With so much going on in the city’s thriving ecosystem, it is easy to miss some of the happenings in the space. We keep you abreast of a few of things that you may have missed in NYC Tech News for the week ending 8/18 including the NYC startup fundings, NYC startup exits, and NYC Tech events including news for Axoni, Magnolia NeuroSciences, MoneyLion, littleBits, The Sill, Concourse Global, ROOM, wayscript, Markable, Bustle Digital Group, and Flavorpill.
Oscar Health has raised an additional $375M in funding from Alphabet. Founded by Joshua Kushner, Kevin Nazemi, and Mario Schlosser in 2013, Oscar Health has now raised a total of $1.3B in funding as its valuation approaches north of $5B.
Axoni, the provider of blockchain solutions for the financial services industry, has raised $32M in Series B funding from investors that include Y Combinator, Goldman Sachs, Andreessen Horowitz, F-Prime Capital Partners, Digital Currency Group, JP Morgan Chase & Co., Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Coatue Management, Nyca Partners, Franklin Templeton Investments, NEX Group. Founded by Greg Schvey and Jeff Schvey in 2013, Axoni has now raised a total of $53M.
Early-stage venture firm 645 Ventures has announced the close of its second fund. Fund II closed at $40M and includes LPs such as Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Princeton University’s endowment, Scott Maxwell, founder of OpenView Ventures, and Cathie Black, and Howard Morgan. 645 Ventures was founded in 2013 by Aaron Holiday and Nnamdi Okike and has invested in over thirty companies from Fund I ($8M) including Hullabulu, Bespoke Post, ALICE, Iterable, Nanit, and MM.LaFleur.
Magnolia NeuroSciences, the biotech company that’s focused on molecule therapeutics for the prevention of neuronal cell death, has raised $31M in Series A funding from investors that include AbbVie Ventures, ARCH Venture Partners, Eli Lilly and Company, Innovative NY Fund, The Partnership Fund for New York City, Pfizer Ventures, Watson Fund, WuXi AppTec’s Corporate Venture Fund and 180 Degree Capital Corp. The company is jointly founded by Accelerator Life Science Partners and MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Consolidation in the media space continues…
Flavorpill, the social events and experiential platform has been acquired by Bustle Digital Group. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Bustle Media Group operates several sites catered towards the interests of the modern women.
Full coverage: Bustle Digital Group Acquires Flavorpill to Expand its Events Business
According to a recent SEC filing, MoneyLion, the digital personal finance platform founded in 2013, has raised an additional $28.8M in funding out of a $40M total offering. The filing indicates that there were 6 parties in the transaction.
littleBits, the platform of electronic building blocks to fuel learning and inventions founded by Ayah Bdeir in 2011, has raised an additional $7.8M in funding according to a recent SEC filing. This appears to be a bridge round and the company has now raised total funding exceeding $70M over six rounds.
The Sill is the indoor potted plant company that bridges the gap between plants and people. Created in 2012, this startup raised $5M in a Venture round led by Rain Ventures, and it has now raised a total of $6.7M over two rounds.
The online tool, Concourse Global, is designed to help high school counselors navigate the college process with their students, and it raised $2M in Seed funding led by Colle Capital Partners along with participation from Jay Varkey, LearnStart, Third Kind Venture Capital, and A-Star-Education Holdings.
ROOM, a provider of modular phone booths for offices, has raised $2M in Seed funding from led by Slow Ventures. This is the second round of funding for ROOM, which was founded by Brian Chen and Morten Meisner in 2017.
wayscript, the visual programming platform, has raised $1.225M in funding according to a recent SEC filing. The filing lists Matthew Rhodes Kropf of Tectonic Ventures as a Director and indicates that there were 16 parties involved in the round. Jesse Orshan and Lane Edan are listed as Executives and Directors.
According to a recent SEC filing, Markable, the image recognition technology for fashion items that was founded by Joy Tang in 2016, has closed $580K funding as convertible debt out of a total $800K offering.
We scrutinized the Inc 5000 list for NYC startups and took a dive into the 30 of the fastest growing companies in NYC, focusing on their revenue.
Full story: The Revenues of 30 NYC Startups EXPOSED
A short video look at all that you missed on AlleyWatch this week. Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube Channel.
