Special Weekend Edition. UiPath Closes a Series D round of $568M. Post Money Valuation Estimated at $7B

VC Deals

Biolux Research, a Vancouver, Canada-based developer of innovative Light Accelerated Orthodontic products, closed a $14M Series A funding round. The round was led by Venrock and joined by Correlation Ventures, insiders and other investors. Biolux manufactures OrthoPulse®, an FDA cleared orthodontic device currently being sold in the United States, Europe, and Asia. OrthoPulse is a non-invasive technology which, when used ten minutes each day, can accelerate orthodontic treatment. More

Companies are on the hunt for ways to reduce the time and money it costs their employees to perform repetitive tasks, so today a startup that has built a business to capitalize on this is announcing a huge round of funding to double down on the opportunity. UiPath — a robotic process automation startup originally founded in Romania that uses artificial intelligence and sophisticated scripts to build software to run these tasks — today confirmed that it has closed a Series D round of $568 million at a post-money valuation of $7 billion. More

Mejuri, a Toronto, Canada-based direct-to-consumer online jewelry retailer, raised $23m in Series B funding.The round was led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Incite Ventures, BDC Capital, Felix Capital, Imaginary Ventures, and Dash Ventures.The company intends to use the funds to continue to expand operations and grow its business reach. More

Roundtrip, a company offering a non-emergency medical transportation solution, has raised a $5.14 Series A round, according to a news release sent to MedCity. Motley Fool Ventures led the round, while Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University participated. More

Zenoti, the leading enterprise cloud platform for the beauty and wellness industry, announced today that it has closed a $50 million Series C funding round led by Tiger Global Management with participation from Norwest Venture Partners and Accel. Already the leading software choice for salon and spa chains, Zenoti has thousands of customers spanning 44 countries. More

New Funds

Union Square Ventures, a venture capital firm known for early bets in Twitter, Etsy and Tumblr, has $450 million in capital commitments to plow into the next generation of technology startups. The capital, which comes in just above the $429 million USV filed to raise earlier this year, is divided across two new funds: $200 million for its 2019 Core Fund and $250 million for the 2019 Opportunity Fund. More

Harrison Street, an alternative real asset investment firm dedicated to the Education, Healthcare and Storage sectors, closed its second European closed-end fund, Harrison Street European Property Partners II, L.P., at €500m. More

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IPOs

Do Wall Street investors believe that exosomes, the tiny bubbles once thought to be just cellular garbage bins, may be the key to treating a slew of potential diseases? The coming IPO for Codiak Biosciences will present a test case. Codiak, a Cambridge, MA, company run by former Biogen research chief Doug Williams, outlined plans late Monday for an IPO. More

Plant-based meat maker Beyond Meat Inc on Tuesday increased the expected price range and size of its initial public offering, ahead of an expected market debut on Thursday, indicating strong investor demand. The company said it expects to offer 9.63 million shares, up from 8.75 million shares and the IPO to be priced between $23 and $25 per share, up from $19 and $21 per share. More

Partnerships

The government-run health system in England is partnering with several major drug companies in an effort to tackle the hepatitis C virus in the country. More

Corporate M & As

Walmart has agreed to buy India's leading online retailer Flipkart, paying $16 billion for a controlling stake of 77%. Flipkart gives Walmart access to a market it has been trying to crack for years. The Arkansas-based retailer has been restricted by local regulations to operating wholesale outlets in the world's fastest growing economy. More

Exits

Curaleaf Holdings Inc., the most valuable U.S. marijuana company, is making a big bet on cannabis oil. The Massachusetts-based company is buying the regulated cannabis business of Cura Partners Inc., a maker of oil for vape pens, in a stock deal valued at about US$950 million. That makes it the largest acquisition so far between U.S. cannabis companies. More

PE Deals

Imperial Dade, a leading distributor of disposable food service and janitorial supplies in the U.S., Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, today announced the signing of a definitive agreement for Bain Capital Private Equity to acquire a majority stake in the company. Imperial Dade will continue to be led by its current management team, who will remain significant investors in the company. More

Blackford Capital has sold its portfolio company Custom Profile to the employees of the company in partnership with Mosaic Capital Partners through an employee stock ownership plan. The sale of Custom Profile is Blackford’s second exit from its 2012 vintage Michigan Prosperity Fund. More

Legal News

Qualcomm will book a one-time payment of $4.5 billion to $4.7 billion next quarter from its settlement with Apple in a patent battle, the mobile chip maker said Wednesday as it reported its quarterly earnings.  More

Health News

If you think your prescription drugs cost more every year, you’re probably right.  Dozens of pharmaceutical companies kicked off 2019 with price hikes on hundreds of medications, and new government estimates say that drug spending could rise 6.1 percent annually by 2020.  More

Events

Medcity Invest: Population Health; New Orleans. May 22, 2019. To highlight the importance of population health and the innovation and investment that is occurring in the field.  More

Weekend Edition. Hulu valued at $15B. Buys back AT&T's minority stake

Issue. April 20, 2019

VC Deals

Lyric, a platform for folks who struggle to decide between a hotel and an Airbnb, has today announced the close a $160 million financing round (an even combination of debt and equity). Airbnb led the equity financing.  More

Amenity Analytics, a New York-based startup developing what it describes as a “text-mining” AI platform for enterprise, today announced that it’s raised $18 million in series B financing led by Starr Companies, with participation from Allstate, Intel Capital, and State of Mind Ventures. It brings the company’s total raised to around $25.6 million. More

ABK Biomedical, Inc., a Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada-based medical device company dedicated to the research, development and commercialization of innovative embolic therapies, raised $30m in Series B funding. The round was co-led by F-Prime Capital and Varian Medical Systems. More

Seattle-based medical device company Bardy Diagnostics today announced a $35.5 million funding round led by River Cities Capital Fund. The company makes the Carnation Ambulatory Monitor (CAM), which is a small, lightweight heart monitor that can detect arrhythmia.  More

Buckzy Payments Inc., a Toronto, CA-based fintech company, closed a $1.75m seed funding round. The round was led by Mistral Venture Partners joined by New York based Revel Partners. The company intends to use the funds to scale its real-time global payments network. More

IPOs

Pinterest priced shares of its stock, “PINS,” above its anticipated range on Wednesday evening, CNBC reports. The company will sell 75 million shares of Class A common stock at $19 apiece in an offering that will attract $1.4 billion in new capital for the visual search engine.  More

Sponsor

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Acquisitions

Butterfly, a Los Angeles-based private equity firm specializing in the food sector, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Bolthouse Farms from Campbell Soup Company (NYSE:CPB) for $510 million in cash, subject to customary purchase price adjustments. More

LiveRamp® (NYSE: RAMP), the identity platform powering exceptional experiences, today announced the acquisition of Faktor to enable streamlined consent management across the open web. This deal represents a big win for the entire ecosystem and reinforces LiveRamp's strategic focus on privacy and data stewardship. More

Stripe, the Silicon Valley company founded by Limerick-born brothers John and Patrick Collison, has acquired Irish start-up Touchtech Payments for an undisclosed sum. Touchtech is a Dublin-based software company that provides advanced strong customer authentication (SCA) technology for financial institutions.  More

Buy Backs

Hulu has paid $1.43 billion to buy back AT&T’s minority stake in the streaming video company. The companies announced Monday that the transaction valued Hulu at $15 billion. As a result, AT&T’s 9.5 percent stake in Hulu was worth $1.43 billion. More   

New Funds

It’s often said that the dramatic fall of crypto prices last year ushered in a new era for technology-focused startups in the blockchain space, and the same argument can be made for the venture capitalists who fund them. Proof of Capital is the latest fund to emerge after it officially announced a maiden $50 million fund today. More

Exits

Salesforce announced today it’s buying another company built on its platform. This time it’s MapAnything, which, as the name implies, helps companies build location-based workflows, something that could come in handy for sales or service calls. The companies did not reveal the selling price, and Salesforce didn’t have anything to add beyond a brief press release announcing the deal. More 

Tech News 

Alexa. Cortana. Google Assistant. Bixby. Siri. Hundreds of millions of people use voice assistants developed by Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, and Apple every day, and that number is growing all the time. More

Events

Startupfest Montreal 2019, July 9 -12. An invent designed for founders, and investors. Network and connect in one of Canada's most beautiful cities. More

DFW Capital Partners Closes it's 5th Fund at $360M.

Weekend Special Edition 

April 6, 2019

VC Deals

With the advent of electric vehicles—from scooters to Teslas—there are a lot of batteries that need charging, and ChargeWheel wants to make doing so as convenient as possible. The SF-based startup, which just announced that it raised $1 million in seed funding, said that it can top off “four electric vehicles or up to 400 e-bikes and e-scooters” with fast charging. It does so by carting around what the company calls “energy trailers” by van. More

Lucid Sight said that it has raised $6 million in funding to expand its MLB Champions and Crypto Space Commander blockchain games to traditional game platforms. More

Two years after Fusion Pharmaceuticals raised a modest $25 million series A, the targeted radiotherapy player has reeled in $105 million in new capital to push a clinical-stage program and build a pipeline of new treatments and combination therapies. More

Philadelphia-based HealthVerity raised $25 million in a Series C round, the data-focused digital health startup announced Wednesday. The new funding comes after an initial $7.1 million Series A in 2016 and $10.1 million Series B in 2017, bringing its total venture capital funding to $42.3 million. More

PE Deals

Goldman Sachs Group Inc invested money from China's sovereign wealth fund in a California-based industrial company and is looking for more U.S. deals, three sources familiar with the matter said, even after increased scrutiny from Washington all but stopped U.S.-China deals last year. More

Sponsor/ PE Markets & Startups

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M&As

Airbnb is continuing to widen its focus beyond “unconventional” hotels as it gets ready for a much-anticipated IPO. Following its acquisition of HotelTonight last month, the company has picked today to confirm that it invested in India’s OYO — a startup that manages budget hotels and other stays. More

IPOs

Lyft Inc was valued at $24.3 billion in the first initial public offering (IPO) of a ride-hailing startup on Thursday, raising more than it had set off to do as investors overlooked uncertainty over its path to becoming a profitable company. More

Ruhnn, a company that enables influencers to sell through e-commerce and is plotting to change the face of China’s fashion industry, has raised $125 million after it listed on the Nasdaq on Wednesday. The company sold 10 million American Depositary Shares at $12.5 a pop, the midpoint of its expected range. More

Shares of Silk Road Medical Inc. rocketed up 81 percent in its first day of trading Thursday after the medical device company raised $120 million in an upsized IPO. The Sunnyvale-based company sold 6 million shares at $20 each, instead of the 4.7 million shares it originally planned to sell for between $15 and $17 apiece. It could get another $18 million if underwriters buy up the shares allotted to them. More

Sponsor/ Business Funding

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Exits

Yahoo spin-out Altaba is selling its entire Alibaba stake and closing down. The Yahoo spin-out created to house Yahoo’s lucrative stake in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan announced today that it will sell its lucrative stake in Alibaba and shut up shop. More

New Funds

DFW Capital Partners, a Teaneck, New Jersey based private equity firm closed its 5th fund at $360M. DFW Capital Partners VI, LP, is an investment partnership dedicated to making control investments in lower middle market service companies. More

For SoftBank Group Corp., $100 billion isn’t enough. The Japanese conglomerate, which has reshaped the technology startup landscape with its Saudi-backed Vision Fund, is in talks with investors to add as much as $15 billion more to its already-massive fund, said people familiar with the discussions. More

Healthcare News

Mount Sinai Health System and the Hasso Plattner Institute have teamed up to launch a digital health institute, which will focus on developing products with predictive and preventive capabilities that improve health outcomes. More