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Airwallex, a global fintech platform, has closed its $100 million Series E extension (Series E2) with the same $5.5 billion valuation, securing additional funds from existing investors Square Peg, Salesforce Ventures, Sequoia Capital China, Lone Pine Capital, Hermitage Capital, 1835i Ventures and Tencent.
HostPlus, an Australian industry superannuation fund, as well as a leading North American pension fund also participated in this round. The extension takes Airwallex’s total funding to more than $900 million.
Melbourne-founded Airwallex accelerated its international expansion in 2021, successfully extending its reach across Europe, North America and Asia Pacific, serving three of the largest e-commerce markets
Francisco Partners (FP), an investment firm that specialises in partnering with technology businesses, has added Paul Cormier, Matt Dircks, Joe Kim and Dr Ford Tamer to its operating team, Francisco Partners Consulting (FPC), as Senior Operating Partners.
FPC now has over 40 operating executives that are providing value-creation support to FP portfolio companies.
Cormier, Chairman of Red Hat, continues in that role while also joining FPC as a Senior Operating Partner. Cormier became Red Hat’s Chairman in July 2022 after most recently serving as the company’s President and CEO.
Dircks joins FPC after serving almost nine years as CEO of
Golding Capital Partners is expanding its product range with the launch of Golding Energy Transition 2022, a €300 million fund which will focus on investments aimed at helping achieve the goals defined by climate agreements.
The global investment strategy of the new fund is to build a broadly diversified portfolio by the end of 2024, which will consist of around 10 funds and up to 20 per cent co-investments. The focus will be on European (60 per cent) and North American (40 per cent) investments in solar and wind energy, energy storage technologies, and other technologies that enable and advance
Singulier, a Franco-British strategy consulting firm, has launched Holis, a data analytics platform intended to deliver insights to private equity investors and drive more effective decision-making throughout the investment cycle.
In an environment where rising interest rates have made private equity firms more cautious and selective, Holis will help investors secure a deeper understanding of their targets and bulletproof their investment theses. It will also assist funds in monitoring the performance and improvement of their portfolio companies.
Holis mixes, analyses, and corrects multiple data sources to quickly and cost-effectively generate sound assumptions to build upon for general partners. The platform
Thomas H Lee Partners (THL), a private equity firm investing in middle-market growth companies, has appointed Paul Black as a consultant for the firm’s healthcare investment group.
Black, who brings more than 25 years of experience leading companies in healthcare information technology (Healthcare IT), will support the team’s efforts in identifying, sourcing, and growing investment opportunities across the healthcare market.
In this role, Black will support the healthcare group in deal sourcing, due diligence for potential investments, and developing new relationships with founders and management teams across the healthcare landscape. He will also serve as an advisor to portfolio companies
Wynnchurch Capital (Wynnchurch), a middle-market private equity firm, has added Andrew Singer as Principal, and Rohan Shah, Annie Masciopinto, and Peter Alexander as Associates in its investment team.
In addition, the finance and administration teams have also been expanded with the appointments of Julia Pollex, Jackie Hurley, and Alexandra Zieminski.
Singer previously served as a Principal at Pamplona Capital Management, where he led and executed transactions for over 9 years. Prior to Pamplona, he worked in the M&A practice at BofA Merrill Lynch, concentrating on branded consumer and retail transactions.
Shah previously served as an Analyst in the M&A investment
Data is yet to capture the full extent of the ‘valuation reset’ across late-stage VC, while lower valued early-stage start-ups could face consolidation…
Late-stage VC has been hit hardest by the reset in valuations, with the number of high-profile examples snowballing through 2022.
At one point last year, payments start-up Stripe was the most highly valued VC investment in the US. Last month its valuation was slashed by 64% by one investor. Weeks earlier, valuations were cut at Swedish buy-no-pay-later fintech Klarna, following delivery app Instacart before it.
“The startups that enjoyed sky high valuations based on hype and ‘FOMO’
Billion-dollar start-ups are spreading across Europe at a rapid rate. US VC firms have taken notice. But do hubs in London and Paris really have an advantage over Silicon Valley?
Once considered a frontier market by VCs in Silicon Valley, Europe has developed a network which currently leads the industry by several measures.
Of the total number of unicorns created there – start-ups valued at $1 billion or above – more than half were created last year alone.
Though they still only represent a slice of last year’s global total (14%, according to Crunchbase), the high number of births seems
Dry powder now exceeds $500 billion but VC funds are more likely to be cautious and counter-cyclical in the current market…
Global start-up funding is slowing but still exceeds pre-pandemic levels, both by deal number and total deal value. Q2 saw the largest quarterly drop in investment in nearly a decade (by 23%), according to data from CB Insights. The $108.5 billion total marked a six-quarter low but was still the sixth largest quarter for investment on record.
The scale of the venture boom during 2021 has overshadowed the dot com bubble at the end of the 1990s. After almost a
Historically high levels of venture capital are still being raised by fund managers, but the number of them doing so is starting to fall…
Despite the valuation bubble bursting in parts of the venture capital market, the amount of capital raised by funds during the first half of 2022 has continued to boom, driven by record numbers of follow-on funds in the US and funds closing at more than $1 billion.
In July, Bay Area-based Lightspeed Ventures said it raised more than $7 billion across three new US funds, and one focused on India. A few days later, London-based Index
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