Venture Daily Digest - 14/12/2023

🗞️ TODAY’S MAJOR UPDATES

• a16z planning to raised billion dollars for three industry specific funds.

• Epic Games won its antitrust battle with Google - Google Monopoly?

• Tesla is recalling nearly all 2 million of its cars on U.S. roads

• Featured Tweet: “Should Founders Work By Vision or Data?” By Reid Hoffman

• What Do You Think: As An Investor - How has your startup investment strategy changed in 2023 to address the changing market landscape?

  
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💰 MASSIVE FUNDING UPDATES

Bicara Therapeutics, a three-year-old startup based in Cambridge, MA, that is developing tumor-targeting antibodies, raised a $165 million Series C round co-led by Braidwell and TPG, with additional participation from Deerfield, Fairmount, and Aisling Capital. More Here

Essential AI, a startup that will use AI for corporate functions such as data analysis and automate monotonous tasks, raised a $56.5 million round led by March Capital, with Advanced Micro Devices, Franklin Venture Partners, Google, Nvidia, and Thrive Capital also anteing up. More Here

Shinobi Therapeutics, a startup based in San Francisco and Kyoto and founded this year that is developing immune evasive iPSC-derived cell therapies, raised a $51 million Series A round. EQT Life Sciences, F-Prime Capital, and Eight Roads Ventures Japan co-led the deal, with Astellas Venture Management, Fast Track Initiative, JIC Venture Growth Investments, and D3 LLC also taking part. More Here

Tacto, a three-year-old Munich startup that helps companies reduce their procurement costs by analyzing key costs like raw materials and energy, raised a $53.9 million round co-led by Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures, with previous investors Visionaries Club, Cherry Ventures, and UVC Partners also participating. More Here

Allstar, a four-year-old New York startup that turns a player’s video game data into videos that can be quickly shared across social media platforms, raised a $12 million Series A round led by Drive Capital, with previous investors Mark Cuban, Studio VC, J-Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and members of the New York Angels also chipping in. More Here

Antabio, a 14-year-old French company that raised a $26.9 million Series B finding round. Investors included AMR Action Fund and EIC Fund as well as previous investors BNP Paribas, Relyens Innovation Santé/Turenne Capital, and IRDI Capital Investment. More Here

Verve Motion, a startup building a robotic “exosuit” designed to help workers complete physically demanding tasks in factories and other like environments, today announced that it raised $20 million in a Series B round led by Safar Partners with participation from Cybernetix Ventures, Construct Capital, Pillar VC, OUP and angel investors including Okta co-founder Frederic Kerrest. More Here

Zuper, a field service management company, closed on $32 million in Series B funding to provide its customers with technologies and tools to cater to a wider range of workers. FUSE led the round and was joined by Prime Ventures and other existing partners. More Here

Aye Finance, an Indian startup that offers its digital lending platform to small firms, has raised $37.18 million in a fresh funding round led by British International Investment, involves the participation of Waterfield Fund of Funds and the startup’s existing investor A91 Partners. More Here

GFO-X, a three-year-old London startup that has developed an exchange for institutional investors to trade digital asset futures and options, raised a $30 million. M&G Investments was the deal lead. More Here

Origin AI, a ten-year-old company based in Rockville, Md., that uses WiFi signals to detect and track the presence and movement of people and objects for property security, smart automations, and eldercare, raised a $15.9 million Series B extension led by Verisure, with Okinawa Electric Power Company also pitching in. More Here

Pivot, a French maker of spend management software, is raising another $21.6 million (€20 million) in new Series A funding just months after announcing its seed funding. The capital comes from earlier backers Visionaries, Emblem, Anamcara and Oliver Samwer. More Here

Cathera, a thirteen-year-old Paris startup that makes a brain implant that uses ultrasound to open the blood-brain barrier and deliver drugs to the brain, raised a $4.9 million Series B round. The investment syndicate included Unorthodox Ventures as well as previous investors Supernova Invest, Saint-Genys, and Bouscas Med. More Here

Seam, a one-year-old San Francisco startup that says it his building a web3 social platform enabling users to code, design, and curate their perfect social spaces online, raised a $2.5 million seed round led by 1kx and including Seed Club Ventures, Sfermion, F7 Ventures, and Social Graph Ventures. More here.

VirtualZ Computing, a five-year-old Minneapolis startup that claims it can connect cloud apps to mainframe data in real-time, raised a $2.2 million seed round led by Next Frontier Capital, with additional funds provided by 2M Companies, Innosphere Ventures, and Next Coast Ventures. The company has raised a total of $4.9 million. More Here

Guardz, an Israeli startup that has built an all-in-one security and cyber insurance service for small and medium businesses, has raised another $18 million in a Series A round of funding. Glilot+, the early growth fund of Glilot Capital Partners, is leading the round, with ClearSky and previous backers Hanaco Ventures, iAngels and GKFF Ventures also participating. More Here

Hyperplane, a San Francisco-based startup that is building foundation models to help banks predict customer behavior, It has raised a $6 million funding round led by former Stripe exec Lachy Groom, who was joined by SV Angel, Clocktower Technology Ventures, Liquid2 Ventures, Soma Capital, Latitud, Atman Capital, Crestone VC and Norte. More Here

Andalusia Labs, Abudabi based Digital asset risk infrastructure-focused formerly known as RiskHarbor startup, has raised $48 million in a Series A round at a valuation “north of $1 billion,” Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round; other investors include Mubadala Capital as well as existing participants like Pantera Capital, Framework Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures and Digital Currency Group, among others. More Here

Metafuels, A Zurich based startups sets out to change the landscape of sustainable jet fuel, and has just picked up an $8 million suitcase. The round was led by Energy Impact Partners and Contrarian Ventures. More Here

Five-Fold Revenue Growth, Zero Networks Raises $20M in Series B to Prevent Attackers from Spreading in Corporate Networks Achieving Five-Fold Revenue Growth, Zero Networks Raises $20M in Series B to Prevent Attackers from Spreading in Corporate Networks. More Here

Circuit City, the former electronics retail chain, is in the market to raise a $25 million round, according to documents filed with the SEC. More Here

AllSpice, the hardware development platform that empowers engineers to modernize their collaboration and workflows, has raised an additional $6 million in venture capital. Investors participating in the recent round included Root Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners, Benchstrength, Bowery Capital, and a group of angel investors. More Here

💰 VENTURE CAPITAL UPDATES

Female Founders Received Only 2% Of Total Capital: Despite a slight increase in funding for female-founded startups, the U.S. and Europe still face disparities, with only 2.1% and 1.3% of total venture capital, respectively, going to women-led companies in 2022-2023. Challenges persist, signaling the ongoing need to address unconscious bias and systemic barriers for female founders in accessing VC funding. More Here

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has reportedly been planning to raise billion dollar money for at least three industry-specific funds. They include a fund dedicated to infrastructure startups—the software that powers cloud applications and services, including AI — and a fund focused on “American dynamism,” or companies that support U.S. national interests. More Here

BoxGroup, an early stage VC fund with offices in New York and San Francisco, raised $425 million across two new funds - BoxGroup Six, a pre-seed and seed stage generalist fund; and BoxGroup Picks, an opportunity fund. Each fund is $212.5 million. More Here

Iron Nation, an emergency venture capital fund founded by veteran entrepreneurs and backed by senior figures in Israel's venture capital community, aims to support early-stage startups impacted by the war. With a focus on companies affected by financing freezes and reservist call-ups, the fund employs the SAFE model, investing $500,000 to $1.5 million without specifying valuation. The initiative, with zero management fees and profits returned to investors, has garnered interest from 625 companies, intending to invest in 30 startups, leveraging matching contributions from the Israel Innovation Authority. More Here

𝕏 FEATURED: TODAY’S FEATURED TWEET

“Should Founders Work By Vision or Data?” By Reid Hoffman

Recently Reid Hoffman (Co-founder of LinkedIn & ) shared an interesting perspective on Whether founders should work by Vision or Data -

“It's about constantly balancing and integrating your vision with the data you collect. Why? ”…Read More Here

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

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💡 STARTUP’S LATEST BUZZ

Lawsuit

Epic Games won its antitrust battle with Google. But what comes next?: In the recent antitrust case between Epic Games and Google, a San Francisco jury found Google guilty of "willfully acquiring or maintaining monopoly power" in its mobile app ecosystem. While the verdict impacts Google's business model by challenging the app store's 30% commission, the specific remedies are yet to be determined by the judge. The ruling may have broader implications for the app store business model, potentially influencing other companies with similar models to reconsider their operations. More Here

Spotify will continue its service in Uruguay after the government assured no extra costs under new copyright laws. The streaming giant had initially planned to exit due to concerns about potential double payments for artists. The government clarified that rightsholders, already receiving 70% of Spotify's revenue, will bear any additional costs. More Here

People

FTX co-founder and former CEO Samuel Bankman-Fried's lawyer says that his client "may be at the very top of the list as the worst person I’ve ever seen do a cross examination." More Here

Layoffs

Etsy is laying off 11% of its staff in the face of intense competition from companies like Shein and Temu. More Here

🤖 LATEST IN EMERGING TECH

Tesla is recalling nearly all 2 million of its cars on U.S. roads due to regulators' concerns about the company's Autopilot feature. The vehicles will be updated over cellular networks. More Here

OpenAI has entered into an agreement with Axel Springer, owner of publications like Business Insider and Politico, allowing the use of its content to train generative AI models. This follows a similar deal with The Associated Press. ChatGPT users will receive summaries of selected articles from Axel Springer, even those behind paywalls, with attribution and links to the full articles. In return, Axel Springer will receive payments, and the deal aims to explore AI-empowered journalism opportunities, though publishers remain concerned about copyright infringement and the impact on their business models. More Here

Google has introduced MedLM, a family of generative AI models fine-tuned for healthcare tasks, available on its Vertex AI platform. The models, including a larger one for complex tasks and a smaller fine-tunable version, aim to assist healthcare workers with various medical applications. However, concerns persist over the accuracy and potential risks of using generative AI in healthcare, as highlighted by the World Health Organization. More Here

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

• Do I Need To Have Expertise In A Specific Sectors To Break Into VC? & VC Jobs Read More (VC & Break Into VC)

• How Can You Use Airbnb's & Stripe's Strategy To Build Your MVP? Read More (Startups & Product)

• Why Founders Are Afraid to Talk About MOAT? Read More (Startups)

• A GP’s View on VC Fund Performance (When It’s “Early”) Read More (Venture Capital)

• Marc Andreessen" You Can't Build A Successful Company Without Thinking On Idea Maze !" Read More (Startup)

🤔 WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Previous Poll: Tie-up between Overvaluation of startups & Market Volatility. I think overvaluation of startups is the valid point. But I don’t think so - market volatility can be that much concern point.

I think in startup investment macro events doesn’t matter. If look at what Naval said regarding the macro events in startup investment - “Ignore All Macro Events In Startup Investing!" Not just him - but startup investment is a long term game - small / short term macro events doesn’t matter as long as startup solving real problem…

→  Join 3-hour power-packed AI & ChatGPT workshop (worth $99) for FREE and learn hacks to 10X work output and grow your business. Register Now 

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

✍️Written By Sahil R | Venture Crew Team

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