The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: Odyssey’s Epic Round, Uniswap Raises Big And Mini Golf Gets Cash

This is a weekly feature that runs down the week’s top 10 funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week’s biggest funding rounds here.

Last week it seemed like big rounds were making a comeback. That’s not the case this week, as even the largest rounds were on the small side and there weren’t a lot of them. Investors continued to go big on biotech and another agtech company made the list, along with a mini golf startup—a first.

1. Odyssey Therapeutics, $168M, biotech: Developing drugs is big business, for both biotech firms and investors. This week, Boston-based Odyssey Therapeutics closed a $168 million Series B led by General Catalyst. Odyssey is developing precision immunomodulators and oncology medicines to treat serious human diseases. The company’s drug discovery engine uses artificial intelligence and machine learning for molecular design, a functional genomics platform for target discovery and other proprietary tech. Founded last year, Odyssey has raised nearly $386 million, according to the company.

2. Uniswap Labs, $165M, crypto: Crypto and blockchain have been relatively quiet recently, but there does usually seem to be at least one round that makes this list every week. This week it was New York-based Uniswap Labs—the company behind the Uniswap Protocol exchange— that landed a $165 million Series B led by Polychain Capital. The raise values the company at $1.66 billion, TechCrunch reported. Founded in 2018, Uniswap is a decentralized exchange platform operating on the Ethereum blockchain. The exchange allows users to deposit tokens into larger liquidity pools and buy and sell at predetermined pricing. In a blog post announcing the round, the company said it has now supported $1.2 trillion in trading volume to date. The company has now raised $176 million, according to Crunchbase data.

3. TripActions, $154M, travel: TripActions has been in the news a lot lately. Just two weeks after it was reported the company had confidentially filed to go public next year, the Palo Alto, California-based business travel startup raised $304 million at a $9.2 billion valuation. The round is comprised of $154 million in equity from new and existing financial investors and a $150 million structured capital transaction led by Coatue. The business travel startup raised $275 million in a Series F round led by Greenoaks Capital last October at a $7.25 billion valuation. In May, Bloomberg reported the company was in negotiations to raise funding at a $9 billion valuation. Late last month, Business Insider first reported the company had filed confidentially to go public and is aiming for a $12 billion valuation in Q2 of next year. The report also said Goldman Sachs has been hired to handle the listing.

4. Puttshack, $150M, sports: Who didn’t at one point love miniature golf? Apparently many people still do. Chicago-based Puttshack locked up a $150 million from funds managed by BlackRock and continued support from Promethean Investments. The company blends a night out—food and beverages—with miniature golf and uses its patented Trackaball technology to help automate scoring and create interactive games at each hole. Puttshack plans to use the new cash to expand into many more locations across the U.S. Founded in 2017, the company has now raised $244 million, according to Crunchbase.

5. Soli Organic, $125M: Agtech continues to be big with investors. Virginia-based indoor farming startup Soli Organic raised $125 million Series D led by CDPQ. Soli sells greens and herbs. However, unlike most indoor farming companies that use hydroponics and vertical farming tech, Soli utilizes soil and its own special fertilizer to grow their crops indoors. The company has been around for a while. It started off as Shenandoah Growers in 1989—making it an OG of the agtech sector. The company has raised $487.5 million since being founded, according to Crunchbase data. 

6. Neumora Therapeutics, $112M, biotech: Watertown, Massachusetts-based Neumora Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotech firm developing medicines for brain diseases, closed a $112 million Series B from investors that included Abu Dhabi Growth Fund (ADG), Amgen, ARCH Venture Partners and others. Founded in 2019, Neumora has raised $650 million in capital, per the company.

7. SprintRay, $100M, 3D printing: Los Angeles-based dental 3D printer maker SprintRay raised more than $100 million in a Series D led by the SoftBank Vision Fund 2, according to a Deal Street Asia report. This is the first disclosed round, per Crunchbase data.

8. Matchpoint Therapeutics, $70M, biotech: Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Matchpoint Therapeutics, a developer of precision covalent medicines to treat immune diseases, closed on a Series A funding of $70 million led by Sanofi Ventures. The company has raised a total of $100 million including its seed round led by Atlas Venture and Access Biotechnology.

9. NorthOne, $67M, fintech: New York-based financial management platform NorthOne raised a $67 million Series B from new and existing investors. Founded in 2016, the company has now raised more than $90 million from investors such as Redpoint and Battery Ventures, per Crunchbase.

10. Ascidian Therapeutics, $50M, biotech: Boston-based Ascidian Therapeutics came out of stealth and announced it had raised a $50 million Series A from ATP, who also developed the company. Ascidian is trying to treat human diseases by replacing mutated exons at the RNA level.

Big global deals

With so few large rounds this week in the U.S., the biggest round globally went to a China-based firm.

• Horizon Robotics, which creates computing platforms for smart vehicles, received a $1 billion investment from Volkswagen for a joint venture. 

Methodology

We tracked the largest rounds in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the seven-day period of Oct. 8 to 14. Although most announced rounds are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as some rounds are reported late in the week.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

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