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| Hey Insiders, Here are the latest stories: - Atlassian to acquire video-messaging startup Loom for $975M
- Accelerators increased dealmaking in 2022 as the broader VC market slumped
- AI for MRI startup Orbem raises $31.6M
If you find this newsletter useful, please share it with your friends and colleagues. Thank you. Karan
p/karan-chafekar | |
| 1 | | Team collaboration software maker Atlassian acquired video messaging startup Loom for $975M. Loom will remain a standalone product, but Atlassian will integrate it into its Jira and Confluence tools. The company will pay $880M in cash and the rest in equivalent stock awards. More: - The acquisition amount is less than Loom's peak valuation of $1.53B from May 2021, when it raised a $130M Series C round.
- Loom laid off 14% of its workforce last year, citing "increased economic uncertainty."
- Despite a higher number of workers returning to offices, Loom's CEO Joe Thomas said, "Our core engagement metrics continue to grow like 50% to 60% per year."
- Loom's acquisition will help Atlassian to increase its product offerings and enable customers to communicate and collaborate more effectively.
- "Async video is the next evolution of team collaboration, and teaming up with Loom helps distributed teams communicate in deeply human ways," said Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes.
Zoom out: - Loom's acquisition amount is roughly the same as the value of Atlassian's previous 20 acquisitions combined.
Q: What key negotiation strategies can startup founders use when evaluating acquisition offers from larger companies to ensure they secure favorable terms and conditions? Join the conversation here. |     | |
| 2 | | 50 of the most active accelerators increased their dealmaking by 14% YoY, closing the year with 7,794 deals, per a new report from CB Insights. 
What the numbers say: The increased dealmaking from accelerators came against a backdrop of a venture funding dip, which saw venture activity decline across the broader market by 4% YoY. With startup valuations declining, investors turned towards early-stage startups to scoop up high-potential opportunities. The median deal count in accelerators increased to 83 in 2022, up 41% YoY. Plug & Play, Y Combinator, and Techstars retained the top spot for the most active accelerators since 2020. However, only Techstars increased its dealmaking from 2021 to 2022. Relevance: Corporate accelerators increased their dealmaking, bagging a 17% share of the total deals in 2022. Amazon launched its Impact Accelerator and Healthcare Accelerator, which helped boost its dealmaking by 247% YoY last year. Similarly, Microsoft and Alphabet increased their accelerator deal count by 118% YoY and 84% YoY, respectively. | | | |
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| 3 | | Orbem, a Germany-based deep tech startup, secured a €30M ($31.6M) Series A led by 83North. The startup uses artificial intelligence to scan biological materials and reduce human dependency on MRI results. More: - The announcement follows the launch of Orbem's product for determining chicken sexes, enabling results in one second per egg.
- The startup has scanned over 21 million eggs.
- "Our mission is to unleash AI-powered imaging for everything and everyone. We believe this is the best way to carry out our core purpose of shedding light on the world's toughest challenges," said the company's CEO, Dr. Pedro Gomez.
- The round included participation from La Famiglia and recurring investors The Venture Collective, Possible Ventures, and Dr. Rüdiger Schmidt.
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| 4 | | Lanch, a Berlin-based startup that partners with influencers to create food brands, raised $6.9M. The startup partnered with German YouTubers Knossi and Trymacs to sell more than 30,000 pizzas during its launch weekend. More: - The round was led by Felix Capital and HV Capital.
- Lanch also focuses on providing its influencers with qualitative and quantitative data to understand customer preferences.
- As part of its model, restaurants that carry the products get one-third of the revenue, with the remainder being split between delivery carriers, influencers, and Lanch.
- In the U.S., the area is best known for Virtual Dining Concepts partnership with Mr. Beast, which launched burger sales in 2018. The YouTuber sued VDC over customer complaints, after which the company countersued Mr. Beast for $100M.
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| 5 | | A third-party app for social media service BlueSky, GraySky, launched pre-orders on the Apple App Store. Having tested the app with 4,000 users, GraySky plans to officially launch on Oct. 21. More: - The aim of the new app is to support features not yet available on BlueSky, such as visibility for other users' likes or the ability to send compatible GIFs.
- GraySky plans to add support for bookmarks, drafts, automatically generating alt text, and muted words, among other features.
- BlueSky surpassed one million users in mid-September after reaching one million downloads in July (not all those with invite codes created accounts).
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| 6 | | Robotics startup Neura Robotics is set to pursue U.S. expansion after closing its latest $16M funding round. InterAlpen Partners led the funding round. Neura CEO David Reger believes that "having an American investor on board creates the perfect conditions for our U.S. market launch in 2024." More: - Four months ago, the firm closed a $55M funding round from Lingotto, Vsquared Ventures, Primepulse, and HV Capital.
- The German startup has four products in its pipeline, namely a multi-sensing indoor mobile robot MAV, an industrial robotic assistant, LARA, a multi-purpose service robot, MiPA; and a cognitive robot, MAiRA.
- Neura's robots are designed to meet ongoing labor shortages and work alongside humans in manufacturing and heavy industries.
Zoom out: - According to the company, the U.S. robotics market will generate an estimated $7.7B in revenue in 2023.
- Neura predicts the global robotics market to grow to $45B by 2028.
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- Payments technology company Tradeshift Holdings has ousted co-founder Christian Lanng due to "serious allegations of sexual assault and harassment" and "gross misconduct on multiple grounds."
- Byju's unit in Singapore has been put under receivership by its lenders. Receiver Kroll Pte. has appointed restructuring experts to take control of Great Learning Education Pte. Ltd. and Byju's Pte. Ltd.
- Indian payments firm CRED is set to acquire online wealth management platform Kuvera.
- AI-powered speech recognition startup Deepgram has laid off 20% of its staff, or around 20 people.
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INSIDE STARTUPS LEADERBOARD (7 DAYS) |
 | Analyst | | Karan Chafekar is a Management Consultant, Business enthusiast, and Licensed Pilot.
Nicolas is a Sr. Analyst at Inside, covering startups and transportation trends. He is an avid map maker and data nerd. Nicolas has worked in the shared-scooter space, as well as advised e-bike and moped start-ups. | | This newsletter was edited by Vibha Chapparike | |
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