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Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
NFL's 49ers to Sell Stakes at Record $8.5 Billion Valuation
(Bloomberg) -- The San Francisco 49ers reached a deal to sell stakes in the NFL team at a valuation of about $8.5 billion, breaking the record for a sports franchise set in December. As Coastline Erodes, One California City Considers 'Retreat Now' How a Highway Became San Francisco's Newest Park Power-Hungry Data Centers Are Warming Homes in the Nordics Maryland's Credit Rating Gets Downgraded as Governor Blames Trump NYC Commuters Brace for Chaos as NJ Transit Strike Looms The club is offloading equity totaling about 6% to three private investors, according to two people familiar with the transaction — each of them are major figures in the world of Silicon Valley venture capital. Billionaire Vinod Khosla is buying the largest stake with the families of Byron Deeter, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, and Will Griffith, founding partner at Iconiq Growth, also acquiring pieces. The deal will require approval at one of the NFL's owners meetings. Bloomberg reported in March that the 49ers were looking to sell a stake. The 49ers and a spokesperson for Khosla declined to comment. The three investors buying stakes all high-profile VC names. Khosla, the founder of Khosla Ventures, co-founded Sun Microsystems before launching his investing career, and more recently, became one of the first and largest backers of OpenAI. Deeter, a 20-year veteran of Bessemer, is a leading investor in cloud technology companies and has served on the board of companies such as Twilio Inc. and ServiceTitan Inc., which recently went public. Griffith is a leader at Iconiq Growth, Iconiq's venture and growth investing platform, which last year said it had raised $5.75 billion for its latest fund. Professional sports team valuations have boomed in recent years because pro clubs have maintained television ratings better than other entertainment, which has boosted revenue from media rights. The NFL's Philadelphia Eagles had the previous high, reaching $8.3 billion last year. Leagues have broadened the pool of potential investors by allowing institutional funds to make investments. In 2024, the NFL became the latest pro league to allow them to buy stakes in teams. That's drawing more money, including funds started to invest in pro clubs. Sportico reported the news earlier. Sign up for Bloomberg's Business of Sports newsletter for the context you need on the collision of power, money and sports, from the latest deals to the newest stakeholders. (Updates with context on tech investors starting the second paragraph.) Cartoon Network's Last Gasp DeepSeek's 'Tech Madman' Founder Is Threatening US Dominance in AI Race Why Obesity Drugs Are Getting Cheaper — and Also More Expensive As Nuclear Power Makes a Comeback, South Korea Emerges a Winner Tariffs Won't Reindustrialize America. Here's What Will ©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
Geek Wire
06-05-2025
- Business
- Geek Wire
Statsig lands $100M at $1.1B valuation, aiming to unify product development as AI upends industry
GeekWire's startup coverage documents the Pacific Northwest entrepreneurial scene. Sign up for our weekly startup newsletter , and check out the GeekWire funding tracker and venture capital directory . Statsig CEO Vijaye Raji at the company's Bellevue headquarters. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop) We have a new unicorn. Four years after it was founded by a former Facebook engineering leader, Statsig has raised $100 million at a $1.1 billion valuation, accelerating its efforts to unify product development tools as AI reshapes how software behaves and gets built. Statsig, based in Bellevue, provides tools that help product teams test new features, measure their impact, and decide what to roll out — building on the practice commonly known as A/B testing. The long-term vision is to make Statsig a 'one-stop product-building platform' that supports everything from conceiving to launching to observing how products perform, said Vijaye Raji, the company's founder and CEO. The Series C round was led by Iconiq Growth — a San Francisco firm known for backing companies such as Datadog, Snowflake, and GitLab — with participation from existing investors, Silicon Valley firm Sequoia and Seattle-based Madrona. Statsig says it will use the additional funding to expand its product lineup and grow its 140-person team. With the funding, it becomes the latest Seattle-area company to reach unicorn status, the term for startups valued at more than $1 billion. The company says it has $40 million in annual recurring revenue. The company declined to disclose further details about its financial results, or to say whether it's profitable. Statsig is currently #9 on the GeekWire 200, our index of the Pacific Northwest's top privately held tech startups. The company was also a finalist for Next Tech Titan in the GeekWire Awards last week. The funding comes as AI accelerates software development and increases product complexity, making experimentation and observation more important, Raji said. AI-generated features introduce new levels of unpredictability, he explained. This means product teams need to observe and validate not only whether a feature works initially, but whether it continues to work as expected after launch. There's also a wave of consolidation happening in the field, as evidenced most recently by Datadog's acquisition of product experimentation company Eppo, a Statsig competitor — initially reported last week and confirmed on Monday. Datadog had approached Statsig about an acquisition before ultimately agreeing to buy Eppo, Alex Konrad of Upstarts Media reported last week. Raji published a blog post last week about Datadog's Eppo deal, calling it a 'huge move in the experimentation category.' In an interview with GeekWire this week, Raji said the consolidation trend plays into Statsig's strategy: the company positions itself as a platform, in contrast to competitors that offer narrowly focused point solutions. Many competitors 'do a really good job solving that one problem,' he said. But as those tools get bundled into broader platforms, he said, it's 'validating the vision that we had originally.' The company expects to grow to between 175 and 190 employees by early 2026, adding roles across engineering, product management, data science, and sales and marketing. 'We're on a mission to change how people build products, and we're just getting started,' Raji said. 'There's so much more to be done, and I think the funding is going to just bolster that.' Raji is a Microsoft veteran who spent 10 years at Facebook, including five years leading its Seattle office. He was inspired in part by the social network's internal tools for experimenting with new product features. He said the new valuation and strong Series C investor backing serves as validation that will help recruit top-tier talent, especially experienced engineers and product leaders who might otherwise be hesitant to join an early-stage startup. The planned employee growth could have an outsized impact on the Seattle region due to the company's unusual policy of working in the office five days a week, which effectively requires employees to live in the region. Raji said the in-person work culture has helped the company move quickly and build a strong sense of collaboration, noting that the five-day office policy tends to attract candidates who are aligned with that pace and style. The company is outgrowing its current office and plans to move to a larger space not far from its current location on the Interstate 90 corridor in Bellevue, Raji said. Murali Joshi, partner at Iconiq Growth, is joining Statsig's board as part of the investment. Raji said he's known Joshi for years and appreciates his hands-on approach, noting that Joshi got to know the company and started visiting Statsig's offices almost three years ago, long before making the investment. With the new funding round, Statsig has raised more than $153 million to date. Its $43 million Series B round in 2022 was led by Sequoia with participation from Madrona. The company had 31 employees at the time. Statsig's platform offers experimentation, analytics, visualization, session replay, web analytics, and feature flagging (turning specific features on or off for different users), among other tools and features. Raji said the company currently has three to four additional products in development.
