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Warner Music's new tempo

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Exclusive ... Converge raises $5.6M

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Hamilton Lane launches VC fund

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Deal flow

Movin' on up (or out)

Channel surfing

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Warner Music Group acquired a controlling stake in Tempo Music, whose song catalog includes Bruno Mars and Adele, from Providence Equity Partners. 

Why it matters: The big three music giants — Warner, Universal and Sony — are increasingly focused on IP acquisition to make up for slowing streaming growth.

Zoom in: Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Bloomberg reported that it values Tempo Music at $450 million.

Bloomberg added that Warner is buying Providence's stake with cash and by assuming Tempo's debt.

Providence will remain a minority investor in Tempo and continue to work with Warner Music Group in an advisory capacity.

Catch up quick: WMG and Providence partnered to launch Tempo in 2019 when catalog values were soaring. 

In addition to Mars and Adele, Tempo's catalog includes Twenty One Pilots' Tyler Joseph, Wiz Khalifa, Florida Georgia Line, as well as Lukas Graham songwriters Stefan Forrest, Morten Pilegaard, Morten Ristorp Jensen, and Jaramye Daniels.

1 big thing: Warner Music's new tempo

Converge, a tech platform for CMOs, raised $5.6 million in a funding round, its CEO Jan-Henrik Lambrechts exclusively tells Axios.

Why it's the BFD: Stronger global privacy laws and the increasing prevalence of ad blockers have made data collection more difficult.

How it works: Converge helps marketing and growth executives of direct-to-consumer platforms understand how they acquire customers and optimize their ad spend allocation. It provides a holistic view of marketing data.

The work that Converge does is usually spread across multiple SaaS providers, such as Tag Managers and Consumer Data Platforms, and reporting solutions like Google Analytics.

"We're replacing a bunch of SaaS that's layered on top of each other. That's the big bet that we're taking," Lambrechts says. 

Zoom in: The company has more than $1 million in annual recurring revenue and has 180 customers, despite a team of just four people.

Lambrechts says part of the funding will go toward hiring. 

Y Combinator, Uncorrelated Ventures and General Catalyst participated in the round, alongside angel investors that include founders of Algolia, Shipbob, PostHog and Postscript.

What's next: Converge also plans to open a New York office.

2. The BFD: Exclusive ... Converge raises $5.6M

Alternative assets giant Hamilton Lane tells Axios it raised $615.3 million for its first dedicated venture capital fund, which will employ a fund-of-funds strategy but also take direct stakes.

Why it matters: Hamilton Lane is going deeper into venture capital and giving more investors direct exposure to the asset class.

Context: Hamilton Lane has deployed $137.1 billion over the last 30 years into VC.

Yes, but: "It had only been available to our larger investors — that could mean $100 million plus," says Miguel Luina, co-head of venture capital and growth equity. "So we put this together to increase the number of clients that could have access to the platform."

Larger venture funds have multimillion-dollar minimum check sizes — making it difficult for advisers like Hamilton Lane to properly diversify a single client's capital across the asset class.

Creating a dedicated fund allows it to pool client capital.

Zoom in: Luina expects that the majority of the capital, a little over half, will go into other venture funds — a fund-of-funds strategy.

Two-thirds to three-quarters of what is remaining is expected to go toward secondaries, which could include buying startup stakes from other investors, structured transactions, or stakes in funds from other LPs.

The remaining portion is expected to go toward direct co-investments alongside funds Hamilton Lane has invested in. The firm has a keen interest in trends around AI, including data management and cybersecurity.

Between the lines: How the fund plans to deploy capital reflects the direction of the venture ecosystem.

There's plenty of talk and hope around IPO markets reopening. But that's unlikely to reverse a bigger trend of longer times to public exit, and those companies that have even sought to stay private forever.

A growing secondaries market is making this possible, acting as competition to the IPO market.

StepStone Group last year raised $3.3 billion for its sixth VC secondaries fund, up from $2.6 billion raised for its 2022 fund. G Squared closed a $1.1 billion secondaries fund.

The bottom line: "The secondary market has probably evolved more than any other part of the venture market," says Luina.

3. Hamilton Lane launches VC fund

Go deeper in our full database in the Axios Pro Deals Tracker.

• Voldex, a "home for top games on Roblox," secured Series B equity funding led by The Raine Group and debt financing from Shamrock Capital. It also acquired game Brookhaven. Go deeper

• With Intelligence, a London-based media and information group owned by Intermediate Capital Group and Motive Partners, acquired M&A content provider The Deal from Delinian, a portfolio company of Astorg and Epiris. Go deeper

• K&F Growth Acquisition II, an experiential entertainment SPAC led by a pair of former Morgan Stanley bankers, raised $250m in its IPO. Go deeper

4. Deal flow

• Jenna Weiss-Berman, previously EVP of podcasts at Audacy, has joined Amy Poehler's Paper Kite Productions as head of its audio unit. Go deeper

5. Movin' on up (or out)

🐭 Disney to centralize streaming offerings within Disney+ (WSJ)

"It plans to add new live sports shows that will be exclusive to Disney+, including a daily episode of popular show SportsCenter, and aims to launch a new ESPN direct-to-consumer service early this fall that will also be available on Disney+," Isabella Simonetti writes.

✋ OpenAI's Sora filmmaking tool meets resistance in Hollywood (Bloomberg)

"Studios are reluctant to get into business with an AI company, wary of how it might use their data and of angering the labor unions with which they work every day. Concerns about the use of artificial intelligence were one of the biggest factors in two labor strikes that paralyzed Hollywood in 2023," Lucas Shaw, Shirin Ghaffary and Thomas Buckley write.

😟 The final flicker of cable news as we know it (THR)

"As one veteran executive argues, it is more likely than not that by the end of President Donald Trump's term, CNN, MSNBC and, yes, even Fox News will have new ownership as the power structures that have defined media for the past four decades break down," Alex Weprin writes.

February 06, 2025

1 big thing: Warner Music's new tempo