Daily funding roundup - July 8, 2015

WeWork raised $434M; Babbel nabbed $20M; Confluent closed $24M

• WeWork, a company that sublets office space, along with amenities, including furniture and Internet, and other additional goodies, to budding entrepreneurs has been raising a lot of capital lately. Fresh off of a $355 billion round in December, which valued it at $5 billion, the has now raised another $434 million in funding. This means that the round is now larger than the $400 million that the company had previously announced at the end of June, which came from Fidelity Management and Research Company, along with funds and accounts advised by J.P. Morgan Investment Management Inc., funds and accounts managed by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., clients of Wellington Management Company, The Goldman Sachs Group and Benchmark Capital. Any additional investors in this latest round were not named in the filing.
  
  
• Language-learning startup Babbel landed $22 million to help expedite product development and expansion across the Americas. The latest round was led by new investor Scottish Equity Partners (SEP), with contributions from existing investors including Reed Elsevier Ventures and Nokia Growth Partners (NGP).
  
  
• Lola, a new startup picked up $1.2 million in seed funding, is looking to differentiate not through merely scheduling deliveries, but by enhancing the product itself. Lola’s new funding comes from a host of big name investors, including BoxGroup, VaynerRSE, Andy Dunn, 14W, and Thrive Capital’s Josh Kushner and Will Gaybrick.
  
  
• The Medical Memory, a medical video messaging platform that lets doctors record and securely share videos of patient visits, announced the closing of $2.1 million seed round led by Provenance Venture Partners. The Medical Memory will use the funding to further develop its platform, expand its service offering and roll out sales efforts nationally.
  
  
• Karmic Labs, a San Francisco, CA-based developer of a payment processing system, got a $5 million Series A round of funding. The round was led by Greycroft Partners. In conjunction with the funding, Mark Terbeek, Partner at Greycroft Partners, joined Karmic’s board of advisors. The company, which had previously raised $2.7m in seed funding from Draper Associates, intends to use the funds to enhance the product and also expand Dash’s market presence.
   
• Big data solutions provider Salviol closed a $7.2 million Series A round led by Orange Growth Fund to drive its European and international operations. It intends to use the new funds to maximise on the growing fraud detection and prevention market which is set to reach $20.49 billion by 2019.
  
  
• Apester, a company that offers tools for online publishers to create polls, surveys, personality tests and video quizzes, then embed them in their articles picked up $8 million in Series A funding. The Series A was led by Mangrove Capital Partners, with participation from former AOL executive Tal Simantov, Wix co-founder Gigi Kaplan, Silverstein Properties President Tal Kerret and Amdocs founder Morris Kahn (Wellborn Ventures).
  
  
• Self-drive car rental company Zoomcar nabbed an internally led round of $11 million from Sequoia Capital, Empire Angels and NGP. The fund would be primarily used to add new vehicles and more employees. Also improvising tech and product is on the company’s priority list.
  
  
• Confluent, a Mountain View, CA-based Apache Kafka-built enterprise-class stream data platform, closed a $24 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Index Ventures, with participation from existing investor Benchmark. In conjunction with the funding, Mike Volpi, partner at Index Ventures, joined Confluent’s board of directors. The company, which has raised $31 million to date, intends to use the funds to accelerate product development, adding new stream data management features to Kafka and other elements.
  
  
• InSphero AG, a developer of easy-to-use solutions for organotypic 3D cell culture models and body-on-a-chip systems, has secured CHF 20 million in financing from the family investment office of a globally active entrepreneur represented through HP WILD HOLDING AG based in Zug, Switzerland. InSphero is using the Series C financing round to rapidly expand its global footprint, broaden its portfolio of novel 3D microtissues and contract research services for 3D drug safety and efficacy testing, and develop new projects and applications based on its proven technology
  
  
• Axtria, a player in big data analytics, raised $30 Million series C round of  funding. The round has been led by Helion Venture Partners, with an investment of $15 million. The raised capital will be used to accelerate hiring, build a sales force, increase marketing, develop products and expand markets including new verticals and geographies.
  
  
• As Chinese stocks continue to tumble, Alibaba, one of the country’s biggest tech companies, is spreading its bets and upping its investments in companies that focus on cross-border commerce and making its e-commerce operations more efficient. Alibaba today announced that it has made a strategic investment into Mei.com, a flash sales site; and it has increased its stake in Singapore Post Limited. Alibaba will put $206.85 million into SingPost and a subsidiary to increase its stake to 14.51 percent and form a new JV. Alibaba has not disclosed the value of the stake in Mei.com but we’ve confirmed with reliable sources close to the deal that it is over $100 million.
  
  

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