US to deploy world’s first alien-hunting system & Musk's xAI Corp Raising $6 Billion

In partnership with

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

Scroll down to find

• xAI's about to flex with a multi-billion supercomputer upgrade,

• while the US is literally building tech to find aliens!

• Plus, leaked emails just spilled all the OpenAI tea,

• ByteDance casually drops a $300B self-valuation, and

• check this - Anthropic's teaming up with Sam to keep AI away from nukes. Oh, and Google Docs just joined the AI art party!

Ready for some mind-blowing numbers? Carta just dropped the real talk on Q3 private markets, we've finally got a startup valuation playbook that doesn't suck, and Marc Andreessen's got thoughts on why AI won't steal your job. Bonus: fresh intel on impact investing and why VC timing is always fashionably late. Hot tech and VC roles just landed - grab 'em before they're gone!

Featured Startup: The Most Emerging Startup You Can't Miss…

Hire Ava, the Industry-Leading AI BDR

Ava automates your entire outbound demand generation so you can get leads delivered to your inbox on autopilot. She operates within the Artisan platform, which consolidates every tool you need for outbound:

• 300M+ High-Quality B2B Prospects

• Automated Lead Enrichment With 10+ Data Sources Included

• Full Email Deliverability Management

• Personalization Waterfall using LinkedIn, Twitter, Web Scraping & More

Book a demo to see what Ava can do.

Featured Your Startup: Want to get your brand in front of 62,000+ founders, investors, executives, and startup operators? For details on our sponsorships, fill up this quick form and we’ll get in touch.

Startup Funding Updates

Gendo, a London, UK-based provider of an AI platform for architects and designers, raised £4.3M in Seed funding. The round was co-led by PT1 and LEA Partners, with participation from Concept Ventures and Koro Capital.

OYO, based in India, a hotel management and booking platform that standardizes and digitizes hotel operations across its network of partner properties. The company's founder Ritesh Agarwal, through his investment vehicle Redsprig Innovation Partners, is proposing to inject $65.1 million at a $3.8 billion valuation. This follows a recent $175 million fundraise that valued the SoftBank-backed startup at $2.3 billion, though still well below its peak valuation of $10 billion in 2019. The company is reportedly preparing for its third attempt at an IPO filing within the next two months.

Factiverse, a Norwegian startup founded in 2020, has developed an innovative B2B AI-powered fact-checking tool that analyzes text, video, and audio content in real-time across 114 languages. Led by CEO Maria Amelie, a former technology journalist, and CTO Vinay Setty, an associate professor in machine learning, the company has raised $1.45 million in pre-seed funding and already secured partnerships with major Norwegian banks and media organizations, including providing live fact-checking during U.S.

Plantible Foods, a San Diego, CA-based technology company leveraging plants to promote the health and longevity of people and the planet, closed a $30m Series B funding round. The round was co-led by Piva Capital and Siddhi Capital, with participation from new investors Betagro Ventures, Cultivate Next (the venture arm of Chipotle Mexican Grill), Nourish Ventures (the venture arm of Griffith Foods), and existing investor Astanor Ventures.

Bluespine, a NYC-based provider of an AI-driven claims cost reduction platform for self-insured employers, raised $7.2M in Seed funding. The round was led by Team8. 

Beta Bionics, an Irvine, CA-based company which specializes in the development of advanced diabetes management solutions, raised $60M in Series E funding. The round was led by Wellington Management. Previous investors Eventide Asset Management LLC, certain funds managed by RTW Investments, Sands Capital, Soleus Capital, Omega Funds, Perceptive Advisors, and Marshall Wace also participated.

runQL, a Waterloo, Ontario, Canada-based tech startup improving how data professionals and developers work with queries for data, raised $1.6M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Mistral Venture Partners with participation from MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund, Inovia Capital, UW Velocity Fund, Philip Rathle, and other Waterloo-based founders.

Mithrl, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI-powered platform empowering scientific research, raised $4M in Seed funding. The round was led by Bonfire Ventures.

Tessl, a London, UK-based AI Native software development company, raised $125M in funding. The round was led by Index Ventures with participation from Accel, and GV.

Just, a Paris, France-based online shopping startup, raised €8M in Seed Funding. The round was led by Backed, with participation from Daphni, Otium, and FJ Labs.

TestSprite, a Seattle, WA-based AI-powered autonomous software testing company, raised $1.5M in Pre-Seed funding. Backers included Techstars, Jinqiu Capital, MiraclePlus, Hat-trick Capital, EdgeCase Capital Partners, and angel investor Rafael Barroso. Additional investment came from the founding team.

Firefly Aerospace, a Cedar Park, TX-based end-to-end responsive space services provider, raised $175M in Series D funding. The round was led by RPM Ventures, AE Industrial Partners, alongside GiantLeap Capital.

Venture Capital Updates

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.

Venture Daily Digest Opens 2 Slots to Help Founders Build Pitch Deck

Decks get you meetings. Without meetings, you have no shot at getting funded. Investor meetings get you funded.

But most founders fail to impress investors through their pitch deck. Many make mistakes by adding the wrong content and including too many - around 10-15 - slides. Investors don't like that.

If you're feeling confused while building a pitch deck, we can help. We've created an internal team of experts, designers, and investors to build and review your pitch deck.

Schedule a call with us today →

Latest In Tech

Elon Musk's xAI Corp is raising approximately $5-6 billion in new funding, primarily from Middle Eastern sovereign funds, which could value the company at $45-50 billion. The funds will be used to double the size of their Memphis-based Colossus supercomputer by adding 100,000 more GPUs, half of which will be the newer, more powerful H200 models. This expanded computing power will support both the development of xAI's language models (including their latest Grok-beta) and Tesla's Full Self Driving software, positioning xAI to better compete with OpenAI in the artificial intelligence space.

NASA and Microsoft have partnered to launch an AI chatbot called 'Earth Copilot' to help the public understand and answer questions about the planet. 'Earth Copilot' is designed to provide easier access to NASA's extensive data collection by converting it into more comprehensible information for users. The collaboration leverages Microsoft's Azure cloud computing technology to process and make NASA's satellite data readily accessible and understandable for the general public.

The Pentagon announced the deployment of a new alien-hunting system called Gremlin, utilizing advanced 2D and 3D radar technologies, starting in the first quarter of fiscal year 2025. Despite numerous reports of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), the Pentagon maintains there is no evidence of extraterrestrials and continues to resolve cases to prosaic objects like balloons and drones. The Gremlin system, developed by the Georgia Tech Research Institute, aims to improve UAP detection and characterization, enhancing US airspace safety and pattern-of-life analysis.

OpenAI’s tumultuous early years revealed in emails from Musk, Altman, and others: Emails from Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and others reveal tensions within OpenAI, showing concerns about Musk's desire for control and Altman's future business direction. Former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever expressed worries that Musk's leadership structure might lead to a monopolized control over artificial general intelligence, contrasting OpenAI's original nonprofit vision. The correspondence also showed OpenAI's early interest in acquiring Cerebras and a potential collaboration with Microsoft, though both did not come to fruition.

Google has introduced a Gemini-powered AI image generator in Google Docs, allowing users to create clip art, similar to Microsoft's AI-generated art in its Office suite. This new feature is accessible to paid Workspace users with specific add-ons, enabling them to create images using a description and choose from various art styles. The image generator offers options for aspect ratios and full-bleed cover images, utilizing Google's Imagen 3 for improved quality, with a rollout starting today for rapid release domains.

Other News

ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, has reportedly valued itself at $300 billion in a recent share buyback, though this valuation had previously dropped to $223 billion last year. The company faces regulatory challenges in the US, where President Biden signed a bill potentially banning TikTok unless ByteDance sells it within nine months.

Anthropic collaborates with the US Department of Energy's nuclear experts to ensure its AI model, Claude 3 Sonnet, does not inadvertently disclose sensitive nuclear weapon information. The initiative involves "red-teaming," a technique used by the National Nuclear Security Administration to identify potential vulnerabilities in Claude's responses that could lead to dangerous exploitation. This project, which started in April and runs until February, aims to share findings with scientific labs to promote independent safety testing against malicious use of AI models.

In-Depth Insights

• Time Dislocations in Venture Capital Exploring how venture capital deals often operate in “time dislocation,” where funding cycles and business growth timelines rarely align.

• State of Private Markets Q3 2024 Carta’s Q3 report highlights shifts in private markets, focusing on trends in fundraising, valuations, and liquidity.

• How to Value a Startup Traditional methods like DCF fall short for startups. Innovative approaches such as Real Options and the VC Method better capture growth potential and strategic flexibility.

• The State of Impact Startups and VC 2023 A look at impact-focused startups and VC trends, showing growth in sustainability, social impact, and innovation investments.

• Why AI Won’t Cause Unemployment - Marc Andreessen argues that AI will enhance productivity rather than displace jobs, transforming industries while creating new types of work.

Venture Daily Digest Picks

• When Should Startups Prioritize PMF Score over NPS? (Read)

• The Real Risk of AI's Failure. (Read)

• 29 business moats that helped shape the world’s most massive companies. (Read)

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

• 6 things startup founders should avoid doing (Read)

• How to build an AI side project (Read)

• Mastering TikTok to get millions in ARR (Read)

• How to promote your startup with $0 (Read)

• Why Do You Work - By David Spinks? (Read)

• How Netflix designs products for 250M+ users (growth design framework). (Read)

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

Today’s VC & Startup Job Opportunities

• Portfolio Management Lead - Atlassian Venture | USA - Apply Here

• MBA Associate - Founder Collective | USA - Apply Here

• Internship/Stage - VC Analyst & Program Manager - Sopra Venture | France - Apply Here

• Chief of Staff - Mangusta Capital | USA - Apply Here

• Venture Capital Winter Internship - Alpha trio capital - Apply Here

• Founder's Office Associate -Forest Hill Venture | India - Apply Here

• Associate - Redalpine | Germany - Apply Here

• Associate - Redalpine | UK - Apply Here

• Associate - Corporate Innovation - ivycap Venture |India - Apply Here

RESOURCES

• Get access to our all-in-one VC interview preparation guide—check it out. For a limited time, we are offering a 30% discount. Don’t miss this. (Access Here)

• Early Stage Startup Financial Model Template For Fundraising (Access Here)

• Building Cap Table As A Founder: Template to Download (Access Here)

• 2700+ US Angel Investors & VC Firms Contact Database (Email + LinkedIn Link) (Access Here)

• 1000+ Euro Tech Angel Investors & VC Firms Database (Access Here)

• 400+ French Angel Investors & Venture Capital Firms Contact Database (Email + LinkedIn Link) (Access Here)

• 350+ Indian Angel Investors & Venture Capital Firms Contact Database (Email + LinkedIn Link) (Access Here)

Do you have any news to share about your Startup or VC fund?
Please email us.

We’ll be back in your inbox On Tomorrow.