Google's X Lab Firing Dozens of Employee & Open AI Banned Developer Over Bot Creation

👋 Hey, Sahil here! Welcome to today’s Venture Daily Digest Newsletter. Every day I share updates on massive startup funding, new VC funds launched, tech, and more to read in 5 min! Today we have major updates on -

• Google’s X labs fired dozens of employee and German Software Firm Restructuring 8000 roles.

• Palantir Faces slow growth and stock declines.

• Plural launching its second €400M early-stage fund after 18 month of Debut.

• Featured Article : Silicon Valley's Cargo Culting Problem.

• What Do You Think: Your Approach In Negotiating Term-sheet With Investors?

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💰 MASSIVE FUNDING UPDATES

Welligence Energy Analytics, a Houston, TX-based energy data & intelligence firm specializing in global oil and gas markets, greenhouse gas emissions, and projects related to carbon capture storage and utilization (CCUS), has raised $41M in growth funding. The round was led by Elephant with participation from Veriten, EDG Group, and executives from the energy, information services, and enterprise software industries. More Here

Indian edtech giant Byju’s, once valued at $22 billion, is seeking new funding at a valuation below $2 billion, signaling a major downturn. The startup aims to raise $100 million to $200 million through a rights issue, potentially diluting about 10%, with implications of a valuation as low as $1 billion. More Here

Coana, A Danish startup to build a next-gen software composition analysis (SCA) tool, has raised $1.6 million in a pre-seed round of funding led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Essence VC and a slew of angels including current and former executives from Google, Red Hat, and GitHub. More Here

Artisse, AI photo creation apps that let users generate photos of themselves using uploaded selfies combined with prompts, has raised $6.7 million in seed funding led by The London Fund. More Here

Masa Network, a San Francisco, CA-based builder of a decentralized data marketplace, raised $5.4M in Seed funding. The round, which brought the total amount to $9.2M, was led by Anagram. Additional investors included Avalanche Blizzard Fund, Digital Currency Group, GoldenTree, OP Crypto, Unshackled Ventures, PEER VC, and others. More Here

Clerk, a startup creating a suite of embeddable UIs, APIs and admin dashboards that app developers can use to authenticate and manage users, has raised $30 million in a Series B round led by CRV with participation from Stripe, Andreessen Horowitz and Madrona. More Here

Neatleaf, a Santa Cruz, CA-based provider of a cultivation management platform, raised $4M in funding. The round was led by AgFunder. Tom Shields, a Partner at AgFunder, is joining the Neatleaf Board of Directors. More Here

Elephas, a Madison, WI-based company developing an ex-vivo platform to assess how live patient biopsies respond to immunotherapies, raised $55M in Series C funding. The round, which brought the total amount to $116.5M, was led by Venture Investors Health Fund and State of Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB), with participation from Northpond Ventures, ARCH Ventures, Sands Capital, Moore Strategic Ventures, Tao Invest, and WARF Ventures. More Here

AiDash, a San Jose, CA-based enterprise SaaS company making infrastructure industries climate-resilient and sustainable with satellites and AI, raised $50M in Series C funding. The round, which brought the total amount to $83M, was led by Lightrock, with participation from SE Ventures, G2 Venture Partners, Benhamou Global Ventures, National Grid Partners, Edison International, Shell Ventures, and additional strategic investors. More Here

Albedo, a Denver, CO-based company offering aerial quality imagery from space, raised $35M in Series A-1 funding. The round, which brought the total amount to $97M, was led by Standard Investments, with participation from Booz Allen Ventures, Cubit Capital, Bill Perkins, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Shield Capital, Initialized Capital, Y Combinator, Giant Step Capital, Republic Capital, and others. More Here

Salas O’Brien, an Irvine, CA-based employee-owned engineering and technical services firm, received a minority growth investment from Blackstone (NYSE: BX). The amount of the deal was not disclosed. More Here

Concrete4Change (C4C), a Nottingham, UK-based advanced materials company that permanently captures and utilises CO2 by mineralising it in concrete, raised £2.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Zacua Ventures. More Here

Monta, a Copenhagen, Denmark-based operating platform powering the EV charging ecosystem, closed an €80M Series B funding. The round, which brought the total amount to €130M in just three years, was led by Energize Capital, GreenPoint Partners and Denmark’s state-backed Export and Investment Fund. More Here

Silverfort, a Tel Aviv, Israel- and Boston, MA-based identity protection company, raised $116M in series D funding. Brighton Park Capital (BPC) led the round, which brought the total amount raised to $222M. More Here

Wayland Additive, a Huddersfield, UK-based electron beam 3D printing metal additive company, raised £4.2M in funding. The round was led by Parkwalk Advisors. More Here

Empeq, a NYC-based technology company tackling national security challenges through advanced materials analysis, received an undisclosed investment from Leonid Capital Partners. More Here

Visit Group, a Gothenburg, Sweden-based hospitality and travel software company, received more then €100M in Strategic Growth funding from PSG. More Here

Kiefa, a NYC-based cannabis SaaS platform, raised $2M in Seed funding. The round was led by Bienville with participation from Alaris Capital. More Here

Accent Therapeutics, a Lexington, MA-based biopharmaceutical company focused on small molecule precision cancer therapies, raised $75M in Series C funding. The round was led by Mirae Asset Capital Life Science, with participation from other new investors Mirae Asset Capital, Mirae Asset Venture Investment, Bristol Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc. More Here

Bluewhite, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based agricultural Robot-as-a-Service (RaaS) company, raised $39M in Series C funding. The round was led by Insight Partners, with participation from new investors Alumni Ventures and LIP Ventures, and existing investors Entrée Capital, Jesselson, and Peregrine Ventures. More Here

Norm Ai, a NYC-based company working for regulatory compliance with AI agents, raised $11.1M in Seed funding. The round was led by Coatue, with participation from Haystack Ventures, M13 Ventures, Basis Set Ventures, Expa Ventures, and Atypical Ventures. More Here

CardioSignal, a Turku, Finland- and Palo Alto, CA-based provider of solutions for the detection of heart diseases using digital cardiac biomarkers, raised $10M in Series A funding. The round, which brought the total amount to $23M, was led by DigiTx Partners, with participation from Sandwater and existing investor Maki.vc. More Here

S2 Genomics, a Livermore, CA-based manufacturer of tissue sample preparation systems for single cell genomics assays, raised $16M in Series A funding. Backers included BroadOak Capital Partners and Research Corporation Technologies (RCT). More Here

TravelPerk, a London, UK-based business travel management platform, closed an additional $104m funding round. The deal was led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 with participation from existing investors including Kinnevik and Felix Capital. More Here

Daytrip, a Prague, Czech Republic-based global travel platform providing private door-to-door car transfers in over 110 countries worldwide, closed a $10m Series B funding. The round was led by Taiwania Capital, with participation from existing investors Euroventures, J&T Ventures and N1. More Here

💰 VENTURE CAPITAL UPDATES

Plural, a London, UK and Tallinn, Estonia-based early-stage investment firm, is launching its second €400M early-stage fund. The capital was raised 18 months after the debut fund. Since inception, Plural has invested in 26 companies in six countries. More Here

Dan Tapiero, CEO of 10T Holdings, expresses optimism about discounted crypto deals amid market challenges. His firm, 1Round Table raising a $200-800 million fund, plans to focus on growth-stage crypto companies with $40-50 million revenue for stability. More Here

AC Ventures, a Jakarta, Indonesia-based venture capital firm, closed its fifth investment fund, ACV Capital V L.P., totaling US$210m, including co-investment funds. Limited partners included the World Bank’s IFC, along with prominent financial institutions from the US, the Middle East, and North Asia. More Here

Myriad Venture Partners, a NYC-based early-stage venture firm focused on AI, clean technology and enterprise B2B software, announced its launch with $100M of initial capital commitments. The fund is backed by anchor investor Xerox, along with a new Advisory Council to pioneer collaboration across the venture ecosystem. More Here

𝕏 FEATURED: TODAY’S FEATURED ARTICLE

Wearing A Black Turtleneck Doesn’t Make You Steve Jobs.
Silicon Valley's Cargo Culting Problem.

In the classic variety of cargo cutting, the founder’s mentality is “It's just I'm going to copy something, don't know why but I'm going to copy it and then I will be as successful as the thing I'm copying.” Almost all founders think this.

If you look at some of the companies that had classically covered Culting:
In 2000, Every Startup Was Obsessed With Google & other is “Spend Like Uber.”… Read More Here

💡 SARTUP’S LATEST BUZZ

Acquisition & Exits

zvoove, a Lohne, Germany-based software provider for the temporary staffing and cleaning industries in Europe, acquired Planbition, a Nijmegen, the Netherlands-based provider of a flexible workforce management solution at undisclosed amount. More Here

Bloomreach, a Mountain View, CA-based provider of a platform for e-commerce personalization, acquired Radiance Commerce, an enterprise-grade conversational commerce platform. More Here

Summit Group, a Silver Spring, MD-based independent provider of fiduciary and administrative services, acquired Sanctuary, a Dubai, UAE-based provider of services to entrepreneurs and families, with support from Sovereign Capital Partners. More Here

Layoffs & Shutdown

Brex, Expense management startup was valued at $12.3 billion two years ago, laid off 282 people, or about 20% of its staff today, amid reports of stalled growth, high burn. More Here

Google's X Labs, which conducts research into bleeding edge technologies, is laying off dozens of staff members and soliciting outside investment from VCs. More Here

SAP SE, German software firm opens new tab unveiled a 2 billion euro ($2.17 billion) restructuring plan covering 8,000 roles, as it seeks to better focus on growth in artificial intelligence (AI)-driven business areas. More Here

Startups & People

Palantir faces a stock decline as U.S. government contract growth slows, with agencies seeking cost-effective alternatives. The company's push into international and commercial markets hasn't fully offset the downturn, leading to its slowest estimated annual growth of around 16% in 2023. More Here

MrBeast (aka Jimmy Donaldson) made approximately $263,000 from the first video he posted on X. That may sound like some serious ad revenue, but Donaldson has his doubts. "It’s a bit of a facade,” he tweeted. More Here

🤖 LATEST IN EMERGING TECH

OpenAI has banned a developer who created a ChatGPT-powered bot imitating Rep. Dean Phillips, who news reports say is running against Biden for the Democratic nomination. More Here

Google News searches turn up AI-generated articles that brazenly steal from legitimate media outlets – and The Post has already identified at least one such ripoff of its own published work. Google also confirmed that AI-generated content is not against its policies, but that content can be removed if it is determined to be “spam” that was published specifically to rank high in News results. More Here

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

• Deep Dive: Artificial Intelligence by Chamath Palihapitiya Read Here

• NVIDIA received the First Cheque from investors Only for three reasons by NVIDIA CEO. Read Here

• Exploring macro and strategic trends in the tech By Benedict Evans. Read Here

• Don’t Waste Time Chasing Investors. Do This Instead. Read Here

• Fundraising tips: How To Answer 'Why Now?' Read Here

🤔 WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Previous Poll: I think Both a and b option can give you better idea: Time-weighted IRR & Cash-on-cash return can give you the better idea. Why - TWIRR looks at when the profits come in. It helps us understand the performance of funds over time, especially when investments last for different lengths.

And Cash-on-cash return is about how much actual money you get back compared to how much you put in. It tells us how easy it is to get our money back and how much profit we're really making in cash.

📬 Newsletter / Channels That You Might Be Interested

• Tech Voyage: Get Daily Updates On Trendy Tech Innovation On Instagram.

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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