Ben Nye, the former co-managing partner at Bain Capital Ventures, established a new VC firm called Venture Guides along with four other partners. The move comes as the firm received $215M in capital commitments toward its debut fund, with ELJ Ventures joining in as an anchor investor. 

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• Venture Guides expects to back seed to Series A stage startups in the software infrastructure sector. 
• The firm has a data-driven approach towards investing, scoring potential investments on eight different parameters before investing. 
• The firm has already backed two seed-stage startups with the capital raised so far, with two more deals currently in process.  
• During his tenure at BCV, Nye's investment yielded 7.9 times the return on investment to investors. 
• He invested in 21 startups, eight of which went on to cement their unicorn status, chief among which was Turbonomic — acquired by IBM for $2B in 2021. 

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• Nye's former employer, BCV, announced two funds totaling $1.9B yesterday.

Alphabet's venture division GV (Google Ventures) led a $135M Series B funding round into genomic medicine startup Chroma Medicine. Incoming funds will enable the firm to advance its therapeutic programs toward clinical trials as it strives to become a leader in epigenetic editing therapeutics.  

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• The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup emerged from stealth in November 2021 with a $125M Series A funding round. 
• Since then, the company has worked on developing promising proof-of-concept data and narrowed its scope to a few diseases. 
• The fresh funding will give the firm enough cash runway to progress toward clinical trials and develop new therapeutics. 
• New investors ARCH Ventures Partners, DCVC Bio, Mubadala Capital, and Sixth Street participated in the funding round, joined by existing backers Atlas Venture, Omega Funds, T Rowe Price, Sofinnova Partners, and others.

Swedish buy-now-pay-later startup Klarna reported nearly $1B (10.4B kroner) in full-year operating losses in 2022. The figure represents Klarna's highest annual losses yet, 46.5% more than 2021's losses of ~$680M (7.1B kroner). Despite the widened losses, Klarna — Europe's most valuable VC-backed company — expects to return to profitability by the third quarter of this year.  

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• Klarna was profitable until 2019, when it started pursuing aggressive expansion in the U.S. 
  • Since last December, the U.S. region has been the company's largest revenue market, with over 34 million registered users. It still expects to continue driving growth in the U.S. 
• The BNPL sector witnessed a slump in 2022 as users retreated amidst rising cutthroat competition, inflationary pressures, interest rates, and regulatory headwinds.
• As a result, Klarna's valuation dropped 85.3% in the year from its peak of $46B to $6.7B. 
• Klarna resorted to layoffs in a bid to cut losses and shifted focus from growth to profitability. 
• The fintech startup has raised $4.5B in total funding to date and is backed by Sequoia Capital, Silver Lake, Mubadala, and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

New York-based green building tech startup BlocPower raised $150M in fresh funding to advance its mission of providing modern cooling, electric heating, and hot water systems for apartments and homes across the U.S. Over $24M of the funding came through a Series B equity round led by VoLo Earth Ventures, with the remaining $130M coming in the form of debt financing led by Goldman Sachs. 

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• The fresh funding brings the firm's total raised to date to over $250M. 
• BlocPower intends to use the fresh funding to expand its electrification programs across the U.S., further develop its BlocMaps SaaS analytics platform, and strengthen administrative capabilities. 
• Other participants in the funding round include Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, Credit Suisse, New York State Ventures, Gaingels, Kapor Capital, and others. 

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• 13% of the U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 resulted from using fossil fuels to power heating and hot water systems in buildings, per the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

Canadian insurtech startup Equisoft secured $125M in fresh equity funding. Equisoft intends to use the proceeds to expedite global expansion, strengthen the balance sheet, fund strategic acquisitions, and accelerate product development. 

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• Investissement Quebec and the government of Quebec invested $36M and $34M into the funding round, respectively.
• The remaining $55M in funding came from Export Development Canada (EDC) and Fondaction.
• Equisoft was bootstrapped from its founding in 1994 until 2018 when it raised its first $17M in funding from investors to accelerate growth by investing in core SaaS products. 
• The company reported a 45% YoY growth in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in 2022. 
• Equisoft has made eight acquisitions to date, with British fintech platform Altus and life insurance analysis platform CompuOffice being its two most recent purchases. 

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• Funding for insurtech startups fell 57% QoQ, from $2.35B in Q3 to $1.01B in the following quarter, per Gallagher Re.

Nexus Venture Partners closed its seventh fund at $700M, its largest yet. The firm intends to back artificial intelligence, SaaS, fintech, and commerce startups across India and the U.S. 

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• Nexus has invested in over 200 startups to date, most notably Delhivery, Unacademy, Zepto, Druva, and Postman. 
• With the closing of the new fund, the firm now has over $2B in assets under management (AUM). 
• The new fund is twice as large as its fifth fund, which closed at nearly $350M in 2019. 

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• Nexus' fund is one the largest raised in India in recent times. 
• Other large funds raised recently include Sequoia Capital's $2.85B funds, Accel's $650M fund, Elevation Capital's $670M corpus, and Chiratae Ventures' $600M funds.

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• Venus Williams joined PE and VC firm Topspin Consumer Partners as an operating partner to focus on health and wellness investments. 
• Former baseball player Alex Rodriguez, popularly known as A-Rod, and his business partner Marc Lore secured $20M in funding led by Forerunner Ventures for their ticketing startup Jump. 
• Former geo vice president of Snowflake Thibaut Ceyrolle joined British VC firm Atomico, taking up the role of a partner. Ceyrolle is tasked with leading the firm's sales and go-to-market strategies. 
• Venture capital deployment in India plunged by 77% YoY in February 2023, per YourStory research. 
• Crypto exchange Binance's venture capital division, Binance Labs, invested an undisclosed sum into the newly formed crypto-focused venture firm Nomad Capital. The move highlights Binance's effort to boost funding for the crypto industry, which has been facing a slump of late. 
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