Series A
Eloquii Design, Inc., a women’s clothing line targeted at plus-sized buyers, has received $6 million from several investors, including Greycroft Partners. Eloquii was originally a subsidiary of The Limited, but was spun off as an independent entity after that fifty year old specialty retailer was liquidated.
Series B
Blab, Inc., a company practicing what it calls Predictive Social Intelligence, has fetched $8 million from Blue Focus PR Consulting, Cooperative Capital, and Shoreline Capital Management. The service collects intelligence about product-related, advertising-relevant conversations happening on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. “The market is all-digital, always changing, and marketers need to be adaptive. Blab gives us a competitive edge through the ability to predict what will happen next. Blab is a part of our global strategy to grow tenfold by 2022,” said Holly Zheng, President of Blue Focus International.
Series C
Cloud-based software provider Socrata, which works with public sector organizations to improve access to government data, has received $30 million in new venture funding. The round was led by Sapphire Ventures, while returning investors OpenView Venture Partners, Morgenthaler Ventures, and Frazier Technology Partners also contributed. Socrata, which has now raised $54.4 million, was founded in 2008 and is based out of Seattle.
Misfit Wearables, a health and fitness wearable computing company based in Redwood City, Calif., has raised $40 million from among others GGV Capital, Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, and the Chinese mobile phone company Xiaomi. Founded in 2011, the company has now raised $63 million. Its flagship product is Shine, an exercise tracker that syncs with smartphones. Misfit was co-founded by John Sculley, former Apple CEO and noted sparring partner of Steve Jobs.
Series D
Stripe announced a new round of venture financing that reportedly values the online payments company at over $3.5 billion, double what it was worth less than a year ago. The $70 million Series D was led by Thrive Capital, with additional participation coming from returning backers General Catalyst Partners, Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, and Sequoia Capital. In less than a year Stripe has landed partnerships with Facebook, Twitter, and Alibaba to facilitate payments on their respective platforms. “If you are assessing Stripe a year ago and the Stripe of today, our ambitions are pretty much unchanged,” said founder and CEO Patrick Collison in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “But a year ago, we didn’t expect to make so much progress.”
Cambridge, Mass.-based unified communications provider Thinking Phone Networks Inc. has secured a $56.7 million financing round from Technology Crossover Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners. The enterprise “UCaaS” company has now raised nearly $90 million in less than 4 years.