Here’s a roundup of the most important deals in venture capital in the last week.
Food ordering platform GrubHub soared more than 24 percent on Wednesday, following a strong second-quarter earnings report and the company’s announcement it would acquire LevelUp, a mobile ordering and payments platform, for $390 million in an all-cash deal. Earlier investors in the LevelUp included JP Morgan, Alphabet‘s GV (formerly known as Google Ventures), Highland Capital Partners, and Discover Card founder Phil Purcell via his fund Continental Advisors. Founded by Seth Priebatsch, LevelUp also graduated from DreamIt Ventures accelerator.
Bloom Energy went public with shares spiking 75 percent on Wednesday, the company’s first day of trading. The company makes fuel cells that are used to power office buildings, data centers and college campuses, among other facilities. Bloom priced its shares at $15 and closed the day at $25. It sold 18 million shares, raising $270 million.
Facebook announced the acquisition of messaging start-up called Redkix for $100 million. Redkix employees will join the Facebook team behind Workplace, which is the company’s subscription-based platform for businesses. The deal was announced in the middle of Facebook’s worst trading week in history. The stock lost around 20% in a single day, wiping out around $120 billion in shareholder wealth.
British drug giant GlaxoSmithKline is investing $300 million in 23andMe, the consumer genetics company, and forging a four-year collaboration to discover medicines using human genetics as a guide. The partnership establishes GSK as 23andMe’s exclusive collaborator for drug target discovery, the companies said Wednesday. Under the company’s new Chief Scientific Officer Hal Barron, GSK is focusing its research strategy on the immune system, genetics and advanced analytics and technology.
Temasek led a $100 million investment in Flywire, a cross-border payments firm formerly known as PeerTransfer. Flywire started out helping international college students pay tuition, room and board, but of late is also involved in real estate, travel and international healthcare payments across borders.
A “pay-by-the-mile” auto insurance company, MetroMile, raised $90 million in a growth round of funding led by Tokio Marin, Intact Financial, along with Bill Maris’ Section 32, NEA, Index and Steve Jurvetson’s Future Fund.
ClassPass raised $85 million in fresh funding to fuel the company’s international expansion. New York-based ClassPass sells memberships that allow customers to attend fitness classes at a wide variety of participating gyms or studios. The company intends to hop across the pond to the United Kingdom and on into Asia, launching in 20 new countries by the end of 2019.
Cogito, a start-up whose software analyzes voices to help call center workers resolve customers’ needs more effectively, raised $37 million in fresh funding. Goldman Sachs Growth Equity led the round. Earlier backers OpenView Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures also participated.
ScandIt raised $30 million from GV and NGP Capital for technology that gives any smart device– from tablets to drones and wearables– into a scanner. The company’s computer vision system can read bar codes, text, and recognize different shapes and images.
Space-tech venture LeoLabs a series A round of $13 million led by Airbus Ventures and WERU Investment. The company is building a network of radars that can track small debris and satellites in low-Earth orbit, in addition to its existing low-Earth orbit mapping systems.
Blavity, a digital news organization with a target audience of Black millennials, raised $6.5 million in a round led by GV (Google’s venture arm) joined by Comcast Ventures, Plexo Capital and Baron Davis Enterprises.
-CNBC’s Meg Tirrell, Jordan Novet and Chloe Aiello contributed reporting.
