– Lilac Solutions announced a $150m Series B financing round led by Lowercarbon Capital and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates.
– The round was also joined by Mercuria Energy Trading and Valor Equity Partners; existing investors Breakthrough Energy Ventures and The Engine also participated in the round.
– Lilac has developed a new ion exchange technology to increase production of lithium from brine resources.
– Lilac will use the new funds to ramp production of the company’s unique ion exchange beads, expand its teams of engineers and field operators, and deploy the technology globally.
– Most of the world’s lithium is contained in brine resources – naturally occurring deposits of salt water. These brines are abundant, but resource developers have struggled to bring projects into production due to a lack of cost-effective technology.

– Canva – a global visual communications platform based in Sidney, Australia – raised USD $200m in a funding round which valued the company at USD $40b.
– The round was led by T. Rowe Price with participation from new and existing strategic investors Franklin Templeton, Sequoia Capital Global Equities, Bessemer Venture Partners, Greenoaks Capital, Dragoneer Investments, Blackbird, Felicis, and AirTree Ventures.
– The company intends to use the funds to accelerate growth, including expanding its team of more than 2,000 employees, which it is expected to double in the year ahead.

– Checkr is a San Francisco CA-based HR technology company.
– Company raised $250m in Series E funding, valuing it at $4.6b.
– The round was led by Durable Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC and Franklin Templeton with participation from BOND Capital, Khosla Ventures, IVP, T. Rowe Price, Coatue, Accel and Y Combinator.
– The new investment will be used to expand operations and business reach.

– Seismic, a sales enablement and marketing orchestration platform based in San Diego, California, announced that it closed a $170 million series G round led by Permira, JMI Equity, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Jackson Square Ventures, Ameriprise, and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price.
– The latest funding, which brings Seismic’s valuation to $3 billion and total raised to $440 million, comes as the company acquires Lessonly, an Indianapolis, Indiana-based developer of sales training, coaching, and enablement solutions.
– The sales enablement platform market, which is expected to be worth $2.6 billion by 2024, continued to grow throughout the pandemic — largely driven by the shift to remote work.

– Rappi, a Colombian on-demand delivery startup, raised $500m funding.
– The round was led by T. Rowe Price and joined by Baillie Gifford, Third Point, Octahedron, GIC and SoftBank.
– The company has raised $2bn since its inception in 2015.

– Element Biosciences from San Diego develops DNA sequencing platform.
– The company closed a $276m Series C financing.
– Backers included new investors Janus Henderson Investors, Logos Capital, Meritech Capital Partners, Counterpoint Global (Morgan Stanley), and T. Rowe Price and existing investors Fidelity Management & Research Company, Foresite Capital, JS Capital Management LLC, RA Capital Advisors, and Venrock.
– The new investment will be used to scale commercial organization in anticipation of the launch of its next-generation sequencing solution.

– Celonis from Munich and New York City develops an Execution Management System (EMS) which provides a set of applications, and developer studio and platform capabilities for business executives and users to eliminate billions in corporate inefficiencies.
– The company closed a $1b Series D funding round led by new investors Durable Capital Partners LP and T. Rowe Price Associates with participation from Franklin Templeton, Splunk Ventures and a group of principal investors.
– The new investment increased the post-money valuation to more than $11b.

– Lumicks, an Amsterdam, The Netherlands-based life science tools company that develops innovative platforms for Dynamic Single-Molecule and Cell Avidity analysis, closed a $93m Series D funding.
– The round was led by new investors Farallon Capital Management and Lauxera Capital Partners, with participation from Softbank Vision 2, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Parian Global Management, Pura Vida Investments, and Irving Investors, as well as existing investor Gilde Healthcare and select members of the management team.
– The company intends to use the funds to accelerate growth initiatives including expansion of both research and development and commercial activities for the z-Movi® Cell Avidity Analyzer.

– Inscripta, Inc. announced the first commercial shipment of its Onyx™ platform and the closing of a $150m Series E financing round.
– The round was led by Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc.
– The Onyx platform is an extraordinarily powerful platform that will enable high-throughput genome editing and analysis.
– The platform will revolutionize the abilities in synthetic biology.
– Inscripta’s Onyx will be used to produce sweeteners, industrial chemicals, and medicinal components.

– Theseus Pharmaceuticals from Boston develops pan-variant kinase inhibitors to treat cancer.
– The company emerged from stealth with the close of a $100m Series B financing.
– The round was led by Foresite Capital with participation from Adage Capital Management, Boxer Capital, Farallon Capital Management, Longitude Capital, Nextech Ventures, Omega Healthcare Investors, Pontifax Venture Capital, Rock Springs Capital, and T. Rowe Price, as well as OrbiMed.
– In conjunction with the financing, Michael Rome, Ph.D., Managing Director of Foresite Capital, has joined the Theseus Board of Directors.

– ServiceTitan from Phoenix has raised a $500M Series F growth financing.
– The round was led by Tiger Global Management and Sequoia Capital Global Equities with significant participation from existing investors, including Bessemer Venture Partners, ICONIQ Capital, Battery Ventures, Index Ventures, Durable Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group, and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates.
– ServiceTitan serves more than 7,500 contracting businesses that collectively employ more than 100,000 technicians and perform more than $20 billion worth of annual transactions across various home and commercial service verticals, including plumbing, air conditioning, electrical, and more.

– Gyroscope Therapeutics from London develops a gene therapy for various eye diseases.
– The company raised $148m in Series C funding.
– The round was led by Forbion’s Growth Opportunities Fund and includes Sofinnova Investments, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., Tetragon Financial Group Limited, an undisclosed healthcare focused fund, Fosun Pharma, Cambridge Innovation Capital and founding investor Syncona.
– The company also announced the appointments of Wouter Joustra, General Partner, Forbion and Maha Katabi, General Partner, Sofinnova to the Gyroscope Board of Directors.

– ABL Space Systems has closed a Series B investment round of $170m.
– The round was led by funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc.
– Participation in the round included existing ABL investors and new investments by Fidelity Management & Research LLC and an unnamed third global investment management firm.
– ABL is the emerging space launch company based in El Segundo, California developing the 1,000-kilogram class RS1 launch vehicle and GS0 deployable launch system.
– A first launch of RS1 is planned later in 2021, after less than four years of rapid development.
– With GS0, RS1 can be transported in shipping containers and launched from any suitable location in the world.

– Squarespace, a NYC-based website building and ecommerce platform, raised approximately $300m in funding at an enterprise valuation of $10b.
– The round includes new investors Dragoneer, Tiger Global, D1 Capital Partners, Fidelity Management & Research Company, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. and Spruce House with participation from existing investors Accel and General Atlantic.
– The company intends to use the funds to expand operations and its business reach.

– Insitro, a machine learning-driven drug discovery and development company, has raised $400m in a Series C financing.
– The financing was led by Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), with significant participation from current investors Andreessen Horowitz, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., Casdin Capital, and funds and accounts managed by BlackRock as well as ARCH Venture Partners, Foresite Capital, GV, Third Rock Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures, HOF Capital and Alexandria Venture Investments.

– Seattle digital home closing service JetClosing closed an $11m Series B round.
– Funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates invested, as well as Pioneer Square Labs and Trilogy Equity.
– Total funding to date is approximately $37m.
– JetClosing on Friday also announced that former Amazon leader and ex-Bulletproof 360 chief Anna Collins is taking over as CEO.
– Collins previously led Bulletproof, a lifestyle company whose signature product is the brain-boosting butter-infused Bulletproof Coffee, as president and COO.
– She spent about six years at Amazon, including a role as GM of Worldwide Prime Membership, and also held leadership roles at PhotoRocket, Microsoft, drugstore.com, and aQuantive.

– Monte Rosa Therapeutics announced the closing of a $95m Series C financing.
– The proceeds will be used to advance its lead development candidate into the clinic, accelerate pipeline growth and bolster its platform capabilities to rationally design and develop small molecule degraders (also known as molecular glues) that hijack the body’s innate ability to degrade proteins.
– Through this approach, Monte Rosa aims to eradicate undruggable proteins that cause or drive the progression of genomically-defined diseases intractable to standard care, including cancer.
– The financing was led by Avoro Capital Advisors with participation from additional new investors Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., and RTW Investments, LP.

– Day One Biopharmaceuticals, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on accelerating therapies for children and adults with cancer, announced a $130 million Series B financing.
– The financing was led by RA Capital Management with participation from additional new investors Boxer Capital, BVF Partners L.P., Franklin Templeton, Janus Henderson Investors, Perceptive Advisors, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., and Viking Global Investors. Existing investors Canaan, Access Biotechnology, and Atlas Venture also participated.