$100M rounds are down but not out in 2020

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

This morning we’re taking a look at mega-rounds: funding events of $100 million or more.

What’s fun about these rounds is that they experience less temporal lag than other venture financings. Generally speaking, the larger a venture round is, the faster it becomes public knowledge. This is why seed rounds are the laggiest of all startup rounds and as you progress up the Series ladder (from A to B to C to D), the rounds that you hear about are increasingly fresh.

If we wanted to take a look at 2020’s largest rounds to date, for example, instead of staring at an incomplete picture that might tell us nothing at all, we could get a reasonable handle on what’s going on in the very late-stages of private equity financings.

This morning we’re looking at $100 million and greater rounds from January, February and March (through the 23rd) for both 2019 and 2020. As you will see, the data shows us that the late-stage private market for startup investments is in better health than we might have expected. This is true despite spotting weaknesses in other parts of the global venture scene (China venture data remains very weak, for example).

The unicorn era, for better or for worse, appears to be still standing for now, despite the chaos that surrounds it.

$100 million or bust

from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2UbOkgP

Comments

Apple rolls out Apple Card Preview to select users

Apple Card is getting its first group of public test users today. A limited amount of customers that signed up to be notified about the release of Apple Card are getting the ability to apply for the card in their Wallet app today — as well as the option to order their physical Apple Card. I’ve been using the card for a few days on my own device, making purchases and payments and playing around with features like Apple Cash rewards and transaction categorization. A full rollout of Apple Card will come later in August. It requires iOS 12.4 and up to operate. The application process was simple for me. Portions of the information you need are pre-filled from your existing AppleID account, making for less manual entry. I had an answer in under a minute and was ready to make my first purchase instantly. I used it both online and in person with contactless terminals. It…works. The card on the screen has a clever mechanism that gives you a sort of live heat map of your spending categorie...

HPE is buying Cray for $1.3 billion

HPE announced it was buying Cray for $1.3 billion, giving it access to the company’s high performance computing portfolio, and perhaps a foothold into quantum computing in the future. The purchase price was $35 a share, a $5.19 premium over yesterday’s close of $29.81 a share. Cray was founded in the 1970s and for a time represented the cutting edge of super computing in the United States, but times have changed, and as the market has shifted, a deal like this makes sense. Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst at Constellation Research says this is about consolidation at the high end of the market. “This is a smart acquisition for HPE. Cray has been losing money for some time but had a great portfolio of IP and patents that is key for the quantum era,” he told TechCrunch. While HPE’s president and CEO Antonio Neri didn’t see it in those terms, he did see an opportunity in combining the two organizations. “By combining our world-class teams and technology, we will have the oppor...

A fight is brewing between two machine intelligence startups, and neither side looks all that smart

Sometimes, reading a lawsuit, it’s tempting to pick sides, to judge who is more right than wrong based on its contents. But a new lawsuit involving two venture-backed companies — both of which are rooted in machine intelligence — makes both sides sound surprisingly careless given their line of work. The plaintiff is Quid , a now 12-year-old company that has raised roughly $108 million from investors, shows Crunchbase. Its newest, $38 million round closed in October, led by REV Ventures, the investment arm of LexisNexis owner RELX Group , and it included participation from some very heavy hitters, including Tiger Global founder Julian Robertson and KKR cofounder Henry Kravis. Quid calls itself a “platform that searches, analyzes and visualizes the world’s collective intelligence to help answer strategic questions.” As company cofounder Bob Goodson has described the company , its software scours the internet, including company websites, news databases and social media postings to help...

Tech Dojo

Search This Blog