|
Well, that was a day! Before we dive into the news, a quick mention for those of you who missed it that we're organizing a intimate-ish event on January 12, a Thursday evening, inside Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, thanks to the generosity of CBRE, the commercial real estate services company, which is welcoming us into its glass-lined space near the top of the building.
It's the first live event we're hosting in more than a year (woot).
We are also exceedingly thankful for Felicis, the global early-stage venture firm, for joining us as our exclusive sponsor. This is the second time that Felicis has stepped up to partner with StrictlyVC on one of these evenings, and the team's help is greatly appreciated.
We'll have more on who is joining us soon; in the meantime, don't wait too long to nab a spot. Seating will be limited.🪑🪑🪑
|
|
|
|
|
It's done, we think. According to the WSJ, Elon Musk completed his takeover of Twitter today and promptly fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust Vijaya Gadde and General Counsel Sean Edgett. Who will take the reins? For now, reports Bloomberg, Musk himself plans to assume the role. It's a lot to manage, in addition to running Tesla and SpaceX, two companies that also require full-time attention. Musk also helps to oversee Neuralink, the neurotechnology company he co-founded that
wants to put AI-enabled computer chips into people's brains (and keeps losing executives), and the tunneling company Boring Company. But there you have it.
Judging by Musk's management style, more change is coming -- and quickly. Earlier today in Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, product leaders reportedly showed Tesla engineers the company’s code so they could assess and explain to Musk what the company needs, which doesn't bode well for Twitter's engineers (is our takeaway).
Advertisers are already nervous, reports the WSJ, which says they're worried about potential conflicts of interest around automotive advertising, given Musk's role at Tesla. A reinstatement of Donald Trump's Twitter account would also be a red line for some advertisers, an ad agency exec tells the outlet.
Musk is trying to assuage them for the moment. On Twitter today, he published a note expressly for advertisers, saying that he is buying the company to “have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner.”
He added that Twitter “cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!”
Still, given the many other demands on Musk's time and some of his past promises -- Musk said in May that he would reverse Twitter's Trump ban, saying that booting Trump off Twitter was a "morally bad decision" and "foolish in the extreme" -- its most fervent users seem to be anticipating that Twitter will indeed become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences.
As New York Times notes, the overriding concern is that Musk's open approach to speech on Twitter could exacerbate long simmering issues of toxic content and misinformation, affecting political debates around the world. UC Irvine law professor David Kaye, who worked with the United Nations on issues of free speech, sums up these fears, telling the Times: “To the extent that world leaders see they have this space and it’s unmoderated, they could push to see how far they can go.”
As for Twitter employees, they've long been miserable, reports The Platformer, noting that based on survey data, this restlessness predates Musk's involvement, though his months-long dance with the company over its ownership motivated many to finally leave or look for work elsewhere.
“The choice right now is either the deal closes and I work for a kind of weird sociopath, or it doesn’t and our stock goes down even more, and I get paid 50 percent of what I made a year ago,” an employee who recently left tells the outlet.
|
|
|
|
|
HealthJoy, an eight-year-old Chicago startup whose platform is designed to make it easier for employees to use their healthcare benefits, raised a $60 million Series D round led by Valspring Capital, with Endeavour Vision, CIBC, and previous investors USVP, Health Velocity Capital, and Nueterra Capital also participating. The company has raised a total of $109.8 million. TechCrunch has more here.
Money View, an eight-year-old Bengaluru startup that offers lending to individuals who aren't able to secure credit from banks and other financial institutions, is reportedly negotiating with Apis Partners to raise a $125 million to $150 million in Series E funding at a $1 billion valuation, according to TechCrunch, More here.
OTI Lumionics, an 11-year-old Toronto startup that is developing display materials for device makers (reportedly including Apple) to create uninterrupted, full-view displays on their devices without the need for “notches” or cut-outs to account for camera technology, raised a $40.6 million round. Investors included LG Technology Ventures, Samsung, United Display, and Anzu Partners. The company has raised a total of $59.6 million. TechCrunch has more here.
SiMa.ai, a four-year-old startup based in San Jose, Ca., that helps clients in areas such as robotics, smart vision, and autonomous systems embed machine learning in their applications via its smart chips, raised a $67 million Series B1 extension round led by MSD Partners, with participation from Fidelity Management & Research Company, Amplify Partners, Dell Technologies Capital, Wing Venture Capital, Alter Venture Partners, +ND Capital, and Lip-Bu Tan. Mint has more here.
Udaan, a six-year-old Bangalore startup that helps retailers and small- and medium-sized businesses establish supply chains with big brands and secure inventory and working capital, raised $120 million in convertible notes and debt from previous investors Lightspeed India Partners and GGV Capital. The company has raised a total of $1.6 billion. TechCrunch has more here.
|
|
|
|
| Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings |
|
|
|
|
Allstacks, a five-year-old Raleigh, NC startup that claims to use machine learning and AI to identify software development risks, raised a $12.3 million Series A round led by Companyon Ventures, with Atlassian Ventures, CreativeCo, Hyperplane Venture Capital, S3, and Bala Investments also taking part. The company has raised a total of $21.2 million. Hypepotamus has more here.
Cresilon, a 12-year-old Brooklyn startup that has developed a hemostatic gel for the animal health market that instantly stops bleeding in a wide variety of applications, raised a $25 million Series A-4 round from an undisclosed set of investors. More here.
Daye, a four-year-old London startup that is developing women’s sexual and reproductive health products such as a CBD-infused cramp-fighting tampon, raised an $11.5 million Series A round from Hambro Perks, MassMutual Ventures, and Cross Border Impact Ventures. The company has raised a total of approximately $22 million. TechCrunch has more here.
Descript, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based audio and video editing app founded by Groupon cofounder Andrew Mason, is raising "tens of millions of dollars" led by the company OpenAI at a valuation of around $550 million, according to The Information. The outlet reported last week that Descript was in talks with OpenAI about an investment. It says the investment comes from OpenAI’s $100 million startup fund, which was established last year to
make early bets on a handful of early-stage startups applying AI to numerous fields. More here.
Devtron, an Indian startup that offers a low-code delivery platform optimized for Kubernetes, raised a $12 million round led by Insight Partners. TechCrunch has more here.
Ionblox (fka Zenlabs Energy), a startup based in Fremont, CA, that is developing silicon anode batteries for use in EVs and eVTOLs, raised a $24 million Series B round. Investors included Lilium, Applied Ventures, and Catalus Capital. More here.
Midi Health, a 15-month-old, Los Gatos, Ca.-based virtual care clinic making expert care accessible and affordable for all women experiencing the hormonal changes of midlife, has closed on $14 million in seed funding co-led by Felicis and SemperVirens. Additional investment comes from Emerson Collective, Icon Ventures, Operator Collective, Muse Capital, Steel Sky Ventures and Anne and Susan Wojcicki. Forbes has more here.
Navina, a four-year-old Tel Aviv startup whose AI systems integrate with existing electronic health records software to identify potential diagnoses and quality and risk gaps requiring attention, raised a $22 million Series B round led by Alive, with Grove Ventures, Vertex Ventures Israel, and Schusterman Family Investments also pitching in. TechCrunch has more here.
Reap, a four-year-old Hong Kong startup that has developed a payments platform for small businesses, raised a $40 million round co-led by Acorn Pacific Ventures, Arcadia Funds, and HashKey Capital, with additional participation from Payment Asia, Hustle Fund, and Fresco Capital. The company has raised a total of $46 million. Forbes has more here.
RightMove, a New York startup spun out of the Hospital for Special Surgery that offers virtual triage and physical therapy for musculoskeletal conditions, raised a $21 million Series A round. The deal leads were the Hospital for Special Surgery and Flare Capital. MobiHealthNews has more here.
SGNL.ai, a one-year-old startup based in Palo Alto, Ca., that helps companies provide “just-in-time” access to enterprise data to their employees based on business need rather than merely a person's position, raised a $12 million seed round led by Costanoa Ventures, with Fika Ventures, Moonshots Capital, and Resolute Ventures also chipping in. TechCrunch has more here.
SwiftConnect, a two-year-old startup based in Stamford, Ct., that provides tools to automate identity, credentialing, and permissioning steps for office spaces through mobile devices, raised a $17 million Series A round co-led by JLL Spark and Navitas Capital, with participation from Bridge Investment Group, Crow Holdings, Cushman & Wakefield, Jamf, Nuveen, World Trade Ventures, and 1414 Ventures. The company has raised a total of $27 million. TechCrunch has more
here.
|
|
|
|
|
Bit.io, a three-year-old San Francisco startup that claims it makes uploading and sharing Postgres databases as easy as editing a Google Doc, raised a $7.5 million seed round co-led by Battery Ventures and GreatPoint Ventures, with Neo and Combine also contributing. More here.
HeyRitual, a startup based in Santa Monica, Ca., that combines live 1:1 guidance from couples' relationship experts with a host of in-app tools to help users build relationship skills in their own time, raised a $2 million pre-seed round. Ground Up Ventures was the deal lead; Samsung Next, Verissimo Ventures, 97212 Ventures, Fresh Fund, and Homeward Ventures also participated. More here.
Joro, a four-year-old Oakland, Ca., startup whose app helps people track and reduce their carbon footprints, raised a $10 million Series A round. The deal leads were Sequoia Capital and Amasia, with additional capital provided by Norrsken, Incite (Nest co-founder Matt Rogers's vehicle), Arrive (Jay-Z's fund), and Mike Einziger (lead guitarist of Incubus). The company has raised a total of $13.5 million. TechCrunch has more here.
Mason, a seven-year-old California and Bengaluru startup that offers a no-code, plug-and-play solution to let D2C storefronts offer products online without requiring a large engineering team, raised a $7.5 million seed round co-led by Accel and Ideaspring Capital, with Lightspeed India, Mana VC, Gaingels, Core91, and VH Capital also pitching in. TechCrunch has more here.
Mattilda, a Mexican startup founded this year that enables parents to make tuition payments in a number of ways, including debit cards, credit cards, bank transfers, and flexible credit lines, raised a $10 million seed round led by FinTech Collective; additional investors included DILA Capital, QED Investors, GSV Ventures, Picus Capital, Emerge Education, SMP, and Xochi Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
Neat, a seven-year-old Paris startup that provides retailers with a white label embedded insurance product that they can then offer to their customers, raised a $10 million round led by Octopus Ventures; New Alpha, Founders Future, and Mundi Ventures also participated. Tech.eu has more here.
Notebook Labs, a 10-month-old, Stanford, Ca.-based zero-knowledge identity protocol (the idea is to build anonymous identity verification and credit scoring for smart contracts), has raised $3.3 million in seed funding led by Bain Capital Crypto. Other participants include Y Combinator (Notebook Labs was part of its summer "batch"), Soma Capital, Abstract Ventures, Pioneer Fund, and NFX. CoinDesk has more here.
Pasito, an 18-month-old, New York-based startup that says it uses health, payroll and financial data to guide employees to the insurance and financial benefits they need (its founder previously logged more than six years with BlackRock), has raised $3.25 million in funding. Its backers include Google, Y Combinator, and Core Innovation Capital. Business Insider has more here.
Pixaera, a three-year-old London startup that helps clients train employees through gaming, raised a $4.5 million round led by LocalGlobe. The company has raised a total of $5.7 million. Tech.eu has more here.
Reclaim.ai, a three-year-old, Portland, Ore.-based calendar software startup that creates schedules for teams, has raised a $3.2 million in pre-Series A funding, bringing its total funding o $9.5 million. The round included participation from Yummy Ventures, Character.vc, Flying Fish, Operator Partners, Grafana CEO Raj Dutt, and others. GeekWire has more here.
SideKick, a three-year-old London startup that aims to help well-off millennials become richer by providing them with the kind of active investment management that high-net-worth individuals enjoy, raised a $3.8 million round led by Octopus Ventures, with additional investment provided by Seedcamp and Semantic. Sifted has more here.
Swantide, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that helps ops, sales, and marketing teams design, configure, and manage CRM, marketing automation, and other software tools, raised a $7 million seed round. Investors included Menlo Ventures, Scribble Ventures, Burst Capital, Neo, and Village Global. More here.
Vixtra, a one-year-old São Paulo startup that works as a payment method between importers and exporters, allowing international suppliers to offer extended payment terms and importers to pay their purchases over time, raised a $3 million pre-Series A round led by Valor Capital, with Fontes also chipping in. The company has raised a total of $9.2 million. LatamList has more here.
|
|
|
|
|
In today’s competitive funding landscape, volume and quality of deal flow are critical for investors. Synaptic enables data-driven deal sourcing by leveraging structured and unstructured datasets – like user traffic, employee data, product reviews, and more. Powered by features like screeners, proprietary growth scores, automated alerts, and CRM integrations, investors can discover companies that match your criteria across 100+ real-time metrics. Sign up for a free trial to learn how Synaptic is an indispensable tool for leading VCs, PEs, hedge funds, and sovereign funds in spotting early signals!
|
|
|
|
|
Collide Capital, one of the largest Black-owned funds, announced the close of its $66 million debut fund, backed by Amazon, Alphabet, and Twitter. The firm says it is the first to be backed by all three tech giants simultaneously. Forbes has more here.
Streamlined Ventures, led by longtime VC (and solo GP) Ullas Naik, secured $140 million in new capital commitments for its two newest funds. This brings the total funds managed to eight with the assets under management reaching about $325 million. Institutional investors, family offices and high net worth individuals pumped $102 million into the firm’s fifth seed fund, which targets startups focused on data science, AI, software automation, APIs and Web 2.5. The second is $36 million into a third opportunity fund that invests in mid-stage financings of seed-stage companies from prior seed funds. TechCrunch has more here.
|
|
|
|
|
Google has acquired Alter, an artificial intelligence (AI) avatar startup that helps creators and brands express their virtual identity, for about $100 million, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch, in a push to boost its content game and better compete with TikTok. The U.S. and Czech-headquartered Alter started its life as Facemoji, a platform that offered plug-and-play tech to help game and app developers put avatar systems into their apps. The startup received $3 million in seed funding from investors including Play Ventures, Roosh Ventures and Twitter. Facemoji later rebranded as Alter. TechCrunch has the story here.
|
|
|
|
|
Jim Cramer -- whose "Mad Money" show is watched by an estimated 140,000 nightly viewers -- is sorry that he boosted Meta during its downturn. He even cried on air about it today. "Let me say this: I made a mistake here. I was wrong. I trusted this management team. That was ill-advised." CNBC has more here.
Andy Rubin, the former Google executive who received a $90 million severance package following a misconduct allegation, sparking widespread protests among staff in 2018, has a new startup focused on “surveillance services” for homes, according to public records found by The Information. The downtown Palo Alto, Ca.-based company, Simple Things, develops security monitoring software involving hardware, sensors, cameras, and motion detectors, the records show. More here.
VC Chris Sacca seemingly let it be known publicly how he feels about Matt Mazzeo, the one-time CAA agent who Sacca hired to help run his previous venture firm, Lowercase Capital. On stage yesterday with Axios's Dan Primack. Sacca was discussing product-market fit, explaining that with social media, it's not always straightforward. Twitter was a "great app," he noted (he was among its earliest investors), but Lowercase also funded Dubsmash and Triller, which Sacca described as "TikTok, but they didn't work. There's no reason they didn't work; they just didn't become TikTok." Primack then kiddingly interjected, "There's a reason Triller didn't work." Then Sacca dropped the bomb. "There were some reasons. But it was an old partner of ours who was underwhelming who did those deals. Fuck it."
(Mazzeo, who joined Coatue in 2018 and recently left to start his own fund, did those deals. We reached out to Mazzeo earlier today; no word back yet.) 🐈
|
|
|
|
|
Meta Platforms's Instagram now has 2 billion monthly active users worldwide, closing in on the 2.96 billion who use Facebook, in a sign of the social media giant’s shifting makeup. Bloomberg has more here.
|
|
|
|
|
Shares of Meta plunged 24.5% today as investors and analysts digested the company’s third-quarter earnings miss and a weak fourth-quarter outlook. Shares closed at $97.94, the lowest price since 2016. (Now you understand why Jim Cramer was crying.) CNBC has more here.
Inside Elon Musk’s struggle to launch SpaceX’s high-stakes Mars rocket. "Those who can’t move" to the Texas-based facility where it is being built -- Starbase -- have "found a way to heed Musk’s call, whether out of loyalty to Musk, commitment to the mission to Mars or maybe even fear of losing their jobs," reports The Information. "Nearly every day such commuters board a SpaceX jet early in the morning in California and leave Texas in the evening, on the one SpaceX flight that is certain to take off on
time."
|
|
|
|
|
Why more and more girls are hitting puberty early.
The new queen of Los Angeles.
|
|
|
|
|
Wander Atlas - Own the future of travel. Earn high-yield passive income, diversify your portfolio, and hedge against inflation. Own a piece of Wander’s inspiring vacation homes with Atlas - the world’s first and only vacation rental REIT (as far as we know!) Click here to get pre-approved for an opportunity to invest in an exciting new asset you can enjoy (and you can stay in the homes, too). Use code STRICTLY250 for $250 off your first Wander booking.
|
|
|
|
|
