Figma Disable AI Feature Amid Plagiarism & Chinese Firm Develops Brain-Computer Interface, Rival Neuralinks

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☕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

Figma temporarily disabled its "Make Design" AI feature after it reproduced Apple's Weather app design, sparking accusations of training on existing apps. CEO Dylan Field denied these claims, citing low variability in underlying design systems, and promised a thorough review before reactivating the feature.

Tools for Humanity, a technology startup co-founded and chaired by OpenAI head Sam Altman hired a former X executive - Damien Kieran as its first head of privacy.

China is forming a committee tasked with drafting standards for brain-computer interfaces, indicating its intention to develop technology comparable to Elon Musk's Neuralink.

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Startup Funding Updates

BoldHue, a Boise, ID-based beauty-tech company, raised nearly $3.4M in Seed funding. The round, which brought the total amount nearly $5.2M, was led by Lucas Venture Group with participation from Capital Eleven, Backstage Capital, Tacoma Ventures, Mark Cuban, and Kevin Huvane. More Here

Sensorita, an Oslo-based startup, aims to reduce construction industry waste by using sensors and machine learning to create digital twins of waste bins, providing real-time data for better waste management. The company, founded by Ulrikke Lien, has raised $3.25 million in a funding round led by Brick and Mortar Ventures, with participation from Telenor, bringing its total funding to $6 million. More Here

Prodia, an Atlanta, GA-based provider of a distributed network of GPUs for AI inference solutions, raised $15M in Seed funding. The round was led by Dragonfly Capital. Other investors included HashKey, Web3.com, Index Ventures, Symbolic Capital, OKX Ventures, EV3, Artichoke, TRGC, Folius, Tangent Capital, Southern Equity, Balaji Srinivasan & Sandeep Nailwal (founder of Polygon). More Here

Phaidra, a Seattle-based startup, develops AI-powered control systems to optimize energy efficiency in data centers, pharmaceutical facilities, and commercial buildings. Founded in 2019 by Jim Gao, Katie Hoffman, and Vedavyas Panneershelvam, the company recently raised $12 million in a funding round led by Index Ventures, bringing its total funding to $60.5 million. More Here

Magic, a U.S. startup developing artificial-intelligence models to write software, is in talks to raise over $200 million in a funding round valuing it at $1.5 billion. More Here

Zedify, a Cambridge, UK-based provider of a cargo bike delivery network, raised £4M in funding. Backers included Barclays Sustainable Impact Capital, Mercia Ventures, Midlands Engine Investment Fund (MEIF), and Green Angel Syndicate. More Here

Redactive AI, a Melbourne, Australia-based provider of a developer platform that solves for the missing AI engineering and security skill sets lacking within enterprise software teams, raised $7.5M USD in Seed funding. The round was led by Felicis and Blackbird, alongside Atlassian Ventures and automation unicorn Zapier. More Here

Pi Squared, (Proof of Proof), raised $12.5 Million in seed funding led by Polychain Capital, the syndicate includes ABCDE, Bloccelerate, Generative Ventures, Robot Ventures, and Samsung Next. Angel investors include Shumo Chu, Harish Devarajan, Justin Drake, Sreeram Kanaan, Csongor Kiss, George Lambeth, Yilong Li, Calvin Liu, Lucian Mincu, Karthik Raju, and Common Prefix. More Here

Uncaged Innovations, a NYC-based biomaterial company creating sustainable leather from grains at scale, raised $5.6M in Seed funding. The round was co-led by Green Circle Foodtech Ventures and Fall Line Capital, with participation from Ponderosa Ventures, Golden Seeds and existing investor InMotion Ventures, the investment arm of JLR (Jaguar Land Rover). More Here

Rent2Cash, a Rome, Italy-based rental advance platform for landlords, raised 3m in pre-seed equity and debt funding. Backers were not disclosed. More Here

Rejuvenate Bio, a San Diego, CA-based biotechnology company dedicated to developing novel gene therapies for chronic age-related diseases, received $4M in grant from California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). More Here

Venture Capital Updates

Industry Ventures, which managed over $8 Billion assets has raised a $900 million early-stage hybrid fund, its seventh and largest to date. The fund will allocate 40% to backing VC funds, 40% to direct investments in Series B startups, and 20% to acquiring stakes in emerging investment firms. Despite challenging market conditions, the firm reports that most of its backed managers are successfully raising funds, albeit with longer timelines. More Here

Freedom Trail Capital, founded in 2023 by former Olympians Samyr Laine and Ayanna Alexander-Laine, is working towards a $50 million fund to invest in consumer brands. The firm, which includes a third general partner Ivan Lopez, has already invested in seven startups and has another seven in the pipeline. Leveraging their experiences in sports, entertainment, and brand-building, the founders aim to support talent-led businesses with strong product-market fit and celebrity commitment. More Here

Ardian, a Paris, France-based private investment firm, raised $3.2 Billion for the sixth generation of its global co-investment platform, Ardian Co-Investment Fund VI, including Fund commitments and mandates from Ardian Customized Solutions. The new fund received support from 188 investors globally, including from Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, and Asia. Investors comprised pensions funds, HNWIs, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds. More Here

Featured Article

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We have shared detailed article in our Venture Curator newsletter.

Startup’s Latest Buzz

Acquisition & Going Public

AnaCap, a private equity investor specialised in partnering with founders and entrepreneurial management teams across services, technology and software within the European financial ecosystem, entered into exclusive negotiations to acquire Cleva, a Paris, France-based insurance software provider, from Inetum. More Here

DRiP Haus, an Austin, TX-based provider of a Solana-based creator platform, acquired Vault Music, a provider of a limited-edition music platform on the Solana blockchain. More Here

Taxfix Group, a Berlin, Germany-based provider of a financial platform for digital tax filing, acquired TaxScouts, a London, UK-based company which specializes in accountant-assisted digital tax filing. More Here

Motorola Solutions (NYSE: MSI) , a Chicago, IL-based connect technologies company, acquired Noggin, a Sydney, Australia-based provider of cloud-based business continuity planning, operational resilience and critical event management (CEM) software. More Here

Layoffs & Bankruptcy

Unacademy, the Indian edtech giant valued at $3.4 billion, is laying off about 250 employees across marketing, business, product, and sales departments to achieve profitability. More Here

Startups & People

Figma's CEO Dylan Field announced the temporary disabling of the company's "Make Design" AI feature after it was found to be reproducing Apple's Weather app design.

The issue was discovered by Andy Allen, founder of NotBoring Software, who accused Figma of training its tool on existing apps. Field denied these accusations, attributing the problem to low variability in the underlying design systems, and promised a full quality assurance review before re-enabling the feature. More Here

Former Apple senior lawyer Gene Levoff has been ordered to pay a $1.15 million fine in an SEC civil case related to insider trading. U.S. District Judge William Martini ruled that despite Levoff's claims of stress-induced "self-sabotage," his violations were particularly egregious given his role in enforcing Apple's insider trading policies. Levoff, who had previously pleaded guilty to securities fraud and received probation, must pay the fine despite arguments that he had already been sufficiently punished.

Apple has chosen App Store chief and former marketing head Phil Schiller to represent the company on OpenAI’s nonprofit board, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Scientists in China have developed a robot with an artificial brain grown from human stem cells, which can perform basic tasks such as moving limbs, avoiding obstacles, and grasping objects, showcasing some intelligence functions of a biological brain. The brain-on-chip utilizes a brain-computer interface to facilitate communication with the external environment through encoding, decoding, and stimulation-feedback mechanisms.

Latest In Emerging Tech

AI-powered search engines like Perplexity AI are raising questions about fair use and plagiarism. The startup has been accused of scraping content against publishers' wishes and plagiarizing articles. Perplexity claims its practices are legal and within fair use, but the situation highlights complex issues in copyright law. As AI continues to summarize web content, concerns grow about the impact on publishers and the future of online information.

Google's ambitious plan to achieve net-zero emissions by 2030 has faced a significant setback, with emissions growing 13% in 2023 and 48% since 2019. The company attributes this increase to the growing demand for artificial intelligence and data centers, which require massive amounts of electricity. Despite challenges, Google has increased its use of renewable energy, with 64% of its data centers and offices powered by carbon-free energy last year.

Revolut, a British fintech company, reported a record pretax profit of £438 million ($553.81 million) in 2023, driven by strong user growth and increased interest-related income. The company's revenue nearly doubled to £1.8 billion, with interest income soaring to £500 million from £83 million in 2022. Revolut is seeking a valuation of over $40 billion in a potential share sale and continues to work on obtaining a UK banking license, though the timeline for approval remains uncertain.

Tesla reported a 4.76 percent drop in vehicle deliveries for Q2 2024, with a total of 443,956 units delivered compared to 466,140 in the same quarter of the previous year. Production also saw a decrease, with 410,831 vehicles produced over the three months ending in June, marking a 14 percent decline from Q2 2023. The primary reasons for these drops include competition from other automakers, supply chain issues, and shifts in market demand, though Tesla's sales remain dominated by its Model 3 and Model Y. More Here

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