Honor, a San Francisco-based provider of tech-enabled senior care services, raised $140 million in Series D funding co-led by Baillie Gifford and T. Rowe Price.
Why it's the BFD: The pandemic has heightened the importance of home care for seniors, as many have sought to avoid nursing homes or other forms on inpatient services.
Other investors included Rock Springs, and return backers Andreessen Horowitz, Prosus Ventures, 8VC, and Thrive Capital.
Backstory: Honor got a term sheet last November from SoftBank, which offered to lead a $140 million investment. But SoftBank bailed one month later, which forced Honor to scramble. It raised a few million dollars from existing equity backers, plus an undisclosed amount of debt.
The bottom line: This is the second company in two days to tell me that it expects its pandemic-related spend to pay dividends long after there's a COVID-19 vaccine. CEO Seth Sternberg says that many of the pandemic-related products that Honor spun up, such as caregiver health screening tech, have helped increase 2020 margins and are expected to be used indefinitely, since no early vaccine is expected to be 100% effective.
