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- VC Daily Digest - 04/10/2023
VC Daily Digest - 04/10/2023
Greylock's 17th Fund Hits $1B & Electric Hydrogen First Green Hydrogen Unicorn
Venture Daily Digest
October 04, 2023
📢 Major News
Greylock Secures $1B For It’s 17th Fund
Global VC deals declined in Q3 for the second quarter in a row
Electric Hydrogen is the green hydrogen industry’s first unicorn
Featured Article: Don't let IPO market distract you - Startups are still dying left and right.
📢 Venture Capital Highlights
Greylock secures $1B for its 17th fund amid launch of early-stage founders program: A $1 billion early-stage fund — its 17th — and Greylock Edge, a program to support founders developing ideas into companies with early revenue and product market fit. In keeping with the venture capital firm’s thesis, Greylock 17 will target pre-seed, seed and Series A founders in the areas of enterprise and consumer software. More Here
Global VC deals declined in Q3 for the second quarter in a row, hitting 3-year lows: Global venture capital deals declined in the third quarter for the second consecutive quarter, falling to the lowest level since the second quarter of 2020. Deal value fell to $73 billion, which is lower than the record by more than 65%, according to the latest first look at a report from PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) upcoming Q3 2023 Venture Monitor. More Here
Venture capital spring is here: As the summer winds down, American venture capital is enjoying a new spring. Though venture investment remains depressed compared to recent heights, green shoots are emerging quickly for those paying attention. Good deals are back. And from inside the world of venture capital, a pervasive, privately acknowledged sense of “investment thesis” disarray among experienced investors is a counterintuitive signal of an impending massive startup dawn. More Here
HCVC is back with a new $75 million deep tech fund: Paris-based VC firm HCVC just announced the final closing of its second fund, simply called “Fund II.” And the team has managed to raise $75 million (€69 million) so that it can back pre-seed and seed companies in Europe and North America. Originally focused on hardware startup investments, HCVC quickly evolved to invest in deep tech startups in general, such as companies working on climate, biotech, robotics, space, etc. More Here
Visa launches $100 million venture fund for generative AI startups: Payments processor Visa on Monday launched a $100 million venture fund for generative artificial intelligence (AI) startups, joining a list of investors who have flocked to the sector this year. Several high-profile names such as Microsoft and Alphabet's Google have backed the AI space, a buzzword in technology circles this year, after chatbot ChatGPT's popularity. More Here
Flashpoint Venture Capital continues ambitious growth in the US: Flashpoint Venture Capital, international tech investment manager with over $400 million AUM focused on US tech companies originating out of Israel and Europe, continues to expand its footprint in the United States. Flashpoint is growing its local portfolio, thus solidifying its commitment to innovation and driving economic growth. More Here
ADP Launches Corporate Venture Capital Fund: ADP, a leading global technology company providing human capital management (HCM) solutions, announces the launch of its corporate venture capital arm and innovation lab, ADP Ventures. ADP Venture's mission is to enhance and strengthen ADP's core business, create offerings in new adjacent segments and geographies, and develop new assets to monetize markets and segments beyond HCM. More Here
📢 Massive Fundings Updates
Electric Hydrogen is the green hydrogen industry’s first unicorn: Electric Hydrogen (EH2), a Massachusetts-based green hydrogen technology company, has just become green hydrogen’s first unicorn, with a $380 million Series C raise that brought its valuation up to $1 billion. That round also brought EH2’s total funding to roughly $600 million, per Crunchbase data. The startup is backed by heavy hitters like Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund, United Airlines, BP and Fortescue Metals. More Here
Qobra raises $10.5 million for its real-time sales compensation tool: French startup Qobra has raised a $10.5 million Series A funding round (€10 million) led by Singular with Revenue Syndicate and existing investor Breega also participating. Qobra helps businesses manage sales compensation so that managers don’t have to use Excel spreadsheets for this pesky task. More Here
Stitch raises $25M Series A extension led by Ribbit Capital, increasing the round’s total to $46M: Stitch focuses on enabling businesses to build, optimize, and scale financial products and providing API gateways to improve the conversion for online payments and optimize payment operations of its clients. The Cape Town fintech has raised $25 million in an extension round of funding led by global fintech investor Ribbit Capital, bringing Stitch’s total Series A to $46 million. Existing backers, including CRE Ventures, PayPal Ventures and the Raba Partnership, participated in the round. More Here
Science lab automation and robotics startup Automata raises $40M: Automata, a company that combines software and hardware to automate science labs around the globe, has raised $40 million in an equity-based round of funding, as the U.K.-based startup looks to double down on recent growth across Europe and the U.S. More Here
Sparx wants to do for enterprise what Truebill did for consumer recurring bills raised $3.1M Funding: Sparx, a startup out to manage financial operations for enterprises, secured $3.1 million in seed capital to continue developing its free suite of automated products meant to save companies money on their recurring expenses. Childhood friends Ricky Pati and Niko Fotopoulos started the company after also working together at other early-stage companies. More Here
EdgeCortix Closes $20 Million in Additional Funding Round: EdgeCortix® Inc., a Japan-based edge artificial intelligence (AI) fabless semiconductor development and design company today announced the closing of a $20 million (approximately ¥3 billion) funding round led by Japan's foremost venture capital (VC) firm SBI Investment Co. Ltd. and Global Hands-On VC (GHOVC), a leading Japan-US collaboration-focused VC with a history of successful semiconductor investments. More Here
Seattle startup Muir AI, which helps companies calculate complex carbon emissions, raises $3.25M: Muir AI, a Seattle startup providing carbon accounting, has raised a $3.25 million seed round led by Base10 Partners. Existing investors Madrona Venture Labs and Soma Capital also participated in the round. The company has raised $3.75 million to date. Muir’s co-founders are CEO Harris Chalat, who came from aerospace companies SpaceX and Relativity Space, and Chief Technology Officer Peter Williams, who worked in aerospace and at Amazon. More Here
📬 Featured: Today’s Featured Article
Don't let IPO market distract you - Startups are still dying left and right. 📉
I came across this data (Fig - 1) about Startup Shutting Down by Carta so sharing my thoughts and reasons behind it.
Many of them are either closing down, seeking buyers, or desperately seeking investors willing to provide the necessary funding to make it through the year.
Source: Carta
The reasons behind this struggle are well-known, with the scarcity of venture capital funding being a major factor, especially at the later stage.
Venture capital investment levels have dropped significantly, reaching lows not seen since before 2020. Moreover, the number of venture-backed companies in the US has doubled since 2016, resulting in more than 50,000 such companies now facing a high risk of running out of capital.
In the coming months, startups will likely intensify their efforts to grab the attention of venture capitalists as their financial runways continue to shrink. This period can be seen as a natural thinning of the startup landscape.
𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐅𝐨𝐫 𝐎𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐦:
If your startup can weather the storm, you'll find yourself up against fewer competitors, and the companies that make it will not just survive but thrive.
📢 The Latest In Emerging Tech: AI
AI Has Always Had A Hardware Problem...Until Now: If you're wondering why - all of a sudden - artificial intelligence has exploded into your life you're not alone. Many of my clients and friends have been asking a similar question ever since late last year when OpenAI released their ChatGPT product and everyone went wow! With such an unprecedented show of how generative AI can conduct very human-like conversations and provide (mostly) accurate answers. More Here
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella: Google's Deal With Apple Is 'Oligopolistic': CEO Satya Nadella testified in a federal court in Washington, D.C. that Google (GOOGL)’s total dominance in the online search business makes it difficult for competitors, even his company, to gain market share. Nadella’s testimony raised an important question: If Microsoft can’t challenge Google, who can? Nadella was called as a witness in the Department of Justice’s antitrust trial against Alphabet (GOOGL)’s Google. More Here
Arc browser’s new AI-powered features combine OpenAI and Anthropic’s models: The Arc browser is “finally” launching its AI-powered features under the “Arc Max” moniker. The Browser Company is using a combination of OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 and Anthropic’s models to build lightweight but useful features. Just like other AI-powered assistants present in rival browsers, you can converse with ChatGPT or ask questions in the context of the current page. More Here
LinkedIn & OpenAI Joined Hands To Bring More AI Tools for Job Seekers: LinkedIn — the Microsoft-owned social platform for those networking for work or recruitment — is now 21 years old, an aeon in the world of technology. To stay current with what the working world is thinking about most these days, and to keep its nearly 1 billion users engaging on its platform, today the company is unveiling a string of new AI features spanning its job hunting, marketing and sales products. More Here
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📢 Startups Snap: The Latest Buzz
Adapting to a world with higher interest rates — a guide for startups: Startups have more things to worry about than they have time — product-market fit, whether to invest in performance marketing or not, how much inventory is too much inventory, whether to hire that staff engineer from Google, just to name a few from a list that usually runs longer than the most well-funded startup’s runway. More Here
Don’t sweat the valuation headlines, ByteDance is doing great: ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, is back in the news. The company recently offered to buy back its stock from its employees, but the issue is, it’s valuing itself at around $223 billion, which is about 26% less than the $300 billion at which it previously offered to buy back its own equity. On the contrary, ByteDance is an insanely good business. The company’s 2022 and Q1 2023 results point to a business that is quickly approaching annual revenue of $100 billion, and more interestingly, a profitability profile that’s similar to some of the U.S.’s most valuable tech giants. More Here
US government confirms it didn’t offer any plea deals to Sam Bankman-Fried: On the first day of Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial, in a dark mahogany-walled courtroom at the Southern District of New York, federal district Judge Lewis Kaplan asked the U.S. government if it had ever offered any plea offers to the defendant. The government’s lawyers confirmed they did not. It was a slow start to the six-week-long trial. More Here
🗞️ Today’s Must Read On: Startup, Technology & VC
What Do You Think Of Today's News Updates? 🤓
✍️Written By Sahil R | Venture Crew Team
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