Bird From CRUNCHBASE: Scooter Higher, Ridesharing Grabs $1B More, And VCs Find Spice In Food Startups

This past week at Crunchbase News, we took a look at the thundering battle between two of China’s largest tech giants: Alibaba and Tencent. We also learned that SoftBank’s Vision Fund, which invested $865 million in Katerra, has a taste for infrastructure startups.

Life sciences company Benchling picked up a $14.5 million Series B to help researchers minimize busywork. On the street, Southeast Asia’s ridesharing company Grab scored up $1 billion from Toyota, and Bird may raise another $200 million as the scooter frenzy continues. Softbank led a $250 million Series D for cloud storage company Cohesity. Crypto also attracted large sums. Bitmain raised a $ 400 million “pre-IPO” round, while good news from the SEC didn’t generate the crypto rally some were hoping for.

Meanwhile, tech IPOs are in bloom this week. Unfortunately, for us, Adaptive Insights IPO is no more. The unicorn opted to join Workday in a $1.55 billion acquisition.

The VC world was equally restless this week. In Asia, 500 Startups’ Thailand-based venture firm 500 TukTuks targeted $20 million in capital, and Samsung NEXT fund is seeking investment opportunities in AI. True Ventures is also angling to raise $650 million across two new funds. And hey, maybe some of that money will make its way to food and cybersecurity startups.

Looking outside the bubble, Mary Ann Azevedo found out Utah is ranked 6th in the nation in per-capita venture dollar volume. We also dove into the WeWork’s latest financial results and took a look at startups aiming to help small business kill swipe fees. Finally, Crunchbase News published its first book review: Survival to Thrival: Building The Enterprise Startup. For CEOs of enterprise startups, this is the book you should be reading.