Series B
TutorGroup, a 2012 Red Herring Top 100 Global company, has secured almost $100 million in a Series B round from investors including Alibaba Group, Temasek and Qiming Venture Partners. The online learning company, which claims to be the biggest institution for English-language learning globally, celebrates the funding with 10,000 free Chinese-learning sessions for winning applicants in the U.S. and Singapore. In China, the market for adults learning English will swell to more than $21 billion in value by 2016. The company said that in “early 2014,” it would base international headquarters in Silicon Valley.
Hampton Creek Foods, which aims to introduce plant-based alternatives to eggs into foods, has raised $23 million in a Series B round led by Li Ka-shing’s Horizon Ventures. Multiple investors contributed to the round, including Ali and Hadi Partovi, Google’s Jessica Powell, Jerry Yang and AME Cloud Ventures, Ash Patel, and Scott Banister. Khosla Ventures, Eagle Cliff and Collaborative Fund also participated. The San Francisco company creates its own cookie dough and mayo.
Durham-based Digitalsmiths, a “video discovery platform” TiVo is buying for $135 million, has raised more than $6.75 million. The company works with 70 percent of top 10 American pay-TV operators, according to a release.
Funding
Berlin-based men’s shopping platform Outfittery has received €13 million ($17.8 million) in an investment led by Highland Capital Partners Europe. Holtzbrinck Ventures, High-Tech Gründerfonds, RI Digital Ventures, Mangrove Capital Partners, and Kreativwirtschaft managed by IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft contributed to the funding, according to a press release. Two years have brought the company upwards of 100,000 customers. According to an Outfittery press release, Datamonitor reports the European men’s fashion market comes to €100 billion, with 10 percent of buys occurring online.
Shenzhen-based Tencent has reportedly picked up a 20-25 percent stake in China’s Yelp-like service, Dianping. The latter company’s valuation: between $1.8 billion and $2 billion. TechNode reports Dianping’s valuation has jumped up from roughly $1 billion since 2011 when the the Shanghai-based company raised more than $100 million.
M&A
Health tracker maker Basis Science may be about to be acquired for under $100 million. TechCrunch reports the company has talked with Apple and Google, and maybe Microsoft and Samsung. San Francisco-based Basis Science recently raised upwards of $23 million in a Series B round from investors like Intel Capital and Stanford University.
Rumor has it that Apple’s chief of mergers and acquisitions met with Palo Alto-based Tesla’s Elon Musk in the spring of last year. The San Francisco Chronicle reported the news and that the Cupertino company is also looking into medical devices.