Ideaforge

Over the past few months, COVID-19 has brought much of the fundraising community to a standstill. However, amidst it all India’s hyper0growth telco Reliance Jio Platforms has put its fundraising efforts into full gear.

Over the past three months, Jio has raised over $15.5 billion from a cohort of investors that include prominent financial institutions like KKR and Silver Lake Partners, massive sovereign wealth funds like Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, and some of the biggest names in tech including Facebook.

The recent deals have cemented Mukesh Ambani’s ambition to make his oil-to-retails giant Reliance Industries (India’s most valuable firm) a top homegrown internet giant.

On Friday, he said he plans to publicly list Reliance Jio Platforms and Reliance Retail, the largest retail chain in the country — also controlled by him — in the next five years.

As Reliance Jio Platforms, which has become the India’s top telecom operator with over 388 million subscribers in less than four years, continues its funding spree, at Extra Crunch we are doubling down on our focus on covering everything Jio from here and out.

As we’ve attempted to get up to speed on the company, we’ve compiled a supplemental list of resources and readings that we believe are particularly helpful for learning the story of Jio, which remains a mysterious firm to many.

Source: Tech Crunch

Apple today confirmed earlier rumors that it plans to shut down re-opened stores in four states.  Impacted locations include six stores in Arizona, two in Florida, another two in North Carolina and one in South Carolina.

“Due to current COVID-19 conditions in some of the communities we serve, we are temporarily closing stores in these areas. We take this step with an abundance of caution as we closely monitor the situation and we look forward to having our teams and customers back as soon as possible,” the company said in a statement to TechCrunch.

It’s been just over a month since the company began to reopen a handful of locations, as states began wider reopening efforts. The company implemented several safeguards, including mask requirements, temperature checks and enforced social distancing, as well as extended cleaning efforts.

“These are not decisions we rush into,” Retail SVP Deirdre O’Brien wrote at the time, “and a store opening in no way means that we won’t take the preventative step of closing it again should local conditions warrant.”

One imagines the company will approach re-re-opening the same way. However, several states have posted increases in COVID-19 cases since government began the process of reopening. Arizona, Florida, Oklahoma, Nevada, Oregon and Texas have all posted record high infection rates in the past week. Given the uncertain nature of the virus’s spread, it seems likely this won’t be the last time Apple and other retailers have to reverse course. 

 

The following locations will be closed, beginning tomorrow,

Source: Tech Crunch

When Nicole Poindexter left the energy efficiency focused startup, Opower a few months after the company’s public offering, she wasn’t sure what would come next.

At the time, in 2014, the renewable energy movement in the US still faced considerable opposition. But what Poindexter did see was an opportunity to bring the benefits of renewable energy to Africa.

“What does it take to have 100 percent renewables on the grid in the US at the time was not a solvable problem,” Poindexter said. “I looked to Africa and I’d heard that there weren’t many grid assets [so] maybe I could try this idea out there. As I was doing market research, I learned what life was like without electricity and I was like.. that’s not acceptable and I can do something about it.”

Poindexter linked up with Joe Philip, a former executive at SunEdison who was a development engineer at the company and together they formed Energicity to develop renewable energy microgrids for off-grid communities in Africa.

“He’d always thought that the right way to deploy solar was an off-grid solution,” said Poindexter of her co-founder.

At Energicity, Philip and Poindexter are finding and identifying communities, developing the projects for installation and operating the microgrids. So far, the company’s projects have resulted from winning development bids initiated by governments, but with a recently closed $3.25 million in seed financing, the company can expand beyond government projects, Poindexter said.

“The concessions in Benin and Sierra Leone are concessions that we won,” she said. “But we can also grow organically by driving a truck up and asking communities ‘Do you want light?’ and invariably they say yes.” 

To effectively operate the micro-grids that the company is building required an end-to-end refashioning of all aspects of the system. While the company uses off-the-shelf solar panels, Poindexter said that Energicity had built its own smart meters and a software stack to support monitoring and management.

So far, the company has installed 800 kilowatts of power and expects to hit 1.5 megawatts by the end of the year, according to Poindexter.

Those micro-grids serving rural communities operate through subsidiaries in Ghana, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, and currently serve thirty-six communities and 23,000 people, the company said. The company is targeting developments that could reach 1 million people in the next five years, a fraction of what the continent needs to truly electrify the lives of the population. 

Through two subsidiaries, Black Star Energy, in Ghana, and Power Leone, in Sierra Leone, Energicity has a 20-year concession in Sierra Leone to serve 100,000 people and has the largest private minigrid footprint in Ghana, the company said.

Most of the financing that Energicity has relied on to develop its projects and grow its business has come from government grants, but just as Poindexter expects to do more direct sales, there are other financial models that could get the initial developments off the ground.

Carbon offsets, for instance, could provide an attractive mechanism for developing projects and could be a meaningful gateway to low-cost sources of project finance. “We are using project financing and project debt and a lot of the projects are funded by aid agencies like the UK and the UN,” Poindexter said. 

The company charges its customers a service fee and a fixed price per kilowatt hour for the energy that amounts to less than $2 per month for a customers that are using its service for home electrification and cell phone charging, Poindexter said.

While several other solar installers like M-kopa and easy solar are pitching electrification to African consumers, Poindexter argues that her company’s micro-grid model is less expensive than those competitors.

“Ecosystem Integrity Fund is proud to invest in a transformational company like Energicity Corp,” said James Everett, managing partner, Ecosystem Integrity Fund, which backed the company’s. most recent round. “The opportunity to expand clean energy access across West Africa helps to drive economic growth, sustainability, health, and human development.  With Energicity’s early leadership and innovation, we are looking forward to partnering and helping to grow this great company.”

Source: Tech Crunch

Just before 8 a.m. PT Friday, Tesla’s head of human resources sent an email telling U.S. employees they could take the day off to observe Juneteenth, the June 19 holiday that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States.

Moments later, HR head Valerie Capers Workman clarified that employees who chose to take the day off would be unpaid, according to an email viewed by TechCrunch. CNBC was the first to report the morning emails. The email was sent as workers on the west coast were starting their workday. For those in other time zones, including those who are employed at the company’s Buffalo, New York factory, the email arrived well into the work day.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.

The timing of the emails — sent on the day of the holiday — has prompted criticism. It’s also raised questions about how it might affect a planned Juneteenth demonstration at Tesla’s Fremont, Calif., factory, which employs more than 10,000 workers.

Later this morning, and perhaps in response to push back, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that Juneteenth will be considered a U.S. holiday at Tesla and SpaceX moving forward.

In a later tweet, Musk confirmed that it would require employees to take a paid-time off or PTO. Employees are allotted a certain number of PTO days per year depending on length of employment and position. Several employees, who will remain unnamed because they’re not authorized to talk to the media, have told TechCrunch that they used up their PTO to stay home as a precaution during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, the day that slaves in Galveston, Texas became aware of their freedom when a Union general reached the region two months after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered in Virginia. This was more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

This year, following nationwide protests about police brutality and systematic racism against Black people, dozens of tech companies have announced plans to recognize Juneteenth and offer it as a paid holiday, including Square and Twitter. Other companies have announced other plans to recognize the day.

Source: Tech Crunch

France’s top court for administrative law has dismissed Google’s appeal against a $57M fine issued by the data watchdog last year for not making it clear enough to Android users how it processes their personal information.

The State Council issued the decision today, affirming the data watchdog CNIL’s earlier finding that Google did not provide “sufficiently clear” information to Android users — which in turn meant it had not legally obtained their consent to use their data for targeted ads.

“Google’s request has been rejected,” a spokesperson for the Conseil D’Etat confirmed to TechCrunch via email.

“The Council of State confirms the CNIL’s assessment that information relating to targeting advertising is not presented in a sufficiently clear and distinct manner for the consent of the user to be validly collected,” the court also writes in a press release [translated with Google Translate] on its website.

It found the size of the fine to be proportionate — given the severity and ongoing nature of the violations.

Importantly, the court also affirmed the jurisdiction of France’s national watchdog to regulate Google — at least on the date when this penalty was issued (January 2019).

The CNIL’s multimillion dollar fine against Google remains the largest to date against a tech giant under Europe’s flagship General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — lending the case a certain symbolic value, for those concerned about whether the regulation is functioning as intended vs platform power.

While the size of the fine is still relative peanuts vs Google’s parent entity Alphabet’s global revenue, changes the tech giant may have to make to how it harvests user data could be far more impactful to its ad-targeting bottom line. 

Under European law, for consent to be a valid legal basis for processing personal data it must be informed, specific and freely given. Or, to put it another way, consent cannot be strained.

In this case French judges concluded Google had not provided clear enough information for consent to be lawfully obtained — including objecting to a pre-ticked checkbox which the court affirmed does not meet the requirements of the GDPR.

So, tl;dr, the CNIL’s decision has been entirely vindicated.

Reached for comment on the court’s dismissal of its appeal, a Google spokeswoman sent us this statement:

People expect to understand and control how their data is used, and we’ve invested in industry-leading tools that help them do both. This case was not about whether consent is needed for personalised advertising, but about how exactly it should be obtained. In light of this decision, we will now review what changes we need to make.

GDPR came into force in 2018, updating long standing European data protection rules and opening up the possibility of supersized fines of up to 4% of global annual turnover.

However actions against big tech have largely stalled, with scores of complaints being funnelled through Ireland’s Data Protection Commission — on account of a one-stop-shop mechanism in the regulation — causing a major backlog of cases. The Irish DPC has yet to issue decisions on any cross border complaints, though it has said its first ones are imminent — on complaints involving Twitter and Facebook.

Ireland’s data watchdog is also continuing to investigate a number of complaints against Google, following a change Google announced to the legal jurisdiction of where it processes European users’ data — moving them to Google Ireland Limited, based in Dublin, which it said applied from January 22, 2019 — with ongoing investigations by the Irish DPC into a long running complaint related to how Google handles location data and another major probe of its adtech, to name two. 

On the GDPR one-stop shop mechanism — and, indirectly, the wider problematic issue of ‘forum shopping’ and European data protection regulation — the French State Council writes: “Google believed that the Irish data protection authority was solely competent to control its activities in the European Union, the control of data processing being the responsibility of the authority of the country where the main establishment of the data controller is located, according to a ‘one-stop-shop’ principle instituted by the GDPR. The Council of State notes however that at the date of the sanction, the Irish subsidiary of Google had no power of control over the other European subsidiaries nor any decision-making power over the data processing, the company Google LLC located in the United States with this power alone.”

In its own statement responding to the court’s decision, the CNIL notes the court’s view that GDPR’s one-stop-shop mechanism was not applicable in this case — writing: “It did so by applying the new European framework as interpreted by all the European authorities in the guidelines of the European Data Protection Committee.”

Privacy NGO noyb — one of the privacy campaign groups which lodged the original ‘forced consent’ complaint against Google, all the way back in May 2018 — welcomed the court’s decision on all fronts, including the jurisdiction point.

Commenting in a statement, noyb’s honorary chairman, Max Schrems, said: “It is very important that companies like Google cannot simply declare themselves to be ‘Irish’ to escape the oversight by the privacy regulators.”

A key question is whether CNIL — or another (non-Irish) EU DPA — will be found to be competent to sanction Google in future, following its shift to naming its Google Ireland subsidiary as the regional data processor. (Other tech giants use the same or a similar playbook, seeking out the EU’s more ‘business-friendly’ regulators.)

On the wider ruling, Schrems also said: “This decision requires substantial improvements by Google. Their privacy policy now really needs to make it crystal clear what they do with users’ data. Users must also get an option to agree to only some parts of what Google does with their data and refuse other things.”

French digital rights group, La Quadrature du Net — which had filed a related complaint against Google, feeding the CNIL’s investigation — also declared victory today, noting it’s the first sanction in a number of GDPR complaints it has lodged against tech giants on behalf of 12,000 citizens.

“The rest of the complaints against Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft are still under investigation in Ireland. In any case, this is what this authority promises us,” it added in another tweet.

Source: Tech Crunch

BMW Group and Mercedes-Benz AG have punted on what was meant to be a long term collaboration to develop next-generation automated driving technology together, less than a year after announcing the agreement.

The German automakers called the break up “mutual and amicable” and have each agreed to concentrate on their existing development paths. Those new paths may include working with new or current partners. The two companies also emphasized that cooperation may be resumed at a later date.

The partnership, which was announced in July 2019, was never meant to be exclusive.  Instead, it reflected the increasingly common approach among legacy manufacturers to form loose development agreements in an aim to share the capitally intensive work of developing, testing and validating automated driving technology.

The two companies did have some lofty goals. The partnership aimed to develop  driver assistance systems, highly automated driving on highways, and automated parking and launch those technology in series vehicles scheduled for 2024.

It seems that the perceived benefits of working together were overshadowed by reality: creating a shared technology platform was a more complex and expensive task than expected, according to comments from the companies. BMW and Mercedes-Benz AG said they were unable to hold detailed expert discussions and talk to suppliers about technology roadmaps until the contract was signed last year.

“In these talks — and after extensive review — both sides concluded that, in view of the expense involved in creating a shared technology platform, as well as current business and economic conditions, the timing is not right for successful implementation of the cooperation,” the companies said.

BMW and Mercedes have other projects and partners. BMW, for instance, is part of a collaboration with Intel, Mobileye, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Ansys. Daimler and Bosch launched a robotaxi pilot project in San Jose last year.

Meanwhile, both companies are still working together in other areas. Five years, BMW and Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, joined Audi AG to acquire location and technology platform HERE. That ownership consortium has since grown to include more companies.

And last year, BMW Group and Daimler AG also pooled their mobility services in a joint venture under the umbrella of the NOW family.

Separately, BMW said Friday it will cut 6,000 jobs in an agreement reached with the German Works Council. The cuts, prompted by sluggish sales caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, will be reportedly accomplished through early retirement, non-renewal of temporary contracts, ending redundant positions and not filling vacant positions, Marketwatch reported.

Source: Tech Crunch

Mapillary, the Swedish startup that wants to take on Google and others in mapping the world via a crowdsourced database of street-level imagery, has been acquired by Facebook, according to the company’s blog. Terms of deal aren’t being disclosed.

The Mapillary team and project will become part of Facebook’s broader open mapping efforts. Mapillary also says its “commitment to OpenStreetMap stays”.  Writes Mapillary co-founder and CEO Jan Erik:

From day one of Mapillary, we have been committed to building a global street-level imagery platform that allows everyone to get the imagery and data they need to make better maps. With tens of thousands of contributors to our platform and with maps being improved with Mapillary data every single day, we’re now taking the next big step on that journey.

As Erik notes, Facebook is known to be “building tools and technology to improve maps through a combination of machine learning, satellite imagery and partnerships with mapping communities”. Mapping has immediate use-cases for the social networking behemoth, such as Facebook Marketplaces and its local business offerings, while another application is augmented reality.

This saw it recently acquire another European startup, Scape, news that TechCrunch broke in February. Founded in 2017, Scape Technologies was developing a “Visual Positioning Service” based on computer vision which lets developers build apps that require location accuracy far beyond the capabilities of GPS alone. The technology initially targeted augmented reality apps, but also had the potential to be used to power applications in mobility, logistics and robotics. More broadly, Scape wanted to enable any machine equipped with a camera to understand its surroundings.

Mapillary is also the latest “open” project to join and now be funded by Facebook. Last December, it quietly acquired U.K.-based Atlas ML, the custodian of “Papers With Code,” the free and open resource for machine learning papers and code.

Returning to Mapillary, the startup is keen to stress that it will continue being a “global platform for imagery, map data, and improving all maps”. “You will still be able to upload imagery and use the map data from all the images on the platform,” says Erik. It is also changing the license to permit commercial use:

Historically, all of the imagery available on our platform has been open and free for anyone to use for non-commercial purposes. Moving forward, that will continue to be true, except that starting today, it will also be free to use for commercial users as well. By continuing to make all images uploaded to Mapillary open, public, and available to everyone, we hope to enable new use cases, and grow the breadth of coverage and usage to benefit mapping for everyone. While we previously needed to focus on commercialisation to build and run the platform, joining Facebook moves Mapillary closer to the vision we’ve had from day one of offering a free service to anyone.

Source: Tech Crunch

In light of the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade and Rayshard Brooks, as well as the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, Juneteenth has quickly made its way onto the radar of tech companies.

On June 19, 1865, slaves in Galveston, Texas, became aware of their freedom. This was about two months after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered in Virginia and more than two-and-half years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

In the last couple of weeks, many tech companies have announced plans to make Juneteenth an official holiday for employees or recognize the day in some other way. Jack Dorsey, CEO of Square and Twitter, was the first major tech CEO to announce that Juneteenth would be a paid holiday for employees. Since then, companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Uber and Lyft have announced their own respective plans to commemorate the day.

Today, Lyft announced its plans to host a Juneteenth panel about the importance of Juneteenth and share a Juneteenth bike route map via Citi Bike. This is in addition to giving employees the day off.

“At Lyft, we recognize that we have more work to do beyond a single action, and celebrating Juneteeth is just one step in our journey,” the company wrote in a blog post. “We are committed to do our best in both material and public ways.”

Other plans by companies include encouraging employees to use the day as a time to learn about racial injustice or to officially commemorate the day on Google Calendar. It’s worth noting that Apple added Juneteenth to its iOS calendar back in 2018. 

Recognition of such a historic day is good. But the way these companies are publicly announcing their plans, seeking press as they do, suggests their need for some affirmative pat on the back. It’s perfectly acceptable to do the right thing and not get credit for it. It shows humility. It shows that a company is more interested in doing right by its workers than it is in saving face. 

Sure, had these companies not gone public with their respective Juneteenth plans, it’s possible other companies would not have followed suit. But beyond deciding to celebrate Juneteenth, making statements about standing with the Black community and donating money, companies need to ensure they take more than just actions to combat racism in tech. 

Instead, as Hustle Crew founder Abadesi Osunsade has said, tech companies need to go beyond one-off actions and form habits around racial justice work. Forming habits around hiring Black people, promoting Black employees, paying Black employees fairly, funding Black founders and making room for Black people in leadership positions is what will lead to concrete change in this industry. 

Meanwhile, in response to recent events of police violence, many tech companies have made paradoxical statements. Many of the statements of support are devoid of meaning when you consider how some companies fail to create diverse workforces, respond to hate speech on their platforms and/or continue to hold contracts with police departments.

Today, Facebook announced it would spend at least $100 million annually with Black-owned suppliers. Earlier this month, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian stepped down from the company’s board of directors to make room for a Black person. Meanwhile, folks over at the Kapor Center for Social Impact are encouraging staff to use Juneteenth as a day of service in the Black community. These are all steps in the right direction — steps that can result in lasting change in the tech industry. Let’s see more of those.

“Yes, Juneteenth is just one day, and we have yet to see how the nation will respond to the injustices in the months and years to come,” Kapor Center Chief People Officer Matt Perry wrote in a blog post. “Here’s to hoping the actions that we take this Juneteenth can be a catalyst for sustainable change… and action.”

Full disclosure, TechCrunch recently decided to make Juneteenth a holiday and I’m here for it. 

Source: Tech Crunch

Over the past two decades, the venture capital industry has exploded beyond anyone’s wildest imaginations.

What began as a sleepy industry in Boston and Menlo Park has now expanded to dozens of cities the world over. The National Venture Capital Association estimates that VCs deployed more than $130 billion in 2018 and 2019, and thousands of new investors have joined the ranks in recent years to find the next great startups.

All that activity, though, poses a dilemma for founders: Who actively writes checks? Who is a leader in a specific market or vertical? Who has the conviction to underwrite pathbreaking investments? Who, ultimately, do you want to have by your side for the next decade as your startup grows?

There are lists that rank VCs by their exit returns. There are lists that rank young VCs by their potential. There are lists of VCs who claim investment interest in various sectors. There are lists that try to ferret out deal volume, impact and other quantitative metrics. There are internal lists at accelerators that share collective wisdom between founders.

All those lists and rankings have an important function to serve, but for all the compilations of investors out there, we couldn’t find a single one that publicly answered a simple yet vital question: Who are the VC investors who are leaders in specific verticals who should be a founder’s first stop during a fundraise?

Today’s venture industry is made up of thousands of investors with varying specialties, and far too many passive investors that are willing to participate in rounds but don’t actively participate in deals unless other investors have committed. Many don’t actively push to get deals done or don’t actively lead the charge to build a syndicate of investors.

With all that in mind, we’re excited to launch a new initiative that we hope will help answer those questions and help founders find that first check — The TechCrunch List.

Over the next few weeks, we’re going to be collecting data around which individual investors are actually willing to write the proverbial “first check” into a startup’s fundraising round and help catalyze deals for founders — whether it be seed, Series A or otherwise (i.e. out of your Series A investors, the first person who was willing to write the check and get the ball rolling with other investors). Once we’ve collected, cleaned and analyzed the data, we’ll publish lists of the most recommended “first check” investors across different verticals, investment stages and geographies, so founders can see which investors are potentially the best fit for their company.

Founders are used to being specialized; after all, they have to live and breathe their startups every single day. So it can be jarring to start talking to generalist investors who know little about a category and ask shallow questions only to render a judgment with irrelevant advice. One of the greatest impetuses for us to put together The TechCrunch List is that like founders, we also struggle to cut through the noise around the interests of individual VCs.

We’d argue that’s close to impossible. There is more spend on technology than ever before in history. Verticals are getting more competitive — market maps that used to have 10 to 50 companies have expanded to hundreds. The only way to compete today is to specialize, and that has never been more true for VCs.

In all, The TechCrunch List will publish the most recommended “first check” writers across 22 different categories, ranging from D2C & e-commerce brands to space, and everything in between. Through some data analysis around total investments in each space, we believe our 22 categories should cover the entirety or majority of the venture activity today.

To make this project a success and create a useful resource for founders, we need your help. We want to hear from company builders and we want to hear from them directly. We will be collecting endorsements submitted by founders through the form linked here.

Through the form, founders will be asked to submit their name, their startup, the stage of company, the name of the one “first check” investor they want to endorse and a couple of minor logistical items. We are asking founders here for their on-the-record endorsement. We ask that you limit your recommendations to one (1) person per fundraise round.

While many investors may have helped you in your journey, we are specifically interested in the person who most helped you get a round underway and closed. The one who catalyzed your round. The one who guided you through the fundraise process. The one investor you would ultimately recommend to other founders who are trying to find their VC champion.

Our main goal is to help founders, dreamers and company builders find investors who will invest in them today, and with your help, we think we can. The TechCrunch List is not meant to identify every possible investor under the sun who might make an investment within a space, nor just the big household-name VCs whose reputations can sometimes seem more linked to their follower counts on Twitter as opposed to their bold term sheets.

Our hope is that this can be a go-to resource for founders looking to fundraise going forward, and with that in mind, we are very determined to improve the glaring representation gaps in the venture industry. It’s no secret that the world of VC still looks like a country-club membership roster, dominated by white men with strong opinions and loud voices. Looking at the data, it’s clear that there are groups that are particularly underrepresented, with only a small portion of the industry made up of Black, Latinx and female investors, for example.

We want to amplify these voices and we want to hear particularly from founders of color, female founders and other underrepresented groups. We also want to make sure our recommended investor lists are sufficiently representative and highlight underrepresented investors who might not have had equal opportunities in the past.

We want to help builders wade through the BS politics and fundraising annoyances that founders complain to us about on a daily basis, and help them identify qualified leads that are actually active, engaged and specialized and are the best fit to help founders raise money and grow now.

Thank you for your support. We’re excited to build The TechCrunch List with you — and for you.

Source: Tech Crunch

The venture capital industry is less transparent today than at any time in recent memory.

For all the talk about expanding access and improving its sordid record on diversity, in reality, it has never been harder for founders to figure out who can even write a check to their startups in the first place.

When I first returned to TechCrunch after my second stint in venture capital, my first piece was entitled “The loss of first check investors.” While working in the venture capital industry, it was maddening to see — particularly at the pre-seed and seed stages — how few investors were really willing to go out on a limb and invest in founders before another VC had committed a check.

It’s only gotten worse in the past two years since that article, and the complexity comes from a number of different places. As our investigation showed more than a year ago, fewer and fewer venture rounds are being announced through SEC Form D filings.

There are almost no publicly accountable datasets left indicating who is writing checks in the venture industry and which companies are receiving those checks. While stealthiness is valid in the early days of a startup, the excuse wears thin after years.

Source: Tech Crunch