Musk's AI Company Raising $6 Billion From Sequoia Capital & Stripe Started Accepting Crypto Payments

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👋 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 -

• xAI, Musk's AI firm, raises $6B at $18B valuation from Sequoia, Future Ventures, Valor Equity, Gigafund.

• Stripe to allow crypto payments via USDC on Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon, re-entering crypto space.

• Norwest Venture Partners, a 65-year-old firm backed solely by Wells Fargo and based in Palo Alto, California, has raised its 17th fund at $3 billion.

• Featured Article : Framework: How a Seed VC Makes Investment Decisions?

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STARTUP FUNDING UPDATES

xAI, Elon Musk's AI company, is raising $6 billion at an $18 billion valuation. Investors include Sequoia Capital, Steve Jurvetson's Future Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, and Gigafund. More Here

Fintoc, a B2B fintech startup based in Chile, that provides an API that enables online businesses to accept instant payments directly from customers' bank accounts, offering an alternative to credit card transactions. It has raised a $7 million Series A round to consolidate its presence in Chile and Mexico. The round was led by Propel, with participation from existing investor Monashees. More Here

PinkDx, Inc., a Daly City, CA-based company focused on positively impacting the health of women throughout their life journey, raised $40m in Series A financing. The round was co-led by Catalio Capital Management, LP, and The Production Board. Other investors include Mountain Group Partners, Byers Capital and Mayo Clinic. More Here

RevenueCat, a subscription management platform for apps based in San Francisco, has raised $12 million in a Series C funding round led by Adjacent. Other investors in this round include Y Combinator, Index Ventures, Volo Ventures, and SaaStr Fund. More Here

RevOpsis Therapeutics, a San Carlos, CA-based biopharmaceutical company spearheading innovation in ophthalmic therapies, closed its first seed funding round, raising $16.5m. The round of funding, which included $7.5m in non-dilutive capital, consisted of notable strategic investments from investors and angels. More Here

Wheelhouse, a NYC-based provider of an independent content and talent platform, received an undisclosed investment from Alignment Growth. More Here

QI Tech, a São Paulo, Brazil-based financial services infrastructure provider, raised an undisclosed amount in Series B extension funding. Backers included General Atlantic, as well as Across Capital. More Here

Sorted, a London, UK-based recycling tech startup, raised £1.65m in Seed funding. The round was led by Pi Labs with participation from Archipelago Ventures, Circular Plastics Accelerator, Conduit Connect, Antler, and angel investors. More Here

Churnkey, a Charleston, SC-based provider of subscription retention automation software, raised $1.5m in funding. Charlotte, NC-based CreativeCo made the investment. More Here

Movement Labs, a San Francisco, CA-based blockchain development team that combines modular elements to create a more secure & performant Ethereum ecosystem, raised $38m in Series A financing. The round was led by Polychain Capital with participation from Hack VC, Placeholder, Archetype, Maven 11, Robot Ventures, Figment Capital, Nomad Capital, Bankless Ventures, OKX Ventures, dao5, and Aptos Labs. More Here

Moso, a Los Angeles, CA-based shop-to-earn platform that merges online shopping with cryptocurrency, closed a $2m seed funding round. Backers included Symbolic Capital, Dao5, Coinlist, Polygon Ventures, along with several strategic angels. More Here'

Agilitas Energy, a Wakefield MA-based integrated developer, builder, owner and operator of distributed energy storage and solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, raised $100M in Debt funding. Nomura Securities International, Inc., provided the financing. More Here

Dropzone AI, a Seattle, WA-based developer of AI security analysts for security operations teams, raised $16.85M in Series A funding. The round was led by Theory Ventures, adding existing investors Decibel Partners, Pioneer Square Ventures, and In-Q-Tel (IQT). More Here

Owlstone Medical, a Cambridge, UK-based company which specialises in Breath Biopsy® for applications in early disease detection and precision medicine, raised $6.5M in funding. The round was comprised of a $5M equity investment to advance Owlstone’s Breath Biopsy platform and $1.5M in grant from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop breath-based diagnostics and identify breath biomarkers for tuberculosis (TB) and HIV. More Here

Treefera, a London, UK-based provider of an AI-enabled data management platform, raised $12M in Series A funding. The round was led by AlbionVC. More Here

Anichess, a progressive chess-based online strategy game developed in partnership with Chess.com and five-time world chess champion Magnus Carlsen, raised US$1.8M in funding. The round was led by Sfermion and Amber Group, with participation from Fenbushi Capital, Aspen Digital, SNZ Capital, and others. More Here

Carv, a Santa Clara, CA-based modular data layer for gaming and AI, raised $10M in Series A funding. The round was led by Tribe Capital and IOSG Ventures, with participation from key investors such as Consensys (developer of MetaMask and Linea), OKX Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, No Limit Holdings, Draper Dragon, Arweave, LiquidX, MARBLEX (the web3 arm of Netmarble), and more. More Here

Cerevance, a Boston, MA-based company focused on developing precision novel therapeutics for central nervous system (CNS) diseases, raised $47M in Series B-1 Extension. The round was led by Agent Capital, Bioluminescence Ventures, and Double Point Ventures, with participation from new investors MQB Partners and LifeRock Ventures and existing investors Gates Frontier, GV (Google Ventures), and Lightstone Ventures. More Here

VENTURE CAPITAL UPDATES

Norwest Venture Partners, a 65-year-old firm backed solely by Wells Fargo and based in Palo Alto, California, has raised its 17th fund at $3 billion. It aims to invest across North America, India, Israel, early-stage, growth equity, and healthcare. Since their last fund, NVP has helped 36 portfolio companies achieve liquidity events, including exits like Spiff's sale to Salesforce and the IPO of Five Star Business Finance. More Here

FEATURED ARTICLE

How a Seed VC Makes Investment Decisions?

While making investment decisions, VCs basically ask themselves three big questions, that revolves around founder, the target market & founder-market fit.

1. Is this an awesome founder?

2. Is this a market I want to have an investment in? This incorporates both the total size potential of the opportunity and the attractiveness of the market itself.

3. Is there strong founder market fit? Is this an authentic idea, and does the capability of the founding team map well towards the needs of the market in the early stages of the business?

If the answers check out, investors use a framework to dive deeper into gauging the opportunity, like: Read More Here

STARTUP’S LATEST BUZZ

ACQUISITION & EXITS

Paystand, a blockchain-enabled B2B payments provider, has acquired spend management software startup Teampay to create a "no-fee B2B digital payment and spend powerhouse." More Here

LAYOFFS & BANKRUPTCY

True Anomaly, a space and defense startup, has laid off around 25% of its workforce and canceled its summer internship program. The layoffs impacted various departments, including sales, business development, and recruiting. More Here

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek was reportedly surprised that laying off 1,500 employees would have such a big impact on his company. More Here

STARTUPS & PEOPLE

Rubrik, a cybersecurity company, went public on the New York Stock Exchange, with shares debuting at $38 and settling at $37 by the end of trading on Thursday. Despite being unprofitable, the company priced its shares at $32 apiece, raising $752 million and giving it a valuation of $6.6 billion. More Here

According to The Information, assuming ByteDance is indeed forced to divest itself of TikTok, it has been exploring scenarios in which it would sell a majority of TikTok to a non-tech company but keep its recommendation algorithms. More Here

LATEST IN EMERGING TECH

Stripe, the fintech giant based in San Francisco, has announced that it will start allowing customers to accept cryptocurrency payments, initially in the form of USDC stablecoins on the Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon networks. This marks Stripe's re-entry into the crypto payments space after dropping Bitcoin support in 2018 due to its volatility. More Here

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That’s It For Today! Will Meet On Monday. Happy Weekend! 🥂

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