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Ryanair, easyJet and Wizz Air point to signs of strong demand despite economic gloom and high ticket prices

European airlines are preparing for record passenger numbers this summer as people rush to book flights despite the economic gloom and high ticket prices.

Ryanair, easyJet and Wizz Air, the region’s three big low-cost airlines, all pointed to early signs of strong summer demand, as well as rising fares, in their most recent results.

Indications that consumers are prioritising travel have spurred airlines to increase flights over summer: European airlines will have 817.5mn seats available between April and October, according to travel data company OAG, the highest number on record.

“Demand remains very strong across the board,” said Wizz Air chief executive József Váradi.

Airlines are on course for a second consecutive bumper summer, after reporting healthy profits thanks to high fares last year.

Adjusted operating profits for the six largest European carriers are expect to hit €10.5bn in 2024, according to consensus estimates from FactSet, up from €9.2bn last year.

EasyJet said it had been filling two planes a minute during its busiest booking periods since the start of this year, while Ryanair said this week that bookings were about 5 per cent higher than at the same time last year, and prices were up “by a low single-digit percentage”.

EasyJet said prices were “well ahead” of the same time last year, while Wizz Air also pointed to strong fares.

Industry optimism extends beyond airlines. Saga said this week that it expected passenger numbers in its travel business to rise 20 per cent this year, while package holiday company On the Beach said the value of bookings in its peak January period was up 27 per cent year on year.

January is one of the busiest holiday booking periods, providing insights on trading for the rest of the year.

“We see positive booking momentum for summer 2024 with travel remaining a priority for consumers,” said easyJet boss Johan Lundgren.

Average air fares across Europe were between 20 and 30 per cent higher over summer 2023 compared with 2019, according to EU data published in October.

Demand for travel has shot up since pandemic restrictions ended but the supply of aircraft remains limited because of problems including delayed deliveries from Boeing and the grounding of some Airbus planes for checks on their engines.

While Ryanair and Wizz Air have both expanded aggressively since 2019, other airlines are keeping their schedules close to, or even below, pre-pandemic levels.

“It’s absolutely supply against demand. People still want to travel and — notwithstanding the cost of living challenges — consumers are prioritising experiences,” said Andrew Lobbenberg, head of European transport research at Barclays.

Analysts at Bernstein said in a recent note that current European airline capacity was “well below its pre-pandemic growth path”, forecasting a 15 to 20 per cent shortfall in seats compared with demand.

“The real issue is that we think there is a lot more demand than what we are able to deliver,” said Váradi.

Wall Street giant also creates committees overseeing banking and markets

Goldman Sachs GS 1.04%increase; green up pointing triangle is shuffling its management committee, in the latest indication of the power dynamics at the Wall Street giant.

Firm veterans Alison Mass and George Lee have left the group, which comprises the heads of the bank’s main divisions and other top executives.

Goldman is also creating two new committees to help oversee investment banking and markets, according to people familiar with the matter. Senior executives have contacted roughly a dozen bankers in recent days inviting them to join the group that will work on strategic initiatives in investment banking, while similar conversations have occurred for the new markets committee.

Chief Executive David Solomon and President John Waldron have been in a monthslong process to determine whether to change the membership of the management committee.

Contenders to join it currently include Will Bousquette, chief operating officer of asset and wealth management, and Kathleen Connolly, global director of internal audit, some of the people said.

“Final decisions haven’t been made and no one has yet been asked to join the management committee,” said Tony Fratto, a Goldman spokesman.

Mass will remain chair of investment banking at Goldman and Lee will remain co-head of the office of applied innovation, Fratto said.

Roughly two dozen executives currently sit on Goldman’s management committee.

The new investment-banking and markets committees will be led by Dan Dees and Ashok Varadhan, respectively, co-heads of the global banking and markets division.

Change is afoot in the top echelons of Goldman. Jim Esposito said this week that he is planning to leave Goldman after nearly 30 years. Esposito, the other co-head of global banking and markets, aspired to be president or CEO of Goldman. Solomon, who had been under pressure from Goldman partners who disagreed with the firm’s expansion in consumer lending and other issues, has indicated to top Goldman executives that he isn’t planning on stepping down soon, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

Goldman bankers are paying close attention to committee invites and executive changes as a sign of whose power and influence is rising and whose is falling.

The invitations have been met with mixed emotions. Some see the invites optimistically, an indication that they are the next generation of leaders within their divisions. Others see it as a consolation prize, a sign that they won’t make the management committee. Meanwhile, some executives are miffed that their co-heads have been asked to join the new committees and they haven’t.

People familiar with the matter say that among those invited to join the investment-banking committee are Vivek Bantwal, Iain Drayton, Stephan Feldgoise, Pete Lyon, Anthony Gutman, Matt McClure, Kim Posnett, Suhail Sikhtian and Marshall Smith. Beth Hammack, a co-head of the global financing group who is currently on the management committee, was also invited to join.

The moves are expected to be a subject of chatter at the partners meeting that Goldman is holding this coming week in Miami.

Luxury giant LVMH is the biggest local sponsor for this summer’s Paris Games. It’s also designing the medals, making French athletes’ uniforms and stocking VIP suites.

PARIS—The Olympics are coming to Paris and, despite promises of a more austere, more sober event, the world’s largest luxury company is treating them like the ultimate home game. LVMH, the group headed by Bernard Arnault, is pulling out all the stops to take over Paris 2024.

One of its jewelers, Chaumet, is designing gold, silver and bronze medals for the Olympics and Paralympics. One of its fashion brands, Berluti, is creating the uniforms that French athletes will wear during a lavish opening ceremony on the Seine. Moët Champagne and Hennessy cognac will flow through every VIP suite. And Louis Vuitton leather goods, which are already used to ferry prizes such as the World Cup and the NBA Finals trophy, will be impossible to miss at the Games.

That kind of ubiquity across the monthlong extravaganza of the Olympics and the Paralympics cost LVMH some 150 million euros, or about $162 million, according to a person familiar with the deal, making the group the single largest local sponsor of Paris 2024.

“The Games are in Paris and LVMH represents the image of France,” said Antoine Arnault, Bernard’s eldest son and the chairman of Berluti. “We couldn’t not be a part of it.”

More than simply hitching the conglomerate’s wagon to the Olympics, the move reflects a larger strategic push into sports by the world’s top luxury companies. They realize that a growing share of their business depends on aspirational consumers they can reach through hugely popular events that ditch old-school exclusivity—some 60% of global luxury sales today come from people who spend less than €2,000 a year on luxury goods, according to Boston Consulting Group.

Not so long ago, mass-appeal sporting events were seen as beneath the highest-end luxury brands, which preferred to target jet-setting country-clubbers through golf, tennis, polo, sailing and Formula One. But in the age of social media, where athletes seamlessly cross into the global influence market alongside pop stars and Hollywood actors, their reach—and universal appeal—has become too significant to pass up.

In 2022, the person with the largest following in the history of social media, Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, cropped up in a Louis Vuitton campaign. Sitting across a chess board from him was his greatest rival, Argentina’s Lionel Messi. Though the two players were never in the same place for the Annie Leibovitz photo shoot, it didn’t prevent the ad from becoming one of the most liked images ever posted on Instagram.

Ahead of the Games, Vuitton sponsored a fencer and a swimmer, while LVMH’s Dior has backed a gymnast and a wheelchair tennis player.

Many of LVMH’s competitors have taken a similar tack. Last summer, Prada sponsored China’s national team at the women’s World Cup—the post announcing the sponsorship was viewed 300 million times on Chinese social-media platform Weibo. Gucci signed up a stable of athletes including the English soccer player Jack Grealish and the Italian tennis player Jannik Sinner. But none has attempted to co-opt an entire event the size of the Olympics.

For Paris 2024, the deal represents a delicate trade-off. Organizers have promised a more reasonable approach to the Games, designed for the masses without the overspending that has defined recent Olympics. While LVMH’s money helps Paris 2024 reach its goal of being almost entirely privately funded—the current figure is 97%, organizers say—the company’s brands cultivate a high-end image that’s potentially at odds with the idea of a toned-down Olympics.

Complicating matters is Bernard Arnault’s image in France: One of the world’s richest men is a lightning rod here for discontent over growing inequality. Still, LVMH points out that its portfolio includes many more affordable brands, such as the cosmetics giant Sephora and several midrange Champagnes. And the Olympic spotlight, for all of the extra scrutiny it invites, represented an irresistible opportunity to burnish its status as the flag-bearer for French taste, corporate might and savoir-faire.

“Our craftsmen are perfectionists, just like top athletes and coaches,” Bernard Arnault said. “And our houses carry the image of France throughout the world.”

Sponsors are betting that as the Olympics unfold from July 26 to Aug. 11, they will become the most appealing Games in over a decade. Preparation has been relatively drama-free, without the time and budget overruns that have beset previous editions. Concerns over congested public transit and high prices for tickets and hotel rooms have hardly deterred sponsors. The prospect of a Parisian backdrop and an opening ceremony with athletes on barges cruising down the Seine is a much easier sell than some of the challenging locations the event has visited since London 2012. There was Sochi 2014, under the supervision of Vladimir Putin, followed by the chaos of Rio 2016, the remoteness of Pyeongchang, South Korea, in 2018, and the pandemic Games of Tokyo 2021 and Beijing 2022.

“You have to convince your partners, you have to show them that it’s going to be worthwhile,” said Tony Estanguet, the former Olympic canoeist in charge of the Paris 2024 organizing committee. “Companies don’t become partners just to please Estanguet.”

The Olympics always lean heavily on hometown sponsors, but LVMH’s involvement will be the most eye-catching of Paris 2024’s 60 or so major partners. People familiar with the process note that LVMH has been the most demanding by some distance. During negotiations, the company went as far as to push for creative input on the opening ceremony, which will snake past the Louis Vuitton headquarters, LVMH’s Samaritaine department store and its Cheval Blanc hotel. It took a personal meeting between Arnault and International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach in December 2022 to pave the way to a deal.

Then, when the time came to unveil the partnership last summer, exactly one year before the Games, LVMH announced it not with a traditional news conference, but in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower on the Champ de Mars, with the IOC’s Bach in attendance.

“This embodies what France does best,” Antoine Arnault said at the time. “Heritage, ambition, creativity, excellence.”=

From its stable of jewelers, which includes Tiffany’s and Bulgari, the company tapped Chaumet, a Paris-based house that predates the French Revolution, to carry out the high-pressure task of designing the medals. So Chaumet delved into an archive of 66,000 drawings for inspiration while operating within the constraints imposed by the IOC—and its own bosses.

“When we make a special order we usually have a customer who is quite flexible,” said Benoît Verhulle, the 13th workshop chief in the history of Chaumet. “Here, it was really super-strict. We had to stick to an entire design within a cylinder of 8.5 centimeters.”

Berluti, LVMH’s Paris-based shoemaker and clothing designer, received the equally high-profile assignment to make around 1,300 outfits for the French delegation to wear during the Olympic and Paralympic opening ceremonies. The company’s designers were told that, despite being founded by an Italian, Berluti’s work needed to capture French elegance and craftsmanship.

And there was one other design note to be respected. The uniforms would all have a few words stitched into an inside pocket:

LVMH

Artisan of All Victories

Some global fund managers fear government efforts to stabilise the market are too little, too late

Chinese authorities’ promise of “forceful” measures last week was their most vocal attempt yet to halt a stock market sell-off that has wiped out almost $2tn in value. For many investors at a Goldman Sachs conference in Hong Kong, that vow was too little, too late.

More than 40 per cent of those surveyed while attending a session on Chinese equities held by the US bank on Wednesday said they believed the country was “uninvestable”. That came just a day after the country’s vice-premier openly called for “more forceful and effective measures to stabilise the market and boost confidence”.

“That many people in Hong Kong voting no [on Chinese equities] is pretty high relative to the constructive home team baseline you typically find,” said Timothy Moe, chief Asia-Pacific equity strategist at Goldman Sachs, adding that the poll results were “emblematic” of the difficulties facing China’s stock market.

Traders, asset managers and hedge funds told the Financial Times that after a decade of steady foreign inflows to Chinese markets, global investor confidence had been shaken by three years of grinding losses, relieved only by fleeting rallies that quickly fizzled out.

This aversion to China stocks among global investors has become more entrenched over the past 12 months thanks to lacklustre economic growth, an unresolved property sector crisis, underwhelming government support for markets and fraying diplomatic relations between Beijing and Washington.

As a result, the benchmark MSCI China stock index is now down more than 60 per cent from its peak of early 2021, reflecting a loss of more than $1.9tn in market capitalisation over that period.

“The global investors we spoke to are by and large out of China,” said Goldman’s Moe. “It’s 3 per cent of your benchmark [index] but can take up 10 per cent of your time . . . and if there’s a rally you can go back in [later]”.

That is a stark contrast to attitudes towards China from just a few years ago, when foreign investors feared they would miss out on the country’s rapid economic growth and domestic consumption turbocharged by rapidly expanding ecommerce platforms.

Now, investors describe a status quo where President Xi Jinping’s focus on stability and national security has cowed once-thriving technology groups and accelerated a financial decoupling from the US. Meanwhile, efforts to transition away from real estate-dependent growth have weighed on the economy, dragging down earnings and the shares of listed companies.

However, the stock market rout has pushed valuations low enough that some Wall Street banks are calling for investors to jump back in. JPMorgan has forecast the MSCI China index — which has already dropped around 10 per cent so far this year — will finish the year at 66. That implies a rise of more than 30 per cent from the benchmark’s closing level on Friday.

But offshore investors trading Chinese equities through Hong Kong’s stock connect programme have continued to dump Shanghai- and Shenzhen-listed stocks, as evidenced by net sales of Rmb11.8bn last month. That marked the first time foreign investors had been net sellers of Chinese equities during the opening month of the year since the scheme began in 2014.

Global asset managers said that it would take more than just low valuations to justify the effort needed for them to start bargain-hunting in mainland markets.

“There’s been a dearth of foreign interest for a long time, and nothing has changed,” said the head of Asia Pacific at one large UK asset manager. “China is quite cheap, but with lots of caveats all the same.”

However, a small cohort of investors have begun to show interest, said traders in Hong Kong, adding that hedge funds eager to ride any recovery rally had built up indirect exposure through options contracts in recent weeks.

Even after the rout, China still forms about a quarter of the MSCI Emerging Markets index, making it hard for investors using the benchmark to ignore. Still, some investors who screen out this Chinese weighting are beginning to take note of stock valuations.

“Is China cheap, is China unloved? Yes,” said one emerging market portfolio manager. Even in a strategy that does away with benchmark exposure to China, he said, “you can have a discrete allocation” to Chinese stocks, which are now trading at a significant discount to other emerging markets or the US.

Yet many foreign investors remain concerned over risks such as the potential for a US-China conflict in the Taiwan Strait, or more aggressive foreign policy from Washington should Donald Trump secure another term as US president later this year.

These risks, they fear, could easily derail a rally in Chinese markets.

George Livadas, manager of Upslope Capital, a Colorado-based hedge fund, said many peers were hoping to buy Chinese stocks at the bottom, given current prices, but argued they had failed to understand how much US-China relations have changed in recent years.

“People will talk about everything except what I think is the obvious headwind,” he said. “It is not just some small disagreement [between the two superpowers]. It is a potential serious risk.”

Once the richest man in China, the liquidation of his property empire marks the end of an era

Evergrande’s homepage is frozen in time at just over a year ago. Back then its founder, Hui Ka Yan, still seemed hopeful he could save the world’s most indebted developer. “All Evergrande employees must . . . never give up,” the charismatic tycoon tells executives in one video, exhorting them to finish thousands of apartments left incomplete after the company officially defaulted on its $300bn debt in 2021.

But the brave words could not avert disaster. This week a Hong Kong judge declared “enough is enough”. Evergrande, whose collapse helped spark a property crisis that has spurred a slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy, should be liquidated. Hui was not able to react. The entrepreneur, named Xu Jiayin in Mandarin, disappeared in September and is being held somewhere in China on suspicion of involvement in “illegal crimes”.

But the ruling and his detention are an ignominious end to the rise of a former steelworker who became one of China’s highest-rollers during the boom years. In less than three decades, Hui created one of the country’s largest property companies while dabbling in football, electric vehicles and theme parks. He used his fabulous wealth to ingratiate himself with elites from Beijing’s “red aristocracy” to the British royal family.

“Of all the developers, I have to say he was one of the more aggressive ones,” says Desmond Shum, author of Red Roulette, a book about elite Chinese business and politics, who knew Hui in his heyday. “So when the market turns, that these people are the first ones to go on the chopping block, it’s not surprising.”

Like many of his generation, Hui’s personal life mirrored China’s rapid changes after opening its economy in the late 1970s. Born into poverty in Henan province, he was raised by his grandmother. After working in the steel industry in the 1980s, he launched Evergrande in 1996 just in time to catch a housing boom driven by China’s new middle class.

After expanding into 280 cities, according to Evergrande’s website, Hui invested in theme parks and poured funds into a government “shantytown” redevelopment programme. This left him heavily exposed to China’s smaller cities, where experts warned the market was heading into oversupply. 

He and other developers often sold houses before construction, using the funds to acquire land while banks offered mortgages on the unbuilt properties. Developers and local governments became addicted to the debt-fuelled model. “That is the problem with a bubble. Once you’re in, you’re in — it’s almost impossible to get out,” said Zhu Ning, professor at the Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance and author of China’s Guaranteed Bubble.

Hui came to embody a brash new breed of Chinese tycoons, sporting a gold Hermès belt buckle, buying mansions in Sydney, Hong Kong and London, and flying around in private jets. In 2015, he bought a 60-metre mega yacht and celebrated the victory of his football team, Guangzhou Evergrande, in Asia’s Champions League, with co-owner internet billionaire Jack Ma and Britain’s Prince Andrew. In 2017, he topped the Forbes China rich list, with a total net worth of nearly $43bn.

Those who knew him say he had an easy-going, bright personality, perfect for high-level networking. According to one banker: “Hui is a person with high EQ . . . [otherwise] how was he able to persuade some big Hong Kong financiers to invest in him and Evergrande?”

Hui’s downfall began in 2020 when President Xi Jinping’s government introduced a new policy limiting leverage as it sought to redress economic imbalances. Evergrande’s aggressive model meant that this translated quickly into a liquidity crisis. Its offshore bond restructuring was in effect blocked last year after the authorities found irregularities in its mainland arm, leading to the liquidation.

Few expect, however, that the liquidation order will extend to the mainland. Beijing would not surrender control of the potentially politically explosive process of resolving Evergrande and other developers’ debts — and finishing their vast number of incomplete apartments, analysts said. 

Hui was not available for comment and Evergrande did not immediately respond.

Many now believe Hui could follow other tycoons who have fallen foul of Beijing, such as Xiao Jianhua, a politically connected financier who was snatched from the Four Seasons in Hong Kong by Chinese agents in 2017 and sentenced to 13 years in jail. “Even if someone wanted to contact him [Hui], they might not be able to do so,” Hong Kong tycoon Joseph Lau, who used to play cards with him, told reporters in November.

His fall marks the “ending of an era”, says Shum. “Many Chinese business people over the last few decades were maximum risk-takers because the economy was on a one-way upward trend . . . So when the downturn comes during the Xi era, people are completely unprepared for it.”

Hui’s legacy promises to be mixed at best. On Beijing’s outskirts, Central Mansion is a former Evergrande housing project “rescued” by the state-owned China Railway Construction. After a long idle period, six of its 15 buildings were finished this month, an agent said, while the rest are set for the end of 2024.

One customer tells the Financial Times she is concerned about her investment after the liquidation — the compound will still be managed by an affiliate of Evergrande Property Services. But the realtor reassures the FT that “there’s nothing to be worried about” — Evergrande no longer has any real influence. “After all boss Xu is still behind bars,” he says.

A stealth startup led by ex-Blue Origin leaders, focused on harvesting resources from the moon, has quietly closed a sizable new tranche of funding, according to regulatory documents.

Interlune, a startup that’s been around for at least three years but has made almost zero public announcements about its tech, has raised $15.5 million in new funding and aims to close another $2 million. A representative for Interlune declined to comment on this story.

This is the first public indication that the company has closed any funding since a $1.85 million seed round in 2022.

Much of what’s known about the startup was reported by GeekWire last October, when Interlune CTO Gary Lai briefly described the startup during a speech at Seattle’s Museum of Flight: “We aim to be the first company that harvests natural resources from the moon to use here on Earth,” he reportedly said. “We’re building a completely novel approach to extract those resources, efficiently, cost-effectively and also responsibly. The goal is really to create a sustainable in-space economy.”

Lai is an aerospace engineer whose resume includes a 20-year stint at Blue Origin, where he eventually became chief architect for space transportation systems, including launchers and lunar landers. Interlune is being led by Rob Meyerson, an aerospace executive who was president at Blue Origin for 15 years. Meyerson is also a prolific angel investor, with investments in well-known hardware startups including Axiom Space, Starfish Space, Hermeus and Hadrian Automation.

The filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission also lists attorney H. Indra Hornsby as a company executive. Hornsby previously held the position of general counsel at BlackSky and Spaceflight Industries, and also worked as an executive VP at Rocket Lab.

What little else is known of Interlune’s tech comes from an abstract of a small SBIR the startup was awarded last year from the National Science Foundation. Under that award, the company said it will aim to “develop a core enabling technology for lunar in situ resource utilization: the ability to sort ‘moon dirt’ (lunar regolith) by particle size.”

“By enabling raw lunar regolith to be sorted into multiple streams by particle size, the technology will provide appropriate feedstocks for lunar oxygen extraction systems, lunar 3-dimensional printers, and other applications,” the abstract says.

A growing number of space startups are focusing on what’s known as in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), or collecting and transforming space resources into valuable commodities. Much of this is driven by NASA’s stated priority to build a long-term human outpost on the moon via its Artemis program: The agency acknowledges that longer-term stays in space will require the ability to generate materials locally — whether that’s to build roads, produce breathable air or even make rocket propellants.

But it isn’t just startups that are trying to commercialize ISRU tech; last year, Blue Origin announced that it had made solar cells and transmission wires out of a material that’s chemically identical to lunar regolith.

In its February 2023 announcement on the tech, Blue Origin said, “Learning to live off the land – on the Moon and on Mars – will require extensive collaboration across the ISRU community.” The phrase is echoed in Interlune’s abstract: “The use of the Moon’s resources is a disruptive capability that will enable missions there to ‘live off the land,’ making the development of this technology important for government agencies and industry alike.”

Lots of big rounds this week, with none bigger than the whopping $1.5 billion raised by sustainability and infrastructure investment firm Generate Capital. On top of that, there were another five rounds of $100 million or more. Who said large growth rounds were dead?

1. Generate Capital, $1.5B, renewable energy: If the name looks familiar, that’s likely because this company has made the list before. Early in 2023, the San Francisco-based green infrastructure investor and operator raised $1.1 billion, per SEC filings and reports. That raise came just about 18 months after it raised $1 billion in 2021. Now Generate is back with a $1.5 billion round raised from a variety of investors, including California State Teachers’ Retirement System. Generate invests in an array of infrastructure projects, from community solar systems to municipal wastewater treatment to electrifying fleets. Founded in 2014, the company has raised $4.2 billion, per Crunchbase.

2. Kore.ai, $150M, artificial intelligence: Another week and another big round for a generative AI startup. AI enterprise conversational platform Kore.ai raised a $150 million round led by FTV Capital. The round also included participation from Nvidia, which of course has been one of the sector’s most active investors. The startup is not new to the AI scene — it’s a decade old — and offers an array of artificial intelligence-related tech from virtual assistants to no-code tools to build AI apps. Founded in 2013, the company has now raised nearly $224 million, per Crunchbase.

3. Zum, $140M, transportation: AI and school buses may not seem like a natural match, but startup Zum would disagree. The Redwood City, California-based transportation company raised a $140 million Series E led by GIC at a $1.3 billion valuation. The new round is a significant jump in value for a company that last raised money in October 2021 — a $130 million Series D — at what was a reported $930 million valuation. The 40% valuation jump is even more impressive considering 2021 was a very different time in the private markets, with venture capital funding hitting all-time highs. Since then, many companies have seen their valuations significantly cut. Zum tries to help school districts increase efficiencies and reduce the costs of managing bus fleets through its proprietary platform — that, of course, uses AI. The platform gives districts visibility so they can optimize routes and even deliver real-time updates to parents. In addition, the startup also has its own fleet of EV buses for districts to use. Founded in 2015, Zum has raised $350 million, per the company.

4. Cour Pharmaceuticals, $105M, biotech: Chicago-based Cour Pharmaceuticals is the top biotech startup on the list this week. The clinical-stage company raised a $105 million Series A co-led by Lumira Ventures and Alpha Wave Ventures. The firm focuses on the development of disease-modifying therapies to treat patients with autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. Founded in 2015, the company has raised nearly $136 million, per Crunchbase.

5. Inari, $103M, agtech: Agtech startups don’t often land this high on the list, but Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Inari raised a $103 million equity round at a $1.7 billion valuation. Inari uses AI-powered predictive design and multiplex gene editing to develop corn, soybean and other higher-yielding seeds that require less water. No lead investor was named, but it included investment from the likes of Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Rivas Capital. Founded in 2016, Inari has raised $575 million, per the company.

6. Watershed, $100M, climate: San Francisco-based Watershed, an enterprise sustainability platform, locked up a $100 million Series C at a $1.8 billion valuation led by Greenoaks. Founded in 2019, the company has raised $239 million, per Crunchbase.

7. Codeium, $65M, artificial intelligence: Mountain View, California-based Codeium, a generative AI-powered coding toolkit developer, raised a $65 million Series B at a $500 million valuation led by Kleiner Perkins. This is the company’s first announced round, per Crunchbase.

8. Accompany Health, $56M, health care: Bethesda, Maryland-based Accompany Health, a primary, behavioral and social care provider for low-income patients, launched with a $56 million Series A. Investors in the round include Venrock and Arch Venture Partners. Founded in 2022, this is the company’s first announced round, per Crunchbase.

9. Basking Biosciences, $55M, biotech: Columbus, Ohio-based Columbus Basking Biosciences, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing a therapy to treat stroke, closed a $55 million financing led by New investor ARCH Venture Partners led the round. Founded in 2019, the company has raised nearly $90 million, per Crunchbase.

10. Cohere Health, $50M, health care: Boston-based Cohere Health, a SaaS health care platform, closed a $50 million round led by Deerfield Management. Founded in 2019, Cohere has raised $106 million, per the company.

While Generate easily led the way for the biggest round globally, there was another large private equity raise in India.