Peter Thiel Backed AI Startup Raising at $2 Billion Valuation & Google Shutting Down It's Podcast App

👋 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!

• Cognition Labs, Peter Thiel-backed AI startup, eyes $2 billion valuation, a sixfold jump, driven by AI tech allure.

• Crypto VC rebounds to $2.52B, up 25% from Q4 2023, powered by regulatory changes, DeFi growth, and institutional interest.

• Rubrik, a Palo Alto data recovery firm backed by Lightspeed, Greylock, and Microsoft, set to go public after raising over $500M in 10 years.

• Google is shutting down its standalone Podcasts app in the U.S.

• Microsoft and OpenAI are building a $100 billion data center complete with supercomputer.

• OpenAI unveils Voice Engine, clones voices from 15-second samples, emphasizes responsible deployment with limited access, watermarked output, and risk consultations.

• Featured Article : Venture Capital Fund Metrics Cheat Sheet.

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Startup Funding Updates

Cognition Labs, an AI startup backed by Peter Theil, is in talks to raise funding at a valuation of up to $2 billion, a sixfold increase from previous valuations, fueled by investor interest in AI technology. Despite lacking significant revenue, Cognition's AI coding tool, Devin, is seen as a potential game-changer in software development, following the trend of other AI startups gaining momentum. However, concerns about the industry's sustainability linger amid high costs and uncertain revenue streams. More Here

Sense4Med, a Rome, Italy-based startup that develops point-of-care devices for the diagnosis of cystic fibrosis, raised €510k in funding. Backers included Innova Venture and Scientifica Venture Capital. More Here

Iron Sheepdog, company offers a simple app to streamline short-haul trucking, allowing contractors to track and pay truckers efficiently. It has raised a $10 million Series B round led by SJF Ventures, with participation from Grand Ventures and Supply Chain Ventures. More Here

Float Health, a San Francisco, CA-based marketplace moving care that doesn’t need a hospital to the home, raised $10m in Series A funding. The round was led by Canvas Ventures, whose General Partner Mike Ghaffary has joined Float’s board, with participation from Wave Capital, Y Combinator and Burst Capital. More Here

Goodbill, a three-year-old Seattle startup whose mission is to audit hospital bills for errors and unnecessary charges and help patients and payers save money, raised a $2 million round from Founders' Co-op, Maveron, and Liquid 2 Ventures. More Here

Brandtech Group, a NYC-based generative AI marketing company, raised $115M in funding. Backers include Fimalac, Nendo Labs, Mousse Partners, and the Bansk Group. More Here

InStride Health, a Boston, MA-based provider of specialty pediatric anxiety and OCD treatment, raised $30M in Series B funding. The round was led by General Catalyst with participation from previous investors .406 Ventures, Valtruis, Mass General Brigham Ventures, and Hopelab Foundation. More Here

Hive, a Geneva, Switzerland-based distributed cloud provider, received €12M in Series A funding. The round was led by from SC Ventures with participation from OneRagtime, and other private investors. More Here

StealthMole, a Singapore-based dark web data intelligence startup, raised US$7M in Series A funding. The round was led by Korea Investment Partners (KIP) and joined by Hibiscus Fund and Smilegate Investment. More Here

Keenys, a den Bosch, The Netherlands-based provider of a tax collaboration platform, raised €10M in funding. Backers included Alea Capital Partners, and Mountainview Capital Partners. More Here

Cyvl.ai, a Somerville, MA-based company which specializes in enterprise AI solutions for transportation infrastructure, raised $6M in funding. The round was led by Companyon Ventures, with participation from Argon Ventures, AeroX Ventures, and Alumni Ventures, and existing investors MassVentures, Launch Capital, RiverPark Ventures, Launchpad Venture Group, and Hub Angels. More Here

Orchard Robotics, a Seattle, WA-based company enabling precision crop management with robots and AI, raised $3.8M in seed and pre-seed funding. The seed round led by General Catalyst. The pre-seed was led by Contrary. Other investors included Humba Ventures, Soma Capital, Correlation Ventures, and VU Venture Partners. More Here

Kidsy, a Chicago, IL-based online retailer for baby and kids products, raised over $1M in funding. The round was led by Impellent Ventures. Other investors included Hustle Fund, Everywhere Ventures, Responsibly VC, The Fund Midwest, Jason Robins, Jenny Fleiss, Mike Salguero, Reilly Brennan and Sanuk Tandon. More Here

Bavest, a Frankfurt, Germany-based B2B fintech startup, closed a €1.1m funding round. Backers included Christian Trummer, founder and chief scientist of Bitpanda, rezooM Capital, Nautic Ventures, Jens Rehwinkel, and Dieter Staib, among others. More Here

Confetti, a New York based provider of a platform to handle team-building activities for companies, raised $16m in Series A funding. The round was Entrée Capital and IN Venture. More Here

Zafran, a NYC-based risk and mitigation company, raised over $30m in funding. The round was led by Sequoia Capital and Cyberstarts, with participation from Cerca Partners and Penny Jar. More Here

Robovision, a Ghent, Belgium-based AI computer vision startup, raised $42m in Series A funding. Backers included Target Global, Astanor Ventures, and Red River West. The startup also converted a $23m convertible loan they received in 2022, which increased total funding to $65m. More Here

Blitz Blectric Mobility, a Jakarta, Indonesia-based electric vehicle (EV) company, raised USD1.6M in funding. The round, which brought total funding to date to USD 2.6M, was led by ADB Ventures, with participation from Iterative VC, FiveFortyAlpha, Third Derivative, BonBillo Fund, Bansea, and Satvik Investments. More Here

Skyflow, a Palo Alto, CA-based data privacy vault company, raised $30M in Extended Series B funding. The round was led by Khosla Ventures with participation from Mouro Capital, Foundation Capital and Canvas Ventures. More Here

Aeovian Pharmaceuticals, a Berkeley, CA-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, raised $50M in funding. The round was led by Hevolution with participation from existing investors Apollo Health Ventures, Sofinnova Investments, venBio, Evotec and b2venture. More Here

Terragia, a Hanover, NH-based technology startup which specializes in biofuels, raised $6M in Seed funding. The round was led by Engine Ventures and Energy Impact Partners (EIP). More Here

Venture Capital Updates

The crypto venture capital landscape has seen a significant rebound in Q1 2024, with $2.52 billion raised, up 25% from Q4 2023, driven by positive regulatory developments, growth in DeFi, and institutional interest. Hot sectors include DeFi, SocialFi, crypto and AI, and zero-knowledge proofs, with valuations spiking in a founder-friendly market. Tokenomics are making a comeback, and despite potential short-term corrections, VCs expect a bullish year ahead, though likely short of the 2021-2022 mania levels due to the absence of major deployers like FTX and Three Arrows Capital. More Here

1kx, a six-year-old blockchain fund focused on consumer crypto applications, has raised a $75 million fund that counts Andreessen Horowitz's Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon as investors, along with Galaxy Digital and anchor tenant Accolade Partners. More Here

Featured Article

Venture Capital Fund Metrics Cheat Sheet

If you are a founder, investors or fund manager this cheat sheet will help you to answer following questions:

• When should you use multiple calculations versus IRR calculations? What are the differences?

• How is your particular investment performing right now?

• How has the company performed historically?

• Which metrics are more vital to limited partners (LPs)? Which metrics are more important to general partners (GPs)?

• How is your overall fund performing?

• How is your fund doing compared to similar VC funds with the same vintage year

There are nine venture capital metrics that used to determine fund health and performance are separated into multiple calculations and internal rate of return (IRR) calculations.…Read More Here

Startup’s Latest Buzz

Acquisition & Exits

One Equity Partners, a NYC-based middle market private equity firm, acquired Acteon Group, a Norwich, Norfolk, UK-based marine energy and infrastructure solutions company. More Here

Abrigo, an Austin, TX-based provider of compliance, credit risk, and lending solutions for financial institutions, has acquired TPG Software, a Houston, TX-based company which specializes in investment accounting and management solutions. More Here

Blue Yonder, a supply chain company with over $1 billion in revenue, is buying One Network Enterprises, a Dallas-based supply chain player that is ranked third in Blue Yonder's space, for approximately $839 million. More Here

Layoffs & Banktuptcy

ChowNow acquires Cuboh, a POS platform consolidating orders from delivery apps, to enhance its POS integration solution for restaurants has layoff 30 employees. More Here

Startups & People

Rubrik, a 10-year-old Palo Alto company specializing in data recovery that has raised over $500 million from investors like Lightspeed, Greylock, and Microsoft, is reportedly filing to go public next week. More Here

Discord, a social-media startup, is set to introduce ads offering rewards from videogame makers for completing in-game tasks, marking a pivot from its ad-free stance. The move aims to boost revenue but risks alienating users, who can opt out of ads, amid concerns over intrusiveness and privacy. More Here

Latest In Emerging Tech

OpenAI has previewed its Voice Engine, which can clone voices from a 15-second sample, aiming for responsible deployment by initially limiting access, watermarking generated audio, and consulting experts on risks. However, concerns remain around potential misuse, such as impersonating voices without consent, hate speech, and election interference. OpenAI plans to gather learnings from the preview before considering wider release, acknowledging the need to distinguish between real and synthetic voices while exploring potential benefits like accessibility and translation. More Here

Microsoft and OpenAI are building a $100 billion data center complete with supercomputer. More Here

AT&T has reset millions of customer account passcodes after a massive data leak containing 73 million customer records, including encrypted passcodes that could be easily deciphered. The leaked data includes sensitive information like names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers. AT&T has launched an investigation and is notifying affected customers. More Here

Google is shutting down its standalone Podcasts app in the U.S. by April 2, asking users to migrate their podcast subscriptions to YouTube Music. The move consolidates Google's audio services under YouTube as video podcasts gain popularity. More Here

The U.S. House of Representatives implements a strict ban on congressional staffers' use of Microsoft's Copilot generative AI assistant due to cybersecurity concerns about potential data leaks. Microsoft plans to release AI tools meeting federal security requirements later this year. Policymakers are increasingly scrutinizing AI adoption in government and considering regulations to protect privacy and prevent misuse in political contexts. More Here

Venture Daily Digest Picks

• Why It’s Hard to Generate a 10X Return on a Startup Investment? Read Here

• Marc Andreessen's Guide to Finding Product-Market Fit! Read Here

• YC Strategy 'Cash In, Cash Out, Milestones Achieved' To Raise Funding. Read Here

• "1% Market Fallacy" that hold most of the startups back. Some VC even refer to TAM as "Totally A Made Up Number." Why? Read Here

• Marc Andreessen: Understand "Onion Theory Of Risk" To Raise Funding For Your Startup. Read Here

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That’s It For Today! Will Meet You Tomorrow!
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✍️Written By Sahil R - The Venture Crew