Altria cuts Juul valuation by $4.5 Billion

Altria’s multi-billion dollar writedown of its investment comes after a slowdown in the growth of overall vaping sales and FDA’s signaling that it will ban the sale of flavored e-cigarettes. The tobacco giant had invested $12.8 billion for a 35% stake in the company. The writedown has plunged Juul’s valuation from $38 billion to $24 billion.

According to a statement released by Altria CEO Howard Willard, “We didn’t anticipate this dramatic of a change in the e-vapor category. The lung injury was something we had not predicted. The dramatic potential for regulatory change that may occur next year was on the extreme end of what we might have expected.”

Paidy, a Japanese Fintech startup raises $143 million dollars

Paidy, a Japanese financial tech startup that focuses on providing instant credit to consumers in Japan has announced $143 million in financing that includes $83 million Series C from investors such as PayPal. Other than PayPal, other investors include Soros Capital Management, JS Capital Management, and Tybourne Capital Management along with an undisclosed investor.

Forecast raises $5.5M in new funding.

Forecast, a Denmark-based startup $5.5m in funding in a round led by Crane Venture Partners. “Forecast”, founded in 2016 has developed an AI-powered project management software to automate project management tasks and claims that using its project management software reduces administrative tasks by 20% to 40%. Their latest round of funding also has participation from SEED Capital and Heartcore.

Crunchbase, the “LinkedIn for company profiles” raises $30M

In Series C funding, Crunchbase an online directory of company based information has raised $30M.  It plans to use the funding to expand its base of paid subscribers. The round was led by Omers Ventures. Since its last round in 2017, wherein they raised $18 million, Crunchbase has expanded its employee base from 10 to 120 and claims that their revenue run rate is up by 10 times higher.