VC Daily Digest - 22/09/2023

📢 Major News

• GGV, 23 year old VC firm splits off intro two firms following congressional panel probe

• Atlanta Venture Capital Fund For Minorities Sued For Alleged Reverse Racism

• Portland generative AI startup lands $6M & More

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📢 Venture Capital Highlights

GGV, 23 year old VC firm splits off intro two firms following congressional panel probe: GGV, the 23-year-old U.S. venture capital firm with a storied track record in China, is splitting into two branches as escalating geopolitical tensions continue to push for decoupling between the world’s two superpowers. It’s a strategy mirroring one recently pursued by Sequoia, which announced in June that it would separate its China and India arms from the U.S. mothership. More Here

Atlanta Venture Capital Fund For Minorities Sued For Alleged Reverse Racism: An Atlanta-based venture capital fund is the target of a lawsuit that alleges the endeavor has discriminatory practices. According to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, The Fearless Fund has been sued by a group affiliated with a conservative activist who led the charge striking down affirmative action at the collegiate level. More Here

Allocate Closes $10MM in Strategic Capital and Adds Key Personnel to Modernize Investment in Venture Capital: Allocate, a platform that provides investors with a streamlined way to invest and manage private investments, announced the closing of $10MM in financing, bringing the total capital raised since the company launched in July 2021 to $33.5MM. The round included Gopher Asset US, an affiliate with Noah Holdings International (NYSE: NOAH), Intera Investments, M13 Ventures, along with several prominent family offices. More Here

Underscore VC’s third fund in the works for early-stage startups: On the heels of Underscore VC’s largest community event of the year,Core Summit, the firm has some funding news on the horizon. The Boston venture capital firm, which focuses on early-stage startups, has indicated it's targeting $50 million for a third fund. The fund was identified as “Underscore.VC Fund III, L.P.” in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. More Here

BV Investment Partners begins its fifth decade with largest fund to date: BV Investment Partners announced it has closed its latest fund at $1.75 billion. The Boston private equity firm said “Fund XI” hit its hard cap after initially targeting $1.5 billion for this raise. BV focuses its investments on tech-enabled business services, software and IT services sectors. More Here

India-focused PE/VC funds raise record $8.5bn in 2022 despite sharp decline in deals: Though 2022 was marked by a sharp decline in technology investments, private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) firms marked record-breaking fund closings. According to research firm Preqin, 70 India-focused PC and VC houses closed funds in 2022, raising an aggregate $8.5 billion, which is the highest-ever annual fundraising value. More Here

📢 Massive Fundings Updates

Portland generative AI startup lands $6M: Portland startup Paxton AI secured $6 million from investors to get its platform into the hands of more customers. The company built a generative AI assistant designed for legal and regulatory research. Attorneys and other professionals can query Paxton for summaries of laws and regulations, and the results include footnotes with citations. More Here

Former a16z execs launch Bastion raise $25M: Two former Andreessen Horowitz crypto division executives, Nassim Eddequiouaq and Riyaz Faizullabhoy, launched web3 startup Bastion this week with $25 million in seed funding. Eddequiouaq was chief security officer, while Faizullabhoy was chief technology officer. Along with the funding, Bastion launched a suite of products so companies can integrate web3 infrastructure into their existing enterprise technologies. More Here

Secoda secures $14M to expand its data cataloging platform: Secoda, a startup developing what it describes as an AI-powered data search and cataloging platform, today announced that it raised $14 million in a funding round led by Craft Ventures with participation from Abstract Ventures and several angel investors. Bringing Secoda’s total raised to $16 million, Secoda co-founder and CEO Etai Mizrahi said that the proceeds will be put toward strengthening the startup’s engineering efforts, channeling more funds into R&D and building “cutting-edge” dev tools. More Here

Mesh, which helps people manage their digital assets, raises $22M: Mesh (formerly Front Finance), a startup developing a service to help customers transfer and manage digital assets like crypto, has raised $22 million in a Series A funding round led by Money Forward with participation from Galaxy, Samsung Next, Streamlined Ventures, SNR.VC, Hike VC, Heitner Group, Valon Capital, Florida Funders, Altair Capital, Network VC and various angels. More Here

AI startup Gizmo raises $3.5M by using gamified quizzes and flashcards to make learning fun: Gizmo, a generative AI learning startup that uses gamified quizzes to engage learners, today announced $3.5 million in seed funding from NFX, Ada Ventures, and Capital T. The company will use the funding to scale its platform globally, hire more engineers and roll out new features. More Here

Ghana’s Complete Farmer, which connects farmers to global food buyers, raises $10.4M: Ghanaian agritech Complete Farmer seeks to transform farming practices in the region by developing critical technical and physical infrastructure to enhance efficiency in the agricultural value chain. It raised a recently concluded $10.4 million pre-Series A funding round ($7 million equity and $3.4 million debt) to consolidate its efforts. More Here

Corti, an AI ‘co-pilot’ for healthcare clinicians, raises $60M: A Copenhagen startup called Corti has raised $60 million to expand its contribution to the field: an AI assistant designed to support healthcare clinicians with patient assessments in real time. Prosus Ventures and Atomico are leading the Series B investment, with previous backers Eurazeo, EIFO and Chr. Augustinus Fabrikker also participating. More Here

📬 Featured: Today’s Featured Articke

37-year-old quit Amazon and started 20 companies before coming up with Instacart—now he’s worth $1.1 billion

Determination turned Apoorva Mehta into a billionaire. More than 900 million grocery deliveries helped, too.

Mehta is the 37-year-old co-founder of Instacart, the online grocery delivery startup that went public on Tuesday and now boasts a market value of $8.8 billion. Read More Here 👇

📢 The Latest In Emerging Tech: AI

This Week in AI: Interactive Evolutions, Enterprise Wins, Biometric Payments: Generative artificial intelligence (AI) hasn’t even celebrated its first birthday yet. But the innovative technology continues to be the gift that keeps on giving. Another week has gone by, and with it an increasing cascade of announcements showing how the novel tech has continued to layer itself into everyday life by making the mundane — across both personal and professional occasions — just a little bit easier and more streamlined for everyone involved. More Here

Poland opens privacy probe of ChatGPT following GDPR complaint: OpenAI is facing another investigation into whether its generative AI chatbot, ChatGPT, complies with European Union privacy laws. Last month a complaint was filed against ChatGPT and OpenAI in Poland, accusing the company of a string of breaches of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Yesterday the Polish authority took the unusual step of making a public announcement to confirm it has opened an investigation. More Here

The copyright issues around generative AI aren’t going away anytime soon: Generative AI has brought a host of copyright issues to the fore. Just this week, authors including George R.R. Martin, led by the Authors Guild, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that the startup’s viral AI-powered chatbot, ChatGPT, was trained on their work without their knowledge or consent. And it’s not just OpenAI that’s having to contend with this. More Here

YouTube Studio to give creators a generative AI tool to suggest video topics: CEO Neal Mohan revealed that the platform is testing a new generative AI-powered tool in YouTube Studio that suggests video topics, making the brainstorming process easier for content creators. Called “AI insights for Creators,” the inspiration tool will generate ideas based on data about what audiences are already watching, Mohan explained. He used Mahna Ghafori, a travel content creator, as an example, saying her viewers are most interested in getting trip ideas. More Here

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📢 Startups Snap: The Latest Buzz

Snapchat now has over 5M paying users for Snapchat+: Snapchat announced today its subscription service for power users, Snapchat+, has now topped 5 million subscribers — a figure that’s up from 4 million in late June and 3 million in mid-April. Now over a year old, the $3.99 per month subscription offering provides access to a sizable handful of exclusive features, including custom app themes, unique app icons, the ability to pin your No. 1 BFF, tools to enhance your Stories or see who rewatched them, and more. More Here

Salesforce to acquire Airkit.ai, a low-code platform for building AI customer service agents: Salesforce has announced plans to acquire Airkit.ai, a low-code platform that helps e-commerce companies build AI-powered customer service agents. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Founded in 2017, Redwood City, California-based Airkit was created by Adam Evans and Stephen Ehikian, who sold a previous big data startup called RelateIQ to Salesforce for $390 million in 2014. More Here

Banish cumulative graphs from your pitch deck: Using cumulative graphs in their presentations, it’s an easy trap to fall into, but it’s best avoided. Investors hate them because they’re misleading at best, dishonest at worst, and they don’t give investors the information they need in order to make an investment decision. Here’s why. More Here

How to spend your first $10K on paid ads: This was the question I had to answer when kickstarting the first paid acquisition campaigns at Postmates back in 2018. Long before we received our massive funding infusion, eventually totaling to $763 million through six rounds, I was responsible for creating a strategy that would provide us with valuable learnings and be as efficient as possible. More Here

Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain implant startup, set to begin human trials: Elon Musk’s controversial biotechnology startup Neuralink opened up recruitment for its first human clinical trial Tuesday, according to a company blog. After receiving approval from an independent review board, Neuralink is set to begin offering brain implants to paralysis patients as part of the PRIME Study, the company said. PRIME, short for Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface, is being carried out to evaluate both the safety and functionality of the implant. More Here

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

• The future of Silicon Valley Read More (Venture Capital )

• Why Do VC Firms Want an Option Pool Before the VC Round? Read More (Startup)

• ​Building Applications with AI - Lessons from LangChain, Hearth, & Context.ai Read More (Technology)

• Decoding Term Sheet: Liquidation Preference | Participation & Non-Participation Rights  (Venture Capital)

• Startups Fail All The Time, But Many Could Fail Better By Thinking Beyond the VCs and Founders Read Here (Startup)

• Building a Generational Business Databrick by Databrick Read More (Technology)

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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