Facebook Co-Founder On Hunt For Startups With $820M Fund
Billionaire Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin’s budding venture capital firm has raised a new $820 million fund for investments in startups, a move that comes at a time when many entrepreneurs are struggling amid a sharp decline in financing deals. B Capital Group, launched five years ago by Saverin and former Bain Capital executive Raj Ganguly, and backed by Boston Consulting Group, announced Tuesday (June 30) it had closed on its second fund, with plans to invest the $820 million “in growth-stage startups” that are “transforming large industries and scaling rapidly.”
COVID-19 has been a challenge for many startups, with at least two different surveys finding a decline in the number of venture capital deals over the first half of 2020.However, the crisis has also created new opportunities as well for startups, with the pandemic having “thrust the world into a new digital age, exposing areas that need to be reimagined,” B Capital Group noted in its announcement on the $820 million fund, its second fund.
Lululemon set to acquire home fitness startup Mirror for $500M
Lululemon today announced plans to acquire home exercise startup Mirror for $500 million. The fitness apparel company noted its plans by way of a press release, noting that it hopes to close the sale by the end of the second fiscal quarter of this year. The deal comes at a time when home workout solutions are in high demand. The COVID-19 pandemic has severely limited workout options for many across the world, and the continued closure of gyms has prolonged the problem. Even when they begin to reopen in different locales, it seems many will be wary of returning to a potentially high-risk enclosed space, so long as the virus continues to spread.
Capital raises $9M for its AI-based ‘capital as a service’ funding platform for startups
In 2019, in the US alone, more than 10,000 startups raised more than $133 billion in venture funding, with a large proportion of that equity investments. Today, a company building a platform to help startups consider alternative routes to financing — specifically less dilutive options that give up less or no equity in the process — is announcing a round of funding of its own to ramp up its activity.
Capital, which has built an AI-based platform called the “Capital Machine” that ingests details about your company to provide tips on how to optimise it and then provides non-dilutive financing for it, has raised a further $9 million, a “Seed 2” that it will use to continue expanding the Capital Machine’s functionality.
Many of these are repeat backers: this second seed round comes about 8 months after Capital launched with its first seed funding of $5 million.
Cyber Security Startup Hunters Raises $15 Million in Series A Round
Israeli cyber security startup Hunters announced June 30 that it has raised $15 million in Series A funding for further development of its solution for detecting and responding to cyberattacks. The investors participating in the round included Microsoft’s venture fund M12, US Venture Partners, seed investors YL Ventures and Blumberg Capital, and Okta Ventures.
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