Augmented Reality, Cannabis And Smart Homes – Crunchbase News

On Oct 15, 2021

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

This week, investors made a big leap into AR company Magic Leap—again. Aside from that big $500 million round, cannabis, smart homes and a lot of fintech all attracted big investments in the U.S. this week, which included a company seemingly crushed by the pandemic but now with an over $7 billion valuation.

The leaders:

Magic Leap, the Plantation, Florida-based augmented reality company can still attract investor interest, even if not a higher valuation. This week the 10-year-old company—which changed CEOs last year after its first headset sold slowly—closed a $500 million funding round at a post-money valuation of roughly $2 billion. That’s the same valuation it hit seven years ago with its $542 million Series B. The company, which will roll-out its second generation headset next year, has now raised a total of $3.5 billion.
Dutchie just keeps getting higher and higher—valuations. In March, the Bend, Oregon-based cannabis tech platform raised a $200 million Series C that valued the company at $1.7 billion. This week, it closed a $350 million round in a Series D led by D1 Capital Partners that values the company at $3.75 billion. It’s been reported that Dutchie now works with more than 5,000 dispensaries—a number that has more than doubled in the last year—across all legal geographies in North America and processes over $14 billion in annualized sales for those dispensaries.
After raising more than a quarter of a billion dollars earlier this year, Palo Alto, California-based Plume Design decided it wasn’t done. The company, which provides a SaaS platform for connected homes, closed a $300 million round of funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2—pushing its valuation to $2.6 billion, nearly double what it was for its Series E in January. Fahri Diner, founder and CEO, told Crunchbase News cable and telecom companies are turning to Plume’s smart-home platform to expand the services they offer as more people cut cable television and get rid of landlines—making connected smart-home offerings a way to attract and retain its customer base.
While it has been a strange two years for everyone, maybe no company has felt that weirdness more than Palo Alto, California-based TripActions. The company, which provides corporate travel booking tools, saw its business plummet to almost nothing in March 2020 as the pandemic set in and travel was halted. It even had to layoff 300 employees—about a quarter of its workforce. However, the company sped up the time frame to introduce its Liquid credit card and expense platform. Now, as travel has come back somewhat, so has the company. After raising $155 million in January, the company just announced a $275 million Series F led by Greenoaks that values it at $7.25 billion. The 7-year-old company said it has raised nearly $1.3 billion—with $780 million of that coming in during the pandemic.
New York-based fintech and electronic credit trading platform Trumid closed a $208 million financing led by Point Break Capital Management. As trading of all sorts becomes more electronic, why not the trading of corporate debt? Apparently it already has, as Trumid said daily trading volumes on its platform are now almost 7x higher than two years ago. This year alone, average daily volume increased 71 percent, the company said in a release.

Quick hits:
New York-based vet services provider Bond Vet raised a $170 million investment from Warburg Pincus. The company has raised a total of $195 million, according to Crunchbase data.
Los Angeles-based fintech company Tala, which provides financial services in emerging markets, closed a $145 million Series E fundraise led by Upstart. The round brings the company’s total funding to more than $350 million.
Cincinnati-based biopharmaceutical company CinCor Pharma announced a $143 million Series B financing led by General Atlantic. The company is developing hypertension treatments.
Redwood City, California-based Dexterity, a provider of robotic systems for logistics, warehouses and supply chains, raised a $140 million Series B round of equity and debt funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins. The round values the company at $1.4 billion.
San Francisco-based Weights & Biases, a platform developer that helps put machine-learning models into production, closed a $135 million Series C from new investors Felicis Ventures1and BOND, as well as existing investors Insight Partners and Coatue, at a $1 billion valuation.

In other news:

U.S.-based companies saw three of the five biggest rounds announced this week globally. Brazil-based Comerc Energia saw the largest, a corporate round of nearly $600 million after the energy provider canceled its IPO. Also, London-based Celsius Network, a blockchain-based lending platform, closed a $400 million venture round, the third-largest funding this week.

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. 9-15. 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