There’s plenty of news to go around from last week’s developments in the Bay Area. Find out what each of these companies is up to. This is the Built In SF weekly refresh.
Standard Cognition raised $150M. Its computer vision tech enables people to shop without waiting in line, scanning or stopping to pay for their items. With the funds from its Series C round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Standard anticipates implementing its product at scale. Currently, it serves customers including Circle K and Compass Group. [GlobeNewswire]
Varo Bank secured $63M. NBA star Russell Westbrook’s VC firm invested new funding into Varo Bank. Varo leads programs aimed at improving the financial state of communities of color. With the new cash, the company will be able to include more credit, savings, and transaction banking features, as well as hire new talent. [Built In SF]
SF Tech Quote of the Week
SeedFi secured $65M. The startup aims to help those in low-income communities build their credit and learn about their finances. SeedFi received $50 million in debt financing in addition to a $15 million investment in its Series A round, led by a16z. With the new funding, the company is looking to expand its product offering as well as its customer base. [Built In SF]
Waymo hits the roads for autonomous test drives. Employee volunteers for the autonomous car company are participating in limited rider testing for Waymo’s self-driving taxis. The goal of the tests is to gather feedback to inform improvements to the company’s tech. The employees will use a standard ride-hailing app to summon a taxi and select a dropoff point with the ability to leave a rating on a five-star scale afterward. [VentureBeat]
Butterfly Network goes public. Healthtech company Butterfly Network, findable by its New York Stock Exchange ticker BFLY, closed its business combination with SPAC Longview Acquisition Corp. The company is now poised to begin trading Class A common stock as well as accelerate its ultrasound tech. Headquartered in Connecticut, the company has a large San Francisco presence as well, and is hiring for more than 50 open roles. [PR Newswire]
Robinhood CEO appears at Congress hearing. With his trading app at the center of the spike and subsequent crash of GameStop’s stock due to traders on Reddit, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev attended a hearing with Congress to determine what happened when the sudden market activity occurred last week. With no clear answers yet, more hearings are being planned for the future. [CNET]
Leaving the Bay Area ... for the Bay Area. As many San Francisco natives, individuals and companies alike have relocated to places like Texas recently, records gathered from the USPS revealed that most people moving from the city of San Francisco actually settled in the suburban Bay Area. The top location was Alameda County, where the new residents are taking advantage of the lower rent prices. [Axios]
TigerGraph pulled in $105M. Its platform functions to help companies get a better grasp on their data, using analytics and machine learning to help them gain more insights. The money from this recent round of funding, led by Tiger Global Management, will go toward innovating its product as well as onboarding new talent around the world. [Crunchbase News]
Sentry got $60M. With its error tracking system, new unicorn Sentry enables developers to keep tabs on every crash in their application stack in real time. The new capital from a Series D round led by Accel will allow the cybersecurity company to invest in developing its product and accelerate its go-to-market functions. [Built In SF]
In more VC funding news: Real estate tech company States Title pulled in $150 million in a debt financing round from HSCM Bermuda to expand its AI-powered solutions to new markets. [FinSMEs]
Los Altos-based vArmour helps enterprises manage their applications across multiple cloud servers, and it’s raised $58 million from existing investors to meet the increased demand for its services. [TechCrunch]
Fictiv closed on a $35 million Series D round led by 40 North Ventures and plans to invest in expanding its digital manufacturing platform and invest in network infrastructure and supply chain operations. [FinSMEs]
Event outcome trading platform Kalshi raised $30 million in a Sequoia-led Series A to bring its exchange to market and enable the trading of event contracts. [BusinessWire]
With the $13 million from its Series A round from investors including Elevation Capital, Zomentum plans to advance its IT sales acceleration platform. [Zomentum]
