On Oct. 21, the publicly traded crypto exchange announced that it is acquiring early-stage investing platform Echo for $375 million in cash and equity.
Notably, the acquisition marked the eighth buy for the San Francisco-based company in 2025 so far, according to The Wall Street Journal. Of those eight deals, three involved undisclosed businesses.
Overall, since its 2012 inception, Coinbase has acquired dozens of companies, per Crunchbase data. Besides Echo, it announced purchases of the following startups in 2025:
In January, it acquired Stryk, the Cyprus-based unit of BUX, as part of a European expansion. Stryk offers CFD trading services to European residents through an app. Financial terms were not disclosed
Also in January, Coinbase picked up Spindl, a 3-year-old San Francisco-based startup that developed a blockchain-based attribution system to help businesses accelerate user growth.
In May, it acquired Deribit, a 10-year-old cryptocurrency derivatives exchange offering options, futures and spot trading for digital assets based in the Netherlands.
Then in July, Coinbase acquired Liquifi, a 4-year-old San Francisco-based startup that helps crypto companies automate their token vesting and lockups, and manage their token cap table. Liquifi was a self-described “Carta for crypto.”
Now it has announced plans to buy Echo, an onchain digital platform that helps communities invest together and aims to give founders more options for their cap table.
Coinbase’s buying sprees seem to come in spurts, according to the data.
Crypto’s crash and recovery
For example, in 2018, it acquired eight known companies. And then in 2021, it picked up seven known companies. But most years, it acquired only one or two companies.
Interestingly, 2018 was defined by what has been described as the “Great Crypto Crash,” or a massive market sell-off after the boom that took place in 2017. Things had rebounded by 2021, which saw a bull market for crypto and the rise of NFTs and DeFi. That November, Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $68,000.
After a bumpy few years, which saw the arrests of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and Binance CEO and founder Changpeng Zhao, Bitcoin has rebounded, surging to an all-time high in 2025. Prices reached $113,156.57 on Oct. 15.
In announcing its plan to acquire Echo, Coinbase said the two companies shared a similar mission of “democratizing early-stage investing, so that more people can support the next generation of breakthrough companies.”
The buy complemented its earlier acquisition of Liquifi, Coinbase said, noting that: “While Liquifi strengthened our ability to support builders at the start of their journey, Echo extends that support into fundraising.”
The largest of its acquisitions in 2025 so far, though, was its $2.9 billion buy of Deribit.
Meanwhile, Coinbase’s market cap as of Oct. 23 hovered just under $83 billion, while its stock is up over 25% year to date.
As startup valuations reset and venture capital firms hunt for unconventional deals, one investor is looking to the bankruptcy courts. Bambu Ventures, an early-stage VC firm, last month agreed to acquire telemedicine company Lemonaid Health — once a $400 million bet by 23andMe — for just $10 million.
The transaction is more than a bargain buy. It’s also an intriguing deal that illustrates how an early-stage VC firm can operate by a private-equity playbook to revive a distressed asset.
DNA testing company 23andMe acquired Lemonaid for $400 million in 2021. Lemonaid operated as a division of 23andMe until the parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this year.
Last month, New York-based Bambu made a deal with Chrome Holding Co. — the rebranded former parent company 23andMe Holding — in which the venture firm agreed to buy Lemonaid for a staggering 40x less than the DNA company had originally paid for the telehealth brand.
Kyle Pretsch, COO of Lemonaid SPV Inc.
So why did Bambu Ventures make a play for Lemonaid? Just how did it win the bid? And what are its plans for the asset? Crunchbase News recently spoke with Kyle Pretsch, COO of Lemonaid SPV Inc. and general partner at Bambu Ventures, to discuss all this and more. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
This is not your typical startup purchase. What prompted you to buy Lemonaid? Are you going to operate as an independent startup?
Lemonaid wasn’t just a company. It was a vision. It was an incredibly exciting team. It’s an incredible, exciting market, and it’s a mission that we can all feel good about, which is increasing accessibility to healthcare. Obviously, there’s a phenomenal market for that, but at the end of the day, we are working to provide improved transparency, the ability to improve your lifestyle at an affordable cost, and do it in a nice, systemic fashion, to reach more people.
23andMe has been an incredible custodian of this company and so we didn’t just see it as a company. We saw something much, much more. We plan to operate it independently. We like the fact that this is a space we’re familiar with. This is a space we have other holdings in.
We expect there will be opportunities along the way to use those contributions to help grow Lemonaid.
I understand that you’re paying about $10 million for Lemonaid when 23andMe paid $400 million to acquire it just a few years ago. Do you view this as an incredible opportunity?
Yes. We don’t believe the value of the asset has eroded since 2021.
Regeneron is buying the rest of 23andMe. How did you end up with Lemonaid?
Regeneron actually didn’t bid for Lemonade. It excluded it from their purchase. And technically Regeneron didn’t win 23andMe, either.
At one point, it had been identified as the winning bidder, but an organization called TTAM Research Institute, which was a research institute founded in part by Anne Wojcicki, the original founder of 23andMe, ended up prevailing in the repurchasing of the assets out of bankruptcy.
It, too, excluded Lemonaid from its bid. So both organizations put forth what’s called a stalking horse bid, which is if no one else bids, they would absorb the asset for a certain amount. And we ended up bidding in excess of that.
This feels very similar to a private-equity play. Do you think this sort of transaction is becoming more common? Are you going to do it more often?
This is a really unique situation, and for so many reasons I don’t think venture capital is going to find itself stalking the bankruptcy courts.
Nor do I think this was a standard bankruptcy case. But I do think our firm specifically brings a very PE style to venture capital. That’s what we do as a firm. And I think this was an exceptional opportunity where you have a venture-like company with PE idealism and process that can go ahead and reconstitute its growth track. We expect venture growth with PE discipline, and we’re happy to marry the two.
The fact that we identified it in bankruptcy court is a huge testament to our firm, how we worked and how we adapted to chase after a vision that we really, really, found meaningful. I believe this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
So it’s not something you’ve done before?
I have some experience in this space, but this is not a situation that I’ve ever come across. We’ve looked at things in bankruptcy before, but I think if you talk to anybody involved in this particular case, they would say: “Never has anything like this existed” for 10 different reasons.
How do you distinguish yourselves as a VC firm, and did Bambu Ventures actually conduct this acquisition?
Bambu Ventures is an operating firm for a variety of venture capital funds. Specifically, our key fund right now is a $50 million to $100 million fund, and Lemonaid is not being purchased from the fund.
We offer co-investments and sometimes pursue side deals, and this was something that I think the fund will have some participation in, but this is an act outside of that fund.
The same principles, however exist, which is, as a firm we believe in finding the companies that are being given these low values, or are being sometimes overshadowed or overlooked, and then bringing our team to it, and bringing discipline and execution to it, and reinvigorating growth — overlooked assets, plus PE discipline in well-known environments. And that, plus our team, is a formula for our success.
The purchasing entity is actually Lemonaid SPV. Bambu Ventures is a guarantor, because that’s a new company.
How is this transaction similar or different from a PE-type acquisition?
The mechanics are a little bit different in that it’s not being owned by a fund or an LP. It’s owned by an SPV. This is very similar to any kind of corporate transaction. We have a cap table. We have set up what we think is an incredible list of investors. We’ve taken some fund money from other VC funds to help instill that it has a list of interested LPs and parties.
So I would say this is very, very similar. The only key difference is we’re investing in a different company … From an organizational governance perspective, we went ahead and moved the investor funds directly into a top, or holding, company with its own cap table, versus a fund.
What will you do differently with Lemonaid?
The 23andMe team have been great stewards to this company, they’ve been great partners in transition and have really set this transaction up for success. I think there are immediate opportunities to advance within patient care, and that’s adding product and reaching more patients.
We plan on investing in marketing spend. Obviously 23andMe, through its process, had reduced that marketing spend heavily.
Will you be competing with companies such as Ro and Hims & Hers?
There is more than enough white space that we can all operate within our own moats and in our own domains without this warriors’ battle.
I will say that we do have visions of incredible growth, and we do have visions of creating a holistic offering that serves more and creates an improved consumer experience.
Veeam CEO Anand Eswaran at the company’s headquarters. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop)
Veeam Software, the data backup and recovery company that recently moved its headquarters to the Seattle area, announced plans to acquire Securiti AI for $1.725 billion.
Securiti AI, based in San Jose, Calif., helps enterprises manage data security posture, privacy, and compliance across cloud and software platforms. The deal aims to integrate Securiti’s Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) and “AI trust” technologies with Veeam’s core data resilience tools, giving companies a single platform to manage, secure, and recover their data while safely deploying artificial intelligence systems.
“We’ve entered a new era for data. It’s no longer about just protecting data from cyber threats and unforeseen disasters; it’s also about identifying all your data, ensuring it’s governed and trusted to power AI transparently,” Veeam CEO Anand Eswaran said in a statement.
Rehan Jalil, Securiti’s CEO and a cybersecurity entrepreneur, will join Veeam as president of security and AI once the deal closes, expected in the fourth quarter.
Securiti, founded in 2019, raised a $75 million Series C round in 2022.
Veeam, which reached a $15 billion valuation earlier this year, relocated its headquarters from Columbus, Ohio, to the Seattle area in 2024, citing the region’s deep technical talent pool. The company employs about 6,000 people globally and protects data for more than 550,000 customers, including two-thirds of the Global 2000.
Veeam moved its headquarters from Switzerland to the U.S. following its March 2020 acquisition by private equity firm Insight Partners — a deal that valued the company at $5 billion at the time.
Veeam CEO Anand Eswaran, who joined the company in December 2021, previously worked in the Seattle area as the corporate vice president of Microsoft Enterprise. He was most recently president at RingCentral.
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