Lume Weekly Private Market News & Notes 12.5.2022
Covers news about startups, private deals, technology, and innovation in the private market
📊 Stats of the Week 📊
With rising inflation and living costs, consumers are planning to spend less on gifts this holiday season (16 in 2021 vs. 9 in 2022) according to WSJ.
💰 Fundraising 💰
Greenwood, a neobank made for Black and Latino customers, raised $45M (Nov 29)
Greenwood announced that it raised $45M in venture capital to help expand its digital banking business. The company said it has about 100,000 accounts, with roughly 200,000 customers on a waiting list.
Neobank for Native Americans raises pre-seed funding (Nov 29)
Totem, a fintech helping Native Americans, announced that it had raised $2.2M in pre-seed funding led by Raven Indigenous Capital Partners.
Keyrock, a crypto trading market-maker, closes $72M Series B (Nov 30)
Keyrock raised $72M new round of fundraising led by Ripple, a crypto payments company. Ripple has also been a key client for the firm for the last three years. Keyrock announced that since its launch in 2017, it has expanded into 200 unique new markets and has seen threefold growth in terms of trading volume while the overall market shrunk by 50%.
Teampay expands partnership with Mastercard, banks $47M (Nov 30)
Teampay, a platform that automate the software purchasing process for companies, announced that it raised a $47M ($35.25M in equity, $11.75M in debt) Series B led by Fin Venture Capital with participation from Mastercard and others.
X1 raises $15M and gets 50% valuation boost (Dec 1)
X1, a consumer fintech startup, raised $15M, increasing its valuation by 50%, however exact valuation number is undisclosed. According to TechCrunch, X1’s annual revenue run rate is $36M. It also announced the launch of a new investing platform that will allow its cardholders to buy stocks with their earned reward points.
Defense tech startup Anduril raises $1.5B round at $8.5B valuation (Dec 2)
Anduril raises $1.5B Series E at $8.5B valuation that doubles the company’s previous valuation in June 2021. Anduril was founded in 2017 by Palmer Luckey, the founder of virtual reality headset maker Oculus VR which was acquired by Meta Platforms for $2B. The Financial Times reported that Anduril generates “hundreds of millions of dollars” in annual revenue. The startup reportedly works with multiple branches of the U.S. military as well as a half-dozen allied nations.
Zylo, a SaaS management platform, raises $31.5M (Dec 2)
Zylo announced that it raised $31.5M in Series C round. The CEO of the company noted that Zylo beat its previous growth record by close to 30%, doubling new business year-over-year and adding customers such as Adobe, Atlassian, DoorDash, Intuit, Slack, Salesforce and Yahoo!.
🗞 Others 🗞
Binance acquires Sakura Exchange BitCoin (Nov 30)
Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange, announced it has acquired 100% of Sakura Exchange BitCoin (SEBC), the Japanese-registered crypto exchange service provider. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Crypto exchange Kraken cuts workforce (Nov 30)
Kraken announced it will reducing its workforce by approximately 1,100 people, or 30%, of its workforce “in order to adapt to current market conditions.”
Klarna Q3 losses double but it forecasts hitting profitability in 2023 (Nov 30)
Klarna's third quarter losses climbed to $200M, compared to $106M in the comparable period last year. Klarna has been focusing on creating new shopping channels linking customers to merchants. As a result, the film’s GMV increased to $60.2bn, up 22% yoy. Revenue increased to $1.4bn up 22%. It also improved its credit loss rate by 8%.
Discord let server owners offer subscriptions (Nov 30)
After a year of testing, Discord is ready to let more creators offer subscriptions. The community platform has enabled Server Subscriptions for all eligible server owners in the US.