SCOOPS, PROFITS, IPOS, DEALS
Going Public: IPO-watchers expect Cloudera, a big data company, to file its S-1 later today. IPO rumors for Cloudera began last month. Bloomberg reported at the time that the company would seek a valuation around $4.1 billion, it’s last private valuation.
Cloudera is heavily funded. The company has raised more than $1 billion from Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, Meritech Capital Partners, Ignition Partners, T. Rowe Price, GV, In-Q-Tel, MSD Capital, and Intel Capital, which led its latest round in 2014. At the time, according to Bloomberg, the company passed on an acquisition offer from Intel, instead convincing the company to invest $740 million in its funding round.
Late last year, the company sold some secondary shares at a discount, advertising its forthcoming IPO as an enticement to sellers, according to solicitation documents viewed by Term Sheet.
Deal scoop: Eventbrite, the event ticketing startup valued at just over $1 billion, has quietly acquired Nvite, a smaller competitor, according to people familiar with the deal. Nvite, based in Washington, D.C., had raised just $1 million in funding in 2014 from a group of local investors. Deal value was not disclosed.
The deal comes as Eventbrite, which has been named as an IPO candidate in recent years, loses a high profile client. Earlier this week, Tough Mudder, the race company, announced it had switched to ACTIVE Network, a provider of event technology for races. I’m told Tough Mudder represented less than 1% of Eventbrite’s revenue.
Funding scoop: Back in November, Term Sheet learned that Robinhood, the stock trading app, was in the market raising a large round of funding. The company was seeking $100 million at a valuation between $600 million and $700 million, according to sources. And then... the round went quiet. Nothing was announced. I assumed it fell apart.
Now sources tell Term Sheet the company is very close to closing a new round of funding with a "much higher" valuation of over $1 billion. Perhaps a boost from all those Uber drivers using Robinhood to buy Snap stock?
A Robinhood representative did not respond to requests for comment.
Personnel scoop: Michael Camacho has left AlpInvest Partners, where he was a principal on the secondaries team for nearly a decade, Term Sheet has learned. Camacho has updated his LinkedIn to show he left but not added a new job.
Broken deal: LeEco’s takeover of Vizeo has stalled, according to reports. The hold-up is reportedly due to regulatory concerns. But this deal has faced skepticism for some time. LeEco has been dealing with a cash crunch since the fall, when Term Sheet first noted that the deal looked shaky.
LeEco agreed to buy Vizeo for $2 billion last July. The price is a steep premium for the TV maker. Vizeo had already filed an S-1 to go public; sources familiar with the situation tell Term Sheet it was seeking a public company valuation that was lower than LeEco’s offer by half: just $1 billion.
If the deal falls apart, the question will be what Vizeo does next. Can it fire the IPO engine back up after a year in spent limbo (and fending off consumer privacy scandals)?
Snap Profits: Wall Street consensus on Snap: $1 billion in sales this year. Losses of $2 billion. Profitable by 2021. My colleague Jen Wieczner notes that that loss is more than Amazon ever lost in a single year, more than Staples lost last year and almost on par with what bankruptcy-prone Sears lost. It’s more than the expected 2017 losses at Twitter and Tesla combined.
She adds: “The only young tech company that is losing money at as high a rate as Snap appears to be ride-sharing startup Uber, and that's a privately held company dealing in services that extend well beyond the scope of the Internet, with enormous costs to deal with regulatory issues and enter new markets.”
Digital currency: Yesterday at a conference hosted by StockTwits, the social network for stock traders, venture investor Fred Wilson sang the gospel of bitcoin. From Jen again:
Wilson said the equivalent of a Wall Street bank now exists for the digital currencies, in what is otherwise a Wild West: It is Coinbase, the Bitcoin and Ethereum brokerage that has recently come under fire for failing to help its investors disclose their profits to the IRS. Coinbase was also Wilson’s very first investment in Bitcoin. “They’re like J.P.Morgan or Goldman Sachs for blockchain,” he said.
~Have a great weekend. I’ll be in San Francisco next week - if you’re local and would like to connect, respond to this email to get in touch.
THE LATEST FROM FORTUNE...
• Anthony Levandowski of Otto/Uber plans to plead the fifth in lawsuit against Google/Waymo.
• Snap isn’t the hottest IPO this year so far. Mulesoft is.
• Blackrock isn’t the only Wall Street firm replacing investors with robots.
...AND ELSEWHERE
The latest Planet Money podcast discusses how Hollywood is starting to look like venture capital. Elon Musk and the farting unicorn. Hey M&A bankers, Trump won. European M&A is soaring. Chinese firms are way ahead of Amazon and Facebook in India. Bye, Palmer Luckey. “You are all liars.”
VENTURE DEALS
• LeEco, the Chinese technology and entertainment conglomerate, raised $2.2 billion in funding from Tianjin Jiarui Huixin Corporate Management Company and Sunac China Holdings, according to Variety. It will use a portion of the funds to acquire film production company Le Young Pictures. Read more.
• Decisely, an Alpharetta, Ga. HR and benefits platform for small businesses, raised $60 million in funding from Two Sigma Private Investments and EPIC Insurance Brokers and Consultants, a portfolio company of The Carlyle Group (Nasdaq:CG).
• Arralis, an Irish space technology startup, raised €50 million ($53.4 million) in funding from an unnamed Hong Kong investor, according to Tech.eu. Read more.
• PharmEasy, an Indian developer of an app for ordering medicines and diagnostic tests, raised $17 million in Series B funding, according to the Economic Times. Bessemer Venture Partners led the round, and was joined by Orios Venture Partners and Aarin Capital. Read more.
• Pepper, a Kansas City, Mo. IoT platform and service provider, raised $8.5 million in Series B funding. Investors include Leawood Ventures, the KCRise Fund, Royal Street Ventures, OpenAir Equity Partners, and Comporium Communications.
• Echo, a San Diego, Calif. maker of a hybrid microscope, $7.5 million in Series A funding. Dolby Family Ventures and Tech Coast Angels led the round.
• Ledger, a Paris-based bitcoin security startup, raised $7 million in Series A funding, according to TechCrunch. Investors include MAIF Avenir, XAnge, Wicklow Capital, GDTRE, Libertus Capital, Digital Currency Group, The Whittemore Collection, Kima Ventures, BHB Network, and Nicolas Pinto. Read more.
• Clarke Industrial Engineering, a North Kingstown, R.I. developer of shutter valves, raised $1 million in funding from New World Angels.
HEALTH + LIFE SCIENCES DEALS
• Promentis Pharmaceuticals, a Milwaukee biopharmaceutical company focused on developing drugs to treat central nervous system disorders, raised $26 million in Series C funding. OrbiMed led the round, and was joined by F-Prime Capital Partners, Aisling Capital, Black Pearl GmbH, the Golden Angels Investors, and angel investors.
PRIVATE EQUITY DEALS
• Silver Lake Partners and Broadcom have made a ¥2 trillion yen ($17.9 billion) bid to acquire Toshiba’s (TSE:6502) chip unit. Read more at Fortune.
• California Medical Evaluators, a Los Angeles provider of medical examination services,raised $6.4 million in funding from TCF Capital Funding.
• Opus Equity Partners has invested in, and merged, Simplex Supplies and Lightcap Industries.
• DCI Design Communications, which is backed by Light Beam Capital, agreed to acquire the assets and operations of EthoStream, a Milwaukee provider of Internet access networks for the hospitality industry, from Telkonet. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
OTHER DEALS
• Creat Group, a Chinese investor, offered to buy Biotest (DB:BIO3) for about €1.2 billion ($1.3 billion) including debt, according to Reuters. Read more.
• Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (TSX:CM) upped its bid for PrivateBancorp (PVTB.O) by 20 percent to about $4.9 billion, according to Reuters. Read more.
IPOS
• OrCam, an Israeli startup that designs visual sensors to help blind individuals interact with their surroundings, is considering a 2018 IPO, according to founder Amnon Shashua (whose other startup, Mobileye, was just acquired by Intel for $15 billion). Read more Fortune.
• Dropbox, a San Francisco-based cloud-storage and file-sharing service, secured $600 million in credit from a group of banks led by JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) ahead of its expected IPO, according to Bloomberg. Read more.
EXITS
• Beijing BDStar Navigation (SZSE:002151) agreed to acquire Rx Networks, a Vancouver-based mobile positioning technology company, for C$31 million ($23.3 million), according to Reuters. Rx Networks raised $5.3 million in funding from investors including Discovery Capital and Telus Ventures. Read more.
• Epiris agreed to sell Treetops Nurseries, a U.K. operator of a chain of nurseries, to Busy Bees for £93 million ($116 million).
• Progress (Nasdaq:PRGS) acquired DataRPM, a Redwood City, Calif. provider of cognitive predictive analytics solutions. DataRPM raised around $6 million from backers including InterWest Partners.
FIRMS + FUNDS
• Panasonic Corporation (TSE:6752) is launching a venture capital arm, Panasonic Ventures. With initial investments of around $100, the California-based firm will invest in U.S. startups.
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