Capital Gains: Ex-NSA Chief Raises $33 Million, Thiel and Soros Team Up and More

Former National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander’s startup raised more than $30 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers this week, and financier George Soros invested with Peter Thiel in a bond-trading startup. Here’s the funding news from Silicon Valley:

• Iconiq Capital, the investment firm that manages the money of Silicon Valley executives like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Weiner, led an $85 million investment in the enterprise technology startup Alteryx, alongside Insight Venture Partners and Meritech Capital Partners. Alteryx’s valuation is reportedly somewhere around $1 billion (New York Times).
• Online art-auction service Paddle8 raised $34 million in Series C funding from a group of investors that includes art dealer David Zwirner, artist Rolf Sachs, Working Title Films Co-Chair Eric Fellner and Sony Music CEO Edgar Berger (ARTnews).
• Brandwatch, a British startup that does “social intelligence” (it closely monitors and mines social media data for clients), raised $33 million from Partech Ventures, Highland Capital Partners Europe and Nauta Capital (Forbes).
• Kleiner Perkins, Trident Capital and others invested $32.5 million in IronNet Cybersecurity, the counter-hacking startup founded by former NSA director and retired four-star general Keith Alexander (The Wall Street Journal).
• French human resources software maker Talentsoft landed a $27.6 million investment from Goldman Sachs (Bloomberg Business).
• Peter Thiel and billionaire fund manager George Soros are leading a $25 million investment in the Internet bond-trading startup TruMid. Former Goldman Sachs exec Jeff Bahl also participated in the round, which values the company at over $100 million (Bloomberg Business).
• Israeli data analysis startup Signals Group raised $15 million in a Series B funding round led by Sequoia, with participation from TPY Capital (Globes).
• Utah-based Boombox, which makes stuff like quizzes and polls for digital publishers, raised $5.5 million in Series A funding from investors that included Pelion Venture Partners (Utah Business).

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Explanatory journalism is a public good

At Vox, we believe that everyone deserves access to information that helps them understand and shape the world they live in. That's why we keep our work free. Support our mission and help keep Vox free for all by making a financial contribution to Vox today.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$95/year

$120/year

$250/year

$350/year

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $120/year

Yes, I'll give $120/year

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via