While there’s considerable angst in the tech industry about layoffs, including layoffs among startups, there’s also a load of venture capital investment taking place.

To the latter point, I’m going to review recent, major infusions of venture capital funding, with a focus on those of $50 million and above, as well as several that are now in “unicorn” status with valuations over $1 billion.

For Acceleration Economy readers, it’s vital to understand where innovation is happening, where the venture community is placing its bets, and which companies have strong potential to help you reimagine your business to dazzle customers. And that’s the reason we highlight such companies on the Innovation Path at Cloud Wars Expo.

The (not exhaustive) list, along with details on each company, follows; note that common threads among these companies include cybersecurity, supply chain optimization, and AI/ML.

Coalition: $250 million

Coalition, which provides insurance to head off digital risk and breaches before they strike, recently said it has raised $250 million from investors including Allianz X, Valor Equity Partners, and Kinetic Partners.

Total funding exceeds $755 million. The company now pegs its valuation at $5 billion, up from $3.5 billion.

Coalition provides cybersecurity tools, around-the-clock digital forensics and incident response, as well as insurance coverage to help organizations identify, mitigate, and insure digital risk. The company now serves more than 160,000 customers with its products and services.

 “Our active approach to underwriting, monitoring, and responding to digital risk has allowed Coalition to achieve market-leading underwriting results while demonstrably reducing claims and losses for our customers so they can continue to thrive in the digital economy,” says Joshua Motta, CEO and co-founder of Coalition.

Aptos Labs: $150 million

Aptos Labs, headed by former Meta (Facebook) employees, announced a Series A funding round of $150 million. A Web3 startup, the company raised $200 million earlier this year.

The latest round was led by FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto with additional new and repeat investors.

The company develops technology it says will elevate the usability and socialization of Web3 and deliver the highest-performing, safest, and most scalable blockchain technology.

Flexe: $119 million

Flexe, which makes “programmatic logistics” software that helps retailers navigate supply chain challenges, secured Series D funding of $119 million with a new investment from BlackRock and add-on rounds from several companies. The company now has a $1 billion valuation and total funding is $263 million.

The company’s technology applies in areas including rapid replenishment to retail partners, reducing network capacity constraints to improve efficiency, scaling fulfillment networks to improve on deliveries, and activating same-day delivery in key markets.

The company cites macroeconomic uncertainty, rapidly shifting consumer behaviors, and forecasting and supply chain woes as factors leading retailers and brands to embrace its technology. The company says it works with six of the 10 largest retailers and four of the five largest consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies.

SingleStore: $116 million

This cloud-native database company recently announced it had raised $116 million in additional funding – led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management. The funding round also included funds from existing investors Dell Technologies Capital, HPE, and IBM Ventures. The company is now valued at $1 billion.

SingleStore said it has raised $278 million in the last 20 months. Total equity funding is $384 million.  The company said it has almost doubled its headcount in the last 12 months and continues to aggressively hire to meet the demand for its product and services.

“The speed and scalability SingleStore provides has allowed us to better serve both our customers and our internal team, and to expand our capabilities along with them, e.g., enabling online analytics that previously had to be conducted offline,” says Christoph Malassa, head of analytics and intelligence solutions at Siemens, a SingleStore customer.

Tecton: $100 million

This company, which makes technology that helps more teams use machine learning operationally (rather than just for analytics), announced a Series C funding round of $100M, led by Kleiner Perkins, adding to its previous $60 million from past rounds. Snowflake and Databricks became strategic investors as well.

Tecton aims to help customers manage the complete lifecycle of machine learning (ML) features through a platform that incorporates storing, sharing, and reuse with the ability to build and automate feature pipelines that generate feature values from batch, streaming, or real-time data. 

The company maintains that operational ML needs to be centralized and built on top of the modern data stack, not on separate infrastructure, so it has placed high priority on partnerships and integrations.

The company says that in the past year its customer base has increased 5x and annual recurring revenue (ARR) has grown nearly 3x.

Bishop Fox: $75 million

This company with an unusual name is an “offensive” cybersecurity provider that combines technology and automation with human expertise to find vulnerabilities before hackers do. Its Cosmos platform performs continuous offensive testing to stay ahead of those hackers.

The $75 million infusion comes from Carrick Capital Partners, bringing the 17-year-old company’s total funding to $100 million. Funds will be used to grow the company’s team of offensive security pros and expand the Cosmos platform.

Bishop Fox reported a number of indicators of growth and customer satisfaction:

• Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) tripled in 2021.
• First quarter bookings grew by more than 50% year-over-year from 2021 to 2022.
• The firm’s workforce increased by 33% since the beginning of 2022
• The company achieved an impressive Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 90 in the first quarter of this year for consulting services.

Bishop Fox lists Google and Zoom as customers.

Swimlane: $70 million

Swimlane, a security automation company, secured $70 million – bringing its total to $92 million.

The funding round was led by Activate Capital and existing investors also participated. The funds will support product development, global expansion, and new partner relationships.

The company’s software, called Turbine, is a low-code security automation platform that captures hard-to-access telemetry data and expands actionability beyond closed detection and response systems.

Unstoppable Domains: $65 million

A platform for Web3 user-owned and portable digital identity with more than 2.5 million registered NFT domains, Unstoppable Domains closed $65 million in Series A funding at a $1 billion valuation.

The round was led by new investor Pantera Capital along with participation from more than a dozen additional investment firms. The company said the funds will be used to drive platform development and new partnerships.

The company’s NFT domains give people full ownership and control of their digital identity. Its 2.5 million registered domains can be used to log into more than 150 Web3 applications, replace lengthy crypto wallet addresses on more than 80 wallets and exchanges, and build Web3 identities. The company said it has logged more than $80 million in sales since its 2019 launch.

Scale Computing: $55 million

Scale Computing has secured $55 million to further build out its edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged products.

Funds managed by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital led the funding round.

Scale Computing’s SC//Platform enables users to run applications and process data outside centralized data centers, at the edge of the network closest to where that data is created and utilized.

Demand on today’s networks requires that more applications run outside the cloud or traditional data centers, close to where they are used by people, devices, and IoT technologies, the company said. As such, its products are designed to help manage the sprawl of complex infrastructure to run applications locally in distributed locations.

For more exclusive coverage of innovative cloud companies, check out Cloud Wars Horizon here: