Lenovo Raising $2 Billion Via Convertible Bonds & Former OpenAI Researchers Joining It's Rival Anthropic

In partnership with

Advertise || Join The Community

👋 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 -

• Lenovo Group is raising $2 billion by issuing zero-coupon convertible bonds to Saudi Arabian company Alat.

• Robinhood Markets launched its first-ever $1 billion share buyback plan, to be executed over two to three years starting from the third quarter.

• Neuralink, Elon Musk's brain-chip company, aims to enroll three patients in a clinical study.

• Jan Leike, a former OpenAI researcher, has joined Anthropic to lead a new "superalignment" team focused on AI safety and security.

• T-Mobile will acquire most of U.S. Cellular's wireless operations for $4.4 billion.

• Featured Article : Antler's Framework for Finding the Right Problem to Solve.

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH VINOVEST

Whiskey: The Tangible Asset for Your Portfolio

Most people fail to diversify their investments.

They invest all their money in intangible assets like stocks, bonds, and crypto.

The solution - fine whiskey.

Whiskey is a tangible asset, providing a unique appeal compared to other investments. Casks of whiskey have measurable attributes like size, age, and weight, making their value indisputable. This physical nature allows for clear identification of issues and adjustments to safeguard future value.

Vinovest’s expertise in managing these tangible assets ensures your whiskey casks are stored and insured to the highest standards, enhancing their worth over time. Discover how this tangible, appreciating asset can enhance your investment portfolio.

Schedule a call with a Vinovest advisor to learn more.

PARTNERSHIP WITH US

Want to get your brand in front of thousands founders, investors, executives, and startup operators? For details on our sponsorships, fill up this quick form and we’ll get in touch.

STARTUP FUNDING UPDATES

Lenovo Group is raising $2 billion by issuing zero-coupon convertible bonds to Saudi Arabian company Alat, and has signed an agreement to set up a manufacturing facility in the kingdom. The Chinese tech giant aims to repay debt, establish a regional headquarters and manufacturing base in Saudi Arabia to boost geographic diversification. More Here

Cloover, a European startup that provides financing software to help small solar installers offer loans for new installations. It has raised $114 million, including a $5.5 million seed round led by Lowercarbon Capital, with participation from 9900 Capital and QED's Fontes, along with $108.5 million in debt financing. Cloover was founded by Jodok Betschart, Peder Broms, and Valentin Gönczy. More Here

Lucy Therapeutics, a Waltham, MA-based biotechnology company, raised $12.5M in funding. The round was led by Engine Ventures and Safar Partners with new participation from Bill Gates, Parkinson’s UK, and the Michael J. Fox Foundation, which provided a $2M non-dilutive grant. More Here

Infra.Market is an Indian startup based in Mumbai that helps construction and real estate firms procure materials, offering its own brands and supply chain technology. It has raised $50 million from existing investor MARS Unicorn Fund (a joint venture between Liquidity Group and MUFG Bank), valuing the company at $2.5 billion. Infra.Market's other investors include Accel, Nexus, Foundamental, and Tiger Global. More Here

Thyme Care, a Nashville, TN-based value-based cancer care enabler, received an undisclosed investment from Echo Health Ventures, and CVS Health Ventures. More Here

Ledger, a French startup based in Paris that manufactures secure cryptocurrency hardware wallets, including the newly launched Ledger Stax with an E-Ink curved display designed in partnership with Tony Fadell. The company has not disclosed any recent investment amounts but has previously raised from investors like Cathay Innovation, Draper Esprit, and others. Ledger claims to secure around 20% of the world's crypto assets and has sold over 6 million devices to date. More Here

Skej, a New York-based startup that offers an AI assistant to handle scheduling meetings by scanning emails and finding mutually available times. It has raised just under $1 million in pre-seed funding from investors including Betaworks, Mozilla Ventures, Stem AI, Spice Capital, Deftly.vc, and Differential Ventures. More Here

Delta Green (formerly Nano Green), a Prague, Czech Republic-based energy company, raised €2.2M in funding. Bakers included Tilia Impact Ventures as lead investor, Credo Ventures and Purple Ventures. More Here

Q*Bird, a Delft, the Netherlands-based communications security startup, raised €2.5M in funding. The round was led by QDNL Participations and Cottonwood Technology Fund, with participation from InnovationQuarter. More Here

Coinflow Labs, a Chicago, IL-based instant settlement payment provider, closed its $2.25M seed funding round. The round was led by CMT Digital with participation from Reciprocal Ventures, Jump Crypto, Draper Dragon, Digital Currency Group, and various angel investors. More Here

Claros Technologies, Inc., a Minneapolis, MN-based leader in PFAS analytical and destruction technologies, raised $22M in new funding. The round was co-led by Ecosystem Integrity Fund and American Century Investments, with participation from Capita3, Children’s Minnesota, Kureha America Inc., Open Door Foundation, F. R. Bigelow Foundation, other corporate investors, several individual investors alongside incumbent investors Groundswell Ventures and the University of Minnesota. More Here

Transcend, a San Francisco, CA-based data privacy platform provider, raised $40M in Series B funding. The round, which brought the total raised to nearly $90M, was led by new investor StepStone Group, with participation from HighlandX and existing investors Accel, Index Ventures, 01 Advisors (01A), Script Capital, and South Park Commons. More Here

Ducky, a Nashville, TN-based provider of an AI-powered support platform, raised $2.7M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Penny Jar Capital, with participation from Bread & Butter Ventures, NOMO Ventures, Wilson Sonsini, angel investors and others. More Here

Switchboard, a Miami, FL-based provider of a customizable oracle network that lets users plug into the on-chain economy, raised $7.5M in Series A funding. The round was led by Tribe Capital and RockawayX, with participation from Solana Foundation, Aptos Labs, Mysten Labs (Sui), Subzero Ventures, Starkware, Arche Capital, Breed VC, Ascensive Assets, and others. More Here

OpenSocial Protocol, a Hong Kong-based composable infrastructure layer for building social applications, raised $5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Portal Ventures and SNZ Capital. Other investors included Animoca Brands, Awesome People Ventures, Arche Fund, Decima Fund, Moonrock Capital, OKX Ventures, Orange DAO, Panony, Summer Ventures, and web3 entrepreneurs including Smokey the Bera, Brian Fabian Crain, Mike Dudas, Martin El-Khouri, Roham Gharegozlou, Don Ho, Mable Jiang, Adam Jin, Serge Kassardjian, and Jason Yano. More Here

Supervizor, a NYC-based provider of a plug and play quality assurance platform for finance teams, raised $22M in funding. The round was led by Orange Ventures, with participation from Wille Finance, La Maison Partners, New Alpha Asset Management, Adelie Capital and ISAI. More Here

Sagetap, a San Francisco, CA-based AI-driven marketplace matching SaaS buyers and sellers, raised $6.8M in funding. Backers included NFX, Uncorrelated Ventures, Emergent Ventures, and 15 active customers. More Here

Revolv Space, a Torino, Italy- and Noordwijk, Netherlands-based space tech startup, raised €2.6M in funding. The round was led by Primo Ventures through Primo Space Fund and joined by Takeoff. More Here

Vizcab, a Lyon, France-based provider of a SaaS platform that calculates the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to reduce the carbon impact of construction projects, raised additional €4.5M in Series A funding. The round, which brought the Series A total amount to €9M, was led by KOMPAS VC. Other investors included Global Brain and Brick and Mortar Ventures. More Here

Swiipr, a London, UK-based travel paytech company, raised £6M in Series A funding. The round was led by Octopus Ventures, with participation from TX Ventures and Solano Partners. More Here

Braavo Capital, a NYC-based provider of non-dilutive financing for consumer subscription apps, raised $5M in Series B funding. The round was led by existing investors with participation from Series A lead investor Headline, and accompanied by a new $30M debt fund with Upper90. More Here

NodeOps, a NYC-based provider of a Blockchain node orchestration platform, raised $5M in Seed funding. The round was led by L1D with participation from Blockchain Founders Fund, Finality Capital, and others. It has also has received support from numerous institutional investors, including Oakgrave Ventures, Double Peak Group, Momentum6, and Bitscale Capital. More Here

Grubtech, a Dubai, UAE-based provider of a SaaS integration and unified commerce platform, raised $15M in funding. The round was led by Jahez Group, with participation from Addition and Oryx Fund, the MENA-dedicated fund of Hambro Perks. More Here

Apollo Insurance, a Toronto, Canada-based digital insurance provider and innovator in the emerging embedded finance sector, raised CAD$18.5m in financing. The financing was provided by Fair Capital Partners as lead arranger and agent and Innovation Federal Credit Union as lender. More Here

VENTURE CAPITAL UPDATES

Avendus, a top Indian investment bank, is raising a $350 million private equity fund called Future Leaders Fund III. This will enable Avendus to make larger investments in startups and maintain meaningful ownership positions. Avendus has established a reputation for delivering profitable exits through its relationships with late-stage investors and the growing trend of Indian tech startup IPOs. More Here

Cathie Wood's Ark Investment Management has purchased a stake in Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI, which recently raised $6 billion at a post-money valuation of $24 billion. The stake represents about 2% of the fund's holdings, according to Ark Chief Futurist Brett Winton. Ark has also disclosed positions in OpenAI and Anthropic, indicating a significant investment in the AI sector. More Here

FEATURED ARTICLE

Antler's Framework for Finding the Right Problem to Solve

The Classical school of Economics chanted, "Supply, creates its demand!” Fast forward to the modern era, the “supply first'' days are long gone. We live in an age of abundance, and new-age entrepreneurs must find the customer demand before creating supply. In modern entrepreneurship, this saying has reversed: "Demand creates its supply." 

Where do you think demand originates from? 

The answer is simple: From a problem waiting to be solved!

If you closely look at any long-lasting business, you'll realise that its core idea germinated from solving customers’ heartfelt problems. A significant and market-relevant problem. No surprise that Uri Levine, the founder of Waze, suggests, "Fall in love with the problem, not the solution." In this writeup we will dive into -

• Great companies focus on solving heartfelt problems.

• What defines a heart-felt problem?

• The five characteristics of heartfelt problems

• How do you identify if a heart-felt problem is worth solving?

Great companies focus on solving heart-felt problems

A study conducted by the Harvard Business Review confirmed that 85% of executives believe that their organisations diagnose problems poorly. Most of them agree that this results in poor time and cost management and lost opportunity costs. 

Problem-solving involves finding innovative and creative solutions to address societal, technological, or business-related problems. 

Take, for example, WhatsApp's story. When its founders started the company, their main focus was on solving heart-felt problems concerning the high cost of international communication. This societal problem has existed for centuries since empires started to take over the world.

WhatsApp wasn’t the only player in this space—Viber, Google Allo, Kik, Skype, and even FB Messenger were competing in the market. 

The team at WhatsApp recognised that mobile carriers and other apps were going against the customer problem. Competitors like Viber and Skype limited the experience by charging for international VOIP calls, and mobile carriers were charging exorbitant prices for international SMS. 

WhatsApp doubled down on the customer problem and created features like free calls, free instant messaging, and only 99 cents for the app. 

The bet paid off, and they grew by 100M users every month. The exit? A whopping $19 billion from Meta with only a team of 32 people. 

What does this tell us?

Customer problems are the North Star for all great companies.

We have shared in detailed writeup here, check it out.

STARTUP’S LATEST BUZZ

ACQUISITION & GOING PUBLIC

T-Mobile will acquire most of U.S. Cellular's wireless operations for $4.4 billion. U.S. Cellular will retain 70% of its spectrum, equity investments, and 4,400 telecom towers. The deal aims to improve T-Mobile's coverage and generate $1 billion in cost synergies. More Here

OpenText, a Waterloo, ON, Canada-based cybersecurity company, acauired Pillr, a Wichita, Kansas-based security operations software provider and a subsidiary of Novacoast, a Canadian provider of cybersecurity services. More Here

LAYOFFS & BANKRUPTCY

The founder of the spyware app pcTattletale announced the company's shutdown following a data breach that exposed its customers' information and victims' stolen data. pcTattletale, which marketed its app for monitoring employees, spouses, and partners without consent, had 138,000 customers and stored over 300 million screenshots of monitored devices. The founder deleted the data and closed the company's AWS account, citing the breach's potential exposure of customers.

STARTUPS & PEOPLE

Jan Leike, a former OpenAI researcher, has joined Anthropic to lead a new "superalignment" team focused on AI safety and security.

Leike's team will work on scalable oversight, weak-to-strong generalization, and automated alignment research for controlling large-scale AI systems. Anthropic has positioned itself as more safety-focused than OpenAI, with CEO Dario Amodei bringing ex-OpenAI employees to launch the company. More Here

Robinhood Markets launched its first-ever $1 billion share buyback plan, to be executed over two to three years starting from the third quarter. The trading app company, known for catering to retail traders, aims to grow beyond its startup phase and adopts this move typically associated with more mature companies. Robinhood's shares rose 4.3% after the announcement, as the buyback underscores its belief in being undervalued despite a 61% year-to-date gain. More Here

Neuralink, Elon Musk's brain-chip company, aims to enroll three patients in a clinical study expected to take several years to evaluate its device designed to give paralyzed patients the ability to use digital devices by thinking alone. The study, which began in January, has a primary completion date of 2026 and a full completion target of 2031. More Here

LATEST IN EMERGING TECH

OpenAI has formed a new Safety and Security Committee to oversee critical decisions related to its projects and operations. The committee comprises company insiders, including CEO Sam Altman, raising concerns about transparency and accountability. OpenAI promises to involve third-party experts, but their influence remains unclear, fueling criticisms about the company's governance and prioritization of AI safety. More Here

Google unveiled AI-powered features for its Chromebook Plus line, including a writing assistant, wallpaper creator, and easy access to its Gemini chatbot. The company also introduced new Chromebook Plus models from HP, Acer, and Asus, with prices ranging from $299 to $699. Additionally, Google teased upcoming features like Gemini-powered reading summaries, task resumption across devices, and a focus mode with personalized playlists and "Do Not Disturb" functionality. More Here

Fintech firm Klarna is using generative AI for marketing campaigns and image generation, saving about $10 million annually. It has reduced image production costs by $6 million and cut spending on external marketing suppliers by $4 million. Klarna has partnered with OpenAI for an AI customer service assistant doing the work of 700 full-time agents. More Here

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

• Build Your Pitch Deck : We write, design and model your pitch deck into a storyteller book within 4-5 days.

• Get Your MVP In 15 Days: Have an Idea? Turn your idea into Reality. Move fast before your competitors.

• Break Into VC: Join Our VC Enthusiast slack Community to learn, network and craft path to venture capital.

HOW’S TODAY’S COFFEE ?

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

  Advertise || Join The Community