Equity Monday on Tuesday 09/08
Equity - A podcast by TechCrunch, Mary Ann Azevedo, Kell, Theresa Loconsolo, Rebecca Bellan, Rebecca Szkutak
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats 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, and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode. Headline roundup: TikTok's parent will pay an irregular bonus to staff, a move that is causing ripples as Bytedance's social service finds itself an international political football. Reed Hastings is not big on working from home. And China's fight with Australia is escalating, again showing how willing China is to become an ostracized internationally; in business terms this makes the India market more important to tech companies. New IPO filings are out from both JFrog and Sumo Logic. We're going for a dive soon, but the short riff is that JFrog wants up to $37 per share, valuing it at more than $3 billion while Sumo Logic wants $21 per share, valuing it at more than $2 billion. (More here on Sumo Logic and here on JFrog.) Big rounds: Byju has put together a half-billion dollars at a $10.8 billion valuation, while Mollie has stacked on $106 million at a valuation that makes it a unicorn. Small rounds: Fashionphile has raised $38.5 million, Cloudentity raised $13 million, and Sarbacane has raised $27 million. And as we recorded, tech shares were set to sell off yet again.