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In a historic year for valuations, League‘s new funding round has squeezed in one more Canadian tech unicorn before the clock struck midnight on 2021. The Toronto-based healthcare startup raised US$70 million in new financing, which at a pre-money valuation of US$850 million, or $1.1 billion, made it Canada’s newest tech unicorn. New Zealand-based accounting platform Xero has reached a deal to acquire Calgary tax preparation software startup TaxCycle for a total of $75 million. A record 560 startups were valued at over US$1 billion this year, earning their place in the so-called “unicorn” club, according to a report from Business Insider citing data from Crunchbase and PitchBook. The term unicorn was first coined in 2013. At the time, there were just 39 U.S. startups that fit the bill, with an average of four unicorn births per year in the decade prior. Today there are approximately 1,000 private companies around the world valued at US$1 billion or more. Those companies are estimated to be worth a total of roughly US$3 trillion, per Crunchbase data. Shares of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. rose 0.8% in morning trading Monday, after China’s securities regulator’s draft rules on overseas listings released over the long weekend OK’d the listing structure known as variable-interest entity (VIE) used by the e-commerce giant to list its shares on the NYSE. Facebook’s Oculus VR app marked a key milestone over the Christmas weekend, when it was the most popular download on Apple’s App Store. The Oculus app beat out long-standing leaders like TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram for having the most downloads. This marks the first time ever the Oculus app was No. 1 on Christmas.

Thank you for your support through 2021, we hope you and your loved ones are enjoying a restful holiday season. Canadian software firm, Dye & Durham Ltd. soared as much as 21% after reaching a deal to buy Australian data services firm Link Administration Holdings Ltd. for about $3.2 billion. Sophic Client, GameSquare Esports (GSQ-CSE, GMSQ-OTC), a stock we recently called out as a tax loss buying candidate, had a nice move (gaining ~35%) last week, as the Company’s execs were profiled in Business Insider. China Mobile, the wireless carrier that was among the state-owned firms forced to delist from the U.S. by the Trump administration for alleged ties to the Chinese military, is seeking to raise the equivalent of US$7.6 billion in a Shanghai initial public offering. It would be the biggest domestic IPO in a decade, according to Bloomberg. The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Tuesday that electric vehicle maker Nikola will pay US$125 million to settle charges that it misled investors about its products. Subscription-based streaming video services worldwide spent nearly US$50 billion on content in 2021, an uptick of 20% from last year, according to new data released by research firm Ampere Analysis. Venture capital invested a record US$30 billion in crypto in 2021, more than quadruple previous high, this comes as Apple, among other tech companies is quickly losing talent to lucrative crypto startups. Semi CapEx to hit US$152 billion in 2021 as market on track for US$2 trillion by 2035. TSMC, the world’s largest foundry, intended to spend between US$25 billion and US$35 billion on new manufacturing capacities as demand for its services is setting records.

The last few months have brought significant uncertainty to public markets. However, despite all this uncertainty the broader markets continue to perform quite well. In this context, despite a continued melt-up for mid-cap and large cap U.S. listed stocks, small-cap stocks have not performed as well. This divergence appears to have worsened this year’s tax loss selling. In our latest Sophic Capital Inc. piece, we highlight a number of small cap Canadian innovation stocks, which could benefit once tax loss selling subsides. Sophic Client, Reklaim (MYID-TSXV) featured in the Wall Street Journal. In a piece, highlighting a handful of business leaders, politicians, and startups, such as Brave Software Inc., Reklaim Ltd. and Streamlytics Inc., seeking to empower consumers to control and benefit from the personal data that the technology industry collects on individuals every day. US software bosses have cashed in hundreds of millions of dollars of stock. The race to cash in comes as the US Securities and Exchange Commission is looking to tighten the rules around sales by corporate insiders. Reddit Inc., the social media site that helped fuel the stock market meme-trading frenzy, said it has filed confidentially for an initial public offering. Buy now, pay later service Affirm fell more than 15% on Thursday as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced an inquiry into the fast-growing segment of the consumer finance market. Oracle Corp. is in talks to buy electronic-medical-records company Cerner Corp., according to people familiar with the matter, a deal that could be worth around US$30 billion and push the enterprise-software giant further into healthcare. Nike is taking a plunge deeper into the world of crypto collectibles, announcing that they’re acquiring the NFT studio RTFKT (pronounced “artifact”).