Lume Weekly Private Market News & Notes 7.18.2022
Covers news about startups, private deals, technology, and innovation in the private market
📊 Stats of the Week 📊
Zipline’s Retail Metaverse Survey Report to better understand how generational differences influence consumer perception of and participation in Metaverse.
Key data from the report reveals:
80% of Gen Z is “familiar” with the metaverse and 51% have participated in it through gaming, purchasing non-fungible tokens (NFTs), or other activities.
84% of Millennials have comparable levels of familiarity with the metaverse and their participation rate is 37%.
83% of people across all generations said gaming was their main reason for participating in the metaverse.
42% of respondents across all generations who have participated in the metaverse have used it for shopping.
84% of Gen X respondents said they were at least somewhat interested in receiving an NFT from their favorite brands compared to 70% of Millennials and 63% of Gen Z respondents.
85% of Gen Z respondents reported feeling indifferent about brands developing a presence in the metaverse, but the same percentage said they’d be interested in hybrid in-store experiences that use mixed reality technologies to incorporate a virtual element to shopping.
📰 Portfolio Company and Past Transactions News 📰
Instawork named a San Francisco Chronicle 2022 Bay Area top workplace (Jul 5 2022)
Out of 126 highly rated organizations, Instawork ranked #28 on the list. The award results, published by the San Francisco Chronicle, are based solely on employee feedback about their experience working at Instawork corporate and are gathered through a third-party survey.
💰 Fundraising & Merger and Acquisition 💰
Hidden Road announces $50M Series A (July 7)
Hidden Road Partners, a blockchain credit intermediary, announced that it has closed a $50M Series A round led by Castle Island Ventures. Hidden Road offers prime brokerage, clearing and financing services for both traditional and digital assets.
Toast acquires employee scheduling app Sling (July 7)
Restaurant tech supplier Toast has acquired Sling, a staff scheduling and communication app. Sling adds another layer to Toast’s Payroll & Team Management suite, which has tools for onboarding, payroll, tip pooling and now scheduling. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Lucinity raised a $17M to help banks with tools fight financial crime (July 7)
Lucinity announced the closing of a $17M Series B investment round, led by Keen Venture Partners. Lucinity's mission is to Make Money Good™ through Human AI. Recent customers of Lucinity include Pleo, a $4.7B FinTech used by 20,000 companies, and Visa's Currencycloud, a part of the world's largest global payment platform.
Online donation platform Change helps charities fundraise in crypto (July 11)
Taking note of how charitable crypto investors are, charity fundraising company, Change.org, brings cryptocurrencies into the donation game by raising $5M in a seed round to expand into web3.
Multi-signature wallet protocol Gnosis Safe raised $100M (July 12)
Gnosis Safe, a leading digital asset management platform, has raised $100M in a funding round led by 1kx to unlock digital asset management. The company also rebranded to Safe.
Pico, a financial infrastructure developer, raised $200M (July 13)
Pico, a leading provider of technology services, software, data and analytics for the financial markets community, announced it has signed an agreement for a $200M strategic investment from Golden Gate Capital, a leading private equity investment firm. The capital will be used to accelerate its M&A activity.
KKday bumps its Series C to $95M as travel resumes (July 13)
When travel platform KKday raised the first part of its Series C in September 2020, the travel landscape was very different. Now, as KKday announces that it’s added $20M to the round, bringing its total to $95M, travel trends are changing, with more people going on domestic or international trips. The funding was led by Asia private equity firm TGVest Capital.
Autonomous flight company Merlin Labs raises $105M, announces partnership with US Air Force (July 13)
Merlin Labs, the leading developer of autonomous flight technology, announced that it has raised a $105M Series B round from Snowpoint and Baillie Gifford. Merlin Labs also announced a partnership with the United States Air Force
Indian fintech OneCard tops $1.4B valuation in fresh $100M funding (July 14)
FPL Technologies, an Indian startup that offers credit cards to customers under the brand name OneCard, raised $100M at over $1.4B post-money valuation, up from about $750M in January this year.
Robin raises $30M in Series C funding (July 14)
Robin, a hybrid workplace company, raised $30M in Series C funding led by Tola Capital as companies embrace hybrid work.
🚀 Product Launches 🚀
PayTalk promises to handle all sorts of payments with voice (July 11)
PayTalk, an app under the workings of Neji Tawo, promises the ability of processing financial transactions with voice. From buying morning coffee to applying for loans, PayTalk gives us a glimpse of what future payments could be.
Impossible Foods is expanding into schools (July 12)
Plant-based brand Impossible Foods is launching two new plant-based meat items specifically designed for K-12 school lunch menus.
Deutsche Bank to develop white label BNPL product for merchants (July 13)
Deutsche bank is working with Viennese fintech Credi2 to develope a white label buy now, pay later product for uptake by online retailers and e-commerce marketplaces.
Plaid adds read-only support for leading crypto exchanges (July 14)
Plaid, the company building data transfer technologies to power fintech and digital finance products, announced that it’s adding support for crypto exchanges to its data network.
🗞 Others News 🗞
Broker-dealer aggregator Wentworth Management to go public through a SPAC (July 7)
Broker-dealer aggregator Wentworth Management Services will go public through a deal with SPAC Kingswood Acquisition (NYSE:KWAC) at a $208M enterprise valuation.
Shanghai wants top companies to explore NFT trading platforms (July 13)
China's biggest city Shanghai officially intends to boost the development of innovations such as blockchain, nonfungible tokens (NFTs), the Metaverse and Web3 during its next five-year plan.
Defi lending protocol Goldfinch passed 1 million loan recipients (July 13)
Goldfinch, a decentralized credit protocol for crypto loans, announced it achieved a milestone reaching over 1 million people and businesses. Launched in Feb 2021 and backed by a16z, Coinbase Ventures, and others, Goldfinch passed $100M in active loans.
Autonomous vehicles startup Nuro winds down operations in Phoenix (July 14)
Nuro, the autonomous vehicle delivery startup that is valued at more than $8.6B, is closing its Phoenix facility.
Stripe is taking a 28% internal valuation cut (July 14)
The the payments processor Stripe last valued at $95B in March 2021, has seen the internal value of its shares slashed by 28%.
OpenSea cuts 20% of staff (July 15)
The NFT marketplace OpenSea announced that its laying off around 20% of the company’s employees.
UAE’s RAKBank partners up with Kraken (July 18)
RAKBank, one of the top financial organizations in the UAE, has partnered with Kraken exchange to enable citizens to trade in crypto and digital assets using their local bank accounts and in dirhams.
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