The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: Remote Brings Home $300M, Grand Ole Opry Raises $293M For A Song

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.

Some weeks are heavy on fintech, others are big on biotech. This week, however, was all over the board. From HR solutions that help hire workers overseas to a legendary music landmark to crypto, investors spread their money far and wide. They also spread a lot of it around. Six rounds that went to U.S.-based companies were of $200 million or more.

1. Remote, $300M, human resources: Companies are finding it harder to find good employees and are having to cast a wider net. That is where San Francisco-based Remote can help. The company calls itself an “employer of record service”—allowing companies to make hires and handle payroll and compliance in countries where they don’t have existing operations. It also can help businesses manage independent contractors worldwide. That business model is attractive right now, and less than a year after closing a $150 million Series B at a valuation of more than $1 billion, Remote raised a $300 million Series C led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2.

2. Opry Entertainment Group, $293M, media: Yes, even Nashville, Tennessee’s famed Ryman Auditorium is receiving funding. Atairos and NBCUniversal took a 30 percent stake in the Opry Entertainment Group, which consists of the “Grand Ole Opry” stage show and media rights, the Ryman Auditorium, a radio station and the “Grand Ole Opry” streaming channel. The deal comes to a $293 million investment, with Atairos agreeing to invest another $30 million if certain performance targets are met. The deal values the media and entertainment company at $1.4 billion—which surely would stop even the legendary Hank Williams from “Moanin’ the Blues.”

3. (tied) Fetch Rewards, $240M, e-commerce: Everybody loves to be rewarded when they shop. Investors are hoping to be rewarded for their new deal with Madison, Wisconsin-based Fetch Rewards. Fetch, a consumer-rewards app, locked up a $240 million equity and debt round led by Hamilton Lane on behalf of clients that raised the company’s valuation to $2.5 billion. The company—whose digital loyalty and marketing platform has more than 13 million active users—has now raised more than $500 million.

3. (tied) Grafana Labs, $240M, analytics: People must really love to be able to visualize analytics. Just seven months after closing a $220 million Series C, New York-based Grafana Labs locked up a $240 million Series D led by GIC, with participation from new investor JP Morgan. The company’s open-source software platform helps monitor and visualize data. Founded in 2014, the company has now raised more than $535 million, according to Crunchbase data.

5. Binance.US, $200M-plus, crypto: San Francisco-based crypto exchange platform Binance.US—the American franchise of Binance—closed a seed round of more than $200 million at a pre-money valuation of $4.5 billion. The deal included investment by RRE Ventures, Foundation Capital, Original Capital, VanEck, Circle Ventures and others. The round is yet another signal of investors’ appetite for all things crypto—especially in this case where they are investing in the U.S. franchise of the world’s largest crypto exchange.

6. Neiman Marcus Group, $200M, retail: Dallas-based apparel retailer Neiman Marcus Group received a $200 million minority equity investment from online luxury fashion platform Farfetch.

7. LogicSource, $180M, enterprise software: Norwalk, Connecticut-based procurement platform LogicSource raised $180 million from FTV Capital. The company has now raised a total of nearly $230 million, according to Crunchbase data.

8. Clarify Health, $150M, health care: San Francisco-based Clarify Health, a cloud analytics and platform for better health care, secured a $150 million Series D financing led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2.

9. BostonGene, $150M, health care: Waltham, Massachusetts-based biomedical software developer BostonGene closed a $150 million Series B led by NEC Corp.

10. IntelyCare, $115M, health care: Quincy, Massachusetts-based IntelyCare, a tech-enabled nurse staffing platform, raised a $115 million Series C led by Janus Henderson Investors at a $1.1 billion valuation.

Big global deals

The three top deals were done outside the U.S. this week, including a raise by a retailer at a whopping $100 billion valuation—a centa-corn?

• Chinese fast-fashion company Shein has reportedly raised between $1 billion and $2 billion in a new funding round at a valuation of $100 billion, per The Wall Street Journal.
• India-based VerSe Innovation, an app and content  developer, raised an $805 million Series J that values the company at $5 billion.
• Switzerland-based cleantech company Climeworks raised a $650 million round. The company’s tech helps take carbon dioxide out of the air.

Methodology

We tracked the largest rounds in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the seven-day period of April 2 to April 8. 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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