Chime adds $485M at a $14.5B valuation, claims EBITDA profitability

In the midst of IPO week we have to add another name to our future debuts’ list, namely Chime, which announced a huge new round of capital today. The $485 million Series F values the consumer fintech giant at $14.5 billion, a huge figure given that Chime was most recently worth $5.8 billion after raising $700 million last December. Even more stark...

38m

It’s game on as Unity begins trading

Unity Software, which sells a game development toolkit primarily for mobile phone app developers, raised $1.3 billion in its initial public offering. The company, which will begin trading today with the ticker symbol “U,” priced its shares at the top end of its expected range, selling 25 million shares at $52 per share. The company’s final IPO price...

1h

In its 4th revision to the SEC, Palantir tries to explain what the hell is going on

For a company vaunted for its clandestine government work and strong engineering culture, you can’t help but wonder if the government’s bureaucratic norms and paperwork pushing are starting to flood into the Shire. When most companies go public, they file a Form S-1 with the SEC, wait a few weeks through the investor road show, and then submit an amended...

3h

3 investors discuss the state of SaaS investing in 2020

Yesterday during Disrupt 2020 I sat down with three investors who know the SaaS startup market very well, hoping to get my head around how hot things are today. Coming on the heels of the epic Snowflake IPO (more to come on that in this weekend’s newsletter), it was a great time for a chat. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read...

3h

Schools are closing their doors, but Opendoor isn’t

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week Natasha Mascarenhas, Danny Crichton and myself hosted a live taping at Disrupt for a digital reception. It was good fun, though of course we’re looking forward to bringing the live show back...

18h

Demand Sage raises $3M to make sales and marketing data more accessible

Demand Sage, a new startup from the founders of recently acquired mobile analytics company Localytics, announced this morning that it has raised $3 million in seed funding led by Eniac Ventures and Underscore VC. When I spoke to CEO Raj Aggarwal, CTO Henry Cipolla and CPO Randy Dailey back in February, they outlined a vision to make it easier for...

1d

Which 5 cloud startup categories are the hottest?

Hello from the midst of Disrupt 2020: after this short piece for you I am wrapping my prep for a panel with investors from Bessemer, a16z and Canaan about the future of SaaS. Luckily, The Exchange this morning is on a very similar topic. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange...

1d

Join Accel’s Andrew Braccia and Sonali De Rycker for a live Q&A on September 22 at 2 pm EDT/11 am PDT

In the midst of Disrupt 2020, we’re busy keeping tabs on all the panels, chats, demos and battling startups, but we’re also prepping for what comes next. Next Tuesday, the Extra Crunch Live series of Q&As with founders and investors resumes, this time with guests Andrew Braccia and Sonali De Rycker from Accel. If you are just catching up to Extra...

1d

Go public now while software valuations make no sense, Part II

On August 5th, TechCrunch wrote that startups should “go public while software valuations make no sense.” What came next was a happy coincidence. Just a few weeks after that post, Unity, JFrog, Asana, Snowflake and Sumo Logic all filed to go public. Today we’re seeing some data from those debuts, most notably the incredibly strong pricing runs from...

2d

Unity raises IPO price range after JFrog, Snowflake target steep debut valuations

On the heels of two IPOs pricing above raised ranges, Unity boosted the value of its own impending debut this morning. The well-known unicorn is currently set to begin trading this Friday, pricing after the bell Thursday. If that happens, the gaming platform company expects to be worth between $44 and $48 per share, up from its preceding $34 to $42...

2d