Venture Capital: Massive $500M+ Rounds From Snyk And Varo Bank

While Varo Bank scored a $510 million Series, Snyk romped home with $530 million.
Lately chartered U.S. neobank Varo Bank announced Thursday its raise of a $510 million Series E at a valuation of $2.5 billion. Today, Israeli cloud security startup Snyk said it collected $530 million comprising $300 million in new money and $230 million in secondary funding. Snyk’s valuation was a solid $8.5 billion – up sharply from $4.7 billion in March when it raised $300 million. (TechCrunch)
Varo Bank – money came in “fast and furious”
The latest round at Varo Bank was led by Lone Pine Capital and saw participation by a large number of new investors including Declaration Partners, Eldridge, Marshall Wace, Berkshire Partners/Stockbridge and funds and accounts managed by BlackRock.
Existing investors Warburg Pincus, The Rise Fund, Gallatin Point Capital and HarbourVest Partners also participated.
“We didn’t set out to raise this much money. It was coming in fast and furious and we were at like $510 [million] and I finally said, ‘Ok, enough,’ ” CEO and founder Colin Walsh told TechCrunch.
“But the fact that we were able to raise this money without even really trying is evidence of the fact that there’s something happening that is just very culturally relevant in this moment and our success to me is very much about having that kind of impact at scale.”
Snyk eyeing acquisitions and an IPO
The megaround at Israeli startup Snyk, which specializes in cloud-native application security, was led by Sands Capital Ventures and Tiger Global. New investors in the round included Baillie Gifford, Koch Industries, Lone Pine Capital, T. Rowe Price and Whale Rock Capital Management.
Accel, Addition, Alkeon, Atlassian Ventures, BlackRock, Boldstart Ventures, Canaan Partners, Coatue, Franklin Templeton, Geodesic Capital, Salesforce Ventures and Temasek also participated as existing investors.
Snyk CEO Peter McKay told TechCrunch that he expected at least some of the money to be used for strategic acquisitions to fuel “inorganic” growth, given that three previous deals had proved “very, very successful.”
The raise also allowed the company to pick the timing of an IPO, now that it had the financial resources.
Related Story: Israeli Cloud Security Startup Snyk Scores $300M Funding; Quadruples Valuation

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