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Santa Monica-based software engineering startup LinearB has raised $50 million in Series B funding led by San Francisco’s Tribe Capital, the company announced Monday.
New investor Salesforce Ventures and existing investors Battery Ventures and 83North also participated in the round, which takes LinearB’s total capital raised to $71 million.
LinearB, which also has offices in Tel Aviv, Israel, was founded in 2018 by Ori Keren and Dan Lines, former executives at cybersecurity firm Cloudlock (which was acquired by Cisco for $293 million in 2016). Informed by difficulties in scaling software development at Cloudlock, the pair launched LinearB, which is essentially a productivity tracker for engineers that provides data analytics and workflow metrics. The platform documents how many hours have been spent coding, how long it took to deploy code and what percentage of code was failing or creating problems.
The startup said it has grown its customer base from 1,500 to 5,000 software development teams “in the past year,” including clients at Bumble, BigID, Cloudinary, Unbabel and Drata. The new funding will be used to expand LinearB’s engineering, sales and marketing teams and further develop its product.
As working from home becomes the norm, LinearB is one of several software-focused companies aiming to meet the demands of a remote engineering workforce. Sourcegraph, a code-collaboration startup based in San Francisco, has been used by the likes of Tinder and Amazon to help scattered engineers annotate and collaborate on code. Jellyfish, a Boston-based productivity startup, helps managers see what work engineers spend their time on each day.
Beverly Hills-based Regeneration.VC said it aims to invest in “circular economy” consumer startups developing regenerative materials—an area it described as a “$4.5 trillion opportunity to ensure the prosperity of our species and planet” in a press release.
The circular economy involves reusing materials at the end of their life cycle to produce new goods, ideally eliminating waste and harmful emissions in the process. The fund’s portfolio companies include VitroLabs, which makes lab-grown leather, and Pangaia, a fashion brand that repurposes discarded textiles.
Regeneration.VC is co-led by general partners Dan Fishman, the former president of Los Angeles ice cream brand Coolhaus, and Michael Smith, a former touring DJ and co-founder of the L.A. real estate firm Creative Space. Alongside DiCaprio and Tribe Capital, the firm’s limited partners include Maryland-based investor ImpactAssets, Twist Bioscience co-founder Bill Peck and Depeche Mode guitarist Martin Gore.
“We need forward-thinking approaches that perform measurably better for our planet,” DiCaprio, who will also serve as a strategic advisor to the fund, said in a statement. “It’s time for people to feel good about their purchases and for businesses to meet that challenge—every bite of food, every t-shirt, every product counts.”
The Oscar-winning actor has previously backed Santa Monica-based seed-stage fund Struck Capital and eco-conscious digital bank Aspiration.
- Aspiration Acquires Carbon Insights to Track Carbon Use - dot.LA ›
- Leonardo DiCaprio Joins LA Venture Fund Struck Capital - dot.LA ›
- Regeneration.VC’s Dan Fishman on Consumer Climate Startups - dot.LA ›
Los Angeles-based Pipe Technologies, Inc. announced Wednesday it has raised $60 million in equity and asset financing as an extension to the $6 million seed round it closed in February.
Launched last September, Pipe enables software as a service (SaaS) companies with recurring revenues to tap into their deferred cash flows by getting a cash advance against the full annual value of software subscriptions. Trading limits on the platform range from $10,000 to several million dollars per month, depending on the size of companies.
The round was led by Fin VC with participation from new investors Tribe Capital, Uncorrelated Ventures, Lachy Groom and KSD Capital, and existing investors Craft Ventures, Fika Ventures, and MaC Ventures. The funding will allow Pipe to expand into new markets.
"We believe Pipe's subscription finance platform will radically transform the global SaaS business model, providing liquidity that will generate a tidal wave of growth and innovation for SaaS companies and positioning subscription contracts as a new and highly valued asset class for global investors," said Peter Ackerson, Investment Partner at Fin VC.
Also on Wednesday, Pipe unveiled its subscription financing platform and announced that Michal Cieplinski will serve as the company's chief operating officer and chief legal officer. Previously, Cieplinski served as general counsel at LendingClub, a publicly traded fintech company.
"Pipe already offers a unique value proposition to the booming SaaS industry, but the vision is much bigger than the work Pipe is doing today," Cieplinski said." We've started with reimagining funding, but ultimately want to be a larger one-stop solution for SaaS services."
- Pipe Taps $60 Million Seed Extension - dot.LA ›
- Pipe Gets $6 Million to Launch SaaS Financing Platform - dot.LA ›