The Briefing: Under Armour To Sell MyFitnessPal, Big Tech Reports Big Earnings, And More

Here’s what you need to know today in startup and venture news, updated by the Crunchbase News staff throughout the day to keep you in the know.

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Under Armour to sell MyFitnessPal

Under Armour  has announced that it will be selling fitness app MyFitnessPal to investment firm Francisco Partners for $345 million.

The sale comes five and a half years after Under Armour acquired the company for $475 million.

Headquartered in Baltimore, Under Armour is best known as a designer, marketer and distributor of branded athletic performance apparel, footwear and accessories.

MyFitnessPal is currently reported within Under Armour’s Connected Fitness division, which also contains the MapMyFitness and Endomondo platforms. In conjunction with the sale, the company said it would discontinue Endomondo at the end of 2020 but will continue operating the MapMyFitness platform

Tech earnings bonanza boosts Alphabet and Amazon,  while Apple and Twitter tumble

A number of big-name technology companies posted quarterly earnings on Thursday, with a mixed bag of results.

Shares of  Alphabet surged after the tech giant topped Wall Street estimates with its latest quarterly earnings report.  The company reported third-quarter net income of $11.25 billion, compared with $7.06 billion in the year-ago period.

Amazon also beat expectations, reporting net income of $6.3 billion in the third quarter compared with $2.1 billion in the same quarter last year. The company brought in a total of $96.15 billion in revenue, a 37.4 percent increase from the $69.98 billion it generated in the same period last year.

Shares of Twitter fell, meanwhile, after the company posted slower-than-expected user growth. The company’s daily active users grew by 1 million from last quarter to 187 million users; analysts had expected the company to report 195 million daily active users.

Apple shares also fell, after the tech giant reported fourth-quarter earnings that slightly exceeded analyst expectations. For Q3, Apple posted revenue of $64.7 billion up 1 percent from year-ago levels.

Fundings:

• Benson Hill lands $150M for foodtech: Benson Hill, a St. Louis-based foodtech company, said Thursday that it has closed a $150 million Series D funding round led by Wheatsheaf and GV. (Read more here.)
• KingSwap raises $20M for DeFi project: Singapore-based KingSwap, which describes itself as a regulated DeFi project with a liquidity pool platform with fiat conversions, said Friday that it raised more than $20 million in funding and liquidity support and will go live on Uniswap on Saturday. The company said its backers include Plutus VC, Hashstreet VC, Alpha Sigma Capital, Tradecraft Capital and 7CC. It said it also added three new members to its advisory board: Christian Rio, CEO at Green Candle X Capital, Giampaolo Parigi, and Alex Nascimento, faculty and co-founder of Blockchain at UCLA.
• Clarity AI gets $15M for social-impact investment platform: Clarity AI, a New York-based startup, closed a $15 million funding round led by Deutsche Börse AG and co-investor Mundi Ventures. Clarity AI’s platform can be used by investors to manage the social impact of their portfolios through a technology platform that uses big data and machine learning to assess sustainability.
• LabGenius closes $15M Series A extension for AI-enabled therapeutics: London-based LabGenius, a startup using machine learning to develop protein therapeutics, said this week that it’s closed a $15 million Series A extension round. The funding was led by Atomico with participation from current investors Lux Capital, Obvious Ventures, Kindred Capital and Inovia Capital.
• Onfleet raises $14M for last-mile delivery software: Onfleet, a San Francisco-based provider of last-mile delivery management software, said Friday that it has raised $14 million in an oversubscribed Series A funding in a round led by Kennet Partners. Onfleet said the funding will allow it to broaden its product offerings and expand its global footprint.
• Wise raises $12M for banking partnerships: Wise, a fintech that enables business banking via partnerships, said it has closed a $12 million Series A funding round led by e.ventures, with participation from Grishin Robotics, and with continued investment from seed investors Base10 Partners and Techstars.
• One Health raises $10M to battle canine cancer: One Health, a biotech startup working on therapeutics to combat canine cancer, said this week that it raised $10 million in a Series A funding round from Polaris Partners, Borealis Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. One Health said the funding will be used to accelerate its FidoCure treatment for dogs and advance research to better understand human cancers and how similar precision therapies and drugs can be used.
• Gig Wage gets $7.5M for gig economy banking: Dallas-based Gig Wage, a payroll platform for the gig economy, said this week that it raised a $7.5 million Series A round of funding led by Green Dot. As the lead investor in the round, Green Dot will also serve as infrastructure bank partner to the startup, helping it to offer its instant payments platform for gig workers and under-banked consumers. Additional participation in the funding round came from Continental Investors, Techstars and Revolution‘s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, among others.
• RealBlocks reels in $7M for alternative investment platform: New York-based RealBlocks, a tech platform that enables access to alternative investments, said this week that it had raised $7 million in an oversubscribed Series A financing round led by new investor Crosslink Capital.
• Seatrec snags $2M for renewable energy technology: Seatrec, a Monrovia, California-based startup working on technology to harvest energy from temperature differences in the environment, this week said it has closed a $2 million seed funding round led by previous investor Norge Larson with participation from Sunstone Management, Frontier Angels, SeaAhead’s Blue Angels, and returning investors from Pasadena Angels. Larson also joins Seatrec’s board as a director, and Sunstone’s John Shen will join the board as an observer.
• Cooler Future raises €1.4M to fight climate change: Cooler Future, a Finnish fintech startup, said this week that it recently closed a funding round of 1.4 million euros ($1.6 million) to continue developing what it said will be Europe’s first climate impact investing app. Investors in the startup include Lifeline Ventures, Nordic Makers, Gary Lin of Purple Orange Ventures, and Patrick Schmidt, CEO at Global Fashion Group.
• Cognite raises additional funding for industrial software platform: Cognite, a Scandinavian startup working on industrial software, said it recently raised an undisclosed amount of Series A financing led by Accel. The latest funding brings Cognite’s valuation to $550 million, according to the startup. The funding also marks one of the largest SaaS financing rounds in Europe, according to Cognite, and the largest software growth financing in Scandinavia to date.

IPOs

• Ant sees $3T in retail demand: China-based fintech giant Ant Group reportedly attracted bids from retail investors for a record $3 trillion of shares in its upcoming record-setting IPO, with dual listings planned in Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Illustration: Dom Guzman