Delaware News Roundup: Marlette Funding’s $225M Series E is the biggest we’ve seen in a while

Editor’s note: This story first appeared as a newsletter alongside a roundup of Technical.ly’s best Delaware reporting from the week, job openings and more. Subscribe here to get updates on Delaware tech, business and innovation news in your inbox on Thursdays.

In this second week of Web3 Month here at Technical.ly, I took a look at the short but strange history of using blockchain for voting. Also this week, I took a trip to “Other World” at the Delaware Theatre Company with a Wētā Workshop, designer, and caught up with tech education advocate and founder of Urban Tech Hero, Danny DeJesus.

As always, if you have a story you think might be a fit with Technical.ly (including guest posts by local experts), drop us a line at delaware@technical.ly.

The big news: Marlette’s eye-popping raise

The big local tech news this week is all about Wilmington fintech company Marlette Funding, best known for its machine learning-powered Best Egg platform. Today, the company announced that it has secured $225 million in committed preferred equity capital.

It’s certainly the biggest raise we’ve seen in a while in Delaware, with a close-ish runner-up being Wilmington’s NiKang Therapeutics, which closed a $200 million Series C in June 2021.

This Series E round was led by the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan, which manages over $80 billion in assets, with participation from investment funds advised by Davidson Kempner Capital Management LP, as well as a large international bank.

Best Egg, which recently launched Best Egg Visa Credit Card and its financial wellness tool Best Egg Financial Health, reported a record-breaking year in 2021, with $300 million in revenue and $4.6 billion of personal loans facilitated.

You may also remember Marlette as the company that built its current state-of-the-art headquarters in North Wilmington’s Concord Plaza during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to some of its innovative features and policies, including hotel desks for employees who opt to work primarily or partially from home.

Meeting space at Marlette HQ. (Photo by Holly Quinn)

Marlette also recently announced several management changes, including the appointment of Jason Swift as president of Best Egg credit card services, which aims to provide access to credit for Americans with little or no savings.

“This capital raise allows us to fund our growing credit card business, explore expansions to our platform and evaluate additional strategic opportunities to create more value for our target consumer,” said Andrew Deringer, chief capital officer of Marlette, in a statement.

What else happened this week in Delaware?

Wilmington Brew Works is set to release an Imperial Ukrainian Stout with proceeds supporting relief funds. The brew is a recipe that was shared by Pravda Brewery in Lviv, Ukraine, after it suspended brewing operations and shifted focus to manufacturing molotov cocktails.

Delaware State University has received a four-year $431,000 grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences under the National Institute of Health for a research project entitled “Image Analysis and Machine Learning Methods for Biomarkers of Age-related and Metabolic Diseases.”

Amazon’s six-month old sortation center at the former General Motors Boxwood plant has more than tripled its original 1,000-employee hiring target.

LaMotte Company, a leading producer of water-quality testing instrumentation and reagents has chosen Newark as the site for its $3.3 million expansion in its New Pencader Corporate Center Site, adding 100+ new local jobs.

The Delaware River and Bay Authority is one of the 35 recipients across 18 states of a $2.2 billion award from the US Department of Transportation’s Federal Transit Administration. Delaware’s public transit will receive close to $12 million in funding.

DoMore24 Delaware, the 24 hour online giving event, reported more than $2.6 million in donations this year, with arts organizations as top recipients.

Upcoming Delaware events

Jobs for Delaware Graduates and Goodwill of Delaware and Delaware County are partnering to host a job fair for high school students on Wednesday, March 23, from 6 to 8 p.m. at The Goodwill Center in Wilmington.

Emerging Enterprise Center’s virtual Cutting Edge: ChemTech and BioTech Innovations Symposium is happening on March 24.

Philly Tech Week presented by Comcast 2022 — which, as always, is not just for Philadelphians — returns this May. Technical.ly’s Developers Conference, our annual “tasting menu” of trending technical topics and real-world deployments, will get a hybrid twist on May 10. Then join entrepreneurs, HR pros and other company culture and tech ecosystem leaders to build better companies at Introduced by Technical.ly on May 12.

Recent Delaware Power Moves

Liz Parlett Butcher, a long standing advocate for children with disabilities, has joined First State Educate as the new director of communications. Prior to joining FSE, Liz served as the regional director of the New Jersey chapter of the Association of American Educators.