Credit via Wiki Commons
Mythic, an AI hardware and software startup, had the largest funding round of March with its $40 million Series B -- led by SoftBank Ventures, no less.
Meanwhile, Austin's TurnKey Vacation Rentals and Outdoor Voices each raised $30 million-plus funding rounds. And quantum computing startup Strangeworks emerged from stealth mode with a $4 million seed round.
There were also a few interesting exits. For example, Mobilogy, an Austin mobile device services company was acquired by ESW Capital, a private equity firm in Austin that purchases and manages software companies.
Those are just some of the top deals from last month. Below, we’ve listed all the local tech startup funding announcements, mergers, acquisitions and venture capital fund activity from March 2018.
We cover funding rounds and much more in our daily newsletter, The Beat. You can sign up to get that here.
If we missed something in this roundup, please e-mail bwistrom@americaninno.com.
Austin Startup Funding
- DroneSense, an Austin-based drone software company for first responders, raised $4.9 million from seven investors, according to an SEC filing. The startup was founded in 2015 by CEO Christopher Eyhorn and CMO Gerard Juarez. Their software provides flight logs, hardware management, pilot information, mission tracking, flight controls and other tools.
- M.io, a startup that links together a variety of workplace messaging apps, raised a $5.75 million round of funding led by Goldcrest Capital, Eniac Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Y Combinator and Capital Factory. M.io, founded in 2015 as Message.io, helps connect popular messaging apps like Slack, Spark and Stride to let businesses talk across platforms with customers and collaborators.
- Strangeworks, a quantum computing software startup founded by whurley, launched at SXSW with a $4 million seed round. The investment was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and with contributions from BoxGroup.
- Austin-based TurnKey Vacation Rentals, which uses smart locks, tablets, decibel monitors and housekeeping schedulers to simplify short-term rental property management, raised a $31 million Series D funding round to expand its tech tools and launch in new markets. The round was led by Adams Street Partners, which contributed to TurnKey’s previous rounds. Altos Ventures also contributed to the round along with two unnamed institutional investors. TurnKey Vacation Rentals has raised $72 million to date.
- Outdoor Voices, an Austin-based athletic-leisure clothing startup, raised a $34 million Series C round, an SEC filing shows. It was led by GV, the venture fund that used to be called Google Ventures. Also in on the round, according to the ABJ, is former Whole Foods CEO Walter Robb.
- Phlur, an Austin-based fragrance and candle startup, reported raising $2.4 million in new equity funding, per a Form D. The company noted it’s targeting $6 million for its Series A. This first portion was led by Symrise, a German fragrance company that’s making its first investment in a fragrance brand.
- Mythic, an Austin AI chip and software company, announced that it closed a $40 million Series B. The round was led by SoftBank Ventures, the venture fund from Japan’s SoftBank. Lockheed Martin Ventures was also listed as a new investor, alongside Sun Microsystems co-founder and early Google investor Andy Bechtolsheim. Existing investors DFJ, Lux Capital, Data Collective and AME Cloud Ventures also invested in the round. The company has now raised $56 million to date.
- Elligo Health Research, an Austin company providing easier access to clinical trials for doctors and patients, announced it has closed a $16 million Series B funding round led by Hatteras Venture Partners and Noro-Moseley Partners. Others in on the round include, FS Healthcare LLC, Excelerate Health Ventures and Shumway Capital.
- DrillingInfo, an oil and gas startup, has added $8.7 million in new funding to an existing round. That round now totals $22.9 million. The company has raised a total of nearly $200 million, according to Crunchbase.
- Umuse, Inc., a startup blending chat and email features for businesses, announced it has closed a $5 million seed round from Shasta Ventures, Next Coast Ventures and Floodgate Capital. The company was founded in 2016 by former Spiceworks founder and CEO Scott Abel.
- CVEX Group, a stealthy startup making an “alternative trading system” using blockchain tech, reported raising $2.2 million in equity funding, per this Form D. Their website is currently a "coming soon" placeholder. The company, founded in 2016, issued a statement about the funding that said the round represents $2.2 million of a planned $3 million Series A round from a single investor. The new money will be used for engineering, marketing and regulatory efforts.
- SpyCloud, a cybersecurity startup, announced it raised a $5 million Series A funding round to expand its product offerings, perform more security research and hire new people. The funding came from Austin-based Silverton Partners and Santa Monica, California-based March Capital Partners. The startup previously raised a $2.5 million seed round from those firms in 2016.
Acquisitions, Mergers and IPOs
- Europcar sold to Daimler its remaining 25 percent stake in car2go, a pick-it-up-anywhere car rental service that was founded in Austin in 2008. Daimler already owned most of the company. And Daimler’s Moovel North America brand also acquired Austin’s RideScout.
- Accruent, an Austin-based facility management software company, has acquired Connectiv, a La Jolla, California-based medical device management startup. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. It was Accruent’s seventh acquisition in the past couple years — and one of dozens in Accruent’s history.
- Austin-based e-discovery and risk management provider Advanced Discovery, which is owned by Trivest Partners, has agreed to be acquired by GI Partners, a private equity firm in San Francisco, and be merged with Washington D.C.-based Consilio. The combined company will be led by CEO Andy Macdonald and have about 2,500 employees.
- Upland Software, maker of cloud-based work management software, announced it has acquired Dublin-based InterFAX Communications Ltd., a messaging solutions company. Upland paid $37 million for InterFAX. Upland said the deal will add $15 million in annualized recurring revenues.
- Pivotal Software, a majority Dell-owned cloud computing company, filed plans to go public. It set a $100 million placeholder target, though that could change. In the filing, the company reported $509 million in revenue for the year ending in February this year. It also posted $163.5 million in net losses.
- ESW Capital, a private equity firm in Austin that acquires software companies, announced it has acquired Mobilogy, an Austin-based company that diagnoses mobile device problems, transfers mobile content to new devices and provides analytics for device use at big companies. Terms of the deal weren’t provided. ESW Capital, founded and led by Trilogy founder Joe Liemandt, has acquired more than 60 enterprise software companies. As part of the deal, Kyle Ford, an ESW Capital executive, is becoming CEO of Mobilogy, which is a division of Cellebrite.
- Rackspace Hosting Inc., the San Antonio cloud management company with offices in Austin, might go public again. Just two years after being taken private in a $4.3 billion deal with Apollo Global Management, the private equity firm is reportedly considering an IPO, people familiar with the deal told Bloomberg. The company might have an enterprise value of $10 billion, the story says. So, apparently Apollo’s management, including the acquisition of Datapipe, has helped the company financially.
- Yeti Coolers has officially put an end to its planned IPO, the ABJ reported. In 2016, the company had sought to raise as much as $100 million. But it quickly backed off those plans, which culminated in March with official SEC paperwork scrapping the idea -- at least for now.
Venture Fund Activity
- Multicoin Capital, an Austin cryptofund that invests in Bitcoin and other coin offerings, announced it expects to close its inaugural fund by the end of the second quarter this year with $250 million invested. Existing investors include Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape and Andreessen Horowitz; David Sacks, co-founder of Craft Ventures and former CEO of Yammer and Zenefits (also PayPal’s first COO); and Bill Lee, a Silicon Valley angel investor. Others include Andreessen Horowitz General Partners Chris Dixon, Austin-based investor and mark vc co-founder Adam Zeplain, Air Paul of Blocktower and Elad Gil of Colo Genomics.
- ATX Seed Ventures, a venture capital firm, filed a Form D indicating it has raised $17.8 million of a planned $75 million fund titled ATX Seed Ventures II, L.P. The firm has invested in several Austin startups, including Olono, Alert Media and several others. The firm is led by partners Chris Shonk, Brad Bentz and Eric Foultz.
