Sequoia Offers To Buy $800 Million Worth Stripe shares & Rabbit r1 AI Secretly Storing User Chats

☕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

Sequoia Capital is offering to buy up to $861 million worth of Stripe shares from its limited partners in funds raised between 2009 and 2011, at a $70 billion valuation. This move reflects both Sequoia's confidence in Stripe's future and the increasing demand for liquidity from LPs in the current dry IPO market.

The Rabbit r1 AI assistant has been secretly storing user chats, making them potentially accessible if the device was lost, stolen, or sold, and users were initially unaware of this logging.

Other Major News

• Synapse's collapse and bankruptcy freeze $160M in deposits, impacting 100 fintechs and 10M users, raising questions about the BaaS. (Scroll To Startup News)

• Canadian private equity firm PartnerOne has acquired HeadSpin, a mobile app testing company, in a fire sale following the company's founder being sentenced to prison for fraud. (Scroll To Startup News)

• Gmail Creator Paul Buchheit’s 90/10 Rule For Your Startup.. (Scroll To Featured Article)

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Startup Funding Updates

Lhoopa, a Singapore-based startup, uses technology and decentralized operations to provide affordable housing solutions in the Philippines, partnering with local professionals to identify, renovate, and sell homes to low-income earners. The company has raised $80 million in its latest funding round, consisting of $20 million in equity and $60 million in debt. The equity round was co-led by the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Wavemaker Partners, with participation from investors including Pavilion Capital, 10X Group, Concentric Equity Partners, Mirath Investments, and NataRock Partners Fund. More Here

Satoshi Protocol, a provider of a protocol designed for the Bitcoin ecosystem, raised $2M in Seed funding. The round was led by Cypher Capital, Side Door Ventures, Optic Capital, Metalpha, Outliers Fund, Comma3 ventures, and angel investors like Paul Taylor (ex-BlackRock) and Yenwen Feng (founder of Perpetual Protocol). More Here

Caliza, a São Paulo-based startup founded by American entrepreneur Ezra Kebrab, aims to revolutionize cross-border transactions in Latin America by using stablecoins and real-time payment networks to enable instant transfers. Caliza has raised $8.5 million in a new funding round led by Initialized, with participation from investors including Abstract Ventures, Class 5 Global, Digital Currency Group, Kraynos Capital, New Form Capital, and Quona, bringing its total funding to $13.8 million.

Jacobi Robotics, a Berkeley, CA-based developer of AI-powered motion planning technology, raised $5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Moxxie Ventures with participation from Foothill Ventures, Humba Ventures, The House Fund and existing investors Swift Ventures, Berkeley SkyDeck Fund, LDV Partners, and Courtyard Venture. More Here

Adaptive, a NYC-based provider of a financial automation platform for the construction industry, raised $19M in Series A funding. The round, which brought the total amount to $26.4M, was led by Emergence Capital with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Definition, Exponent, 3kvc, Box Group, and Gokul Rajaram. More Here

Bima Labs, a San Mateo, CA-based developer of Bitcoin-backed stablecoins, raised $2.25M in Seed funding. The round was led by Portal Ventures, with participation from Draper Goren Blockchain, Sats Ventures, Luxor Technology, Delta Blockchain Fund, Halo Capital, CoreDAO, and angels including DOMO (creator of BRC-20), Ryan Fang (Ankr), Paul Taylor, Brian Crain (Chorus One), Paul Kim (Notifi and ex-director of product at Circle), Jeffrey Feng (Sei Labs), Smokey (Berachain), and more. More Here

HammerTech, a Melbourne, Australia- and Menlo Park, CA-based construction safety software company, raised US$70M in Growth funding. The round was led by Riverwood Capital. More Here

TruckSmarter, a San Francisco, CA-based digital platform designed to assisting owner-operators and trucking companies in optimizing their operations, received $50M in Debt financing, with the option to scale to $100M, led by CoVenture. More Here

NanoPass Technologies, a Ness Ziona, Israel-based provider of intradermal delivery solutions, raised $6M in funding. The round was led by Awz Ventures, which provided $4M. More Here

Neuspera Medical, a San Jose, CA-based neuromodulation company, raised $23M in Series D funding. The round was led by Vertex Ventures HC and Treo Ventures with participation from Action Potential Venture Capital, Windham Venture Partners, Olympus Innovation Ventures and another strategic investor. More Here

Presti, a French startup, uses generative AI to transform single product images into realistic furniture photos, streamlining the process of creating product visuals for furniture brands. Presti has raised a $3.5 million seed round led by Partech, with participation from several business angels including Thibaud Elzière, Maxime Brousse, Abou Laraki, Rémi Lemonnier, and Julien Hirth. More Here

Digestiva, a Davis, CA-based food biotech company, closed its Series A equity financing round, raising $18.4m. The round was led by Magdalena, with participation from UC Investments, and existing investors The March Fund and Astanor. More Here

Halo Industries, a Santa Clara, CA-based creator of a laser manufacturing technology platform for the semiconductor industry, raised $80M in Series B funding. The round was led by Thomas Tull’s U.S. Innovative Technology Fund (USIT) with participation from 8VC and SAIC. More Here

HERO Software, a Hannover, Germany-based SaaS platform for trade businesses and workers, raised €40m in Series B funding. The round was led by Eight Roads with participation from Cusp Capital and Federated Herme. More Here

Modicus Prime, an Austin, TX-based computer vision software provider that automates biologics image analysis, raised $3.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Silverton Partners, with participation from Alumni Ventures and others. More Here

Alvys, a Solana Beach, CA-based provider of a logistics operating platform for logistics and supply chain management, raised $20.5M in Series A funding. The round was led by Titanium Ventures (formerly Telstra Ventures), with participation from RTP, Bonfire and Picus Capital. More Here

Instinct Digital, a London, UK-based SaaS solution designed to streamline and automate aspects of funds and investor reporting, raised £5M in Series A funding. AlbionVC made the investment. More Here

Partior, a Singapore-based fintech company aiming to provide unified ledger-based interbank rails for real-time clearing and settlement, raised $60M+ in Series B funding. The round was led by Peak XV Partners with participation from Valor Capital Group and Jump Trading Group as new investors, and J.P. Morgan, Standard Chartered and Temasek. More Here

AusperBio Therapeutics, Inc. and Ausper Biopharma Co., Ltd. (collectively AusperBio), a clinical-stage biotechnology company with operations in the USA and China, closed a $37m Series A financing round. The round was led by existing investor, InnoPinnacle Fund, with participation from new investors including Yuanbio Venture Capital, Qiming Venture Partners, Hankang Capital, and Genesis Capital. More Here

Solus Power, a London, UK-based provider of portable electric vehicle charging solutions, raised £22M (US$28M) in funding. Dubai, UAE-based Petra Equity Partners made the investment. More Here

Bedal International, a Diepenbeek, Belgium-based medical device company delivering next generation catheter securement solutions, closed an $11m funding round. The round was led by White Fund, and SFPIM, the sovereign wealth fund of Belgium, with participation from F3Finance and LRM. More Here

Venture Capital Updates

Alpine Space Ventures, a Munich-based VC firm founded by former SpaceX engineer Bulent Altan and investor Joram Voelklein, has closed its first $184 million fund dedicated to space technology. The fund, backed by early SpaceX employees and major institutions like the European Investment Fund and NATO Innovation Fund, aims to invest in 10-15 companies building the space industry supply chain. More Here

Featured Article

Gmail Creator Paul Buchheit’s 90/10 Rule For Your Startup.

“Do what gets you 90% of the solution with 10% of the effort.”

There’s a direct correlation between how complete a solution needs to be before users will use it and how painful the problem it’s trying to solve is for them.

If you’re truly making something people want then they’ll be ok with an only half-baked solution.

First-time founders miss this. If people aren’t using their product, they think the reason is because the product isn’t good enough rather than the problem isn’t painful enough. This leads to founders spending months or even years on a product that is very unlikely to get off the ground.

The solution is to implement the 90/10 rule:

Find the most painful part of the problem for your users and focus all your time on solving that specific thing.

Previously we have shared this in our venture curator newsletter…. subscribe to it to get daily updates on startup tips….

Startup’s Latest Buzz

Acquisition & Going Public

Edward Lifesciences (NYSE: EW), an Irvine, CA-based global leader in patient-focused innovations for structural heart disease and critical care monitoring, acquired Innovalve Bio Medical Ltd., an early-stage transcatheter mitral valve replacement (TMVR) company.

OneStream Software, which is backed by private equity firm KKR (KKR.N), opens new tab, is targeting a valuation of about $4.38 billion in its U.S. initial public offering.

Layoffs & Bankruptcy

Startups & People

Former President Donald Trump has chosen Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate for the 2024 presidential election. Vance, known for his memoir "Hillbilly Elegy," has a background in venture capital, having worked at Mithril Capital and Revolution before founding his own firm, Narya Capital. Since winning his Senate seat in 2022, Vance has stepped back from active management of Narya, which is now run by co-founder Colin Greenspon and is raising a second $125 million fund.

Latest In Emerging Tech

The Rabbit r1 AI assistant has been secretly storing user chats, making them potentially accessible if the device was lost, stolen, or sold, and users were initially unaware of this logging. Rabbit has introduced a factory reset option and reduced the amount of data stored on the device, addressing the issue where pairing data could read sensitive information. Rabbit assured users there was no evidence of pairing data misuse, and a software update to fix these issues will install automatically on all r1 devices.

YouTube Music is introducing two new features to enhance song discovery on its platform. The first is an AI-generated conversational radio feature, currently being tested with select Premium users in the U.S., which allows users to create custom radio stations by describing what they want to hear. The second is a Shazam-like song recognition tool that enables users to find songs by singing, humming, or playing parts of them.

Disney is investigating a data leak from its internal Slack workplace collaboration system, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. Hacking group NullBulge claims to have released over 1 terabyte of data, including information on ad campaigns, studio technology, and job applicants, with some data dating back to at least 2019.

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