The news was first by . The company is aiming for a $12 billion valuation in Q2 of next year, according to the report. The report also said has been hired to handle the listing.

The business travel startup last raised $275 million in a Series F round led by last October at a $7.25 billion valuation. In May, the company was in negotiations to raise funding at a $9 billion valuation.

The news comes as the IPO market is going through its slowest period in years. Many tech startups have shied away from going public as many of its already-listed brethren have seen their shares take significant haircuts since the beginning of the year.

Few big tech startups have looked to unplug the IPO pipeline. One exception is , which in May made news when the grocery delivery service said it had filed paperwork for a public listing.

Long road

Founded in 2015, TripActions has raised $1.5 billion. While the company now boasts a healthy valuation, times have not always been good for the startup.

TripActions looked like it would become one of the first casualties of COVID-19 when the pandemic took hold in March 2020. With all travel stopped, the company saw its revenue drop to $0. CEO and co-founder openly talked about the problems, including laying off 300 people.

However, in June 2020, the company was able to secure $125 million in debt and doubled down on its newly launched expense reporting platform—a platform that became popular as many were working from home and had new expenses.

By early 2021, the company was able to raise a $155 million Series E.

Big-named investors in TripActions include , , , and .

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We’ve already looked at how Coatue has slowed and has had a rough year. One large firm not yet examined, however, has been . Because it has been so quiet recently, it is perhaps easy to overlook.

Dragoneer, which counts companies such as , and among its previous investments, significantly ramped up its investing pace in 2021. That year, the San Francisco-based firm took part in 80 different announced fundraisings, with those rounds totaling a whopping $28 billion, according to Crunchbase .��

Important to note, however: The amount any investor—including Dragoneer—invests as a specific stake in a round is not usually divulged.

Some of the large rounds Dragoneer took part in last year included:

• Co-leading ’s $520 million Series H in January.
• Taking part in ’ $1 billion Series G in February and $1.67 billion Series H in August.
• Co-leading ’s $596.2 million Series G in November.
• Taking part in ’s $1.3 billion Series D, also in November.

This year has presented a very different story. The firm has dramatically pulled back as the venture market has continued to slow every month. Through nearly three quarters of this year, Dragoneer has made only 21 deals, with those rounds totaling just more than $4.1 billion, according to Crunchbase data.��

The firm has not taken part in an announced deal thus far in the third quarter.

That does not mean the firm has pulled out of deals, or even big deals. In January it led ’s $235 million Series F, as well as ’s $300 million Series F in May. It also participated in ’s $1 billion raise in January.

Unicorn hunting

However, Dragoneer is on pace to add the fewest number of unicorns to its portfolio since 2020, according to Crunchbase data. Last year, the firm was one of the top investors in bringing aboard $1 billion-plus companies when it added 35 to its portfolio. This year, that number stands at only eight, the same number it added in 2019.

The slowing pace—and price—of deals is not surprising considering the softening venture market witnessed through the course of this year, with many saying it really started in late 2021. Dragoneer’s numbers would seem to bear that out, as the total value of deals in Q1—which likely closed in Q4 of last year—was substantially down from any quarter in 2021.

Many firms—especially large growth equity firms that must find a balance between their private and public market investments—have significantly pulled back in the venture market this year as inflation, interest rates and geopolitical issues have roiled the economy.

Large, late-stage growth rounds have been most dramatically affected in the market—a spot where Dragoneer thrives—as investors seem unwilling to pay for high valuations.

Whether that will change and valuations will come down, or investors will re-open their wallets remains a question we may not have answers to until next year.

Dragoneer did not respond to requests for comment.

Methodology

The total dollar amount of rounds the firm participated in reflects the total investment in those rounds, not the particular firm’s stake in those rounds—which is normally not released. All numbers relating to deals and deal size are from Crunchbase data.

Further reading:

• Bessemer Venture Partners Slows From 2021 Pace
• SoftBank’s Vision Fund Deals Show Slowing Pace, Smaller Rounds
• Coatue’s Funding Numbers Take Significant Dip in First Half Of Year
• Accel’s Deal Size Shrinks As Venture Market Pullback Continues

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Richmond, California-based is hoping to provide just that, as the carbon-free portable generator manufacturer locked up a $100 million Series B led by .

Founded in 2020, the company has now raised just more than $113 million, according to Crunchbase data. Others participating in the round included , , ’s , , , Ventures, and .

Moxion manufactures mobile batteries and energy storage to enable last-mile electrification in sectors that include construction, transportation, events and entertainment, film production and telecommunications.��

The company recently started construction at its first manufacturing facility and expects to commission a second domestic manufacturing facility in 2024.

Moxion will use the funding to scale production at those facilities.

“Temporary power generation is a critical part of many industries, including construction, film production, live events and disaster response,” said co-founder and CEO in a . “As these industries look to decarbonize, there’s enormous demand for cleaner alternatives to the fossil-fuel-burning generators that these industries have historically relied on.”

Cleantech grows

Moxion’s funding is just the latest big round to go to VC-backed startups in the cleantech sector, as many industries look to decarbonize and go greener.��

So far this year, the industry has seen 17 funding rounds worth $100 million or more, according to Crunchbase data.

Despite venture capital investing slowing this year, cleantech is on pace to see a slight uptick from last year, . In 2021, VC-backed cleantech startups saw $7 billion of investments come into the sector. Already this year, investors have poured more than $6.6 billion into cleantech.

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The capital event was led by Martin Casado at who has joined RapidAPI’s board of directors. Participating investors in the round include , Green Bay Capital, and , the founder and CEO of Nexmo, which in June 2016.

In prior funding, , also led by Andreessen Horowitz. The company confirms that, between the two rounds, it has raised $12.5 million in venture funding.

In 2017, , a similar API search platform.

Why It Matters

Connectivity continues to be a major through-line in technology startups, perhaps now more than ever. People use applications and platforms to connect to each other; applications connect to a network through layers of software and hardware; and, more often than not, applications connect to other applications, databases, and platforms through application programming interfaces (APIs for short).

There are open APIs for just about everything. They help software developers do more faster by letting them easily integrate outside software functionality into their own work. But one of the problems with having a virtually limitless set of options available is, of course, discoverability and organization (or lack thereof, in this case).

RapidAPI is certainly not the first or only company out there trying to catalog the world’s APIs. For example, , founded in 2005, was an early entrant to the space. It was . Newer, community-contributed efforts like have also cropped up as of late.

But RapidAPI is among the fastest-growing marketplaces for open APIs out there today, with over 8,000 APIs listed and 400 billion API calls made each month, according to a statement from the company.

As more companies look to integrate more data and functionality into their platforms, and as programming increasingly becomes a mainstream skill, the demand for APIs and the sites and services that organize them will only continue to grow.

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