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Hello and welcome to the Daily Crunch on January 19, 2022! What a round-up of the news we have for you today: China’s changing venture landscape, the power of passwords, no-code startups, and why women still make paltry sums of money compared to men. Please enjoy! – Alex
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- China’s corporate venture landscape is hitting a regulatory wall: Chinese tech giant ByteDance has dissolved its strategic investment team, it was announced today. The news comes as other sources reported that the country’s government could require major internet companies to obtain permits before making any investments. If this comes to fruition, the ByteDance news could prove to be more of a harbinger than a one-off event, potentially reducing the overall capital available to startups in the country.
- Funding for female founders continues to disappoint: New data shows that less than 2% of VC funding went to all-women teams last year. The dollar amount rose as the larger venture landscape grew, but the data was still more than random. What’s happening? TechCrunch investigated the question.
- When do VCs hit the brakes?? The boom in venture capital activity that the world saw last year, and that appears to be ongoing today, is increasingly at odds with falling valuations for public technology companies. The growing dissonance between public concern and private enthusiasm has us wondering when VCs might slow down their role a bit.
Startups/VC
This is the biggest startup news today 1Password raised a massive $620 million round at a $6.8 billion valuation. The new funding was led by Iconiq Growth and saw the involvement of a murderous array of venture capital firms.
Thought to be a Series C, the investment comes after the company raised a huge $200 million Series A and a similarly sized $100 million Series B. Companies waiting to raise capital and then collect a big check are rare, but not so rare that we don’t occasionally see the news event double. Such was the case today: Dovetail, which, having raised a modest amount and burned only half the funds since its inception, has raised a $63 million Series A, it announced today.
1Password is, of course, a password manager, while Dovetail builds researcher-focused software for enterprise teams.
Before we turn to venture capital rounds, let’s talk about some fund news:
- The pace of fintech investment is pretty crazy: The venture capital field is full of superlative figures, enormous amounts of money, gigantic figures and large rounds. But perhaps the biggest single niche, or at least the one that seems to be making the most noise, is fintech. So we delved into this category to learn more.
- Viola Ventures closes $250 million: The Israeli tech scene has been more than busy in recent years, as evidenced by the fact that Viola’s latest fund “was oversubscribed and has hit its cap,” reports TechCrunch. The company currently has $1.25 billion under management.
- Turns out you can raise a small crypto fund: With crypto funds hitting the billion-dollar mark and often shooting right past that number, it’s almost nice to find a smaller pool of capital. Inflection has raised a blockchain-focused fund worth just under $41 million, and our own Romain Dillet took a look. (Speaking of crypto, POAP or the “Proof of Attendance Protocol” just raised $10 million, while Something involving Tom Brady and NFTs brought in $170 million.)
And now the daily flood of new capital from a crowd of startups:
- $49.55 million for autonomous electric rail transportation: Parallel Systems, founded by a crew of former SpaceX people, wants to “build autonomous battery-electric rail vehicles”. It just came out of camouflage. Decarbonization is hot. Autonomy is hot. Transit is hot. It’s no surprise, then, that the company just raised eight figures.
- HR tech company Lattice raises $175 million at a $3 billion valuation: The new round, a series F, will serve to expand the human resource management service. Given that we’re in a never-ending pandemic and the landscape of work has changed forever, it’s no big surprise that people are lining up to fund Lattice’s work.
- South African mobile games company lands $20 million: Meet Carry1st, a social games publisher who just raked in eight figures. The round shows that the African continent’s fruitful 2021 fundraising cycle continues into the new year and marks a16z’s first investment in an African-headquartered startup.
- Filmhub is like the DistroKid for films: If you’re making a movie and want it to land on streaming channels, you might need some help. Filmhub just raised $6.8 million to help filmmakers get their work to “more than 100 streaming channels,” reports TechCrunch.
- Softr increases due to the strength of the no-code market: Softr’s product allows people to build apps from datasets – Airtable today, more on the way – and intends to create a marketplace for templates and extensions in the future. It just landed $13.5 million to keep going. TechCrunch covered its seed round here.
And to wrap us up is Revolut Introduction of stock trading in the United States, and Rainy days could be ahead for crypto in the UK.
Why Microsoft’s $2 trillion-plus market cap makes its $68 billion Activision a cheap bet
Photo credit: Michael Ciaglo/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Risk is an integral part of gambling, so it may be inappropriate to call Microsoft’s proposed purchase of Activision Blizzard a “bet.”
Considering that Microsoft has a market cap of over $2 trillion, buying a gaming company that pumps out titles like Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, and Candy Crush for $68 billion isn’t exactly fraught with danger .
According to Box CEO Aaron Levie, the move solidifies Redmond’s entry into AR/VR gaming.
“If you believe VR and immersive computing is the future – whether for consumer or business use cases – Activision is helping Microsoft build a flywheel of content and technology that will bring more users on board for that future.”
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