Funding highlight reel
ZOE (an Air Street investment), the personalised nutrition company known for its large-scale microbiome clinical studies,
raised a $20M Series B led by Ahren. If you’re based in the US, you can order the product today at
www.joinzoe.com
Exscientia, the AI-first clinical stage drug development company,
raised a $225M Series D led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. The Fund is also providing an additional $300M equity commitment that can be drawn at the Company’s discretion. This funding comes on the back of two active clinical trials for drugs designed by Exscientia - a world first.Â
Dyno Therapeutics, the adeno-associated viral vector design company focused on gene therapy,
raised a $100M Series A led by a16z.Â
Einride, the Swedish electric and autonomous freight mobility company,
raised a $110M Series B from Temasek, Soros Fund management and others.Â
Anthropic, a new AI safety-focused research company formed by alums of OpenAI,
raised a $124M maiden financing round.Â
Ada Health, the Berlin-based telemedicine company,
raised a $90M from by Leaps by Bayer.Â
Shift Technology, an AI-first software company built for insurers,
raised a $220m Series D led by Advent International at a unicorn valuation. The product offers decision automation across underwriting, subrogation, and compliance. It serves 100 customers in 25 countries.
Mythic, the analog chip company,
raised a $70M Series C led by BlackRock and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Â
Tessian, the cybersecurity company focused on human mistakes,
raised a $65M Series C led by March Capital.Â
EasyMile, the French autonomous shuttle company,
raised a €55M Series B led by Searchlight Capital Partners. The company has deployed 180 vehicles in 30 countries to date.Â
Cymulate, a cybersecurity company that lets customers run machine-based attack simulations on their networks to discover vulnerabilities,
raised a $45M Series C led by One Peak Partners.Â
Placer.ai, a location data analytics company,
raised a $50M Series B led by angels Josh Buckley, Todd Goldberg and Rahul Vohra.Â
ComplyAdvantage, the financial crime prevention company,
extended its Series C to $70M with new investment from Goldman Sachs
.
Causaly, a software company that helps researchers navigate biomedical research,
raised a $17M Series A led by Index.Â
Pah Robotics, a company that automates welding in manufacturing plants,
raised a $56M Series B led by Addition.Â
Plus One, a computer vision control system for logistics robots,
raised a $33M Series B led by McRock capital.Â
Sprout.ai, an insurance focused startup applying NLP and computer vision to claims automation,
raised a $11M Series A led by Octopus Ventures.
Coiled, an MLOps company,
raised a $21M Series A led by Bessemer. Â
iSIZE, a video compression company,
raised a $6.3M round led by Octopus Ventures.Â
Exits
Lyft Level 5, the self-driving division of Lyft, announced its intention to be
acquired by Woven Planet (a Toyota holding company focused on autonomous driving) for $550M. Of this, $200M is upfront and $35M is paid over five years. For Lyft, this also means a saving of $100M in net operating expenses from reduced R&D. To dive deeper into the consolidation of AVs, have a read of
this post.
Blue Yonder, the AI-first supply chain software company for retail, manufacturing and logistics customers, was
acquired by Panasonic for up to $8.5B.Â
Gingo Bioworks, the company that engineers novel organisms to produce useful materials and substances, merged with a SPAC to value the public company at $17.5B post-money. You can find the investor deck
here.
WaveOptics, makers of waveguide technology for use in augmented reality headsets, was
acquired by Snap for $500M.Â
Inivata, a precision medicine liquid biopsy company, was
acquired by NeoGenomics for $390M. This follows NeoGenomics’ $25M investment in May 2020. Inivata was formed around technology developed at
Nitzan Rosenfeld’s group based in the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute (where I did my PhD).Â
DeepCube, a software-based inference accelerator, was
acquired by Nano Dimension, a 3D printer manufacturer working on additively manufactured electronics. The deal is worth $70M.
Pixel8earth, a 3D mapping company using crowdsourced data, was
acquired by
Snap for $7.6M.Â
—
Signing off,Â
Nathan Benaich, 13 June 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.