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The prolific is leading the extension, which also includes “significant participation” from , SendBird’s initial Series B lead. This means that SendBird’s Series B now amounts to $102 million. That’s a pretty big jump from a $16 million in 2017.

SendBird, which first started in 2013 as a B2C application company, evolved into a messaging platform after building one for its own needs. After applying to , the startup launched its first messaging product in January 2016. Since then it has “more than” tripled its ARR every year, according to founder and CEO , who declined to reveal just what that ARR is.

Other growth metrics it did provide: in 2018, the company tripled the number of messages sent through its platform, surpassing 1 billion messages per month. It also grew to more than 50 million monthly active users and 16 million daily active users. Headcount grew by 180 percent last year and has increased from 70 to 98 since January, according to the company. Customers include the NBA, Yahoo! Sports, and Indonesia’s , among others.

On its growth metrics alone, SendBird certainly fits the profile of the kind of high-growth private company we like to cover. Plus, the SaaS space is just hot, as our EIC Alex wrote in February. At that time, he noted that SendBird’s Series B part 1 came at a time when public companies operating in similar spaces were posting sharp gains. , in particular, had been on a tear in the public markets in recent quarters.

The addition of Tiger Global as an investor happened quickly, and perhaps a little unexpectedly, according to Kim.

“After announcing our Series B, a lot of hedge funds and investment firms reached out,” he told Crunchbase News. “We’d heard great things about Tiger Global and liked that they had invested in a lot of successful companies in the consumer space. We also thought they had a good overlap in their portfolio of our ideal customers in terms of target market…We had a term sheet one day after our meeting with them. It was an incredibly fast process.”

That prompted existing investor Iconiq to contribute to the second part of the Series B. (Kim said for legal reasons, the startup had to extend that round, rather than create a Series C, because the raises happened so close together) SendBird has recently opened offices in Singapore, London and Bengaluru and generally plans to focus on its go-to-market strategy with its new capital, according to Kim. The company currently operates in 150 countries and also aims to continue expanding globally, with an emphasis on hiring in the United States and Korea, he said.

, general partner at ICONIQ Capital, said his firm invested in both tranches of the Series B round because of its belief that “SendBird has emerged as the category leader, recognizing the immense demand from businesses for a chat and messaging solution and meeting these needs with a customer-focused product and API.”

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Hello from the , where the snow has turned to ice and it’s cold enough that I’ve opted for warm espresso. It’s awful here, but happily, in the world of startups, things are still pretty hot.

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I want to hit on three things this morning, starting with a funding round. Then we’ll visit a small acquisition in crypto and close on a note regarding Uber’s latest quarterly results.

Three Cheers For  SendBird and Twilio

is riding the SaaS wave. The company, which powers messaging inside applications, just raised $52 million in a Series B round led by Iconiq Capital.

The financing comes as public companies operating in similar spaces have been posting sharp gains.  in particular has been on a tear in the public markets in recent quarters. The company’s recent success, however, wasn’t always assured.

After proposing an IPO value  back in 2016, shares of Twilio at a sharper $15 per and once it began trading. After climbing north of $60 per share, Twilio lost altitude, crashing into the $20s and $30s from late 2016 into 2018.

Then its shares took off, showing investors both public and private alike that vertical SaaS companies powering other firms’ apps and services could generate toothsome revenues and winsome growth.

As , , a popular payment processing unicorn, could be lumped in with Twilio. Along with, private-market investors hope, , which powers messaging inside applications.

How is that different than what Twilio offers? The two products actually aren’t very close; Twilio wants to supply SMS and other forms of comms for your app as needed, similar to a utility. SendBird wants to place its messaging functions into your app.

Investors appear to agree with Ron that there are similarities, however. We can surmise as such given that the investing class just fired a big Series B at the firm. Before the new round, SendBird a comparatively-scant $18.7 million.

Coinbase Wants More Coins

The popular crypto company bought Neutrino, a company that the unicorn “a blockchain intelligence platform.”

Why did Coinbase want the smaller company? From its on the matter, this stuck out: “[Neutrino will] also help us bring more cryptocurrencies and features to more people while helping ensure compliance with local laws and regulations.” I presume that the deal means that Coinbase will bring more coins onto its platform over time.

There’s over Coinbase’s work to expand its crypto lineup; amidst the complaints, however, it’s often hard to tell at times what is pro-bitcoin drumbeating, and what is well-grounded worries about less established crypto projects receiving the Coinbase imprimatur.

The deal wasn’t priced, but as Crunchbase doesn’t have listed funding information for , I doubt that the agreement was a tough chew for Coinbase.

Uber’s Not-Really-Slimming Losses

Here’s some correct coverage of Uber’s fourth-quarter results that we should discuss that emailed out last week:

To which we need to reply: Yes, but.

Yes, but a huge tax benefit saved Uber from posting a higher Q4 net loss in 2018 than it did in 2017.

The ridehailing company’s Q4 2017 net loss came to $1.1 billion. Uber’s Q4 2018 net loss after taxes was $865 million. But Uber’s Q4 2018 net loss before the impact of income taxes was -$1.22 billion.

In short, Uber had a $358 million (benefit from) taxes that I don’t think that anyone external to the company fully understands. And since I suspect that Uber won’t be able to gin up a similar bump every quarter, perhaps we should look at some more recent profit metrics to see if the company is getting closer, or further away from profitability.

Well, in Q3 2018 Uber’s operating loss was $773 million. In the fourth quarter of the same year, that figure swelled to a $1.06 billion loss. Whoops.

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