Microsoft's $23M Investment in AI Startup & Trump's 35% Tax Rattles VCs

Venture Daily Digest - 12/12/2024

Author

Venture Daily Digest
December 12, 2024

In partnership with

☕ Good Thursday Morning. Welcome to today's quick rundown in the Venture Daily Digest Newsletter.

Scroll down to catch

  • Microsoft's $23M Investment in AI powered IT Operation Startup

  • Trump’s proposed university endowment tax could hurt funding, VC warns

  • Google urges US government to break up Microsoft-OpenAI cloud deal

  • Apple reportedly developing AI server chip with Broadcom

  • OpenAI likely trained Sora on game content — and legal experts say that could be a problem.

  • Microsoft begins testing the ability to share files between iPhones and Windows PCs.

  • Google launches Gemini 2.0.

Fresh from the analyst desk: Battery Ventures just dropped the crystal ball on cloud's future, Andrew Chen's spilling tea on what killed growth hacking, and we've got the inside scoop on why those job listings might be fake (spoiler: it's wild). Oh, and if you're riding the AI wave, there's a fresh take on the "agentic revolution" you can't miss. Speaking of jobs - we've got some real ones waiting for you!

From Our Partner - HubSpot

Need a personal assistant? We do too, that’s why we use AI.

Ready to embrace a new era of task delegation?

HubSpot’s highly anticipated AI Task Delegation Playbook is your key to supercharging your productivity and saving precious time.

Learn how to integrate AI into your own processes, allowing you to optimize your time and resources, while maximizing your output with ease.

Featured Your Startup: Want to get your brand in front of 66,000+ founders, investors, executives, and startup operators? For details on our sponsorships, fill up this quick form and we’ll get in touch.

Venture Daily Digest Picks

  • Don’t miss this event: Where is startup funding headed in 2025?
    Join Founder Institute CEO Jonathan Greechan and top pre-seed startups at the Founder Showcase - Silicon Valley's premier pitch event. Watch global founders pitch live, get funding insights, and network with investors online. (Sign up here for free)

  • How badly Tiger’s ‘spray and pray’ fund performed. (Read)

  • How much time should founders typically allocate to fundraising, from Elizabeth Yin (Hustle Fund Cofounder)? (Read)

  • How many hours do Y Combinator founders work? A poll from YC’s internal forum. (Read)

  • Why LTV Matters More in 2024 by Tomasz Tunguz. (Read)

  • 8 lead generation pillars and 24 tools For Startup Founders. (Read)

  • Duolingo on how to win with gamified design. (Read)

  • Sam Altman - ‘Don't Run Toward Ideas Where There Is Oversupply of Founder Relative To Market Demand.’ (Read)

  • The Best Time to Invest in a Company is When it Most Violates a Popular Narrative… (Read)

  • Building a VC fund is harder than you think - Wischoff Fund Journey (Read)

  • The playbook teams are using to crush viral app growth (Link)

Startup Funding Updates

NeuBird, a San Francisco, CA-based creators of Hawkeye, a GenAI empowered ITOps engineer, raised $22.5M in funding. The round was led by M12, Microsoft’s venture fund, with additional participation from Mayfield, StepStone Group and Prosperity7 Ventures. 

Finny, a NYC-based provider of a fintech platform using Gen AI, raised $4.3M in Seed funding. The round was led by Maple VC and HNVR, with participation from Crossbeam Ventures, Liquid 2, Y Combinator, Morningstar CEO Kunal Kapoor, Gusto CPO Tomer London and Deel COO Dan Westgarth.

Ayar Labs, a San Jose, CA-based company which specializes in optical interconnect solutions for large-scale AI workloads, raised $155M in Series D funding. The round was led by Advent Global Opportunities and Light Street Capital with participation from AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, NVIDIA, 3M Ventures and Autopilot. They joined existing investors such as Applied Ventures LLC, Axial Partners, Boardman Bay Capital Management, GlobalFoundries, IAG Capital Partners, Lockheed Martin Ventures, Playground Global, and VentureTech Alliance. This brings the total funding to $370 million and raises the company’s valuation to above $1 billion.

CoachCare, a NYC-based remote patient monitoring (RPM) and virtual care management company, raised $11M in Funding. The round was led by Catalyst Investors.

Servicengine, a Danbury, CT-based provider of SaaS relocation management software, raised $3.1M in funding. The round was led by Advantage Capital.

RapidCanvas, an Austin, TX-based AI agents company, raised $16M in funding. The round was led by Peak XV, with additional participation from Titanium Ventures and existing investors Accel and Valley Capital Partners, bringing the total amount to $23.5M.

Ambrosia Biosciences, a Boulder, CO-based drug discovery company, raised $25M in Series A funding. The round was led by Merck with participation from participation from existing investors BVF Partners and Boulder Ventures.

Syncell, a Taipei, Taiwan- and Watertown, MA-based company which specializes in new subcellular protein purification and spatial proteomics analysis, raised $15M in Series A funding. The round was led by Taiwania Capital, with participation from new and existing investors.

Players Health, a Minneapolis, MN-based provider of athlete safety and sports insurance solutions, raised $60M in Series C funding. The round was led by Bluestone Equity Partners with participation from Mosaic General Partners, RPM Ventures, SiriusPoint and TriplePoint Capital.

Mynt, a Stockholm, Sweden-based provider of corporate credit cards and spend management solutions, raised €22M in Series B funding. The round, which brought the total amount to $50M, was led by Vor Capital, with participation from existing investors CNI, Incore, and others.

Silent Push, a Reston, VA-based preemptive cybersecurity intelligence company, raised $10M in Series A funding. The round was led by Ten Eleven Ventures and Stepstone Group. This combined with its early seed round brings its total funding to $22M.

Becis, a Singapore-based company which specializes in a variety of decarbonisation solutions, raised US$53M in equity funding. Backers included FMO, KLP Norfund Investments, Pula Investments and Siemens Financial Services.

Concentro, a NYC-based provider of a clean energy financing platform, raised $3M in Seed funding. The round was led by firstminute Capital, with participation from Silence VC, LifeX, Plug & Play, and Avesta Fund and existing investors J Ventures, Contour Venture Partners, & Dorm Room Fund as well as various angels and VC scout networks.

Veradermics, a New Haven, CT-based clinical-stage aesthetics and dermatology-focused biopharmaceutical company, raised $75M in Series B funding. The round was led by Suvretta Capital Management and included new investors Longitude Capital, Surveyor Capital (a Citadel company), Osage University Partners, and PhiFund. Existing investors, JW Childs Associates, Connecticut Innovations, and Vlad Coric, MD, also participated.

Albert Invent, an Oakland, CA-based provider of an end-to-end R&D platform accelerates chemical innovation in materials science using AI, raised $22.5M in Series A funding. The round was led by Coatue, with participation from TCV, Index Ventures, F-Prime, and Homebrew.

RL Core Technologies, an Edmonton, AB-based company developing optimization software for improved process control in water and wastewater, raised $5M in Seed funding. The round was led by TQ Ventures, with participation from Flying Fish Ventures.

EzDubs, a San Francisco, CA-based startup providing a real-time speech translation app, raised $4.2m in Seed funding. The previously unannounced funding round was led by Rahul Garg and Neeraj Arora during their tenure at Venture Highway. Other participants were Y Combinator and angels including Jared Friedman (Y Combinator), Amjad Masad and Michele Catasta (Replit), Qasar Younis (Applied Intuition) and Ben Firshman (Replicate).

CarbonX, a Delft, The Netherlands-based battery anode materials company, raised additional €4M in Growth funding. The round was led by Energy Transition Fund Rotterdam managed by InnovationQuarter and existing shareholders Innovation Industries, and Borski Fund.

Normo.ai, a Milano, Italy-based provider of a SaaS platform that offers a specialized GPT assistant for accountants and business professionals, raised €250K in Seed funding. Backers included Fabio Nalucci and Pertile Venture.

Exabits, a San Mateo, CA-based provider of a compute-base layer platform transforming high-end GPU (graphic processing units) clusters into accessible investment assets, raised $15M in funding, at a $150M valuation. The round was led by Hack VC, along with other investors, following a previous round led by Portal Ventures.

Stainless Software, Inc., a NYC-based provider of an API platform, raised $25M in Series A funding. The round was led by a16z with participation from Sequoia, The General Partnership, Felicis, Zapier, MongoDB Ventures, and some operators, including Claire Hughes Johnson (former Stripe COO) and Amit Agarwal (Datadog President).

SpotmyEnergy, a Cologne, Germany-based cleantech startup, raised €10.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Norrsken VC with participation from Vorwerk Ventures alongside existing investor Picus Capital.

Wavegate Corporation, a Lake Charles, LA-based developer of neuromodulation technology for chronic pain management, raised $26M in Series A funding. The round was led by UCEA Capital Partners.

Emerging Startup That You Can’t Miss - RYSE

$10 Million in Revenue, 200% Growth—Meet the Smart Home Company That’s Changing the Game

Smart homes are the future, and RYSE is leading the charge in one category being ignored by the competition. With 10 granted patents and products already earning rave reviews on Amazon and Best Buy, RYSE has achieved over $10 million in total revenue and is grew at an astonishing 200% month-over-month.

RYSE make it easy to automate window coverings, helping homeowners upgrade to smart living in minutes. And with partnerships with major retailers like Home Depot, Lowe’s, and BestBuy, RYSE is rapidly expanding its footprint in a market growing 23% annually.

At just $1.75 per share, you can invest in this game-changing company before their next wave of growth.

Venture Capital Updates

Floodgate's Ann Miura-Ko warns that the Trump administration's proposed endowment tax hike from 1.4% to 35% could significantly impact venture funding. The concern stems from university endowments being major limited partners in private equity and venture capital investments. While similar legislation was previously blocked by Democrats, the proposal's fate remains uncertain despite VC representation among the new administration's appointees.

Latest In Tech

Apple is collaborating with Broadcom on its first AI-focused server chip, codenamed Baltra, focusing on networking technology essential for AI processing. While Apple's current Silicon chips power its devices' local AI features, this new server chip aims to support cloud-based AI tasks like Siri and Maps, with the design expected to be completed within 12 months.

OpenAI's Sora, a video-generating AI model, appears to have been trained on video game content including Twitch streams and game walkthroughs, as evidenced by its ability to generate gaming-related content and replicate streamer likenesses. This potential use of gaming content in training data could have significant legal implications for OpenAI, particularly regarding copyright and trademark rights, as video game content involves multiple layers of protection including game developers' rights, player-created content, and streamer performances.

Google has asked the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to dismantle Microsoft's exclusive agreement to host OpenAI’s technology on its cloud servers, according to a Reuters report. The request follows an FTC inquiry into Microsoft's business practices, with companies like Google and Amazon alleging the deal forces cloud customers onto Microsoft servers, leading to possible extra costs. This move highlights ongoing tensions between Google and Microsoft over artificial intelligence dominance, with past accusations of anti-competitive behavior and secret lobbying efforts surfacing between the tech giants.

Other News

Microsoft is rolling out a new feature to Windows Insiders that enables file sharing between iPhones and Windows PCs through its Phone Link app, allowing users to transfer files in both directions using simple sharing options. This addition expands on Phone Link's existing iOS capabilities, which were introduced last year to enable phone calls, iMessage integration, contacts access, and notification viewing on Windows PCs, though the timeline for a wider release of the file sharing feature remains unspecified.

Google Gemini 2.0 Flash introduces advanced features, offering developers real-time conversation and image analysis capabilities through a multilingual and multimodal interface that processes text, imagery, and audio inputs. This new AI model allows for tool integration such as coding and search, enabling code execution, data interaction, and live multimodal API responses to enhance development processes. With its demonstration, Gemini 2.0 Flash showcases its ability to handle complex tasks, providing accurate responses and visual aids, aiming to eventually make these features widely accessible and affordable for developers.

In-Depth Insights

  • The Agentic Revolution A deep dive into the "agentic" revolution in startups, examining how founders can leverage agency-driven decision-making to build resilient organizations in today’s dynamic landscape.

  • 10 Years After Growth Hacking Reflecting on a decade of growth hacking, Andrew Chen provides insights into how the growth hacking landscape has evolved and what modern startups need to focus on for sustainable growth.

  • OpenCloud 2024: The Future of Cloud Computing Battery Ventures’ comprehensive report on OpenCloud 2024 delves into the latest trends in cloud computing, exploring key insights and predictions for the evolution of the cloud industry.

  • Why Companies List Fake Jobs This article explores why companies list fake job openings—from talent pipelining to boosting brand perception. A revealing look at a widespread HR tactic and its implications for both job seekers and employers.

How Can I Help You?

Today’s VC & Startup Job Opportunities

  • VC Investment Intern - First momentum venture | Germany - Apply Here

  • Investment Analyst - Velocity Venture | Singapore - Apply Here

  • Senior Associate - Motley Fool Venture | USA - Apply Here

  • Founder Associate - Allocator One | UK - Apply Here

  • Executive Assistant - Transition VC | India - Apply Here

  • Senior Investment Associate - Forum Venture | USA - Apply Here

  • Investor Relations Analyst - B Capital Group | USA - Apply Here

  • Ventures Associate, AI Investing - Point 72 Venture | USA - Apply Here

  • Investment Analyst Intern - Motion Venture | Singapore - Apply Here

  • Principal - Africa Climate Ventures | Kenya - Apply Here

RESOURCES

  • Early Stage Startup Financial Model Template For Fundraising (Access Here)

  • All-In-One Guide To Pitch Deck Storytelling - Free Template & Curated Resources (Access Here)

  • All-in-one VC interview preparation guide—check it out. For a limited time, we are offering a 30% discount. Don’t miss this. (Access Here)

  • Building Cap Table As A Founder: Template to Download (Access Here)

  • 2700+ US Angel Investors & VC Firms Contact Database (Email + LinkedIn Link) (Access Here)

  • 1000+ Euro Tech Angel Investors & VC Firms Database (Access Here)

  • 400+ French Angel Investors & Venture Capital Firms Contact Database (Email + LinkedIn Link) (Access Here)

  • 350+ Indian Angel Investors & Venture Capital Firms Contact Database (Email + LinkedIn Link) (Access Here)

Do you have any news to share about your Startup or VC fund?
Please email us.

We’ll be back in your inbox on Tomorrow.

Reply

or to participate.