Musk unexpectedly offers support for California’s AI bill & IBM Closes China R&D Operation

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Top News

Elon Musk has expressed support for California's SB 1047, a bill requiring safeguards for large AI models to prevent serious harm. This stance aligns with Musk's long-standing advocacy for AI regulation, despite his own company xAI potentially being subject to the bill's requirements. Musk's position contrasts with OpenAI, which opposes SB 1047 and supports an alternative bill.

IBM announced the complete closure of its China R&D operation, affecting over 1,000 jobs.

Other Major News

• Apple may be working on an AI 'personality' to replace Siri on its robots. (Scroll To Tech Updates)

• Apple announced that CFO Luca Maestri will step down from his role on January 1. (Scroll To People Updates)

• OpenAI, Adobe, and Microsoft have support for California's bill requiring tech companies to label AI-generated content. (Scroll To Tech Updates)

• How Investors Will Grade Your Startup: A Sample VC Memo On A $5M Seed Round.. (Scroll To Featured Article)

• VC & Startups Job Opportunities (Scroll To Today’s Opportunities)

• Build your fundraising pitch deck with the help of Venture Daily Digest’s expert team. (Scheduled a call with us)

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🗞️ Startup Funding Updates

Slingshot AI, a New York- and London, UK-based AI mental health startup, reportedly raised approximately $30m in seed funding. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Other backers in the company included Felicis Ventures, BoxGroup, Gokul Rajaram, Jerry Murdock, Bryan Baum, Sumeet Gajri, Arjun Sethi, Mike Stoppelman, Liu Jiang, Cory Levy, and David Cahn. More Here

Beam Mobility, an e-scooter startup operating in Australia and New Zealand, provides shared electric scooters in urban areas. The company has raised $135 million from investors including Affirma Capital and Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia India and SEA). More Here

Viggle AI, a Canadian startup, has developed a 3D-video foundation model called JST-1 that creates physics-based animated characters for memes, visualizations, and creative projects. The company has raised $19 million in a Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Two Small Fish. More Here

PrivacyHawk, a Los Angeles, CA-based company which specializes in consumer data protection, raised additional $3M in funding. Backers included K Street Capital, ffVC, Cadron Capital, Alliance Catalyst Fund, Array, Liebenthal Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Duro, and Gaingels. More Here

Viggle AI, a Toronto, Canada-based startup empowering character animations through generative artificial intelligence, raised $19M in Series A funding. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from additional investor Two Small Fish. More Here

U2U Network, a Hanoi, Vietnam-based blockchain infrastructure platform, received a seed investment from V3V Ventures. The amount of the deal was not disclosed.

Corn, a developer of an Ethereum (ETH) Layer-2 network that uses its hybrid tokenized Bitcoin (BTCN) as gas and redirects network yield back to users and protocols, raised $6.7M in funding. The round was led by Polychain Capital with participation from Binance Labs, Framework Ventures, ABCDE, Symbolic Capital, HTX Ventures, Relayer Capital, Sandeep Nailwal, Smokey, Papa Bear, Primo, 0xSami, Udi Wertheimer, Andrew Huang, Sam MacPherson, Brian Kang, Georgios Vlachos, and others. More Here

HomeLight, a Scottsdale, AZ-based real estate technology platform empowering innovative transactions top agents, lenders, and their clients, raised $20M in Series D extension funding. The round was led by Zeev Ventures, with participation from Stereo Capital and Menlo Ventures, among others. More Here

Butlr, a Burlingame, CA-based physical AI (PAI) startup, raised $38M in Series B funding. Backers included Pacific Alliance Venture, GS Futures, DNX Ventures, Ray Stata, Joi Ito, Carrier, and Qualcomm. More Here

BSX, a provider of a DeFi derivatives protocol built on the Ethereum Layer 2 network Base, raised $6.2M in funding. The total amount above includes a pre-seed and seed funding rounds. The latest $4m seed round was led by Blockchain Capital while a $2.2m pre-seed round was raised a year ago but announced along with the seed. Backers included Bankless Ventures, No Limit Holdings, Cadenza Ventures, Breed VC, Maelstrom, as well as angels Zach Segal, Tommy Shaughnessy, and Isaiah Washington. More Here

SatLayer, a BTC re-staking platform developer, raised $8m in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Castle Island Ventures and Hack VC with participation from Franklin Templeton Digital Assets, OKX Ventures, Mirana Ventures, and others. More Here

Home Run Dugout, Austin, TX-based entertainment provider featuring indoor soft-toss baseball, raised $22.5M in Series A funding. The round was led by Lagniappe Capital Partners with participation from BCS Capital and from existing investors. More Here

Resal, a Jeddah, Saudi Arabia-based provider of an e-gifting platform, raised $9M in funding. Backers included Derayah Ventures Fund, Al-Wafrah AlThanya Investment Company, Venture Souq FinTech Fund, ADDiriyah Asset Management, Nomad Holdings, Bugshan Investment Group, and several family offices, along with other angel investors. More Here

Sunswap, a London, UK-based clean-tech startup decarbonising cold chain logistics, raised £17.3M in funding. The round was led by BGF, with participation from Shell Ventures, Dutch venture capital fund, Move Energy, and existing backers Barclays and Clean Growth Fund. More Here

Tilt, a London, UK-based provider of a real-time shopping app for fashion, raised $18m in Series A funding. Theround was led by Balderton Capital with participation from existing investors TQ Ventures, Earlybird and Seedcamp. More Here

Revenew, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a payment operations and optimization platform, raised $4.6m in seed funding. The round was led by Fika Ventures, with participation from Dash Fund and TTV Capital. More Here

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📰 Venture Capital Updates

Ben Freeberg, a cancer survivor and former venture capital associate, has launched Oncology Ventures with a $30 million debut fund. The firm focuses on investing in startups that improve cancer care through data and technology, excluding drug discovery. Oncology Ventures has already backed seven startups and attracted capital from prominent healthcare institutions, with Freeberg's personal experience helping him connect with founders and win competitive deals.

CenterOak Partners, LLC, a Dallas, TX-based private equity firm, closed CenterOak Equity Fund III, L.P. at over $1.1 billion. The Fund’s capital was largely committed by existing institutional investors, but it also attracted support from many new limited partners globally, including private and public pensions, endowments and foundations. More Here

📌 Featured Article

How Investors Will Grade Your Startup: A Sample VC Memo On A $5M Seed Round.

This framework was shared by John Hu, an entrepreneur with experience at leading venture capital firms such as Goldman Sachs and Norwest Venture Partners. John is currently building his own startup called Stan. He applied this framework to evaluate his own venture, rating each category.

• Team: What is the quality of your team? How strong is your “Founder-Market’Fit? Why is your team the best team to solve this problem?

• Market Size: How large is this market? Does it have BN$+ potential

• Competition: How competitive is this market?

• Differentiation: How will you beat the competition? What’s your competitive angle?

• Metrics: How strong are your metrics? How strong of a growth indication do they give?

• Exit Potential: How many potential buyers are there of your company?

These are great points that founders can consider to grading their startup, but there is a simpler way to grade a startup as 'A' or 'C,' as shared by Herwig Springer -

• 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗺
  A for taking market feedback over theory.
  C for having outside commitments at play.

• 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗦𝗶𝘇𝗲
  A for evidence to support target market cap.
  C for overestimating the accessible market.

• 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗲𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻
  A for having a key competitive advantage.
  C for failing to acknowledge key competitors.

• 𝗗𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻
  A for building strong moats like proprietary technology.
  C for differentiation based on easily replicable factors.

• 𝗠𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘀
  A for balancing growth and profitability metrics.
  C for focusing on vanity metrics like sign-ups.

• 𝗘𝘅𝗶𝘁 𝗣𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹
  A for considering options like M&A.
  C for hyperfocusing on one path.

We haves shared in detailed writeup in our Venture Curator newsletter, Check out here…

📑 Startup’s Latest Buzz

Acquisition & Going Public

Enigma, a cybersecurity platform focusing exclusively on Zero Trust, acquired Onclave Networks, a cybersecurity company focused on securing devices, services, and people across diverse environments.

Summit Partners and Vista Equity Partners are exploring a sale of Trintech, potentially valuing the financial software provider at around $2 billion. Trintech, based in Plano, Texas, generates $200 million in annual revenue and $90 million in EBITDA. The company serves 4,200 organizations, including Toyota and the Dallas Cowboys, and acquired a financial software business from Fiserv in 2023.

Layoffs & Bankruptcy

Startups & People

Apple announced that CFO Luca Maestri will step down from his role on January 1, transitioning to lead the corporate services team while reporting directly to CEO Tim Cook. Kevan Parekh, current VP of Financial Planning, will be promoted to CFO after 11 years with the company.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov's arrest in France for alleged failure to moderate illegal content has unexpectedly boosted the app's downloads and rankings. The app has climbed to top positions in various App Store categories, particularly in France, with global iOS downloads increasing by 4%. French President Emmanuel Macron stated that the arrest was part of an ongoing judicial investigation and not a political decision.

NASA announced that astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore will return from the ISS in February 2024 with the SpaceX Crew-9 mission, following thruster failures on Boeing's Starliner spacecraft. Due to safety concerns, NASA decided against using the Starliner for the crew's return. NASA remains committed to working with Boeing despite the challenges.

🤖 Latest In Emerging Tech

Inflection, the AI startup behind chatbot Pi, plans to introduce usage caps on its free service and offer data export options for users. This comes after a $1.3 billion fundraise and subsequent acqui-hire by Microsoft, which led to antitrust investigations. New CEO Sean White is steering the company towards enterprise products, with 13,000 organizations expressing interest in API access. Inflection aims to announce its first enterprise products and partnerships in the fall, focusing on customizable AI models for large corporations.

OpenAI, Adobe, and Microsoft have expressed support for California's AB 3211, a bill requiring tech companies to label AI-generated content. The bill mandates watermarks in metadata for AI-generated media and visible labeling on large online platforms. This support marks a shift from earlier opposition by a trade group representing these companies, likely due to amendments made to the bill.

Apple is developing a new AI-based 'personality' for use in upcoming robotic devices, aiming to enhance interactions similar to how Siri functions on existing Apple products. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that Apple's futuristic AI assistant will be more humanlike and could operate on a tabletop product and other future robots, potentially costing under $1,000. The project is in early development stages with no guarantees of release, while Apple continues to integrate generative AI features into its devices, like iPhones, iPads, and Macs, later this year.

💼 Today’s VC Job Opportunities

• Partner 22, Investor Relations - a16z | USA - Apply Here

• Venture Partner - Web3 & Blockchain - Taisu Venture | USA- Apply Here

• Investment Associates - Beyond Venture Partner | India - Apply Here

• Managing Director - In-Q-Tel | Australia - Apply Here

• General Partner -- 16 fund | UK - Apply Here

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