VC Daily Digest - 15/11/2023

📮Today’s Major News

• Airbnb has acquired a secretive new AI startup, GamePlanner at $200M

• YC Executives Launching $350 M VC Fund

• Social media companies must face youth addiction lawsuits, US judge rules

• Venture capital landscape has witnessed a significant decline in median growth-stage valuations

Khosla Ventures Closes In on $3 Billion for Venture Funds

Khosla Ventures is in the final stages of raising a $500 million seed fund, a $1.6 billion venture fund, and a $900 million growth fund. The firm has a hot hand given it was the first outside investor in OpenAI… More Here

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💰 Massive Fundings Updates

Civitai, a generative AI content marketplace, co-founded by Maxfield Hulker and Briant Diehl, raised a $5.1 million round in June led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) at a $20 million valuation. More Here

Baton, a music collaboration platform for unreleased material secured $4.2 million in funding. The round was led by BITKRAFT Ventures with participation from Techstars, Dorm Room Fund, NYU’s Innovation Venture Fund, the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship, Dark Arts, Franklin Templeton, Harmonic Future and angels in the music industry. More Here

Atlas, a Vienna Based 3D generative AI platform, allows developers to generate detailed 3D models from reference images and text. It has raised 6 million in seed funding after two years in stealth. The funding consists of two rounds: a $4.5 million round led by 6th Man Ventures (6MV) and a $1.5 million round led by Collab+Currency. More Here

Keychain, A Manufacturing platform that seek to use artificial intelligence to help brands find manufacturing partners, announced an $18 million seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners this morning. More Here

Phantm, an Australian startup that is working with Starbucks Australia and MECCA to replace plastic with sustainable alternatives, raised a $1.3 million seed round co-led by Blacknova VC, Salus Ventures, and CoVentures VC. More Here

Element Energy ("Element"), a Menlo Park-based Battery Management Technology company, today announced the close of $111 million in capital comprised of a $73 million Series B equity investment and a $38 million debt facility provided by Keyframe Capital Partners, L.P. ("Keyframe"). More Here

Nouscom, an eight-year-old Swiss startup that is developing neoantigen cancer vaccines to address conditions such as colorectal cancer, raised a $73.4 million Series C round co-led by Andera Partners, Bpifrance, and M Ventures, with Revelation Partners, Indaco Venture Partners, Panakès Partners, X-Gen Ventures, 5AM Ventures, EQT Life Sciences, and Versant Ventures also taking part. More Here

CoverSelf, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that aims to enable insurers to in-source their payments processing work in order to reduce their dependence on third parties and improve their relationship with providers and patients, raised an $8.2 million seed extension round co-led by BEENEXT and 3one4 Capital. More Here

Augmentus, a four-year-old Singapore startup that has developed a no-code robot programming platform for industrial automation for clients such as Hyundai and Johnson & Johnson, raised a $5 million Series A round led by Sierra Ventures and including previous investor Cocoon Capital. More Here

Solvimon, a one-year-old Utrecht startup that helps businesses implement different pricing methods such as usage-based pricing, raised a $9.6 million round. Northzone was the deal lead. More Here

Diesta, a one-year-old London startup whose platform is designed to automate the reconciliation and distribution of insurance payments, raised a $2 million seed round from Restive, SixThirty, Antler, SystemaNova, and Westerly Ventures. More Here

EyeTell, a five-month-old startup by YouTube cofounder Chad Hurley that uses AI to generate short-form video scripts and content, has raised an unknown amount of seed funding led by Kevin Hartz’s A-Star Capital with an investment from Ron Conway’s SV Angel. More Here

BrightGo, a startup founded this year based in San Bruno, CA, whose software helps janitorial companies manage their workforce, raised a $3 million seed round. Costanoa Ventures and Index Ventures co-led the deal. More Here

Bloom, a one-year-old London startup that has developed a career coaching app, raised a $10 million seed round. Octopus Ventures and MMC Ventures were the co-leads. More Here

SpinDrive, an eight-year-old Finnish startup that provides active magnetic bearings for original equipment manufacturers, raised a $4.1 million Series A round. Rhapsody Venture Partners led the transaction, with previous investors Innovestor and Born2Grow also participating. More Here

🚀 Venture Capital Highlights

Former YC Continuity head targets $350 million growth-stage fund: Anu Hariharan, the former head of Y Combinator's YC Continuity program, is reportedly raising a $350 million fund. Her new firm, Avra, which some have dubbed "YC for growth," plans to run an eight-week program for approximately a dozen post-Series A startups each quarter. More Here

Monta Vista Capital, a seed stage startup focused fund secured $48 million in capital commitments for its third fund — its largest to date — to support B2B startups. Monta Vista targets startups in infrastructure, vertical SaaS and digital transformation of industries, like mining and textiles. It raised capital from a large network of 65 individual investors. More Here

Airbridge Equity Partners, an Amsterdam-based fund that typically invests €1-5 million in European B2B or B2C startups that have demonstrated commercial success and are starting to scale, raised a $63 million fund, its second. More Here

Venture capital landscape has witnessed a significant decline in median growth-stage valuations over the past two years especially in third-quarter data. While valuations have experienced a notable nosedive, they have not dipped below levels seen four years ago, indicating a return to more realistic figures. Interestingly, despite this trend, pre-seed and seed valuations have risen in 2023, with record-high sizes for seed deals, showcasing varied market conditions within the startup ecosystem. More Here

Transcend Fund amasses nearly $60m in second seed fund: Venture capital firm Transcend Fund has announced the closure of a nearly $60 million second seed fund. The firm was established in 2020 and is managed by Andrew Sheppard, Brett Krause, and Shanti Bergel. Transcend focuses on early-stage investments across the video games industry. More Here

Mendoza Ventures, a female and Latinx-founded Fintech, AI, and Cybersecurity Venture Capital firm, today announced that Truist Ventures is investing in its Early Growth Fintech Fund as a limited partner. The fund is targeting $100M and will invest in early growth-stage startups with a focus on diverse teams. More Here

💡 Startups Snap: The Latest Buzz

Airbnb has acquired a secretive new AI startup, GamePlanner.AI, the company announced this morning. CNBC reports that the purchase price was around $200 million.GamePlanner was co-founded by Adam Cheyer and Siamak Hodjat. Cheyer famously helped co-launch the startup Siri, which Apple acquired and whose technology became the basis for Apple’s AI-powered Siri assistant. More Here

Social media companies must face youth addiction lawsuits, US judge rules: A federal judge denied dismissal attempts by major social media companies, including Alphabet and Meta, in nationwide litigation accusing them of harming children's mental health by enticing them to their platforms. The ruling allows lawsuits seeking damages for alleged negative health effects to proceed, rejecting claims of immunity under the First Amendment and the Communications Decency Act. More Here

Bluesky replacing Twitter (X): Bluesky, a decentralized social app developed independently from Twitter, gained over a million users since Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter. Founded by Jack Dorsey, Bluesky uses the AT Protocol, allowing transparency and open-source development. The app, currently invite-only, offers a Twitter-like experience with algorithmic choice, community-specific moderation, and plans for federated communities using the AT Protocol. More Here

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🤖 The Latest In Emerging Tech: AI

You.com has launched APIs enabling large language models (LLMs) like Meta's Llama 2 to access real-time information from the web, overcoming limitations of static training data. Priced at $100 per month, the APIs offer web search, news, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) capabilities, allowing LLMs to provide more up-to-date and contextually relevant answers to user queries. More Here

AI robotics’ ‘GPT moment’ is near: The next frontier in AI is robotics, with efforts underway to develop a "GPT for robotics." Similar to language models like ChatGPT, this approach involves a foundation model trained on diverse, high-quality datasets, utilizing reinforcement learning to achieve human-level autonomy in the physical world. The rapid growth in robotic foundation models is poised to redefine industries, particularly in tasks requiring precise object manipulation, with widespread deployment expected by 2024. More Here

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

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• The Venture Capital Blueprint: Fund Returns Modelling Read More (startups & venture capital)

• What do VCs look for? 10X return or 10X fund size outcome? Read More (Startups & Venture Capital)

• Aaron Epstein On Business Models That Build Winners Read More (Startups)

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✍️Written By Sahil R | Venture Crew Team

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