Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Paris Based Startup, Mirakl, Raises $300 Million, Becomes A Unicorn

Is it just me or do European venture rounds seem larger* this month?
As the story notes, this one even caught the attention of M. Macron:
From Bloomberg:
E-commerce Startup Mirakl Raises Funds at $1.5 Billion Value
Paris-based Mirakl has raised $300 million in a funding round led by private equity firm Permira valuing the e-commerce startup at $1.5 billion, the company’s U.S. chief executive officer and co-founder said in an interview.

The round makes Mirakl, which also has offices in Boston, a newly minted unicorn with a valuation of more than $1 billion. The company makes software that helps build marketplaces and online stores for customers including Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., Kroger Co. and Siemens AG, its website showed.

An initial public offering is one of “the very serious options on this table and one of the drivers of this round,” Adrien Nussenbaum, Mirakl’s U.S. CEO and co-founder, said in an interview. “We think within a couple years we would be in a position to IPO,” he said.

Companies that power e-commerce have been boosted by the Covid-19 pandemic when consumers have shifted their shopping habits to the home. Large e-commerce provider Shopify Inc. has seen its shares more than double since March.

Nussenbaum added that the company partners with Shopify and Adobe Inc.’s Magento Commerce on connecting their platforms to third-party sellers. Permira was an investor in Magento Commerce before it sold to Adobe for $1.68 billion in 2018.

He added that Mirakl would use the investment to hire 300 engineers over the next three years....
....MORE 
*September 21
Venture Capital: Berlin-Based Ag Startup Raises $170m in First Close of Series C Round