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UK-based Isotropic Systems has raised a $40 million funding in an “oversubscribed” round that the startup says will help it get its next-generation broadband terminal to the production phase by its 2022 target. The funding, a Series B that brings the company’s total raised to $60 million, was led by SES and included participation form Boeing HorizonX, Space Angels, Orbital Ventures on the venture side, and that includes UK government grant support as well.
Isotropic’s business is centred around a new type of broadband terminal it’s developing that can communicate across multiple frequencies, making it possible for it to connect to more than one satellite network at the same time without any loss in signal quality or network speed for any individual connection. The final product would then offer ground connectivity to customers that could potentially maintain connections with more than one of the emerging satellite broadband networks in development, including those being set up by OneWeb, SpaceX, Intelsat, SES, Amazon and more.
The startup will be stand-in cup a 20,000 square-foot testing and prediction facility near Reading in the UK, and expects to have the first operational version of its ground terminal in production by 2022. If its final product works as advertised, it could be a major boon both for satellite network connectivity providers and for clients, since it would mean that customers who can afford the service don’t have to either select from among the available options, and can instead use one hardware solution to connect to multiple in order to take advantage of potential speed benefits, as well as network redundancy.
The benefits are obvious, provided the financials make sense. Imagine, for instance, using onboard wifi on an international flight. Typically, these networks have been unreliable to say the least. Coverage and quality drop-outs are common, and speeds tend to be weak in even the best of cases. Networks like Starlink aim to correct a lot of these legacy problems, but even better would be a solution that offers connection to multiple satellite networks simultaneously, switching between each connection as necessary to maintain the best possible network quality – and potentially combining available bandwidth when possible to boost speeds.
Isotropic’s potential customer list for such an offering spans military, government, and civilian markets, across both broadband and low-data IoT networks. This latest funding should help it prove its groundbreaking technology can attain the production scale and efficacy required to live up to its promise.
Today in an SEC filing, Tesla disclosed that it has acquired $1.5 billion in bitcoin, the popular cryptocurrency. Moreover, the company noted that it may also accept bitcoin in the future as a form of payment for its cars, though it did allow that there is some regulatory uncertainty around that effort.
As the news broke, the price of bitcoin instantly rose by around 7% to more than $40,000 per coin.
Tesla had previously telegraphed that it had an interest in the cryptocurrency, however to purchase such a large block of the coin is notable.
In its filing, Tesla writes that earlier this year it “updated [its] investment policy to provide [it] with more flexibility to further diversify and maximize returns on [its] cash that is not required to maintain adequate operating liquidity,” adding that it has the option of putting cash into “certain alternative reserve assets” that include “digital assets, gold bullion, gold exchange-traded funds and other assets as specified in the future.”
Under that banner, the firm has “invested an aggregate $1.50 billion in bitcoin,” going on to say that the well-known electric car company “may acquire and hold digital assets from time to time or long-term.”
That’s enough wiggle room for Tesla to do whatever it wants with its cash and the crypto markets.
But the company wasn’t done, completing its news-drop by adding that the company “expect[s] to begin accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for [its] products in the near future, subject to applicable laws and initially on a limited basis, which [it] may or may not liquidate upon receipt.”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made waves in recent days by pumping a silly cryptocurrency joke called Dogecoin; this is something more material. Tesla is selecting bitcoin as the cryptocurrency of its choice, helping to further cement the blockchain as the world’s best known. And that it may accept bitcoin-denominated transactions in the future could help bitcoin retain both value, and exchange volume, though we probably repeat ourselves. It’s worth noting that Musk himself has also personally sent bitcoin prices higher in past using his social presence, including by changing his bio to just the single word, before its price faded back after he removed it earlier this month.
The car company then spends three paragraphs saying that its choice is risky. That’s an understatement. Then again, what is Musk if not entertaining?
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Micromobbin’
Last week I highlighted how Lime was getting into the shared moped business. Now, shared moped startup Revel is getting into the EV charging game. I wonder if we are starting to witness the beginning of a business diversification trend in micromobility?
Revel said it is building a DC fast-charging station for electric vehicles in New York City, the first in a new business venture that will eventually spread to other cities. The company said this new “Superhub,” which is located at the former Pfizer building in Brooklyn, will contain 30 chargers and be open to the public 24 hours a day. This will be the first in a network of Superhubs opened by Revel across New York City, the company said.
Revel didn’t build the EV charging infrastructure in-house. Instead, it is using Tritium’s new RTM75 model for the first 10 chargers at its Brooklyn site, which will go live this spring. These chargers are designed to deliver 100 additional miles of charge to an electric vehicle in about 20 minutes, according to Revel.
Image Credits: Revel
Deal of the week
Uber announced plans to acquire alcohol delivery service Drizly in a stock-and-cash deal valued at $1.1 billion deal — cementing a strategy that started more than a year ago. The upshot: Uber is betting that its delivery and ride-hailing businesses will provide the fastest path to profitability.
Drizly’s marketplace will be eventually folded into the Uber Eats app. For now, Drizly will maintain the standalone app. The acquisition of Drizly is expected to close in the first half of the year.
For those who don’t follow Uber’s every move, here’s a quick recap. Since early 2020, Uber has offloaded most of its businesses, including shared scooter and bike unit Jump, self-driving subsidiary Uber Advanced Technologies Group and the air taxi moonshot Uber Elevate. It also sold a $500 million stake in its Uber Freight spinoff. Meanwhile, it acquired on-demand delivery app Postmates and now Drizly.
Rad Power Bikes is one other company that had a “deal of the week” worthy funding round. The Seattle-based electric bike seller raised $150 million from institutional investors, including Morgan Stanley’s Counterpoint Global Fund, Fidelity Management & Research Company, TPG’s global impact investing platform The Rise Fund and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates. Existing investors Durable Capital Partners LP and Vulcan Capital also participated in the round.
While $150 million is hardly the biggest raise in transportation, it’s one of the larger ones in the world of electric bikes. The size of round — and the institutions involved — suggests investors see room from growth in the ebike industry and believe in Rad Power’s business model and its ability to expand beyond the $100 million in sales it generated in 2019. Rad Power Bikes declined to disclose its 2020 sales numbers.
Rad Power is a direct-to-consumer electric bike seller known for creating robust products that combine features like fat tires, big batteries and motors with touchscreens, and even cargo carrying capacity — all at prices hundreds of dollars below its competitors.
The company’s founder and CEO Mike Radenbaugh told me that the funds will be used to double its 325-person workforce, increase the number of retail showrooms and service locations, continue to bring on more contract manufacturers to diversify its supply chain and add more accessories so consumers and customize their bikes.
Other deals that got my attention …
Bear Flag Robotics, the Silicon Valley-based startup that is developing autonomous technology for farm tractors, announced last month a $7.9 million seed extension funding round led by True Ventures. (I missed this one last week). The funding comes two years after it raised a $4.6 million seed round also led by True Ventures. Graphene Ventures, AgFunder, D20 and Green Cow VC also participated in the round.
DealerPolicy, an insurance marketplace for automotive retail, raised $30 million in Series B funding led by 3L Capital and Hudson Structured Capital Management Ltd.
Hip, the mobile app startup that connects riders to buses and shuttles, raised $12 million. The company was a consumer-facing business, but has changed its business model to focus on helping employers prepare for, and start to bring their workers back to the office or factory.
Otonomo, the cloud-based software startup that helps companies capture and monetize connected car data, agreed to merge with special purpose acquisition company Software Acquisition Group Inc. II with a valuation of $1.4 billion. The prospectus filed by the Otonomo shows it generated $400,000 in revenue in 2020 with a total operating expenditure of $10 million. Otonomo said it expects to have a negative gross profit through 2021. The company said it expects to be EBITDA positive by 2024.
REE Automotive has reached merger agreement with special purpose acquisition corporation 10X Capital Venture Acquisition Corp. The combined company, which will be listed on the NASDAQ under the new ticker symbol “REE,” will have an equity valuation of $3.6 billion. The startup has developed flat and modular EV platforms with fully autonomous-ready independent drive-by-wire, brake-by-wire and steer-by-wire technology for each wheel.
The company said it raised $300 million in private investment in public equity, or PIPE, from investors including Koch Strategic Platforms and Mahindra & Mahindra and Magna International.
The transaction is expected to provide more than $500 million of gross proceeds to the company.
Urban SDK, a connected mobility and safety analytics platform, raised $1.66 million in a funding round led by the Florida Opportunity Fund and matched by DeepWork Capital, a venture capital firm investing in early-stage companies in Florida.
Wheels Up, the private jet subscription service, announced plans to go public through a merger with special purpose acquisition company Aspirational Consumer Lifestyle Corp. The deal, which is expected to close in the second quarter, would give Wheels Up a valuation of more than $2 billion — more than twice its 2019 value.
Ford ramps up EV and AV spending
Ford said this week it will spend $22 billion on electrification — double its previous commitment — and invest $7 billion on autonomous vehicles through 2025. It should be noted that $2 billion of that AV budget has already been spent, leaving $5 billion left to invest over the next four years.
“We are accelerating all our plans — breaking constraints, increasing battery capacity, improving costs and getting more electric vehicles into our product cycle plan,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said. “People are responding to what Ford is doing today, not someday.”
The announcement comes at the beginning of a critical two-year period for Ford and on the heels of a fourth quarter that delivered a $2.8 billion loss. The automaker will ramp up deliveries of its all-electric Mustang Mach-E vehicle and the Bronco Sport (which is not an EV). The first electric E-Transit commercial vans will come off the line in late 2021. Meanwhile, development continues on an all-electric F-150 pickup that is coming in mid- 2022.
And don’t forget that Ford is also planning to use Google’s Android Automotive operating system in new vehicles, beginning in 2023 as part of a six-year partnership announced February 1 that will bring embedded Google apps and services to drivers.
Ford’s announcement comes a week after GM said it aspired to produce only electric vehicles by 2035.
We often hear about companies working to improve the customer experience, but for IT their customers are the company’s employees. Nexthink, a late stage startup that wants to help IT serve its internal constituents better, announced a $180 million Series D today on a healthy $1.1 billion valuation.
The firm, which was founded in Lucerne, Switzerland and has offices outside of Boston, received funding from Permira with help from Highland Europe and Index Ventures. The company has now raised over $336 million, according to Crunchbase data.
As you might imagine, understanding how folks are using a company’s technology choices internally is always going to be useful, but when the pandemic hit and offices closed, having access to this type of data became even more important.
Nexthink CEO and co-founder Pedro Bados says that most monitoring tools are focused on figuring out if the systems are working correctly and finding ways to fix them. Nexthink takes a different approach, looking at how employees are adopting the tools a company is offering.
“What we do at Nexthink is to take the [monitoring] problem from a completely different perspective. We say that we’re going to give your IT department a real time understanding of how employees are experiencing IT [at your company],” Bados told me.
He says that they do this by looking at the problem from the employees’ perspective. “At the end of the day we’re giving all the insights to IT departments to make sure they can improve the digital experience of their employees,” he said.
This could involve querying the user base in the same way that HR and marketing survey tools allow companies to check the pulse of employees or customers. By gathering this type of data, it helps IT understand how employees are using the company’s technology choices.
This software is aimed at larger organizations with at least 5000 employees. Today, the company has over a 1000 of these customers including Best Buy, Fidelity, Liberty Mutual and 3M. What’s more, the company has surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue, a success benchmark for SaaS companies like Nexthink.
Nexthink currently has 700 employees with plans to reach 900 by the end of this year, and as a maturing startup, Bados has given a lot of thought on how to build a diverse workforce. Just being spread out in two countries gives an element of geographic diversity, but he says it takes more than that, and it all starts with recruitment.
“The way to make sure we get more diversity is we look at recruitment and make sure that we have a balanced pipeline. That’s something we measure as a company,” he said. They also have a diversity committee, which is charged with delivering diversity training and figuring out ways to hire a more diverse and inclusive workforce.
While the company has a healthy valuation and a good amount of money in the bank, Bados doesn’t see an IPO for at least a couple of years. He says he wants to double or triple the business before taking that step. For now, though with $180 million in additional runway and a $100 million in ARR, the company is well positioned for whatever future moves it chooses to make.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/08/nexthink-nabs-180m-series-d-on-1-1b-valuation/
