INTELLI™ Weekly Insights
Monday, November 14, 2022 | Volume 1 Series 25 | Fintech Companies To Look Out For, FTX Fiasco, and more updates from the weekend.
📅 Happy Monday to you all - Another week is upon us as we race towards the end of the year. We’ve got another round of news and updates brought to us by the team at INTELLI™. We have some more Fintech news, signals, and companies to watch out for, a quick summary of the whole FTX fiasco, and some more updates that we collected over the weekend.
👁️ Top Growing FinTechs to Keep Your Eye On 👁️
Exploding Topics gave their own list of Top Fintech Companies to keep an eye on, which we’ve summarized here for you:
1. Gohenry- a money management platform that teaches young people how to handle their finances.
2. Revolut- London-based Revolut has quickly emerged as one of the most valuable fintech startups on the planet.
3. M1 Finance- an app-based money management app. Its users can invest in ETF and custom stock portfolios. It also lets people borrow low-cost of line credit and go complete banking services, digitally.
4. Treasuryspring- operates in the wholesale money markets world. Specifically, the software is designed to minimize risk while maximizing return using fixed-term funds (FTFs).
5. Figure- a financial service powered by blockchain for both personal and business use. The startup offers financial products related to mortgages, home equity, and personal loans for individuals.
6. Stockal- their new goal was designed to help retail investors abroad put their money into international markets, like the US.
7. BharatPe- an integrative payment processing platform for merchants in India.
8. Chime- a neobank that provides users with zero fee mobile banking solutions.
9. Bluesheets- a bookkeeping automation software that uses human-assisted AI to extract data, update financial ledgers, and generate reports and analytics.
10. Robinhood- a stock brokerage company that gives retail investors the ability to trade stocks, options, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies.
To read more about the stats click here.
📰 FTX: Here's What's Up (via the Scoop that’s out there)
If you are not aware by now, FTX and Binance are cryptocurrency exchanges, meaning they enable customers to trade digital currencies for other digital currencies or traditional money, and vice versa.According to CoinMarketCap, an industry data tracker, the two processes the majority of all crypto trades in the world.
Now what happened to FTX? FTX has a native cryptocurrency token called FTT, which traders use for operations like paying transaction fees. Last year, Mr. Zhao (CEO, Binance) sold his stake in FTX back to Mr. Bankman-Fried (CEO, FTX), who paid for it partially with FTT tokens.
A hedge fund run by Mr. Bankman-Fried was reported to hold a unusually large amount of FTT tokens, the same hedge fund which was also claimed to have close financial ties with FTX, even though they shoukd be completely separate businesses.
With this report, Binance announced that it would sell its FTT Tokens, which led to FTT's price plummeting as traders pulled out of FTX.
This lead to an estimated $6 Billion withdrawal amounts, to which it seemed to lack the funds to fulfill.
Binance in turn said that an agreement between it and FTX to buy the latter company was reached. This allowed Mr. Bankman-Fried to assure customers that all their withdrawals would be processed.
However, Binance announced it would no longer buy FTX, saying it had arrived at that decision “as a result of corporate due diligence.” It also cited regulatory investigations and reports of mishandled funds.
Following this, FTX announced that it was filing for bankruptcy, as well as Mr. Bankman-Fried had resigned as CEO of the company.
The speed of FTX’s downfall has left crypto insiders stunned.The cryptocurrency industry has long struggled to convince regulators, investors and ordinary customers that it is trustworthy. The fall of FTX, which seemed more stable than other companies, and the pullout by Binance have jolted the market. FTT’s price has fallen about 80 percent since Tuesday. The prices of Bitcoin and Ether, some of the most valuable tokens, have both fluctuated widely since then, at one point dropping more than 20 percent. This will surely keep all of us on our feet watching out for what happens next in the realm of Crypto.
💰 INTELLI™ Featured Venture Deals
Kyte, a San Francisco-based rental car delivery company, raised $60 million in Series B funding led by InterAlpen Partners.
Coefficient, a Mountain View, Calif.-based data connectivity and automation company for spreadsheets, raised $18 million in Series A funding led by Battery Ventures.
Tellus, a Cupertino, Calif.-based savings platform powered by real estate, raised $16 million in seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz.
The Wire, a New York-based news and data platform focused on China and global supply chains, raised $14 million in Series A funding led by Sequoia Capital.
Savvy, a New York-based wealth management platform, raised $11 million in Series A-1 funding led by Cal Berkeley’s The House Fund.
Directus, a Brooklyn, New York-based open source software company, raised $7 million in Series A funding led by True Ventures.
Recess, a Venice, Calif.-based marketing platform connecting brands with events and venues, raised $5 million in Series A funding co-led by Data Point Capital and Spring Mountain Capital.
Electric Era, a Seattle-based climate tech startup, raised $4 million in funding with investments from Blackhorn Ventures, Proeza Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, and Remus Capital.
🤝 Recent Exits
CBRE Group acquired Full Spectrum Group, a Laguna Hills, Calif.-based maintenance and repair services provider for laboratory assets, from Pfingsten. Financial terms were not disclosed.
EmployBridge acquired Bluecrew, a Chicago-based hourly W-2 workforce-as-a-service platform, from IAC. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Molded Devices, a TruArc Partners portfolio company, acquired GlobalMed, a Trenton, Canada-based medical tubing and extrusion manufacturer, and Schauenburg Truplast, from Schauenburg Hose Technology. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Stay tuned for more updates brought to you by PreIPO INTELLI™