Flock Raises Big As Investors Swarm To Public Safety

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This is a weekly feature that runs down the week’s top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out the biggest funding rounds of last week here.

Last week’s run of big rounds slowed down slightly this week, but overall still had a strong showing. Yet another huge public safety raise, as well as big rounds for semiconductor, life sciences and cybersecurity startups.

1. Flock Safety, $275M, public safety: Just a week after public safety startup Peregrine Technologies locked up a $190 million funding round led by Sequoia Capital — minting the San Francisco-based firm as a new unicorn at a $2.5 billion valuation — another such startup raised even bigger. Atlanta-based Flock Safety raised a $275 million round led by Andreessen Horowitz that values the startup at $7.5 billion. The company’s integrated safety platform includes license plate readers, gunshot detection, AI-powered video cameras and drone-as-first-responder technology. The company also has surpassed $300 million in annual recurring revenue. Founded in 2017, the company has raised nearly $656 million, per Crunchbase.

2. Celestial AI, $250M, semiconductor: Optical interconnectivity startup Celestial AI raised a $250 million Series C1 round led by Fidelity Management & Research Co. at a reported $2.5 billion valuation. The fresh cash comes almost exactly a year after the company locked up a $175 million Series C led by Thomas Tull’s US Innovative Technology Fund. The startup’s photonic fabric platform helps separate compute and memory, making processing extensive AI faster and providing more energy-efficient computing. Founded in 2020, Celestial AI has now raised more than $515 million, per the company.

3. Lila Sciences, $200M, life science: The intersection of artificial intelligence and science is seeing a lot of money, and this week we saw another example. Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Lila Sciences raised a huge $200 million seed round from the likes of Flagship Pioneering and others. The new company is looking to build the world’s first scientific superintelligence platform and fully autonomous labs for life, chemical and materials sciences by using an advanced form of AI that can not only process vast amounts of data and make predictions, but also assist scientists in “designing and conducting new experiments, generating hypotheses and testing them in real-world environments.”

4. Cybereason, $120M, cybersecurity: Boston-based cybersecurity startup Cybereason announced a $120 million investment led by SoftBank, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Liberty Strategic Capital, just a month after its outgoing CEO said the company could go bankrupt. The new cash also came with the announcement Manish Narula has been appointed as the new CEO. Last month, former CEO Eric Gan sued former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and the SoftBank Vision Fund, accusing them of putting the company at risk by rejecting multiple fundraising plans. The past few years have been an about-face for a company that was flying high during the free money days of 2020 and 2021. In July 2021, the startup announced it had raised $275 million in a financing led by Liberty Strategic Capital, the fund started by Mnuchin. No valuation was given by the company, but reports at the time in both the Globes newspaper in Israel and The Boston Globe said the round valued the company at about $3.1 billion. In 2022, the company confidentially filed for an initial public offering that would have valued it at more than $5 billion, Reuters reported at the time. However, in 2023 the company raised a $100 million investment led by SoftBank while announcing the CEO change to Gan just months after reports that the company hired JPMorgan Chase & Co. to find a buyer for the company.

5. Dexterity, $95M, robotics: Robotics startup Dexterity raised a $95 million round that values the company at $1.65 billion, per Bloomberg. Lightspeed Venture Partners participated in the round. The Redwood City, California-based company develops robots for repetitive tasks like loading and unloading boxes from vehicles and sorting parcels. Founded in 2017, the company has raised $291 million, per Crunchbase.

6. (tied) Ditto, $82M, information technology: San Francisco-based Ditto, which helps synchronize data on the edge, raised an $82 million Series B led by Top Tier Capital Partners and Acrew Capital at a post-money valuation of $462 million. Founded in 2018, the company has raised $136 million, per Crunchbase.

6. (tied) Mesh, $82M, crypto: Crypto payments network Mesh closed a $82 million Series B led by Paradigm. Founded in 2020, San Francisco-based Mesh says it has raised more than $120 million.

8. Nirvana Insurance, $80M, insurance: San Francisco-based Nirvana Insurance, an AI-driven commercial trucking insurer, announced an $80 million Series C led by General Catalyst valuing the company at nearly $850 million. Founded in 2021, the company has raised $162 million, per Crunchbase.

9. Lumafield, $75M, manufacturing: Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Lumafield, a developer of industrial X-ray CT technology, closed a $75 million Series C led by IVP. Founded in 2019, the company has raised nearly $143 million, per Crunchbase.

10. MicroTransponder, $65M, medical device: Austin, Texas-based MicroTransponder, a medical device maker to help treat neurological diseases, raised a $65 million Series F financing round led by U.S. Venture Partners. Founded in 2007, the company has raised $180 million, per Crunchbase.

Big global deals

A big crypto company saw the largest deal of the week.

Methodology

We tracked the largest announced rounds in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the seven-day period of March 8 to March 14. Although most announced rounds are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as some rounds are reported late in the week.

Illustration: Dom Guzman