New a16z funds, a $200M round, and the latest from WeWork and Slack

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week brought the ever-excellent Danny Crichton back to the show, along with myself. The two of us opted to do a bit of a news run, so strap in for a host of topics. Of course, we had to cover some IPO news at the end, but here’s what else happened this week that caught our eye:

• New funds at a16z! We haven’t chatted about new funds too much this year, but a16z’s two new funds ($750 million and $2 billion) are a big deal. The bio and crypto and early-stage firm now has a separate late-stage vehicle.
• More Vision Fund! SoftBank’s capital cannon is going to double up its crew and possibly reload with $100 billion more. Maybe. The personnel thing is happening, according to the firm. The money, more like probably.
• Cheddar exits! It’s always nice when a media company works out, and Cheddar’s up-exit at $200 million is a win. Sure, it’s no Slack but the scrappy video network ran hard and managed to cross the line worth nine-figures. Not bad.
• Divvy snags $200 million! This week Divvy raised as much in one go as Cheddar sold for, a good reminder of how rich the venture market is today. Divvy has been on a fundraising tear in the last 18 months, landing a Seed, Series A, Series B, Series C, and a debt round since December 2017.

And then we pivoted to the two topics we had no choice but to talk about: The WeWork IPO news (more here), along with the latest on Slack’s S-1 from Danny himself.

All that and we had some fun. Chat you all next week.