Startups Weekly: Varied Paths to Liquidity Achievement

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This week has been busy for startups: While there were no major IPOs, several exits took place alongside some noteworthy liquidity events, in addition to numerous funding rounds spanning various sizes and stages.

Top Startup Headlines from This Week

This week featured M&A activity from frequent acquirers, providing a comforting exit strategy for founders grappling with customer retention and funding challenges.

Acquired: The fintech startup Mainstreet.com, based in San Jose, has been acquired by workforce management firm Employer.com, now valued at over $700 million.

Cash challenges: General Fusion, despite achieving a major development milestone, has laid off at least 25% of its workforce, with CEO Greg Twinney attributing this to financial strains.

By Datadog: Datadog has acquired Eppo, a platform for feature flagging and experimentation, which will now operate as “Eppo by Datadog,” following its recent purchase of AI startup Metaplane.

Retention challenges: Co-founder Hasan Sukkar of 11x has resigned as CEO, with CTO Prabhav Jain stepping in. The AI startup has faced scrutiny for displaying logos of companies that were not active customers amidst retention issues earlier this year.

Building or investing: Carta has acquired SimpleClosure, a startup branding itself as “the TurboTax for shutting down.” Previously, the equity management firm halted a similar service called Carta Conclusions.

Small world: ServiceNow, after acquiring Moveworks two months ago, has also purchased Data.World, a company that has raised over $130 million for its cloud-native data catalog and governance platform.

Conditions apply: Investors are considering adding another $30 million into struggling Indian ride-hailing service BluSmart, contingent upon the resignation of co-founder Anmol Singh Jaggi.

Liquidity event: The sales automation company Clay allowed employees with over a year of service to sell shares to existing investor Sequoia, valuing the company at $1.5 billion.

Significant VC and Funding News This Week

The funding rounds this week show that while AI is capturing investor interest, the potential for longer and healthier lives — for individuals and batteries alike — is also getting attention.

Unlimited potential: NewLimit, a startup focused on longevity founded by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, raised $130 million in Series B funding led by Kleiner Perkins to advance its age-reversal therapies.

Finom on the rise: Neobank Finom, which serves SMBs across multiple European countries, garnered roughly $105 million from General Catalyst to speed up its growth plans.

Defense-driven boost: Orca AI, which provides an autonomous navigation platform with defense applications for shipping, secured $72.5 million in its Series A funding, bringing total contributions to over $111 million.

Vulnerability scanning: Ox Security, which specializes in identifying code vulnerabilities, has raised $60 million in a Series B round led by DTCP to support its expansion.

Creative tech: Recraft, which created a stealth image model that outperformed OpenAI’s DALL-E and Midjourney in a prominent benchmark last year, has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Accel.

Goodbye business cards: Australian startup Blinq raised $25 million in Series A funding to pivot from traditional business cards to digital solutions integrated with CRM systems.

AI with clarity: WisdomAI, aiming to eliminate inaccuracies in business insights, secured $23 million in a notably large seed funding round.

Increased battery efficiency: Breathe Battery Technologies, which provides software for optimizing and predicting battery performance, raised $21 million in Series B funding led by Kinnevik Online AB.

Contextual coding: Unblocked, offering an AI-powered assistant for contextual coding inquiries, has secured $20 million in Series A funding from B Capital and Radical Ventures.

Continued investment: Bosch Ventures, the investment branch of Bosch, will maintain its deep tech investments through a new $270 million fund, focusing more on North American startups.

In Summary

As Marathon Venture Capital, located in Athens, wraps up its latest fund with approximately $84 million in commitments, TechCrunch interviewed partner Panos Papadopoulos about how Greek startups are addressing global markets and more.