Lume Weekly Private Market News & Notes 1.17.2022
Covers news about startups, private deals, technology, and innovation in the private market
📊 Stats of the Week 📊
The number of VC-backed companies filing for bankruptcy or shutting down has hovered around 1,000 per year since 2016, according to PitchBook data. At the same time, new startup formation has increased, as measured by first VC financing, greatly exceeding startup failures.
💰 Fundraising 💰
ChatGPT creator OpenAI in talks for tender offer valuing company at $29B (Jan 5)
OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research lab behind chatbot ChatGPT, is in talks to sell existing shares in a tender offer that would value the company at about $29B, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Observability platform Chronosphere raises $115M at a $1.6B valuation (Jan 10)
Chronosphere, which helps companies monitor cloud-native applications, raised $115M Series C, valuing the company at $1.6B. The company says its current list of users includes the likes of DoorDash, Zillow and Visa, and Robinhood.
Fintech company Paytient raises $40.5M to help Americans access and afford healthcare (Jan 10)
Paytient, the creator and leading provider of Health Payment Accounts (HPAs), announced a $40.5M Series B funding round, bringing the company’s total funding to $63M. Since launch, Paytient members have swiped their cards nearly 400,000 times to pay providers and health systems across the country.
Butter Payments raises $22M (Jan 11)
Butter, a startup helps businesses to improve their subscription revenue, announced that it raised $21.5M in Series A funding at a valuation of close to $100M.
Capella Space raises $60M to accelerate constellation (Jan 11)
Capella Space, a satellite manufacturer, closed $60M in growth equity financing. Its chief executive said that the company’s annual revenues tripled in 2022, foresees continued strong growth from government customers, while demand from commercial customers grows at a slower pace.
Bank of America and Goldman Sachs Invest in Xpansiv (Jan 12)
Xpansiv, an infrastructure provider for environmental markets, announced the closing of a $125M capital raise.
Impel secures $104M growth investment (Jan 17)
Impel that offers an AI-powered customer engagement platform for the auto industry announced it secured $104M in growth investment. The company says it had a hand in $2B worth of car sales since its inception in 2011 and has grown revenue by more than 100% over the past two years.
🤝 M&A 🤝
Nuvei acquires Paya for $1.3B to expand beyond retail payments (Jan 9)
Canadian FinTech Nuvei said it will acquire payments firm Paya, a leading provider of integrated payment and commerce solutions in the U.S., in a $1.3B all-cash deal. The purchase price represents a 25% premium to the January 6, 2023 closing price.
Fidelity acquired fintech Shoobx (Jan 10)
Fidelity announced that it has acquired Shoobx, which manages startups’ employee-equity plans, for an undisclosed amount. Fidelity said its purchase of Shoobx is a sign of its commitment to the private market “and will help to satisfy an increasing demand Fidelity sees from private companies to support them as they scale and grow.”
Deel enters equity management space with acquisition of Capbase (Jan 11)
Remote payroll startup Deel has acquired fintech Capbase for an undisclosed amount in a cash and stock deal. Deel raised nearly $680M in total funding, was last valued at $12B and boasted it had crossed the $100M in ARR threshold in March of 2022.
Voyager Digital gets initial court approval for Binance.US deal (Jan 11)
Bankrupt crypto lender Voyager Digital has received initial court approval for its proposal to sell its assets to Binance.US for $1.02B. The deal will require the approval of creditors and final court approval.
Discord acquires Gas, a compliments-based social media app for teens (Jan 17)
The messaging platform Discord announced its acquisition of Gas, an app that’s popular among teens for its positive spin on social media. According to TechCrunch, Gas reached 7.4 million installs and almost $7M in consumer spending since its launch in summer 2022.
🗞 Others 🗞
Greenlight launches a gamified financial literacy curriculum for kids and teens (Jan 6)
Greenlight, the fintech company on a mission to help parents raise financially-smart kids, announced the launch of Greenlight Level Up™, an interactive, curriculum-based financial literacy game.
Stripe’s internal valuation gets cut to $63B (Jan 12)
Payments unicorn Stripe has cut its internal valuation by 11% to $63B which puts its internal per-share price at $24.71. The 11% cut comes after an internal valuation cut that occurred six months ago, which valued the company at $74B.