Lume Weekly Private Market News & Notes 1.23.2022
Covers news about startups, private deals, technology, and innovation in the private market
📊 Stats of the Week 📊
💰 Fundraising 💰
Tabby raises $58M at $660M valuation (Jan 17)
MENA-based buy now, pay later startup Tabby has raised $58M, led by Sequoia Capital India and STV, at a valuation of $660M. Tabby says more than 3M users shop from 10,000+ brands, including nine out of MENA’s 10 largest retail groups.
Splitero Secures $11.7M in Series A (Jan 17)
Splitero, a fintech startup that provides homeowners better options to access their home equity, announced that it secured an $11.7M Series A funding round. Since launching in Aug of 2021, the company has secured $1B+ in financing to help homeowners access their equity without new debt or monthly payments.
Beaconstac raises $25M investment for its QR code management platform (Jan 17)
Beaconstac, which works with companies including United Airlines, Amazon and Deloitte, to create end-customer QR code experiences. Beaconstac announced that it closed a $25M Series A funding. According to Insider Intelligence, more than 99.5 million smartphone users will scan a QR code by 2025.
Copilot raises $10M to help service businesses build digital customer experiences (Jan 19)
Copilot, a platform aimed at helping companies, including marketing agencies, accounting firms and law firms, run and grow their businesses, announced that it raised $10M in a Series A funding round at a $100M post-money valuation. Its Co-founder and CEO said Copilot has more than four years of runway.
Microsoft agrees to multibillion-dollar deal with OpenAI (Jan 23)
Microsoft confirmed it has agreed to a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment” into OpenAI, the startup behind the artificial intelligence tools ChatGPT and DALL-E. Earlier this month The Wall Street Journal reported the startup could be valued at $29B. OpenAI had been valued at $14B during a tender offer in 2021.
🤝 M&A 🤝
TaxBit acquires crypto accounting platform Tactic (Jan 17)
Crypto tax and accounting platform TaxBit has bought out rival Tactic. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed. TaxBit has raised over $235M in total funding to date. It was valued at $1.33B in Aug 2021.
McKinsey, eyeing the MLOps space, buys Tel Aviv–based Iguazio, an MLOps platform (Jan 17)
Global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company announced that it has acquired Iguazio, a Tel-Aviv-based startup in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. The companies did not reveal the cost of the acquisition, but it is estimated to be around $50M.
🗞 Others 🗞
TikTok’s parent ByteDance pushes into payments with help from J.P. Morgan (Jan 5)
JP. Morgan has been quietly working with TikTok parent ByteDance on payments technology that is helping the Chinese giant expand into more than two dozen markets and reach millions more users. Users around the world spent $3.4B on TikTok in 2022.
Amazon announced its Buy with Prime (Jan 10)
Amazon announced it’s expanding its Buy with Prime service to U.S.-based merchants by the end of the month. The service, which allows third-party merchants to offer Prime benefits like free shipping and returns on their own apps. Since its April debut, Amazon claims the offering has increased shopper conversion by an average of 25%.
Investing platform Public launches treasury accounts (Jan 11)
Public, an investing platform, has begun rolling out Treasury accounts through a partnership with Jiko, a financial network for money storage and movement. Public currently has more than 3M users.
Goldman Sachs’s Apple Card unit loses $1.2B in nine months (Jan 13)
Goldman Sachs' newly-created "Platform Solutions" unit, which houses the firm's fintech, credit card and transaction banking operations, made a pre-tax loss of $1.2 billion in the first nine months of 2022.
Klarna says US is now its top market (Jan 17)
Klarna said that America is now its largest market in terms of revenue, with volumes up 92% year over year. The company has 32 million customers in the U.S., which accounts for more than a fifth of its worldwide user base and represents a 44% increase year over year.
Bluedot’s debit card for EV owners offers cheaper charging, cash back (Jan 23)
Bluedot, a banking and rewards platform for EV owners, is currently offering customers a flat fee of $0.30 per kilowatt hour of charging with participating EV charging stations, and 20% cash back on charges with nonparticipating charging networks.
Amazon-Stripe partnership (Jan 23)
Stripe announced that it has become a strategic payments partner for Amazon, processing a "significant" portion of the tech giant's total payments volume across its businesses, including Prime, Audible, Kindle, Amazon Pay, Buy With Prime, and more.