January 19, 2021

• Better appointed Diane Yu as its new CTO. She previously founded FreeWheel (an ad monetization platform for media networks) and worked in the Engineering department at DoubleClick.

• Blend Labs raised $300 million at a $3.3 billion valuation.

• Byju’s acquired Aakash, an operator of 200 brick-and-mortar coaching centers.

• Checkout.com raised $450 million at a $15 billion valuation.

• Cockroach Labs raised $160 million at a $2 billion valuation.

• GitLab completed a $195 million secondary sale at a $6 billion valuation.

• Plaid’s $5.3 billion merger with Visa wasn’t completed due to the DOJ filing an antitrust lawsuit.

Read More

January 11, 2021

• Last week, Affirm increased its IPO pricing target range to $41/share - $44/share which corresponds to a valuation as high as $10.7 billon.

• Divvy raised $165 million at $1.6 billion valuation.

• Epic Games acquired Rad Game Tools, a seasoned game development firm.

• Hootsuite acquired Sparkcentral, a SaaS platform for digital customer service.

• Instacart appointed Nick Giovanni as its CFO. Giovanni previously worked at Goldman Sachs where he advised later stage growth clients on financial transactions.

• Revolut requested U.K. regulators for a banking license.

• Roblox raised $520 million at a $29.5 billion valuation and expressed plans for a direct listing.

• SoFi has reached an agreement to be acquired by Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. V (NYSE: IPOE).

Read More

January 4, 2021

• 23andMe raised $82.5 million in a new funding round.

• Affirm acquired PayBright, a Candian Buy Now Pay Later firm, to expand the reach of its services.

• Nuro acquired Ike, an autonomous truck start up

• Ripple was sued by the SEC. The SEC claims that Ripple’s XRP token should be registered as a security.

Read More

December 22, 2020

• Last week, Coinbase confidentially filed for its IPO.

• Ginkgo Bioworks acquired Novogy, a firm with an extensive strain assets and IP portfolio.

• Oscar Health raised $140 million in a new funding round led by Tiger Global.

• Robinhood was fined $65 million from the SEC for not accurately describing how the firm generated revenue to its customers.

• Roblox acquired Loom.ai, a platform that develops 3D avatars.

• Rubrik acquired Igneous, a developer of a unstructured data backup platform.

• StockX raised $275 million at a $2.8 billion valuation.

• UiPath confidentially filed for its IPO.

• Wish raised $1.1 billion in its IPO at a $14.1 billion valuation.

• Zomato raised $660 million at a $3.9 billion valuation.

Read More

December 14, 2020

• Last week, Affirm stated that it will delay its IPO to 2021.

• Airbnb raised $3.5 billion at a $40 billion valuation in its IPO.

• Calm raised an additional $75 million at a $2 billion valuation.

• DoorDash raised $3.4 billion at a $34 billion valuation in its IPO.

• Reddit acquired Dubsmash, a short video platform.

• Roblox stated that it will delay its IPO to 2021.

Read More

December 7, 2020

• Last week, Airbnb increased the price range for its IPO to $56 to $60 per share which translates to $42 billion valuation.

• DoorDash increased the price range for its IPO to $90 and $95 per share which translates to $30 billion valuation.

• Gainsight was acquired by Vista Equity Partners for $1.1 billion.

• Kustomer was acquired by Facebook for $1 billion.

• Scale.Ai raised $155 million at a $3.5 billion valuation.

• Two weeks ago, Hippo insurance raised $350 million from Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Company.

Read More