Latest news with #PitchBook
Bloomberg
21 hours ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
VC Trends in the First Half of 2025
Bloomberg Technology TV Shows IPO activity is having more of a 'reset than a rebound' says PitchBook Senior Venture Capital Analyst Emily Zheng. She discusses trends in the venture capital market over the first half of 2025 with Caroline Hyde on 'Bloomberg Tech'. (Source: Bloomberg)
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Figma looks to raise nearly $1B as it kicks off its IPO roadshow
Enterprise design startup Figma has entered the next step of its IPO journey. Figma announced Monday it is kicking off its IPO roadshow. The company plans to offer more than 36 million shares of class A stock that are expected to be priced between $25 and $28 a share. This offering includes a mix of primary and secondary shares and would allow the company to raise around $1 billion. The company is expected to price its IPO the week of July 28. If the company prices its shares in the middle of its range, it will garner a market value of $15.9 billion, according to Renaissance Capital. That valuation is less than the $20 billion that Adobe offered to acquire Figma for in September 2022, but more than the company's last private valuation of $12.5 billion, according to PitchBook data. Figma initially filed its intent to go public back in April. The company was founded in 2012 by Dylan Field and Evan Wallace. To date, it's raised more than $740 million in venture capital from firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, and Sequoia, and others.
Technical.ly
a day ago
- Business
- Technical.ly
Baltimore startups see funding slow as AI dominates VC interest
Venture capital dropped again in Baltimore last quarter, as investors pulled back amid a broader dip that mirrors national market trends. Companies secured $70.8 million across 15 deals in the Baltimore region in Q2 2025, according to the latest Venture Monitor report, released quarterly by PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association. That represents a 46% drop compared to the first quarter of the year, which brought in $132 million across 21 deals. Q1 had already marked a slowdown from the last quarter of 2024, when investment jumped to close out the year. The continuous downturn in the Baltimore region isn't surprising to McKeever 'Mac' Conwell, founder of local firm RareBreed Ventures, who said the VC industry is still undergoing a 'reset' after the boom in 2021. 'It's a lot of macro trends that we're seeing in the data, but playing out here locally,' Conwell said. 'Generally speaking, the funding market has been really, really tough the last three years.' UpSurge Baltimore, which also tracks local venture capital activity, reported a different figure for Q2 total investment: $93 million. According to UpSurge data analytics manager Chris Bunner, it's a good reflection of Baltimore's core funding base, which he pegs at $90–$100 million per quarter. In past years, quarterly totals were often inflated by one or two mega deals, he said, so current figures appear lower by comparison. Over the past decade, local VC funding has gone on a volatile ride. Activity ramped up in 2018, with funds deploying capital faster than ever, according to RareBreed's Conwell. After a brief pause at the start of the pandemic, capital flooded in — fueled in part by the crypto boom, he said — which created massive liquidity and drove up startup valuations. Many venture firms were investing their funds in just 1 to 2 years instead of the usual 3 to 5, pushing limited partners to keep up with the faster pace. When public markets dipped in 2021 and 2022, it put a damper on investor enthusiasm, Conwell said. That made their venture allocations look disproportionately large, causing many to pause or reduce their commitments to VC funds. With less capital flowing into firms and many early-stage investments made at inflated valuations, the industry was forced to slow down. 'Everybody's like, 'Oh, we've overspent and spent way too much money, way too fast. Now let's take a step back,'' Conwell said. AI is investor catnip, but the local pipeline remains strong While overall funding remains tight, certain sectors are emerging as clear priorities for investors, shaped in part by shifting federal policy and economic focus under the Trump administration, according to the NVCA Q2 report. 'Companies operating in AI, national security, defense tech, fintech, and crypto — sectors aligned with the administration's priorities — are attracting disproportionately more investor interest, and this trend will likely continue throughout President Donald Trump's term,' the report read. Conwell also noted the heavy investment concentration in AI companies. Even startups that aren't AI native, he said, are often fitting it into their strategies to remain competitive in the funding landscape. This focus is reflected in Baltimore's two biggest deals of the quarter: Pixee, an AI-powered cybersecurity platform, and Impact Analytics, which applies AI to data analytics. Each secured $15 million. It's likely that biotech, one of Baltimore's largest sectors, will see a decrease in funding, per Conwell, since it relies heavily on federal grants cut by the Trump administration. Bunner, of UpSurge, emphasized that deal type and stage also matter when analyzing the state of the local startup ecosystem. He pointed to several recent Series A deals as signs the region still has a strong early-stage base. That's important for long-term growth, he said, because each Series A sets up the possibility for future later series rounds. 'In a smaller market like Baltimore, it's important to ask not just how much is being invested, but where those deals are happening,' Bunner said. 'Are companies getting funded at every stage? That's what shows whether the pipeline is healthy.' Maria Eberhart is a 2025-2026 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs emerging journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported in part by the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation and the Abell Foundation. Learn more about supporting our free and independent journalism.
Business Insider
3 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
New Windsurf CEO Jeff Wang recounts a frantic weekend of dealmaking to save the startup: 'I was on the verge of tears'
In the ultra-competitive world of artificial intelligence, dealmaking sometimes must be a frantic, around-the-clock affair. The recent deal between AI startup Windsurf and Cognition, which took place over a single weekend sprint, was no exception. To sum it up: The industry's most successful AI startup, OpenAI, was initially set to acquire Windsurf, which makes an AI coding assistant, in a $3 billion deal. But the deal fell through, and Google swooped in to hire away its CEO and some of its top executives. That left the company's remaining executives scrambling to figure out what to do next and to break the news to the company's 250 employees, who were anticipating a windfall from the OpenAI deal. "It was my job to explain to the company our path forward," Windsurf's new CEO, Jeff Wang, wrote in a post on X. Wang was formerly the company's head of business. He had planned to discuss the options — fundraising from VCs, selling the company to someone else, distributing remaining cash, or just keeping it going. "The mood was very bleak," Wang wrote. "Some people were upset about financial outcomes or colleagues leaving, while others were worried about the future. A few were in tears." Later that day, a ray of light emerged. Wang said Cognition cofounder Scott Wu, and its president, Russell Kaplan, reached out. They wanted what was left of Windsurf. Cognition makes the AI coding agent Devin, which it calls "the first AI software engineer." It is valued at $4 billion, coming off a $120 million funding round in March, according to PitchBook. Wang saw the melding of the company's products as a potential win-win. "Devin would benefit from a foreground synchronous agent, while we needed a remote asynchronous agent," he wrote. Added to that, he was excited about both companies sharing talent. The dealmaking kicked off immediately. They brought in lawyers and spent all weekend hashing it out. In just over 24 hours, they had signed a letter of intent, the first step. A key part of the deal was prioritizing Windsurf employees — ensuring payouts, waiving cliffs, and accelerating equity vesting, Wang said. Lawyers pored over the deal all day Sunday, and by Monday morning, it was finalized. One lawyer called the deal "one of the fastest" they had ever seen, Wang wrote. When the deal was at last announced to Windsurf's employees Monday morning, Wang said they celebrated. "The applause from our people seemed to last forever, and I was on the verge of tears myself," Wang said.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Astronomer board launches investigation after viral Coldplay 'kiss cam' video appears to show CEO embracing HR chief
Astronomer's board is launching an investigation after its CEO appeared to be filmed embracing its HR head at a concert. The video clip went viral on social media, propelling the tech company into the spotlight. "We will have additional details to share very shortly," the company said. Tech company Astronomer is launching an investigation after its CEO, Andy Byron, appeared to be filmed embracing the company's head of HR at a Coldplay concert. "The Board of Directors has initiated a formal investigation into this matter and we will have additional details to share very shortly," the company said in a statement on X. It added that "no other employees were in the video" and that reports saying Byron has put out a statement are incorrect. "Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability," the statement said. The investigation is the next chapter in a saga that commanded social media's rapt attention. A clip appearing to show Byron and Kristin Cabot, Astronomer's head of people, caught in "kiss cam"-style crowd footage at a Coldplay concert went viral on Thursday. The pair appeared horrified to be broadcast on the jumbotron at Gillette Stadium and quickly untwined, prompting Coldplay front man Chris Martin to speculate that they were "having an affair or they're just very shy." The internet became fascinated with the narrative. Byron's name was the top trending search term on Google on Thursday, and tens of millions have watched the clip. Commentators on X and TikTok joked about the awkward scenario. The company turned off comments on its LinkedIn and X accounts as they became flooded with them. People even placed bets — over $250,000 was traded on Polymarket — on Byron's chances of remaining as CEO. For more than 24 hours, the company and its leadership — the board, active founders, and Byron — stayed quiet about the scandal and did not respond to requests for comment from the media or release a statement. Ry Walker, who served as Astronomer CEO from 2015 to 2022, put out a comment: "Yes, I was co-founder and early CEO - not on the team or board since 2022, and have no information on ColdplayGate," Walker wrote on X. Astronomer CEO Andy Byron's career history Founded in 2015, Astronomer builds data management and optimization products that it says are used by companies like Activision and Marriott. In May, it completed a Series D funding round that valued the company at $775 million, according to PitchBook. Byron came on as CEO in July 2023 after holding C-suite roles at several other software and tech firms. In November 2024, he hired Cabot as the company's head of people. Byron worked at several software companies in the decades before he took the reins at Astronomer. He worked from 2019 to 2023 as an executive at Lacework, a cloud security company that was sold last year for an estimated $200 million to $230 million, according to Forrester Research. For about two years before Lacework, he was the chief revenue officer at Cybereason, another software company. The company is privately held and raised a series H venture-capital round earlier this year, according to PitchBook data. Its head count and valuation grew while Byron worked there, but its head count has since declined, and its valuation fell significantly from 2022 to 2023, per PitchBook. He has worked in the Boston tech scene for more than a decade. Earlier jobs included a sales executive role at Fuze, which sold communications and messaging software. It was sold in 2022 for $250 million, and at Aveksa, which was acquired in 2013 by RSA, an EMC subsidiary, for a reported price of $225 million. Read the original article on Business Insider Solve the daily Crossword
