| Happy Monday, all! Hope yours is going well. We’ve been on calls, in meetings, and in the middle of a laptop switcheroo; if we missed anything, we’ll catch you up tomorrow.:) |
| Top News |
| The U.S. Department of Commerce just banned American companies from selling components to leading Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE for seven years for violating an agreement in a sanctions violation case. Industry watchers expect the move to pretty much destroy ZTE’s handset business. Reuters has more here. Elon Musk’s Boring Co. raised $113 million in equity to dig tunnels and develop a high-speed transportation system known as the hyperloop. The startup disclosed the investment in an SEC filing processed earlier today. Bloomberg has more here. |
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| New Fundings |
| AgNext, a two-year-old, India-based agriculture data firm, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding led by Omnivore. The Economic Times has more here. Ceterus, a 10-year-old, Charleston, S.C.-based maker of accounting software for small-business entrepreneurs, has raised $10 million in Series B funding led by Harbert Growth Partners, with participation from earlier investorsTechOperators, Grotech Ventures, Idea Fund Partners, and Alerion Ventures. More here. Embibe, a 5.5-year-old, Bengaluru, India-based online education platform that says it uses data analytics to capture and address student weaknesses, has raised $180 million from Reliance, which now owns a majority of the company. Your Story has more here. GrAI Matter Labs, a two-year-old, Paris, France-based ultra-low power neuromorphic computing startup, has raised $15 million in Series A funding led byiBionext, with participation from 360 Capital Partners and 3T Finance. More here. Kolide, a two-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based infrastructure analytics company, raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Matrix Partners. TechCrunch has more here. Level Ex, a three-year-old, Chicago-based medical technology company creating professional video games for physicians, has raised an undisclosed amount in funding from OSF Ventures. MedCity News has more here. Mixcloud, a 10-year-old, London-based long-form digital audio streaming platform, has raised $11.5 million in funding led by WndrCo. TechCrunch has more here. Sensu, a year-old, Portland, Ore.-based full-stack monitoring platform, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Battery Ventures, with participation from Foundry Group. TechCrunch has more here. SpaceX, the 16-year-old, Hawthorne, Ca.-based maker of rockets and other spacecraft, is reportedly aising $507 million of private capital in a deal that will value the company at $25 billion. As Fortune notes, the deal would rank SpaceX just behind Uber and Airbnb among the most valuable startups. More here. Sword Health, a six-year-old, Porto, Portugal-based company whose digital physiotherapy solution allows patients to be treated remotely in their own homes, has raised $4.6 million in seed funding from Green Innovatons and Vesalius Biocapital. TechCrunch has more here. |
| New Funds |
| Caerus Ventures, a 5.5-year-old, West Palm Beach, Fla.-based seed and early-stage venture firm, is looking to raise up to $100 million for its second fund, shows an SEC filing first flagged by Fortune. More here. Niv Dror, AngelList’s former head of marketing, has launched a $3 million venture-capital fund called Shrug Capital, stylized as ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Capital. Business Insider has more here. Gili Raanan, general partner at Sequoia Capital Israel, has raised $50 million for a new venture capital fund called Cyberstarts that plans to invest in 10 cybersecurity companies. Investors in the fund include Sequoia Capital and Check Point Software cofounders Shlomo Kramer and Marius Nacht. Reuters has more here. Octopus Ventures, the 11-year-old, London-based early-stage venture fund, says it has closed its newest fund with roughly $285 million, bringing its total assets under management to roughly $1.2 billion. The new fund is 64 percent bigger than the firm’s last fund, closed in 2016. Bloomberg has more here. Chinese venture capital firm Qiming Venture Partners has announced the closing of three new funds totaling $1.39 billion. The new funds include Qiming Venture USD Fund VI, with closed with $935 million; Qiming Venture RMB Fund V with RMB2.1 billion ($334 million); and Qiming U.S. Healthcare Fund I, which the firm closed with with $120 million in commitments. China Money Network has more on the different funds here. |
| Exits |
| Boston Scientific has agreed to acquire nVision Medical, a San Bruno, Calif.-based developer of a medical device to detect ovarian cancer and tube blockages, for roughly $275 million, including $150 million in an upfront payment. nVision had raised just $16.4 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. Its backers included Arboretum Ventures, Catalyst Health Ventures and Astia. Mass Device has more here. Coinbase, the high-flying cryptocurrency exchange, announced plans earlier today to acquire Earn.com, the five-year-old startup that uses the blockchain for its paid-email service, in a deal worth more than $120 million in cash, stock, and some crypto assets. In addition, Coinbase has appointed Earn.com co-founder and CEO Balaji Srinivasan as its first CTO. TechCrunch has lots more here. The seven-year-old coding school General Assembly has agreed to be acquired for $412.5 million in cash by Swiss staffing and workforce development company Adecco. General Assembly raised nearly $120 million in venture funding between 2011 and 2015, with a final round at a post-money valuation of around $440 million. Axios has more here. Goldman Sachs has acquired Clarity Money, a two-year-old, New York-based personal finance app focused on monthly bills. Clarity had raised $14.5 million from investors, shows Crunchbase. Backers included RRE Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Maveron and Citi Ventures. Reuters has more here. |
| IPOs |
| Evelo Biosciences, a Cambridge, Mass.-based developer of monoclonal microorganisms for treating inflammatory diseases, has filed to raise $100 million in an IPO. The company has raised more than $170 million in venture funding. FierceBiotech has more here. nLight, a Vancouver, Wash.-based maker of semiconductor lasers, has set the terms of its IPO terms, revealing plans to sell 5.4 million shares at between $13 and $15 for a valuation of $462 million if prices in the middle of that range. The company has raised roughly $200 million from investors. GeekWire has more here. Pluralsight, the Utah-based online education company, has filed for an IPO that seeks to sell up to $100 million in shares, according to an SEC filing. The company has raised roughly $192 million from investors. TechCrunch has more here. Smartsheet, a Bellevue, Wa.-based SaaS platform for managing and automating collaborative work that had raised around $106 million from VCs, just revealed plans to sell 11.6 million shares at between $10 and $12 in an IPO. GeekWire has more here. |
| People |
| VC John Doerr talks OKRs at TED. Renowned investor Tim Draper, who once advocated splitting California into six states, says he would now settle for three. Paul Jacobs, the ousted chairman of Qualcomm, is making progress in lining up enough funding to offer to take the chipmaker private and could make the bid within a few months, says Bloomberg. Lerer Hippeau is now taking over Binary Capital’s second fund, too. |
| Essential Reads |
| How Russian Facebook ads divided and targeted U.S. voters before the 2016 presidential election. Google has worked out a fascinating, slightly scary way for AI to isolate voices in a crowd. Amazon, which sells bulk items to business customers through its Amazon Business marketplace, has shelved its plan to sell and distribute pharmaceutical products after considering it last year, according to CNBC’s sources. More here. Oof. Thousands of Android mobile apps are improperly tracking children, according to a new study. |
| Detours |
| Dan Scavino is the the White House’s social media director and the only man that Trump trusts with his Twitter account. The 100 pages that shaped comics. Forty sea gulls wrecked his hotel room. Then came the pepperoni pardon. |
| Retail Therapy |
| The 50 most luxurious hotels in New York. When words won’t suffice. |