Hard Kombucha, Fintech Around The World, And Hippos Love Honey

Welcome to the Crunchbase News Weekend Update. An email form of this post went out Saturday morning. Happy reading!

Hosting Thanksgiving, for the Mascarenhas family, means a couple things. It means a lot of Bon Appétit Youtube videos, multiple trips to Trader Joes, and an attempt at tikka masala mac and cheese.

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It also means chaos in between all of those bits, so if you don’t mind, we’re going to make this newsletter a bit snappier than usual so I can head back to the cutting board.

Let’s start with a glaze: This week, PayPal acquired Honey for $4 billion, its biggest acquisition to date and its second buy this year. Speaking of historic deals, Hippo Insurance made its first known acquisition to date. Finally, we talked to SocialRank after it sold off its analytics business to Trufan. The startup told us a story about social media giants, venture capital money, and, in my opinion, a healthy dose of ego.

Now on to the funding rounds of the week. Learn about threat detection in cybersecurity through IntSight’s $30 million Series D raise, and how venture capitalists are willing to bet big on beverages through this startup that raised $25 million for hard kombucha. We also heard from Austin’s artificial intelligence scene, with $10 million for retail AI, and $40 million for real estate brokerage AI in the city.

Looking at fintech news, Redwood City, Calif.-based BlueVine raised $102.5 million to help bring financing options for small businesses. Outside the United States, Nigerian payment and ride-hailing app OPay raised a $120 million in a Series B, and Brazillian digital bank Neon reportedly raised $94 million.

And that’s all I have for you. I’m off next week, so no newsletter, but check out my Twitter if you’re invested in the mac and cheese saga. If not, I’ll see you all in December.

Thankful for all of you that let us do our dream jobs everyday,

Natasha

Illustration: Dom Guzman