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| Here’s a look at today’s Startups briefing. - 👥 RevOps platform Fullcast got $34M seed funding and new leadership
- 📝 Qualia sued competitor Settlor and former employee Krista Myers for stealing trade secrets.
- 🌎 Brazilian fintech CloudWalk to expand to the U.S.
We have also rounded up the top early-stage funding rounds of this week. Thank you. Karan
p/karan-chafekar | |
| 1 | | Epic Ventures led a $34M seed round and the acquisition of RevOps software maker Fullcast. The round includes a $4M debt facility availed from Silicon Valley Bank. Tech entrepreneur Ryan Westwood, who personally invested $8M in the round, is succeeding founder Dharmesh Singh as the CEO. Westwood's priority is to improve the platform's user interface, enhance capacity planning, expand the workforce, and automate workflows with AI. More: - Founders Singh and Bala Balabaskaran are transitioning into the chief customer officer and chief technology officer roles, respectively.
- Westwood previously co-founded Simplus, a tech consulting firm acquired by Infosys for $250M in 2020, and was also the CEO and chairman of PcCareSupport.
- Westwood is bringing along with him former co-workers who are stepping into the C-suite roles, with Isaac Westwood taking up the chief operating officer role, Amy Cook stepping into the chief marketing officer role, and Lance Evanson into the chief commercial officer position.
- The startup has raked in $6.5M in revenue since its launch in 2021.
- About 80 clients, including Iterable and Cobra, use the firm's software to manage and track the performance of their revenue-generating teams.
- Other investors participating in the round include Companyon Ventures, Firsthand Alliance, True Blue Partners, and Sepio Capital.
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| 2 | | VCs deployed $583.8M in early-stage North American startups this week between Jan. 13 and Jan. 19, per Crunchbase data. Biopharma startups raked in 21% of the funding this week. Biotech, AI, and B2B startups nabbed 19%, 12%, and 9% of the financing, respectively. 
Here are the top five largest rounds announced this week: - Tr1X, a biotech startup developing cures for immune and inflammatory diseases, emerged from stealth mode with a $75M Series A funding led by The Column Group. NEVA SGR and Alexandria Ventures participated in the round.
- New Enterprise Associates led a $75M Series B funding round into maternal and fetal medicine biopharmaceutical startup Comanche Biopharma. GV, F-Prime Capital, Lilly Asia Ventures, Longview Healthcare Ventures, and Atlas Ventures participated in the round.
- Forta, a healthcare services startup that leverages AI to offer care programs, bagged $55M in Series A funding led by Insight Partners. The round saw participation from Exor Ventures, Alumni Ventures, 23&Me, Curative, Flexport, Warby Parker, Allbirds, and others.
- Ratio Therapeutics, a startup developing radiopharmaceuticals for the treatment of cancers, closed its Series B funding round at $50M. Schusterman, Duquesne, PagsGroup, and Bristol Myers Squibb participated in the funding round.
- Towable battery-powered travel trailer startup Lightship closed its Series B round at $34M. Obvious Ventures and Prelude Ventures led the round, joined by Allegis Capital, Thor Industries, and TechNexus Venture Collaborative.
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| 3 | | Digital real estate closing and settlement platform Qualia is suing title production software firm Settlor and former employee Krista Myers, who is now a product manager at Settlor. Qualia accused Myers of stealing roughly 900 files, including plans for ResWare software, key customer contracts, list of customers, specifications of future product features, and planned customer pricing methods when she left the firm. More: - The firm alleges that Myers had "secretly" accepted the position at Settlor when she resigned from her position in Qualia in May 2023.
- Myers was an employee with Adeptive Software and later joined Qualia in 2021, when the latter acquired ResWare from Adeptive in December 2020.
- Qualia initially reminded Myers to keep confidential information private in September 2023, which she ignored.
- Qualia claims it has forensic proof that Myers has stolen intellectual property and trade secrets.
- The firm is suing both for misappropriation of trade secrets.
- Additionally, it is suing Myers for breach of contract and Settlor for intentional interference with a contract.
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| 4 | | Brazilian payments startup CloudWalk is gearing up to expand its tap-to-pay and other technologies to the U.S. This is the first step of CloudWalk's global expansion ambitions. The expansion comes after the firm broke even last year with $400M in annual revenue. More: - CloudWalk will initially offer merchant payment solutions in New York City, San Francisco, and Austin through the Jim.com portal.
- The firm had about 1.1 million clients last year.
- CloudWalk touched a valuation of $2.15B at its last funding round in 2021.
- To date, it has raised $360M in venture capital from Coatue, DST Global, Valor Capital, and other investors.
- Founder and CEO Luis Silva believes the U.S. market has a transaction volume that is 10 times larger than Brazil's.
- Silva believes the time is right for its U.S. expansion as it still lags behind Brazil in digital and instant payments.
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| 5 | | 280 Earth, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based direct air capture startup that spun out from Google's Moonshot Factory X, is set to officially launch soon. The firm is closing in on a funding round led by former Facebook CFO Gideon Yu through his VC firm Yu Capital. More: - Yu will also serve as the company's executive chairman.
- The firm is developing a dry sorbent-based direct air capture technology that can operate at lower temperatures than competitors and leverage waste heat.
- Builders VC is also reportedly participating in the firm's funding round.
- The company purchased three acres of land near Taylor Lake for its first facility in Oregon.
Zoom out: - Oil and gas companies have started investing in the direct air capture market, thanks to the incentives provided by the U.S. government and the increasing investor support.
- Occidental acquired Carbon Engineering startup for $1.1B last August.
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| 6 | | Autonomous identity security solutions provider Oleria bagged $33.1M in Series A funding led by Evolution Equity Partners with participation from Salesforce Ventures, Tapestry VC, and Zscaler. The firm will use the proceeds to further develop its product innovation, incorporate AI, and accelerate its go-to-market strategy. More: - Former Salesforce chief trust officer Jim Alkove and former JumpCloud chief product officer Jagadeesh Kunda founded Oleria.
- The fresh funding brings the firm's total funds raised to date to $40M.
- It last raised a $8M seed round led by Salesforce Ventures in March 2023, 10 months after emerging in stealth.
- Evolution's partner Taher Elgamal and former Mandiant COO John Watters will join the company's board of directors as part of the transaction.
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- Briq, a startup automating financial workflows for construction companies, extended its Series B round with an additional $8M. The firm retained the same $150M valuation from its previous $30M Series B round from June 2021. The current round was co-led by MetaProp, Blackhorn, and Enaic.
- Light-duty EV truck manufacturer Newrizon took the first step of its globalization strategy by exporting its electric vehicles to the Middle East.
- Writer, the startup behind multilingual LLM AI platform, announced support for 30 more languages, including Spanish, French, Hindi, Arabic, and Russian.
- Deeptech firm Qlik acquired intellectual property, including patents and technology, from natural language processing and generative AI startup Kyndi for an undisclosed sum.
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 | Analyst | | Karan Chafekar is a Management Consultant, Business enthusiast, and Licensed Pilot. | | This newsletter was edited by Vibha Chapparike | |
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