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| Hey Insiders, Today's newsletter covers: - 👤 Pivot Bio's new CEO
- 📉 Amazon's acquisition of Fig amidst global M&A slowdown
- 🤝 AtNorth acquires Gompute
If you find this newsletter useful, please share it with your friends and colleagues. Thank you. Karan
p/karan-chafekar | |
| 1 | | Agriculture tech startup Pivot Bio's co-founder Karsten Temme is set to hand over the CEO role to veteran agtech investor Chris Abbott. Temme will stay with the company as its chief innovation officer. The change of guard comes as the company crossed a milestone of raking in $100M in revenue in 2023, up 60% YoY. More: - Abbott previously co-led Continental Grain Company's Conti Ventures for five years since its establishment in 2018.
- Conti Ventures invested in Pivot Bio in 2018 and has been a board member.
- In the near future, Pivot Bio intends to expand its manufacturing and distribution across the U.S.
- The startup intends to pursue international expansion in "due time," with Abbott listing Canada and South America as two potential expansion targets.
Q: At what point must founders consider handing over the CEO role to experienced leaders? Join the conversation here. |     | |
| 2 | | Amazon acquired Y Combinator-backed startup Fig's technology for an undisclosed sum. What happened: Fig's co-founders and employees will join Amazon Web Services' team. Fig, which is building an autocomplete functionality for the command line interface, has raised slightly over $2M in total funding. The San Francisco, Calif.-based startup has been backed by YC, General Catalyst, Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel, Eventbrite founder Kevin Hartz, and ex-GitHub CTO Jason Warner. 
What the numbers say: The acquisition comes as M&A activity has slowed globally in 2023. Global M&A deal value declined by 6.5% QoQ and 33.7% YoY to $873.4B in Q2 2023, per Pitchbook. In North America, M&A deal values dipped by 4.5% QoQ and 28.5% YoY to $466.5B. The dip was slightly more severe in Europe, which saw $293.4B worth of M&A transactions, down 7.6% QoQ and 40.2% YoY.
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| 3 | | AtNorth, an Icelandic computing and AI services company, announced the acquisition of Gompute, which focuses on running computer-aided engineering simulations. Gompute's data center, with a potential output of 10MW, in Gothenburg, Sweden, will be integrated with AtNorth's portfolio. More: - AtNorth operates six data centers across the Nordic region, with a new site expected in Helsinki, Finland, in Q3 2024.
- The company's data centers run on renewable energy and circular economy principles.
- Eyjolfur Magnús Kristinsson, AtNorth's CEO, highlighted the "huge surge" in demand for HPC and AI workloads, which led to the acquisition.
- AtNorth was acquired by Switzerland-based private equity firm Partners Group in Dec. 2021.
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| 4 | | IoTech, a San Francisco-based company focused on open-edge computing, raised a growth round led by Dell Technologies Capital. The transaction amount was not disclosed. More: - The startup plans to use the funds to expand pre-sales support, sales, and marketing.
- IoTech claims Accenture, Schneider Electric, Johnson Controls, and King Steel among its customers.
- The company develops Edge Central, a modular open-edge distributed computing data platform and edge management software that seeks to reduce time-to-value.
- The round included participation by SPDG, Northstar Ventures, and the Scottish Investment Bank.
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| 5 | | Amplified Industries, an Internet of Things startup, is launching out of stealth mode with $10M in funding led by Schooner Capital. The company focuses on providing real-time data for the oil industry to boost productivity, prevent failures, and reduce environmental impact. More: - One of the startup's applications detects mechanical issues to prevent leaks by including an emergency shut-off for pumps.
- Amplified claims there are 4,000 devices deployed across six states.
- Bill Severns, founder of the Energy Consulting Group, says the concept of a digital oil field has been present for over 20 years; however, widespread adoption has been challenging.
- The startup was spun out of MIT in 2019, having won the university's $100,000 startup competition.
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| 6 | | Swedish payments startup Trustly acquired French payments platform SlimPay for €70M ($75.5M). The acquisition will help Trustly expand its product offerings to include recurring payment solutions such as subscriptions and donations. Trustly's CEO Johan Tjärnberg will leverage the buyout "to enable open banking to consumers across Europe." More: - Trustly intends to start rolling out the new solutions in SlimPay's existing markets in Germany, France, Spain, and Italy.
- Trustly will fund the acquisition with additional capital received from existing backers.
- The Nordic Capital-backed startup shelved plans to go public in 2021.
- SlimPay had last raised a €15M ($16.2M) Series A funding round led by Prime Ventures in Jul. 2015.
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- Synthetaic inked a five-year agreement with Microsoft, giving the AI startup access to nearly one million hours of cloud compute resources.
- The tax authorities in India are investigating the founders of three unicorn startups, FirstCry.com, Globalbees Brands, and Xpressbees, for allegedly evading taxes.
- Indian edtech startup Byju's chief business officer, Prathyusha Agarwal, stepped down from his role.
- Better Life Partners, a startup offering medical and behavioral healthcare solutions for people dealing with addictions, closed its Series B funding round at $26.5M. F-Prime Capital and aMoon co-led the funding round.
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Term of the Day White-collar crime: A white-collar crime is committed by someone of a higher social or economic status in the course of their occupation, motivated by financial gain. Question of the Week Do you share details about your salary with your coworkers? Join the conversation |
INSIDE STARTUPS LEADERBOARD (30 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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