VC Daily Digest - 06/11/2023

📮Today’s Major News

• Ex-Meta COO Starting VC Fund

• Musk Launching Open AI Rival, Grok

• Featured Article: Why Your Startup Idea Isn’t Big Enough for Some VCs?

• Former Google China President's Startup 0.1AI, ChatGPT Rivals Hits $1B Valuation

01.AI, a China based startup founded by computer scientist with the aim of developing a large language model for the Chinese market, challenging the likes of OpenAI in China. The startup has released its first model, Yi-34B, an open-source bilingual (English and Chinese) model with 34 billion parameters. It has raised some undisclosed amount at $1Billion valuation Backed by investors including Sinovation Ventures and Alibaba Cloud…..

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💰 Massive Fundings Updates

Carepatron, the New-Zeland based startup focused on serving solo practitioners and small health practices and healthcare management platform. It has raised $4 million in seed funding from Blackbird and TQ Ventures. More Here

01 AI, a China based startup founded by computer scientist with the aim of developing a large language model for the Chinese market, challenging the likes of OpenAI in China. The startup has released its first model, Yi-34B, an open-source bilingual (English and Chinese) model with 34 billion parameters. It has raised some undisclosed amount at $1Billion valuation Backed by investors including Sinovation Ventures and Alibaba Cloud. More Here

Cedar, A Austin based startup is targeting real estate developers with some software to reduce the cost and time it takes them to source and evaluate new housing projects. It has raised $3 million in seed funding. The round was led by Caffeinated Capital and included participation from developer Tishman Speyer, Kojo CEO Maria Davidson, David Rubenstein via Shorewind Capital and Alumni Ventures. More Here

Memo Therapeutics, an 11-year-old Zurich company that's investigating a treatment for BK polyomavirus infection in kidney transplant recipients, raised a $27.7 million Series C round led by Pureos Bioventures, with additional participation from previous investors Swisscanto, Vesalius Biocapital, Adjuvant Capital, Verve Ventures, and Schroders Capital. More Here

Gynesonics, a startup based in Redwood City, Ca., that is focused on developing minimally invasive ablation procedures for symptomatic uterine fibroids, raised a $42.5 million round co-led by previous investors Amzak Health, Endeavour Vision, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, Runway Growth Capital, and Bain Capital, with new investor MVM Partners also participating. More Here

Verqor, a six-year-old Mexican startup that claims it can provide loans to farmers in “48 hours or less”, raised a $7.5 million pre-Series A round. Yara Growth Ventures was the deal lead, with Accion Venture Lab, SP Ventures, GLOCAL, and Amplifica Capital also anteing up. More Here

Deft, a E-commerce search startup releasing a multimodal search function for users to get better results. The company raised $1.8 million in a seed round from Hustle Fund, Frontier VC, Vitalize, Long Ecommerce Ventures, 43 Ventures and angel investors. More Here

Accelex, a five-year-old London startup that helps investment firms, asset managers, and hedge funds automate data-intensive tasks, such as data collection, data cleaning, and data analysis, raised a $15 million Series A round led by FactSet, with previous investors Illuminate Financial, AlbionVC, SixThirty Ventures, and Expon Capital also pitching in. More Here

Agentio, the New York-based startup is building a platform for creators to sell ad slots to brands. The startup has raised $4.25 million in seed investment funding co-led by Craft Ventures and AlleyCorp, with participation from additional institutional investors including Antler, Protagonist and Permanent Capital. More Here

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🚀 Venture Capital Highlights

Peak XV Partners (Formerly Indian Sequoia Capital) Scores Impressive 10x Returns: Peak XV Partners, after separating from Sequoia, has achieved remarkable returns, including a 10x gain on Mamaearth's oversubscribed IPO and a 15x return on Go Colors' shares. With 20 IPOs in India and Southeast Asia, the fund surpasses its peers in the region. The firm, managing a $2.5 billion capital pool, is now expanding focus to Australia and the U.S. for future investments. More Here

Ex-Meta COO Sandberg Sets Up Venture Investment Firm with Husband: Sheryl Sandberg, the longtime former COO at Meta Platforms, and her husband Tom Bernthal have started an investment firm to fund businesses in various sectors. The new firm, Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners, uses the couple’s personal capital for investing, supporting and scaling alongside great entrepreneurs. More Here

Defense Tech Shines Amidst Challenging Funding: In a challenging fundraising environment, AI startups and defense tech companies are standing out, with Shield AI recently raising a $200 million Series F round, reflecting investors' confidence in the sector. Defense tech's recession-proof nature and global stability concerns are driving increased investments, with successful companies like Palantir paving the way for venture-scale returns. Despite declining funding in other sectors, defense tech is expected to see continued growth in 2024. More Here

📬 Featured: Today’s Featured Article

Why Your Startup Idea Isn’t Big Enough for Some VCs?

Investors often tell founders that their startup doesn't align with their investment thesis or some generic response like “not this time (not investing this time)” leaving most founders confused.

There are several reasons for this, such as the startup not aligning with the investor's thesis in terms of industry or funding amount. But One common reason for rejection is when investors believe that the startup is not big enough for venture capital (VC) investment. Read More Here…

💡 Startups Snap: The Latest Buzz

OpenSea, a leading NFT marketplace, has confirmed laying off approximately 50% of its staff as part of significant organizational changes. The move aims to streamline the company and refocus efforts on launching "OpenSea 2.0," a next-generation version of the platform. This decision follows the market's decline in mid-2022 and a shift in policies, including discontinuing mandatory creator royalty payments for most NFT sales. More Here

Scarcity of Unicorns in UK and France: The world's first AI Safety Summit was held at Bletchley Park, where the Bletchley Declaration on AI safety was signed by global leaders and tech CEOs. Despite the event's focus on AI, the creation of new unicorns in the UK and France remained scarce, with only three born in Europe in Q3 2023. Both countries continue to work towards their unicorn goals, but there is growing skepticism about the traditional billion-dollar valuation metric, leading to a shift in focus towards growth potential and scale-up status in startup rankings. More Here

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🤖 The Latest In Emerging Tech: AI

Musk's xAI’s chatbot, Grok available for X Subscribers: Elon Musk's AI startup, xAI, is set to release its own conversational AI system named Grok, designed to answer questions similarly to ChatGPT. The system, developed on tens of thousands of GPUs, offers real-time access to information and internet browsing capabilities. Subscribers to xAI's Premium Plus plan and a limited number of U.S. users will have access to Grok, marking a significant step in Musk's quest to create a "maximum-truth-seeking AI." More Here

Healthcare AI startup Olive, once valued at $4 billion, has announced its closure and will sell its revenue cycle automation tools to Waystar and Humata Health. The company's shutdown reflects the declining funding trend in the digital health space, with startups raising only $2.5 billion in Q3 2023, compared to the peak of $29 billion in 2021. Olive's financial struggles, including layoffs and divestments, culminated in this decision amid the challenging market conditions. More Here

🗞️ Today’s Must Read On: Startup, Technology & VC

• 6 Marketing Mistakes Made by Pre-seed Startups Read More (Startups)

• Early Work By Paul Graham (My Fav.) Read More (Startups)

• What do VCs look for? 10X return or 10X fund size outcome? Read More (startups & venture capital)

• How to get startup ideas by Paul Graham Read More (Startups)

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✍️Written By Sahil R | Venture Crew Team

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