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Equity Monday: Zoom buys Five9 as Robinhood sets IPO price range

by Alex Wilhelm

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.

It was a big damn morning, so we had to cut some stuff. Here’s what we got into:

  • Stocks and cryptos are off this morning, as inflation and COVID-19 concerns rise.
  • Zoom is buying Five9. The deal is not super expensive, nor is it cheap. But given the huge percentage of Zoom’s market cap that it represents, it’s a serious wager from the video conferencing startup.
  • Carlyle is buying LiveU for around $400 million. TechCrunch broke this news. The deal shows that private equity interest in startups that aren’t unicorns.
  • Robinhood dropped a new SEC filing this morning! That means we have a price range and valuation target to play with. More from TechCrunch on the matter shortly.
  • From India: A huge round for Lenskart, and a big Series A for GlobalBees.
  • And we covered this round from Nigeria. A smaller transaction, but one that could prove to be quite neat, we reckon.

Ok! Chat Wednesday!

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:00 a.m. PST, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts!

Carlyle to acquire live broadcasting and streaming tech outfit LiveU for over $400M, say sources

by Ingrid Lunden

Streaming is the name of the content game these days, and now one of the companies that builds tech to do this from anywhere in the world is getting acquired. LiveU — whose satellite/cellular hardware and software for capturing and delivering live streaming and broadcasting video is used by over 3,000 large media organizations — is going to be acquired by private equity firm Carlyle, multiple sources tell TechCrunch, for a value of over $400 million.

LiveU is based in Israel, and the deal was reported to be in the works by local press. Our sources say that the acquisition is in the final stages of closing and could be announced as soon as today or tomorrow. A LiveU spokesperson declined to comment on the story, and a Carlyle spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

What is notable is that this is the second time that LiveU has changed hands in the space of two years: the company was previously acquired by Francisco Partners, another PE firm, for at $200 million.

The quick jump in valuation, more than doubling in 25 months, is due in part to the huge surge of interest we’ve seen for video content.

It was not that long ago that you only watched live video on television, using a limited set of broadcast channels. Now, we have live, or near-live, or on-demand moving pictures coming at us from everywhere. On-demand and live streamed video can be found on apps (both those dedicated (Read more...)