NVIDIA Acquired AI Startup For $700 Millions & DOJ Seeks Prison, $50M Fine For Binance Founder

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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 -

• Nvidia is acquiring AI startup - Run:ai for $700 Millions & IBM to Acquire HashiCorp for $6.4 Billion in Cloud Management Deal.

• Swiggy, Indian food delivery startup aims to raise $1.25 billion through an IPO, valuing the company at around $12 billion.

• DOJ Seeks 3-Year Prison, $50M Fine for Binance's CZ Zha for violating federal sanctions and money laundering laws.

• Threads now has over 150 million monthly active users, up from 130 million in February.

• Featured Article : Sequoia’s Capital Two simple methods to find whether startups have achieved Product-Market Fit (PMF).

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STARTUP FUNDING UPDATES

Radical, a Seattle, WA-based high-altitude solar-powered aircraft maker, raised $4.5m in Seed funding. The round was led by Scout Ventures with participation from Inflection Mercury Fund and Y Combinator. More Here

Edonia, Paris-based startup working on creating protein ingredients using microalgae. It has raised €2 million ($2.1 million). The investment was led by French venture capital firm Asterion Ventures, with participation from BPI. More Here

Xaira Therapeutics, an AI biotech company based in San Francisco Bay Area, aims to revolutionize drug discovery using generative AI. It has been incubated and funded with $1 billion. The investors include ARCH Venture Partners, Foresite Labs, F-Prime, NEA, Sequoia Capital and others. More Here

Dripos, a NYC-based comprehensive software platform built specifically for coffee shops, raised $11m in Series A funding. The round was led by Base10 with participation from Michael Siebel of Y Combinator, Shyam Rao (founder of Punchh, acquired for $500+ million by Partech), and Ian Crosby (founder of Bench and Teal, and former Head of Fintech at Shopify), among others. More Here

Chemix, a Sunnyvale, CA-based EV-battery developer, raised $20M in Series A funding. The round was led by Ibex Investors, with participation from Mayfield Fund, Berkeley SkyDeck, Urban Innovation Fund, BNP Paribas Solar Impulse Venture Fund (SIVF), Global Brain’s KDDI Open Innovation Fund III (KDDI CVC), and Porsche Ventures. More Here

AtaCor Medical, a San Clemente, CA-based medical device company, raised $28M in Series C funding. The round was led by Arboretum Ventures and included existing investors Longview Ventures, Hatteras Venture Partners, Catalyst Health Ventures, and BayMed Venture Partners. More Here

Handl Health, a Los Angeles, CA-based provider of an AI platform built to help benefits consultants design and deliver health benefits, raised $2.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Mucker Capital and Everywhere VC, with participation from Tau Ventures, Riverfront Ventures, DHVP (Digital Health Venture Partners), Boutique Venture Partners, Plug and Play Ventures and Techstars. More Here

ThreatLocker, an Orlando, FL-based global cybersecurity company that offers a Zero Trust endpoint security solution, raised $115M in Series D funding. The round was led by existing investor General Atlantic, with participation from other major investors StepStone Group and the D. E. Shaw group. More Here

FirstHive, a San Jose, CA-based provider of customer data platform (CDP) solutions, raised an undisclosed amount in funding. Backers included Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV), Saama and Amit Singal as new lead investors. More Here

Sublime Security, a Washington, DC-based provider of an AI-powered, programmable email security platform, raised $20M in Series A funding. The round was led by Index Ventures with participation from previous investors Decibel Partners and Slow Ventures. Dmitri Alperovitch joined the investment round and Board of Directors. More Here

Alaffia Health, a NYC-based company that specialises in generative AI for health plan claim operations, raised $10M in funding. The round was led by FirstMark Capital, with participation from GingerBread Capital and existing investors including Anthemis, Aperture Venture Capital, 1984 Ventures, Remarkable Ventures, and Tau Ventures. More Here

Trace, a Columbus, OH-based provider of a platform that empowers creators to build location-based AR spaces, raised $2M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Rev1 Ventures and Impellent Ventures. Other investors included Everywhere Ventures, Ohio Innovation Fund, Portland Seed Fund, Allied Venture Partners, Service Provider Capital, Astir Ventures, Move VC, and Phoenix Venture Fund. More Here

FinQuery, formerly know as LeaseQuery, an Atlanta, GA-based provider of AI-powered solutions built to manage companies’ largest areas of spend, received a $25M minority investment. The round was led by Periphas Capital with participation from Lavelle Capital. More Here

RWX, a Columbus, OH-based provider of a Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) platform, raised $7M in Seed funding. The round was led by Quiet Capital. More Here

Augment, an AI-powered coding platform based in Palo Alto, has emerged from stealth with $252 million in funding at a near-unicorn valuation of $977 million. The investors include former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Index Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Innovation Endeavors, and Meritech Capital. More Here

Nagomi Security, a NYC-based proactive security and threat exposure management company, raised $30M in funding. The round was led by TCV, with participation from CrowdStrike Falcon Fund and Okta Ventures. More Here

Vixtra, a São Paulo, Brazil-based fintech company, raised $36m in Debt and Equity funding. A $30m USD debit facility with asset managers such as Capitânia, Verde, Credit Saison, and Contea. a $6m seed extension funding. More Here

Nooks, a San Francisco, CA-based AI dialing & prospecting platform, raised $22M in Series A funding. The round was led by Lachy Groom with participation from Tola Capital and Stifel Venture Banking, bringing Nooks total funding to $27M. More Here

Endeavor BioMedicines, Inc., a San Diego, CA-based clinical-stage biotechnology company, closed a $132.5m Series C financing, including the conversion of a $5m convertible instrument. The round was led by AyurMaya. More Here

Amplifier Security, an Atlanta, GA-based provider of an automation and security copilot, raised $3.3M in funding. The round was led by Cota Capital with participation from WestWave Capital and Shift Left Ventures, and included angel investments from founders of Slack, MobileIron, Centrify, PeopleNet, Skyflow and Mercury. More Here

BforeAI, a NYC- and Montpellier, France-based predictive security company, raised $15M in Series A funding. The round was led by SYN Ventures, with participation from early investors Karma Ventures, Karista, Addendum Capital, and a new investment from the Partnership Fund for New York City. More Here

Tines, a Boston, MA- and Dublin, Ireland-based company which specializes in smart and secure workflows, raised $50M in new funding, as an extension to its Series B. The round, which brought the total amount to $146.2M, was led by Accel and Felicis with participation from Addition, CrowdStrike Falcon Fund and SVCI, all pre-existing investors in Tines. More Here

Aropha, a Bedford, OH-based laboratory focused on advancing biodegradable material discovery and testing through lab automation and AI predictive modeling, raised $1m in Seed funding round. The round was led by Comeback Capital, with participation from Lightbank and Right Side Capital Management (RSCM). More Here

Camion, a London, UK-based provider of an electric vehicle charging intelligence and analytics platform, raised EUR2.7M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by EQT Ventures, with participation from First Look Capital and RitMir Ventures, along with angel investor Chris Adelsbach. More Here

Lumeris, a St. Louis, MO-based value-based care managed services operator for health systems and providers, raised $100M in equity growth funding. The round was led by Deerfield Management, and Endeavor Health. Existing investors Kleiner Perkins, Sandbox Industries, BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners and JDLinx (an investment company owned by John Doerr) also participated. More Here

VENTURE CAPITAL UPDATES

Bitdefender, a Bucharest, Romania-based leader in cybersecurity, announced the launch of Bitdefender Voyager Ventures (BVV), a new investment initiative dedicated to financing and nurturing the next generation of startups in cybersecurity, data analytics, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI). BVV has a global mandate, with an emphasis on Europe, and will focus on investment opportunities at the seed or Series A stage where it can act as either lead or co-investor. More Here

Eniac Ventures, The New York-based seed-stage firm has made over 250 investments, including in AI/ML companies has closed two new funds totaling $220 million. This includes a $60 million Select 1 fund for follow-on investments and a $160 million Eniac VI fund. More Here

FEATURED ARTICLE

Sequoia’s Capital Two simple methods to find whether startups have achieved Product-Market Fit (PMF).

Rajan Anandan, Managing Director at Sequoia Capital, shared two simple methods that can help founders find whether they have achieved Product-Market Fit (PMF)”

The First is the "Retention Curve" -

"The retention curve is what percentage of your users keep coming back over some time while using your product/service."

Essentially, there are 3 kinds of retention curves, and you should plot this curve by day, week, or month, once you launch your product.

1. Declining Curve (dark grey line), let's say you’ve launched a consumer internet app on day 0, and every week your retention rate declines by 10%, which essentially means that by the end of 3rd month, all your initial users would have churned, then that's a declining curve, which indicates that you don’t have a product-market fit.

2. The Flattening Curve (orange line) is good, although it kind of varies depending upon the category (Health-Tech, EdTech, etc.,) but generically speaking if the retention curve flattens between 20%-40% that could be quite good.

3. Finally the best one is the Smiling Retention Curve (green line), which means that retention drops but then as time goes on you keep reactivating users, which indicates that you're getting close to your product-market fit.
   
   Another question that the founder should think about is -

   Do Customers Love Product? Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a metric that organizations use to measure customer loyalty toward their brand, product or service.
   
   NPS works by asking your customers a single question: "How likely are you to recommend our products/services to others?"
   
   NPS = % Promoters (score 9-10) - % Detractors (score 0-6)
   
   If the magic score is = 70% or more, then you have an amazing product-market fit. But if the number declines to 40% or below, then you don’t have it. It's that simple!… Read More Here

STARTUP’S LATEST BUZZ

ACQUISITION & EXITS

Nvidia is acquiring Run:ai, a Tel Aviv-based company that makes it easier for developers and operations teams to manage and optimize their AI hardware infrastructure. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed publicly, but two sources close to the matter tell TechCrunch that the price tag was $700 million. More Here

IBM has agreed to buy cloud management vendor HashiCorp in a deal that values the software outfit at $6.4 billion on an enterprise basis. More Here

Finsight, a NYC-based financial technology company, acquired T-REX, a provider of a cloud-native platform engineered to model and manage investments across private credit. More Here

KnowBe4, a Tampa Bay, FL-based provider of security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, is to acquire Egress Software Technologies, a London, UK-based company which specializes in adaptive and integrated cloud email security. More Here

LAYOFFS & BANKRUPTCY

UPMC, healthcare giant has confirmed that it is laying off workers across its 40-hospital system, half of which are in Southwestern Pennsylvania. More Here

Tesla is laying off 2,688 employees at its Austin factory. This comes ahead of expected weak Q1 earnings and follows previous layoffs announced by Elon Musk. More Here

STARTUPS & PEOPLE

Swiggy, an Indian food delivery startup, plans to raise $1.25 billion in an IPO. It will issue $450 million in new shares and offer $800 million from existing investors. Swiggy is valued at around $12 billion and counts Prosus, SoftBank among backers. The IPO is slated for later this year after earlier deferral due to market conditions. More Here

Rubrik, a ten-year-old Palo Alto company that helps companies back up and secure their data, priced its IPO at $32 per share, valuing the company at $5.6 billion. More Here

Threads now has over 150 million monthly active users, up from 130 million in February. It is integrating with the decentralized ActivityPub protocol and plans to release an API for developers by June. While gaining steam, Threads is not positioning itself as a direct Twitter/X alternative focused on news amplification. More Here

The Department of Justice is asking the court to sentence Binance Founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao to serve three years in prison and pay a $50 million fine for violating federal sanctions and money laundering laws. More Here

LATEST IN EMERGING TECH

Marc Tessier-Lavigne, the former president of Stanford University who resigned last year after questions arose about his scientific research, has a new job as CEO of a drug development startup and it just launched with $1 billion in capital commitments from Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners, among others. More Here

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

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