Apple's $110 Billion Stock Buyback Plan & SVB Selling It's VC Arm to Brookfield and Sequoia Capital

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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, fresh VC funds, and some cool tech – all in just 5 minutes! Today’s major updates include -

• Apple Inc. has announced a massive $110 billion stock buyback program.

• Defunct Silicon Valley Bank, has agreed to sell its venture capital arm, SVB Capital, to an entity backed by Brookfield Asset Management and Sequoia Heritage.

• Freshworks, the publicly listed SaaS firm, is acquiring U.S.-based startup Device42 for $230 million.

• Sam Altman: "GPT-4 is the dumbest AI you'll ever have to use"

• Featured Article : When Should You Raise Funding For Your Startup? & How Much To Raise?

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STARTUP FUNDING UPDATES

Lamini, a Palo Alto startup building a generative AI platform for enterprises, raised $25 million from investors including Andrew Ng, Dylan Field, Drew Houston, Andrej Karpathy, and Bernard Arnault. More Here

GroundGame.Health, a Tampa, FL-based provider of a social impact solution that fulfills unmet social and care needs for people everywhere, raised $17M in funding. The round was led by 7wireVentures. More Here

Karius, Inc., a Redwood City, CA-based leader in genomic diagnostics for infectious disease, raised $100m in Series C funding. The round was co-led by Khosla Ventures and new investors 5AM Ventures and Gilde Healthcare. More Here

Renda, a startup based in Nigeria, provides an end-to-end fulfillment solution for businesses in Africa, simplifying order fulfillment and retail distribution. It raised a $1.9 million pre-seed round led by Ingressive Capital's $1.3 million equity investment. Other investors include Techstars Toronto, Magic Fund, Golden Palm Investments, Reflect Ventures, Vastly Valuable Ventures, Founders Factory Africa, and SeedFi. More Here

Liberty Pixel, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based game developer, raised $1M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Spring Ventures with participation from Journey Ventures. More Here

Maia Farms, a Vancouver, Canada-based company dedicated to enhancing the global protein supply with mycelium, raised $2.3M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Joyful Ventures, PIC Group and Koan Capital, with participation from from angel investors within the Creative Destruction Lab. More Here

Bricklayer AI Inc., a McLean, VA-based AI cybersecurity solution that enables autonomous AI specialists to work alongside human experts, raised $2.5m in pre-seed funding. Backers included Sovereign’s Capital, Dreamit Ventures, VIPC’s Virginia Venture Partners, BlueWing Ventures, and Blu Ventures, as well as cybersecurity industry leaders. More Here

Balcony Technology Group, a Hoboken, NJ-based blockchain infrastructure company, raised an undisclosed amount in Pre-Seed funding. Backers included Blizzard Fund. More Here

Danti, an Atlanta, GA-based Earth data search engine provider, raised $5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Shield Capital with participation from Tech Square Ventures, Humba Ventures and Leo Polovets, Space.VC, and Radius Capital. More Here

StrongDM, a Palo Alto, CA-based zero trust privileged access management (PAM) company, raised $34M in Series C funding. The round, which brought the total amount to $96M, was led by Anchor Capital, with participation from new investors Capital One Ventures, Cisco Investments, Frontline Ventures, and Singtel Innov8, as well as existing investors including GV, Sequoia Capital, and True Ventures. More Here

Indicium, a NYC- and São Paulo, Brazil-based data and AI consultancy, raised a $40M investment from Columbia Capital. More Here

Guesty, a NYC-based property management software platform for the short-term rental and hospitality industry, acquired Rentals United, a Barcelona, Spain-based provider of a cloud platform to distribute and promote properties across multiple listing sites. More Here

Mimic, a Palo Alto, CA-based ransomware defense company, emerged from stealth with a seed round of funding of $27m. The round was led by Ballistic Ventures, with participation from Menlo Ventures, Team8, Wing Venture Capital and Shield Capital. More Here

Livara Health (formerly known as SpineZone), a San Diego, CA-based value-based musculoskeletal (MSK) management company, raised $15m in Series B funding. The round was led by A1 Health Ventures, with participation from existing investors Polaris Partners, Providence Ventures, Martin Ventures, and a new strategic investor. More Here

Transcarent, a San Francisco, CA-based healthcare platform provider, raised $126m in Series D funding. The round was led by General Catalyst and 7wireVentures, joined by new investors Geodesic Capital and Memorial Hermann Health System, with support from previous investors Threshold Ventures, Kinnevik, Ally Bridge Group, Human Capital, Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, Alta Partners, and Leaps by Bayer. More Here

Altruist, a Los Angeles, CA-based custodian for independent RIAs, raised $169M in Series E funding. The round, which valued the company north of $1.5B, was led by ICONIQ Growth with participation from new investor Granite Capital Management, Adams Street Partners and Sound Ventures. More Here

Apex, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based AI security company, emerged from stealth with $7m in seed funding. The round was co-led by Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures, with participation from notable angel investors, including Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. More Here

Monocle, a NYC-based AI-powered promotion platform provider, is emerging from stealth mode supported by a $7.5M seed funding. The round was led by F2 Venture Capital with participation from Tiferes Ventures and irrvrntVC and from founders at, Instacart, Everlane, Melio, and Chubbies. More Here

Symbe, a London, UK-based provider of an AI-powered platform that helps sales teams win more deals by automating the creation of business cases, raised £1.2M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Concept Ventures and joined by Pact VC, Notion Capital, and angels from Nodes Ventures, Resolv Labs Founder Fedor Chmile, Founders Capital CEO Richard Hadler, and from Stripe. More Here

Tuza, a London, UK-based provider of a comparison site for business card payments, raised £4M in Seed funding. The round was led by Connect Ventures with participation from Northzone, Triple Point and Entrepreneur First. More Here

LayerX Security, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based provider of a security platform, raised $26M in Series A funding. The round, which brought total investment to $34M, was led by Glilot+, with participation from Dell Technologies Capital and other investors. More Here

Pollen Careers, a London, UK-based provider of a job platform, raised £112K in funding. More Here

Potential Motors Inc., a Fredericton, NB, Canada-based automotive technology company developing advanced driver assistance systems for off-road environments, raised additional $2M in funding. The round, which brought the total amount to $8.5M, included participation from Brightspark Ventures, Build Ventures, NBIF (the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation), and Farpointe. More Here

Birdwingo, a NYC- and Prague, Czech Republic-based provider of a financial education and investment platform, raised €1.2M in funding. Backers included Bienville Capital, other company founders, and bank executives. More Here

Upholstery2u, a Brierfield, UK-based mobile upholstery repairs provider, received £1.125M in Growth Investment from Middleton Enterprises. More Here

Stargate Hydrogen, a Tallinn, Estonia-based company providing green hydrogen solutions, raised €42M in Seed funding. The round was led by UG Investments and IPCEI, with participation from other investors. More Here

Ikerian AG, a Bern, Switzerland-based parent company of RetinAI U.S., developer of software solutions for medical image and data management, and artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare, raised USD 6.18M in Series A extension funding. The round was led by the corporate venture capital arm of Topcon Healthcare, Inc. More Here

Aikido, a Ghent, Belgium-based platform for developers to get their web app secured, raised $17m in Series A funding. The round was led by Singular, with participation from existing backers Notion Capital and Connect Ventures. More Here

Pleo, a Copenhagen, Denmark-based provider of a spend management platform, received €40M in debt financing facility from HSBC Innovation Banking UK. More Here

Securitize, a Miami, FL-based company which specializes in tokenizing real-world assets, raised $47M in funding. The round was led by by BlackRock (Nasdaq: BLK) with participation from Hamilton Lane (Nasdaq: HLNE), ParaFi Capital, Tradeweb Markets (Nasdaq: TW), Aptos Labs, Circle and Paxos. More Here

VENTURE CAPITAL UPDATES

SVB Financial, the parent company of the defunct Silicon Valley Bank, has agreed to sell its venture capital arm, SVB Capital, to an entity backed by Brookfield Asset Management and Sequoia Heritage for an undisclosed amount. More Here

Scout Ventures, Texas based a leading venture capital firm focused on frontier and dual-use technologies built by hard-to-access founders, announced the successful closing of Fund IV at $94 million. More Here

Imec.xpand, an independent global venture capital fund, today announced the launch of a new EUR 300 million fund aimed at accelerating the growth of transformative semiconductor and nanotechnology innovations. More Here

FEATURED ARTICLE

When Should You Raise Funding For Your Startup? & How Much To Raise?

These are the most common questions I receive from founders. So here's the simple framework that you can consider to decide -

One of the most common mistakes that founders make is 'jumping into fundraising when the business is not ready. What does it mean?

Remember - Investors write checks when the idea they hear is compelling, when they are persuaded that the team of founders can realize its vision and that the opportunity described is real and sufficiently large. When founders are ready to tell this story, they can raise money. And usually, when you can raise money, you should.

But for some founders, it is enough to have a story and a reputation

However, for most, it will require an idea, a product, and some amount of customer adoption - traction.

Luckily, the software development ecosystem today is such that a sophisticated web or mobile product can be built and delivered in a remarkably short period at a very low cost. Even hardware can be rapidly prototyped and tested.

Investors also need persuading. Usually, a product they can see, use, or touch will not be enough. They will want to know that there is product market fit and that the product is experiencing actual growth.

So, founders should raise money when -

"they have figured out what the market opportunity is who the customer is, and when they have delivered a product that matches their needs and is being adopted at an interestingly rapid rate."

How rapid is interesting? This depends, but a rate of 8-10% per week for several weeks is impressive. To raise money founders need to impress.

For founders who can convince investors without these things, congratulations. For everyone else, work on your product and talk to your users.

How Much To Raise?

In my view, the answer is based on a startup’s life, which can be divided into two parts—Before Product/Market Fit, and After Product/Market Fit.

Before Product/Market Fit, a startup should ideally raise at least enough money to get to Product/Market Fit.

After Product/Market Fit, a startup should ideally raise at least enough money to fully exploit the opportunity in front of it, and then to get to profitability while still fully exploiting that opportunity.

Also, the definition of “at least enough money” in each case should include a substantial amount of extra money beyond your default plan so that you can withstand bad surprises.

In other words, insurance. This is particularly true for startups that have not yet achieved Product/Market Fit since you have no real idea how long that will take.

These answers all sound obvious, but in my experience, a surprising number of startups go out to raise funding and do not have an underlying theory of how much money they are raising and for precisely what purpose they are raising it.

(We have shared the detailed writeup in our Venture Curator Newsletter)

STARTUP’S LATEST BUZZ

ACQUISITION & EXITS

Freshworks, the publicly listed SaaS firm, is acquiring U.S.-based startup Device42 for $230 million to strengthen its IT asset management capabilities. More Here

Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has agreed to acquire Parsionate, a Stuttgart, Germany-based data consultancy specialized in data products and modern data foundation services, ranging from data strategy development to technology implementation. More Here

BioCatch, a Tel Aviv-based digital fraud detection company, has a new majority shareholder in U.K. private equity firm Permira, which acquired shares valuing BioCatch at $1.3 billion from investors including Bain Capital, Maverick Ventures, and Tech Opportunities. More Here

ButcherBox, a meat delivery service with over $600 million in revenue, has acquired Truffle Shuffle, a startup offering live cooking classes and meal kits, in a cash-only deal to help its customers get better at cooking. More Here

LAYOFFS & BANKRUPTCY

Peloton's CEO Barry McCarthy steps down after announcing another round of layoffs affecting 15% of its workforce or around 400 employees. This is the fifth round of layoffs as the company struggles to align its expenses with revenue. Karen Boone and Chris Bruzzo will serve as interim co-CEOs as Peloton continues its restructuring efforts. More Here

STARTUPS & PEOPLE

The U.S. vs. Google antitrust trial is reaching its conclusion, with the Department of Justice alleging that Google used anti-competitive tactics to maintain its dominance in the search engine market. The outcome of this case could have far-reaching implications for Google's business practices and the advertising landscape. More Here

LATEST IN EMERGING TECH

Apple Inc. has announced a massive $110 billion stock buyback program, surpassing its previous record of $100 billion in 2018 and making it the largest buyback ever announced in the United States. More Here

Sam Altman: "GPT-4 is the dumbest AI you'll ever have to use": OpenAI CEO Sam Altman described GPT-4 as the "dumbest" AI model users will have to interact with, anticipating significantly smarter versions in the future. Altman emphasized that OpenAI's AI models, including GPT-4, have considerable potential for improvement, with successive models like GPT-5 and GPT-6 expected to be significantly smarter. Despite the high cost of development, which could range from $500 million to $50 billion annually, Altman is confident in the future value these advanced AI systems will bring to society. More Here

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

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

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