Daily funding roundup - February 8, 2016

Hired raised $40M; Xignite received $20.5M; TalentSky announced $10M funding;

• Vast, a company wielding big data for the used cars marketplace, raised $14 million in funding from Capital One Growth Ventures. Jaidev Shergill, one of the firm’s managing partners, has joined the board of directors at Vast as part of the deal. Previously, Vast primarily focused on its relationship with dealers, but the company has a new offering called CarStory dedicated to consumers.
  
  
• Careers marketplace Hired closed a $40 million Series C funding round led by Lumia Capital, a growth-stage VC firm. The San Francisco company has raised $72.7 million in venture capital to date from Lumia, Crosslink Capital, Sierra Ventures, and others. When it closed a $15 million Series in December 2014, the company was reportedly valued at $200 million. We reached out to the company, but they're not disclosing what valuation investors peg them at with this new round.
  
  
• Jodel, a Berlin, Germany-based provider of a social livefeed app, raised funding from Redalpine Venture Partners. The amount of the deal was not disclosed. The company is using the funds to continue to expand operations. It is hiring. Led by Alessio Avellán Borgmeyer, CEO, and Tim Schmitz, COO, Jodel provides a localization-based app that allows users to communicate with others near them, limited to a perimeter of not more than 10 kilometres. 
  
  
• Trussle, an online matchmaking service for mortgage seekers, closed a £1.1 million (approximately $1.59 million) funding round led by Robin Klein and Saul Klein’s new VC firm, Localglobe. The London-based startup also drew support from Songkick co-founder and chairman Ian Hogarth, Betfair’s co-founder Ed Wray and ex-Google UK MD Dan Cobley. The investment, the company said, will be used to expand its team, develop its product, operations and customer support.
  
  
• Imperial Innovations Group plc has led a £5 million (approximately $7.21 million) Series A funding round in portfolio company Aqdot Limited, a Cambridge (UK) based specialist chemical company. Innovations has committed £3.0 million to the round alongside Cambridge Enterprise, Parkwalk Advisors and Providence Investment Company. Innovations first invested in the Company in November 2013 and has now invested a total of £4.6 million. As a result of this investment, Innovations will now hold a 46.5% (non-diluted) interest in the Company.
  
  
• Pune-based ecommerce logistics firm, Xpressbees, raised around $8 million (about INR 54 Cr) from SAIF Partners and Vertex Ventures, the venture arm of Singapore government’s investment fund Temasek. The startup is also the logistics support provider for online babycare retailer FirstCry. It claims to deliver 60,000+ shipments every day.
  
  
• Vestagen Technical Textiles, Inc., an Orlando, Florida-based medical technology company developing and marketing high performance apparel for healthcare and other demanding applications, completed a $7 million financing. Backers in the round, which was a planned extension of its previous financing, included Advent Life Sciences, HealthQuest Capital and others. The company intends to use the funds to commercialize VESTEX. 
  
  
• TalentSky, a next generation professional skills network with a mission to help people navigate the changing world of work, announced $10 million in Seed and Series A cumulative funding ahead of the company's February 4th launch.  TalentSky's raise comes primarily from individual investors who share the company's passion for solving the skills gap problem.
  
  
• Xignite, a San Mateo, CA-based provider of market data cloud solutions for financial institutions and financial technology companies, raised $20.5 million in Series C funding. The round, which brought total funding to $37 million, was led by Tokyo-based Quick Corporation, part of the Nikkei Group and Japan’s largest financial information provider, with participation from current investors StarVest Partners, Altos Ventures, and Startup Capital Ventures. In conjunction with Atsuyuki Nakajima, Quick’s Managing Director, will be joining Xignite’s Board of Directors.

VC's Raising Funds

• Matrix Partners China IV received commitments of $500 million from 42 LPs, according to a with a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Matrix raised its Fund III in April 2014 on $350m, which was the same size as the firm’s second China fund, which was closed in 2011. Matrix, which is based in Boston and has offices in Beijing and Shanghai, currently has more than $1bn under management in its China-focused funds.

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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