Citigroup Plans to Lay Off 20,000 Roles & Apple in Legal Battle Over App Store

🗞️ TODAY’S MAJOR UPDATES

• Citigroup, investment bank announced layoff of 20,000 roles in a bid to save as much as $2.5 billion.

• Thomvest Ventures, a San Francisco, CA-based venture capital firm, closed a new $250m fund.

• Funding Surge in climate tech and biotech sector.

• Featured Article : Steve Jobs: 'The Half-Truth of First-Mover Advantage'!

• What Do You Think: Average annual user acquisition cost you find acceptable for a scalable tech startup?

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💰 MASSIVE FUNDING UPDATES

Electra, Paris-based EV charging startup raised a $330 million (€304 million) Series B round. PGGM, a Dutch pension fund service provider, as well as Bpifrance’s Large Venture fund are leading the funding round. More Here

Noctrix Health, Inc., a Pleasonton, CA-based medical device company, closed a $40M Series C financing. The round was led by Sectoral Asset Management with participation from other new investors Angelini Ventures, ResMed, and Asahi Kasei Corporation and insiders OrbiMed and Treo Ventures. More Here

Granata Bio, a Boston, MA-based biopharma company focused on the infertility medication market, raised $14M in Series A funding. The round was led by GV (Google Ventures) with participation from CooperSurgical, Gedeon Richter, Alumni Ventures, Amboy Street Ventures, Vibe Bio and others. More Here

ZymoChem, a San Leandro, CA-based provider of a carbon-efficient bio-manufacturing platform, raised $21M in Series A funding. The round was led by Breakout Ventures with participation from new investors including lululemon athletica, inc. and Toyota Ventures, and existing investors including GS Futures, KdT Ventures, and Cavallo Ventures. More Here

Weavix, a Wichita, KS-based technology firm specializing in frontline communication and efficiency solutions, raised $23.6M in Series B funding. The round was led by Insight Partners, with participation from Four More Capital, The Friedkin Group, and Perkins Coie. More Here

Palm Tree Crew, a Miami, FL-based entertainment, hospitality, and investment holding company, recently closed a $6M funding round at a $150M valuation. Backers included Barry Sternlicht, Brad Garlinghouse, David Adelman, Jim Coulter, Jonathan Kraft, Keith Rabois, and Michael Meldman, among others. More Here

Delfos, a Barcelona, Spain-based provider of a virtual engineer software platform for renewable energy assets, raised €6.3m in seed funding. The round was led by Contrarian Ventures and Headline with participation from existing investors DOMO.VC and EDP Ventures. More Here

Snyk, a Boston, Massachusetts-based developer security company, acquired Helios, a Tel Aviv, Israel-baserd leader in capturing application runtime data. More Here

Zeal, a Cairo, Egypt-based provider of a POS terminals value added service solution, raised $4M in funding. The round was led by Raed Ventures and Cur8 Capital, with participation from strategic angel investors. More Here

Tandem PV, a San Jose, CA-based company which specialized in perovskite solar technology, raised additional $6M in funding. The round, which brought the total amount to $27M, was led by existing investor Planetary Technologies, with participation from new investor Uncorrelated Ventures. More Here

Second Front Systems, a public-benefit corporation accelerating the delivery of mission-critical solutions in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and for NATO, received undisclosed investment from Booz Allen Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Booz Allen Hamilton (NYSE: BAH), NEA and Moore Strategic Ventures. More Here

Cyrano Therapeutics, a Delray Beach, FL-based regenerative medicine company, raised $9.0M in Series B funding. The round was co-led by the Florida Opportunity Fund managed by DeepWork Capital and existing investors Lumira Ventures and Remiges Ventures. More Here

Oxford Medical Simulation, a Boston, MA-based company which specialized in virtual reality healthcare training, raised $12.6M in Series A funding. The round was led by Frog Capital with follow-on capital from ACF Investors, existing shareholders and strategic partners. More Here

Stalicla, a Geneva, Switzerland-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company advancing precision medicine pipelines for neuropsychiatric and neurological disorders, raised $17.4M in Series B funding. The round was led by SPRIM Global Investments Pte, Ltd, with key participation from core investors. More Here

Ineratec, a Karlsruhe, Germany-based e-Fuel company, raised over $129M in Series B funding. The round was led by Piva Capital with participation from Planet A Ventures, MPC, High-Tech Gründerfonds, FO Holding, Safran Corporate Ventures, Honda, ENGIE New Ventures, HG Ventures, TDK, Copec WIND Ventures, RockCreek, Emerald, and Samsung Ventures. More Here

Xyte, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based developer of an all-in-one servitization platform for device and hardware manufacturers, raised $30m in funding led by Intel Capital, with participation from Samsung Next and existing investors S Capital and Mindset Ventures. More Here

Panacea Financial, a Little Rock, AR-based financial technology company dedicated to providing financial services to doctors and doctors’ practices, raised $24.5M in Series B funding. The round was led by Valar Ventures. More Here

Pliant, a Berlin, Germany-based company which specializes in API-based solutions and credit card services, raised additional €8M in Series A funding. Molten Ventures joined SBI Investment, Alstin Capital, and Motive Ventures. More Here

elv ai, a Bratislava, Slovakia-based startup that combines artificial intelligence with human moderators to make the internet safer for debate, raised €500K in funding. The Slovak CB ESPRI Impact One fund made the investment. More Here

💰 VENTURE CAPITAL UPDATES

Thomvest Ventures, a San Francisco, CA-based venture capital firm, closed a new $250m fund. The new fund, which brought the firm’s total assets under management (AUM) to $750m, enables the firm to invest in the next generation of companies across the firm’s core focus areas of financial and real estate technology, cybersecurity, cloud and AI infrastructure. More Here

Sandwater, an Oslo, Norway-based venture capital firm, closed its early-stage venture fund, at 1.4bn NOK (approx. €125M). Backers included multiple international institutional investors, including, amongst others, the European Investment Fund (EIF), First Swedish National Pension Fund (AP1), and LGT, alongside the Norwegian climate fund Nysnø, Investinor, family offices of Canica and Lærdal, and many other private equity investors in the Nordics. More Here

𝕏 FEATURED: TODAY’S FEATURED ARTICLE

Steve Jobs: 'The Half-Truth of First-Mover Advantage'

Being first in the market is often seen as a competitive advantage, but how real is this competitive advantage? For example, do you have to be first – new product, new service, new market, etc?

Moving quickly and striving to establish your business as the ‘go-to’ product/solution in a new market (or niche) sounds like a competitive advantage, but the reality is often very different….Read More Here

💡 SARTUP’S LATEST BUZZ

Acquisition

Mytraffic, a London, UK-based provider of location intelligence and traffic analytics solutions, acquired Geoblink, a Madrid, Spain-based provider of a geospatial intelligence platform. More Here

Goodnotes, London-based notetaking startup acquiring South Korean startup Dropthebit, which operates a meeting and video summary tool called Traw. More Here

MPearlRock, a NYC-based investor in emerging consumer packaged goods brands, acquired nutpods, a Bellevue, WA-based brand in the field of a non-dairy coffee creamer category. More Here

Össur (Nasdaq Copenhagen: OSSR), a Reykjavik, Iceland-based provider of mobility solutions, acquired Fior & Gentz, a Lüneburg, Germany-based maker of lower limb neuro orthotic components. More Here

Layoffs & Shutdown

Citigroup, investment bank announced layoff of 20,000 roles, or 10% of its workforce, in a bid to save as much as $2.5 billion amid slowed revenue. More Here

The video game industry has experienced a surge in layoffs in 2024, with major companies like Unity Software, Twitch, Playtika, Discord, and others cutting a significant number of jobs. As of 2024, at least 2,967 people have been laid off, continuing a trend from the previous year. The industry, despite its significant revenue, faces challenges such as corporate greed, industry consolidation, and the lack of workers' unions to protect employees. More Here

Party Fowl, a Nashville Hot Chicken chain, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, citing challenges including pandemic-related impacts, underperforming locations, and financial struggles. More Here

🤖 LATEST IN EMERGING TECH

OpenAI is forming a Collective Alignment team to gather public input and encode it into their AI models to ensure alignment with human values. This initiative follows their public program, launched in May, awarding grants for experiments in establishing a democratic process for AI rules. OpenAI faces increased scrutiny, including a U.K. probe and accusations from rivals, as it addresses regulatory concerns and aims to limit malicious use of its technology in elections. More Here

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear Apple and Epic Games' appeals in the antitrust dispute over the App Store, maintaining the lower court ruling. While Apple largely won the case, the court decided app developers could steer customers to the web for transactions, challenging Apple's "anti-steering" rules. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney called it a "sad outcome," but highlighted that developers can now inform U.S. customers about better prices on the web, emphasizing ongoing regulatory actions against Apple's app store practices. More Here

Amid the Apple-Beeper dispute, users of Beeper's messaging apps are reporting being banned from iMessage on their Macs, possibly due to Apple's actions to disable Beeper's iMessage-on-Android solution. Apple's measures have drawn bipartisan attention, with legislators urging a DOJ investigation into potential anticompetitive behavior. More Here

📰 TODAY’S MUST READ ON: STARTUP, TECH & VC

• Open Source Models : What Can We Determine from Download Patterns? Read More (Technology)

• Why Your Startup Idea Isn’t Big Enough for Some VC ? Read More (Startups)

• AI is Not the Death of Vertical SaaS Read More (Technology)

• How Startups Like Reddit Raised Funding With Just an Idea, Without Writing A Line Of Code? Read More (Startups)

🤔 WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Yesterday’s Poll:

📬 Newsletter That You Might Be Interested

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That’s It For Today! Will Meet You Tomorrow!
Happy Wednesday! 🥂

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✍️Written By Sahil R | Venture Crew Team