M&A Marks Unicorn Activity

It’s been rather quiet on the unicorn front in past weeks, but some activity of note more recently did extend across mergers, acquisitions and even a downround.

The keystone event of the last few days included the news that Cisco agreed to buy AppDynamics for $3.7 billion right before that firm had been scheduled to debut via IPO on the public markets. The strategic intent for Cisco is to boost enterprise software and application management.

In other possible M&A news, Airbnb is reported to be in talks to acquire Tilt, a startup that would help expand the booking service into actual payments. Trade press reports state that the purchase price could be around $50 million, with some reports stating that the tally may be far lower at between $10 million and $20 million.

Separately, Insidesales.com, which works with data to help sales agents across verticals, said that it has raised $50 million, to, well, accelerate sales. That funding round was led by Polaris Partners, Microsoft and others.

And in other expansion plans, Warby Parker is looking to open 25 stores this year – the brick-and-mortar kind. That may be an anomaly in an age where many retailers are in fact shuttering operations.

As for downrounds, here’s one for the books, as SimpliVity was acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise for $650 million in cash, a significant valuation cut from the $1 billion implied worth that had accompanied a 2015 funding round.