The Briefing: Inovia Closes $450M Growth Fund, Squarespace Valued at $10B, Bitpanda Lands $170M, 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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Inovia Capital closes $450M fund

Montreal-based Inovia Capital, a venture firm investing across stages, announced it closed on $450 million for its second growth-stage fund, Inovia Growth Fund II. The firm focuses on Canadian and European entrepreneurs.

The firm says it was motivated to raise a growth fund in part because “until recently, it was difficult for Canadian companies to attract both talent and capital for the growth stages of their life cycle.” As a result, many CEOs chose to sell early rather than scale their companies independently.

Across its growth and early-stage funds, Inovia says it now manages over $1.5 billion in capital.

—  Joanna Glasner

Squarespace worth $10B after $300M round

Squarespace, which enables users to build websites and facilitate e-commerce, raised approximately $300 million to give it a valuation of $10 billion, the company said Tuesday.

New investors in the round include Dragoneer, Tiger Global, D1 Capital Partners, Fidelity Management & Research Company, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price and Spruce House. They join existing investors Accel and General Atlantic.

Including the new round, Squarespace has raised $578.5 million in known venture-backed funding since its inception in 2003, according to Crunchbase data.

The company said it will deploy the new funds into growth, as well as technology and product development.

— Christine Hall

Bitpanda raises $170M, becomes unicorn: Vienna-based Bitpanda, a digital assets platform, announced that it has raised $170 million in a Series B round led by Valar Ventures. With the new funding, Bitpanda says it has cemented its status as Austria’s first unicorn.

— Joanna Glasner

SumUp raises $894M in debt funding: London-based SumUp, provider of a platform for businesses to handle credit card payments, raised $894 million in debt funding from backers led by Goldman Sachs to invest in acquisitions and new products. The company is known as a provider of mobile point-of-sale terminals for small businesses.

— Joanna Glasner

Equa raises $2.2M private round: Denver-based corporate governance platform Equa closed $2.2 million in a private investment. Horizen Labs, an enterprise blockchain technology developer,  contributed to the raise. Equa’s platform allows companies to access and control various aspects of governance and equity management, aiding them from formation to cap table management to investor relations. The company has more than 100 customers.

— Chris Metinko

Fintech and e-commerce

• Brim, Zeller raise fintech rounds: Toronto-based fintech company Brim Financial closed on a $25 million Series B round co-led by Desjardins Group and EPIC Ventures. The company issues credit cards as part of a platform as a service to enable banks, credit unions, fintechs or large commercial partners to roll out financial products, credit cards and integrated buy-now pay-later tools.
• Australian fintech company Zeller brought in $19.4 million in a Series A round led by Addition. The company came out of stealth last July and offers integrated payments and financial services tools for business banking. Zeller intends to use the funds on product development, marketing and sales functions, as well as building a local customer success team.

• Flowspace, Stor.ai, 3DLOOK, Livescale, Jiffy raise e-commerce funding: Flowspace, a Los Angeles-based fulfillment technology platform, raised $31 million in Series B investment, led by BuildGroup, to give it a total of $46 million in funding since being founded in 2017, according to Flowspace. The company enables businesses to manage their warehousing and fulfillment through its proprietary software platform which now runs in hundreds of partnering fulfillment centers across the U.S.
• Israel-based Stor.ai, a digital commerce tool for grocers, announced a $21 million extension to its Series A led by Meitav Dash and Mizrahi Tefahot. The company intends to use the capital on product development, growth in North America and to enter Latin America and Europe. Helping grocery stores thrive in an increasingly digitized market, Stor.ai enables grocers to build and manage their own catalogue of inventory and fulfillment methods to grow their online businesses.
• 3DLOOK, a mobile body measuring and fit tool, raised $6.5 million in Series A funding led by Almaz Capital. The San Mateo, California-based company maps customers’ body data with product data to generate personalized fit and size recommendations so brands can create better fitting clothes. The company intends to use the funds to expand its leadership team and establish new R&D labs in the U.S. and Western Europe.
• Live shopping e-commerce experience Livescale Technologies announced a $2.5 million equity financing round led by Luge Capital and Granicus Group. The new capital will be deployed into product development and establishing business in new markets. The Montreal-based company, launched in 2016, enables merchants and consumer brands to host live e-commerce shopping events and integrates directly with payment processing so customers can check out and pay without leaving the livestream.
• London-based online supermarket Jiffy raised $3.6 million in seed funding, led by LVL1 Group,  to launch its first stores in London and then across the U.K. The company aims to deliver fresh groceries and household essentials in around 15 minutes. Over here in the States, Fridge No More is doing the same thing. It also announced its funding Tuesday, a $15.4 million round, led by Insight Partners, to bring on additional staff and expand across New York City and the East Coast.

— Christine Hall

Agriculture

Eden Green raises $12M: Eden Green Technology landed $12 million in funding from undisclosed investors as part of a development deal that involves breaking ground on a new vertical farming greenhouse near its R&D greenhouse in Cleburne, Texas. Eden’s greenhouse-as-a-service model gives grocers the opportunity to vertically integrate their supply chains, but at the local level, Eddy Badrina, CEO of Eden Green Technology, said via email.

— Christine Hall

Health care

Clarify Health inks $115M: San Francisco-based Clarify Health, an enterprise analytics company providing insights to health care organizations, announced $115 million in Series C funding led by new investor Insight Partners. The company intends to use the new funds on technology development of its self-service health care analytics cloud and business applications. Clarify Health gathers government and commercial claims, electronic health records, prescription and social and behavioral data on more than 300 million patients then applies machine learning to provide insights on each patient’s health care journey.

— Christine Hall

M&A

Grand Rounds to merge with Doctor On Demand: Health care navigation company Grand Rounds announced Tuesday its intention to merge with telehealth platform Doctor On Demand. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The companies say their merger would create the first-of-its-kind integrated virtual care company in the U.S.

Grand Rounds co-founder and CEO Owen Tripp will serve as CEO of the combined company, which will offer physical, behavioral, financial and administrative support to address the $300 billion problem of uncoordinated care in the U.S., according to the release. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2021. Since 2011, Grand Rounds has raised $272 million in known venture-backed capital, while Doctor On Demand has raised $235 million since its inception in 2012, according to Crunchbase data.

— Christine Hall

Illustration: Dom Guzman