Funding highlight reel
Waymo, the self-driving company,
raised a further $2.5B round from a range of growth and crossover investors including a16z, Alphabet, CPPIB, Fidelity and others. Another potential SPAC/IPO candidate in the making.
Celonis, the category-leading process mining company based in Munich and NYC,
announced a $1B Series D led by Durable Capital Partners and T. Rowe Price Associates. The 10-year old business is now valued at $11B and counts thousands of customers. Celonis is, amongst other things, a gateway drug to robotic process automation (e.g. UiPath) and is now clearly an IPO candidate.
Anduril, the American defense technology company,
raised a $450M Series D led by Elad Gil. This values the business at $4.6B post-money. Elad shared
interviews with high-level individuals involved in US defense and policy.
Tractable, the AI-first insurance company,
raised a $60M round led by Insight Partners at a $1B valuation, making the company the first computer vision unicorn in fintech.
CMR Surgical, a surgical robotics company,
raised a $600M Series D led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2.
Gong, the AI for sales team analytics and coaching,
raised a $250M Series E led by Franklin Templeton. This brings the company’s valuation to $7.25B.
Insilico Medicine, an AI-first drug discovery company,
raised a $225M Series C led by Warburg Pincus. Their first clinical indication is idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
Alation, the data search, discovery, and governance company,
raised a $110M Series D led by Riverwood Capital at a $1.2B valuation. It’s revenue stands above $50M.
Cognigy, a low-code conversational AI company,
raised a $44M Series B led by Insight Partners.
Gideon Brothers, the Croatian warehouse robotics startup that commercialises an autonomous pallet transportation robot,
raised a $31M Series A led by Koch Disruptive Technologies.
Waabi, a new autonomous vehicle company founded by Raquel Urtasun who led Uber’s ATG in Toronto,
raised a maiden $83.5M round led by Khosla Ventures.
Dusty Robotics, a construction robotics company,
raised a $16.5M Series A led by Canaan Partners. Their first autonomous product prints out plans on the floor of construction sites.
Scythe, a landscaping robotics company,
raised a $18.6M Series A round led by Inspired Capital. Their first product is an autonomous lawn mower.
Akur8, an insurance automation company,
raised $30M Series B.
MachineMetrics, an industrial data company,
raised a $20M Series B led by Teradyne.
Exits
Allcyte, the AI-first functional precision oncology company, was acquired by the leading AI-first drug design company,
Exscientia for €50M. Allcyte was the largest investment for Air Street Capital - I
shared my journey with the company and why the acquisition is a big deal for end-to-end AI-first drug discovery.
Babylon Health, the British telehealth provider,
announced its intentions to go public via a SPAC deal that values the business at $4.2B. Babylon says its services cover 24M patients, generating revenues of $79M in 2020. Their investor deck is available
here. The deal brings $575M in gross proceeds, including a $230M PIPE that includes Palantir (which itself has been a very active SPAC investor, in
exchange for long-term paid software deals with their targets).
Quanergy, a LiDAR and 3D perception software company,
entered into an agreement with a SPAC to list for $1.4B.
DeepMap, a startup that built high-definition maps for AVs in the US, entered into an
acquisition agreement with NVIDIA. The business had raised $90M, employed 160 people, and was worth $450M on paper - the acquisition price was not disclosed. The strategy here from NVIDIA is to integrate DeepMap’s capabilities into its NVIDIA DRIVE suite, which includes training and validation systems as well as cloud and in-car compute.
CryptoNumerics, a data privacy startup, was
acquired by Snowflake for $7.1M.
—
Signing off,
Nathan Benaich, 18 July 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.