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OpenAI To Raise $6.5 Billion & Fearless Fund Shuts Down It's Grant Program For Black Founders

OpenAI To Raise $6.5 Billion & Fearless Fund Shuts Down It's Grant Program For Black Founders

Venture Daily Digest - 12/09/2024

Venture Daily Digest
September 12, 2024

☕Hey there, Welcome to today's quick rundown in the Venture Daily Digest Newsletter. We've got the scoop on startup fundraising, VC funds, and some cool tech – all in just 5 minutes!

Top News

OpenAI is reportedly in talks to raise $6.5 billion at a $150 billion valuation, potentially increasing its worth by 74% since earlier this year. The AI company, known for ChatGPT, may also secure a $5 billion revolving credit facility. This funding would solidify OpenAI's position as one of the world's most valuable startups and allow it to remain private longer.

Other Major News

OpenAI’s new model Strawberry to launch earlier than planned.. (Scroll To Tech Updates)
Meta scraped every Australian user's account to train its AI (Scroll To Tech Updates)
Mistral releases Pixtral 12B, its first multimodal AI model.. Scroll To Tech Updates)
Former Samsung execs arrested for stealing chip technology for China.. (Scroll To Startups & People Updates)
How to ask your investors for customer intros? (Scroll To Featured Article)
VC & Startups Job Opportunities (Scroll To Today’s Opportunities)

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🗞️ Startup Funding Updates

Connectly, a San Francisco, CA-based company which specializes in conversational commerce, raised $20M in Series B funding. The round was led by Alibaba, with participation from Unusual Ventures, Volpe Capital, RX Ventures, Falabella Ventures and Philippos Kourkoulos Latsis.

CardiaTec, a Cambridge, England, UK-based TechBio company employing computational methods to decode the biology behind cardiovascular disease, raised $6.5M in seed funding. The round was led by Montage Ventures with participation from Laidlaw Scholars Ventures, Apex Ventures, and Continuum Health Ventures.

SplxAI, a London, UK-based cybersecurity company dedicated to safeguarding AI applications, raised $2M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by investors including Inovo.vc, South Central Ventures, and Runtime Ventures.

Ren Systems, a Raleigh, NC-based relationship intelligence company, raised $3.5M in funding. The round was led by JLL Spark Global Ventures, the venture arm of commercial real estate firm JLL, with participation from Camber Creek, ZoomInfo, and Contour Ventures.

Protege, a NYC-based provider of a platform for AI training data, raised $10M in Seed funding. The round was led by CRV with participation from SV Angel, Liquid 2 Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, Flex Capital, Adam D’Angelo, Travis May, and others.

SpectraWAVE, Inc., a Bedford, MA-based medical imaging company focused on improving the treatment and outcomes for patients with coronary artery disease (CAD), raised $50M in Series B funding. The round was led by Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc. joined by S3 Ventures, Lumira Ventures, SV Health Investors, Deerfield Management, NovaVenture, Heartwork Capital, and undisclosed parties.

Neat, a Paris, France-based startup specializing in embedded insurance, closed a €50m Series A financing round. The round was led by Hedosophia, with participation from ETFS Capital, Athletico Ventures, Mundi Ventures, New Alpha, Founders Future and Purple.

PhoreMost Ltd., a Cambridge, UK-based biopharmaceutical company, added USD $12m to its Series B financing, bringing the total raised to over $50m. The additional investment was led by Parkwalk Advisors, with participation from existing investors BGF, Dr Jonathan Milner, Amadeus Capital and Astellas Venture Management.

Alosant, a Bozeman, MT-based provider of a customer experience platform for master-planned communities, raised an undisclosed amount in Series A funding. The round was led by Greg Avis, co-founder and former Managing Director of Summit Partners.

Catalyst OrthoScience, a Naples, FL-based private medical technology company, raised $20M in equity and venture debt financing. Backers included RC Capital, Mutual Capital Partners and Bridge Bank.

InMobi, a Singapore-based consumer technology company focused on finding new ways for consumers to discover and consume content, shop, and engage with brands, raised $100M in debt funding. MARS Growth Capital led the agreement.

Radiant Biotherapeutics, a Toronto, Canada-based preclinical biotechnology company developing an antibody platform, raised $35M in Series A funding. The round was led by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Amplitude Ventures of Canada.

Crackle Technologies, a Singapore-based company providing technology for data analytics and predictive modeling, raised USD1.7M in funding. The round was led by We Founder Circle and AC Ventures. Other investors included founders of Impetus Technologies, Sunicon Ventures, Global DeVC and Misfits Capital.

Ammalgam, a Singapore-based decentralized lending exchange (DLEX) provider, raised $2.5M in funding. The round was led by Lightspeed Faction and Framework Ventures with participation from Robot Ventures, Bodhi Ventures, NGC Ventures, DeWhales, Blockchain Founders Fund, and angels including Kain Warwick, Anton Bukov, Spencer Noon, and Jordi Alexander.

Optalix, a London, UK-based finance software provider, raised $3M in funding. The round was led by Calculus Capital, with participation from 24 Haymarket and others.

Syantra, a Calgary, Canada-based precision biotechnology company, raised CAD$4.9M in Series A-1 funding. The round was led by CG Wealth Management, with participation from existing investors.

Illuma Labs, a Plano, TX-based company which specializes in voice authentication technology for banking contact centers, raised $9M in Series A funding. The round was led by LiveOak Ventures, with participation from Forefront Venture Partners, Curql Fund, UsNet, Capital Factory, Connexus, and TDECU.

PanTera, a Mol, Belgium-based radioisotope producer, raised €93M in Series A funding. The round was led by EQT Life Sciences, with participation from Kurma Partners, Eurazeo, Korys, Paladin and PMV.

Forterra, a Clarksburg, MD-based self-driving technology company, raised $75M in Series B funding. The round was led by Moore Strategic Ventures, XYZ Venture Capital, and Hedosophia, with participation from Standard Investments and existing investors, including Enlightenment Capital, Crescent Cove Advisors, and Four More Capital.

Solasta Bio, a Glasgow, Scotland, UK-based agri-biotech company specialising in green insecticides, raised $14M in Series A funding. The round, which brought the total raised to date to $19m, was led by Forbion, FMC Ventures and Corteva Catalyst, with participation from existing investors included Cavallo Ventures, Rubio Impact Ventures, Scottish Enterprise, UKi2S, SIS Ventures and University of Glasgow. More Here

Cashmere, a Los Angeles, CA-based provider of an AI-powered client acquisition platform for wealth management firms, raised $3.6M in Seed funding. The round was led by Canapi Ventures, with participation from Benchstrength, Plug and Play, The House Fund, Courtyard Ventures, and angel investors.

Aifleet, an Austin, TX-based tech-driven trucking company, raised $17M in Series B funding. The round was led by Tom Williams at Heron Rock, with participation from Volvo Group Venture Capital, Obvious Ventures, Ibex Investors, Compound, Winthrop Square, and Cooley, bringing its total funding to almost $50M.

Polly, San Francisco, CA-based provider of mortgage capital markets technology and operator of a cloud-native, commercially scalable product and pricing engine (PPE), raised additional $25M in growth equity funding. The round was led by 8VC with participation from other existing investors, including Menlo Ventures, Meritech, Khosla Ventures, and Fifth Wall.

📰 Venture Capital Updates

Fearless Fund, a venture capital firm, has settled with the American Alliance for Equal Rights to end its Strivers Grant program for Black women-owned businesses following a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination.

📌 Featured Article

How to ask your investors for customer intros?

Most founders send an investor update at the end of each month with a sentence that reads something like: we’d love potential customer introductions to (buyer at target market).

Then nothing happens. No introductions are made.

Investors, both VC and angel, are a great channel to source new opportunities and customers. But you, the founder, have to be very specific in the ask and make it easy for the investor to make introductions. Here’s how you can do it:

Look at the portfolios of your investors.
Identify companies you think would be good potential customers.
Identify the best person at that company to speak with about your offering.
Send your investor an email for each intro you’re requesting.

If you want intros to 10 companies from a single investor, send 10 emails to that investor. Subject: intro to (person) at (company). Body: write the email you want the investor to forward to their contact at the company. All the investor has to do is forward the email.

Track these intros in a spreadsheet. If you have a VC or angel investor who isn’t helping, follow up and ask them what else they need to make the ask/intro.

At a minimum, your investors should be forwarding every email you send requesting a meeting on your behalf. This process will be far more effective at generating investor referrals than what most founders do today.

[Check out our Venture Curator newsletter - to get insights on startups, AI and venture capital from leading founders & investors]

📑 Startup’s Latest Buzz

Acquisition & Going Public

Confluent, a Mountain View, CA-based data streaming provider, acquired WarpStream, a Chicago, IL-based provider of an Apache Kafka®-compatible data streaming platform.

Layoffs & Bankruptcy

Italian app developer Bending Spoons plans to lay off 75% of WeTransfer's staff, following its acquisition of the file-sharing platform in July. The exact number of layoffs is yet to be determined, according to CEO Luca Ferrari.

Startups & People

Caroline Ellison, former cryptocurrency executive, has asked a federal judge for leniency in sentencing, citing her cooperation in the case against Sam Bankman-Fried. Ellison pleaded guilty to fraud charges related to the $8 billion theft from FTX customers and is scheduled for sentencing on September 24. Her lawyers argue that her immediate acknowledgment of wrongdoing and valuable testimony against Bankman-Fried warrant a lenient sentence.

Two former Samsung executives, Choi and Oh, were arrested for allegedly aiding China with stolen Samsung technology to build a chip factory, according to South Korean authorities. Choi, now the CEO of Chinese tech company Chengdu Gaozhen, and Oh, the head of process design at the same firm, are accused of leaking Samsung tech worth $3.2 billion to China. South Korean police state the actions of Choi and Oh have harmed Korea's competitiveness in the ongoing global chip war, following years of investigations into similar incidents involving Samsung's trade secrets.

🤖 Latest In Tech

OpenAI will release a new reasoning-focused AI model called "Strawberry" for ChatGPT within the next two weeks, as reported by The Information. Unlike previous models, Strawberry will think before responding, with processing times lasting 10 to 20 seconds, and will initially only handle text inputs. This new model aims to solve more complex problems by conducting "deep research" and will complement OpenAI’s existing advanced models, boosting the company's significant growth since the launch of ChatGPT.

Meta's global privacy director admitted that Meta scrapes photos and texts from all public Facebook and Instagram posts from Australian users since 2007 to train its AI technology. Unlike the European Union, Australian users do not have an opt-out option from data collection for AI training, which Meta attributes to the lack of specific privacy regulations in Australia. Meta does not scrape data from users under 18 but collects information if shared on accounts managed by their parents or guardians, indicating a gap in data protection for minors.

Mistral has launched Pixtral 12B, a 12-billion-parameter multimodal model capable of processing both images and text, making it the company's first such model. This new model, which is built on Mistral’s existing Nemo 12B text model, can interpret images of various sizes and can be accessed via platforms like GitHub and Hugging Face. Pixtral 12B's release follows Mistral's successful $645 million funding round, positioning the company as a significant European contender in the AI industry, comparable to OpenAI.

💼 Today’s VC Job Opportunities

Program Associate, AI Health - Techstar | USA - Apply Here
Assistant Controller - 645 Venture | USA - Apply Here
Strategic Venture Capital Investor - Wind Venture | USA - Apply Here
Junior VC Analyst - 16 vc | India - Apply Here

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