February 1, 2021

• Last week, Databricks was raising $2 billion at a valuation between $27 billion and $29 billion.

• DataStax acquired Kesque, a cloud messaging platform that is used to stream data between enterprises.

• Didi Chuxing raised an additional $300 million for its autonomous driving unit.

• Nubank raised $400 million at a $25 billion valuation.

• Robinhood raised $3.4 billion in new funding to meet regulatory requirements related to users’ trading activity and expand its financial literacy initiatives. Its user trading volume increased significantly following the Reddit-fueled rally of select stocks including AMC and GameStop. Robinhood received criticism following the decision to limit customer’s trading activity in these stocks after drawing on between $500 million and $600 million in credit lines to meet higher margin requirements.

• Qualtrics raised $1.55 billion in its IPO at roughly a $15 billion valuation.

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January 25, 2021

• Last week, Dashlane appointed JD Sherman as its new CEO. Sherman previously worked as the President and COO of Hubspot.

• Deliveroo raised $180 million at a valuation greater than $7 billion.

• Rivian raised $2.65 billion in a new funding round.

• TripActions raised $155 million at a $5 billion valuation.

• Wrike was acquired by Citrix for $2.25 billion.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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