A former San Jose company went public this week in a merger with a Bay Area-based blank-check company.
Movella Holding Co. (Nasdaq: MVLA) hit Wall Street Monday by combining with Palo Alto's Pathfinder Acquisition Corp. It raised $111.2 million via the deal, mostly through a related private placement investment.
The developer of motion tracking technology has had a rough public debut. Over the last three days, its stock price has dropped by more than 50% from Pathfinder's final closing price Friday of $8.58 a share. On Wednesday, Movella's shares fell to as low as $3.80 a piece before recovering a bit.
Movella relocated its headquarters to just outside Las Vegas in October after announcing its merger plan last fall, Deborah Stapleton, its investor relations chief, told the Business Journal Wednesday. It made the move because the area is becoming "an epicenter for entertainment, health and sports," which are among the target applications for its technology, she said.
Despite the move, Movella still has employees at its old base in North San Jose, Stapleton said.
Of the money it raised by going public, $75 million came via an investment by San Francisco-based private equity firm Francisco Partners. Pathfinder only contributed $36.2 million after investors holding about 89% of its shares turned them in for refunds.
Pathfinder's merger with Movella was its second attempt to take a private company public. In late 2021, it scrapped a previous plan to combine with ServiceMax Inc., the Pleasanton-based provider of a service that helps companies manage their representatives that are out in the field. ServiceMax went on to be acquired by PTC Inc. (Nasdaq: PTC), a Boston-based provider of engineering software, for $1.46 billion in January.
Here's more Bay Area startup and venture news from midweek:
Fundings
- Hexagon Bio Inc., Menlo Park, $77.3 million: The Column Group, Two Sigma Ventures, 8VC, Nextech Invest and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board invested in the Series B round for developer of treatments of cancers and infectious diseases.
- Descope Inc., Los Altos, $53 million: Lightspeed Venture Partners and GGV Capital led the seed round for this provider of software that helps developers incorporate passwordless authentication systems into their apps. Unusual Ventures, Dell Technologies Capital, Cerca, Tech Aviv, J Ventures, Silicon Valley CISO Investments, CrowdStrike Inc. CEO George Kurtz, former Symantec Corp. CEO John W. Thompson, Rubrik Inc. CEO Bipul Sinha and Wiz Inc. CEO Assaf Rappaport also invested.
- Third Wave Automation Inc., Union City, $15 million: Qualcomm Ventures and Zebra Technologies Corp. invested in this maker of autonomous forklifts.
- Vaas USA Corp., San Francisco, $5 million: Andreessen Horowitz led the seed round for this provider of debt management software for lenders and borrowers. Nazca, Maya Capital, ClockTower Ventures, Latitud and Marathon Ventures also participated.
Funders in the news
- Signalfire raised $900 million for a new fund. The San Francisco venture firm focuses on investing in early-stage startups.
- FTV Capital promoted Allison Walker to partner. The private equity firm, which is based in New York and San Francisco, also promoted Mike Vostrizansky and Andy Fleischman to the same position.
