OpenAI's Rival Mistral AI Raised $640 Million & India's First E-Scooter Makers $660 Million IPO

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👋 Hey, Sahil here! Welcome to today's quick rundown in the Venture Daily Digest Newsletter. I've got the scoop on startup fundraising, VC funds, and some cool tech – all in just 5 minutes ☕! Today’s major updates include -

• Mistral AI, a European AI startup aiming to rival giants like OpenAI and Anthropic, has raised a massive €600 million ($640 million) from General Catalyst.

• Masha Bucher is the founder and general partner of Day One Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm has raised a $150 million Fund III.

• Indian e-scooter maker Ola Electric has received regulatory approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India to proceed with its planned $660 million IPO.

• Billionaire Elon Musk has moved to dismiss his lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, alleging they abandoned the company's original non-profit mission focused on developing AI.

• Ilit Raz, former CEO of the AI recruitment startup Joonko, was charged by the SEC with defrauding investors out of at least $21 million by making false claims about the company's customers, candidate pool, and revenue.

• Featured Article : Successful Startups Grow Quadratically, Not Exponentially.

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Startup Funding Updates

Mistral AI, a European AI startup aiming to rival giants like OpenAI and Anthropic, has raised a massive €600 million ($640 million) in a Series B funding round led by General Catalyst, valuing the company at $6 billion. The startup has released pre-trained models under open source licenses, while its proprietary models like Mistral Large and Codestral are designed as API-first products for commercial use, with Codestral having a restrictive license on its outputs. The funding round includes a long list of notable investors, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, Samsung, Salesforce Ventures, and others, ensuring the company's continued independence and expansion in the AI space. More Here

Spawning AI, founded by Jordan Meyer and Mathew Dryhurst, is based in Los Angeles, California. It has created Source.Plus, a platform that curates "non-infringing" media for AI model training. Spawning AI raised $3 million in venture capital from investors like True Ventures and Seed Club Ventures. More Here

Mad Mobile, a Tampa, FL-based company which specializes in restaurant and retail SaaS and payment solutions, raised $50M in financing. Backers included Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital and Bridge Bank. More Here

Flow Computing, a startup based in Finland, claims it can dramatically increase the performance of any CPU by up to 100x with its proprietary Parallel Processing Unit (PPU) chip and software tweaks. The company has raised €4 million (about $4.3 million) in pre-seed funding led by Butterfly Ventures, with participation from FOV Ventures, Sarsia, Stephen Industries, Superhero Capital, and Business Finland. More Here

Linq, a Boston-based startup, has developed an AI agent that automates various tasks for financial analysis and research. It has raised $6.6 million in a funding round led by InterVest and Atinum, with participation from TechStars, Kakao Ventures, Smilegate Investment, and Yellowdog. More Here

Omniscent, a Sydney, Australia-based company using AI to decode the human brain, raised an undisclosed amount in Series C funding. The round, which brought the total amount to US$60M, saw participation from an undisclosed investor. More Here

Wild Common, a Jackson Hole, Wyoming-based agave spirits company, raised $5M in Series A funding. Backers included HIPstr, the early-stage investment arm of HighPost Capital. More Here

Motion Gestures, a Waterloo, Canada-based company which specializes in AI software for hand tracking and gesture recognition use cases with 3rd party cameras, raised USD 2M in Pre-A funding. The round was led by CCAA, with participation from Keiretsu Forum, Propel*, and GTAN. The latest financing brings total capital raised since startup launch to USD 10M, including USD 4.5M in Canadian Government grants for AI-based Computer Vision research. More Here

Brightwave, a NYC- and Boulder, CO-based AI-powered research assistant that generates financial analysis on any subject, raised $6M in Seed funding. The round was led by Decibel Partners, with participation from Point72 Ventures, Moonfire Ventures, and angel investors including executives from OpenAI, Databricks, Uber, and LinkedIn. More Here

Moleculent, a Stockholm, Sweden-based provider a functional biology platform, raised $26M in Series A funding. The round was co-led by ARCH Venture Partners and Eir Ventures with participation from existing investors. More Here

Astrocade AI, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI-powered social gaming platform, raised $12M in Seed funding. Backers included AME Cloud Ventures, NVIDIA Ventures, Venture Reality Fund, Eric Schmidt, Niccolo De Masi, John Riccitiello, David Baszucki, Jerry Yang, Mike Abbott, and more. More Here

Cardino, a Berlin, Germany-based company which specializes in the used electric vehicle (EV) market, raised €4M in Seed funding. The round was supported by angel investors and notable figures, including key investors from platforms like Rosberg Ventures, Vinted.com, Bolt, HomeToGo, Dance and HeyJobs. More Here

Particle, a news-reader startup based in San Francisco, has developed an app that uses AI to summarize news from various publishers, providing readers with a multi-perspective view of stories. The company has raised $10.9 million in Series A funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with additional investment from Axel Springer, a global media company. More Here

AlphaSense, a market intelligence platform based in New York, helps professionals extract relevant information from a vast array of data sources like research, filings, and news. The company raised $650 million at a $4 billion valuation in a round co-led by Viking Global Investors and BDT & MSD Partners, with participation from investors including CapitalG, Goldman Sachs Alternatives, J.P. Morgan Growth Equity Partners, SoftBank's Vision Fund 2, Blue Owl, and Alkeon Capital. More Here

Cyberhaven, a San Jose, CA-based company which specializes in data detection and response (DDR), raised $88M in Series C funding. The round was led by Adams Street Partners, and Khosla Ventures, with participation from Redpoint Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, Vertex Ventures, Crane Venture Partners, Wing Venture Capital, Amol Kulkarni, Gerhard Eschelbeck, Ash Devata, and others. More Here

Ship Angel, a NYC-based provider of an AI-native platform for international shippers, raised $5M in funding. The round was led by Glasswing Ventures and newark venture partners (nvp), with participation from Bienville Capital, Socii Capital, and Plug and Play. More Here

Parity, a Toronto, Canada-based remote HVAC optimization as a service company for multifamily buildings and hotels, raised $19M in Series B funding. The round was led by Idealist Capital. More Here

Cognigy, a Düsseldorf, Germany-based company which specializes in AI-first customer service automation, raised $100M in Series C funding. The round was led by Eurazeo Growth, with participation from existing investors Insight Partners, DTCP, DN Capital and others. More Here

Xona, an Annapolis, MD-based developer of a zero-trust user access platform for industrial operations, raised $18M in strategic funding. The round was led by Energy Impact Partners (EIP). More Here

Tendred, a Copenhagen, Denmark-based company which specializes in digital transformation for heavy equipment management and operations, raised $30M in Series A funding. The round was led by A.P. Moller Holding, with participation from Quadri Ventures, Saurya Prakash, Wa’ed Ventures, Nakhla Ventures, SOMA Capital, and Liquid 2 Ventures. Existing backers included Peter Thiel, Paul Graham, and Y Combinator. More Here

Apricot Technologies, an Oklahoma City, OK-based startup that leverages generative AI to reduce health care documentation, raised an undisclosed amount in funding. The round was led by Cortado Ventures. More Here

Sloyd, an Oslo, Norway-based 3D model creation tech provider, raised €3M in Seed funding. Backers included a16x Games Speedrun, Antler, Skyfall Ventures, FreshFund, Acecap Finance, Hartmann Capital, and Autodesk. More Here

Adcytherix, a Marseille, France-based biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of novel antibody drug conjugates (ADC), raised €30M in Seed funding. The round was led by Pontifax with participation from Pureos Bioventures, RA Capital Management, Dawn Biopharma (a platform controlled by KKR) and the management of the company. More Here

WorkL, a London, UK-based company that helps businesses improve the happiness and engagement of their teams, raised £2M in Series A funding. Calculus Capital made the investment. More Here

Zeliq, a Paris, France-based AI sales platform provider, raised €9.2m in seed financing. The round, which brought total funding to date to $15.4m, was led by Exor Ventures, the with participation from Resonance VC. More Here

YesWeHack, a Paris, France-based provider of a bug bounty and vulnerability management platform, raised €26M in Series C funding. The round was led by Wendel, alongside new investors such as Adelie and Seventure Partners, as well as reinvestment from Bpifrance, Open CNP, The Corporate Venture Capital fund of CNP Assurances, and Eiffel Investment Group. More Here

Venture Capital Updates

Masha Bucher is the founder and general partner of Day One Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm. The firm has raised a $150 million Fund III to back founders solving pressing issues like climate change and social isolation. Day One Ventures has had 22 exits and backed 8 unicorns, including Superhuman, Remote, and Truebill. The new fund will focus on areas like AI, fintech, climate, future of work, and web3, with a deeper integration of art and culture. More Here

Collaborative Fund recently raised $125 million for its sixth flagship fund, focusing on sectors like climate, health, and food, as well as consumer-facing companies. The firm saw strong demand from long-term investors, partly due to successful exits like Reddit's IPO and Scopely's $4.9 billion acquisition, allowing it to distribute capital. The fund will invest in seed-stage companies, with a focus on addressing changing consumer spending habits and climate sustainability across various verticals. More Here

Featured Article

Successful Startups Grow Quadratically, Not Exponentially.

“Fast-growing startups are frequently described as “exponential,” especially when the product is “viral.” But “exponential” is an incorrect characterization, even for hyper-growth, “viral” companies like Facebook and Slack.

If your model is incorrect, you don’t understand growth, which means you can’t control it, nor predict it.”— Jason Cohen …understanding the model is useful not only for predicting growth but also because understanding the foundational drivers of growth allows us to take smarter actions to create growth in our own companies.

First, he dispels the notion of “exponential” by looking at some popular companies that grew rapidly, and who often get dubbed as examples of this growth model.

Let’s take a look.

Not exponential

It’s been a minute since high school math…

• Exponential growth = growing by a multiple. For example: In year 1 you grow by 10, in year 2 by 100, in year 3 by 1000.

• Quadratic growth = growing by adding a constant. For example: Growing in year 1 by 10, then in year 2 by 20, in year 3 by 30.

In both, growth is clearly still accelerating, just at wildly different rates. To drive the point home:

Facebook is the definition of hyper-growth—getting to $50B in revenue faster than any company in history.

Read detailed article in our Venture Curator Newsletter….

Startup’s Latest Buzz

Acquisition & Going Public

Indian e-scooter maker Ola Electric has received regulatory approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India to proceed with its planned $660 million Initial Public Offering (IPO), paving the way for the country's first EV company listing. Backed by investors like SoftBank and Temasek. More Here

BeReal, the popular social media app known for encouraging authentic, unfiltered sharing among friends, is being acquired by Voodoo, a French mobile apps and games publisher, for €500 million. More Here

ZS, an Evanston, IL-based management consulting and technology firm, acquired Digital Additive, an Atlanta, GA-based Salesforce digital marketing agency. More Here

Formstack, a Los Angeles, CA-based form, document, and eSignature software provider, acquired Open Raven, a Los Angeles, CA-based data management and security company. More Here

ClearCompany, a Boston, MA-based provider of a talent management platform, acquired Brainier Solutions, a Minneapolis, MN-based provider of cloud-based learning management systems. More Here

ClinicalMind (CM), a NYC-based healthcare marketing and communications agency, acquired Sensified, a Raleigh, NC-based insight-driven healthcare communications company. More Here

Raspberry Pi, the maker of the tiny, cheap, single-board computers, has gone public on the London Stock Exchange. Pricing its IPO at £2.80 per share, the company was valued at £542 million ($690 million). More Here

Layoffs & Bankruptcy

One97 Communications, owner of the Paytm brand, based In India is laying off an undisclosed number of employees and claimed that it is providing outplacement support for their smooth transition, according to a company statement. More Here

Startups & People

Billionaire Elon Musk has moved to dismiss his lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, alleging they abandoned the company's original non-profit mission focused on developing AI for humanity's benefit. Originally filed in February, the lawsuit claimed OpenAI violated its founding principles by monetizing its technology like GPT-4 for profit. However, Musk has now requested to dismiss the case without prejudice, leaving open the possibility of refiling it in the future. More Here

The SEC charged Ilit Raz, CEO of the now-defunct AI recruitment startup Joonko, with defrauding investors of at least $21 million by making false claims about the company's customers, candidate pool, and revenue. Raz allegedly fabricated testimonials, contracts, and bank statements to deceive investors about Joonko's success in using AI for diversity hiring. In a parallel action, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced criminal charges against Raz. More Here

Latest In Emerging Tech

Light, the maker of minimalist phones, is introducing the Light Phone III, featuring a larger OLED display, a camera, and an NFC chip for future payment tools. The phone retains its minimalist approach, without access to social media, the internet, or email. It aims to improve usability and performance while offering a way to escape addictive technology. The Light Phone III is priced at $799, with early adopters able to preorder it for $399. More Here

Apple is taking a cautious and practical approach to integrating artificial intelligence in iOS 18, rebranding it as "Apple Intelligence." The company is carefully rolling out AI features where they can solve specific problems and provide expected results in everyday use cases, such as writing assistance, summaries, and smart replies. Rather than overwhelming users with powerful AI capabilities, Apple's offerings are designed to enhance existing apps and features, acting as a supplementary layer that feels like smarter tools rather than a separate, independent interface. More Here

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