AnalytixInsight

Public markets remain extremely volatile, as demonstrated by the 7%+ intra-day swing in the NASDAQ Composite on Thursday, February 24th. Against, this backdrop, Waterloo based eSentire will be valued at US$1.1 billion following $325 million deal. In addition, we counted ~$100 million of additional VC backed deals in Canada last week. Traction Guest, which was one of the first four companies to receive an investment from Salesforce’s $100 million Canadian-focused fund, will be acquired by Salesforce. Terms were not disclosed. Twitter Inc. said Wednesday it is offering US$1 billion of high-yield 8-year bonds in a private placement. Carvana, the online used car marketplace, has agreed to buy Kar Global’s Adesa U.S. auction subsidiary for $2.2 billion in cash. SoFi Technologies Inc. is buying banking-software maker Technisys SA for about US$1.1 billion, the latest in a string of deals designed to transform the lender into a one-stop financial shop. The SEC is investigating whether Tesla stock trades made by Elon Musk and his brother violated insider-trading rules, WSJ report says. Apple reportedly completed production tests for its AR/VR headset. Meta Platforms has broken up a group of more than 300 employees working on operating systems for its virtual and augmented reality devices, according to three people with knowledge of the situation. Meta Platforms is testing ad-revenue sharing on Facebook Reels with all creators in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. It will expand the test to more countries in the coming weeks. Alibaba reported its slowest-ever revenue growth for the quarter through December, as its core commerce business in China grew only 7% amid an economic slowdown.

Even as public markets remain choppy, we counted Canadian VC funding totaling almost $600 million in the past week. Public markets remain unforgiving, as evidenced by Shopify’s steep share price decline this past week. With fintech stocks down 40%, Chime delays its IPO. SoftBank is reportedly seeking a US$8 billion margin loan as part of Arm IPO. Banks are planning to pitch IPO valuations for Arm of upward of US$50 billion. Arm is likely worth US$25 billion to US$35 billion based on the industry’s valuation metrics and analysts’ early projections; Bloomberg reported this month. Crypto company Circle doubled its valuation to US$9 billion under new SPAC terms. Sequoia Capital is raising up to US$600 million for a new fund focused on cryptocurrency start-ups. The announcement marks the firm’s first-ever sector-focused investment fund, a sign of its long-term commitment to the exploding crypto sector. Epic says there are now more than 500 million Epic games accounts. Sea Ltd. lost more than US$16 billion of value in its biggest daily market drop after India abruptly banned its most popular mobile gaming title. Super Bowl ads boosted crypto app downloads by 279%, led by Coinbase, which had to briefly throttle traffic after its website crashed. Google is creating new privacy rules for its Android smartphone operating system to curb how users are tracked for advertising purposes, the company said Wednesday, following the path Apple forged with its App Tracking Transparency rules. Construction of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s first advanced chip plant in the U.S. is three to six months behind schedule, sources told Nikkei Asia, a sign that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker is finding it more challenging to expand overseas than at home.

Vancouver quantum computing startup D-Wave is going public on the New York Stock Exchange via a SPAC, which is anticipated to raise $431 million in gross proceeds. Meanwhile, Venture investment in Canada’s tech sector exploded in 2021, according to a new Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) report. Canadian tech startups saw over $16 billion in VC investment last year. This figure crushes the $6 billion the ecosystem saw in 2020, when venture funding sputtered due to the pandemic, and is more than double the country’s previous high of just under $8 billion in 2019. TerraZero Technologies announced a strategic ~$10 million investment from BIGG Digital Assets (BIGG-CSE). EMERGE (ECOM-TSXV) reported strong preliminary Q4 2021 results — Revenue is expected to be between $14.2 million and $14.8 million in Q4 2021, an increase of over 491%, compared to $2.4 million Q4 2020. Almost a decade after the term “unicorn” was coined to describe a rare breed of private company, about two new companies are joining the herd daily, as there now over 1,000 unicorns. Public markets continued to remain choppy with added geopolitical tensions going into the weekend, while there appears to be increased M&A chatter; not unsurprising in light of public markets dislocations. Affirm tumbled 10% after the Buy-Now-Pay-Later fintech’s Twitter blunder revealed details of it’s earnings early. Tesla logged a US$101 million impairment loss from Bitcoin in 2021 as the cryptocurrency’s value fluctuated. Nvidia expects to book US$1.36 billion charge in Q1 Fiscal 2023 due to termination of Arm deal with Softbank. Cisco made US$20 billion-plus takeover offer for Splunk. Binance, led by the world’s richest crypto billionaire, is taking a US$200 million stake in Forbes. OpenSea, the most dominant marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), launched a venture capital arm on Friday, becoming the latest privately held crypto startup to create a division backing other emerging Web3 startups. The biggest assembler of iPhones said component shortages that have plagued electronics production for more than a year are showing signs of easing, a potentially encouraging signal for manufacturers across industries.

This past week witnessed one of the most volatile stock reactions for multiple stocks on earnings we recall seeing. Amazon repurchased ~US$1.3 billion of its stock in January, the first buyback in a decade. After getting smashed earlier this year, Peloton stock shot up more than 30% after market on Friday after reports of Amazon’s acquisition interest. Facebook was set to shed about US$200 billion in market value, following its earnings report, in what would be one of the biggest one-day market capitalization wipeouts for any company on record. PayPal stock sank to a 21-month low Wednesday after the payments platform trimmed its financial forecast, citing the impact of inflation. On the flip side, The startup behind Bored Ape Yacht Club is reportedly in talks with Andreessen Horowitz for funding at a US$5 billion valuation. FTX, the third largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, raised US$400 million in a new funding round that valued the company at US$32 billion, the company announced Monday. Wag Labs Inc., the developer of dog-walking app Wag!, has agreed to go public through a merger with a blank-check company. San Francisco-based Wag and CHW Acquisition Corp. will have a value of about US$350 million as a combined company, according to a Thursday announcement confirming a Bloomberg News report. In Canada, this week we counted nearly a billion dollars of VC funding announcements, including a US$6 million investment by Stack Capital Group (STCK-TSX) into Montreal based Canadian travel Unicorn, Hopper. While announcements can be made after a decent amount of time has elapsed since the funding – this level of VC activity is nonetheless impressive in light of public markets volatility.