OpenAI to Launch AI Agents In Early Jan 2025 & Apple Faces $3.8B iCloud Lawsuit

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☕ Good Thursday Morning. Welcome to today's quick rundown in the Venture Daily Digest Newsletter.

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• OpenAI's game-changing AI agents dropping in 2025,

• Thrive Capital's eye-popping $1B Databricks play, and

• Apple's $3.8B iCloud headache across the pond!

• Plus, AMD cuts deep with 1000 layoffs,

• AI giants hit a wall, and that wild Discord leak ends with a 15-year sentence.

Listen up - a16z just dropped their hottest investment thesis yet: AI's eating operations work and they're betting big on both sides of the table. Meanwhile, OpenAI's quietly pouring $400M into robots (yes, actual robots!), and we've got the secret sauce behind consumer AI subscriptions. Oh, and some VC wisdom that'll flip your pattern-matching playbook on its head.

Fresh tech and VC roles just landed - catch them while you can!

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Startup Funding Updates

Robin AI, a London, UK-based provider of legal AI for business, raised $25M in funding. The round was led by group of its customers and existing investors including Paypal Ventures, Willets (Michael Bloomberg’s family office) and Cambridge University.

Notabene, a NYC-based provider of cryptocurrency compliance solutions, raised $14.5m in Series B funding round. The round was led by DRW VC, with participation from funds managed by Apollo, NextBlock, ParaFi Capital, and Wintermute, along with existing investors CMT Digital, F-Prime, Green Visor Capital, Illuminate Financial, Jump Capital, Signature Ventures, and Y Combinator.

Outbuild, a San Francisco, CA-based construction scheduling and planning software company, raised $11M in Series A funding. The round was led by Sway Ventures with participation from Hilti Venture, Trimble Ventures, and venture capital firms BGV and Zacua Ventures.

Chaos Industries, a Los Angeles, CA-based technology company building new defense and critical industry technologies, raised $145M in Series B funding. The round, which brought the total amount to $215M, was led by Accel, with participation from 8VC, as well as Overmatch Ventures, Lerner Enterprises, and existing insiders.

Lunar Outpost, a Golden, CO-based lunar surface mobility company, raised an undisclosed amount in Series A funding. The round was co-led by Type One Ventures and Industrious Ventures. Promus Ventures also participated.

Starfish Space, based in Washington, develops satellite servicing spacecraft called Otter for extending satellite life in geostationary orbit and disposing of defunct satellites in low Earth orbit. The startup has raised $50M in total funding, including a recent $29M round led by Shield Capital with participation from Point72 Ventures, Booz Allen Ventures, Aero X Ventures, Trousdale Ventures, TRAC VC, Munich Re Ventures, Toyota Ventures, NFX, and Industrious Ventures.

Trolley, a Toronto, Canada-based provider of a global payouts platform, raised $23M in Series B funding. The round was led by Wavecrest Growth Partners, with participation from Pace Capital.

Zeplyn, a NYC-based AI assistant for financial advisors, announced a $3M seed funding. The round was led by Leo Capital, with participation from Converge and angel investors.

mediaire, a Berlin, Germany-based company developing AI-powered diagnostic solutions for MRI imaging, raised €12M in funding. The round was led by LBO France with participation from IBB Ventures, the Swiss family office Wille Finance, HTGF, LIFTT, and Gateway Ventures.

Prelude, a Paris, France-based company developing a fraud-resistant SMS verification API, raised $8M in Seed funding. The round was led by Singular and Seedcamp.

Neon, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a direct-to-consumer platform built for games, raised $14M in funding. Backers included Renegade Partners, Thrive Capital, a16z Speedrun, SciFi VC, and Ribbit Capital.

Vega, a London, UK-based alternative investment technology company, raised $20M in Series A funding. The round was led by Apollo and Motive.

Sympower, an Amsterdam, the Netherlands-based flexibility services provider balancing electricity grids through its local operations to create a truly sustainable energy system, raised €21.3M in Series B-1 funding. The round was led by A&G Energy Transition Tech Fund with direct investment from the European Investment Fund (EIF) and participation from existing investors Activate Capital, Rubio Impact Ventures, PDENH, and Expon Capital.

Writer, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a generative AI platform for the enterprise, raised $200M in Series C funding, at a $1.9B valuation. The round was co-led by Premji Invest, Radical Ventures, and ICONIQ Growth with participation from Salesforce Ventures, Adobe Ventures, B Capital, Citi Ventures, IBM Ventures, Workday Ventures, Accenture, Balderton, Insight Partners, and Vanguard.

Stepful, based in San Francisco, provides AI-powered 4-month healthcare training programs for medical assistants and pharmacy technicians. The startup has raised $43.5M in total funding, including a $31.5M Series B led by Oak HC/FT alongside investors Y Combinator, Reach Capital, and AlleyCorp.

Odyssey, based in San Francisco, develops an advanced camera capture system and AI technology to generate detailed cinematic virtual worlds using real-world data collected through backpack-mounted cameras. The startup has raised $27M in total funding, including an $18M Series A led by EQT Ventures with participation from GV and Air Street Capital.

Leland, based in San Francisco, operates a coaching marketplace platform that matches coaches with users seeking guidance in areas like university admissions, exam preparation, and professional development. The startup has raised $17.1M in total funding, including a recent $12M Series A led by Forerunner Ventures with participation from GSV Ventures, Goodwater, FJ Labs, Next Play Ventures, and several LinkedIn executives.

Venture Capital Updates

Thrive Capital is reportedly in discussions to acquire a $1 billion stake in Databricks through a tender offer, which would value the analytics software company at approximately $55 billion, up from its previous $43 billion valuation in 2023. Databricks, known for its data storage and analysis technology, would see this investment follow Thrive's recent participation in OpenAI's funding round, where the venture capital firm committed $1.2 billion with an option for an additional $1 billion.

Altos Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm founded 28 years ago, specializes in enterprise and consumer software investments with focus on SaaS, consumer and mobile technologies, serving as first institutional investor for high-growth founders. The firm has just secured $500M for their latest fund (their largest to date) and manages over $7B in assets across 15+ funds through Altos Ventures, Altos Hybrid, and Altos Korea Opportunitious Fund vehicles.

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Latest In Tech

OpenAI is reportedly preparing to launch an AI agent tool called "Operator" in January 2025, which will allow AI to directly perform tasks on users' computers, primarily through web browser interactions. Set to be initially released as a research preview through their developer API, the tool will compete with similar offerings like Anthropic's Computer Use feature and Google's upcoming consumer agent. This announcement comes alongside OpenAI's release of a policy paper that proposes creating AI-focused economic zones in the U.S. and forming international alliances to compete with China in AI development.

OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic are facing hurdles in developing more advanced AI models due to diminishing returns from their significant investment efforts. OpenAI's new model, Orion, has not met desired outcomes, particularly in coding tasks, due to insufficient training data, and will not be released until improvements are made. These companies are encountering challenges in sourcing diverse, high-quality data and may need to explore alternative training methods to improve their AI technologies further.

U.K. consumer rights group 'Which?' has filed a £3 billion ($3.8 billion) legal claim against Apple on behalf of 40 million iCloud users, alleging the company abused its iOS monopoly to lock users into its cloud storage service. The lawsuit contends that Apple gives preferential treatment to iCloud over competitors, makes it difficult for consumers to use alternative storage providers, and charges inflated prices for storage once users exceed the free 5GB limit, with individual consumers potentially owed around £70 ($90) in compensation.

Other News

AMD has announced a 4% workforce reduction, affecting approximately 1,000 employees out of its 26,000-strong workforce, as the company aims to realign resources for growth opportunities. The layoffs come amid a challenging period for AMD, marked by a 69% decline in its gaming division and struggles to compete with Nvidia in the AI chip market, where the company's current quarterly revenues and future projections lag significantly behind its rival.

Jack Teixeira, a former US Air National Guard member, received a 15-year prison sentence for leaking confidential military documents on Discord, considered one of the most significant leaks in US history. Teixeira was arrested for distributing sensitive information related to national security interests involving countries like Russia, China, and Ukraine, which he accessed through his position at a Massachusetts military base. Pleading guilty to six counts of national defense information transmission, Teixeira avoided larger espionage charges and a potential 60-year sentence, with a final ruling of 15 years, followed by supervised release.

In-Depth Insights

• New a16z Investment Thesis: a16z shared insights on AI's transformation of operations work, evolving beyond RPA to enable genuine automation through AI agents and LLMs. The article identifies two key market opportunities in horizontal AI enablers and vertical automation solutions for specific industries, while highlighting the vast potential market targeting both 8 million operations roles and part of the $250B business process outsourcing sector.

• The Consumer Subscription Trifecta: Recently Olivia, partner at a16z, shared an interesting framework for evaluating consumer AI subscription businesses, emphasizing that successful companies need at least two out of three key metrics: high conversion to paid, strong retention, and organic user acquisition.

• Where OpenAI is investing: CBInsights reveals OpenAI's aggressive robotics push via a $400M investment in Physical Intelligence, key robotics hires, and strategic partnerships, while US maintains AI funding dominance despite Silicon Valley's cooling deal flow.

• Predictably Bad Investments: Evidence from Venture Capitalists: Diag Davenport shared a thought-provoking perspective on venture capital management, arguing that the theoretically most successful VC manager would be one who operates without constraints, specializations, or predetermined patterns in their investment approach. He challenges traditional VC practices, citing data that questions industry dogma around pattern matching and founder attributes, while acknowledging that some focused approaches (like in pharma/biotech) can be effective.

Venture Daily Digest Picks

• All-In-One Guide to Negotiating a Venture Capital Round. (Read)

• Get Access to 47 premium editable pitch deck templates. (Read)

• Why your startup shouldn’t announce a seed round (Read)

• Observations on whats happening currently in pre-seed and seed rounds (Read)

• The 4 secret ingredients of the best pitch decks (Read)

• Why your product idea sounds too complicated and how to simplify it (Read)

• A hiring hack for startups (Read)

• More thoughts on why founder mode is so effective (Read)

• 6 things startup founders should avoid doing (Read)

Today’s VC & Startup Job Opportunities

• Manager, Venture Investing - Technical Investing Associate - Capital One | USA - Apply Here

• Marketing & Content Leader kalaari capital - India - Apply Here

• Investment Manager /Director -Enbw | Germany - Apply Here

• Associate - Bloomberg beta | USA - Apply Here

• Reporting Analyst - Very early venture | Swiss - Apply Here

• Investor - Founders Factory | Singapore - Apply Here

• Associate - Bloomberg Beta | USA - Apply Here

• Investor Relations Analyst - B Capital Group | USA - Apply Here

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