Open AI Crossed $1.6 Billion Income & Founder Faces SEC Charges For $41M Fraud Scheme

🗞️ TODAY’S MAJOR UPDATES

• Open AI crossed $1.6 billion in annualized income in 2023

• Fidelity has marked down the value of its shares in X Holdings, previously Twitter, by 71.5%

• Ex-CEO Laura Tyler Perryman of Stimwave Technologies faces SEC charges for a $41 million fraud scheme.

• Featured Tweet : Stripe’s Founder Advice On Hiring The First 10 Employees

• What do you think: We're launching an invite-only community for founders and investors. Which platform do you recommend?

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💰 MASSIVE FUNDING UPDATES

Shield AI, a San Diego, CA-based defense technology company, raised $300M with additional $100M in Series F funding, and $200M in debt from Hercules Capital. More Here

Giga ML, a US based startup building a platform that lets companies deploy LLMs on-premise — ostensibly cutting costs and preserving privacy in the process. It has raised ~$3.74 million in VC funding to date from Nexus Venture Partners, Y Combinator, Liquid 2 Ventures, 8vdx and several others. More Here

Quntas Labs, a London, UK-based commercial AI erosion impact prediction company, raised $550K in Seed funding. The saw participation from Faisal Al-Rajhi and other undisclosed investors. More Here

UltiHash, a San Francisco-based startup works with the mission to reduce the environmental toll by cutting down the overall amount of data that needs to be processed. It has raised $2.5M pre-seed funding. The round was led by Inventure (backed Capalo AI, Lassie, and Wirepas) with participation from PreSeedVentures, Tiny VC, Futuristic VC, The Nordic Web, Antti Karjalainen, Founder, and angel scout for Sequoia Capital, and other private investors. More Here

Labrys Technologies, London based startup defense AI startup raised $5.5 million in seed funding from Project A Ventures (backed ARX and Quantum Systems) with participation from international Defense Tech-focused investors, including MD-One, Offset Ventures, Marque Ventures, and Expedition Fund.

💰 VENTURE CAPITAL UPDATES

3200 Venture Backed Startup Shut Down in 2023: Over 3,200 U.S. venture-backed startups, raising $27 billion, shut down in the past year amid challenging conditions, as reported by PitchBook. Their closures, often less dramatic than high-profile cases, highlight the diverse reasons for startup failures, from timing issues to funding shortages and broader economic challenges. The definition of "failure" remains subjective, with bankruptcy serving as a significant but not exclusive indicator. More Here

Pronomos Capital, a startup-city venture capital fund founded by Patri Friedman, grandson of economist Milton Friedman, has raised at least $13.3 million from investors like Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen. The firm funds the creation of privately owned cities in developing countries, aiming to experiment with new forms of business, government, and medical treatments without government regulations. More Here

Partech VC, France based VC raised a seed fund of worth €360M. This fund will back mission-critical software, data, and fintech specialists in Europe. Partech Venture will back mission-critical software companies driving the digital transformation of enterprises and SMBs with the latest fund. More Here

𝕏 FEATURED: TODAY’S FEATURED TWEETS

Stripe’s Founder Advice On Hiring The First 10 Employees

Patrick Collison shared - "When hiring the first ten people at Stripe, we focused on a few key aspects beyond the standard criteria of intelligence and pleasant Demeanour.

1. Hire Individuals who could hit the ground running.
2. Hire people who were not just skilled but also known to be good by others.
3. Look for inherently happy individuals.
4. Adopt a longer time horizon for hiring… Read More Here

💡 SARTUP’S LATEST BUZZ

People

Fidelity has marked down the value of its shares in X Holdings, previously Twitter, by 71.5% since Elon Musk's $44 billion buyout, with a 10.7% reduction in November. This revaluation comes amid Musk's controversial remarks to X advertisers. Fidelity's actions suggest a cautious outlook, contrasting with the positive performance of publicly traded comps like Meta and Snap in November. More Here

Laura Tyler Perryman, former CEO of Stimwave Technologies, a Broward County medical device startup, faces SEC charges for an alleged $41 million fraud scheme. The complaint accuses Perryman of making false statements about the company's nerve stimulation device, including a fake component. Stimwave recalled the device, filed for bankruptcy in 2022, and now faces SEC and criminal charges in the Southern District of New York. More Here

Acquisition

Ajinomoto Company Inc., a Tokyo-based global manufacturer, completed acquiring the gene therapy startup's equities. With the undisclosed amount, Ajinomoto company look this acquisition as a synergic investment. More Here

Cisco to acquire advanced artificial intelligence startup MindMeld for $125 million, making it the networking giant's second acquisition this month. More Here

Juniper Networks' security business is getting a shot in the arm as the networking vendor to acquire security analytics software startup Cyphort. More Here

Microsoft has acquired social learning startup Flipgrid. The acquisition marks the latest push into the education market for Microsoft, which has been going head-to-head with Google and its popular Chromebook product and Google Classroom web-based service in the same arena. More Here

Legal

A federal judge ruled against Twitter (now X), stating it violated a contract by not paying promised bonuses to employees, as alleged in a lawsuit by former senior director Mark Schobinger. The lawsuit, representing around 2,000 employees, seeks damages over $5 million and claims breach of contract under California law. The ruling deems the breach of contract claim plausible. More Here

IPO

Kaspi, Kazakhstan-based fintech disclosed a surge in profits and revenue filed U.S. listing by making its IPO paperwork public. The company commands a valuation of nearly $19 billion on the London Stock Exchange. More Here

Sushi Ginza Onodera, Inc., a Delaware corporation, is a food service company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan has filed for a proposed IPO. More Here

Dropbox, Cloud storage and file sync and share technology developer has filed for IPO, giving the company a target valuation of $7 billion to $8 billion setting the price range of its upcoming IPO at a range of between $16.00 and $18.00 per share. More Here

🤖 LATEST IN EMERGING TECH

OpenAI raked in $1.6 billion in annualized income in 2023 The figure, up from $1.3 billion in October, comes amid the dramatic ouster and then return of the company's CEO, Sam Altman. More Here

GitHub has launched Copilot Chat, a programming chatbot powered by GPT-4, offering real-time guidance in Visual Studio Code. Despite potential copyright concerns, GitHub recommends making repositories private for opt-out. It competes with Amazon's CodeWhisperer in the AI-driven coding assistance space. More Here

📰 TODAY’S MUST READ ON: STARTUP, TECH & VC

• AI and Everything Else By Benedict Evans Read Here (Tech & AI)

• Don't Send All 'Your Data To Investors' Too Early In The Process, Why? Read Here (Startup Fundraising)

• What Does It Take To Implement 'Do Things That Don’t Scale' For Your Startup? Read Here (Startups)

• Michael Seibel On How To Pick The Right Problem To Solve! Read Here (Startups)

🤔 WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Previous Poll: 50% of readers vote for the healthcare and life science sector, attracted the most global VC funding in 2023. But Climate Tech & Clean Energy sector (Sustainability) attracted most funding in 2023. You can read here..

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That’s It For Today! Will Meet You Tomorrow!
Happy New Year Guys! 🥂

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✍️Written By Sahil R | Venture Crew Team