Deals in brief

Dutch neobank bunq is challenging Revolut for its European customers on the back of a $228m Series A round. The raise is hailed as the biggest European Series A round ever.

The funding round marks an end to founder and CEO Ali Niknam bootstrapping the challenger bank himself, having poured $116.6m into the venture since the launch in 2012. That being said, he did top up bunq’s coffers in this funding round as well. It is not clear how much he contributed to the latest cash injection.

Alternative investment management firm Pollen Street Capital provided the remaining capital for the Series A, which brought bunq’s valuation to $1.9bn, officially putting it into the unicorn club.

Danish neobank Lunar raised a €210m Series D round. While the Nordic neobank didn’t provide an official valuation in its press release, Scandi newspaper Dagens Industri puts Lunar’s valuation north of the $1bn mark, meaning it’s now aquired the coveted unicorn status.

Investment company HEARTLAND led the round, with Swedish investment firm Kinnevik and Chinese technology titan Tencent topping up Lunar’s coffers as well.

Buy-now-pay-later giant Klarna has achieved a $45.6bn valuation on the back of a $639m SoftBank-led investment round, potentially making it Europe’s most valuable privately-owned tech company.

The newly minted quadradecacorn’s existing investors Adit Ventures, Honeycomb Asset Management and WestCap Group also participated in the raise.

Chinese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer XPeng made its debut on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX), wrapping up a listing that brings the company closer to investors in China and offers it insurance against the risk of having to delist in the US.

XPeng, which competes with Tesla and other Chinese EV brands such as NIO and Li Auto, raised 14.02bn Hong Kong dollars ($1.8bn) in its Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) on Wednesday. The company issued 85 million Class A ordinary shares at a price of 165HKD.

Shares opened at 168 HKD, a 1.8% rise. Shortly after, they turned negative and ended the day flat at 165 HKD apiece. Ten months ago, the Chinese EV maker listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), where it raised $1.5bn.

Cybersecurity company FireEye is selling its product business and brand to a consortium led by private equity firm Symphony Technology Group in an all-cash transaction of $1.2bn.

The sale will separate FireEye network, email, endpoint and cloud security products from Mandiant, an incident response and threat intelligence company bought by FireEye in 2013 for more than $1bn.

The remaining Mandiant brand will focus on its “controls-agnostic software and services”, which includes cybersecurity consulting for enterprises and a subscription-based platform that provides threat intelligence.

The deal is expected to close by the fourth quarter of 2021.

Alphabet subsidiary Waymo has secured $2.5bn in external funding as it continues to throw money at its autonomous vehicle project.

The company, which began as Google’s self-driving car division, said it will use the funds to advance its Waymo Driver autonomous driving platform, which underpins its autonomous ride-hailing service Waymo One and delivery business unit Waymo Via.

Cybersecurity company SentinelOne almost achieved an $11bn market cap in its public debut on the US stock market on Wednesday, tripling the $3bn valuation from November. The 2020 valuation had followed from the close of a $267m funding round, according to GlobalData.

Sentinel One’s initial public offering (IPO) saw its shares jump by 21.4% sold under the ticker “S”. The starting price for the SentinelOne IPO had been $35 for the 35 million shares sold on the debut. However, the price skyrocketed to $46 on the day and closed on $42.5, Reuters reported.