Captain Fresh, a business-to-business harvest-to-retail marketplace for animal protein, is engaging with investors to raise up to $50 million in fresh funding, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Captain Fresh declined to comment.
The startup specifically focuses on seafood, helping fishermen and farmers sell their catch and livestock to businesses.
Captain Fresh has raised over $100 million prior to the new funding and was valued at $500 million in the previous round, whose first tranche it closed in March 2022.
It has since extended that round to raise another $15 million or so.
This week, read about Amazon, EV startup Fisker, electric boats, a bunch of new funding deals and my time driving the all-new Kia EV9.
Remember Lordstown Motors, the EV startup that went public via a SPAC and has since filed for bankruptcy protection?
Steve Burns, who founded and was then ousted from Lordstown Motors, is back with a new EV startup called LandX Motors.
Northvolt, the Swedish battery startup, secured a $5 billion debt deal to help pay for the expansion of its first gigafactory.
The Kia EV9 comes in five trims with the cheapest — the rear-wheel drive EV9 Light — starting at $54,900.
Reddit is preparing to launch its initial public offering (IPO) in March, according to a new report from Reuters.
Reddit is planning to make its public filing in late February and complete the IPO by the end of March.
The company is looking to sell around 10% of its shares in the IPO, and will decide on what IPO valuation to pursue closer to the time of the listing.
However, Reuters sources cautioned that Reddit’s IPO plans could potentially be pushed back, which has happened in the past.
Its IPO plans have also been delayed due to uncertainty around the IPO market over the last two years, Reuters notes.
According to PitchBook data, VC investments in crypto companies are down by 68% in 2023 compared to 2022.
But that’s a small number compared to 2022, the year during which crypto companies raised $30 billion.
French crypto startup Kiln just closed a $17 million funding round in December 2023.
As a reminder, staking consists in locking crypto assets in a blockchain to secure a blockchain and its transactions.
Several proof-of-stake blockchains let its users stake crypto assets, such as Polygon, Solana and Avalanche.
Prometeo, a startup out of Uruguay building channels to enable open banking across Latin America, is today announcing that it has picked up $13 million in funding to expand its business.
A lot of open banking these days focused on national rollouts — not least because banking conventions and regulations are often very localized.
(It’s not the only company that believes that open banking has a big role to play in financial services in the future: last year, the open banking startup Ivy raised funding specifically to expand to Latin America; and Christine wrote here extensively on Finerio, an ambitious open banking startup out of Mexico.
More recently, last year it led a $14 million round into nocnoc, a Latin America cross-border commerce specialist.
It also owns the point-of-sale payments company Zettle, which has been making very big inroads into Latin America for years now.
Hyperexponential, a London-based insurance technology (insurtech) startup that serves the property-casualty (P&C) insurance industry with “decision intelligence” for pricing, has raised $73 million in a Series B equity round of funding.
Boston-based venture capital (VC) firm Battery Ventures led the round, with participation from existing investor Highland Europe and Andreessen Horowitz (A16z).
Moreover, that Hyperexponential is bringing in high-profile U.S. VC firms points to an international roadmap, with the company confirming plans to expand beyond its current operations in the U.K. and Poland to the lucrative U.S. market.
“We’ve focused on building a capital-efficient, independent business that was both high-growth and sustainable from the outset,” said Hyperexponential co-founder and CEO Amrit Santhirasenan, in a statement.
The company also said that it plans expand into adjacent markets, including SME insurance.
Cap table management startup Carta has been dealing with a PR nightmare for the past couple of days.
The short of it is that one sales employee, according to Carta, used confidential data from one of the company’s customers to craft a sales pitch for a secondary stock sale.
The problem, according to Carta, is taken care of.
Before we dive into what this mess might portend for Carta, we need to understand the state of affairs at the company before this came to light.
While Carta hasn’t raised a round since that 2021-era transaction, per secondary data from platforms like Hiive Markets, Caplight and Notion, its current valuation is estimated to be about half of its last primary round.
PhotoRoom — a startup out of Paris, France — has built a popular AI-based image editing app and API targeting e-commerce vendors, media specialists, and others.
Multiple sources say that the startup is raising between $50 million and $60 million on a pre-money valuation of between $500 million and $600 million.
PhotoRoom, and Matthieu Rouif, the CEO who co-founded PhotoRoom with CTO Eliot Andres, declined to comment on any funding-related questions.
Adding all this together, since its last round in 2022, when it raised $19 million, PhotoRoom has been blowing up.
Most categories of apps, she wrote, are still up for grabs; and within the popular area of AI image-based tools, apps like PhotoRoom, in her opinion, have a shot at success.
Health in her HUE, a digital health app that focuses on reducing health disparities for women of color, announced that raised a $3 million Seed round today, led by Seae Ventures.
The company is being built during a precarious time for women’s health, where women of color, especially Black women, still face medical discrimination.
Health in her HUE says it has nearly 13,000 members with 1,300 health providers across 60 specialties, from therapy to chiropractic.
Wisdom, who remains CEO, says the company will use its Seed round to expand its products and programs.
Others that participated in this seed round include Johnson & Johnson Impact Ventures, HBCU Founders Fund, Stanford Impact Fund, and Morgan Stanely Inclusive Ventures Labs.
It’s round two of our Pub Quiz!
If you didn’t do too well on our first one, no worries — New Year’s Eve is around the corner, so we’ve created a second game to help you kick off the night.
Good luck, and Happy New Year!
(P.S: Remember to click the box and scroll.)
