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Friday! [Juggles oranges.] Hope you have a terrific weekend, all!
Before we turn the đź“´ switch on this thing, we leave you with this week's StrictlyVC Download, featuring Neil Sequeira of the early-stage venture firm Defy.vc, who reveals
the nearly seven-year-old, Woodside, Ca.-based firm is now investing from of a new $300 million fun and talked with us about where his team is shopping, as well as why so many new funds are being announced amid the current, purported slowdown. Hope you enjoy it.
Separately, when we reported on Stripe yesterday, we mistakenly typed that it was weighing the possibility of taking itself private when we meant public. (We know that you know what happened there, but we regret the error just the same.)
Massive thanks to the sustainability software outfit Sustain Life for sponsoring this podcast week's episode. If you want to get a handle on your carbon footprint, you might check out Sustain Life’s complete carbon accounting and ESG platform. More here.
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The Justice Department today asked a federal judge to bar FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried from communicating with current and former employees of the collapsed crypto exchange without a lawyer present after prosecutors alleged he recently contacted a potential witness in his criminal case. Prosecutors said Bankman-Fried has also contacted other current and former FTX employees and are concerned that the communications could lead to witness tampering. The WSJ has the story.
Anthropic, a San Francisco AI start-up whose founders include several former OpenAI researchers, is close to raising roughly $300 million in new funding in a deal that could value Anthropic at roughly $5 billion, reports the New York Times. The start-up, which was founded in 2021, previously raised $704 million, valuing it at $4 billion, according to PitchBook. More here.
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| Fifth Wall, Already Managing $3.2B, Looks to Eat Up Even More of Its Market |
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Brendan Wallace’s ambition is beginning to seem almost limitless. The venture firm that Wallace and cofounder Brad Greiwe launched less than seven years ago already has $3.2 billion in assets under management. But that firm, Fifth Wall, which argues there are massive financial returns at the intersection of real estate and tech, isn’t worried about digesting that capital. It’s heavy-hitting investors — CBRE, Starwood, and Arbor Realty Trust among them — don’t seem concerned, either.
Never mind that just last month, Fifth Wall closed the largest-ever venture fund focused on real-estate tech startups with $866 million in capital, or that it closed a $500 million fund earlier in 2022 that aims to decarbonize the property industry. Never mind that on top of these two efforts, Fifth Wall also expanded into Europe last February with a London office and a €140 million fund. (It also a large New York office, an office in Singapore, and a presence in Madrid.) As for the fact that office buildings in particular have been shocked by a combination of layoffs, work-from-home policies and higher interest rates, Wallace says he considers it an opportunity.
More, Wallace already sees many more opportunities he wants to pursue, including in Asia, as well as around infrastructure, including the buying and building of "utility-scale solar and micro grids and wind farms" that Fifth Wall plans to both invest in and to which it will provide financing.
More here.
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Character, an AI chatbot startup founded by two former Google researchers, has told investors it wants to raise as much as $250 million in new funding, according to The Information, whose sources say the size indicates the startup is aiming for a valuation of at least $1 billion. More here.
Paradigm, a 15-month-old, New York-based startup that aims to simplify clinical trials, tells the New York Times it has raised $200 million from investors, including ARCH, General Catalyst, sovereign wealth funds and the American Cancer Society’s BrightEdge fund, among others. More here.
Pearl Health, a three-year-old New York startup whose platform aims to help primary care practices find gaps in care and manage the health of their patient populations, raised a $75 million Series B round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Viking Global Investors, with AlleyCorp and SV Angel also taking part. The company has raised a total of $95.5 million. MobiHealthNews has more here.
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| Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings |
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Aedifion, a six-year-old startup based in Cologne, Germany, whose AI-based platform helps building owners track energy consumption and spending, raised a $12.8 million Series A round co-led by World Fund and BeyondBuild, with participation from the family office of the Hopps (SAP’s founding family); Bauwens, Drees & Sommer; and MOMENI Venture, as well as previous investors BitStone Capital and Phoenix Contact Innovation Ventures. Silicon Canals has more here.
Atomos Space, a five-year-old, Denver-based startup that's developing orbital transfer vehicles ("tugboats in space," TechCrunch calls them), has raised $16 million in funding led by Cantos Ventures and the Yamauchi No. 10 Family Office (that’s the family that founded Nintendo). Other participants in the round included Upheaval Investments, Dolby Family Ventures, Arden Road Investments, Elefund and Techstars. More here.
iSeller, a seven-year-old Jakarta startup that has built a point-of-sale platform for online and offline merchants, raised a $12 million Series B round. Intudo Ventures was the deal lead, while KVision, Mandiri Capital Indonesia, and Openspace Ventures also contributed. The company has raised a total of $20 million. More here.
iVexSol, a 13-year-old company based in Lexington, Ma., that aims to increase the production of lentiviral vectors (gene delivery vehicles that are a critical raw material in the manufacturing of cell and gene therapies), raised a $23.8 million Series A-3 round from Bristol Myers Squibb, Charles River Laboratories, Asahi Kasei Medical as well as previous investors BioLife Solutions, and Casdin Capital. The company has raised a total of $39.1 million. More here.
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Caura, a four-year-old London startup whose app helps British drivers manage the fees and administrative costs of owning a car, raised a $5 million round from Lloyds Banking Group. The company has raised a total of $11 million. Bloomberg has more here.
Elaborate, a two-year-old New York startup that integrates with existing electronic medical record systems to send patients their test results along with context or insights that might alleviate any unnecessary anxiety, raised a $10 million seed round led by Tusk Venture Partners, with Founder Collective, Company Ventures, Bling Ventures, and Arkitekt Ventures also pitching in. The company has raised a total of $12.5 million. Fast Company has more here.
Ethos Wallet, a six-year-old Singapore startup whose crypto wallet integrates into decentralized applications on the Sui blockchain, raised a $4.2 million seed round co-led by Boldstart Ventures and Gumi Cryptos Capital, with Mysten Labs, Tribe Capital, Matrixport, Charge Ventures, Builder Capital, and Alliance DAO also piling on. CoinDesk has more here.
Free From Market, a two-year-old startup based in Kansas City, Mo., that provides specialized food plans for individuals living with chronic conditions, raised a $2.1 million seed round led by Bluestein Ventures, with Acumen America, Beta Boom, KCRise Fund, 1st Course Capital, and Asset Blue Ventures also chipping in. More here.
People Science, a Los Angeles startup that is building a consumer-facing research and development platform for alternative medicines, raised a $5.3 million second seed round led by Acre Venture Partners; additional investors included Bluestein Ventures, THIA Ventures, and FORM Life Ventures. The company has raised a total of $8.5 million. More here.
Refined Laser Systems, a German startup that is developing an intraoperative microscope to identify tumor margins directly in the surgery room, thereby helping to avoid the need for revision surgeries, raised a $2.9 million seed round co-led by High-Tech GrĂĽnderfonds and APEX Ventures and joined by NRW.Bank, Onsight Ventures, and Papst Venture Capital. Photonics Media has more here.
StoryCo, a Los Angeles startup that is building a web3 storytelling platform, raised a $6 million seed round co-led by Collab + Currency and Patron, with Floodgate Ventures, Blockchange Ventures, Sfermion, and Flamingo DAO also participating. CoinDesk has more here.
Uptime Health, a five-year-old Nashville startup that provides healthcare administrators and operators with software to manage compliance tasks and improve overall efficiency, raised a $4.5 million Series A round. Wavemaker 360 and Caduceus Capital Partners co-led the deal. More here.
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What will the investment landscape look like over the coming months? Affinity surveyed hundreds of dealmakers to find out. See what they said—and discover what Affinity platform data reveals about the state of deal flow this year. Download the Predictions Report today.
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The SEC is investigating Elon Musk’s role in shaping Tesla’s self-driving car claims, the latest effort by watchdogs to scrutinize the actions of the world’s second-richest person.
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OpenAI, the viral generative AI company, has moved to dismiss a wide-ranging lawsuit brought by open-source software developers claiming that the company’s “Copilot” AI program was trained with and reproduced their code without authorization. It said in court documents filed yesterday that the complaint had major procedural problems and relied mostly on unspecific allegations. Bloomberg Law has the story.
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice . . .
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The tech companies that have reportedly vacated the most San Francisco office space.
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A new AI system from Google can generate music in any genre given a text description. But the company, fearing the risks, has no immediate plans to release it.
The surge of attention around ChatGPT is prompting pressure inside tech giants including Meta and Google to move faster, potentially sweeping safety concerns aside, according to six current and former Google and Meta employees who talked with the Washington Post.
(Note: when we sat down with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman two weeks ago, we asked about Google's concerns about safely releasing its AI into the wild. We recounted that Google has reportedly told its employees that its technology is too imperfect, could harm its reputation, and isn't ready, to which Altman said, "I hope when they launch something anyway, you really hold them to that comment. I'll just leave it there."
We'd also asked about Anthropic (see "Top News") and Altman conceded it is a "rival in some sense." He also called the team "very, very talented," and offered that "multiple AGIs in the world" --meaning machine intelligence that can solve problems as well as a human, which is what all of these outfits are working toward -- "is better than one.")
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