Morning VC Brief丨2024.09.06

Morning VC Brief is an expert daily curation of tech and venture news. Feel free to forward; the sign-up is here

00. TL;DR

1/ Engineer Productivity Platform Cortex raises $60M Series C

2/ HR Platform Oyster raises $59M Series D at $1.2B

3/ ICHRA Health Benefits startup Thatch raises $38M Series A

4/ Documentation Platform Mintlify raises $18M Series A

5/ Sports Content Platform DubClub raises $7.5M Series A

6/ Construction SaaS startup Trestle raises $2.3M Seed Round

7/ Salesforce Acquires Data Management Firm Own for $1.9B

8/ Qualcomm is working on MR smart glasses with Samsung and Google

01. Venture News

1/ Engineer Productivity Platform Cortex raises $60M Series C

Cortex is the Internal Developer Portal eliminating “developer tax” with paved paths to production. This round was led by Scale Venture Partners with participation from World Innovation Labs, Cross Creek, Alpha Square Group, Patrick and John Collison (Stripe) IVP, Sequoia Capital, and Y Combinator. Link

2/ HR Platform Oyster raises $59M Series D at $1.2B

Oyster is a payroll and HR platform for distributed workforces. In 2023 alone, Oyster facilitated $107M in payments to full-time employees and contractors based in emerging markets. This round was led by Silver Lake Waterman with participation from Emergence, Stripes, Georgian, and more. Link

3/ ICHRA Health Benefits startup Thatch raises $38M Series A

Thatch built an easy-to-use platform that helps employers save money while giving employees the freedom to choose their healthcare coverage. This round was led by Index Ventures and General Catalyst with participation from SemperVirens, The General Partnership, a16z and Avid Ventures. Link

4/ Documentation Platform Mintlify raises $18M Series A

Mintlify provides modern standard for public facing documentation for developers. Content powered by Mintlify reaches over 20 million developers a year and is growing fast.. This round was led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Bain Capital, Y Combinator, and more. Link

5/ Sports Content Platform DubClub raises $7.5M Series A

DubClub is a platform for people to consume, discuss, and buy premium sports content from creators. The platform has facilitated over $50M in subscription payments for cappers, processed over 5 million transactions. This round was led by Renegade Partners with participation from Warby Parker, Hall of Fame NFL players, and more.

6/ Construction SaaS startup Trestle raises $2.3M Seed Round

Trestle streamlines the time-consuming contract and vendor management process for contractors with a holistic SaaS platform. This round was led by Lerer Hippeau with participation from Alumni Ventures, Meridian Ventures, Redbud VC, and more.

02. Tech News & Updates

1/ Salesforce Acquires Data Management Firm Own for $1.9B

Own provides a range of enterprise-focused data backup tools and services such as automated backup and disaster recovery. Own has raised $507.3M from Tiger Global, BlackRock, Insight Partners, and Salesforce Ventures. As of August 2021, Own was valued at $3.35B.

In recent weeks, Salesforce has closed smaller acquisition deals, snatching up startups PredictSpring (an omnichannel commerce platform) and Tenyx (which makes AI-powered voice agents). Link

2/ Qualcomm is working on MR smart glasses with Samsung and Google

Google, Samsung and Qualcomm’s smart glasses would be a different approach from Apple’s Vision Pro, a mixed-reality headset launched this year that is worn on a user’s head and can be controlled through hand gestures. Qualcomm has a chip called the Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1, designed for smart glasses. Link