Lume Weekly Private Market News & Notes 2.6.2022
Covers news about startups, private deals, technology, and innovation in the private market
📊 Stats of the Week 📊
US online transactions grew 21% from October to December 2022 YoY, with gaming and travel seeing increases of 153% and 57% respectively.
💰 Fundraising 💰
Thrive Capital said to lead potential investment in Stripe (Jan 30)
Stripe is aiming to raise roughly $2.5B at a valuation of $55B to $60B, drop for a company that last raised money at a ~$95B valuation in 2021. Thrive has committed $1B, said a person familiar with the situation, who requested anonymity because the talks are confidential according to The New York Times.
Fintech Moov raised $45M Series B (Jan 31)
The payment platform Moov Financial has secured $45M in a Series B funding round led by Commerce Ventures. Andreessen Horowitz, Bain Capital Ventures (BCV), Visa, and Sorenson Ventures also participated in the fundraising.
Sunstone Credit announces $20M to enable businesses to go solar (Jan 31)
Sunstone Credit, a technology-enabled clean energy financing platform, that helps businesses go solar, announced a $20M Series A funding round. Since launching in late 2021, Sunstone has onboarded hundreds of solar developer partners in all 50 states.
Banking as a service startup Treasury Prime raises $40M Series C (Feb 1)
Treasury Prime announced a $40M Series C funding round. Its revenue grew by nearly 400% and accounts by more than 450% since it raised a $20 million Series B in May of 2021.
Google invests $300M in Anthropic (Feb 3)
San Francisco-based AI startup and rival to ChatGPT Anthropic was raising a $300M round at a valuation of $5B. The deal gives Google a 10% stake in the company.
Voyager Space raises $80M as it continues development on private space station, Starlab (Feb 3)
Voyager Space, a company developing a private space station, has raised $80.2M in new capital.
Gameball raises $3.5M to scale its CRM platform (Feb 6)
Gameball, a customer intelligence and marketing CRM platform, raised a $3.5M seed funding. The company has served over 7,000 businesses reaching 20 million customers.
🗞 Others 🗞
California DMV puts car titles on Tezos blockchain (Jan 26)
California's DMV and open-source blockchain Tezos and Oxhead Alpha, a crypto-focused software development firm are building a DMV-run blockchain that will not only digitize car titles for California drivers, but also seek to streamline title transfers between owners.
Twitter applies for US licenses to facilitate in-app payments (Jan 30)
Twitter has taken its next steps towards facilitating payments in the app, with The Financial Times reporting that the company has begun applying for regulatory licenses in US states, the next legal requirement for providing payment services in the app.
OpenAI launches ChatGPT Plus, starting at $20 per month (Feb 1)
OpenAI launched a new pilot subscription plan for ChatGPT, its text-generating AI that can write convincingly human-like essays, poems, emails, lyrics and more, called ChatGPT Plus and starting at $20 per month.