Money Moves: A Caribou becomes a unicorn with a $115M Series C

Money Moves is a column where we chart the funding raises of tech companies across the region. Have a tip? Email us at dc@technical.ly.

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Caribou raises $115 million

Caribou Financial, the DC auto-financing and car insurance company once known as Motorefi, just landed an oversubscribed Series C of $115 million that Goldman Sachs Asset Management led. With the funds, the company reaches a $1.1 billion valuation, making it a unicorn.

New investors Innovius Capital and Harmonic participated in the round alongside existing investors Accomplice, CMFG Ventures, Curq Fund, Firebolt Ventures, Gaingels, Moderne Ventures and Motley Fool Ventures, among others also participated in the round. The fresh funding follows a $50 million Series B from May of last year, which Goldman Sachs also led. The company has raised $190 million since its 2016 founding.

“We are putting people in control of their auto finances, saving them thousands of dollars with a fast and easy process,” said Caribou CEO Kevin Bennett in a statement. “We’re proud of what we are building and grateful to have such a talented team and experienced group of investors backing our vision. We are just getting started.”

Nisos nabs $15 million in a Series B

Nisos, a managed intelligence company in Alexandria, Virginia, raised $15 million in a Series B, the company announced today.

Cybersecurity investor Paladin Capital Group led the round alongside existing investors Columbia Capital and Skylab Capital. According to Nisos, the funds follow a 60% increase in headcount and 140% year-over-year increase in bookings for Q1. With the new funds, the company will refine its Nisos Intelligence Platform, expedite product management and development work, boost its marketing and grow its staff. To date, the company has raised $33 million since its founding in 2015.

Nisos CEO David Etue told Technical.ly that the funds will allow the team to bring its solutions to a larger range of customers and solve more problems in security.

“Despite vendor promises to the contrary and significant spending, security and intelligence teams find themselves in possession of threat data — not intelligence — leaving them unable to answer critical questions to combat motivated and sophisticated adversaries,” Etue said. “Even mature enterprise intelligence programs have a range of needs, from risk monitoring to tailored requests for information to integrations with internal systems. Nisos believes these needs can only be addressed with an analyst-led approach that combines people, process and technology.”

Inspiration Mobility lands $215 million

DC-based Inspiration Mobility, a startup creating a sustainable infrastructure platform for electric vehicles, raised $215 million in fresh funds. Macquarie Asset Management and Ferrovial SA, both new investors, led the round in concert with ArcLight Capital Partners.

In November, ArcLight also announced a separate $200 million investment in the company to help with its founding, bringing the total raised since its inception last year to $415 million.

Alongside the funding news, the company also appointed Gary Gadsden as senior VP and head of fleet sales and Chris Getner, formerly of Arlington, Virginia’s WireWheel, as its new CTO.

“Now more than ever, fleets need a fully integrated partner to help ease their transition to electric. The combination of our team, our operating structure and available capital offer a single, integrated solution for fleets looking to overcome the costs and complexities of electrification,” said Josh Green, founder and CEO of Inspiration, in a statement. “This new capital will enable us to accelerate the transition to clean, electric fleets that reduce costs for our customers while playing a major role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

Here’s who else is raising this month:

• DC Capital Partners Management, a private equity firm, made a controlled investment in Valkyrie Enterprises, a defense engineering firm based in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Through the deal, DC Capital portfolio company Hill Technical Solutions will merge with Valkyrie.
• The Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation (VIPC), the state’s funding entity, announced that 15 pre-seed companies split $950,000 in funding. They are as follows:
  • Applied Impact Robotics 
  • BCMstrategy
  • CybrBase
  • Evizia
  • Grantable
  • Happy Active Family
  • Industrial Intelligence
  • Kinometrix
  • Perfusion Medical
  • Resale Global
  • Royelles
  • SylLab Systems
  • Team Excel
  • Terravive
  • Transfoam
• VIPC also announced an investment in Magazine Jukebox, a Norfolk, Virginia company that developed a digital magazine rack.
• Tysons Corner, Virginia’s Spectrohm, which is developing inspection tech for mail and packages, raised a $2 million seed round led by HCVC. Good Growth Capital, RavenTek, J. Hunt Holdings, Dragon Ventures and Klein Venture Partners also participated in the round.

Mergers

• Herndon, Virginia’s ManTech International, a security tech company, was acquired by Carlyle for $4.2 billion in an all-cash transaction.
  • “This announcement is an important milestone for ManTech and a testament to our growth and the leadership position we have built since our founding by George Pedersen more than 50 years ago,” said ManTech CEO and president Kevin Phillips in a statement.
• Centreville, Virginia-based defense tech contractor Parsons acquired Xator, a Reston-HQed infrastructure tech company for defense agencies. The deal is valued at $400 million.

Government Contracts

• Arlington-based Excella, an Agile technology firm, was awarded a five-year, multi-award contract from the Department of Defense Joint Artificial Intelligence Center with a $241 million ceiling. The company will be providing project and program management, data science, data engineering, software development, data governance and cloud integration.
• Reston’s Golden Key Group, which develops workforce development solutions, nabbed a prime multi-award contract from the Office of Human Resources Operations and Services.  The company will be developing technology for talent management, hiring and more.
• Accenture Federal Services, based in Arlington, won a $175 million, three-year contract for crowdsourcing and other solutions for NASA.
• DC-based OST, a systems integration for technical and management tech, earned a $90 million managed service provider contract from the DC Office of the CFO. Through the contract, it will help the city with faster and easier access to temporary talent. The deal is worth $10 million through September of this year and $20 million until 2026, totaling $90 million.