VC Daily Digest - 19/09/2023

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Your Monday to Saturday Daily Morning Dose of Venture Insights, Funding Updates and Startup Stories Delivered Straight to Your Inbox🚀.

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📢 Top Venture Capital News

Questions every VC needs to ask about every AI startup’s tech stack: From fraud detection to agricultural crop monitoring, a new wave of tech startups has emerged, all armed with the conviction that their use of AI will address the challenges presented by the modern world. However, as the AI landscape matures, a growing concern comes to light: The heart of many AI companies, their models, are rapidly becoming commodities. A noticeable lack of substantial differentiation among these models is beginning to raise questions about the sustainability of their competitive advantage. More Here

Fidelity’s billionaire Johnson family backs consumer venture capital fund: FMR LLC, the parent company of Fidelity Investments, is backing a new venture capital fund whose initial investments span spices, vegan vitamins, and skincare. Unfold Ventures began marketing itself Monday, launching with $300 million from FMR, which counts the billionaire Johnson family as its biggest shareholder. The fund spent about a year prior to the launch quietly investing in four startups in health, wellness, and beauty. More Here

Ant Group Withdrawing From $100 Million Crypto Fund A&T Capital: Ant Group is reportedly preparing to wind back its investments in the cryptocurrency sector. The Chinese tech giant is unwinding its $100 million investment in venture firm A&T Capital, Bloomberg News reported Monday (Sept. 18), citing sources familiar with the matter. According to the report, the move follows the resignation of A&T founding partner and former Ant executive Yu Jun, who left amid an in-house investigation into his workplace behavior. Sources tell Bloomberg it’s not clear whether A&T will remain in operation. More Here

Blockchain Capital launches two new funds for a total of $580M: The crypto bear market may be ongoing, but Blockchain Capital is still going big. It closed two new funds for a total of $580 million, the firm’s general partner Spencer Bogart told TechCrunch. The two venture funds, its sixth early-stage fund and its first “opportunity fund,” are allocated roughly two-thirds and one-third of the $580 million, respectively, Bogart said. The firm’s last investment vehicle, its fifth early-stage fund, was $300 million in June 2021. More Here

Not all companies need to be venture-scale: We live in an era rife with the narrative of unicorns, decacorns, and startups that seemingly explode overnight into multi-billion-dollar enterprises, and every budding entrepreneur is seemingly dreaming of being the next Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg. But the truth is, not every startup needs to be “venture-scale.” I see a common problem with many startups I work with as a pitch coach: Companies will attempt to raise from VCs despite knowing they can’t possibly deliver venture-scale returns. More Here

📢 Top Startup’s Fundraising News

Material wealth: Scrap metal trading marketplace Metaloop raises $17M: Metaloop, a seven-year-old Austrian company that connects scrap metal sellers with buyers, which today announced it has raised €16 million ($17 million) in a Series A round of funding. European Union (EU) lawmakers this month announced plans to reduce waste and increase recycling across the bloc, with proposals to collect and process 45% of 16 identified “strategic” raw materials by 2030. More Here

Procurement management platform Levelpath raises $30M: Levelpath raised $30 million in a Series A round led by Redpoint with participation from Menlo Ventures, which follows an unannounced $14.5 million seed round led by Benchmark with participation from NewView Capital and World Innovation Lab and brings the startup’s total raised to $44.5 million. More Here

Writer nets $100M for its enterprise-focused generative AI platform: Investors haven’t tired of generative AI startups yet — particularly those with clear enterprise applications. Case in point, Writer, which is developing what it describes as a “full-stack” generative AI platform for businesses, today announced it raised $100 million in a Series B funding round led by ICONIQ Growth with participation from WndrCo, Balderton Capital and Insight Partners, Aspect Ventures and Writer customers Accenture and Vanguard. More Here

Dragos raises $74M to secure industrial control systems from threats: Dragos, a company building software to secure the control systems for manufacturing and industrial equipment, has raised $74 million in a Series D round extension led by WestCap. The round, which brings Dragos’ total raised to $440 million, leaves the startup’s post-money valuation unchanged for the second year at $1.7 billion. More Here

📢 Featured: Today’s Featured Tweet

When To Prioritize Growth Over Profitability?

Recently we shared a tweet on when to prioritize growth over profitability. Over a few year, there was a drastic shift from growth to profitability and many first time founder get confused between growth & profitability.

To solve this issue, we have shared 7 ways to decide what’s more important at early stage - growth or profitability. Have a Look! 👇

📢 Top AI News

Instead of fine-tuning an LLM as a first approach, try prompt architecting instead: Amid the generative AI eruption, innovation directors are bolstering their business’ IT department in pursuit of customized chatbots or LLMs. They want ChatGPT but with domain-specific information underpinning vast functionality, data security and compliance, and improved accuracy and relevance. The question often arises: Should they build an LLM from scratch, or fine-tune an existing one with their own data? For the majority of companies, both options are impractical. Here’s why. More Here

UK’s competition watchdog drafts principles for ‘responsible’ generative AI: An initial review of generative AI by the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) which was announced back in May has concluded with a report containing seven proposed principles to “ensure consumer protection and healthy competition are at the heart of responsible development and use of foundation models” (FMs), as it puts it. More Here

New AI tools are helping doctors screen for mental health conditions: The health system in Britain is now deploying AI-powered mental health tools in large-scale clinical settings, while U.S. health insurance companies are trialing them.A diagnostic "e-triage" tool from Limbic, a British AI startup, has screened more than 210,000 patients with a claimed 93% accuracy across the eight most common mental disorders, including depression, anxiety and PTSD, co-founder Ross Harper, a computational neuroscientist, told Axios. More Here

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📢 Top Startups News

Instacart’s IPO values the company at $9.9 billion, a steep plunge from the $39 billion: Grocery delivery business Instacart priced its initial public offering at the top of a marketed range to raise $660 million in the second marquee listing in a week. The San Francisco-based company sold 22 million shares for $30 each on Monday, according to a statement. Instacart and current shareholders had offered the shares for $28 to $30, a range that was elevated after chip designer Arm Holdings Plc rose 25% in its trading debut Thursday after the year’s biggest IPO. More Here

Can the tech IPO market keep up its positive momentum?: This morning, Boston-based email marketing software maker Klaviyo raised its IPO price range to $27 to $29 per share, a few dollars more than its prior $25 to $27 per share estimate. This indicates the company gauged interest in its IPO to be high enough that it feels confident it can raise a few more dollars while also getting out at a better price. More Here

Elder tech is expanding beyond reactive solutions: My grandpa will turn 93 this November. He’s my last living grandparent, and while he hasn’t made it this far without any health complications, he’s largely thriving and still able to maintain a garden, brew beer and try new baking projects. My family has long attributed his longevity to how active he’s remained. He still takes walks, and he maintained his lawn until just a few years ago. He’s a living example of how important exercise is for those who are aging — hopefully mixed with some good genes, for my sake! Bold is built on the same premise. More Here

Twitter/X rival T2 rebrands as ‘Pebble,’ saying the old name was never meant to be permanent: An X challenger didn’t hide its ambitions to take on the social network formerly known as Twitter when it dubbed itself T2 at launch, but now that name — one which indicates a desire to build a Twitter clone — is no more. The company announced on its platform that the would-be X rival will now be called “Pebble.” More Here

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

• 📜 Navigating Dilution and Ownership in Startup Fundraising Read More

• 📪 Decoding Term Sheets for Founders and Investors in Simple Terms Read More

• 📑 Understand Convertible Note Investment Option: The Valuation Game-Changer! Read Here

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

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

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

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

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What do you think of today's newsletter?

• ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Amazing piece

• ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ This was really good

• ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ It was okay

• ⭐️ ⭐️ Not your best

• ⭐️ Waste of time

✍️Written By Sahil R | Venture Crew Team

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