Hi there,

Here’s this week’s hot or not.

Hot: Divestitures

Attention: corp dev and financial sponsors/PE.

More than ever, it's time to look for non-core assets and businesses that companies are divesting in an effort to focus on the core.

We've seen Walmart divest most of its D2C brands.

And last week, Shopify dropped a nuke on its shipping & fulfillment ambitions by selling Deliverr to Flexport. Shopify acquired the company for $2.1B one year ago.

Based on the ownership Shopify received in Flexport, it likely divested Deliverr at a 50%+ discount to the $2.1B it paid.

It also divested 6 River Systems to Ocado. Shopify acquired 6 River for $450M in 2019.

To dig into Shopify's other strategic priorities, check out our research and its strategy map here.

Not: Robotaxis
 

It’s a tough time to be a robotaxi company.

With soaring costs and regulatory uncertainty blocking the road to commercialization, companies in the space are coming under pressure.

Argo AI shut down last year despite raising billion-dollar investments from Ford and Volkswagen.

Cruise just reported a $561M loss on $30M in revenue.

Growing uncertainty around the viability of robotaxis puts more than $20B in equity funding at stake and will likely drive valuations down.

We use CB Insights funding and valuation data to analyze the robotaxi market in this research brief.

Coming soon: CB Insights customers will be able to explore the autonomous driving systems market — including its top vendors, key growth and investment trends, and more — using our brand-new Market Reports.

Here’s a sneak peek for all the data nerds out there.

Hot: Pfizer partnerships
 

Pfizer has already forged a number of partnerships in 2023, across a wide variety of global regions and disease areas.

Yet partnerships aren’t deeply understood or analyzed, mostly because this data hasn’t traditionally been easily accessible. 

However, we’ve been amassing the world’s largest business relationship database to make this data accessible and available to our customers.

Better yet, we mined this data to highlight who Pfizer is working with and distill its areas of strategic focus.

As we look at Pfizer’s 2023 partnerships, we see them falling into 3 main buckets:

• Collaborative research & development (42%)

• Access and distribution (42%)

• Manufacturing (17%)

Who has Pfizer partnered with in 2023 so far, and what exactly does this reveal about its growth strategy?

Find the answers in this research brief.

Is the psychedelics space experiencing a comedown?

After peaking at $658M across 59 deals in 2021, funding in the space has significantly dropped.

The 3 top-funded companies that have gone public have all seen their market caps drop well below their IPO valuation.

But while venture investors have pulled back, strong tailwinds remain. Here’s where the space is headed.

Hot: Coding copilots

Generative AI is powering a new category of productivity tool: copilots.

There are 25+ startups developing copilot tools that specifically target software development. 

So far this year, funding to these coding copilot companies has crossed $100M. 

Replit is the sole unicorn in the space at present.

It’s also nearly doubled its headcount over the past year, as we can see with CB Insights headcount trend data.  

We break down the intensifying battleground in the young coding copilot market and where it’s headed next here.

Not: Advanced manufacturing

Advanced manufacturing funding plummeted in Q1’23.

It dropped by 62% quarter-over-quarter — and deal count followed suit, dropping by 38%.

Still, early-stage rounds accounted for nearly half of all deals in the quarter.

This highlights continued investor interest in emerging solutions focused on optimizing product development and reducing costs amid ongoing supply chain disruption.

Dive deeper into key investment trends and discover which investors are the most active amid the downturn in our State of Advanced Manufacturing in 7 charts report.

I love you. 

Anand 

@asanwal 

P.S. Interested in the headcount data above? It’s coming to the CBI platform this month. See what it can do for you here.