Startup Trends: Private Unicorns turn to acquisitions to expand competencies
During the second quarter, several private unicorns made strategic acquisitions to grow or expand their competencies.
Chime and Salt Labs
Chime, a consumer fintech firm, announced in June that it acquired Salt Labs, a provider of an employee rewards and incentive platform that functions like a savings account for hourly workers. Chime, founded in 2013 and based in San Francisco, offers products including debit cards, spending accounts, and an optional savings account, all through a mobile banking app.
Salt Labs’ team and offerings will become part of Chime, which will launch a new business unit, Chime Enterprise, led by Salt Labs’ Founder and CEO Jason Lee. Chime will also gain access to Salt Labs' relationships with enterprise clients in industries including transportation, call centers, hospitality, and parking services, giving it new opportunities in account growth and revenue streams.
Chime’s Forge Price™ as of July 17, 2024, is $24 which implies a valuation of $7.96 billion, a 68% discount to its last funding round in August 2021.
AlphaSense and Tegus
Market research firm AlphaSense announced that it acquired Tegus, a provider of research, private company content, financial data, and workflow tools. According to AlphaSense, combining the two firms' complementary product and content capabilities will help customers uncover more comprehensive insights from thousands of content sets such as equity research, company filings, event transcripts, and news. The combined firm will also accelerate growth, innovation, and content expansion. New York-based AlphaSense has more than 4,000 enterprise customers using its platform, including the majority of the firms in the S&P 500.
AlphaSense first disclosed the $930 million deal in June 2024 and closed the purchase in July.
As part of this Tegus acquisition, AlphaSense closed a new $650 million funding round, co-led by Viking Global Investors and BDT & MSD Partners, and joined by new investors including J.P. Morgan Growth Equity Partners and SoftBank Vision Fund 2. According to the company, the latest financing round brings AlphaSense's valuation to $4 billion.
Tegus’ Forge Price™ as of July 17, 2024 is $60.36 which implies a valuation of $3.3 billion.
Databricks and Tabular
Databricks announced in June 2024 the purchase of Tabular, a data management company. San Francisco-based Databricks provides data analytics solutions to corporations and provides an open and unified platform for data and AI.
The purchase brings together creators of two of the leading open-source lakehouse formats, Apache Iceberg™ and Linux Foundation Delta Lake. Databricks said the purchase price was between $1 billion and $2 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Tabular’s team will join Databricks, and the two companies will provide clients with greater data compatibility when working with data spread between different lakehouse formats.
Databricks’ Forge Price™ as of July 17, 2024, was $73.03 which implies a valuation of $43.13 billion, a 1% discount to its last funding round in August 2021.
Armis and Silk Security
Armis, a cybersecurity provider to Fortune 500 corporations and governments, said in April 2024 that it purchased Silk Security, a leading platform for cyber risk prioritization and remediation, for $150 million. Armis will integrate the Silk Platform to provide security teams with a consolidated view of findings encompassing all data sources, from on-premises devices to cloud computing, coding, and application security tools.
Silk Security was founded in 2022 by three security professionals and previously raised $12.5 million from Insight Partners, Crowdstrike Falcon Fund, and Hetz Ventures. San Francisco-based Armis last raised $300 million in 2021, valuing it at $3.4 billion at that time. In February, Armis also acquired CTCI, a private firm specializing in AI-powered pre-attack threat-hunting technology.
About the Author
Jeannine DeFoe is a former Bloomberg News reporter and an experienced financial writer who focuses on a variety of topics such investing, wealth management and fintech. Read more from Jeannine.