Highlights of the Week - (10/22/2020)

October 23, 2020

The second to last work week of October comes almost to a close. Here is a recap of good to know topics we shared throughout the week.

Work from home new norms drive growth at Vari and Autonomous, both private companies who focus on office furniture but have shifted their marketing focus on the work-at-home experience.
Used car ownership, as well as car-sharing companies, are catching on amongst the younger generation. Publicly traded online car dealer Carvana, who had previously never posted a profit, reported a record 3Q in September to drive their stocks up by 30%. On top of that, carsharing platforms like GetAround just closed a $140MM round to boost their service.
Audio is the new trend. Audio technology is transforming the way people work and communicate. Companies like Chorus.ai, Gong.io, and ASAPP all take a stab at using Natural Language Processing to improve sales and customer service. Meanwhile, audio to text transcription startups like Otter.ai are tapping into the online conferencing market and partnering with Zoom to transcribe meetings and improve the quality of an online meeting.
B Corporations making a difference. From edtech, medical scrubs, to banking technology, certified B Corporations are businesses that have verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose. Read the full list.

Weekly Funding Stats
During this week, the software and internet services industries led with the most funding of over $1.0BN funding. Here’s a chart of the top 5 industries.

This week’s top-funded companies were:

Tekion, a provider of a cloud-based platform with AI for automotive retail
Perch, a company that acquires D2C businesses and products that are already selling on Amazon
98point6, a Seattle based telemedicine company that provides on-demand digital primary care for patients.
Bind Benefits, a Minneapolis health insurance startup
BrightFarms, an indoor farming tech startup.

Snap Sees Record High Earnings

Snap sees a 4% daily active user increase capitalizing on Facebook controversy.
[Read more]

Instacart Will Accept Food Stamps

Grocery delivery service Instacart accepting food stamps will help millions of families dealing with food insecurities.
[Read more]

Since last week, PrivCo has added:
3738 Companies | 131 Funding Activities | 129 M&A Deals

Funding & Deal Highlights:

Syte, an e-commerce visual search platform from Tel Aviv, gets $30MM Series C to expand in the US and Asia markets.

RVshare, an RV rental company from Akron, Ohio, raised $100MM to capitalize on vacationers looking to travel safely. The company has seen a 650% increase in bookings between April to May 2020.

BrightFarms, a foodtech startup from New York, lands $100MM Series E funding to expand high-tech indoor farming across America. The Series E round of funding was led by Cox Enterprises, which now owns a majority stake in the company, and includes a follow-on investment from growth equity firm Catalyst Investors.

Jam, a collaboration-focused website development platform raised $3.5MM in seed funding to launch its public beta. The platform will allow developers and designers to track issues and make suggestions by bring chat, comments, and task management into a single website.

DYPER, a subscription-based diaper delivery service founded in Scottsdale, Arizona, received $20MM in funding, led by The Craftory.

NeuraLegion, an application security platform raises $4.7MM seed led by DNX Ventures. The Tel Aviv-headquartered company developed its platform for developers, quality assurance, and DevOps workers in mind, to allow security scans to run much earlier in the development process and help lower costs.

Vectary, a design platform that focuses on 3D and AR, has raised $7.3MM in funding led by EQT Ventures. The platform makes 3D and AR creation more accessible.

Fabric, a headless commerce platform raised $9.5MM in seed funding to help DTC and B2B companies build an eCommerce platform that suits their needs.

Klar, a new online bank from Mexico City, has received $15MM in equity funding from Prosus Ventures.

Sk Hynix, the Korean semiconductor, buys Intel’s NAND Memory business for $9BN. The transaction will make SK Hynix the world’s second-largest provider of NAND flash memory chips behind Samsung.

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Highlights of the Week - (10/22/2020)

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