Amazon's acquisition. Delivery robots. Supersonic jet company raises.
Hola,
Unicorn startups continue to raise massive funding rounds — WeWork raised $300M just this week — but relatively few are seeing the exit door.
Globally, the number of $1B+ VC-backed company exits peaked in 2014 at 32, fell to 20 in 2015, and bounced up to 23 in 2016. But there have been only 4 so far this year, including the IPOs of Snap and Mulesoft this month.
In other words, despite Snap’s hyped offering, 2017 is not off to a rip-roaring start in this respect.
There are some unicorn IPOs expected soon, including those of Okta and Cloudera.
But other companies are under pressure. Middle Eastern e-commerce player Souq, which was valued at $1B earlier this year, was bought by Amazon for up to $750M earlier this week. And Indian e-commerce site Flipkart saw its valuation cut from $16B to $11B last week.
Meanwhile there’s a global pile-up of 167 VC-backed unicorns waiting to make good on their ten-figure valuations. That’s a lot of impatient venture investors drumming their fingers on the table. And it’s an open question whether public or M&A markets have the appetite to absorb this glut any time soon.
$300M: This week, SoftBank invested $300M into New York-based unicorn WeWork, a provider of co-working and office spaces. Earlier this year, the Japanese telecom giant took part in a $330M round to Olacabs and a $500M round to SoFi, among other investments. We previously looked at SoftBank’s investments in private companies in the US versus those it made in other parts of the globe. You can access the relevant parts of the WeWork filing connected to the new raise here, normally available only to CB Insights clients as part of our new Enhanced Valuation data.
$750M: Amazon acquired e-commerce company Souq.com for up to $750M. The UAE-based company was valued at $1B in February 2016 and previously received funding from investors including Naspers, Tiger Global Management, and Baillie Gifford & Co., among others. We recently looked at the most active investors in the UAE and where they are placing their bets.
50 to 100 years: US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said in an interview this week that he believes AI, machine learning, and robots won’t impact the US jobs market significantly for another 50 to 100 years, and said “it’s not even on our radar screen.”
$37M: The amount raised by hotel booking app HotelTonight in a round led by smart money investor Accel Partners. Other top VCs to previously invest in the company include First Round Capital and Battery Ventures. We looked at smart money VC trends into travel tech here.
2.6x: Supersonic jet company Boom Technology raised a $33M Series A from 8VC, Y Combinator, RRE Ventures, Caffeinated Capital, and Palm Drive Capital. The company says its Boom jet is 2.6x faster than any other airliner (going at a speed of 1,451 MPH) and can cut the travel time from London to NYC to 3 hours and 15 minutes. The cost per way is $2,500.
$5: Online publishing platform Medium has announced the launch of its paid subscription service. Users will be charged $5 a month to receive exclusive content, features, and early access to “a new Medium experience.” Subscribers will also be able to save stories to an offline reading list.
14th: The United Nations released its World Happiness Report, ranking global happiness among 155 countries based on a number of socioeconomic factors. Norway took first place, followed by Denmark, Iceland, and Switzerland. The United States is witnessing a declining level of happiness, from ranking third in 2007 to ranking fourteenth in 2016. Central African Republic is the least happy country on the list.
