MobileIron, an enterprise mobility management and mobile security company, just announced that it has closed a Series F round, raising $48 million.1 Closing a round is standard for Mountain View companies, and a $48 million round is large but not out of the ordinary. However, the “Series F” part of the announcement stands out. Although a Series F is not unheard of, it is relatively rare.2 With MobileIron’s series F round as a prompt, here is a look at some of the largest rounds of 2013 so far:3

Largest Rounds of 2013 Thus Far:

Seed Round:

Pivotal Largest Seed Round in 2013

According to CrunchBase, Pivotal raised a $105M seed round in May of 2013.4 This round is rather unique as GE bought a 10 percent stake in Pivotal for the same $105M price just one month prior to the seed round.5 So what is Pivotal, and why did GE invest in the company?

Pivotal has several different enterprise offerings including: data management and analytics, application and data infrastructure as a service, data consulting, but its core technology is the Platform-as-a-Service offering Pivotal Cloud Foundry.6 Pivotal CF allows enterprise customers to rapidly create applications using their immense data sets.

Series A Round:

Largest Series A round of 2013

According to CrunchBase and a company press release, AirWatch secured a $200M Series A round in February of 2013.7 AirWatch is an enterprise mobility company that enables, “IT departments to easily deploy, configure, secure, manage and support smartphones and tablets across multiple mobile platforms and operating systems while securing applications and content.”8

Series B Round

Largest series B round in 2013 hootsiute

On Aug. 1, 2013, HootSuite announced the closing of a $165 Million Series B Round.9 The four year old social media management platform has more than 7 million users, including 237 of the Fortune 500 companies.10 HootSuite allows users to manage their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ profiles and pages from one platform.

Series C Round

Largest C round of 2013 Uber

Uber announced on Aug. 23, 2013, that they closed a $258M Series C round.11 While there has been some controversy around the ride on demand startup, Uber was valued at around $3.4 billion prior to the C Round.12 For all the negative press and publicity, Uber is popular and looks to remain so.

Series D Round

Largest series D of 2013 pinterest

In Feb. 2013, Pinterest raised a $200 Million Series D Round, on a valuation of $2.5 billion.13 It is interesting to note that the visual social network raised less than and had a lower valuation than Uber’s C Round, above. The lesser valuation is a product of there being an amount ambiguity, at least in public statements, concerning companies revenue model, though this is made up for with around 50 million unique monthly users.14

Series E Round

largest series E round 2013

On 9 October 2013, Flipkart announced, via a Tweet from their CEO, that they had closed a $360M Series E Round.15 Flipkart is a massive Indian eCommerce marketplace, or “The Amazon of India.”

Series F Round

Series F round 2013

The largest Sereis F round of 2013 would have been Intrexon at $150M in May, but they filed for and held an IPO in August.16 Therefore, Proteus Health has raised the largest F Round of 2013, so far.

largest F round 2013

On 1 May 2013, Proteus Digital Health closed a $62.5 Series F Round.17 Proteus offers an incredibly unique “Digital Health Feedback System.”18 The system, “[I]ncludes wearable and ingestible sensors that work together to gather information about medication-taking, activity and rest patterns.”19 Also, for what its worth, The CEO of Proteus has an amazing name.

Series G Round

Series G round 2013

Series G rounds are rare, with CrunchBase listing only 10.20 The case of the LivingSocial raise is a little convoluted. At first, it appeared as though the Series G was a debt-round, but the company later clarified the reports and released more documentation.21 It seems as if the Series G was more of a last ditch effort to save the company, rather than a round to spur growth or expand.

There you have it, the largest rounds of 2013 thus far, though It is hard to imagine that this list will remain the same at the end of 2013.

  1. MobileIron filed the round with the SEC on 11 October 2013.  
  2. CrunchBase lists a total of 145 Series F rounds, and 21 such rounds in 2013. While that may seem like a lot of F rounds, consider that CrunchBase lists a total of 12,153 seed rounds, with more than 1000 seed rounds in 2013.  
  3. This analysis will look only at those companies that operate within the technology/software sector, and only at rounds, not acquisitions, debt-rounds, IPOs, or other such funding. So, for example, while the largest investment of 2013 would be SigmaCare’s $2.6B private equity round that resulted in Marlin Equity Partners (PDF) taking control of the company, it will not be included in this article.  
  4. CrunchBase profile for Pivotal and the SEC filing  
  5. TechCrunch covered General Electric’s investment in Pivotal.  
  6. Pivotal’s full offerings and the Pivotal CF.  
  7. AirWatch profile on CrunchBase, and the press release announcing the Series A round.  
  8. AirWatch Overview (PDF).  
  9. HootSuite press release announcing Series B round.  
  10. Ibid  
  11. Uber’s announcement in their Blog.  
  12. Business Insider, ValleyWag, and the Huffington Post have covered the Uber controversies pretty extensively. TechCrunch has the details and valuation figures from the 2013 Uber C Round.  
  13. TechCrunch article on the raise.  
  14. The Atlantic and the Wall Street Journal, covered Pinterest’s revenue model, or lack thereof. However, on the official Pinterest Blog, the company has noted that they are experimenting with promoted pins and other forms of advertising.  
  15. TechCrunch covered the details of the round, which was the highest ever for an Indian internet company. Sachin Bansal – Flipkart CEO – Tweet announcing the round.  
  16. Intrexon raised $150M; Intrexon closes IPO.  
  17. Proteus’ announcement of Series F Round  
  18. Digital Health Feedback System Product Description  
  19. Ibid  
  20. CrunchBase Series G Rounds  
  21. I make no claims to be an expert on the terms of venture funding. For a more informed discussion, as it relates to the actual terms and structure of LivingSocial’s Series G Round, see these articles on Business Insider and Reuters.