Tootfinder

Morgan Stanley says xAI raised $5B of equity in addition to $5B in debt; the company raised $6B in December from a16z and others (Miles Kruppa/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/elon-musks-xai-raises-10-billion-debt-equi…

Elon Musk’s xAI Raises $10 Billion in Debt, Equity
Elon Musk’s xAI raised $5 billion of equity in addition to $5 billion in debt, according to Morgan Stanley, which advised on the debt transactions. “The combination of debt and equity reduces the overall cost of capital and substantially expands pools of capital available to xAI,” Morgan Stanley wrote in a post on X , which did not name any investors in the debt or equity. XAI raised $6

Warner Music and Bain announce a $1.2B joint venture to buy song rights; sources: Warner is in talks to acquire the Red Hot Chili Peppers' catalog for $300M (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/8e50bf81-d346-49ec-a4a5-6b379e632140

Warner Music and Bain target $300mn Red Hot Chili Peppers catalogue deal
Acquisition would be a coup for record company and private equity firm’s new song rights joint venture

Vista Equity Partners agrees to acquire ERP software provider Acumatica from PE firm EQT, sources say in a deal that values Acumatica at ~$2B including debt (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-0…

Buyout Firm Vista to Acquire EQT’s Acumatica in $2 Billion Deal
Vista Equity Partners agreed to acquire Acumatica Inc., a software company that helps businesses streamline workflows.

London-based Dojo, a payments tech provider to over 140K businesses, raised $190M from Vitruvian Partners in its first equity raise since launching in 2021 (Vishal Singh/Silicon Canals)
https://siliconcanals.com/dojo-secures-investment-of-e168-6m/

UK’s payments tech provider Dojo secures investment of €168.6M
Dojo is a payments technology provider that aims to expand its presence in the payments sector with a focus on supporting in-person commerce.

AMC Entertainment reaches an agreement with creditors to reduce debt, including raising ~$223.3M and converting $143M of debt into equity; AMC falls ~6% (Connor Hart/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/bus…

Mexico City-based digital bank Klar raised a $190M Series C led by General Atlantic, including $170M in equity and $20M in debt, valuing the company at $800M (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-30…

Nexstar has deleted references to DEI and data on its workforce composition from its site; it is interested in acquisitions that are subject to FCC approval (Matthew Keys/The Desk)
https://thedesk.net/2025/05/nexstar-ends-dei-programs-policies/

Scoop: Nexstar pulls back on DEI programs amid FCC lobbying efforts
The broadcaster removed references to its diversity, equity and inclusiveness programs from its website and social media profiles.

📉 Private Equity, UnitedHealth Take a Huge Loss as Oregon Bans Corporate Control of Doctors
#business

Winnipeg-based Conquest Planning, which uses AI to help financial advisors and other clients make decisions, raised an $80M Series B led by Goldman Sachs (Jon Fingas/BetaKit)
https://betakit.com/conquest-planning-

Conquest Planning raises $110-million Series B to fuel US expansion of its financial management platform | BetaKit
Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives led the Winnipeg startup’s latest funding round.

This is why people are sending donations to Luigi's defense lawyers...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/may/27/exactech-tpg-medical-devices-bankruptcy

Here Lies Hudson’s Bay Company, Murdered by Private Equity https://jacobin.com/2025/06/hudsons-bay-canada-private-equity/

Here Lies Hudson’s Bay Company, Murdered by Private Equity
Hudson’s Bay Company, Canada’s oldest retailer, didn’t die of natural causes — it was gutted by private equity. Stripped of assets and loaded with debt, it leaves behind job losses, endangered pensions, and a hollowed-out legacy reduced to branding rights.

Dinari, which offers blockchain-based US stocks, secures a broker-dealer registration to become the first tokenized equity platform to secure approval in the US (Hannah Lang/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/sustai…

“Equity will no longer be treated as the responsibility of a single team,” he said. “It will be a shared expectation for every team.”
WA Commerce Department dissolves standalone equity team | The Olympian
https://www.theolympian.com/news/politics-government/article308352160.html

lol this project can go fuck itself
https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/10/xlibre_new_xorg_fork/

Forked-off Xlibre tells Wayland display protocol to DEI in a fire
: Project to modernize the X.org X11 server seems to actively court controversy

London- and Paris-based Animaj, a kids' media company that uses proprietary generative AI production tools to automate animation pipelines, raised $85M (Elsa Keslassy/Variety)
https://variety.com/2025/digital/global/…

HarbourView Equity Leads $85 Million Investment in Animaj
HarbourView Equity Partners is leading a $85-million investment in Animaj, the AI-powered media company specializing in kids & family entertainment.

Amsterdam-based Finom, a neobank targeting SMBs, raised a €115M Series C led by AVP after raising €92.7M from General Catalyst in May (Anna Heim/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/23/smb-focused-finom-closes-e115m-as-european-…

SMB-focused Finom closes €115M as European fintech heats up | TechCrunch
Finom, an Amsterdam-based challenger bank for SMBs that claims to have doubled its revenue in 2024, closed a €115 million Series C equity round (around $133 million).

Josh Kesselman, founder of rolling paper brand Raw, acquires High Times magazine for $3.5M, after its private equity owner failed to make loan payments in 2024 (Emmett Lindner/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/business/high-times-mag…

New Owner for High Times Magazine Bets on a Counterculture Comeback
The anti-establishment magazine, which was taken over by a private equity firm in 2017, was purchased this week by an avid fan and reader for $3.5 million.

London- and Paris-based Animaj, a kids' media company that uses proprietary generative AI production tools to automate animation pipelines, raised $85M (Elsa Keslassy/Variety)
https://variety.com/2025/digital/global/…

HarbourView Equity Leads $85 Million Investment in Animaj
HarbourView Equity Partners is leading a $85-million investment in Animaj, the AI-powered media company specializing in kids & family entertainment.

Optimal Coordination of Flexible DERs in Local Energy and Flexibility Markets to Ensure Social Equity
Niloofar Pourghaderi, Milad Kabirifar, Payman Dehghanian
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.02179

Optimal Coordination of Flexible DERs in Local Energy and Flexibility Markets to Ensure Social Equity
Local electricity markets offer a promising solution for integrating renewable energy sources and other distributed energy resources (DERs) into distribution networks. These markets enable the effective utilization of flexible resources by facilitating coordination among various agents. Beyond technical and economic considerations, addressing social equity within these local communities is critical and requires dedicated attention in market-clearing frameworks. This paper proposes a social equi…

Sources: Elon Musk's xAI is in talks to raise $4.3B via an equity investment on top of the $5B it has recently been trying to borrow from debt investors (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-17…

Byron Allen settles with McDonald's over his $10B 2021 lawsuit accusing the fast food chain of racial stereotyping in its ads budget; terms were not disclosed (Jonathan Stempel/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/sus…

CB Insights: VCs and private equity firms poured $3.1B to fund 144 deals in the LA area in Q1 2025, up from $2.7B in Q1 2024 and $1.4B in Q1 2023 (Los Angeles Times)
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-06-06/venture-capital-…

Venture capital investment rises in L.A., and not just for AI startups
Venture capital investors and private equity firms poured $3.1 billion to fund 144 deals in the L.A. area in the first quarter of this year, up 15% from a year ago.

Wall Street giants like Blackstone, KKR, and BlackRock are pouring hundreds of billions into AI data centers, creating concerns of "oversupply" and a bubble (Maureen Farrell/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/02/business/ai-da…

Are A.I. Data Centers a Sure Thing or the Next Real Estate Bubble?
Private equity firms like Blackstone are using their clients’ money to buy and build data centers to fuel the artificial intelligence boom.

CapVest-owned Datasite, which offers workflow automation tech for dealmaking, acquires Grata, which helps users with all aspects of the deal process, for $200M (Maria Armental/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/private-equi…

Thoma Bravo raised $34.4B across three funds, including $24.3B for its main software company buyout fund and $8.1B for its midsize software-focused fund (Miriam Gottfried/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.