Capital Gains: Gargantuan late-stage funding rounds are the new black

Traditionally, startups whose private valuations number in the tens of billions are racing to go public.

That’s not been the case over the last couple years.

Airbnb and Uber are the latest companies to buck convention, instead opting to raise giant late-stage debt funding rounds. And Uber’s chief China rival, Didi Chuxing, finished a whopping $7.3 billion round at a $28 billion valuation.

More on that, and other funding headlines from Silicon Valley, below:

• Didi Chuxing, the most popular ride-hailing service in China and Uber’s chief global competitor, finished up a $7.3 billion funding round at a $28 billion valuation. A few weeks back, Didi raised $4.5 billion in equity from investors (including Apple) and received the remaining $2.8 billion from lenders.
• To keep up with Didi, Uber is continually raising tons of money. It recently took in $3.5 billion in equity funding from the Saudi Arabian government. And now it’s looking to get $2 billion in loans to give it more cash without further diluting its cap table.
• Airbnb wants to add other kinds of travel services to its home rental booking platform, and it eventually plans to go public. Those are a couple good reasons why it raised $1 billion in debt financing, adding to its already substantial cash pile. The company raised $1.5 billion last year at a $25.5 billion valuation.
• A few years ago, Twitter was thinking about buying Soundcloud. Instead, it’s now investing $70 million in the music streaming service that’s in dire straits similar to Twitter’s own problems.
• Chinese tech giants Tencent and Lenovo are part of a $50 million investment round in the augmented reality startup Meta, which makes a headset akin to Microsoft’s HoloLens (Bloomberg).
• Crisis Text Line is a charity-startup hybrid thing that offers over-the-phone, text message- and social-media-based peer counseling. The company raised $23.8 million from Reid Hoffman, Melinda Gates, the Ballmer Group and Omidyar Network.
• Eyeview, which builds custom video ads based on who is looking at them, raised $21.5 million in a new round led by the Israeli firm Qumra Capital.
• Common is a startup that rents entire buildings and then sublets the rooms out as "co-living" spaces. The company just raised $16 million in a Series B round led by 8VC, with additional funding from Circle Ventures, Solon Mack Capital, the LeFrak Organization, Maveron, Lowercase Capital, Slow Ventures and Pierre Lamond (The Real Deal).
• Talkspace, which "believes that affordable therapy is as easy as an online platform" and offers a therapy service over an app, raised $15 million in funding led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from Spark Capital, SoftBank, TheTime and Metamorphic Ventures (TechCrunch).

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?

Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple of big issues with relying on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on:

First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.

Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. And we can’t do that if we have a paywall.

So even though advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek grants and reader support. (And no matter how our work is funded, we have strict guidelines on editorial independence.)

If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today? Any amount helps.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

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