VC Fund With $3.5B AUM Shutting Down & OpenAI's Founding Scientist Leaving For Second Time

👋 Hey, Sahil here! Welcome to today’s Venture Daily Digest Newsletter. Every day I quick updates on startup funding, new VC funds and tech in just 5 minutes! Today we have major updates on -

• Foundry Group, an 18-year-old venture firm with $3.5 billion AUM, unexpectedly decides to shut down.

• Founding Scientist Of OpenAI leaving for Second Time.

• Instacart is laying off around 250 employees, representing 7% of its workforce.

• Nvidia launch "Chat with RTX" tool that allows owners of GeForce RTX 30 and 40 Series GPUs to run an offline on PC.

• Featured Article : Paypal's 'Going Sharp' Stategy To Find Product Market Fit.

🤝 Venture Crew’s Verified Founders & Investors Community

Need Your Opinions…..

🤝 Partnership With US!

Want to promote your startup to our community of 22,500+ entrepreneurs and investors? Fill out the form, our team will reach out to you.

🎉Get A Discount of 20% For Multiple Featured

💰 MASSIVE FUNDING UPDATES

Cambridge Mechatronics, a Cambridge, UK-based company which specializes in the design and control of Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) actuators, raised over $40M in funding. The round was led by Atlantic Bridge. Intel Capital and Supernova acted as co-leads with participation from Sony Innovation Fund. More Here

Finom, a European challenger bank aimed at SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) and freelancers, has raised €50 million ($54 million) in a Series B equity round of funding. It was co-led by new investor Northzone and existing investor General Catalyst, which has previously backed the likes of Airbnb, Stripe, and Snap. More Here

Boat Planet, a St Louis, MO-based marketplace for boat repair and maintenance industry, raised $1.2M in Seed funding. The round was led by 46VC, with participation from Ascend Venture Capital and Quad 2 Capital. More Here

Meter, a San Francisco, CA-based internet infrastructure company for businesses, raised $35M in funding. The round was led by Sam Altman and Lachy Groom, with support from existing investors including Sequoia, Meraki co-founders John Bicket and Sanjit Biswas, and VMware founder Diane Greene. More Here

Zylon, a Madrid, Spain-based GenAI application for every workplace not requiring tech or prompt engineering skills to be used, raised $3.2M in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Felicis with participation from LifeX Ventures, Zypsy and other strategic angels like Travis McPeak co-founder of Resourcely, Kirill Tashilov of Talis Capital and Hans-Christian Zappel founder of IMMO. More Here

Clue Software, a Bristol, UK-based provider of software for investigations and intelligence management, raised £4M in funding. The round was led by Frog Capital, and included angel and employee investment, supported by ScaleUp Group. More Here

SQCDP, a London, UK-based SaaS startup providing an application for manufacturers to replace paper and spreadsheet-based systems, raised £200K in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by QVentures with angel investors joining the round. More Here

Sibli (formerly Responsibi), a Toronto, Canada-based AI powered investment research company, raised $4.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Staircase Ventures, with participation from The Group Ventures, Burst Capital, MaRS IAF, and private investors. More Here

Document Crunch, an Atlanta, GA-based provider on AI-powered contract platform, raised $9M in Series A funding. The round was led by Navitas Capital with participation from Zacua Ventures, Fifth Wall, Argonautic Ventures, and Ironspring Ventures. More Here

Marqo, a San Francisco, CA- and Melbourne, Australia-based vector search company, raised $12.5M in Series A funding. The round, which brought the total amount to $17.8M, was led by Lightspeed with participation from Blackbird VC, January Capital, and Chronosphere founder and CTO Rob Skillington. More Here

Skylo Technologies, a Mountain View, CA-based direct-to-device satellite connectivity service provider, raised $37M in funding. The round saw participation from investors including Intel Capital, Innovation Endeavors, BMW i Ventures, Samsung Catalyst, Next47, and Seraphim Space. More Here

Quilter, a Los Angeles, CA-based AI company building generative circuit board design software, raised $10m in Series A funding. The round was led by Benchmark with participation from Coatue and existing investors including Root Ventures and Harrison Metal Capital. More Here

Rimere, a Newport Beach, CA-based climate solutions company with proprietary plasma technology, raised $10M in funding. The round was led by Clean Energy Fuels Corp. More Here

Camus Energy, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a grid orchestration platform, raised $10M in Series A extension. The round, which brought the total round amount to $26M, was led by Congruent Ventures and Wave Capital. More Here

Aegir Insight, a Copenhagen, Denmark-based provider of decision-making software, data, and intelligence for the offshore wind sector, raised €8.5M in Series A funding. The round was led by Seaya Andromeda with participation from Climentum Capital. More Here

Seal Security, a NYC-based cybersecurity startup leveraging large language models (LLM) to increase that increases their patching capacity, raised $7.4M in Seed funding. The round was led by Vertex Ventures Israel, with participation from Crew Capital, PayPal Alumni Fund, and Cyber Club London. More Here

Sudo Biosciences, a Carmel, IN-based biopharmaceutical company committed to designing and developing precision TYK2 (tyrosine kinase 2) inhibitors, raised additional $30M in Series B funding. The round, which brought the total amount to $147M, was led by Enavate Sciences and TPG, with participation from Sanofi Ventures, More Here

BioAge Labs, a Richmond, CA-based clinical-stage biotechnology company developing novel therapies for obesity and metabolic diseases by harnessing the biology of aging, raised $170M in Series D funding. The round was led by Sofinnova Investments. New investors including Longitude Capital, RA Capital & Cormorant Asset Management. More Here

Groover, a Paris, France-based provider of a music promotion platform, raised $8M in Series A funding. The round was led by OneRagtime, Trind, Techmind, and MozzaAngels, with participation from Partech, Bpifrance’s Tech & Touch fund, Verve Ventures, and Frenchfounders. More Here

ProfoundBio, a Seattle, WA-based clinical-stage biotechnology company developing novel antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) therapeutics for patients with cancer, raised $112M in Series B funding. The round was led by Ally Bridge Group. More Here

Bob W, a Helsinki, Finland-based hospitality company, raised €40M in Series B funding. The round was led by Evli Growth Partners and joined by growth capital investors and European entrepreneurs. More Here

Tortus, a London, UK-based generative AI startup building an assistant for doctors, raised £3.3M in Seed funding. The round was led by Khosla Ventures. Other investors included Entrepreneur First, former NHS Chair Lord David Prior, and Eric Jang participate in this round. More Here

💰 VENTURE CAPITAL UPDATES

Foundry Group, an 18-year-old venture firm with $3.5 billion AUM, unexpectedly decides to shut down, despite announcing a $500 million fund in 2023. Foundry 2022 will be their last fund. Portfolio companies face uncertainty, but Foundry plans to continue leading Series A and B financings with the remaining fund. Co-founders expect to stay until the firm's work is done, aiming to deploy all funds by 2026. Raises questions about follow-on funding for startups. More Here

AIX Ventures, a San Francisco, CA-based venture capital firm, closed its second fund, at $202M. Led by Richard Socher, Shaun Johnson, and others, AIX Ventures is an AI-focused venture capital firm investing across the early stages, from PreSeed to Series A. More Here

Beta Boom, a Salt Lake City, UT-based pre-seed and seed stage venture capital firm, has closed a $14.5M Fund II. Limited Partners include Ally Bank, Pivotal Ventures (A Melinda French Gates Company), Bank of America, and Atento Capital. More Here

𝕏 FEATURED: TODAY’S FEATURED ARTICLE

Paypal's 'Going Sharp' Stategy To Find Product Market Fit.

In November 1999, PayPal founded the Product Market Fit (PMF) - When it identified a clear and urgent pain point for a large and growing market: online payments, particularly focusing on eBay users who needed a convenient way to pay and get paid for their online auctions.

The company's growth skyrocketed after it dropped other plans and went all-in on the eBay use case, with the number of users increasing from less than 10,000 at the end of 1999 to 5 million by the summer of 2000.

This is a result of PayPal's sharp startup strategy, which still works today… Read More Here

💡 SARTUP’S LATEST BUZZ

Acquisition & Exits

SchoolStatus, a Ridgeland, MS-based provider of K-12 data-driven solutions that empower student success, acquired SchoolNow, a unified digital publishing platform for K-12 that streamlines how schools engage families and their communities. More Here

BitGo, a Palo Alto,CA-based digital asset company, acquired Brassica, a provider of investment infrastructure for private securities and alternative investments. More Here

Layoffs & Shutdown

Instacart is laying off around 250 employees, representing 7% of its workforce, as part of a restructuring to streamline operations and focus on key initiatives. The company reported Q4 revenues of $803 million, slightly below analysts' estimates. More Here

Paramount Global, led by CEO Bob Bakish, is initiating planned layoffs, expected to affect around 800 U.S.-based employees, constituting approximately 3% of the company's global workforce. More Here

Startups & People

Andrej Karpathy, a founding scientist member of OpenAI, has announced his departure from the company for the second time. His exit is described as unrelated to any specific event or issue, and he expresses appreciation for his time at OpenAI. Karpathy plans to work on personal projects, and his responsibilities have been transferred to another senior researcher within the company. More Here

🤖 LATEST IN EMERGING TECH

OpenAI has introduced memory controls for ChatGPT, allowing users to instruct the AI to remember specific details across conversations. The new feature, currently in testing, lets users ask ChatGPT to remember information or turn off its memory altogether. OpenAI emphasizes privacy, offering a Temporary Chat feature. More Here

Nvidia launch "Chat with RTX" tool that allows owners of GeForce RTX 30 and 40 Series GPUs to run an offline AI-powered chatbot on Windows PCs. The tool enables quick answers to queries by customizing a GenAI model to search through local documents and files. While more of a toy than a production tool, it supports various file formats and YouTube playlist transcriptions, but lacks context memory and may vary in response relevance. More Here

📰 TODAY’S MUST READ ON: STARTUP, TECH & VC

• VC Distributions Sink To 14-Year Low. Read Here

• New SAFE Valuation Caps for Fundraising Success. Read Here

• Never express your ‘Use of Funds’ slide as percentages, why? Read Here

• Venture capital: Shedding the "access class" label. Read Here

• What Should Be Your MVP Mindset In the Pre-Launch Stage? Read Here

🤔 WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Yesterday’s Poll:

43.75% Readers vote for the option (D) and that’s correct.
$4.7 billion was generated in deal value within the enterprise fintech vertical. You can read more about the trends, deals and opportunities in the space in our Q4 2023 Enterprise Fintech Report. _{(Our Sponsored Partner)}

📬 Newsletter That You Might Be Interested

• Techpresso: Get the most important tech news in a free daily email.

• Transacted: Get the latest trends and transactions with the Street’s most informative M&A update.

That’s It For Today! Will Meet You Tomorrow!
Happy Wednesday! 🥂

  Advertise || Investor Database || Break Into VC

✍️Written By Sahil R | Venture Crew Team