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Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Monday December 20th! Now, well into the second half of December, you might think that we will have to save ourselves with news broadcasts. Not a little! We had a 10-digit deal today, an IPO registration and a wealth of start-up news. So buckle up – don’t take any breaks yet! Work! –Alex
The TechCrunch Top 3
- Oracle to Acquire Cerner in a $ 28 Billion Deal: It’s a bloody big deal. Everyone knows Oracle, but what is Cerner? According to our own Ron Miller, Cerner is an electronic health record company. Of course, a big tech company that buys something in the health data space may have your problems, but analysts TechCrunch spoke to generally liked the deal.
- In Justworks’ IPO registration: At the end of last week, Justworks, a provider of HR software focused on SMEs, applied for an IPO. Today TechCrunch took a closer look at its submission and is curious about its economics and overall business performance. The company has raised significant capital throughout its existence as a private company, so this is a big, venture-backed exit to watch for in early 2022. (Together with Reddit!)
- Rocket to buy TrueBill for $ 1.275 billion: And because a $ 1 billion deal wasn’t enough to keep us busy today, Rocket Companies announced its huge purchase of consumer fintech TrueBill in an all-cash deal. TechCrunch noted that since TrueBill is slated to hit around $ 100 million ARR this year, according to its buyer, the deal felt a bit cheap. For investors who quickly doubled their last investment, this is a nice win.
Startups / VC
Today there was a lot of huge startup news and a lot of smaller, but still critical, updates. So first the largest and then as many of the smaller notes as we can fit in this newsletter!
- Rec Room raises $ 145 million at a valuation of $ 3.5 billion: Why does a social gaming platform collect so much money? Well, Roblox. That is the answer. How come? Because Roblox has shown that user-created games can easily generate huge revenue on a centralized platform, and investors are betting that interpreting the concept of Rec Room will be a cash cow in time. The company was valued at $ 1.25 billion earlier this year, so its new valuation may be foamy, but investors are willing to pay, in part, as Roblox is valued at over $ 58 billion this afternoon , no doubt.
- ZeroFox goes public through a SPAC: This is fun. According to TechCrunch, ZeroFox is an “Enterprise Threat Intelligence Cybersecurity Startup Helping Companies Identify Social Media Risks”. So it’s a software company that goes public through a blank check company. The deal values ZeroFox at around $ 1.4 billion. You can read the deck hereif that’s your jam. But the deal shows that the SPAC boom is not over yet – yet.
- $ 100 Million for Fast Groceries in India: Zepto is a fast grocery delivery service, the type of business that wants to get you items in 10 minutes or less. The model is hugely popular in Europe and North America, with companies like Zapp and Gopuff putting up big numbers. Zepto is a notable round because the deal is big and because it more than doubles the company’s valuation “from $ 225 million less than two months ago to $ 570 million”. [the company] is expanding into newer cities. “
- Remote hire is big business: This is what Turing’s new round tells us. The company has just raised $ 87 million for its Talent Cloud, a service that “uses AI to source, rate, hire, engage, and then remotely manage engineers,” TechCrunch reports. The new capital increases Turing’s valuation to $ 1.1 billion.
- Kneron raises $ 25 million for AI chips: Given the global chip shortage / fiasco, I am in favor of more capital pouring into chip companies, including startups. What Kneron is building isn’t going to help Ford build more trucks, but its AI chips are “semiconductors that accelerate machine learning,” we wrote, which still sounds pretty important.
- Nonprofit startup is working to lower prices for predatory prisoners: Not every startup that is founded is designed to either save a pension fund or enable a venture capitalist to finally stop flying in business class. In the case of Ameelio, the company is establishing free telephone calls for inmates. If you’re unfamiliar with the U.S. prisoner state, you know that my nation somehow found it palatable to take advantage of both those incarcerated by private prisons and the exorbitant cost of those incarcerated to get phone calls and other services. Ameelio could mix that up with free video calling services. Let’s hope
- Adventr rminds m of the Wb 2.0 glry dys: Remember when startups just dropped letters from a word and called it a name? It was a good time. Adventr is bringing the trend back with its name and is working on making video more interactive. Very Web 2.0, again in a way that I don’t mind. The company just raised $ 5 million.
- The AI dentist will now see you: Overjet is a company that I covered earlier, so it’s nice to see it pop up on our pages again. Thanks to a new $ 42.5 million Series B, the company is now worth over $ 400 million. Overjet uses AI to help dentists make decisions about teeth for much of my 20s.
- Stenon is working on dirt data: Agtech is a fun part of the tech world because it’s about applying new methods to pretty much the oldest human endeavor, which is trying to coax food out of the ground. Stenon is directly involved in this work, providing farmers with what TechCrunch calls a “real-time soil sensor solution”. That means data from the dirt. Why does that matter? Well, the water content of the soil can, for example, have a strong influence on the time of harvest. Stenon just completed a $ 20 million Series A.
The Growing Power of Digital Health: 6 Trends To Watch For In 2022
Credit: INA FASSBENDER (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
The pandemic started the “digital healthcare revolution” and patients and providers are unlikely to return.
“In the first nine months of 2021, health offers were in great demand,” writes WHI Fund President Bill Taranto in a guest article. “They brought in a total of $ 21.3 billion in venture capital for 541 deals, which, according to Rock Health, dwarfs the previous record of $ 14.6 billion set in 2020.”
Tarent summarizes six trends that need to be considered in the new year:
- Telemedicine is changing the way we treat chronic diseases.
- Digital therapeutics are rewriting the future of healthcare.
- Social determinants of health that lead to greater health equity.
- Remote health monitoring improves results and lowers costs.
- Real data delivers real results.
- Healthcare is becoming really patient-centered.
(TechCrunch + is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams move forward. Here you can sign up.)
Big Tech Inc.
- YouTube TV and Disney are doing nice: There’s an interesting, recurring chicken game that content providers and content providers play when it comes to your cable bill. And Alphabet’s YouTube TV isn’t immune either. After a dispute with Disney over money – what else with the mouse company – an agreement was reached that resulted in Disney channels remaining on YouTube TV. Customers of the latter service will receive a $ 15 credit for the interruption.
- Meta sues phishers: The company formerly known as Facebook is suing a phishing group that has been looking for their users’ credentials. A good. Good on Facebook for that. Second, why don’t we hear more about this type of work?
- Line for further NFT work in 2022: You can’t shake a stick in tech today and accidentally run into an NFT game, so here is the day. Line, the popular messaging service in Japan, is rolling out an NFT service in markets outside of Japan next year. But don’t worry if you find yourself in Line’s main market – the company “operates its beta version for the NFT market separately through the Line Bitmax wallet, which is suitable for Japan,” writes TechCrunch.
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