Funding highlight reel
SambaNova Systems, makers of a specialized AI semiconductor and computing platform,
raised a $676M Series D led by SoftBank at a $5B valuation. The company has now raised over $1B since it was founded in 2017. Unlike its rival startups, SambaNova appears to be focused on providing subscription-based AI models to its customers based on its hardware rather than selling datacenter racks or chips for customers to run themselves.Â
Scale AI, the data annotation company,
raised a $325M Series E co-led by crossover investors Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Tiger, along with Durable and Wellington. With a roster like this, you can bet the company is prepping to go public.Â
Vectra, the cybersecurity AI company for on-premise and cloud-based networks,
raised $130M at a post-money valuation of $1.2M led by Blackstone Growth.Â
Nuro, the autonomous on-road delivery vehicle company,
added Woven Capital (the investment company of Toyota Research Institute) and Chiptole Mexican Grill to its $500M Series C.Â
Cresta, a product that improves team performance with live prompts on the best thing to say during every customer interaction,
raised a $50M Series B led by Sequoia. The company, which has its roots in the Stanford AI lab, claims that agents convert 20% more sales when using the Cresta system.Â
Snorkel, the AI platform emerging from Chris Re’s group at Stanford that introduced labeling functions into the mix,
raised a $35M Series B led by Lightspeed. The product has expanded into model training, inference, and collaborative workflows.Â
Streamlit, the fastest way to build and share data apps in Python,
raised a $35M Series B led by Sequoia. The product is particularly popular amongst data science groups that interface with non-technical teams.Â
Comet, the creators of an ML model experimentation platform,
raised a $13M Series A led by Scale Venture Partners off the back of “500% year on year growth”, according to the company.
ShareChat and
Moj, two AI-driven mobile products for interest-based WhatsAapp group and short video content sharing in India,
raised a $502M round at a $2.1B valuation led by Tiger Global. The service is now India’s largest regional social media platform with 160 million MAUs serving 15 Indian languages.Â
Signifyd, an AI-based fraud protection software company,
raised a $205M round at a $1.34B valuation led by Owl Rock Capital.
Sift, another AI-first fraud prevention company,
raised $50M at a valuation over $1B led by Insight Partners. Â
Canvas Medical, a new electronic health records software company,
raised a $17M Series A led by IA Ventures. The startup also partnered with Anthem, one of America’s largest health insurers.Â
Carta Healthcare, a clinical data company that helps physicians navigate patient registries,
raised a $17M Series A led by Storm Ventures.Â
Veriff, an Estonian identity verification startup that processes video and photos using machine learning,
raised a $69M Series B led by IVP and Accel.Â
Synthesia, the AI-first video generation platform,
raised a $12.5M Series A led by FirstMark.
Tempo, the home fitness hardware product that uses 3D sensors and computer vision to analyze your form and coaches you,
raised a $220M Series C led by SoftBank only 9 months after its $60M Series B. The company says it grew 10x in the last year.Â
Oxbotica, the Oxford-based developer of a universal on/off-road autonomy solution,
raised a £10M Series B from Ocado Group, the UK’s leading online supermarket and warehouse robotics company. As part of the investment, Ocado will
“outfit a subset of its delivery vans and warehouse vehicles with data capture capabilities, which may include video cameras, LiDAR, RADAR and other sensing devices. Ocado will make this data available to Oxbotica to train and test its technologies, which will then inform Ocado as to what opportunities exist and where best it might take advantage of these exciting new partnerships.”
Bigeye, the data quality monitoring company,
raised a $17M Series A led by Sequoia. The company’s founders previously worked at Uber where they build internal tools for DQM.Â
Xwing, a software company providing autonomous capabilities to small propeller aircraft,
raised a $40M round at a $400M post-money valuation after demonstrating its first gate-to-gate autonomous commercial cargo aircraft flight.Â
Cape Privacy, an enterprise private computation company,
raised a $20M Series A led by Evolution Equity Partners.Â
Sensei, a Lisbon-based startup providing autonomous store technology to retailers,
raised a $6.5M round led by Seaya and Iberis Capital.Â
Deep Instinct, an AI-first cybersecurity company,
raised a $100M Series D led by BlackRock.Â
Exits
AutoStore, a Norwegian developer of robotics and software solutions for automated warehouse logistics, entered into an
acquisition agreement with SoftBank in which the firm would acquire 40% for $2.8B, valuing AutoStore at $7.7B. AutoStore was founded in 1996 and brought to market a “cube storage automation” product to create very dense warehouse storage. The business now has 20,000 robots deployed in over 600 installations across 35 countries. For those of you familiar with Ocado, the UK online retailer, and robotics company, you’ll notice that AutoStore’s products appear quite related to Ocado’s. In fact, the companies are involved in a
lawsuit over IP infringement that kicked off last year.Â
Darktrace, the British AI-first cybersecurity company that detects, investigates, and responds to cyber threats within enterprises,
filed to list on the LSE. The business was founded in 2013 around maths researchers at the University of Cambridge and has since cemented itself as a global leader. Its ARR grew from $100M in 2018 to $235M in 2020. Customers start with a three-week proof of value and then convert to paid software subscriptions with an average contract ARR of $60k. Its net ARR retention rate is 99%, which is high but not best in class and counts almost 5,000 customers. This listing is a major win for the UK technology industry as it sees a globally recognized AI-first software company poised for long-term growth.Â
Nuance, a publicly-traded speech and text recognition company founded in 1992 with almost 7,000 employees,
announced its intent to be acquired by
Microsoft for almost $20B. This would be Microsoft’s second-largest deal ever, behind its $27B acquisition of LinkedIn in 2016. Nuance has built up a business in the medical domain where its technology processes and transcribes medical notes. Nuance itself has been very acquisitive and defensive over its IP portfolio, which is another reason for Microsoft to take over it to expand its healthcare practice.Â
TuSimple, the self-driving trucking company, raised $1B in an IPO that valued the company at $8.5B. The company posted revenues of $1.8M in 2020 and a net loss of almost $200M.Â
Plus, another self-driving company, is
reportedly in talks to merge with a SPAC run by Hennessy Capital that would value the business over $3B along with $500M in new capital.Â
ZebiAI, a Boston-based small molecule discovery company that uses machine learning to improve DNA-encoded library creation, was
acquired by
Relay Therapeutics, a NASDAQ-listed computational drug discovery company for $85M ($20M cash, $65M in Relay stock). If ZebiAI meets certain commercial targets as part of Relay, shareholders could receive up to an additional $100M. After Haystack’s recent acquisition by insitro, this positions
Anagenex (an Air Street portfolio company) as the sole standalone AI-first DEL company.Â
Vicarious Surgical, a VR-controlled miniaturized surgical robot,
entered into an agreement with a SPAC called D8 Holdings that values the business at $1.1B. The company plans to launch its product on the market in late 2023. It plans to offer surgeons a base station with 9 degrees of freedom per arm, which lets the surgeon make incisions of 1.5cm and see 360 degrees. You can find its investor presentation
here.
—
Signing off,Â
Nathan Benaich, 9 May 2021
Air Street Capital is a venture capital firm investing in AI-first technology and life science companies. We’re an experienced team of investors and founders based in Europe and the US with a shared passion for working with entrepreneurs from the very beginning of their company-building journey.