The Crunchbase News Briefing: Thu., Oct. 8

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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Affirm files confidentially for IPO

Affirm, the company known for offering payment installments for online purchases, announced Thursday that it had filed confidentially for an initial public offering. The company most recently raised a $500 million Series G round just last month and is backed by investors including Founders Fund and Spark Capital. Affirm is one of several tech companies to file to go public in recent months, joining high-profile unicorns like Palantir, Snowflake, and Asana. Because Affirm filed confidentially, its financials and other information has not been publicly disclosed.

Funding rounds

Instacart bags $200M in fresh funding: Instacart announced another $200 million in financing led by existing investors Valiant Peregrine Fund and D1 Capital Partners [Read more here.]
MessageBird raises $200M Series C: Amsterdam-based MessageBird, a provider of cloud-based customer service software and automation tools, raised $200 million in a Series C funding round led by Spark Capital. [Read more here.]
Hyperice gains $700M valuation following $47.8M investment: Hyperice said it raised $47.8 million in an investment round led by Main Street Advisors and SC.Holdings, 32 Equity, the National Basketball Association and a group of 17 athletes. Hyperice focuses on recovery technology, including its connected fitness technology, HyperSmart. The new funds will be used to accelerate growth, including expanding globally.
TigerConnect raises $45M for health care collaboration tool: TigerConnect announced a $45 million Series D investment that is intended to bolster its telehealth and workflow collaboration platform. The round was led by HealthQuest Capital, with additional investment coming from New Leaf Ventures, Montreux Growth Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Invus and Industry Ventures. Including the new funds, TigerConnect has raised approximately $150 million in total.
Datavant raises $40M for open health care database: Datavant, helping life sciences and health care organizations safely connect their data while protecting patient privacy, announced $40 million in Series B funding, bringing its cumulative fundraising to $83 million. The round was led by Transformation Capital, with participation by new investors Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC Inc. and Cigna Ventures, as well as participation from existing shareholders Roivant Sciences and Flex Capital. The funds will be used to expand Datavant’s open health care data ecosystem and product development.
Point Pickup secures $30M for platform development: Final-mile delivery platform Point Pickup Technologies, raised $30 million in Series A funding from BBH Capital Partners. The funding will be invested in Point’s technology platform and client services.
Grid comes out of stealth with $18.6M: Grid, enabling companies of all sizes to train state-of-the-art artificial intelligence models on hundreds of cloud processing units from a laptop, emerged with $18.6 million in Series A funding led by Index Ventures with participation from Bain Capital Ventures and Firstminute.
Winningtemp closes 15.1M euros for global expansion: Sweden’s Winningtemp, an AI and science-based employee engagement platform, has raised 15.1 million euros in a Series B funding round co-led by Bonnier Ventures and Frog Capital. The company will use the funding to expand internationally.
Oxigen closes $15M for brand awareness: Oxigen, a pH-balanced water boosted with oxygen, closed a $15 million Series B round of funding backed by investors, including multiplatinum recording artist Brett Eldredge, and Kevin Love, as well as other notable business leaders. The company intends to use funding proceeds to build further brand awareness through increased marketing and to further scale national distribution.
Claravine picks up $5M for data connection: Tech platform Claravine announced $5 million in Series A funding to standardize, govern and connect marketing data across teams, systems and channels. The round, led by Grayhawk Capital with participation from Next Frontier Capital and Peninsula Ventures, brings the company’s total funding to $12.4 million. The new funding is intended to further build out product development and go-to-market strategies.
Shipa launches with $3.75M: Shipa, providing a cloud-native application management framework built to manage the full application lifecycle with no Kubernetes expertise necessary, launched Thursday with $3.75 million in seed funding. The round is co-led by Engineering Capital and Jump Capital.
Tradeswell comes online with $3.3M: Tradeswell unveiled its neural AI for real time e-commerce buoyed by $3.3 million in seed funding from SignalFire, Grit Capital Partners and Construct Capital. Tradeswell is already being used by more than 100 brands to automate actions, decisions and insights.
Gitpod raises $3M for native integration with GitLab: Germany-based Gitpod, an open-source developer platform to automate the coding environment for developers, announced $3 million seed funding from Crane Venture Partners, Speedinvest and Vertex Ventures US, as well as a partnership and native integration with GitLab.