VC Daily Digest - 14/09/2023

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📢 Top Venture Capital News

Saudi Arabia Investment Is Increasing In US-Based Startups: Earlier this month, U.S.-based networking startup Nile announced a large $175 million Series C co-led by March Capital and Saudi Arabia sovereign wealth fund Sanabil Investments. That was followed this week by Houston-based Axiom Space locking up a $350 million round led by Saudi Arabia’s Aljazira Capital — its first investment in a U.S.-based startup, per Crunchbase data — and Korean health care company Boryung Pharmaceutical. Although the two rounds may not seem to have much in common, they do share something — they illustrate the growing appetite Saudi Arabia-based investors have in U.S. startups. More Here

Venture Capital Investment Market to grow by USD 737.56 billion from 2022 to 2027: The venture capital investment market is estimated to grow by USD 737.56 billion from 2022 to 2027, decelerate at a CAGR of 20.88%. The venture capital investment market is fragmented owing to the presence of many global and regional companies. A few prominent companies that offer venture capital investment market are Accel, Agoranov, AH Capital Management LLC, Balderton Capital UK LLP, Battery Ventures, Caixa Capital Risc SGEIC S.A., Cherry Ventures Management GmbH, Eurazeo, First Round Capital, GGV Capital, Greylock Partners, Hoxton Ventures LLP. More Here

Andreessen Horowitz And Others Poured $200 Million Into Startup Health IQ. Now It’s Bankrupt: The company, which plans to liquidate, has $1.3 million in assets and nearly $257 million in liabilities, according to court filings. That will likely leave its lenders, investors and vendors with almost nothing. On December 8, 2022, after raising more than $200 million in equity and convertible debt from the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, startup Health IQ started laying off hundreds of employees and contractors. More Here

Sapphire Partners is now managing all of CalSTRS’ emerging manager portfolios: Sapphire Partners, the LP arm of Sapphire Ventures, has taken a significant stride in the venture world, now managing five funds with $1.4 billion in assets focused on emerging managers on behalf of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS). This move comes after Invesco decided to step away from this line of business, selling its emerging manager stakes to Sapphire. More Here

Superorganism wants to be the conservationist on the cap table raising $25M for First Fund: Superorganism, a venture firm dedicated to biodiversity and nature, was launched by former conservationist Tom Quigley and VC and angel investor Kevin Webb. The firm, which is currently targeting $25 million for its first fund, plans to invest in pre-seed and seed-stage companies, contributing between $500,000 and $3 million. Superorganism will focus on startups that advance biodiversity, reduce harm to species, or enable biodiversity in the future, and will donate 10% of all profits to conservation efforts. More Here

Kae Capital Hits Final Close Of Winners Fund II: Early-stage venture capital firm Kae Capital, which has backed companies like consumer nutrition platform Healthkart, on-demand manufacturing network Zetwerk, and lendingtech startup Loantap, among others, has made the final close of its Winners Fund II (KWF II). The VC firm said it has raised $50 million (around ₹410 crore) for the Winners Fund II, which was launched in mid-2020. More Here

📢 Top Startups News

US ‘the only country’ crypto startups should avoid, says Ripple CEO: The United States is one of — if not the worst — place to launch a cryptocurrency startup in the world right now, according to Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, whose firm is in a legal battle with the U.S. securities regulator. “The only country I would not encourage you to start a company right now is in the U.S.,” Garlinghouse said on a Sept. 12 panel at Token 2049 in Singapore. The Ripple boss wants the U.S. to take note from the likes of Singapore, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates and Switzerland by enacting policies that encourage crypto innovation while protecting consumers. More Here

Midjourney Shows the Way to Success without VC Funding: Midjourney has lots of issues. The platform is counterintuitive to use, needs very specific prompts to generate great pictures, and requires a subscription. But above all, the platform is neck-deep battling the copyright infringement lawsuits. And although it looks like nothing is going its way, Midjourney continues to be the second-most popular platform in the generative AI space and the most popular in the AI image generation segment. According to media reports, with a mere 40-member team, the company is slated to rake in $200 million in revenue this year from its 15 million community members. More Here

📢 Featured: Today’s Featured Tweet

How Are Startups Investing VCs Money Into Other Startup?

Recently Anand Sanwal shared a tweet on - Startups were raising VC $ and then turning around and investing those $ into other startups was one of the wilder things during peak market craziness!

Examples:  @stripe did 21 investments in 2021 & @coinbase / Coinbase Ventures did 138 investments in 2022 and 121 in 2021. Have a Look! 👇

📢 Top AI News

Stealth AI Startup From Ex-Googlers Raises $40 Million: Essential AI is raising $40 million in new funding, according to a person familiar with the deal, underscoring Silicon Valley’s frenzy to back promising young artificial intelligence companies. The funding round for the secretive company comes just a few months after it raised $8 million in a deal led by Thrive Capital, according to PitchBook. Thrive is also an investor in Microsoft Corp.-backed OpenAI. Here

Adobe starts paying bonuses to Stock contributors whose content is being used to train Firefly: Firefly stand out from a crowd of other image generation models was that the company only trained it on content that was either in the public domain or that it had rights to through Adobe Stock, its stock image service. But since day one, there were questions about how (and if) it would pay the photographers and illustrators whose content it used to train Firefly. They, after all, stand to lose quite a bit of business if Adobe’s users opt to simply use Firefly to generate unique images instead of downloading existing stock photos. More Here

EU to let ‘responsible’ AI startups train models on its supercomputers: The European Union has signalled a plan to expand access to its high performance computing (HPC) supercomputers by letting startups use the resource to train AI models. However there’s a catch: Startups wanting to gain access to the EU’s high power compute resource — which currently includes pre-exascale and petascale supercomputers — will need to get with the bloc’s program on AI governance. More Here

Drone Startup Shield AI Valued at $2.5 Billion in New Funding Round: Shield AI, a startup that makes autonomous drone technology for military applications, is raising $150 million from investors, according to people familiar with the discussions. The deal values the San Diego-based company at $2.5 billion. Shield AI makes software called Hivemind, which is a kind of self-driving pilot for aircraft that doesn’t require communications or GPS, and can be used in situations where enemy forces could otherwise interfere with navigation. More Here

AI-Driven Grid Resilience firm, Prisma Photonics secures approximately $20 Million: Prisma Photonics, the dynamic, AI-driven startup that monitors large-scale infrastructure, such as power grids, announced today that it raised approximately $20M in a Series C round led by New York-based global private equity and venture capital firm Insight Partners, with participation from Elements, a Climatech fund, SE Ventures (Schneider Electric's venture capital arm), Future Energy Ventures (the venture capital investment and collaboration platform of E.ON), Chione Switzerland, and INcapital. More Here

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📢 Top Startup’s Fundraising News

Access code: Evidence brings open source BI to technical data teams raised $2.1M: Toronto-based startup, Evidence, is offering a fresh approach to business intelligence (BI) tools, targeting technically-inclined data teams with a code-based, open-source platform. The company, which recently raised seed funding, is expanding its commercial footprint by opening up its premium cloud product to businesses lacking the resources to self-deploy. Unlike traditional drag-and-drop BI workflows, Evidence enables teams to build data products using SQL and markdown, providing a more sophisticated and granular approach to data management. More Here

Digital forensics firm Binalyze raises $19M to investigate cyber threats: London-based startup Binalyze, specializing in digital forensics and incident response, has raised $19 million in a Series A round. The funds will be used to scale operations and innovate the digital forensics industry, making it faster, remote, scalable, automated, and integrated with other security platforms. Despite a challenging market for cybersecurity startups, Binalyze's unique focus on investigation and collaboration sets it apart, positioning it as a leader in a market projected to reach $10.82 billion by 2028. More Here

The Exploration Company signs agreements with Axiom raised $44M: The Exploration Company, a Europe-based startup, is preparing to challenge space delivery giants SpaceX and Northrop Grumman. They've recently signed a preliminary cargo delivery agreement with Axiom Space, aiming to service space stations primarily. The company is developing a modular and reusable orbital vehicle, Nyx, with an initial demonstration mission planned for January 2024. The Exploration Company's ability to work with various national launchers is a key differentiator, allowing for flexibility and scalability. More Here

Exostellar raises $15M to help companies optimize their cloud spend: Public cloud services spending is projected to reach $1.1 trillion by 2026, up from $531.7 billion this year, according to IDC. But as the use of cloud services expands, organizations are having a tougher time keeping track of exactly how much they’re spending on compute. Statista reports that around 82% of companies find managing cloud spend to be a “significant” challenge today. Self-estimated wasted cloud spend sits at 28% for this year, per Flexera — down from 32% a year ago. More Here

Treefera raises $2.2M to solve the carbon credits credibility problem with AI: Earlier this year, Disney, Shell, Gucci and several other big companies discovered that they had purchased carbon credits that were essentially worthless. A collaborative investigation alleged that Verra, the world’s largest issuer of voluntary carbon credits, had sold credits for forests that were not at risk of destruction, essentially wiping out the value of the credits. Fallout ensued. In the months that followed, Verra’s CEO resigned and the organization rewrote its verification methodology. More Here

Swan secures $40 million to bring embedded banking to Europe: For the past few years, everybody working in fintech has been talking about embedded finance. It’s supposed to be the next revolution in financial services — bringing financial services to other products and services so that these services are as seamless as possible for the end users. That’s why it’s interesting to see that Swan, a French startup working on embedded banking, has managed to raise a $40 million Series B funding round (€37 million). More Here

🗞️ Interesting Today’s Read On: Startups & Venture Capital

• 📮Visualizing Funding Runway & Burn Rate Read More

• 🗃️ Decoding Term Sheet: Liquidation Preference | Participation & Non-Participation Rights Read Here

• 📪Hidden Trap Of Convertible Note and Liquidation Preference Multiples Read More

• 📜 Decoding Startup Valuations with the Venture Capital (VC) Valuation Method Read More

• 📪 The Game-Changing Clause For Entrepreneur. Read More

• 📑 Is the "1% Market Fallacy" Holding Your Startup Back? Read Here

• 📰 Why Your Startup Idea Isn’t Big Enough for Some VCs? Read More

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✍️Written By Sahil R | Venture Crew Team

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