Daily funding roundup - July 23, 2015

Flipboard raised $50M; Notion Capital launched $120M; CarPrice closed $40M

• CarPrice  wants to be the company that brings the process of buying used cars in Russia online closed $40 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Baring Vostok Private Equity Fund V, with additional participation from Almaz Capital and other investors.
  
  
• Flipboard raised $50 million. Previous investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byer, Index Ventures, Insight Venture Partners, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, Ashton Kutcher, and The Chernin Group. That last round of funding was said to have valued Flipboard at $800 million. The company also would not reveal what its current valuation is following this latest funding.
  
  
• The marketplace for private jets, helicopters and air ambulance, JetSetGo, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Yuvraj Singh’s startup fund YouWeCan Ventures. The company will use funds for improving service and marketing. The Delhi-based startup enables the sale of empty travel legs to other customers thereby adding value to original leg customer (by giving a credit against original charter cost). This way, the empty leg traveler gets a charter at a more attractive price point.
  
  
• Antix, a smartphone application which enables outdoor sports enthusiasts to have their action camera footage instantly auto-edited into highlight reels, secured $2.4 million in new funding from Silicon Beach, California-based, auto-follow drone and live-streamed media company, TRACE Live Networks. As part of the agreement, TRACE Senior Management will fill two Antix Board positions and consult closely on the company’s strategic direction and management processes. TRACE will also retain an exclusive option to fully acquire Antix.
  
  
• Buzzoole, a Naples, Italy influence engine optimization platform, raised approx. €480,000 in a second round of funding. Backers included R301 Capital, Custodi di Successo, DigitalYOU, Alessandro Gatti, CEO of F.G. Invest, Giuliomario Limongelli, co-founder and CEO of Groupon Italia, Franco Raddi and 6 Buzzoole’s employees.
  
  
• Clover, a mobile on-demand dating service, closed $2 million in funding. The investment was led by New York based Social Starts with participation from a group of private investors. As part of the financing, Tony Wonnacott and Michael Allen will join Clover’s board of directors. The financing comes on the heels of a rapid user and revenue surge across the US. The company plans to use the new funds to accelerate growth, expand the platform and build out the team.
  
  
• Canada-based startup Procurify that helps businesses to streamline their purchasing and expense workflow, raised a $4 million seed round. The investment was led by Point Nine Capital, Nexus Venture Partners and the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC). Hootsuite’s CEO Ryan Holmes and its chief revenue officer Steve Johnson also participated in this round. The company aims to utilize the raised fund to invest in its sales, marketing and product development teams for its cloud-based platform.
  
  
• Outpost Games, a Redwood City, CA-based video game startup, closed a $6.2 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Benchmark. In conjunction with the funding, Mitch Lasky, general partner at Benchmark, and angel investor Manuel Bronstein, head of consumer products at YouTube, joined the board. The company intends to use the funds to invest in tools, platform technology and content. 
  
  
• Bulletproof, a company behind the butter coffee and a line of other biohacking products, is expanding into a line of cafés and a new product, FatWater.  Trinity Ventures, who led the $9 million round, is an investor in Starbucks, Jamba Juice and Fitbit.
  
  
• Blue Earth Diagnostics Ltd, a private diagnostics company, has received £18 Million Series B funding from Syncona Partners.  This financing will enable BED to complete activities leading to a regulatory filing and, on receiving regulatory approval, commercialise fluciclovine (18F), a synthetic amino acid investigational positron emission tomography (PET) radiopharmaceutical preferentially taken up by cancer cells, in particular prostate cancer and brain tumour cell lines.  
  
  
• JetSmarter, a mobile marketplace that seamlessly connects travelers to private jets from their smartphones, raised $20 million from a group of influential investors with its most recent Series B raise. Some investors include: Members of The Saudi Royal Family, world-renowned music and entertainment moguls, London-based private equity fund, group of High Net Worth Individuals and Family Offices including top c-level executives from companies such as Goldman Sachs and Twitter.
  
  
• MedGenome, a market leader for genomic diagnostics in India and a leading provider of genomics research services globally, today announced it has received a $20 million investment from Sequoia Capital in a Series B funding round. With this funding, MedGenome will further invest in building its cutting-edge bioinformatics infrastructure, enhance its sequencing facilities in India and the US, and expand its research and scientific teams.
  
  
• Continuum Analytics, which develops Anaconda, the leading modern open source analytics platform powered by Python, secured a $24 million Series A funding round led by General Catalyst Partners and BuildGroup. The funds will be leveraged to accelerate product development, expand sales and marketing, and continue to invest in strengthening the Python and Anaconda communities. 
  
  
• GenSight Biologics, a clinical-stage biotechnology company discovering and developing novel therapies for mitochondrial and neurodegenerative diseases of the eye, and in the future, of the central nervous system, completed a Series B preferred stock financing of approximately $36 million. New investors included Fidelity Management & Research Company, Jennison Associates (on behalf of certain clients), Sphera Global HealthCare Fund, Perceptive Advisors and HealthCap. Existing Series A investors also participated in the round. 
  
  
• Boston-based synthetic biology startup Ginkgo Bioworks announced a $45 million Series B investment led by Viking Global Partners, which was part of Moderna Therapeutics’ massive $450 million round in January of this year. The round also comes from OS Fund, Y Combinator and Felicis Ventures, which put up Ginkgo’s $9 million round in March. The new funding will be used to expand into fields including pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and probiotics, as well as to hire 15-20 new employees by the end of the year and to build a second robotic lab to make the microbes.
  
  
• Remedy Partners, a developer and manager of bundled payment programs for government and private health insurers, announced today it has raised $50 million from Bain Capital Ventures. The capital will be used to support Remedy's dramatic growth in new customers and partnerships. Bain Capital Ventures Managing Director Mike Krupka will join the Remedy Partners Board of Directors.
  
  
• MRL Ventures, Merck ’s early-stage biotech investment arm, has agreed to join The Baupost Group in leading a $55 million Series B venture investment in Cambridge, Mass.-based RaNA Therapeutics. The round included a handful of “crossover” investors that usually focus on public companies—Rock Springs Capital Management, Brookside Capital, and Leerink Partners. Earlier investors such as Atlas Venture, GlaxoSmithKline ’s SR One group, Pfizer Venture Investments, and Monsanto all doubled down after they participated in the company’s $20.7 million Series A round in January 2012.
  
  
• Notion Capital, a venture capital (VC) investment firm based in London, launched a new $120 million fund to back Europe’s business-to-business (B2B) cloud-computing companies. The VC firm had two previous funds prior to today, amounting to around $150 million, and plans are afoot to extend its latest $120 million fund to $150 million by the end of this year.
  
  
• Investment firm, DCM announced the launch of A-Fund, a $100 million investment focusing on start-ups which leverage on Android’saccelerating growth. The fund was made possible with investment and support from GREE Inc., Japan’s largest mobile gaming social network, KDDI Corporation, Japan’s second largest mobile operation and Tencent, one of the largest Internet companies in China.

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. 

Image source: gapsa.upenn.edu