Lume Weekly Private Market News & Notes 11.7.2022
Covers news about startups, private deals, technology, and innovation in the private market
📊 Stats of the Week 📊
Key takeaways from the Tech Valuations Report Q3’22 (Source: CBInsights)
Median tech valuations declined QoQ across all stages except Series A, which saw a 1% uptick. The negative change in valuations grows as deal stages mature, culminating in a 27% drop for Series D+.
💰 Fundraising 💰
NiftyApes, an NFT lending platform, raised seed round (11/1)
NiftyApes that allows users to get loans on any NFT collection raised $4.2M in seed funding led by Variant and FinTech Collective, with participation from Coinbase Ventures.
TouchBistro raises $110M for restaurant tech (11/1)
TouchBistro, a restaurant point-of-sale system, announced it nabbed $110M in growth financing. Founded in 2010, Canada-based TouchBistro has expanded to over 100 countries and 16,000 restaurants.
Alation bags $123M at a $1.7B valuation (11/2)
Enterprise data intelligence startup Alation announced that it has raised $123M in new funding at over $1.7B valuation — a 1.5 times higher than the company’s previous valuation in a challenging economic climate.
Orum raises $22M to inject AI into the sales prospecting process (11/2)
Orum, a startup leverages AI to detect, identify and connect with sales prospects, closed a $22M Series B round at “triple” the company’s previous — but undisclosed — valuation.
Loop raises $30M to digitize logistics payments (11/3)
Loop, a startup operating a payments platform for the shipping and logistics industry, has raised $30M in total funding. Loop launched its product offering in March and in its first month, did $25M in booked total payment volume. Today, it’s doing over $1B in total payment volume.
Dropit raises $25M to digitize brick-and-mortar stores and unify inventories (11/3)
Dropit, a retail technology platform that bridges the digital divide by unifying merchants’ online and in-store inventories, has raised $25M in a Series C round of funding.
Travel app Hopper raises $96M to double down on social commerce (11/7)
Travel booking startup Hopper announced that it closed a $96M follow-on investment from Capital One, bringing the company’s total raised to $740 million. Hopper was last valued at $5 billion, TechCrunch reported in early February.
🗞 Others 🗞
Blockfi and Stripe partnered bring more users to the crypto economy (10/31)
Blockfi partnered with Stripe on a payments integration for the crypto platform.
Parafin partners with Amazon for merchant cash advance program (11/1)
Leveraging Parafin’s technology, Amazon is launching a merchant cash advance tool that offers eligible Amazon sellers a cash advance that ties repayment to a percentage of sellers’ Gross Merchandise Sales.
U.S. private-sector job growth picks up in October (11/2)
Private employment increased by 239,000 jobs last month. The pick-up in private hiring shown in the ADP National Employment report on Wednesday was concentrated in the services sector, specifically the leisure and hospitality industry. Hiring in the goods-producing sector slumped, with factories shedding jobs.
Cap table startup Carta sold shares in the secondary market at $8.5B valuation (11/3)
The valuation of Carta jumped to $8.5B after employees sold shares to investors. Carta last year raised $500M at 7.4B valuation.
Stripe cuts 14% of its workforce (11/3)
Stripe has announced that it’s laying off 14% of its workers, impacting around 1,120 of its employees. Stripe’s internal valuation reportedly dropped 28% from $95B last year to around $74B.