Metronomes have been keeping time for hundreds of years, rhythmically clicking back and forth at exact intervals. A metronome is steady, and a tool that’s long been used by dancers, musicians, and athletes to build precision in timing. That association is what gave usage-based billing startup Metronome its name.
“We wanted a name that felt like ‘you can depend on us,’” said Scott Woody, Metronome cofounder and CEO. “Something that’s super reliable, that no matter what happens in your business, Metronome is there to keep you going.”
Metronome has raised a $50 million Series C, led by NEA, Fortune can exclusively report. The round included Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Workday Ventures, Greyhound Capital, Truebridge Capital Partners, Activant Capital, SineWave Ventures, and Megalith Ventures. This round brings the company’s total capital raised to $128 million. (The company declined to disclose valuation.)
Fittingly, timing has been a theme throughout Metronome’s arc. The company was founded in 2019—a moment when usage-based billing was far from hot.
“We were second-time entrepreneurs, I had a solid background working at Dropbox in engineering, and it was still hard to raise money,” said Woody. “And everyone was very clear about why they were saying no—that ‘usage-based billing wasn’t a thing.’ There were very few companies that had it, like AWS or Snowflake at the time, but it was very, very niche.”
The AI boom has completely changed that, taking usage-based billing from niche to essential for some of the buzziest companies in the world. Metronome has accordingly been in a surge throughout the AI boom: Nvidia, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Databricks are among the startup’s customers, the company says. (There’s a growing list of competitors riding this wave, too, like Stripe Billing.)
“The market opportunity for Metronome is abundant as providers of AI and infrastructure software are prioritizing the alignment of value for their solutions,” said Hilarie Koplow-McAdams, NEA venture partner, via email. “Every technology revolution is accompanied by a business model change and Metronome provides the ‘picks and shovels’ to support that change.”
The AI wave is also building on the cloud wave, Woody told Fortune.
“But the AI boom has really accelerated the application layer becoming more usage-based. Think about ChatGPT as an application,” said Woody. “It’s $200 a month or $20 a month, depending on which version you have, but those subscriptions also have usage limits baked into them.”
There’s no one-size-fits all approach to billing, which is part of the challenge and the opportunity, which Woody realized back when he was first putting Metronome together.
“I literally have this spreadsheet of 50 different companies,” he said. “And what we realized was that actually, all these companies actually do bill the same. They have clusters of business models that are all the same, but they have tiny tweaks on top of them. So the way I like to think about it is they all use the same Legos, but they paint the Legos different colors.”
See you tomorrow,
Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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VENTURE DEALS
- OrganOx, an Oxford, England-based organ medtech developer, raised $142 million in funding. HealthQuest Capital led the round and was joined by Sofina, Soleus Capital, Avidity Partners, and existing investors BGF and Lauxera Capital Partners.
- Auditoria.AI, a San Jose-based AI agent for CFO offices, raised $38 million in funding. Innovius Capital led the round and was joined by Dell Technologies Capital, Sentinel Global, and existing investors Venrock, NeoTribe Ventures, Engineering Capital, and KPMG Ventures.
- Albert Invent, an Oakland-based AI-powered research and development platform for chemical innovation, raised $20 million in funding, valuing the company at $270 million. J.P. Morgan Private Capital’s Growth Equity Partners led the round and was joined by Coatue and TCV.
- Cambium, a Halethorpe, Md.-based supply chain platform for the wood industry, raised $18.5 million in Series A funding. VoLo Earth Ventures led the round and was joined by NEA, Dangerous Ventures, Tunitas Ventures, existing investors MaC Venture Capital, Rise of the Rest, 81 Collection, and others.
- Patlytics, a San Francisco-based AI-powered patent platform, raised $14 million in Series A funding. Next47 led the round and was joined by existing investors Gradient, 8VC, Alumni Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, and Myriad Venture Partners.
- HouseWhisper, a Seattle-based AI-powered real estate assistant, raised $6.7 million in seed funding. Mayfield led the round and was joined by PSL Ventures and 75 & Sunny Ventures.
- Fuse Vectors, a Copenhagen-based gene therapy technology developer, raised $5.2 million in pre-seed funding. HCVC led the round and was joined by Bio Innovation Institute and EIFO.
- Pivotal, a Singapore-based crypto infrastructure developer, raised $2.5 million in seed funding. LIF led the round and was joined by Babylon Labs, Avail, and others.
- Sonar Mental Health, a Sacramento-based AI-powered mental health platform for students, raised $2.4 million in pre-seed funding. Nina Capital led the round and was joined by GSR Ventures, J4 Ventures, and the Stanford University Social Impact Founder Fellowship.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- Coral Tree Partners acquired a majority stake in DMC Production, a Stockholm-based sports broadcast company, for €50 million ($52.3 million).
- TCG acquired a minority stake in Audiochuck, an Indianapolis-based podcast company, for $40 million.
- New Mountain Capital agreed to acquire the U.S. commercial insurance division of NSM Insurance Group, a Conshohocken, Pa.-based specialty insurance company. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- Oakley Capital and Eurazeo agreed to acquire a majority stake in Bridewell, a Reading, England-based cybersecurity company, to combine with I-Tracing, a Paris-based cybersecurity company backed by Oakley and Eurazeo. Financial terms were not disclosed.
EXITS
- Flowers Foods agreed to acquire Simple Mills, a Chicago-based crackers, cookies, snack bars, and baking mixes provider, from Vestar Capital Partners for an enterprise value of $795 million.
PEOPLE
- Brighton Park Capital, a Greenwich, Conn.-based investment firm, added Jeff Surges as a partner. Previously, he was at RLDatix.
- Norwest, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based venture capital and growth equity investment firm, promoted Irem Rami, Scott Mitchell, and Chris Scullin to partner; Connor Pike and Chris Sondej to principal; and Suraj Shah to vice president.
