OpenAI Unveils Cheaper GPT-4o mini & Fei-Fei Li Launches AI Startup Valued at $1 Billion After Four Month

☕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

Canadian private equity firm PartnerOne acquired HeadSpin, a mobile app testing startup, for $28.2 million, valuing it at 1.4 times its revenue. The sale follows HeadSpin's founder being sentenced for fraud earlier this year, which led to a significant devaluation of the company from its previous $1.1 billion valuation.

Fei-Fei Li, called the "godmother of AI," has founded World Labs, a startup valued at over $1 billion after just four months, according to the Financial Times. World Labs aims to develop AI with human-like visual processing for advanced reasoning, a research area similar to what ChatGPT is working on with generative AI. Li, famous for her work in computer vision and her role at Google Cloud, founded World Labs while partially on leave from Stanford, backed by investors like Andreessen Horowitz and Radical Ventures.

Other Major News

• OpenAI launched GPT-4o mini, a small AI model outperforming competitors on reasoning tasks. (Scroll To Tech News)

• WazirX, a major Indian crypto exchange, suspended withdrawals after a security breach resulted in the loss of $230 million, nearly half its reserves (Scroll To Layoff News)

• Market Command Matrix (Scroll To Featured Article)

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Startup Funding Updates

OnRamp, a Boston, MA-based company that delivers customer onboarding by automating and streamlining the post-sales process, raised $14.2M across a seed and recent Series A funding rounds. The round was led by Javelin Venture Partners with participation from Contour Venture Partners, Pear VC, Quiet Capital, Correlation Ventures, Frontier Ventures, J Ventures and others, along with strategic individuals including Claire Hughes Johnson (Stripe), Steve Fredette, and Louis Beryl (Four Cities Capital). More Here

Pelotero, a Boston, MA-based player intelligence platform that combines data, coaching expertise, and AI to help coaches deliver personalized development in real time, raised $3m in seed funding. The round was led by Greg Ciongoli and Bennett Fisher, with participation from other notable technology investors including Frederick Kerrest, Vice Chairman and Co-Founder of Okta, and Ryan Moore, Founder of Accomplice. More Here

Planned, a Montreal, Canada-based provider of an end-to-end solution for travel & events, raised $35M in Series B funding. The round, which brought the total amount to $65M, was led by Drive Capital, with the participation of Outsiders Fund and two other firms. More Here

EverFence, a Newport Beach, CA-based company that leverages technology to offer clients fence solutions, raised $7M in Series A funding. The round was led by HIPstr, HighPost Capital’s Early-Stage Investment arm. More Here

Marathon Fusion, a San Francisco, CA-based startup developing fuel processing technology for the fusion industry, raised $5.9m in seed funding. The round was led by 1517 Fund and Anglo American, with participation from Übermorgen Ventures, Shared Future Fund, Malcolm Handley and other investors. Alongside a CREATE award from the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E, these investments bring Marathon Fusion’s total funding to $6.9M. More Here

Coast, a New York-based company that offers a smart way for companies in the United States to manage fuel and fleet spending, raised $40m in Series B financing. The round was led by ICONIQ Growth, with participation from existing investors Accel, Insight Partners, Vesey Ventures, and Avid Ventures, as well as new investors Thomvest. More Here

After.com, a US online platform that helps families navigate end-of-life services, raised $10m in Series A funding. The round was led by HIPstr, the early-stage investment arm of HighPost Capital. More Here

REMspace, a San Francisco, CA-based neurotechnology company specializing in lucid dreaming studies, closed a $1M seed funding. The backers were not disclosed. More Here

Allium, a NYC-based blockchain data platform for enterprises, raised a $16.5m Series A funding. The round was led by Theory Ventures with participation from seed investors Kleiner Perkins and Amplify Partners.More Here

Thoughtful AI, an Austin, TX-based AI-powered revenue cycle automation company, raised $20m in Series A funding. The round was led by Nick Solaro of Drive Capital with participation from TriplePoint Capital. More Here

EdgeRunner AI, a Seattle, WA-based startup building Generative AI for the edge, closed a $5.5m seed funding round. The round was led by Four Rivers Group with participation from Madrona Ventures and strategic angels. More Here

Matera, a Philadelphia, PA-based provider of sotware enabling real-time payments in Brazil, received a $100M investment from Warburg Pincus. More Here

Renalys Pharma, a Tokyo, Japan-based late-stage clinical biopharmaceutical company, raised a ¥6.0Bn in Series A funding. The round was led by Catalys Pacific and SR One, with participation from JPS Growth Investment Limited Partnership. More Here

Momento, a Seattle, WA-based provider of a real-time data platform, raised $15M in Series A funding. The round was led by Bain Capital Ventures, with participation from The General Partnership, Marianna Tessel Neha Narkhede, Tom Killalea, Don MacAskill, and John Lilly. More Here

doinstruct, a Berlin, Germany-based provider of a mobile-first onboarding and training platform, raised €7.6M in funding. The round was led by Creandum. More Here

Nearfield instruments, a Rotterdam, the Netherlands-based developer of Metrology & Inspection (M&I) solutions for the semiconductor manufacturing industry, raised €135M in Series C funding. The round was led by Walden Catalyst and Temasek with participation from Innovation Industries, Invest-NL, and ING. M&G Investments, through its Catalyst strategy, acted as a co-investor. More Here

Edit Cloud, a London, UK-based provider of a cloud based, AI-powered editing platform, raised £2M in funding. The round was led by Edge, with angel investors including Simon Ward, and Justin Cooke. More Here

wamo, a London, UK-based provider of a digital business account for SMEs, raised $5M in funding. Backers included Logo Ventures, Finberg, and Re-Pie Asset Management. More Here

Cubbit, a Bologna, Italy-based geo-distributed cloud enabler, raised $12.5M in funding. The round was led by LocalGlobe and ETF Partners with participation from Verve Ventures, 2100 Ventures, Hydra (holding of Datalogic), Growth Engine, Eurenergia and Moonstone. More Here

Rhizome, a Washington, DC-based provider of a climate resilience planning platform for the power grid, received a $1M investment from Convective Capital. More Here

Dynelectro, a Copenhagen, Denmark-based company which specializes in sustainable energy solutions, raises €11M in funding. The round was led by Export & Import Fund of Denmark (EIFO), Yara Growth Ventures, Vsquared Ventures, PSV Deeptech, The Footprint Firm and the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund. More Here

Venture Capital Updates

Menlo Ventures and Anthropic have partnered to launch the $100 million Anthology Fund, aimed at investing in early-stage AI companies. The initiative will provide funding starting at $100,000 and $25,000 in Anthropic model credits to selected startups. Menlo Ventures, which recently led a $750+ million funding round in Anthropic, sees this as an opportunity to identify promising AI startups and potentially back them in future rounds.

Featured Article

Market Command Matrix

Patrick Campbell sold his startup, Profitwell, for $200 million last year — and it was entirely bootstrapped.

Since then he’s started sharing a lot of primary research he’s commissioned into topics that there isn’t a lot of ground truth data on. Most recently, he shared his competitive research playbook and shared this framework — the market command matrix:

The y-axis represents how much of a competitor’s resources they’re piling into your market, and the x-axis represents how aware customers in your market are of the competitor.

The big text in each quadrant is what you should do in response. While the placements on the matrix aren’t exact (for example a “big VC bet” could have dramatically more or less mindshare depending on what stage they’re in), Patrick’s recommendations are good.

Note that he only recommends you take action against the two quadrants on the right — the competitors who your target and/or existing customers are likely to be aware of.

Another note: “all-out attack” may mean exploring partnerships when you both have leverage in different parts of the market — it doesn’t mean burning all your money on paid ads.

He also includes free playbooks on how to handle competitors in each quadrant — the full article is worth a read.

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Startup’s Latest Buzz

Acquisition & Going Public

Payroll provider Deel has acquired Hofy, a London-based office equipment management company, for over $100 million. The acquisition will allow Deel to launch Deel IT, a comprehensive IT management solution for remote workers.

WP Engine, a global web enablement company providing premium WordPress products and solutions, acquired NitroPack, an all-in-one SaaS solution for improving site speed and performance metrics, including Google’s Core Web Vitals. More Here

Samsung acquired Oxford Semantic Technologies, a UK-based knowledge graph startup, to enhance its AI capabilities.

Manycore Tech Inc., a maker of 3D design software, is preparing to file for a Hong Kong initial public offering as soon as this year to raise as much as $200 million. More Here

Layoffs & Bankruptcy

Microsoft laid off an internal team focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion, (DEI) prompting criticism from a team leader about the company's lack of investment in these efforts. The team was eliminated due to "changing business needs" as of July 1, despite previous commitments to improve diversity.

Startups & People

J. Michael Cline, co-founder of Fandango and numerous other startups, died after falling from a Manhattan hotel. Cline was a pioneering entrepreneur who revolutionized online movie ticketing and founded the venture capital firm Accretive. His death is under investigation by the New York Police Department.

Latest In Emerging Tech

OpenAI launched GPT-4o mini, a small AI model outperforming competitors on reasoning tasks.

It's faster and cheaper than larger models, replacing GPT-3.5 Turbo as OpenAI's smallest offering. GPT-4o mini supports text and vision, with future plans for video and audio capabilities. OpenAI also introduced new enterprise tools, including a Compliance API for regulated industries and improved controls for workspace GPTs.

Apple clarified it does not use YouTube transcription data for training its AI systems, specifically highlighting the usage of high-quality licensed data from publishers, stock images, and publicly available web data for its models. OpenELM, Apple's research tool for understanding language models, was trained on Pile data but is used solely for research purposes without powering any AI features in Apple devices like iPhones, iPads, or Macs. Apple has no plans to develop future versions of OpenELM and insists that any data from YouTube will not be used in Apple Intelligence, which is set to debut in iOS 18.

WazirX, a major Indian crypto exchange, suspended withdrawals after a security breach resulted in the loss of $230 million, nearly half its reserves. The attack exploited a multisig wallet vulnerability, with blockchain data suggesting the hackers are attempting to offload assets using Uniswap. This incident marks another setback for WazirX, which recently separated from Binance following a public dispute. The company has called it a "force majeure event" and is working to recover the funds.

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