Lume Weekly Private Market News & Notes 5.15.2022
Covers news about startups, private deals, technology, and innovation in the private market
📊 Stats of the Week 📊
Generative AI — AI that can write essays, create artwork and music, and more — continues to attract outsize investor attention.
💰 Fundraising 💰
8fig raises $140M Series B funding (May 9)
Fintech firm 8fig announced that it has secured a $140M Series B funding round reported as $40M in equity and $100M in a credit facility. 8fig has provided online sellers with more than $500M since being founded and increased its annual revenue by 800% last year.
Petal raises $35M (May 10)
Petal, which offers three Visa credit card products aimed at underserved consumers, closed a $35M funding round led by Valar Ventures. At the time of Petal’s Series D raise in January of 2022, the company’s CEO said that it was “doing $20 million to $30 million in annualized revenue.” By year’s end, it was up to $80 million, and the CEO is projecting that Petal will become profitable sometime in 2024.
Wellthy lands $25M (May 11)
New York-based Wellthy, a family care concierge service, raised a fresh $25.5M in funding. From 2019 to 2022 the number of lives covered with Wellthy benefits grew from about 100,000 to 2 million. And while the company declined to reveal hard revenue figures, its CEO says it saw 17x growth in revenue from 2019 to 2022.
Everseen raises over $70M for AI tech to spot potential retail theft (May 11)
Artificial intelligence platform Everseen has raised $71M to help retailers prevent theft. Everseen counts over half of the world’s top 15 retailers among its customers, with deployments in over 6,000 retail stores and at more than 80,000 checkout lines.
Procurement startup Zip raises $100M (May 15)
Zip, a provider of an intake-to-pay platform, raised a $100M Series C from investors Y Combinator, CRV, and Tiger Global at a $1.5B post-money valuation. Zip boasts hundreds of customers globally including Snowflake, Coinbase, Northwestern Mutual, Canva, Webflow and Databricks.
Automotive ethernet chip startup Ethernovia raises $64M (May 15)
Ethernovia announced that it raised $64M in Series A funding. Porsche Automobile Holding SE, Qualcomm Ventures and Western Digital Capital were among the participating investors.
🗞 Others 🗞
Capchase gets into buy now, pay later for SaaS financing (May 11)
Capchase, a provider of non-dilutive growth capital, is now in the buy now, pay later space after launching Capchase Pay which enables SaaS companies to collect the full contract value for their software while also providing their customers with flexible payment terms.
Brex bid for SVB portfolios (May 14)
TechCrunch spoke with Brex co-CEO and co-founder Henrique Dubugras, who confirmed that the company did in fact put its name in the hat for SVB but only for the early-stage and growth portfolios within its business.
SpaceX to launch first commercial space station in 2025 (May 15)
SpaceX reported it will launch the world’s first commercial space station as early as 2025 with the goal of eventually developing a multi-module base.