Notable Deals: Enigma, Ro, UiPath, WayRay, And Bread

Venture investors are churning out big deals left and right, so many that any news team would have a hard time covering them all in depth. So we’ve rounded up the noteworthy financings from the day, including some from our own coverage.

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Here are some of the biggest deals which raised $50 million or more today.

Featured Today On Crunchbase News

Indigo

Crunchbase News’s Savannah Dowling covered Indigo’s latest $250 million round and what its CEO, David Perry, said about the company’s new Marketplace initiative over email.

If you just want to know the details of the deal, here’s what happened: Indigo raised $250 million in a Series E round. Participants include institutional investors Flagship Pioneering and Baillie Gifford, as well as government investors from the Alaska Permanent Fund and the Investment Corporation of Dubai. The round values the company at $3.5 billion, post-money—more than double its Series D valuation it raised at in September 2017.

Postmates

In the Crunchbase News morning report, Alex Wilhelm covered Postmates’s $300 million fundraise and possible plans to go public in 2019.

Here’s the details of the deal: Postmates raised $300 million in a late-stage venture round which values the company at $1.5 billion, post-money. Postmates has now raised just under $600 million to-date.

Today In Other Supergiant Rounds

Crunchbase News colloquially refers to VC rounds of $100 million or more as “supergiant.” You can read more of our supergiant coverage here.

UiPath

Robotic automation software company UiPath raised $225 million in a Series C round co-led by Sequoia Capital and Alphabet investment arm CapitalG. Accel also participated in the deal, which also valued the company at over $3 billion, post-money.

As reported by VentureBeat, the company says it works with major customers including HP, DHL, NASA, Airbus, Lufthansa and “nearly 2,000” others globally. According to VentureBeat, UiPath anticipates a 400 percent year-over-year bump in ARR. SaaStr founder Jason Lemkin contends UiPath “went $10m to $100m [in ARR] in a year or so.” The company plans to grow headcount by 300 percent, to 1,700, by the end of the year.

Aijia Home Furnishing Products

Chinese home goods upstart Aijia Home Furnishing Products raised CN¥1 billion ($145 million) in a Series B round led by Tiantu Capital. The round values the company at over $1 billion, making Aijia Home Furnishing Products the latest unicorn in China’s accelerating e-commerce market.

Other Notable Rounds

Enigma Technologies

Based in New York City, Enigma ingests and connects disparate datasets into knowledge graphs and builds interactive interfaces for the networked data. (A public-facing example is its Sanctions Tracker.) The company sells its data infrastructure and services to enterprise clients.

Today, the company announced it raised $95 million in a Series C round. A number of investors participated in the round, including NEA, Two Sigma Ventures, Comcast Ventures, and MetLife. The company’s valuation hasn’t been disclosed.

Ro

Today, Ro, formerly known as Roman, announced it raised $88 million in a Series A round led by FirstMark with participation from Initialized Capital, General Catalyst, and SignalFire. Prior to this round, the company had raised just $3.1 million in seed funding. Ro has grown from five employees to seventy since January 2018.

What launched as an online pharmacy for erectile dysfunction medications has since rebranded to Ro. According to TechCrunch, today the company unveiled a new $129 smoking cessation kit including nicotine gum and a prescription of bupropion, a common stop-smoking drug. This should come in handy for all the adults (and, chances are, some kids) who are hooked on Juul’s flavored nicotine vapor pods, as Crunchbase News reported on last week.

Bread

Ever notice how an increasing number of big-ticket items are available to buy through monthly installments? Bread is one of those companies offering online purchase financing through a customizable interface.

According to today’s announcements, Bread raised $60 million in a Series C round led by Kinnevik AB that also had participation from RRE Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Colle Capital Partners, and Cue Ball. This brings the company’s total known funding to $200.3 million.

WayRay

In the time between now and when cars can drive themselves, there’s a push to move parts of the dashboard to the windshield. WayRay is developing on holographic augmented reality heads up displays (HUDs) for cars.

WayRay raised $80 million in a Series C round led by Porsche. Hyundai Motor Company, Alibaba Group, China Merchants Capital, JVCKenwood Corp., and “several” unnamed sovereign wealth funds also invested in the round, according to TechCrunch. With the new capital, WayRay is valued at $500 million, post-money.

Porsche is not the only car company investing in startups. Crunchbase News recently profiled the investment habits of automakers including Toyota, Daimler, Ford, and BMW, among others.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias