Venture Daily Digest - 08/12/2023

🗞️ TODAY’S MAJOR UPDATES

• Congruent turned down over $300M from LPs for its third climate tech fund

• Coinbase’s and Robinhood’s break belies good news for a host of fintech startups

• Google’s Gemini Demo Was Faked

• Featured Tweet: Michael Seibel On “How To Find Early Adopters For Your MVP?”

• What Do You Think: Will Crypto Industry Rebound?

Break Into VC Is Easy With VC Crafter Community

We have launched our VC Enthusiast Community - to help individuals to learn, network and craft path to the venture capital. This community is specially for those who are looking to learn about VC and making career into it.

As a Community member you will get access to:
Community Access, VC Weekly Events, Networking Sessions, Sessions on Learning VC Concepts - fund modelling, startup building, evaluating startups & more, daily job updates, funding news updates, CV & Interview Preparation & More!

Join 100+ VC Enthusiast →

🤝 Partnership With US!

Want to promote your startup to our community of 20,000+ entrepreneurs and investors? Check our media kit here & fill out the form. We’ll reach out to you!

💰 MASSIVE FUNDING UPDATES

Pragmatic, a 13-year-old startup based in Cambridge, UK, that manufactures semiconductors that are used across various sectors, ranging from healthcare to consumer goods, held a $203.9 million first close on its Series D round. The deal was co-led by M&G's Catalyst and UK Infrastructure Bank, with Northern Gritstone, Latitude, and MVolution Partners as well as previous investors British Patient Capital, Cambridge Innovation Capital, and Prosperity7 Ventures also participating. More Here

Sarvam AI, the five month old Indian based AI startup races to build a suite of full-stack generative AI offerings in the world’s most populous nation It has raised $41 million. The $41 million funding raise is across the seed and Series A financing rounds. Lightspeed led the Series A round and co-led the seed with Peak XV Partners. Peak XV and Khosla Ventures also participated in the Series A funding. More Here

Klook Travel Technology, a nine-year-old, Hong Kong-based travel booking service, has raised $210 million in funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners. BPEA EQT and SMIC SG Holdings also joined the round, along with earlier backers like HongShan (formerly Sequoia China). The outfit has now raised more than $900 million altogether. More Here

MaintainX, a five-year-old San Francisco startup whose software help businesses in various industries manage and optimize their maintenance operations, raised a $50 million round at a $1 billion valuation; the company was previously valued at $191 million in a 2021 funding round. The deal was led by Bain Capital Ventures, with previous investors Bessemer Venture Partners, and August Capital also chipping in. More Here

Vast Data, a seven-year-old New York and Israeli startup that claims its platform streamlines data storage, organization, processing, and analysis in order to speed up the performance of AI models, raised a $118 million Series E round at a $9.1 billion valuation. The deal lead was Fidelity, with NEA, Drive Capital, and Bond Capital also contributing. More Here

AgroSpheres, a seven-year-old startup based in Charlottesville, Va., that says it has developed a delivery system for biopesticides that is more targeted than traditional methods, raised a $25 million Series B round from FMC Ventures, Lewis and Clark AgriFood, Ospraie Ag Science, Bidra Ventures, and Cavallo Ventures. More Here

Blue World Technologies, a five-year-old Danish startup that makes fuel cells for the automotive and heavy-duty transportation sectors, raised an $11.9 million round. Investors included Maersk Growth, the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark, and Cycle Group. More Here

Center, a five-year-old startup based in Bellevue, Wa., whose offering includes a corporate card and travel expense management software, raised a $30 million Series C round led by Top Tier Capital Partners, with additional participation from previous investor Durable Capital Partners. The company has raised a total of $140 million. More Here

Orchid, a four-year-old San Francisco startup that provides consumers with genome screening for embryos, raised a $12 million round. Backers include Prometheus Fund, Starbloom Capital, Refactor Capital, Pebblebed, Day One Ventures, and Conviction Capital. More Here

ContactMonkey, a Toronto-based platform that lets companies create, send and track internal comms from Outlook and more. It has raised $55 million in a Series A round led by Updata Partners. More Here

DataCebo, a US based startup creating an open source library called Synthetic Data Vault, or SDV for short. The startup’s $8.5 million in seed funding was led by Link Ventures and Zetta Venture Partners, with participation from Uncorrelated Ventures. More Here

Simply Homes, One Portland, Maine-based startup aims to address the problem by buying single-family homes in blighted neighborhoods, renovating them and then renting them out to very low-income families, the elderly and the disabled (or Section-8 voucher holders). It has raised $22 million in funding to further its efforts. Gutter Capital and Watchung Capital co-led the company’s recent funding round, which included participation from Village Global, Ambush Capital, RavenOne Ventures, Neil Parikh, Gabe Flateman, Luke Sherwin and others. More Here

Lutra AI., aims to creates AI workflows from natural language so no technical experience is needed. It integrates with existing apps, like Google Workspaces and Slack, and enables automation for tasks like email management and internet research. It has raised $3.8 million in seed funding in a round that included Coatue Ventures, Hustle Fund, Maven Ventures, WVV Capital and a group of angel investors, including Andrej Karpathy, Jeff Dean and Scott Belsky. More Here

Opal, a vendor taking an automated approach to identity access management, it raised $22 million in a Series B round led by Battery Ventures with participation from Greylock and Box Group. More Here

Pimento, A French startup that is using generative AI in an interesting way, as the company focuses on the first step of creative processes — ideation, brainstorming and moodboarding. It has raised a $3.2 million (€3 million) funding round from by Partech and Cygni Capital. Several angel investors also participated in the round, such as Julien Chaumond (Hugging Face), Stanislas Polu (Dust), Thibaud Elzière (Hexa), Jean-Charles Samuelian (Alan), Igor Manceau (former creative director at Ubisoft), Jonathan Widawski (Maze), Alessandro Sabatelli (ex-Apple) and Nicolas Steegmann (ex-Stupeflix). More Here

Bujeti, A African corporate cards and spend management platform has raised $2 million in seed funding. The startup, involved with how African businesses, including SMBs, startups and enterprises, manage and handle finances, received this capital from lead investor Y Combinator and other backers, including Entrée Capital, Voltron Capital, Unpopular VC, Kima Ventures, Dropbox co-founder Arash Ferdowsi, Alan Rutledge, Tristan Walker of Heirloom VC and Mono CEO Abdul Hassan. More Here

Scalable Capital, a Munich startup that aims to make investing in financial markets accessible to a wider range of consumers, is putting more fuel in its tank to drive deeper into Europe. The company has raised €60 million in equity ($65 million ). A round led by Tencent, with BlackRock, HV and Tengelmann participating. More Here

💰 VENTURE CAPITAL UPDATES

Congruent turned down over $300M from LPs for its third climate tech fund: Congruent Ventures, led by Joshua Posamentier and Abe Yokell, faced a threefold oversubscription while raising its third fund, originally targeting $200 million. Despite turning down $325 million to maintain a fund size aligned with their strategy, the firm secured $275 million, highlighting heightened interest in climate tech investments. Congruent plans to continue its focus on early-stage North American startups with positive climate impacts. More Here

Zelda Ventures, a Bay Area-based pre-seed fund, debuts with $33 million in capital commitments, focusing on investing in startups led by founders previously backed by Suzanne Fletcher, the general partner. Fletcher, with a two-decade career and over 350 investments, aims to fill the gap left by diminishing angel money and larger early-stage funds, seeking passion, commitment, and a market-focused idea from founders for the first check into their new ventures. More Here

Coinbase’s and Robinhood’s break belies good news for a host of fintech startups: Investors are optimistic about a rebound in consumer trading, boosting the values of fintech startups like Coinbase and Robinhood. Recent data indicates an improvement in trading activity, potentially providing a lifeline for private counterparts seeking more capital in the fintech sector, which has seen reduced VC investment in the past two years. This renewed sentiment is reflected in the rising values of companies such as Coinbase (up 301% this year) and Robinhood (up 39%). More Here

𝕏 FEATURED: TODAY’S FEATURED TWEET

Michael Seibel On “How To Find Early Adopters For Your MVP?”

"The first version of your product is for people who have their hair on fire!” Michael Seibel, Partner at Y-Combinator shared an interesting perspective on who will be your early adopters for MVP and how to find them… Read More Here

→ Follow us on twitter - to get daily tactical advice from the greatest founders & Investors.

💡 STARTUP’S LATEST BUZZ

Layoffs

Music streaming service Tidal is reducing its workforce by over 10% as part of its parent company Block's plan to cap employees at 12,000 for business growth. The move follows Spotify's recent cut of 17% of its workforce, citing slow economic growth. Tidal's layoffs, affecting around 40 employees, contribute to the broader trend of job losses in the tech industry, with over 240,000 cuts reported this year. More Here

Acquisition

Kenyan insurtech Lami Technologies' acquisition of Bluewave fell through after a two-year "strategic partnership agreement." Bluewave's founder, Adelaide Odhiambo, stated that changing terms, including the acquisition cost, led her to walk away from the deal in August. Despite this, Bluewave, now relaunching, has signed partnerships to distribute micro-insurance products in East and Southern Africa. More Here

Arlington data privacy startup WireWheel has been acquired by competitor Osano in a rare exit for a Greater Washington company this year. The 7-year-old company's software helps large companies abide by countries' varying privacy regulations, and Austin-based Osano said WireWheel’s data privacy tools “will be fully integrated into the Osano platform. More Here

🤖 LATEST IN EMERGING TECH

Google’s best Gemini demo was faked: Google's Gemini AI model faces scrutiny as its impressive demo video showcasing multimodal capabilities was revealed to be mostly simulated. While the video claimed to demonstrate live interactions, it was created by using carefully tuned text prompts with still images. Critics argue that Google's approach has eroded trust, questioning the company's transparency and integrity in presenting the capabilities of its AI model.

Grok, developed by xAI, Elon Musk's AI startup, has launched on X (formerly Twitter), initially for Premium Plus subscribers. Priced at $16 per month, Grok provides conversational responses drawing on real-time X data, showcasing a purported "wit" and willingness to answer unconventional queries. Musk aims to boost subscriptions amid advertiser controversies, with Grok as one of several new services introduced on X. More Here

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

• Venture Capital Jobs & Tips To Break Into VC Read More (VC Jobs)

• Why It’s Better To Raise Less Capital In The First Round? Read More (Startups)

• How Can One Build Conviction Over An Idea? Read More (Startup)

• Paul Graham on Bootstrapping business Read More (Startup)

🤔 WHAT DO YOU THINK?

(Will featured some of the best opinion in upcoming newsletter…)

That’s It For Today! Will Meet You On Monday! Happy Weekends! 🥂

✍️Written By Sahil R | Venture Crew Team

  🤗 Build Your MVP 🤝 Advertise 👉 Follow Us