| Friday! [Throws champagne glass at fireplace.] Please don’t let it be a sweep, please don’t let it be a sweep. Remember, no SVC next week but we’ll be back soon. Hope you have a wonderful weekend and week (much as we wish we could rewind this past one and start over). |
| Top News |
| You can’t be surprised at this point, but: Facebook now says it gave some companies special access to additional data about users’ friends after shutting off access for other developers. The bike-share company Motivate (which operates publicly as Citi Bike), is apparently still up for grabs. |
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| New Fundings |
| Ant Financial, the nearly four-year-old, Hangzhou, China-based fintech affiliate of Alibaba that includes Alipay, announced today that it has raised a stunning $14 billion in Series C funding. (Earlier reports had pegged the targeted amount at a nearly-as-stunning $9 billion). The round includes an RMB tranche for Chinese investors and a US dollar tranche for other investors. Some of these backers include the Singapore-based sovereign funds GIC and Temasek, Malaysian sovereign fund Khazanah Nasional Berhad, Warburg Pincus, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Silver Lake and General Atlantic. TechCrunch has more here on the deal. Meanwhile, CNBC takes a look at how the young company sprinted past Goldman Sachs in size. Bedrock Analytics, a five-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based intelligent analytics and insights automation platform for the consumer packaged goods industry, raised $7.2 million in funding co-led by Cervin Ventures and Illuminate Ventures. More here. BlueVine, a five-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based online lending company that caters to small businesses, has raised $60 million in Series E funding led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from new investors, including SVB Capital and “all major” previous investors. More here. EON Foundation, a Palo Alto, Ca.- and Singapore-based blockchain games company, has raised $5 million in seed funding, including from Cherubic Ventures. VentureBeat has more here. Gett, an eight-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based ride hailing app, has raised $80 million in funding at a $1.4 billion valuation led by earlier investor VW, with participation from Access Industries and others. TechCrunch has more here. JetClosing, a two-year-old, Seattle-based provider of digital real estate title and settlement transaction software, raised $20 million in Series A funding led by T. Rowe Price, with participation from PSL Ventures, Imagen Capital Partners and return backers Trilogy Equity Partners and Maveron. TechCrunch has more here. Panda, a year-old, San Francisco-based voice-activated camera with filters, has raised $850,000, including from Social Capital, Afore Capital, and Cyan Banister. TechCrunch has more here. SutroVax, a five-year-old, Foster City, Ca.-based developer of conjugate and antigen-based vaccines to prevent serious infectious diseases, has raised $85 million in Series C funding led by TPG Growth, with participation from Medicxi, Foresite Capital and earlier backers Abingworth, Longitude Capital, Frazier Health Care Partners, Pivotal bioVenture Partners, Roche Venture Fund, and CTI Life Sciences Fund. More here. TraceLink, a nine-year-old, North Reading, Ma.-based company that helps eliminate counterfeit prescription drugs from the global marketplace, has raised a $60 million in new funding shows an SEC filing. According to previous filings, the company has now raised roughly $140 million to date, including from Goldman Sachs. More here. WhyHotel, a two-year-old, Baltimore, Md.-based operator of pop-up hotels in luxury apartment buildings, has raised $3.9 million in seed funding led by Camber Creek, with participation from Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund,Mendacre, MetaProp and Working Lab Capital. More here. |
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| New Funds |
| The government of Guizhou Province, China, has announced plans to establish a RMB3 billion ($470 million) industrial fund to boost big data developments. China Money Network has (a little) more here. |
| Exits |
| Workday announced today that it’s buying Rallyteam, a San Francisco-based startup that helps companies keep talented employees by matching them with more challenging opportunities in-house. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. According to Crunchbase, Rallyteam had raised $8.6 million from investors, including Norwest Venture Partners, Storm Ventures, and Microsoft, among others. TechCrunch has more here. |
| IPOs |
| Stitch Fix, one of last year’s high-profile IPOs, has had a bumpy ride for the past few quarters, but it blew out expectations yesterday for its most recent quarter, and the stock went nuts. We separately chatted yesterday with Alex Wilhelm of Crunchbase News and VC Brian Ascher of Venrock about why people aren’t quite so crazy about Domo‘s planned IPO; if you’re looking for some weekend listening, you can check out that conversation over on the “Equity” podcast. |
| People |
| People RBC just fired its investment banking chief Blair Fleming because he failed to disclose that he was having an affair with a staffer. The Financial Times has more here. Kevin Hartz, co-founder and former CEO of Eventbrite, has quietly stepped down as a partner with venture capital firm Founders Fund, reports Axios. Hartz joined Founders Fund in late 2016, several months after turning the reins at Eventbrite over to co-founder and wife Julia Hartz. The former chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix, is being accused of taking $8 million from the company ahead of its collapse. Verizon will have a new CEO as of August: Hans Vestberg, who is currently the company’s CTO. Dealbook takes a look at outgoing CEO Lowell McAdam’s biggest deals. |
| Essential Reads |
| How not to launch a blockchain network. Status symbol, wreaker of havoc: a look at the one-name email. Investors in the newest unicorn race better settle in a long ride. To wit, while it’s known that San Francisco plans to cap the number of e-scooters in the city, now Santa Monica, Ca. is following suit, recommending regulations that will allow up to three providers to operate just 1,500 devices in the city, with the potential to increase the number to 2,250 by the end of 2019. |
| Detours |
| Female versions of Marvel actors. How to easily create and manage dummy email accounts that forward to your real address. A Are you sure there isn’t anything else I can do before the end of the school year? |
| Retail Therapy |
| For your inner college student. |