Venture Daily Digest
Posts
Bill Gates Energy fund Raises $900 Million & Character.AI Founder Rejoining Google After Leaving In 2021

Bill Gates Energy fund Raises $900 Million & Character.AI Founder Rejoining Google After Leaving In 2021

Venture Daily Digest - 05/08/2024

Venture Daily Digest
August 05, 2024

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

Top News

Breakthrough Energy Ventures, launched by Bill Gates, is raising its third fund of $839 million. The fund will focus on climate innovations in electricity, transportation, manufacturing, buildings, and food/agriculture.

Founders of Character.AI, Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, along with other team members, are rejoining Google’s AI unit DeepMind, the companies announced on Friday.

Other Major News

Nvidia delays next AI chip due to design flaw (Scroll To Tech Updates)
Open AI has developed a text watermarking tool to detect ChatGPT-written assignments. (Scroll To Tech Updates)
Neuralink has implanted its brain-computer interface device in a second patient. (Scroll To Tech Updates)
Paul Graham's Views on Competitor Analysis and a Framework for Performing It. (Scroll To Featured Article)

From Our Partner 10 East

Where Sophisticated Investors Access Private Markets

10 East, led by Michael Leffell, allows qualified individuals to invest alongside private market veterans across private credit, real estate, niche venture/private equity, and other one-off investments that aren’t typically available through traditional channels.

Members can participate on a deal-by-deal basis - benefiting from institutional resources, sourcing, vetting, and ongoing monitoring.

Partnership With Us

Want to get your brand in front of 50,000+ founders, investors, executives, and startup operators? For details on our sponsorships, fill up this quick form or reply to this email as “Advertise” and we’ll get in touch.

Latest AI Trending Tool - You can’t miss

Jazon AI: The AI SDR agent that handles reach out, responses & research. Jazon handles outreach autonomously so you can focus on closing deals. (Try Here for free)

Startup Funding Updates

Contextual AI, a San Francisco, CA-based startup that builds customized language models for businesses to enhance their AI applications, raised $80m Series A funding round. The round was led by Greycroft with participation from Bezos Expeditions, NVentures, HSBC Ventures, and Snowflake Ventures as well as existing investors Bain Capital Ventures, Lightspeed Ventures, Lip-Bu Tan, Conviction, and Recall Capital. More Here

Bilt Rewards, a NYC-based loyalty program for the home and neighborhood, raised an additional $150m in funding. The round was led by Teachers’ Venture Growth (TVG), the late-stage venture and growth investment arm of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, with participation from existing investors and new endowments including Vanderbilt University Endowment and the University of Illinois Foundation. More Here

Healx, a Cambridge-based startup using AI to discover new drugs for rare diseases, has raised $47 million in a Series C round. The funding was co-led by Atomico and R42, with participation from Ayana Capital, Balderton, Btov, Global Brain, Jonathan Milner, O2h and VU Venture Partners. More Here

Axle Energy, a London, UK-based energy flexibility platform connecting distributed assets with energy markets, raised $9M (£7M) in seed funding. The round, which brought the total amount raised by the company to over $10M (£8M), was led by Accel with participation from existing investors Picus Capital and Eka Ventures More Here

Mintify, a Uniondale, NY-based builder of an NFT order book, raised $3.4m in funding. Backers included ARCA, Cumberland, Psalion, Master Ventures, Zeneca, GM Capital, and Spencer VC. More Here

Knowde, an online marketplace for chemicals and polymers, has secured a $60 million Series C round. The funding, led by new investors Blue Cloud Ventures and Point72 Private Investments alongside existing backer Sequoia, values the company at over 20x ARR. While this valuation is lower than its previous $500 million. More Here

TS Conductor, a Huntington Beach, CA-based manufacturer of advanced electric power lines, closed a $60m growth funding round. The round was led by Wellington Management, joined by Quanta Services, Gates Frontier, Energy & Environment Investment, Inc., Blue Earth Capital, and Edison International, and repeat investors National Grid Partners, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources. More Here

PortfolioPilot.com, a San Francisco, CA-based AI-driven financial advisory platform from Global Predictions, closed a $2M seed funding round. It’s backed by Morado Ventures, NEA Angel Fund, Unpopular Ventures, and several prominent Silicon Valley angel investors, this new capital brought the total funds raised to $4M. More Here

SafeGuard Privacy, a NYC-based provider of a SaaS-based compliance platform that allows publishers, agencies, brands, data providers, and tech platforms to assess, audit, and comply with global privacy laws, closed a $3.6M USD funding round. The round was led by TechOperators, Dynamism Capital, Sidekick Partners, and two other existing investors. More Here

Access Curated Resources, Support Our Newsletter

1000+ Euro Tech Angel Investors & VC Firms Database (Access Here)
2700+ US Angel Investors & VC Firms Contact Database (Email + LinkedIn Link) (Access Here)
400+ French Angel Investors & Venture Capital Firms Contact Database (Email + LinkedIn Link) (Access Here)
350+ Indian Angel Investors & Venture Capital Firms Contact Database (Email + LinkedIn Link) (Access Here)
Building Cap Table As A Founder: Template to Download (Access Here)
Early Stage Startup Financial Model Template For Fundraising (Access Here)

Venture Capital Updates

In 2021-2022, cultivated meat companies raised over $1.6 billion in venture funding, but only about $20 million in 2024 so far. The industry aims to produce 30 million pounds annually, far below the 100 billion pounds of traditional meat produced today. Mosa Meat's $300,000 hamburger in 2013 now costs around $20 to produce, but remains far costlier than conventional meat. With 200 startups worldwide, many face closure or scaling back due to funding challenges. Despite hurdles in production, cost, and consumer acceptance, companies remain hopeful about contributing to the 60% increase in food production needed by 2050.

Featured Article

Paul Graham's Views on Competitor Analysis and a Framework for Performing It

Paul Graham’ X Profile

Paul Graham on Competition in Early-Stage Startups

Don't Worry about Competitors

When you think you've got a great idea, it's sort of like having a guilty conscience about something. All someone has to do is look at you funny, and you think "Oh my God, they know."

These alarms are almost always false:

Companies that seemed like competitors and threats at first glance usually never were when you really looked at it. Even if they were operating in the same area, they had a different goal.

One reason people overreact to competitors is that they overvalue ideas. If ideas really were the key, a competitor with the same idea would be a real threat. But it's usually execution that matters:

All the scares induced by seeing a new competitor pop up are forgotten weeks later. It always comes down to your own product and approach to the market.

This is generally true even if competitors get lots of attention.

Competitors riding on lots of good blogger perception aren't really the winners and can disappear from the map quickly. You need consumers after all.

Hype doesn't make satisfied users, at least not for something as complicated as technology.

Remember, competition can teach you a lot about what not to build or what to prioritize. Many successful companies have been built by executing simple ideas that their competition didn’t pursue. But how should you conduct competitor analysis for your startup? No, I’m not talking about SWOT analysis. You’ll find plenty of articles online explaining why SWOT analysis isn’t worth it. Instead, I’ll share a framework (by Antler) and a practical approach to competitor analysis.

We haves shared in detailed writeup in our Venture Curator newsletter, Check out here…

Startup’s Latest Buzz

Acquisition & Going Public

Infibeam Avenues acquired 54% of Rediff.com for $3 million, marking a dramatic turn for the 28-year-old former Nasdaq-listed company. Once valued at $600 million, Rediff struggled to adapt to the evolving digital landscape despite its early success. Infibeam plans to leverage Rediff's 55 million monthly visits to cross-sell financial products, with Rediff reporting $4 million in revenue last fiscal year.

Layoffs & Bankruptcy

Rad Power Bikes, a Seattle-based e-bike startup, has undergone its fifth round of layoffs since April 2021, with the latest cuts primarily affecting product development teams. The company, which has raised over $300 million from investors, cited rising costs and economic headwinds as reasons for the decision.

Startups & People

Founders of Character.AI, Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, along with other team members, are rejoining Google’s AI unit DeepMind, the companies announced on Friday. Character.AI reached a $1 billion valuation last year and plans to offer a nonexclusive license of its large language models to Google, which will help fund its growth and the development of personalized AI products. The founders, who left Google in 2021 due to disagreements about advancing chatbot technologies, are now returning amid a competitive AI landscape and will contribute to DeepMind's research team.

Meta is negotiating with celebrities like Awkwafina, Judi Dench, and Keegan-Michael Key to use their voices for its AI assistant, MetaAI, which is akin to Siri and Google Assistant. SAG-AFTRA has reportedly agreed on terms with Meta, requiring the company to pay actors and obtain consent for using their AI-generated likeness, potentially resulting in millions of dollars in fees for the celebrities involved.

Latest In Emerging Tech

Dojo is Tesla's custom supercomputer designed to train its Full Self-Driving neural networks, with the goal of achieving full autonomy and launching a robotaxi. Tesla is developing proprietary D1 chips for Dojo to potentially reduce reliance on Nvidia GPUs and increase AI training efficiency. Musk aims to have Dojo operational by end of year, with plans to expand its capabilities for general-purpose AI training in the future.

OpenAI has developed a text watermarking tool to detect ChatGPT-written assignments but is debating its release due to potential risks. The method involves subtle changes in word selection, creating an invisible watermark detectable by a separate tool.

Neuralink has implanted its brain-computer interface device in a second patient with a spinal cord injury, following successful results with the first patient.

Nvidia reportedly faces potential delays of three months or more in launching its new Blackwell AI chips due to design flaws, according to the Information. This setback could impact major customers like Meta, Google, and Microsoft, who have ordered billions of dollars worth of chips.