Startups Weekly: Different paths on the road to liquidity

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This week was busy for startups: While there were no IPOs of note, there were other exits and even unusual liquidity events, as well as a significant number of funding rounds of various sizes and stages.

Most interesting startup stories from the week

This week brought us M&As from serial buyers, an exit option that may be reassuring for founders still struggling with customer retention and funding headwinds.

Scooped up: San Jose, California-based startup Mainstreet.com became the latest fintech to get acquired by workforce management company Employer.com, which is now valued at just north of $700 million. 

Short on cash: Despite recently hitting a key development milestone, General Fusion laid off at least 25% of its employees, with CEO Greg Twinney explaining that the Canadian fusion power company was running out of money. 

By Datadog: Datadog bought Eppo, a feature-flagging and experimentation platform that will now operate under the brand “Eppo by Datadog.” This comes shortly after it acquired AI-powered observability startup Metaplane. 

Retention issues: 11x co-founder Hasan Sukkar stepped down as CEO and was replaced by CTO Prabhav Jain. The AI startup came under scrutiny earlier this year for showing logos of companies that were not active customers, amid claims it was struggling with customer retention. 

Build or invest: Carta acquired SimpleClosure, a startup branding itself as “the TurboTax of shutting down.” The equity management startup previously discontinued a similar offering, called Carta Conclusions.

Small world: Two months after buying Moveworks, ServiceNow acquired Data.World, which had raised more than $130 million in venture financing for its cloud-native data catalog and data governance platform.

With conditions: A group of investors is considering injecting another $30 million into ailing Indian ride-hailing startup BluSmart — as long as co-founder Anmol Singh Jaggi agrees to resign.

Liquidity: Sales automation startup Clay took the unusual step of allowing employees with at least one year of tenure to sell shares to existing backer Sequoia. The operation values the company at $1.5 billion.

Most interesting VC and funding news this week

Rounds this week confirmed that AI isn’t the only thing that can attract VCs: The promise of a longer, healthier life — both for people and for batteries — can, too.

No limit: NewLimit, the longevity startup founded by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, raised a $130 million Series B led by Kleiner Perkins to develop age-reversing therapies.

Qonto rival: Finom, a neobank serving SMBs in several European countries, raised approximately $105 million from General Catalyst to boost its growth. 

Boosted by defense: Orca AI, whose autonomous navigation platform for shipping has defense applications, raised a $72.5 million Series A, bringing its total funding to over $111 million.

Scanning: Ox Security, which scans for vulnerabilities in code, secured a $60 million Series B led by DTCP that it will use for growth and expansion.

Crafty: Recraft, whose stealth image model beat OpenAI’s DALL-E and Midjourney on a popular benchmark last year, raised a $30 million Series B led by Accel.

Bye, business cards: Australian startup Blinq raised a $25 million Series A to make business cards obsolete and replace them with digital alternatives with CRM integrations.

Wisdom truth: WisdomAI, an AI startup hoping to help avoid hallucinations when delivering business insights, raised $23 million in an unusually large seed round.

More power: Breathe Battery Technologies, whose software helps optimize and predict battery performance, raised a $21 million Series B led by Kinnevik Online AB.

Coding context: Unblocked, a company behind an AI-powered assistant that answers contextual questions about lines of code, raised a $20 million Series A from B Capital and Radical Ventures.

Positive energy: Bosch Ventures, the venture arm of Bosch, will keep on investing in deep tech through its new $270 million fund, but with increased focus on North American startups. 

Last but not least

As Athens-based VC firm Marathon Venture Capital closed its newest fund with approximately $84 million in capital commitments, TechCrunch caught up with partner Panos Papadopoulos to discuss how Greek startups are serving global markets, and more.