Daily funding roundup - July 30, 2015

GitHub raised $250M; Catawiki landed $82M; Golden Gate Ventures announced $50M

• Git repository hosting service GitHub has just raised a $250 million round of funding, the company has confirmed to VatorNews. The round was led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Thrive Capital, Institutional Venture Partners and previous investor Andreessen Horowitz. The company would not comment on its current valuation but the Wall Street Journal, which first reported this latest fund raising, has it pegged at $2 billion.
  
  
• Applica, an online platform that aims to centralize the college application process, landed $100,00.00 in seed funding. Alandy Dy and Tan, freshmen from Stanford University and Ateneo de Manila University, submitted their idea to Harvard Social Innovation Collaborative’s Village to Raise a Child program and won, thereby providing them the opportunity to present their vision not only to esteemed members of the Harvard University faculty but also to the United Nations Global Compact and other prestigious institutions. And this led to the birth of Applica — a cloud database system that seamlessly connects universities with students.
  
  
• Lea(R)n, a Raleigh-based startup developing an online resource for educators, closed a seed round of more than $800,000. The round was led by Colorado-based Edovate Capital and included corporate investments from AT&T, Kaplan and Techstars, as well as angel investors Gregg Burt of California and Walt Winshall and Jean Hammond of Boston. North Carolina’s Inception Micro Angel Fund also contributed to the round.
  
  
• FarmedHere, a Bedford Park, IL-based indoor vertical farming company that uses sustainable methods to grow and deliver local produce, received a $1.35 million credit facility. Square 1 Bank provided the financial resources. The company intends to use the funds for working capital and continued growth.
  
  
• Eximo Medical, an early stage Israeli company with a novel hybrid catheter technology for superior tissue resection invascular, completed its Series A funding round $1.6 Million. Accelmed, a leading medical device Investment Fund, led the round, with the participation of the Alfred Mann Institute at the Technion (AMIT), the Technion R&D Foundation Ltd. and a private investor.
  
  
• Sales workflow startup PersistIQ, nabbed $1.7 million in seed funding. Investors in the seed round include Point Nine, Salesforce Ventures, Y Combinator and undisclosed angels. (PersistIQ was incubated last year at Y Combinator.) PersistIQ aims to improve the workflow of the entire sales process and to “be everywhere the sales rep is.”
  
  
• Three American universities are set to conduct wide-ranging research on cryptocurrencies using roughly $3 million in grant funding from the National Science Foundation, a US government agency that supports and funds scientific research. Cornell, the University of Maryland and the University of California Berkeley will focus on developing new cryptocurrency systems that, according to principal investigator Elaine Shi, will address “pain points” attributed to bitcoin and other existing networks.
  
  
• Boston-based standardized test app developer LTG Exam Platform (LTG) announced a new strategic investment that brings LTG's total Seed funding to $3.6 million. Current investors include Atlas Venture and Living Mountain Capital; new investors include Edward Roberts and his son Mitch Roberts. LTG will use the funds to expand its engineering and product staff in Israel and Boston so that LTG can add new apps to its lineup, and drive growth of its free Prep4SAT and Prep4GMAT apps, both available for free on iOS and Android.
  
  
• CEVEC Pharmaceuticals, an expert in the production of tailor-made recombinant glycoproteins and gene therapy vectors, announced the successful completion of a financing round of € 4.5 million ($4.9 million). New investors included Investtodate GmbH, Frank Ubags, CEO, and Nicole Faust, CSO of CEVEC. Existing investors also participated in this financing. These included Peppermint Venture Partners GmbH, Creathor Venture Management GmbH, NRW.Bank, KfW Bank, G.A.T. Holding as well as a number of private individuals.
  
  
• Autopilot, a multi-channel marketing automation platform, announced a $7Million strategic investment to bring personalized marketing to the masses, increasing total funding to $20.5 Million. Salesforce Ventures and Stage One Capital join previous investors Blackbird Ventures, Garnett Ventures, Rembrandt Venture Partners, Southern Cross Venture Partners, and Tim Draper.
  
  
• Personal concierge service GoButler  launched out of beta after closing an $8 million Series A round, led by General Catalyst Partners. Additional strategic investors include Lakestar, Rocket Internet’s Global Founders Capital, Slow Ventures, BoxGroup, Ashton Kutcher & Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures and Cherry Ventures. The funding round marks the official launch out of beta for GoButler, with the service now fully operational across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
  
  
• FreedomPop, a U.S. wireless carrier startup that has been building a business based on completely free voice and data services, raised another $10 million in funding from two strategic investors, the pan-Asian mobile carrier Axiata and an unnamed tech investor based in the U.S., the company.
  
  
• Shenzhen-based smart cycling helmet maker Livall Ridinghas completed RMB80 million (US$13 million) series A financing led by ChinaEquity Group, according to Chinese media reports. The company also says it has signed an agreement to partner with a Chinese bicycle maker to create a smart bicycle. The company previously raised RMB20 million angel investment from undisclosed investors.
  
  
• Vaniday, a platform that lets people book haircuts, massages and other beauty and wellness services online, secured €15 million (around $16.4 million) in its first round of funding. The round involved existing backer Rocket Internet and other investors. Vaniday says it is planning to expand further in the next few weeks.
  
  
• Tictail, the global community that allows users to discover the world’s greatest independent brands, raised $22 million in Series B funding from existing investors Creandum, Thrive Capital, Balderton Capital and Acton Capital. The new funding will allow Tictail to enhance its mobile marketplace and further its global expansion. The new Series B funding brings the company’s total amount raised to $32 million.
  
  
• Jun Group, the leading mobile video and branded content advertising platform, announced a $28 million investment from Halyard Capital and Bridge Bank. The relationship, which represents Jun Group’s first institutional partnership, will allow the company to accelerate a number of growth initiatives.
  
  
• Thrive Market, an online wholesale buying club for healthy organic products, announced its $30 million Series A round led by Greycroft Partners and e.Ventures, with participation from Scripps Network (owners of the Food Network) and the founders of the Honest Company, TOMS Shoes, Vitamin Water, Stonyfield Farms, and Zulily. Dana Settle, Partner and co-Founder of Greycroft Partners, will be joining the board.
  
  
• InsideView, a San Francisco, CA-based market intelligence provider, raised $32.5 million in funding. The round was led by Spring Lake Equity Partners with participation from other investors Big Sky Partners, Foundation Capital, Rembrandt Venture Partners and Split Rock Partners. In conjunction with the funding, Jeff Williams, a partner at Spring Lake, joined InsideView’s board of directors.
  
  
• PicMonkey, a leading web-based photo editing and graphic design service, announced that it has received a $41 million investment from Spectrum Equity, a leading growth equity firm whose previous investments have included successful online subscription businesses such as Ancestry.com, SurveyMonkey, Prezi and Lynda.com. In conjunction with the investment, Pete Jensen and Ethan Choi of Spectrum Equity will join PicMonkey's board of directors.
  
  
• Golden Gate Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm, based in Singapore, announced a fresh $50 million fund for the region. Golden Gate Ventures’ second fund includes $35 million from a host of prominent international investors and advisors, including Eduardo Saverin, co-founder of Facebook; Temasek Holdings, the Singaporean government’s investment arm; and Monitor Capital Partners, a Belgium-based asset management firm. Singapore’s National Research Foundation, Line messenger’s parent company Naver, and Far East Ventures are also contributing.
  
  
• UK-based crowd equity platform Crowdcube has raised £6 million ($9.3 million) from stockbroker Numis, Tim Draper, his London-based VC firm Draper Esprit and existing backer Balderton Capital. As a result Crowdcube is now valued at £51 million. The move will also now it to offer a way for investors to access companies which are about to go public, bringing IPO investment opportunities to the platform. IPOs will join the investments on Crowdcube, which include bonds, funds and VC rounds.
  
  
• European online auction house Catawiki raised $82 million in a Series C round led by New York-based Lead Edge Capital, with participation from previous investors, including Accel and Project A Ventures. This latest round takes the company’s total funding past the $95 million mark, after the $12.8 million raised last December, and a previous $1 million Series A round.
  
  
• A venture-capital fund backed by Lord Rothschild and fund manager Neil Woodford have led a £10 million (around $10.9 million) investment round into Seedrs as the crowdfunding platform plans to expand overseas. Augmentum Capital, founded by entrepreneurs Tim Levene and Richard Matthews, and the Woodford Patient Capital Trust are investing £7.5million into Seedrs, while a further £2.5million will be offered to existing shareholders and other individual investors through a campaign on the platform.

If you are interested in being included in our funding roundup, submit your press release or blog post about your financing round to mitos@vator.tv. 

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