Venture Daily Digest - 12/12/2023

🗞️ TODAY’S MAJOR UPDATES

• Tiktok Entered E-Commerce market with investmnet of $1.5B in A Startup.

• VC Firms lose $32 Billions In Startup Winter

• Indian VC Firm, Omidyar Network shut down it’s operation over multiple startup losses

• Featured Article: How Can You Use Airbnb's & Stripe's Strategy To Build Your MVP?

• What Do You Think: As an investor, what factor matters most when considering an early stage startup investment?

  
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💰 MASSIVE FUNDING UPDATES

TikTok plans to expand its presence in Indonesia's e-commerce market through a $1.5 billion joint venture with Tokopedia, GoTo's e-commerce unit. TikTok will hold a controlling stake of 75.01% in the new entity, following regulatory hurdles faced by its wholly owned effort, TikTok Shop Indonesia. The move aligns with the Indonesian government's recent ban on direct payments for online purchases on social media platforms, with TikTok acquiring a majority stake in Tokopedia to comply with local regulations. More Here

Curvance, a remote provider of a DeFi platform, raised $3.6M in Seed funding. This seed round lead by Offchain Labs, Wormhole, Sandeep Nailwal, and core contributors from Scroll, Mantle, Eigenlayer, GMX, Curve Finance, Convex Finance, Balancer, Aura Finance, and Pendle Finance. More Here

Jiant, a Los Angeles based startup, ready-to-drink alcohol brand for modern consumers, closed a $6m Series A capital raise. The round was led by Natureza Growth Partners qith participation from G5 Capital, Sage Venture Partners, AIR Ventures, Semillero Partners, Brown Angel Group, Freedom Trail Capital and Michael Silverstein, former global leader of the Boston Consulting Group’s global consumer practice and NYT Best-selling author of Trading Up. More Here

Citrusx, an early-stage startup out of Israel, raised a $4.5 million seed investment to build a software service to help companies stay in compliance, whether with internal company rules or broader government regulations. This round is led by Canadian venture firm Awz Ventures, with participation from several angel investors. More Here

Nonco, an institutional digital asset brokerage firm, closed its seed funding round, received a total of $10m of aggregate new capital. The round was a combination of equity and convertible notes, the round was led by Valor Capital Group and Hack VC. Other participants in the round include Morgan Creek Digital, Bullish, CMCC, Lvna Capital, Theta Capital, Bastion Trading, Libra Capital Ventures, and other high profile investors. Brian Brooks (Valor Capital Group) and Alex Pack (Hack VC) joined as board members. More Here

Armada, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a mobile edge computing platform that delivers internet connectivity, computing and AI anywhere on the planet, raised over $55M in funding. The round was led by Founders Fund, Lux Capital, Shield Capital and 8090 Industries, with participation from Felicis, Contrary, Valor Equity Partners, Marlinspike, 137 Ventures, Koch Real Estate Investments, 8VC and a cohort of other investors. More Here

Medefy Health, a Tulsa, OK-based provider of a mobile-first healthcare benefits navigation platform, raised $10M in Series A funding. The round was led by Mercury Fund with participation from Advantage Capital. More Here

CAEmate, a Bolzano, Italy based provider of a cloud-based software platform to create digital twins to monitor physical infrastructures, raised €3m in first funding. This round lead by CDP Venture Capital, 360 Capital, Marco Carlini and Matti Kuivalainen. More Here

Helicity Space, a Pasadena, CA-based commercial space company, specializes in fusion propulsion and its applications to advance space exploration efforts, it has raised $5M in Seed funding. The investors includes Airbus Ventures, TRE Ventures, Voyager Space Holdings, E2MC Space, Urania Ventures and Gaingels. More Here

Leav, a Montreal, Canada-based startups develops mobile self-checkout solutions aimed at enhancing the shopping experience for consumers and streamlining retail operations for retailers, it had raised $2.3M in Seed funding. The round was led by Exo10.vc. More Here

Relevance AI, An Australia-based startup aims to help companies of all sizes build custom AI agents for any use case or function to maximize productivity. It has raised $10 million (AUD 15 million) in a Series A funding round led by King River Capital with participation from global investors Peak XV’s Surge, Galileo Venture and its previous investor Insight Partners. Relevance AI will use the new capital, which brings its total raised to $13.2 million. More Here

DataCebo, a three-year-old Boston startup that claims it can build, deploy, and manage generative AI models for enterprise-grade applications when real data is limited or unavailable, raised an $8.5 million seed round co-led by Link Ventures and Zetta Venture Partners, with Uncorrelated Ventures also chipping in. More Here

Gacha Monsters, a Tokyo startup that publishes a web3 game called Poglin, raised a $3 million seed round from Animoca Brands, Infinity Ventures Crypto, FBG, and Big Time Games. More Here

💰 VENTURE CAPITAL UPDATES

Venture capital firms lose billions in start-up winter: Venture capitalists and investors are facing significant losses, with about $32 billion invested in start-ups now nearly worthless, including WeWork, Hopin, Olive AI, Plastiq, and Bird. The startup winter has led to a plunge in overall funding, but Generative AI firms defy the trend, raising a record $10 billion in 2023, highlighting the transformative power of this technology despite challenging economic conditions. More Here

Omidyar Network, backed by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, is closing its India operations, impacting nearly 75 startups in the South Asian market. The decision comes unexpectedly, with the firm citing the achievement of its primary impact objectives as the reason. Omidyar Network India, with about $673 million in assets, faced challenges in 2023, including the sale of Doubtnut and the shutdown of ZestMoney, both backed by the organization. More Here

Utah's state-backed venture capital firm, the Utah Innovation Fund, was established with $15 million to support promising businesses, addressing venture capital reluctance for hardware-focused innovations. The fund, initiated by Rep. Jeff Stenquist and Sen. Ann Millner, aims to fill investment gaps, providing "patient capital" for longer-term projects and fostering a robust tech venture capital ecosystem in the state. More Here

Shiseido, A beauty conglomerates is rolling out a new venture arm -- Shiseido Long Term Investments for the Future (LIFT) Ventures -- to make early-stage investments in beauty wellness innovation. LIFT Ventures is reportedly focused on investing in "novel technologies, innovative platforms, high-growth brands, and new business models," among other things. More Here

Venture capital investment in the food tech sector declined for the eighth consecutive quarter in Q3 2023, with 205 deals totaling $2 billion, a 13.9% decrease from the previous quarter, according to a PitchBook report. The sector experienced a notable 71% year-over-year decline, reflecting challenges in areas such as alternative protein, e-commerce, and food production. While the Instacart IPO provided a positive note, the closed IPO window and high capital expenditures in the sector contribute to the ongoing challenges in food tech investment. More Here

𝕏 FEATURED: TODAY’S FEATURED ARTICLE

How Can You Use Airbnb's & Stripe's Strategy To Build Your MVP?

One of the most common mistake that founders do while building a MVP is focusing too much on product and forget the viable part. 

Do you know - successful startups like Airbnb & stripe used Y-Combinator strategy which purely focused on Viable part which make them successful.. so what’s this strategy to build MVP & can you copy that strategy? .. Read More Here

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💡 STARTUP’S LATEST BUZZ

People

Strava, a popular activity-tracking platform, experienced significant growth during the pandemic, reaching over 120 million members. Strava has appointed Michael Martin as its new CEO. Co-founder Michael Horvath, who had briefly returned to the role, will stay on as an executive advisor. Martin, a former general manager at YouTube’s shopping unit, is expected to guide the company through its next phase of growth and potential revenue diversification strategies. More Here

Shutdown

Near Intelligence, a Pasadena, Ca.-based, publicly traded software firm that provides data insights to major companies including Wendy’s Co. and Ford Motor Co., filed for bankruptcy today with plans to sell itself. The outfit, which went public less than a year ago through a SPAC, listed estimated assets of at least $50 million and liabilities of $100 million. More Here

Acquisition

Docker has acquired AtomicJar, a startup with a $25 million Series A, specializing in container testing. AtomicJar's platform, Testcontainers, gained popularity in the Docker marketplace, boasting millions of monthly pulls and over 600,000 unique IP addresses. Docker aims to enhance its build, test, and deploy services by incorporating AtomicJar's testing capabilities into its platform. More Here

🤖 LATEST IN EMERGING TECH

The European Union's new AI regulation, the world's first comprehensive AI law, includes powers for the Commission to adapt rules for general purpose AI (GPAI) over time. The law categorizes GPAIs into low and high risk tiers based on compute power, with an initial threshold set at 10^25 FLOPs. GPAIs in the high-risk tier will face regulatory requirements, including testing for systemic risks, and compliance with copyright rules. The EU AI Act is expected to be in full force around 2026, with a phased compliance approach and some regulations in effect sooner. More Here

Beeper Mini is back in operation after Apple’s attempt to shut it down: Beeper Mini, the app enabling Android users to receive iMessage texts, resumed operations after Apple initially shut it down, citing security risks. The app, founded by Eric Migicovsky, claims to have fixed issues affecting message transmission and maintains its security features, challenging Apple to third-party audits. Beeper Mini is temporarily free, undergoing testing before re-entering the Play Store, and now requires Apple ID sign-in due to unresolved phone number registration problems. More Here

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

• How to Improve Your LLM : Combine Evaluations with Analytics Read More (Technology and AI)

• Crafting unforgettable startup names that resonate, inspire thought, and make competitors wince Read More (Startups)

• How to Get Your First Customers? By YC Partners Read More (Startups)

• 'You Can’t Raised Funding Without Using Old Sales-Marketing Funnel’ Read More (Startup)

🤔 WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Previous Poll: Honestly it’s great to see people are more bullish on climate tech sector. But I am more curious about - 32.14% people go for other options. Would like to know - what sector are you bullish on in 2024? You can simply reply on this email.

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

✍️Written By Sahil R | Venture Crew Team

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