Apple Acquired AI Startup & SpaceX's Starship Loses Contact During Reentry

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

• Ballistic Ventures, led by former Kleiner Perkins star Ted Schlein, has swiftly closed its second fund at $360 million.

• Apple has acquired DarwinAI, a Canadian startup specializing in vision-based tech for manufacturing efficiency.

• AstraZeneca acquired Amolyt Pharma for $1.05 Billion.

• SpaceX's Starship successfully completes full-duration loses contact during reentry.

• TikTok faces a $10.9 million fine in Italy over child safety concerns.

• Featured Article : How to Prove Your Market Is “Big Enough” to VCs?

• Daily Digest Board: Sharing Updates….

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STARTUP FUNDING UPDATES

ShopMy, a marketing platform for content creators to connect with brands and monetize their content, raised $18.5 million. The round was led by Inspired Capital. Additional investors include AlleyCorp, Scott Belsky (Adobe’s chief strategy officer), Jennifer Fleiss (Rent the Runway co-founder) and Rand Currier (Granite co-founder and COO). More Here

Fluent Metal, a Cambridge, MA-based company developing production-grade liquid metal printing technology, raised $3.2M in funding. The round, which brought the total amount to $5.5M, was led by E15 with participation from Pillar VC. More Here

Redcoat AI, a San Francisco, CA-based cybersecurity company at the forefront of combating AI-powered threats, emerged from stealth mode, backed by $4.24m in funding. The round was led by Pear VC, with participation from Leonis Capital, Sancus Ventures, Kyber Knight, and others. More Here

mmERCH, a NYC-based blockchain-enabled Web3 fashion startup, raised $6.4m in seed funding round at a $25.7m post-money valuation. The round was led by Liberty City Ventures, with participation from 6529 Holdings LLC, Christie’s Ventures, and Flamingo DAO. More Here

Polyhedra Network, the company behind zero-knowledge interoperability protocol zkBridge, raised $20M in funding, at $1 Billion valuation. The round was led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Animoca Brands, Emirates Consortium, Mapleblock Capital, Hashkey Capital, UoB Ventures, Symbolic Capital, Longhash Ventures, MH Ventures, Arkstream Capital, and Web3Port Foundation, among others. More Here

Pi Health, a Cambridge, MA-based oncology-focused health technology and clinical research company committed to transforming global access to innovative medicines and clinical trials, raised over $30M in Series A funding. The round was led by AlleyCorp and Obvious Ventures, with additional investments from Invus Capital and leaders in oncology from across the globe. More Here

HiLabs, a Bethesda, MD-based provider of AI-powered solutions to manage dirty data, raised $39M in Series B funding. The round was led by Denali Growth Partners and Eight Roads Ventures, with participation from F-Prime Capital. More Here

Quintessent, a Santa Barbara, CA-based heterogeneous silicon photonics and quantum dot laser technology company, closed on over $11.5m in Seed funding round. Osage University Partners (OUP) led the round along with new investors including M Ventures, and joining existing investors Sierra Ventures, Foothill Ventures, and Entrada Ventures. More Here

WarpStream Labs, a Chicago, IL-based cloud native data streaming infrastructure company, raised $20M in funding. The round was led by Greylock and Amplify Partners with participation from angels Ben Sigelman (CEO of Lightstep), Spencer Kimball (CEO of CockroachDB), and Barry McCardel (CEO of Hex Technologies). More Here

SquareDash, a Fort Worth, TX-based provider of a payment advance platform for the insurance restoration industry, raised over $20M in total funding. The latest equity round was led by Fintop Capital with participation from Hivers and Strivers, The PenFed Foundation, i2BF Global, The Hustle Fund, The Council, and other angel investors. More Here

Tubulis, a Munich, Germany-based oncology company, closed an upsized €128m ($138.8m) Series B2 financing. The round was co-led by EQT Life Sciences and Nextech Invest Ltd. More Here

Unstructured, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of tools to ingest and preprocess large language models (LLMs), raised $40m in Series B funding. The round was led by Menlo Ventures with participation from Databricks Ventures, IBM Ventures. More Here

Mindfuel, a Munich, Germany-based data product management company, raised €3.75M in Seed funding. The round was led by Project A Ventures. More Here

Mission Therapeutics, a Cambridge, UK-based clinical-stage biotech company developing therapeutics that enhance mitophagy to promote cell/organ health, raised £25.2M in funding. The round was led by existing investors Pfizer Venture Investments, Sofinnova Partners, Roche Venture Fund, SR One, IP Group, and Rosetta Capital. More Here

Asgard Therapeutics, a Lund, Sweden-based biotech company developing in vivo direct cell reprogramming for cancer immunotherapy, raised €30M in Series A funding. The round was led by RV Invest and Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc., with participation from existing investors Novo Holdings, Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund and Industrifonden. More Here

CarbonCapture, a Los Angeles, CA-based direct air capture (DAC) company, raised $80M in Series A funding. The round was led by Prime Movers Lab, with participation from Idealab X, Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures, Neotribe Ventures, Alumni Ventures. New investors included Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, Aramco Ventures, and Siemens Financial Services. More Here

Nozomi Networks, a San Francisco, CA-based company which specializes in OT and IoT security, raised $100M in Series E funding. The round saw participation from Mitsubishi Electric and Schneider Electric. More Here

inDrive, a Mountain View, CA-based provider of a mobility and urban services platform, raised an additional $150M investment from General Catalyst. More Here

Interlune, a Seattle, WA-based natural resources company, raised $18M in Seed funding. The round was led by Seven Seven Six, with participation from Aurelia Foundry Fund, Gaingels, Liquid 2 Ventures, Shasta Ventures, and a committed group of University of Michigan alumni. More Here

MarineLabs, a Victoria, Canada-based maritime weather intelligence technology company, raised $4.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by BDC Capital’s Sustainability Venture Fund with participation from Seaspan Shipyards. More Here

Odne, a Dubendorf, Switzerland-based dental startup, raised USD 5.5M in Series A1 funding. The round was led by Revere Partner (NY) and NV Capital (LIE), with participation from Dental Innovation Alliance (DIA), Plug&Play, Hatcher, and Züricher Kantonalbank. More Here

Goodshuffle, a Washington, DC-based software company for the event rental and production industry, raised $5M in Series A funding. FINTOP Capital made the investment. More Here

Carbonova, a Calgary, Canada-based startup that aims to turn greenhouse gas emissions into carbon materials for sustainable and inexpensive everyday essentials, raised $6M in funding. The round was led by Kolon Industries, with participation from Natural Gas Innovation Fund NGIF Capital. More Here

Youverify, a Nigerian provider of identity verification and anti-money laundering (AML) solutions for banks and startups, secured a $2.5 million investment from Elm. More Here

VENTURE CAPITAL UPDATES

KSL Capital Partners, a Denver, CO-based investor in travel and leisure businesses, closes its latest travel and leisure focused private equity fund, KSL Capital Partners VI, L.P. (“KSL VI”). Together with commitments from the General Partner, KSL VI closed on approximately $2 Billion in capital commitments. More Here

Ballistic Ventures, led by former Kleiner Perkins star Ted Schlein, has swiftly closed its second fund at $360 million, exceeding its initial target of $300 million. With a hands-on approach, they actively engage with portfolio startups in the cybersecurity sector, aiming to replicate their early success, including the $625 million acquisition of Talon Cyber Security by Palo Alto Networks. More Here

Westbound, a five-year-old Menlo Park, Ca.-based venture firm once known as Concrete Rose, has raised a $100 million fund two to invest in more Black, Latin and diversity-minded founders. More Here

FEATURED ARTICLE

How to Prove Your Market Is “Big Enough” to VCs?

The second most common reason why VCs pass on an investment is some version of “it’s not big enough.” For a VC to generate a great fund-level return, they typically needs to invest in at least one company that has billions of dollars of enterprise value.

To do that, most VCs decide that each one of their investments needs to have the potential to exit at or above that amount, even if it’s very unlikely to be the reality for every single investment.

The problem is, that most really exciting companies seem “not big enough” to a lot of investors, especially really early on. These startups are often going after markets that don’t currently exist or seem like a niche opportunity (but in reality, are much bigger).

“So if you’re a founder choosing to take the VC path,

How Can You Counter Investors’ Objections About Market Size?” Below are some different approaches. Keep in mind that some of these are left-brain sort of approaches and others are more right-brain…..Read More Here

STARTUP’S LATEST BUZZ

ACQUISITION & EXITS

Apple has acquired DarwinAI, a Canadian startup specializing in vision-based tech for manufacturing efficiency, as reported by Bloomberg. DarwinAI's expertise in making AI models smaller and faster could assist Apple in developing on-device generative AI features for iOS 18, addressing its lag behind competitors in AI-powered features.

Zscaler, a cloud security company with headquarters in San Jose, California, has acquired cybersecurity startup Avalor 26 months after its founding, reportedly for $310 million in cash and equity. More Here

AstraZeneca acquired Amolyt Pharma, a Cambridge, MA- and Lyon, France-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company specializing in developing therapeutic peptides for rare endocrine and related diseases, for up to $1.05 Billion. More Here

LAYOFFS & BANKRUPTCY

EA’s layoffs and cutbacks have hit Apex Legends and Star Wars Jedi studio Respawn Entertainment, including some devs who were there at the multiplayer game’s start. More Here

General freight, The Illinois-based trucking company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to reorganize. More Here

STARTUPS & PEOPLE

Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin plans to lead a group of investors to purchase TikTok amid bipartisan concerns over its national security implications, as the House passed a bill to ban the platform if not sold by ByteDance. TikTok, with 170 million U.S. users, faces uncertainties over ownership transfer and Chinese government approval despite opposition to the forced sale. More Here

Paytm secures a crucial license from the National Payments Corporation of India to operate as a third-party application provider, allowing it to continue offering UPI payments amidst regulatory challenges. The move comes ahead of Paytm Payments Bank's scheduled cessation of operations, following an RBI order in January. NPCI also advises Paytm to complete migration of existing handles and mandates to new payment system provider banks. More Here

OpenAI CTO Mira Murati "freaks out" a WSJ reporter with Sora's AI videos.

LATEST IN EMERGING TECH

SpaceX's Starship successfully completes full-duration ascent burn, showcasing payload capabilities, but loses contact during reentry. FAA approval granted despite Super Heavy booster's rapid unscheduled disassembly. More Here

TikTok faces a $10.9 million fine in Italy over child safety concerns. Italian regulators imposed the fine after finding that TikTok “failed to implement appropriate mechanisms” to monitor content on its platform, “particularly those that may threaten the safety of minors.” More Here

VENTURE DAILY DIGEST PICKS

• ​Generative AI and intellectual property by Benedict Evans. Read Here

• How To Respond When A VC Asks About Your Startup’s Valuation? Read Here

• Superlinear returns by Paul Graham. Read Here

• How Do VCs Make High-Quality Investment Decisions? Read Here

• Hidden Trap Of Convertible Note and Liquidation Preference Multiples. Read Here

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That’s It For Today! Will Meet You On Monday!
Happy Weekend! 🥂

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✍️Written By Sahil R - The Venture Crew