Lume Weekly Private Market News & Notes 7.24.2022

Covers news about startups, private deals, technology, and innovation in the private market

📊 Stats of the Week 📊

💰 Fundraising 💰

Character.AI in talks to raise for fresh capital (Jul 16)

• Just four months after closing a $150M Series A at a $1B valuation, Character.AI that allows people to create their own personalized AI chatbots may be looking for even more cash per a report in The Information.

Karat, a startup building financial tools for content creators, raises $70M (Jul 19)

• Karat Financial, a financial services platform for creators, closed a $70M Series B round of debt and equity. The company said $40M of the round, a combination of debt ($30M, led by TriplePoint Capital) and equity ($40M, led by SignalFire).

RISC Zero raises $40M (Jul 19)

• Risc Zero, a creator of infrastructure that helps developers build zero-knowledge proof software to make blockchains more accessible, raised a $40M Series A led by Blockchain Capital.

Collectly, a payment platform for healthcare bills, raised a $29M (Jul 20)

• Collectly, a patient financial engagement software for medical groups, announced the closing of a $29M Series A funding round led by Sapphire Ventures. Currently, Collectly has engaged over 300,000 patients daily and is growing revenue over 3x year over year according to TechCrunch.

Whop, an online marketplace for digital goods, raises $17M (Jul 20)

• Whop is a marketplace for people to sell access to digital products. The round values the startup at over $100M. The marketplace has a around a million customers and 3,000 sellers that’s done $100 million in transactions to date according to TechCrunch.

Gushwork.ai raises $2.1M (Jul 21)

• Gushwork.ai, an AI-powered platform designed for enterprises to outsource complex operational workflows, raised $2.1M in pre-seed funding. Within the first three months of operation, Gushwork.ai saw more than 50 businesses adopting its platform to delegate more than 200 complex workflows.

🗞 Others 🗞

More Americans leaning on Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay to buy groceries (Jul 19)

• More than ever, cash-strapped shoppers are using BNPL (buy now pay later) services to buy basic necessities, including groceries according to a recent report by the Washington Post. The usage of services like Afterpay, Klarna and Affirm has surged by 40% in the first two months of 2023.

Federal Reserve officially launches new FedNow instant-payments service (Jul 20)

• The U.S. Federal Reserve has launched FedNow which will aim to modernize the country’s payment system by eventually allowing everyday Americans to send and receive funds in seconds, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the central bank announced.

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