JPMorgan in da place 😎 while Bored APE is boiling 🤩
Weekly press review in Tech & Web3 - 21st March 2022 - Issue #40
I’m Sebastien co-founder and CEO of Early Metrics. TechWatchbySeb is a monthly newsletter to provide Tech Investors, Entrepreneurs & Innovators insights to evaluate any Innovative & Growing company.
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Before starting, major news to tell you!
The Tech Watch by Seb is evolving to now include a new section dedicated to Web 3. I will keep this organisation to present my weekly top 3 news, but now on 2 different verticals: Tech & Web 3. I hope you will enjoy it!
Summary for this week
Section 1 - Tech main news:
JP Morgan in the da place
Chip is good
A week in Insurtech
Section 2 - Web3 main news:
Bored APE new coin for a better community
Luno keep accelerating its investments in Web3
ConsenSys raised USD 450 mln in Series D
🥇JP Morgan in the da place
JPMorgan, who is probably one of the most active banks in the Tech scene, had been pretty active last week as it got involved in 2 major operations:
JPMorgan Chase & Co 🇺🇸 said it would buy Global Shares 🇮🇪 fintech firm whose software helps businesses manage employee stock plans. Before this acquisition, the startup has raised around $30M.
Oakbrook Finance 🇬🇧 raises £142m from JPMorgan 🇺🇸 and Atalaya 🇺🇸 to grow its consumer lending platform. Oakbrook is a digitally enabled consumer finance and technology business, removing the barriers between consumers that want to borrow and investors that want to lend. It is the first round of the company.
Source:
Global Share: reuters.com
Oakbrook Finance: finextra
🥈Chip is good
Chip Designer SiFive 🇺🇸 Raises $175 Million, Setting Stage for IPO.
SiFive designs chips for the semiconductor industry. It offers the system on a chip for the microcontroller, embedded, IoT, and wearable applications; and a toolset to provide debug capabilities. SiFive brings the power of open source and software automation to the semiconductor industry, making it possible to develop new hardware faster.
With this Series D completed, the company has raised a total of $360M and is now valued at $2,5Bn.
Sources: bloomberg
🥉A week in Insurtech
The insurtech sector has been quite dynamic last week with 2 major operations:
Cowbell 🇺🇸 raises $100M to build out its AI-based cyber insurance platform for SMBs. The company was founded in 2019 and succeeded its Series B with strategic investors such as Anthemis 🇬🇧.
InsurTech Policygenius 🇺🇸 nabs $125m after 2 years of strong growth. Policygenius is the online insurance marketplace combining cutting-edge technology with the expertise of real licensed agents to help people get the coverage they need to protect their family, property, and finances with confidence. The company was founded in 2014 and closes its series D which led to a total of $286M raised.
Source:
Cowbell : Techcrunch
InsurTech Policygenius: fintech.global
🥇Bored APE new coin for a better community
You’ve probably heard about the Bored APE avatar NFT bought by some of the biggest stars. The founders of the collection have announced last week the creation of Crypto money.
ApeCoin describes itself as "a token for culture, gaming and commerce used to empower a decentralized community building at the forefront of Web3."
Known as APE for short, this digital asset is "owned and operated" by a decentralized autonomous organization — giving investors the ability to vote on governance matters and benefit from an ecosystem fund.
Source:
Curated: coinmarketcap
🥈Luno keep accelerating its investments in Web3
Luno 🇬🇧, a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group (DCG) 🇺🇸, today announced that it is launching Luno Expeditions, an early-stage investment arm to back fintech and crypto/web3 startups globally.
The fund will leverage DCG’s seven-year experience of backing web3, DeFi and crypto startups as it looks to expand its investment activity to reach more early-stage businesses at pre-seed and seed. The fund will invest between $50,000 to $250,000. Multiplied by the number of startups it plans to back each year, we should expect Luno Expeditions to fork out between $15 million to $75 million yearly.
Sources: Techcrunch
🥉ConsenSys raised USD 450 mln in Series D
Crypto developer ConsenSys 🇺🇸, which owns the popular Ethereum-based MetaMask wallet, announced a $450 million Series D round today that values the company at $7 billion, nearly double in worth since its last fundraise in November 2021.
Since its launch in 2014, the company has raised a total of $725M and is backed by investors such as ParaFi Capital, SoftBank Vision Fund or Marshall Wace…
Source: Techcrunch
Last but not least
If you want to access the rest of my press review for last week, please click on this button, and will send it back to you.
👍 That’s it for this week, wishing you a great week ahead, and feel free to share if you like 😁