| Friday! [Pours Scotch atop ridiculous ice cubes.] No column today but we’ve had a series of interesting calls today so should have some good stuff for you next week. See you Monday.:) Oh, and if you’re looking for a podcast to listen to this weekend, we had fun making this yesterday over at TechCrunch. |
| Top News |
| Donald Trump has been personally pushing U.S. Postmaster General Megan Brennan to double the rate the Postal Service charges Amazon.com and other firms, reports the Washington Post. |
| New Fundings |
| Adzuna, a seven-year-old, U.K.-based meta-search engine for jobs, has raised £8 million in Series C funding from Smedvig Capital. The company has now raised £12 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here. AtYourGate, a three-year-old, Newport Beach, Ca.-based mobile e-commerce and airport gate delivery service, has raised $2 million in seed funding led by Triton Funds. More here. CipherHealth, a nine-year-old, New York-based maker of healthcare coordination software, has raised $37.5 million in new funding led by JMI Equity. More here. CowaRobot, a four-year-old, Shanghai, China-based developer of robotics for low-speed autonomous driving, has raised $21 million in Series B funding co-led bySoftBank China Venture Capital and China Creation Ventures. China Money Network has more here. Cuebiq, a 2.5-year-old, New York-based location intelligence and consumer insights company, has secured $27 million in Series B financing. The investors included Goldman Sachs Principal Strategic Investments, Nasdaq Ventures, DRW Venture Capital, Tribeca Venture Partners, Tribeca Angels and TLcom Capital. More here. DigiLens, a 15-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based augmented reality display maker, has raised $25 million in Series C funding from automotive parts manufacturing giant Continental. TechCrunch has more here. EIP Pharma, a four-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based biotech at work on treatments for central nervous system diseases like Alzheimer’s, has raised $20.5 million in Series B funding led by Access Industries. FierceBiotech has more here. Eyellusion, a four-year-old, L.A.-based hologram concert company that features deceased stars, has raised $2 million in seed funding from Thomas Dolan. Dolan part of a family that owns a number of New York entertainment properties and venues, including Madison Square Garden. Billboard has more here. FogPharma, a three-year-old, Boston-based drug development company, has raised $66 million Series B financing led by 6 Dimensions Capital, with participation from GV, Blue Pool Capital, Horizons Ventures, Nan Fung Group,Leerink Partners and all of the company’s earlier backers. Xconomy has more here. HiFiBiO Therapeutics, a five-year-old, Paris-based antibody developer focused on cancer and inflammation, has raised $37.5 million in Series B funding co-led by Sequoia China and LYFE Capital, with participation from Legend Star Capital, Proxima Ventures and return backers VI Ventures and Nest Bio Ventures. FierceBiotech has more here. Jirnexu, a six-year-old, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia-based financial comparison services startup, has raised $11 million in Series B funding from SIG Asia Investments and earlier investor SBI Group. TechCrunch has more here. Maisonette, a two-year-old, New York-based online baby and children’s fashion e-commerce site, has raised $15 million in Series A funding led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Pritzker Group Venture Capital, DFJ and Thrive Capital. Business of Fashion has more here. Mynd, a two-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based property management tech startup, has raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Canaan Partners and Jackson Square Ventures. BW Disrupt has more here. OpenClassrooms, a five-year-old, Paris-based online higher ed platform, has raised $60 million in Series B funding led by General Atlantic. TechCrunch has more here. OwlTing, an eight-year-old, Taipei, Taiwan-based maker of blockchain-powered applications for hotel bookings, food safety, and other verticals, has raised at least $10 million from SBI Crypto Investment, part of Japan-based SBI Holdings. The company had previously raised $5.1 million across its seed and Series A rounds. Bloomberg has more here. Workframe, a two-year-old, New York-based collaboration and communication platform for commercial real estate professionals, has raised $9.5 million in Series B funding led by Newmark Knight Frank, with participation from MetaPropr and earlier investor Venrock. More here. |
| Sponsored By . . . |
| Want access to 80 mobile app specialized developers? That’s what you get with CodigoDelSur, a digital development boutique that has designed and developed digital products for a wide range of companies, from Avon to Office Depot to Shutterfly to Founder Institute graduates like Kindara — and in your time zone! Contact us and access a free 30-minute consultation to find out more about how we can help with your next big idea and learn more about our services and pricing |
| New Funds |
| Biomatics Capital is raising a second venture fund targeting $300 million, according to an SEC filing. The Seattle-based firm is led by Julie Sunderland, who previously served as the director of program related investments for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Boris Nikolic, previously the chief advisor for science and technology to Bill Gates. We wrote a bit about the firm when it launched last year with its $200 million debut fund. Lightspeed Venture Partners is considering setting up a new cryptocurrency project that would be the first of its kind for a top-tier venture firm: An earmarked pool of cash within a bigger fund to be spent solely on crypto investments. Recode has the skinny here. Reinventure Group, a four-year-old, Sydney, Australia-based venture capital group, has closed its third $50 million fund backed by Westpac. The capital will be used to accommodate Reinventure’s expanding focus on the wider Asia-Pacific region. Startup Daily has more here. |
| Exits |
| EAT Club, a corporate lunch service whose customers include Flipboard, Mastercard and TaskRabbit, has acquired Farm Hill, a lunch box delivery service, to solidify and expand its presence in the San Francisco Bay Area. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but Farm Hill had previously raised $4 million in capital; EAT Club has raised more than $46 million. TechCrunch has more here. Rackspace today announced that it has acquired RelationEdge, a five-year-old, San Diego-based Salesforce implementation partner and digital agency. The companies did not disclose the financial details of the acquisition. TechCrunch has more here. |
| IPOs |
| Adaptive Insights, a Palo Alto, Ca.-based maker of cloud-based financial management software, just filed for a $100 million IPO. The company had raised $175 million from investors, including Onset Ventures (which owns 17.9 percent of the company as of this writing), Norwest Venture Partners (16.5%), Bessemer Venture Partners (11.7%), and a whole bunch of others. Crunchbase News has more here. |
| People |
| Goldman Sachs’s CEO Lloyd Blankfein will likely step down in December. Bill Gates‘s unvarnished perspective on Donald Trump. Uber’s chief product officer, Jeff Holden, has stepped down, though details about his next moves remain scarce, says Recode. Kevin Lee, co-founder of the New York-based digital marketing agency Didit, has made a bid for the remaining assets of Gawker Media. Reuters has more here. Chinese search engine giant Baidu facing more turmoil in its top ranks, with President Qi Lu planning to step down from his operational roles after about 18 months on the job. A former top executive with Microsoft, Lu was hired with much fanfare but says now that, “Due to personal and family reasons, I am no longer able to work in China on a full-time basis.” The WSJ has more here. |
| Essential Reads |
| Last night, Boring Company executives Elon Musk and Steve Davis offered a few more details about their plans to revolutionize L.A. urban transit. TechCrunch has more here. A leaked look at Facebook‘s search engine for influencer marketing. Publishers with video ambitions see YouTube as a safer bet than Facebook. Finally, phew, a white-glove shopping service for affluent city moms, courtesy of Walmart. |
| Detours |
| A “chief of disguise” at the CIA says “The Americans” got a lot right. A link where you can watch the royal wedding tomorrow (if you’re on the move and not in front of your elephantine TV screen). “What, are you going to go home and have a warm beer and talk to your parrot?” (We just love Barry.) |
| Retail Therapy |
| How to make your apartment look like a “Westworld” set. |