Tesla's Humanoid Robot has a New Competitor & Open AI's Partnership With Wired & The New Yorker Publications

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☕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

Unitree Robotics has launched the production version of its G1 humanoid robot, priced at $16,000, just three months after its initial announcement. The G1 is 90% cheaper than Unitree's previous humanoid model, the H1, offering advanced features such as 23 degrees of freedom and a 3D vision system for real-time navigation. While the G1 is not ready for consumer use, it is envisioned as an affordable platform for research and development, likely appealing to institutions and businesses exploring robotic automation.

Other Major News

• OpenAI partners with Condé Nast which owns publications like The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Wired. (Scroll To Tech Updates)

• Cisco has announced a second round of layoffs this year, planning to cut 7%. (Scroll To Layoff Updates)

• Anthropic gets sued on allegations of ‘large-scale theft’. (Scroll To Startups Updates)

• Jessica Livingston: More customer support tickets are a sign of product market fit. (Scroll To Featured Article)

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🗞️ Startup Funding Updates

David, a NYC-based maker of food that increases muscle and decreases fat, raised $10M in Seed funding. The round was led by CEO Peter Rahal, with participation from Valor Siren Ventures, Peter Attia, M.D., and Andrew Huberman, Ph.D. More Here

Defcon AI, a Mclean, VA-based insights company that’s building a new modeling, simulation, and analysis (MS&A) toolset for the modern military environment, raised $44M in Seed funding. The round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from Fifth Growth Fund and Red Cell Partners, among others. More Here

SleekFlow, a social commerce platform headquartered in Singapore and Hong Kong, has developed a conversational AI suite for customer engagement in Asian markets. The startup recently secured an additional $7 million in funding, bringing its total raised to $15 million. This latest round was led by Atinum Investment, with participation from existing backers AEF Greater Bay Area Fund, Transcend Capital Partners, and Moses Tsang, as well as previous lead investor Tiger Global. More Here

Enteligent, a Morgan Hill, CA-based developer of solar-powered DC-to-DC chargers for electric vehicles (EVs), raised $6M in funding. The round was led by Taronga Ventures. More Here

Talus Biosciences, a Seattle, WA-based drug discovery company, raised $11.2M in Seed+ funding. The round was led by Two Bear Capital, with participation from WRF Capital, NFX, YC Continuity Fund, Funders Club VC, and BoxOne Ventures. More Here

Mindset Care, a NYC-based provider of a platform designed to simplify the application process for social security disability benefits for individuals with mental illnesses and their caregivers, raised $13M in funding. The round was led by Science Inc., with participation from Wellington Management, Tubbs Ventures, Enable Ventures, XYZ, and LivEdge Capital. More Here

Pathalys Pharma, a Research Triangle Park, NC-based biopharmaceutical company in the late stages of developing treatments for kidney disease, raised $105M in Series B funding. The round was led by TCGX, which was joined by other investors including, JP Morgan Life Sciences Private Capital, Samsara BioCapital, Marshall Wace, KB Investment, JPS Growth Investment Limited Partnership, and included support from Pathalys’ founding investors, Catalys Pacific and DaVita Venture Group. More Here

Reliant AI, a Montreal, Canada- and Berlin, Germany-based provider of gen AI-powered data analytics software, raised $11.3M in Seed funding. The round was led by Tola Capital and Inovia Capital, with participation from angel investor Mike Volpi. More Here

Fortera, a San Jose, CA-based materials technology company, raised $85M in Series C funding. Backers included Khosla Ventures and Temasek, Wollemi Capital, NOVA by Saint-Gobain, Presidio Ventures, and Alumni Ventures. More Here

Clarium, Inc., a NYC-based healthcare technology company supporting hospital supply chain operations, raised $10M in funding. The round was led by General Catalyst, with backing from Kaiser Permanente Ventures, Texas Medical Center Venture Fund, Yale New Haven Health, as well as existing investors AlleyCorp, 1984 Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and others. More Here

Orderly Network, a remote developer of a Web3 liquidity layer, raised over $5M in funding. Backers included OKX Ventures, Manifold Trading, Presto Labs, LTP, Nomad Capital, and Origin Protocol. More Here

Apheros, a Zurich, Switzerland-based thermal management company, raised CHF1.6M in funding. The round was led by venture capital firm Founderful. More Here

DealPotential, a Stockholm, Sweden-based tech startup specializing in the investment industry, raised $1M in Seed funding. Backers were not disclosed. More Here

Fabric Cryptography, a San Francisco, CA-based verifiable processing unit (VPU) startup, raised $33m in Series A funding. The round was co-led by Blockchain Capital and 1kx, with participation from Inflection, Protocol Labs, Offchain Labs, Polygon, Matter Labs, Illia Polosuhkin, Sreeram Kannan, Alex Vlasov, Sandy Peng, Uma Roy, Daniel Shorr, Daniel Lubarov, Ben Fisch, Ben Fielding, Sandeep Nailwal, Joseph Andrews, and dcbuilder. More Here

Allstacks, a Raleigh, NC-based provider of a software engineering intelligence platform, raised $10M in Series A funding. The round was led by Quadri Ventures, alongside M12, Microsoft’s Venture Capital Fund, as well as ​​Companyon Ventures, Clutch VC, S3 Ventures, Tweener Fund, CreativeCo, and Hyperplane. More Here

ChargeEuropa, a Warsaw, Poland-based electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure company, raised an undisclosed amount in funding. The round was led by Shift4Good. More Here

Cassidy, a NYC-based provider of a business automation platform, raised $3.7M in Seed funding. The round was led by The General Partnership, with participation from Neo, Comma Capital, Spacecadet Ventures, Ride Ventures, and angels like Erik Goldman (Co-founder of Vanta), Jason Dorfman (CEO of Orum), Zach Sims (founder of Codecademy), and other angels and operators. More Here

Waza, a Lagos, Nigeria-based international payments startup, raised $8m in funding. The round included $3m raised in equity funding from Y Combinator, Byld Ventures, Norrsken Africa, Heirloom VC, and Plug and Play Tech Center, and $5m in debt. More Here

Bookbot, a Prague, Czech Republic-based provider of an online platform for second-hand books, raised €4m in Series A funding at a valuation of over €20m. The round was led by Genesis Growth Equity Fund I with participation from existing backer Miton. More Here

Eppo, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an experimentation platform, raised $28M in Series B funding. The round was led by Innovation Endeavors with participation from Icon VC and existing investors Menlo Ventures and Amplify Partners. More Here

BeyondMath, a San Francisco, CA-based company which specializes in advanced engineering simulation, raised $8.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by UP.Partners, with participation from Insight Partners and InMotion Ventures. More Here

zkMe, a Hong Kong-based provider of zero-knowledge (ZK) identity verification solutions, raised $4M in Seed funding. The round was led by Multicoin Capital with participation from OKX Ventures and Robot Ventures. More Here

Kubiya, a San Jose, CA-based provider of a conversational AI solution for DevOps teams, raised $6M in extension funding. The round was led by Heavybit with participation from Hyperwise VC. More Here

Trunk Tools, a NYC-based provider of an AI Platform for the construction industry, raised $20M in Series A funding. The round was led by Redpoint Ventures with participation from Innovation Endeavors. More Here

The Rounds, a Philadelphia-based startup, delivers recurring grocery and household essentials in reusable packaging. The company recently raised $24 million in a Series B funding round led by Moderne Ventures, with participation from Construct Capital, First Round Capital, FJ Labs, and Redpoint Ventures. This brings The Rounds' total funding to $66 million. More Here

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📰 Venture Capital Updates

BEVC, a Berkeley-based life sciences investor, is raising a $25 million fund focused on climate-related startups, according to an SEC filing. Founded in 2023, the firm’s co-founders, all with PhDs in life sciences, have previously invested in health-focused startups. BEVC's new fund marks a shift toward investing in planetary health alongside human health. More Here

📌 Featured Article

Jessica Livingston: More customer support tickets are a sign of product market fit.

A counterintuitive tip about startups is that more customer support tickets are a sign of product market fit.

If users didn’t love the solution your product was offering to a painful problem, they wouldn’t care enough to write in support tickets. And more tickets = more users.

But when support tickets grow at an exponential rate, they become a problem where you simply can’t get to all of them and still work on the product, growing it, managing the team, talking to investors, etc.

So how do you solve that?

Most people’s first instinct is to hire a customer support person, but this is almost always the wrong first move:

1. You take yourself further away from your users, making it more complex to understand their issues.

2. If your startup keeps growing, you’ll just have the same problem again soon.

Instead, take Jessica Livingston’s (Founding Partner of Y-Combinator) advice (below) and focus on making the product better.

We haves shared in detailed writeup in our Venture Curator newsletter, Check out here…

📑 Startup’s Latest Buzz

Acquisition & Going Public

PakEnergy, a Dallas, TX-based delivering business automation and performance optimization solutions for the energy industry, acquired Plow Technologies, a provider of digital automation and cloud/SCADA software.

Layoffs & Bankruptcy

Cisco has announced a second round of layoffs this year, planning to cut 7% of its workforce after letting go around 4,000 employees in February. Affected employees will not be notified until September 16, leading to frustration and a reportedly toxic work environment. Despite lower-than-expected earnings, CEO Chuck Robbins received $31.8 million in total compensation for 2023.

Startups & People

X announces closure of Brazil operations, citing "censorship orders" by Judge Alexandre de Moraes. The company claims Moraes secretly threatened its legal representative with arrest for non-compliance. X states it will protect staff safety but maintain service availability in Brazil.

🤖 Latest In Emerging Tech

OpenAI has signed a multi-year deal with Condé Nast to feature content from its publications, like The New Yorker and Vogue, in ChatGPT and SearchGPT. The agreement allows OpenAI to train on Condé Nast content, though terms were not disclosed. This partnership follows similar deals OpenAI has made with other major publishers, sparking concerns among reporters and editors.

A group of authors has filed a lawsuit against AI startup Anthropic, alleging "large-scale theft" for using pirated copies of copyrighted books to train its chatbot, Claude. This marks the first lawsuit by writers specifically targeting Anthropic, although similar cases have been brought against OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, for the same reasons. The lawsuit accuses Anthropic, which markets itself as a responsible AI developer, of contradicting its goals by using unauthorized works, and it adds to the increasing legal challenges faced by AI developers.

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