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This week was busy for startups: Whereas there have been no IPOs of observe, there have been different exits and even uncommon liquidity occasions, in addition to a big variety of funding rounds of assorted sizes and levels.
Most attention-grabbing startup tales from the week
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This week introduced us M&As from serial consumers, an exit possibility that could be reassuring for founders nonetheless fighting buyer retention and funding headwinds.
Scooped up: San Jose, California-based startup Mainstreet.com turned the most recent fintech to get acquired by workforce administration firm Employer.com, which is now valued at simply north of $700 million.
Quick on money: Regardless of lately hitting a key growth milestone, Normal Fusion laid off at the least 25% of its staff, with CEO Greg Twinney explaining that the Canadian fusion energy firm was working out of cash.
By Datadog: Datadog purchased Eppo, a feature-flagging and experimentation platform that may now function beneath the model “Eppo by Datadog.” This comes shortly after it acquired AI-powered observability startup Metaplane.
Retention points: 11x co-founder Hasan Sukkar stepped down as CEO and was changed by CTO Prabhav Jain. The AI startup got here beneath scrutiny earlier this yr for exhibiting logos of corporations that weren’t energetic clients, amid claims it was fighting buyer retention.
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Construct or make investments: Carta acquired SimpleClosure, a startup branding itself as “the TurboTax of shutting down.” The fairness administration startup beforehand discontinued an identical providing, known as Carta Conclusions.
Small world: Two months after shopping for Moveworks, ServiceNow acquired Knowledge.World, which had raised greater than $130 million in enterprise financing for its cloud-native information catalog and information governance platform.
With situations: A bunch of buyers is contemplating injecting one other $30 million into ailing Indian ride-hailing startup BluSmart — so long as co-founder Anmol Singh Jaggi agrees to resign.
Liquidity: Gross sales automation startup Clay took the weird step of permitting staff with at the least one yr of tenure to promote shares to current backer Sequoia. The operation values the corporate at $1.5 billion.
Most attention-grabbing VC and funding information this week
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Rounds this week confirmed that AI isn’t the one factor that may appeal to VCs: The promise of an extended, more healthy life — each for individuals and for batteries — can, too.
No restrict: NewLimit, the longevity startup based by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, raised a $130 million Sequence B led by Kleiner Perkins to develop age-reversing therapies.
Qonto rival: Finom, a neobank serving SMBs in a number of European international locations, raised roughly $105 million from Normal Catalyst to spice up its progress.
Boosted by protection: Orca AI, whose autonomous navigation platform for delivery has protection functions, raised a $72.5 million Sequence A, bringing its complete funding to over $111 million.
Scanning: Ox Safety, which scans for vulnerabilities in code, secured a $60 million Sequence B led by DTCP that it’ll use for progress and growth.
Artful: Recraft, whose stealth picture mannequin beat OpenAI’s DALL-E and Midjourney on a well-liked benchmark final yr, raised a $30 million Sequence B led by Accel.
Bye, enterprise playing cards: Australian startup Blinq raised a $25 million Sequence A to make enterprise playing cards out of date and substitute them with digital options with CRM integrations.
Knowledge fact: WisdomAI, an AI startup hoping to assist keep away from hallucinations when delivering enterprise insights, raised $23 million in an unusually massive seed spherical.
Extra energy: Breathe Battery Applied sciences, whose software program helps optimize and predict battery efficiency, raised a $21 million Sequence B led by Kinnevik On-line AB.
Coding context: Unblocked, an organization behind an AI-powered assistant that solutions contextual questions on strains of code, raised a $20 million Sequence A from B Capital and Radical Ventures.
Optimistic vitality: Bosch Ventures, the enterprise arm of Bosch, will carry on investing in deep tech by means of its new $270 million fund, however with elevated give attention to North American startups.
Final however not least
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As Athens-based VC agency Marathon Enterprise Capital closed its latest fund with roughly $84 million in capital commitments, TechCrunch caught up with companion Panos Papadopoulos to debate how Greek startups are serving international markets, and extra.
