspaper says is $78 million. Over the past few years, Facebook has been expanding its efforts in gaming. More

TiVo has scrapped plans to split itself into two separate companies and instead announced a $3 billion merger with Xperi, a publicly traded company that sells audio, imaging and computing technology products, reports Variety. The new merged entity will take the Xperi name but will continue to sell entertainment services under the TiVo brand along with Xperi’s DTS, HD Radio, and IMAX Enhanced brands. More

Care.com, the nation’s largest online marketplace for babysitters and other caregivers, just agreed to sell to IAC/InterActive Corp. for about $500 million in cash or $15 a share. Care went public five years ago. Its shares were trading as low as $9 this summer. More

New Funds

Truffle Capital, a 15-year-old, Paris-based venture firm focused on biotech and med-tech startups, has closed on $278 million for a new fund that it plans to use to fund a dozen new startups, mainly in France. More
 

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 This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, 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.

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Energy Giant Saudi Aramco Is Expected To Be Valued At $1.7 Trillion

VC Deals 

Proteus Motion, formerly known as Boston Biomotion, a NYC-based sports and healthtech company, raised $3.8m in funding. The company intends to use the funds to continue to develop and manufacture its software products, conduct research and development for Version 2 of the Proteus system, and add users for its software subscription product, which allows trainees to access training content, track trends and personalized insights, leveraging 50 million data points captured to date. More 

Accel Robotics, a San Diego-based startup focused on AI and computer vision for checkout-free stores, raised $30m in Series A funding. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate its expansion worldwide by growing operations, increasing manufacturing capacity, and streamlining its expanding deployment pipeline. More 

Singapore-headquartered FinAccel has secured $90 million in one of the largest funding rounds for a fintech startup in Southeast Asia as it looks to further grow its credit lending app Kredivo and build more financial services. The financing round, dubbed Series C, for the three-and-a-half-year-old startup was jointly led by Asia Growth Fund — a joint venture between Mirae Asset and Naver — and Square Peg. More 

Three months after Goldman Sachs lent $100 million to Mexican fintech Konfio, SoftBank has invested another $100 million into the financial services company. The investment confirms Reuters’ August report that SoftBank was in advanced talks with the startup — now one of the most heavily funded fintechs in Mexico. More 

KOHO, a FinTech startup that is changing the way Canadians bank, has raised $25 million led by U.S.-based venture capital firm Drive Capital, whose portfolio boasts Duolingo, Udacity, and Root Insurance. National Bank of Canada, through its venture capital arm NAventures, also participated in the round. More 

Uncapped, a London-headquartered and Warsaw-based startup that wants to provide “revenue-based” finance to growing European businesses, is officially launching today and disclosing that it has raised £10 million in funding. More

IPOs 

The energy giant Saudi Aramco is expected to be valued at $1.7 trillion in its public offering, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The state-owned oil company is expected to raise $25.6 billion from the IPO, The Journal reported. At that valuation, the IPO would be the world's largest, beating out Alibaba Group, which raised $25 billion in 2014. More 

New Funds 

 Revelstoke Capital Partners, a Denver, CO-based private equity firm focused on investing in healthcare services companies, completed fundraising for Revelstoke Capital Partners Fund II, L.P. and Revelstoke Single Asset Fund I, L.P., totalling $1.4 billion. More 

MiddleGame Ventures, a 1.5-year-old, Luxembourg-based fintech-focused investment firm, has held a first close on a fund that's targeting €150m altogether and aim to fund post-seed, Series A, and Series B stage investments in Europe and North America. The outfit's limited partners include the Luxembourg Future Fund and the European Investment Fund. More 

Exits

Enterprise AI company Dataiku has announced some changes in its capitalization table. CapitalG (formerly Google Capital), Alphabet’s growth equity investment fund, is investing in the startup by buying out some of Serena Capital’s shares. More 

Carousell, a seven-year-old, Singapore-based online classifieds business, has agreed to merge with a subsidiary of the Norwegian telecoms firm Telenor Group, in a deal that values the combined company at more than $850 million. Carousell will merge with Telenor’s 701Search, which owns online marketplaces Mudah in Malaysia, Cho Tot in Vietnam, and OneKyat in Myanmar, as part of the equity and cash agreement, it said in a statement last year. Telenor will become the single-largest minority shareholder in Carousell with a 32 percent stake in the combined company. More

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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.

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VC Deals Only. Weekend Edition. DroneDeploy raises $35 million for drone management and logistics tools

VC Deals Only

HealthCare.com, a NYC-based provider of technology-enabled health insurance solutions, secured $18m in Series B funding. The round, which brought the total capital raised to over $27m, was led by Second Alpha Partners, with participation from Axis Capital and CNO Financial Group.The company intends to use the capital to fund technology, engineering and data-science investments, expand consumer experience solutions and accelerate the development and marketing of its proprietary insurance products. More

Chip, the London-based fintech that created an automatic savings account, has raised £7.3 million, with £3.8 million crowdfunded by customers and the remainder from unnamed angel investors. The campaign ran for three weeks in September and is currently Crowdcube’s most participated-in crowdfund, with 7,182 investors. More

LawnStarter, an Austin, TX-based on-demand platform for outdoor services, raised $10.5m in growth funding. The round was led by Edison Partners with participation from existing investor Lerer Hippeau.The company intends to use the funds to continue its growth in lawn care across the US and add new outdoor service lines including landscaping, fertilization, pest control, and tree care.More 

Convoy, the digital freight network that connects truckers with shippers, has raised $400 million in a Series D funding round as it aims to scale its business amid an increasingly competitive market.The funding round brings Convoy’s post-money valuation to $2.75 billion.More 

Mobile monetization gets harder and harder every year (heck, I’d bet this gets more difficult by the week in this ultra-competitive market). Companies have long been trying to solve this problem for studios and publishers, and the latest one to offer tools to help here is Wappier.Wappier is a platform that uses AI models to predict consumer and user behavior, and it just raised $4 million in a seed round More

DroneDeploy, a startup developing a holistic cloud-based drone mapping and analytics platform, today announced that it’s closed a $35 million series D round led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Energize Ventures, AirTree, Emergence Capital, Scale Venture Partners, and Uncork Capital also participated in the tranche, which follows on the heels of a $20 million series C in June 2018 and brings DroneDeploy’s total raised to $90 million.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

CVC Capital Partners, a private equity and investment advisory firm, closed CVC Growth Partners Fund II, at $1.6 billion.Fund II exceeded its $1 billion target and, including a sidecar co-investment vehicle, has secured commitments of $1.6 billion. Fund II enjoys a diverse global investor base, spread across North America, Europe, the Middle-East and Asia. More

Angular Ventures, the early-stage enterprise and “deep tech”-focused VC firm founded by former DFJ Esprit partner Gil Dibner, is announcing the closing of its debut fund at $41 million. Targeting startups in Europe and Israel, Angular Ventures has been operating in so-called “stealth mode” for almost two years, seeing its portfolio grow to 12 companies. The VC typically invests between $250,000 and $1.5 million, from writing a startup’s first cheque to Series A. It says it aims to do five-seven new investments per year.More

IPOs 

Alibaba Group Holding, the record holder of the largest global initial public offering, has unveiled a secondary listing plan in Hong Kong, in a vote of confidence for the local financial market as the worst political crisis in the city’s history threatens its status as a global financial centre.The e-commerce giant aims to sell 500 million new shares, with 487.5 million set aside for international offering and the rest for Hong Kong public, according to a filing in New York. More 

When Beyond Meat's post-initial public offering expired on October 29, the company's stock fell 24% as roughly 48 million shares suddenly became eligible to trade on the market.In the weeks since, the post-IPO lockup expiration has continued to add downward pressure on shares of the plant-based meat alternatives company. The stock has fallen an additional 6% percent from October 29 through Monday's close. More 

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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.

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Exits 

Epic Games announced it has acquired Quixel, a startup that created a huge “photogrammetry” asset library of real world imagery that can be used in animated films or video games. More

 

VC Deals Only. Weekend Edition. Anti-Fraud Startup Riskified Raises $165 Million

VC Deals

Counterfeiting isn’t a new problem, but it’s a growing one. The global market for fake goods is estimated to exceed $1.2 trillion. Counterfeits take roughly $300 billion worth of revenue away from brands that have to compete with them. In worse news still, roughly two out of every five products purchased online was counterfeit, according to the U.S. Government of Accountability Office.Perhaps it’s unsurprising that fraud prevention and phishing detection startup RedMarlin recently secured capital from an investor cohort. The Los Altos-based company this morning announced that it has raised $10 million in series A funding. More 

As the UK continues on its slow march to leave the European Union, a London-based startup that enables companies to work internationally has raised a huge round of funding from a strategic backer to expand its business. Ebury, which provides foreign exchange, money transfer and other currency services to small and medium businesses and their banking partners, has picked up £350 million (about €400 million, or $452 million) led by Spanish banking giant Santander. With the deal, Madrid-based Santander will become a majority shareholder at 50.1% but notes that Ebury will continue to operate as an independent entity. More 

FreeTrade the U.K. challenger stockbroker that offers commission-free investing, has closed $15 million in Series A funding. The round includes a $7.5 million investment from Draper Esprit, the U.K. publicly listed venture capital firm, along with previously announced equity crowdfunding via Crowdcube.The funding will be used by Freetrade for further growth and product development, including “doubling down” on engineering hires. The firm, which claims more than 50,000 customers, is also planning to expand to Europe next year. More 

Faire, a curated wholesale marketplace that connects independent retailers and makers, raised $150m in Series D funding round at $1 billion valuation.The round was co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Founders Fund with participation from existing investors including Forerunner Ventures, YC Continuity, and Khosla Ventures.The company, which has raised $266m in total funding to date, intends to use the funds to expand into new markets, improve the marketplace, and continue building its tools. More 

Boston-based PathAI, maker of artificial intelligence tools for pathology, has capped off its Series B funding round with a $15 million strategic investment from the Merck Global Health Innovation Fund and Bristol-Myers Squibb. This raise brings the startup’s full round to $75 million, and its total funding to just over $90 million. More 

Tel Aviv-based online payments fraud prevention startup Riskified Ltd. has completed a $165 million funding round, the company announced Tuesday. The round was led by New York-based General Atlantic according to a company valuation of more than $1 billion, the company said. Minneapolis-based Winslow Capital participated in the round, as did existing investors Qumra Capital, Entrée Capital, and Pitango Venture Capital. 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 

London-based VC firm Frog Capital has announced the first close of its second scale-up fund, which is expected to accumulate over €150 million. The fund is dedicated to European software companies that earn around €5 million in annual revenue. More 

Foresite Capital has launched a new incubator with one goal in mind: to help usher in a transformation in healthcare.Led by Foresite's managing director—Vik Bajaj, Ph.D., a former exec at Verily and Grail—the incubator, dubbed Foresite Labs, will sit at the intersection of data science and healthcare. More

Aspirant Group, a Japanese middle-market buyout firm, closed a ¥50 Billion fund. AG III’s commitments were secured from European and U.S. investors, and several global fund of funds, as well as major Japan institutional investors. Investors included major financial institutions, pension plans, asset managers, and family offices. More 

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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. 

IPOs 

China’s Megvii Technology Ltd. is considering whether to delay its initial public offering given uncertainty over whether it can secure its existing $4 billion valuation while on an American blacklist, according to people familiar with the matter. More 

Chinese autonomous air mobility company EHang has filed with the SEC the paperwork required to go public in the U.S. on the Nasdaq exchange, with a $100 million initial public offering. The company, which has been flying demonstration flights with passengers on board for a while now, is gearing up to launch its first commercial service in Guangzhou after getting approval from local and national regulators to deploy its drones in the area. More 

Exits  

Veeva Systems is buying Crossix Solutions with an eye to integrating the Veeva healthcare professional (HCP) cloud software services with the more patient-centric Crossix data and analytics.Under the $430 million cash deal, Crossix will remain an independent unit inside Veeva called Veeva Crossix and will continue to be run by Crossix CEO Asaf Evenhaim. More

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 

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This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, 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. Starling Bank raises additional £30M as it nears 1 millionth account holder

VC Deals

Logixboard, a Seattle, WA-based digital partner for freight forwarders, raised $4.2m in seed funding. The company intends to use the funds to expand its platform and accelerate product innovation. More

Octave, a national behavioral health practice, raised $11M in Series A funding. The company intends to use the funds to continue to expand nationally, with additional locations planned for California and New York next year. More

Fintech startup Athena has closed a $70 million Series C round as it looks to push into mortgage origination. The country’s largest industry fund, AustralianSuper, joined the raise alongside long-term backers Square Peg Capital, AirTree Ventures and Hostplus, as well as Salesforce Ventures and NAB Ventures. More

French startup MadBox is raising a $16.5 million (€15 million) Series A funding round from Alven. The company is developing mobile games and handles everything from start to finish, from game design to publishing and user acquisition. More

Clay Wilkes had already been retired for six years when he launched Galileo Financial Services in 2000. The serial entrepreneur, who had been an early pioneer in telecommunications technologies now runs the backend integrations with financial institutions for some of the biggest names in financial technology and has just raised $77 million in financing from Accel Partners. More

Fabric, the startup that wants to make automated logistics available to retailers of all sizes, announced today it has raised $110 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Corner Ventures, with participation from Aleph, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), Innovation Endeavors, La Maison, Playground Ventures and Temasek. More

Starling Bank, the U.K.-based challenger bank founded by banking veteran Anne Boden, has raised an additional £30 million in funding. Starling says the new funding will support increased investment in its consumer and SME bank accounts, as well as its B2B banking services. The capital will also be used to accelerate expansion into Europe. 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.

Partnerships

A new digital health company is being launched by two well-known names in healthcare: the Cleveland Clinic and telemedicine company American Well.  The joint venture — called The Clinic and based in Cleveland— will leverage the hospital expertise of Cleveland Clinic providers and the telemedicine platform devised by American Well to deliver virtual care and high-acuity services to patients. More

New Funds

The Australian tech industry has, in the last few years, started to generate a swathe of startups that have broken through internationally. In fact, it’s now gaining a reputation as a serial producer of high-quality tech platforms, the hottest of which right now is Canva, which recently raised an additional $85 million to bring its valuation to $3.2 billion, up from $2.5 billion in May.  More

Exits

The Kik messaging platform has been bought by MediaLab, a holding company which operates Whisper and a number of other apps, the company announced Friday. More

Micron Technology said it acquired Fwdnxt, a maker of hardware and software tools for artificial intelligence deep learning applications. When combined with Micron‘s memory chips, Fwdnxt (pronounced “forward next”) will enable Micron to explore deep learning solutions required for data analytics, particularly with internet of things and edge computing. More

Amazon has acquired Health Navigator, a startup that develops APIs for online health services. According to CNBC, which first reported the deal, Health Navigator will become part of Amazon Care, its pilot healthcare service program for employees. More

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This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, 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. Level Home raises $71 million from Walmart to imbue locks with connected smarts

VC Deals

Wheels, the startup founded by Wag founders Jonathan and Joshua Viner, just announced a $50 million round led by DBL Partners. This round brings Wheels’ total funding to $87 million. Wheelscurrently operates in six markets, including San Diego, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, and Scottsdale, Ariz.The plan is to use the funding to deploy in additional markets throughout the U.S. and in international markets.  More

Blue Canoe, a Bellevue, WA-based provider of an artificial intelligence (AI) B2B platform for non-native English speakers to improve their clarity and confidence in speaking English, closed its seed round, raising $2.5m.  More 

In less than two years, Revel has gone from an idea to a shared electric vehicle startup with more than 1,400 mopeds across Washington, D.C., and Brooklyn and Queens, New York. Now, it’s ready to grow up — and beyond these three cities — with a fresh injection of $27.6 million in capital raised in a Series A round led by Ibex Investors .  More 

Smart locks that play nicely with HomeKit and similar platforms are a proposition almost too good to pass up. Level Home today revealed that it’s raised over $71 million in funding from Walmart, Hut 8 Ventures, and home construction and real estate company Lennar. More 

Thimble, which offers flexible, short-term insurance to small businesses and freelancers, is announcing that it has raised $22 million in a Series A funding round led by IAC.  More 

New York’s Rho Business, which wants to create a digital business banking system for early-stage and high-growth startups, has raised a $4.9 million seed round led by Inspired Capital.  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 

Singapore based Insignia Ventures Partners has hit an oversubscribed final close for its second fund at US$200 million. Limited partners include premier institutional investors such as sovereign wealth funds, university endowments, foundations and renowned family offices from Asia, Europe and North America, said Insignia.  More

M13, an early-stage consumer technology venture capital firm that has invested in Lyft, Pinterest, Ring, Bird and more has raised a second, $175 million fund. The fund was raised by a number of limited partners, including Sir Richard Branson, a serial entrepreneur and founder of Virgin Group and Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post and Thrive Global.  More 

Exits 

Intel Corp (INTC.O) has agreed to purchase a software business from Toronto-based Pivot Technology Solutions Inc (PTG.TO) for $27 million, the U.S. chipmaker. Intel said it would buy Smart Edge, a software that helps split up data and store it closer to users to make computing devices respond faster. More 

As Facebook prepares to launch its new cryptocurrency Libra in 2020, it’s putting the pieces in place to help it run. In one of the latest developments, it has acquired Servicefriend, a startup that built bots — chat clients for messaging apps based on artificial intelligence — to help customer service teams.  More 

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IPOs 

Endeavor Holdings Group has officially withdrawn the registration of its planned IPO, about three weeks after it halted the launch of the stock on the New York Stock Exchange the same day it was to debut.  More 

Saudi Aramco’s board is expected to give final approvals to proceed with its mammoth share sale next week, according to people familiar with the matter. The board is planning to meet with its advisers on the initial public offering around Oct. 17, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter isn’t public.  More