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Welcome to Last Week In Venture, a weekly roundup of venture deals inked with interesting companies that you may have missed.

There鈥檚 a lot going on. The U.S. Southeast braced for Hurricane Florence as Joyce and Helene . , one of the Google guys, , which wanted to grill him and other executives on election interference and national security. And a months-long . The FCC thinks to enact their own net neutrality rules. And a company invited folks to to show off its new phones. It鈥檚 been a week!

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In spite of all that, though, investors continued to funnel staggering amounts of capital into companies like , , , and . It鈥檚 easy to overlook what companies outside the spotlight are contributing to startup ecosystems around the world. But that doesn鈥檛 mean their stories aren鈥檛 worth sharing.

Here we go!

Funding Hotspot: Aftermarket Marketplaces

Most of us who can afford it prefer to buy new stuff. But for big-ticket purchases especially, like a car, it can pay to buy used. And for some rare or collectible items, buying something right out of someone鈥檚 closet might be the only way to cop a grail.

This week saw a couple of used-good marketplace platforms raise cash from investors. Here鈥檚 the run-down:

• is one of several upstarts competing to own part of the very lucrative used car industry. On Thursday, it announced led by automotive dealership network . A fleet of prior investors including , , , and , among others, invested in the round.. In addition to that equity financing, the company secured as part of the transaction.
• Detroit-based , a platform for buying and selling sneakers and select streetwear, picked up a cool $44 million from and , , including unlikely syndicate partners DJ and founder . It plans to use this capital to expand its anonymous mobile-first marketplace infrastructure to other product verticals, and into international markets.

Other Rounds From Interesting Companies

• , which makes a website-building platform, in what the company is framing as an extension of its Series A round. (The company’s CEO, David Chen, that the round was “technically a Series B level round.”) This brings the Shanghai-based company’s total known funding to $17 million since it was founded in 2012, when Chen and his co-founders were students at the University of Chicago. Today, the company employs over 300 people. (Note: Crunchbase News鈥檚 Jason D. Rowley and Alex Wilhelm were both classmates of David Chen.)
• Chicago-based formally announced it led by . The company operates the 鈥渇irst licensed cryptocurrency exchange to offer institutional trading and settlement for both the spot market and CFTC-regulated derivatives,鈥� according to a statement. Its two founders initially launched the company to build futures trading markets for avocados and industrial hemp, but pivoted with the crypto craze. In December 2017, Seed CX that , the cryptocurrency exchange, acquired a controlling strategic stake in the company, citing its swap exchange facility (Seed SEF) as a core motivator for the deal. Seed CX started raising this Series B round back in June, according to Crunchbase News approached the company about at the time.
• Drone manufacturer raised led by and had participation from and (which followed on its $2 million seed investment from April 2017.). Impossible Aerospace鈥檚 7.1 kilogram (15.7 pound) flagship Impossible US-1 drone features a 75 kilometer (46.6 mile) range, an optional thermal-imaging camera from FLIR, and a two-hour flight time, over twice that of major competitors. The base model drone costs $7,500 and the one with the FLIR camera will set buyers back by $10,000. CEO Spencer Gore that 鈥淭he US-1 is more than just a product. It鈥檚 also a proof of concept of a new way of designing aircraft.鈥� With its battery-first structural design and custom drivetrain, Gore eyes a future of developing bigger, human-laden aircraft.
• Finally, we direct you to an article Crunchbase News published on Friday about , which just raised $25 million in a Series A round. What does the company do? Among other things, it grows brains in jars for science.

And for those intrepid folks who made it to the end, a lagniappe: . We鈥檙e off to enjoy a relaxing weekend! ?

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