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This week in space historyI don’t mean to be impolite, but this week in space history we’re revisiting…URANUS.
That’s right: On March 13, 1781, a German-born, British astronomer named Sir William Herschel noticed a faint object through his telescope.
He initially thought it might be a comet, but later correctly identified it as our solar system’s seventh planet.
Berlin’s Razor Group has acquired U.S.-based Perch, and on top of this it has raised just over $100 million led by Presight Capital with other undisclosed investors participating.
The news is the latest development in a wider consolidation and reordering taking place in the world of e-commerce aggregation.
Perch, we have heard from multiple sources, had been looking for a buyer for the better part of a year.
Perch and Razor do happen to have some investors in common, such as Victory Park Capital, which may well have been central to the negotiations between the two.
He claims that this deal solidifies Razor as the “market leader”, and that it is on track for $1 billion in revenues in the next four to eight quarters.
Everbridge, a critical event management (CEM) software company, is going private in a $1.8 billion all-cash deal that will see it taken over by private equity giant Thoma Bravo — 20% more than what was originally announced last month.
Things never recovered, with its valuation hovering at below the $1 billion mark for the past six months.
Premium planThoma Bravo, a private equity firm renowned for snapping up underperforming enterprise software firms, is effectively paying a premium in excess of 83%* on Everbridge’s market cap on February 2.
“We look forward to working with Everbridge to expand their ability to capitalize on opportunities in an expanding marketplace for risk, compliance, and safety solutions,” Thoma Bravo partner Hudson Smith said in a press release.
*This article was updated on March 1, 2024, with amended acquisition price and premiums after Everbridge’s “go shop” process yielded greater interest.
Payments infrastructure giant Stripe said today it has inked deals with investors to provide liquidity to current and former employees through a tender offer at a $65 billion valuation.
Notably, the valuation represents a 30% increase compared to what Stripe was valued at last March when it raised $6.5 billion in Series I funding at a $50 billion valuation.
But it is also still lower than the $95 billion valuation achieved in March of 2021.
A Stripe IPO has been long anticipated and was widely expected to happen in 2024.
But with this deal, it appears that an initial public offering may not take place until next year.
Today, KKR added to that growing total when it announced it was going to acquire Broadcom’s end user computing business for $4 billion.
These pieces include VMware Workspace One and VMware Horizon, two remote desktop applications that had been part of the VMware family of products.
Almost immediately, Broadcom began slashing costs, starting with laying off over 2000 VMware employees, just a week after the deal was official.
KKR managing director Bradley Brown still sees a lot of room for growth moving forward to build out the EUC (end user computing) division into a vibrant stand-alone business.
One interesting aspect of this deal is that KKR intends to implement an employee ownership program, giving employees a chance to own equity in the new company alongside KKR.
This “deepened” partnership will focus on commercial self-driving Ram delivery vans, a target that was first announced in 2020 and promptly faded from public view.
Discussions on this “improved” deal have focused, in part, on a crux around driverless delivery: how does the package get from the vehicle to the customer?
Waymo, which is owned by Google parent-company Alphabet, currently doesn’t operate a commercial delivery service using its self-driving vehicles.
That deal did include a future plan to include delivery via Uber Eats, but as of today, it has not launched, according to a Waymo spokesperson.
Under the deal, Fiat Chrysler — now known as Stellantis — would handle the manufacturing and provide Waymo with minivans that built in redundancies designed for autonomous driving.
Match Group’s deal with OpenAI is just business with AI glitter on topListen here or wherever you get your podcasts.
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This week, Mary Ann, Kirsten and Alex gathered to chat through a massive sheaf of news.
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In a press release written with help from ChatGPT, Match Group announced an enterprise agreement with the AI chatbot’s maker, OpenAI.
The AI tech will be used to help Match Group employees with work-related tasks, the company says, and come as part of Match’s $20 million-plus bet on AI in 2024.
It even offered a quote from ChatGPT itself: “I’m thrilled that Match Group matched with me.
To keep its corporate data protected, only trained and licensed Match Group employees will have access to OpenAI’s tools, it noted.
Before being able to use these tools, Match Group employees will also have to undergo mandatory training that focuses on responsible use, the technology’s capabilities, as well as its limitations.
However, by the time the merger was closed, much of the SPAC cash was nowhere to be found.
The investors that chose to sell their shares in this way did better than anyone who stuck around, because MariaDB’s stock tanked sharply during its first day as a public company.
In its SPAC pitch, the company forecast its annual recurring revenue (ARR) to reach $53 million in FY 2022, and $72 million in FY 2023.
It also expected revenue of $47 million in FY 2022, and $64 million in FY 2023.
In the first quarter of FY 2024, MariaDB reported revenue of $13.6 million, up from $12.8 million a year ago.
FairMoney, a digital bank based in Lagos and headquartered in Paris, is in discussions to acquire Umba, a credit-led digital bank providing payroll and financial services to customers in Nigeria and Kenya, in a $20 million all-stock deal, sources tell TechCrunch.
Umba, founded by Tiernan Kennedy and Barry O’Mahony in San Francisco in 2018, was launched as a credit-led digital bank targeting emerging markets.
To date, the digital bank has secured around $20 million in funding, per PitchBook data.
FairMoney could likely be more interested in Umba’s microfinance license, obtained in 2022 through acquiring a majority shareholding in Daraja Microfinance Bank.
For FairMoney, acquiring Umba could streamline entry into Kenya, bypassing the lengthy licensing process that took Umba three years.
