Masayoshi Son Raising $100 Billion For AI Chip & Lyft CEO's $2 Billion Typo Mistake

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

• Masayoshi Son is looking to raise up to $100 billion for a chip venture.

• CapitalG, Alphabet's venture arm has $7 billion asset under management looking to invest in cybersecurity and AI startups.

• 75% of the Super Bowl traffic received by Elon Musk's X was fake.

• OpenAI has reportedly completed a deal that values the company at $80 billion or more.

• Featured Article : The pitch deck's goal: generate interest, secure a meeting – not investment

• Daily Digest Board: Community Announcement & Your Opinion…

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Massive Funding Updates

SoftBank Group, Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son is looking to raise up to $100 billion for a chip venture that will rival Nvidia. More Here

Miruku, a New Zealand-based food tech company has raised $5 million in pre-Series A round. It was led by Motion Capital and included seed round investor Movac and new investor NZVC. More Here

Rasa, an enterprise-focused conversational generative AI platform with financial services companies as clients, raised $30 million in a Series C round co-led by StepStone Capital and PayPal Ventures. Notably, this marked PayPal’s first AI investment. More Here

Helika, a Toronto, Canada-based data analytics & infrastructure provider for traditional and web3 gaming, raised $8M in Series A funding. The round was led by Pantera Capital with participation from Sparkle Ventures, Diagram Ventures, and Sfermion, Scopely, SciPlay, Spencer Tucker, Damon Gura and Marc Alloul. More Here

Monumental, Amsterdam-based startups aim to revolutionize the construction industry with tech has raised $25 million round, led by Plural and Hummingbird, with participation from Northzone, Foundamental and NP-Hard Ventures. More Here

Pivt, a NYC-based workforce relocation company, raised an undisclosed amount in funding. The round saw participation from Randi Zuckerberg, Evan Segal, Joe Abrams, and Noemis Ventures. More Here

Dapple Security, a Denver, CO-based developer of a digital security technology platform, raised $2.3M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by First In. Access Ventures and Techstars also joined in the round. More Here

BioNeex, a NYC-based provider of a biopharmaceutical industry’s research and development (R&D) business development platform, raised $500K in Seed funding. The round was led by biopharma industry leaders, including former executives at Pfizer and Amgen. More Here

Kynd, a London, UK-based provider of cyber risk management solutions, raised an undisclosed amount in funding. The round saw participation from Verisk and BGF. More Here

Overmoon, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a tech-enabled vacation rental platform, raised $80M in Equity and Debt funding. The round saw participation from NFX, Khosla Ventures, Camber Creek, 1Sharpe, Sunsar Capital, and others. More Here

Flower Labs, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an open-source framework, ecosystem and community for training to accelerate the mainstream adoption of federated and decentralized AI, raised $20M in Series A funding. The round was led by Felicis, with participation from First Spark Ventures, Factorial Capital, Beta Works, Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund, Mozilla Ventures, and angels, such as Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue and GitHub co-found er Scott Chacon. More Here

Rogo, a NYC-based generative AI company for financial institutions, raised $7M in Seed funding. The round was led by AlleyCorp, with participation from Company Ventures, BoxGroup, and ScOp Ventures. More Here

Armilla AI, a Toronto, Canada-based provider of an AI-powered assurance platform, raised $4.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Mistral Venture Partners with participation from Greenlight Re and Chaucer as well as MS&AD Ventures, SixThirty Ventures, Morgan Creek Digital and Y Combinator. More Here

Kairos Aerospace, a 10-year-old startup based in Sunnyvale, Ca., whose hardware and software can detect methane leaks for the oil and gas companies, raised a $52 million round led by BlackRock, with Hartree Partners as well as previous investors DCVC, Climate Investment, and Energy Innovation Capital also taking part. More Here

Orienspace, a four-year-old Beijing startup that builds and launches rockets designed for commercial space missions, raised a $83.5 million Series B round. Investors included Liangxi Science and Technology Innovation Industry Fund of Funds, Hongtai Fund, Xin Ding Capital, CMBC International Holdings, Shanhang Capital, and Shenyin & Wanguo Investment. More Here

Revel, a Brooklyn startup that operates a rideshare service in urban areas utilizing electric moped, electric bikes, and scooters, is in the market to raise a $200 million round. More Here

Simplyblock, a two-year-old Berlin startup that says it is developing low-latency, high performance cloud storage for database applications, raised a $2.7 million seed round led by 42CAP, with Antler and Begin Capital also joining in. More Here

SocialCrowd, a two-year-old Los Angeles startup whose platform is designed to improve employee performance through gamified incentives, raised a $1.6 million round led by Bread and Butter Ventures, with VC414, Serac Ventures, and Gala Capital Partners also taking part. More Here

Fever, a Swedish startup that provides a platform for utility companies, electric vehicle manufacturers, data centers, and power producers to operate their own virtual power plants, raised a $10.8 million seed round led by General Catalyst, with La Famiglia and Norrsken VC also investing. More Here

Marqo, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that uses AI to comb through unstructured data, raised a $12.5 million Series A round. The lead investor was Lightspeed Venture Partners, with Blackbird Ventures and January Capital also pitching in. More Here

Fordefi, a three-year-old New York startup whose digital wallet provides investment funds, trading firms, and web3 companies with features like secure trading, treasury management, and integration with blockchain applications, raised a $10 million seed extension round led by Electric Capital and including Paxos and Alchemy. More Here

Groover, a boston based startups aims to connects artists with tastemakers to help them find their audience, has raised an $8 million Series A round led by OneRagtime, Techmind, Trind and Mozza Angels. More Here

Venture Capital Updates

CapitalG, Alphabet's venture arm has $7 billion asset under management since 2013. CapitalG typically invests between $50 million and $200 million in each company in AI and cybersecurity companies. More Here

RW3 Ventures, a crypto-focused VC firm, closes a $60 million fund with backing from Raptor Group and Abu Dhabi's Mubadala. The firm prioritizes real-world blockchain applications in sectors such as healthcare and music. RW3, led by Pete Najarian, aims to bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3, with investments in companies like Rymedi and CAT Labs. More Here

Sequoia Capital is reportedly pushing famed former partner Michael Moritz to step down from his personal board position at the buy-now-pay-later company Klarna. According to The Information, Sequoia partner Matthew Miller has asked shareholders at Klarna to remove Moritz, with Roelof Botha, Sequoia’s chief, letting them know Miller has the firm's full support. More Here

Featured Article

Keep Your Pitch Deck Short

Pitch deck has one purpose, to drive enough interest to schedule a meeting. That’s it. It should not (and will not) convince someone to invest in the company.

You should be able to accomplish the goal in 6-12 slides, max. If your pitch deck is 14+ pages, you are likely providing too much information. Too much information can be risky because it gives investors more opportunities to find red flags.

So omit unnecessary details so that investors can focus on the following details that matter most.… Read More Here

Startup’s Latest Buzz

Acquisition & Exits

Signal AI, a London, UK-based company which specializes in reputation and risk intelligence, acquired Social 360, a NYC- and London, UK-based reputation intelligence monitoring company. More Here

Codestone, a Poole, UK-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) and cloud database technologies company, acquired Cloud Business Limited, a Basingstoke, UK-based business consulting, digital transformation, and IT managed services. More Here

Yuga Labs, maker of Bored Apes, is acquiring Proof, a startup founded by Kevin Rose that created the Moonbirds NFT collection, for an undisclosed sum. More Here

Layoffs & Shutdown

Nike is laying off approximately 2% of its workforce It's likely that most of the layoffs will be at the company's Beaverton headquarters. More Here

Startups & People

Lyft CEO David Risher took responsibility for a significant typo in an earnings announcement that temporarily added $2 billion to the company's market cap. Despite the error, Lyft's stock rose nearly 35% as the company reported its first full year of positive free cash flow. The typo misstated projected margin expansion, but Lyft's overall performance showed growth in bookings, revenue, and record annual ridership. More Here

A cybersecurity firm is claiming that over 75% of the Super Bowl traffic received by Elon Musk's X was fake. More Here

Despite a dip in funding and layoffs in the gaming industry in 2023, video game startups raised $2 billion, with optimism from VCs for a turnaround in 2024. The sector, shifting from mobile to cross-platform games, sees AI as a key trend, potentially lowering production costs and opening new avenues for startups. The availability of developer talent and increased corporate interest contribute to the positive outlook, despite challenges. More Here

Latest In Emerging Tech

OpenAI has reportedly completed a deal that values the company at $80 billion or more, nearly tripling its valuation in less than 10 months. The deal involves selling existing shares through a tender offer led by Thrive Capital, allowing employees to cash out their shares. More Here

Must Read On Startups, VC & Tech

• Paypal's 'Going Sharp' Stategy To Find Product Market Fit. Read Here

• YC Partner: Avoid These Tempting Startup Ideas - Tarpit Ideas. Read Here

• ​One of the Biggest Public Offerings in 20 Years By Tomasz Tunguz. Read Here

• Reddit has entered into a $60mm licensing deal with an ‘unnamed large AI company. Read Here

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

Daily Digest Board

Community Announcement

I have received a lot of emails encouraging us to use Slack for the founders and investors community instead of Telegram. With this overwhelming request, we are moving ahead with Slack. Stay tuned for more updates…

Your Opinion

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

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✍️Written By Sahil R - The Venture Crew