Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
Venture Capital
• Goodfire, an AI interpretability research company, raised $50m. Menlo Ventures led, joined by Lightspeed, B Capital, and Anthropic. Go deeper
• t'order, a Korean restaurant tech company, is seeking to raise $50m in Series C funding. Go deeper
• Cy4Data Labs, a San Jose, Calif.-based data protection company, raised $10m led by Pelion Venture Partners. Go deeper
• Spur, a startup using AI agents to test websites, raised $4.5m from First Round Capital, Pear VC, Neo, Conviction, Liquid 2 Ventures, and Predictive Venture Partners. Go deeper
🚑 RISA Labs, a Palo Alto-based oncology AI company, raised $3.5m in a seed round. Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal led the round and was joined by Oncology Ventures, General Catalyst, z21 Ventures, OddBirdVC and Ashish Gupta. Go deeper
• Hammer Missions, a U.K. drone startup focused on mapping for construction, raised £1.6m led by ACF Investors. Go deeper
Private Equity
🚑 Ampersand Capital Partners invested in Lexington Medical, a Bedford, Mass., developer of minimally invasive surgical stapling solutions. lexington-med.com
• ECI Software, a portfolio company of Apax Partners and GIC, acquired Davisware, a Woodstock, Ill., provider of ERP software for field services businesses, from Serent Capital. davisware.com
• GoldState Music, a music rights investment platform, raised $500m from Northleaf Capital Partners and Ares Management. goldstate.com
• Ignite Visibility, a digital marketing agency owned by Mountaingate Capital, acquired Outliant, a web development and digital marketing agency. ignitevisibility.com
• Mill Point Capital acquired Koozie Group, a Clearwater, Fla., promotion products manufacturer that will be merged with existing Mill Point portfolio company Garyline. kooziegroup.com
• Monogram Capital Partners and Halmos Capital Partners acquired a majority equity stake in Vasco, a sports surfacing provider in Ohio and Florida. Go deeper
• Smart Safety, a portfolio company of Carr's Hill, acquired workplace safety companies SCTI (Florida) and Trinity Safety Management (Georgia). smartsafetygulfcoast.com
• Sports Endeavors, backed by Seawall Capital, completed the acquisition of Soccer Master, a St. Louis,-based soccer retailer. Go deeper
• Vivos Therapeutics (Nasdaq: VVOS), backed by New Seneca Partners, agreed to acquire the operating assets of The Sleep Center of Nevada, an operator of medical sleep centers in the state, for $9m. Go deeper
M&A
• Adani Ports of India agreed to buy Abbot Point Port, an Australian deep-water coal export facility, for nearly A$4b. Go deeper
• Checkr agreed to acquire Truework, an employment verification startup last valued at $480m, per Ryan Lawler. TrueWork is backed by Sequoia Capital, Activant Capital, Khosla Ventures, and G Squared. Go deeper
• Forge Global (NYSE: FRGE) agreed to acquire Accuidity, a private equity indexing business, for around $20m in cash and stock. Go deeper
• Shell (NYSE: SHEL) short-listed Gunvor and Adnoc for its downstream assets in South Africa, per Bloomberg. Go deeper
⚡Spearmint Energy, a grid storage developer, has raised $250m for two projects in Texas from Manulife, East West Bank, Investec Inc and Sugar Creek Capital. Go deeper
Fundraising
• Equitage Ventures, an early-stage firm investing in senior care tech, raised $47.3m. Go deeper
• J.C. Flowers is raising its sixth financial services-focused PE fund, per an SEC filing.
Odds & Ends
• Sanofi agreed to pay up to $1.8b for an exclusive licensing agreement with Earendil Labs, an autoimmune drug company. Go deeper
It's Personnel
Alper Daglioglu joined Brookfield to lead a new investment solutions group that will be chaired by Oaktree's Howard Marks. Daglioglu previously was with Morgan Stanley. Go deeper
- Erin Brodwin, Colin Campbell, Katherine Davis, Katie Fehrenbacher, Ryan Lawler, Alan Neuhauser, Dan Primack, and Aaron Weitzman contributed to this report.
