The Game Developers Conference wasn’t the only thing grabbing tech news headlines here in San Francisco last week. A number of local tech companies scored investments from some of the biggest names in venture capital. Familiar faces like Andreessen Horowitz and Insight Partners made an appearance in the term sheets, but most notable was SoftBank Vision Fund 2, which led three major Bay Area investments totaling some $330 million. Who were the lucky recipients? Who else got funding this week? All will be revealed in the Built In SF weekly refresh.
Astronomer scored $213M. The data orchestration company is poised for big growth now that it has this fresh Series C, which was led by Insight Ventures. CEO Joe Otto says data orchestration is a “competitive necessity” for companies of all sizes as their tech stacks continue to get more complex, and Astronomer will work to meet that demand by using this money to grow its data and customer success teams, further develop its technology and scale its go-to-market operations.
In addition to the funding, the company announced that it is preparing to acquire Datakin, a data operations tool created by the founders of the OpenLineage and Marquez open source projects. Astronomer aims to integrate Datakin’s features in order to help its customers “build faster, run with confidence and reduce operational risks.” [PR Newswire]
CommerceIQ got its horn. Less than a year after raising a $60 million Series C, the Palo Alto-based company has secured another $115 million in Series D funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, bringing its valuation to more than $1 billion. The fresh capital is coming at a time when e-commerce optimization has never been more important, and CommerceIQ helps by automating everything from revenue statistics to marketing, working for major brands like Johnson & Johnson and Kellogg’s. Now, the new unicorn plans to expand its presence globally, as well as scale its business to meet rising demand. [Built In SF]
Digits raised $65M. At just four years old, Digits is working to redefine what it means to “close the books” for accountants, allowing them to close dozens of books at once with its fully encrypted, collaborative tools. This fresh funding comes a little less than two years after the fintech company closed its $22 million Series B, and brings its valuation to $565 million. The round was also led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from existing investors like GV and Benchmark. It will be used to grow its product and expand its team, especially in product and engineering. [Built In SF]
SF Tech Quote of the Week
RapidAPI pulled in $150M. In yet another appearance this week from SoftBank Vision Fund 2, this Series D caps off a year of massive growth for RapidAP, with its annual recurring revenue increasing by more than 100 percent and its user base ballooning to a whopping 4 million people. This level of growth tracks with a massive surge in demand for APIs and other software innovation as industries continue to digitize. To keep up, RapidAPI will use this fresh funding to expand its team and continue innovating its product. Additional investors include Andreessen Horowitz, M12 and Viola Growth. [Built In SF]
Alphabet just spun out its quantum tech group. SandboxAQ, a quantum computing group that’s been under the umbrella of Google holding company Alphabet for six years, is finally emerging as its own company after raising an undisclosed amount of “nine-figure” funding. Investors in the round include major players like Breyer Capital, TIME Investments and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who is also now the newly established company’s chairman.
SandboxAQ aims to figure out how AI and quantum can develop commercial products for everything from telecommunications to financial services to health care, and is already working with a handful of customers. Although quantum computing isn’t quite a reality yet, its promise of producing faster and superior computational power has gotten a lot of investor attention, especially in the last year. [Crunchbase News]
In more funding news: Hex, a startup that aims to simplify how data scientists gather and share data, has raised $52 million in fresh Series B funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. Industry leaders Databricks and Snowflake have also joined the round as strategic investors, which will help Hex further scale its platform. [TechCrunch]
Logistics startup Kargo closed on a $25 million Series A round, which will largely be used to triple its workforce. [Built In SF]
And Alife Health announced raising $22 million as it works to modernize and personalize fertility care with artificial intelligence. [PR Newswire]
