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☆ A Voyager investor says the FTX meltdown puts the bankrupt crypto lender's bailout in jeopardy, with $1.3 billion of customer assets on the line
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-10 | by ( April Joyner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

FTX US, led by Sam Bankman-Fried, was set to buy the assets of the bankrupt crypto-lender Voyager. Bankman-Fried tweeted Thursday that FTX US, which is a separate company from FTX, was "100% liquid." FTX US' bailout was set to offer some relief to Voyager's customers, who faced the complete loss of their crypto assets, with claims of about $1.8 billion in total. Furthermore, some FTX customers had reported issues making withdrawals from their accounts, raising concerns about FTX's liquidity. On Thursday, Bankman-Fried estimated that FTX only had 80% available in liquid assets of the roughly $5 billion in assets customers withdrew on Sunday.

☆ Sequoia Capital took a $213 million bath on FTX after the crypto exchange imploded. That's not that bad, VCs say.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-10 | by ( Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

FTX investor Sequoia Capital has marked down its position to $0 as the crypto exchange crumbles. Sequoia Capital now views its $213.5 million investment in FTX as worthless as the crypto exchange teeters on the brink of collapse after an eleventh-hour deal to salvage the business fell apart. "Somehow Sequoia capital turned a FTX write down to zero into a humblebrag. It invested $150 million into FTX through its third growth fund, which Sequoia said totaled less than 3% of that fund's capital commitments. In its letter to investors, Sequoia said it does "extensive research and thorough diligence" on every investment it makes.

☆ Dremio: 2022 Top Startups for the Enterprise
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-07 | by ( Cnbc.Com Staff | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Dremio is an open lakehouse platform aiming to reinvent SQL — a core language used to manage data — and simplify data structure. Founded in 2015 in Santa Clara, California, the company allows data teams to save time pulling insights and makes data engineering easier. With Dremio, users have the ability to access analytics and business intelligence on their data lakehouse with the same functionality as data warehouses. The company announced that it closed a $160 million Series E funding round in January 2022, which doubled its valuation to $2 billion. Insight Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Redpoint, Cisco and Sapphire Ventures are among Dremio investors.

☆ Eightfold.AI: 2022 Top Startups for the Enterprise
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-07 | by ( Cnbc.Com Staff | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

The six-year-old company uses deep learning and artificial intelligence to help companies find, recruit, and retain employees. Its talent acquisition platform enables customers to identify suitable candidates and import and filter through thousands of resumes. A candidate can upload a resume and Eightfold's system will identify the most relevant jobs for that candidate in real time. Customers include Bayer, Capital One, Activision, Booking.com, Vodafone, Mercado Libre and Akamai. The company has raised nearly $400 million to date from investors including SoftBank, General Catalyst, Capital One Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Foundation Capital.

Web Summit, the sector’s annual bash held in Lisbon, is doing the opposite. And the usual welter of tech companies, investors and celebrities are still milling around. That new strain of reality-based tech investing has a lot further to go, though. The relative lack of investor focus at Web Summit on new technologies that could really move the dial, such as ways to ease climate change, is striking. The sector, Smith told Breakingviews, will increasingly “influence what people talk about and who comes to Web Summit”.

☆ Insider is seeking nominations for the 2022 rising stars of venture capital
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-02 | by ( Madeline Renbarger | Samantha Stokes | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

Insider is putting together a list of the best up-and-coming venture capitalists of 2022. We want to spotlight VCs who are skilled at dealmaking at both large and small funds. In the past, we've had people with a variety of roles and experiences from VC funds like Founders Fund, Greylock Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Tiger Global, and Spark Capital. Please make your submission below or through this form by November 11th to have your selection considered for the list. Please email Madeline Renbarger at mrenbarger@insider.com or Samantha Stokes at sstokes@insider.com with any questions or issues submitting your nominations.

☆ Women in venture capital are writing the rules of maternity leave and bending the male-dominated culture to their will
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-31 | by ( Melia Russell | Madeline Renbarger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

And with more women entering the male-dominated venture industry, firms are being forced to craft maternity leave policies on the fly to accommodate new mothers. Forty years ago, the clubby male world of venture capital admitted so few women that maternity leave as a benefit was effectively nonexistent. "There is no playbook about how to take maternity leave or raise a family while also accelerating your career as an investor." Lux CapitalLike in many male-dominated industries, maternity leave as a benefit for investors doesn't come up in conversation until someone needs it. Though, the best policies, investors said, give women choices about how they operate on leave, rather than prescribing a one-size-fits-all leave.

☆ The Case for Why Consumers Will Still Want to Use Cryptocurrencies
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-30 | by ( ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The market for bitcoin and other digital assets has swung wildly in 2022, pushing prominent crypto firms into bankruptcy—and leaving many investors poorer. For a look at the state of the industry, and where it might be heading next, The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Dean spoke with Ravi Mhatre , founding partner of Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Sam Bankman-Fried , founder and chief executive of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, at The Wall Street Journal’s annual Tech Live conference. Here are edited excerpts of the conversation.

☆ Venture Firms Are Betting on Public Tech Stocks as Startup Market Stalls
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-13 | by ( Berber Jin | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

One of Amplitude’s largest shareholders when the data-analytics firm went public was Sequoia Capital. Venture-capital firms are jumping into the stock market, buying up battered shares in publicly traded tech companies at a time when they are investing less in the startups that have long been their focus. Some major venture firms including Accel and Lightspeed Venture Partners have purchased more stocks of companies they first backed as startups this year, defying the industry norm of selling those shares soon after public listings.

☆ Venture-Capital Firms Buy Up Public Tech Stocks as Startup Market Stalls
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-13 | by ( Berber Jin | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

☆ Blockchain.com gets Singapore licence, second crypto firm to obtain approval this week
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-12 | by ( Xinghui Kok | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Representations of cryptocurrency Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dash plunge into water in this illustration taken, May 23, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File PhotoSINGAPORE, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Blockchain.com, a cryptocurrency exchange backed by investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, said on Wednesday it had received approval from Singapore's central bank to offer payment services in the city-state. The announcement came a day after crypto giant, Coinbase, said it had also received the same approval. This brings the number of crypto companies allowed to operate in Singapore to 18, out of the roughly 180 firms who have applied for a crypto payments licence since 2020. Blockchain.com, which was valued at $14 billion in March, said in a statement that it views Singapore as an attractive location to grow its institutional customers and team.

☆ Stability AI, the startup behind the hot text-to-image art generator Stable Diffusion, quietly raised funding at a $1 billion valuation
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-11 | by ( Matthew Lynley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Stable Diffusion text-to-image model creator Stability AI has closed a massive financing round. Stable Diffusion is among a number of hyper-popular models like OpenAI's DALL-E 2. Stability AI, the creators of the hyper-popular text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion, has closed a new funding round that values the company at $1 billion, multiple sources familiar with the deal tell Insider. Founded in 2020, London-based Stability AI quickly became a household name in AI with the public release of Stable Diffusion in August 2022. For the time being, however, Stability AI is a young startup with a yet-unproven business plan.

Insider asked more than 40 investors to identify top up-and-coming fintechs. Investors nominated startups both inside and outside of their own portfolios. Insider surveyed 43 investors — including those from Bain Capital Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and QED Investors — about the most promising fintechs to watch. Startups that were nominated included a mix of investors' portfolio companies and ones they have no financial interest in. As was the case last year, the majority of those nominated work with other businesses, not individual consumers.

☆ Exclusive: TripActions has filed confidentially for an IPO, targeting a $12 billion valuation, a rare exception in the frozen IPO market
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-28 | by ( Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

TripActions, which was last valued at $7.25 billion, aims to modernize business travel. Founded in 2015 by Ariel Cohen and Ilan Twig, the Palo Alto-based company helps businesses manage travel, company cards and expenses for employees. At the time, Cohen said TripActions had originally planned to go public this year but delayed those plans when the market went south. TripActions raised $275 million in series F funding last fall at a $7.25 billion valuation in a deal led by Greenoaks. Andreessen Horowitz first invested in TripActions in 2018, when it led the company's series C funding round at a $1.1 billion valuation.

Investors nominated startups both inside and outside of their own portfolios. Check out the 61 startups identified as the most promising fintechs. Startups that were nominated included a mix of investors' portfolio companies and ones they have no financial interest in. In total, 61 startups that haven't raised beyond a Series B round were identified. Many investors noted B2B startups are one of the biggest bright spots in the sector as businesses and financial institutions continue to streamline their processes and cut costs where they can.

☆ Walmart's secretive fintech ONE is the new disruptor in consumer banking, and the retailer has nabbed talent from Wall Street mainstays like Goldman Sachs.
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-20 | by ( Aaron Weinman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

In January last year, the retailer said it was pursuing a partnership with venture-capital firm Ribbit Capital, which backed Robinhood. The next month, Walmart lured Omer Ismail and David Stark, two executives from Goldman Sachs' Marcus, over to work on a fintech initiative. Insider's Ann Gehan, Carter Johnson, and Ben Tobin have identified the key people shaping this effort at its fintech called ONE. Done deals :Acrisure, a fintech company that operates an insurance broker and real-estate services company, has acquired B2Z Insurance. Aditxt, a biotech company developing tech around monitoring the immune system, raised $20 million after selling 3.33 million shares on Nasdaq.

Insider asked more than 40 top fintech investors to nominate the most promising fintechs. Here are the 61 most promising fintechs. Insider surveyed 43 investors — including those from Bain Capital Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and QED Investors — about the most promising fintechs to watch. Global fintech funding dropped to $20.4 billion in the second quarter, falling 46% from last year, according to data from CB Insights. Check out the 61 fintechs identified as most promising by top investors.

☆ See the 22-slide presentation an Israeli startup used to raise $45 million for an easier way to treat migraines
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-12 | by ( Sarah Braner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Israeli healthcare startup Theranica just raised a $25 million Series C round. Theranica, an Israel-based startup developing treatments for pain management, raised a $45 million series C funding round last month. Theranica makes Nerivio, a device placed on the arm that treats migraines through electrical stimulation without needing to use drugs. The company raised a $6 million series A round in 2017 and a $35 million series B round in 2019. Here is the 22-slide presentation Theranica used to raise its $45 million Series C round.

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