Daily funding roundup - September 18, 2015

Clover Health bagged $100M; Jaunt raised $50M; Establishment Labs closed $20M funding round

• Travel Startups Incubator announced a $25,000 investment in VidPal, a travel and tourism video marketplace that provides paid opportunities to the freelance video community and gives the 56.4 million visitors to New York City an on-demand, video request service. Along with Travel Startups Incubator, VidPal has partnered with Crowne Hotel Princeton and New York Tours. The startup also plans future partnerships with ExpoTv and GenVideo. The company’s cloud services provider is Rackspace Cloud.
  
  
• Padlet, a Y Combinator-backed company has raised an additional $1.2 million in funding to continue to grow its business. The new funding was led by Cherubic VC, and included Jeff Epstein (partner at Bessemer), Ryan Petersen (CEO, Flexport), Amos Elliston (CTO, Flexport), Dave Lerner, Paul Sethi, Maiden Lane, and others. Previously, the company had around $450,000 from angels and Y Combinator combined. With the additional backing, San Francisco-based Padlet will expand its team of four by hiring another developer, designer and head of content and community, the company says.
  
  
• ReelTime, a Spring Hill, FL-based virtual reality content producer, closed $2 million in funding. Media Funding Group made the investment in exchange for a combination of stock at a premium to the market. The company intends to use the funds for national and local advertising placements. Led by James Hodges, CEO, ReelTime is a leader in the production and distribution of Virtual Reality Content worldwide.
  
  
• Mangstor, Inc, a leading provider of industry standard NVMe Flash storage solutions, announced it has closed $10.2 million in Series B funding. Led by New Science Ventures, this investment will be used to fuel growth in leadership, sales and engineering roles as well as to fund product and technology development.
  
  
• Tascent, Inc., a biometrics and identity innovation company, announced completion of an $18.5 million Series A funding round to build upon the success of its groundbreaking biometric technology platform. The Series A round enables Tascent to develop new high-throughput iris recognition and mobile biometric identity solutions, enhancing its product lineup and further expanding its presence in government, enterprise and other market sectors.
  
  
• Establishment Labs, the next generation breast aesthetics company, announced the closing of a new round of financing in excess of $20 Million led by Crown Predator Holdings and JW Asset Management. The investment and partnership from Crown Predator and JW Asset Management and the global relationships and experience they provide will enable us to accelerate investment in our technology, grow our customer base, and scale our business to meet growing demand. We are excited to officially begin the journey to bring our next generation Motiva implants to the United States, the largest market for breast aesthetics in the world.” said Juan José Chacón-Quirós, CEO of Establishment Labs.
  
  
• Venice, California-based Headspace has raised $34 million for a meditation app that aims to help users with stress, focus, and anxiety. The round was led by The Chernin Group, with participation from Advancit Capital, Allen & Company, Breyer Capital, Broadway Video Ventures, Deerfield Management, Freelands Ventures, and William Morris Endeavor as well as celebrity angel investors Jessica Alba, Cash Warren, Jared Leto, Ryan Seacrest, and LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner
  
  
• Jaunt raised more than $50 million in a third round of funding. The funding is another sign that investors are very interested in the disruptive potential of virtual reality, which immerses you in virtual worlds. The funding follows a $27.8 million round that Jaunt raised last year to create non-gaming virtual reality content, such as 360-degree videos that immerse you in events such as a Paul McCartney concert.  Previous Jaunt investors include Highland Capital Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Google Ventures, BSkyB, and others. Jaunt has unveiled its own VR camera, which can be used to film in all directions at the same time. Jaunt’s own film studio in Los Angeles is headed by former Lucasfilm chief technology officer Cliff Plumer.
  
  
• Clover Health, an insurance startup based out of San Francisco, is hoping that with its data-driven approach it can rebuild healthcare for senior citizens from the ground up. It wants that by tracking all the inputs of a person’s medical history from insurance claims and determining who the highest-risk patients are. Clover Health then works with those patients to help them become healthier and improve overall clinical outcomes. To pull that off, the company has raised $100 million in an equity round led by First Round Capital and debt.
  

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Image source: venturebeat.com