Silicon Valley Funding News - Week of February 20, 2023. Hexagon Bio Raised $77.3M Series B

Happy Monday and hello from the beautiful and sunny San Francisco! 

Here are a few great reads and lists for the week:

• 😔 Opensea Declared Defeat - In the face of rising competition from rival Blur, leading NFT marketplace OpenSea (valued at $13.3 billion) announced today that it will temporarily eliminate its 2.5% fee on sales, as well as cut down creator royalty protections. Effectively cutting off its primary source of revenue... OpenSea will only enforce a 0.5% mandatory creator royalty fee on NFT trades for projects that don’t have an on-chain enforcement method, although sellers can choose to pay a larger percentage. This is a hugely controversial move.  A lot of folks on the Twittersphere is making fun of them. 
• 📊 Data Driven Fundraising Guide for Open Source Startups - Open source founders often ask "What level of traction do I need to raise for my seed round?"  Should I focus on Github stars? How many Slack members is a good goal to set? Do I need revenue? Click here read more.
• ⬇ Crypto Funding Way Down - By the end of Q4 2022, quarterly blockchain funding had fallen 70% from the start of the year to hit its lowest level since 2020, according to CBInsights State of Blockchain Report. After two consecutive quarters of decline, this down quarter didn’t really come as a surprise, especially after the November announcement of FTXgate sent shockwaves through the ecosystem. Crypto startups are still able to fundraise and raised $185 million this first week of February, compared to $578M over the same period in 2022.
• 🇨🇳  Beijing Wants to Build ChatGPT - The nation's capital pledged to help companies develop large-language models like OpenAI’s GPT-3. The city also committed to help build an ecosystem of open-source frameworks and applications for these models, according to a report by Beijing News, which is owned by China’s Communist Party. Beijing had 1,048 “core AI companies” as of October 2022. In the southern tech hub of Shenzhen, the government aims to add 10,000 5G base stations this year to bolster internet connectivity. China had 2.31 million 5G base stations at the end of 2022 vs 175,000 in the US.
• 🇭🇰 Hong Kong Internet Report 2022-2023 - I presented the Hong Kong Internet Report this past week with Asia Society.  You can download it here.  As part of that conversation, we also discussed Hong Kong Top Talent Pass Scheme, Global STEM Professorship Scheme, RAISe+ Scheme ($1.2 billion scheme for 100 university research teams), InnoHK research laboratory clusters, Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing (Amendment) Ordinance 2022 (includes regulation of virtual assets exchanges), Hong Kong Adventures – Great Outdoors, Hong Kong Arts Scene. 

This week a total of 12 startups raised $289.1M in funding, 0 M&As:

• $62.5M goes to 3 Enterprise startups
• $55M goes to 2 FinTech startups
• $17M goes to 2 Crypto/Web3 startups
• $21M goes to 2 Food and Beverage startups
• $132.3M goes to 2 BioTech startups
• $1.3M goes to 1 Renewable Energy/Environment startup