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Five home games in a row! 💪
Before we shut it all down, we have a new StrictlyVC Download episode for you featuring Aydin Senkut, a former Google exec who faced some sharp elbows when he began angel investing 17 years ago, yet whose venture firm, Felicis, now manages $3 billion in assets for its investors. The outfit's track record helps, aided by its willingness to invest in most parts of the world (it was scouting far and wide before many other U.S. firms). We wrote about Felicis's newest flagship fund earlier this week, but in this separate conversation, Senkut talks with us about what he thinks Stripe's real valuation should be, the reasons Felicis is unlikely to raise a second opportunity-style fund after closing its first in 2021, and how worried or not startups should be about OpenAI better productizing its offerings. We enjoyed it; we hope you will, too.
Major thanks to Hunt Club for sponsoring the episode. Hunt Club works with VC firms like Tiger Global and Crosscut and their portfolio companies to hire the world's "best executive and professional talent," it says. Ready to find your future leader? Head to huntclub.com.
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The Biden administration is preparing a new program that could prohibit U.S. investment in certain tech sectors in China. Reports provided to lawmakers and seen by the WSJ didn’t identify the specific sectors the Biden administration views as risky, but they said tech that could advance rivals’ military capabilities would be a focus of the program.
Holy sh*te. FTX says it has identified a deficit of $8.9 billion in customer funds that it can’t account for, the first time the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange has pinned down how much money has gone missing.
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Character.ai, a six-month-old chatbot company that uses large language models to generate conversation in the style of various characters, including Elon Musk, and which was founded by Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, who previously helped build Google’s conversational model LaMDA, has reportedly raised between $200 million and $250 million in funding at a $1 billion valuation led by Andreessen Horowitz. The Financial Times has the story.
Kindbody, a five-year-old New York startup that helps employers offer their employees in-person and virtual fertility services, raised a $100 million round at a $1.8 billion valuation. Perceptive Advisors led the transaction. The company has raised a total in excess of $290 million. Femtech Insider has more here.
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| Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings |
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BlocPower, a nine-year-old Brooklyn startup that assists commercial buildings with the installation of green energy upgrades, raised a $24 million Series B round led by VoLo Earth Ventures, with Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, Credit Suisse, Builders Vision, New York State Ventures, Unreasonable Collective, Kimbal and Christiana Musk, Gaingels, commentator Van Jones, Kapor Capital, My Climate Journey, Tale Venture Partners, and basketball star Russell Westbrook also piling on. The company also pulled down $130 million in debt. BlocPower has raised a total of $265.4 million. BuiltinNYC has more here.
Electrify Video Partners, a two-year-old London startup that is investing in and acquiring YouTube channels, raised a $50 million round. MEP Capital was the deal lead. TubeFilter has more here.
Hectare, an eight-year-old UK startup that helps agribusinesses gain insights about commodities for use in inventory planning, trading, and logistics, raised a $20 million Series A round from existing investors and angels. The company has raised a total of $49.8 million. More here.
Pennylane, a three-year-old Paris startup that aims to position its accounting software as the predominant financial operating system for SMEs, is reportedly raising $30 million to $50 million at a $600 million to $650 million valuation, according to Business Insider, which says DST Global is the deal lead. Business Insider has more here.
Pili, an eight-year-old French startup that produces sustainable dyes and pigments, raised a $15.8 million Series A round. Investors included Ecotechnologies 2, Famille C Participations, Elaia Partners, SOSV, and Startupangels.de. The company has raised a total of $27.6 million. JustStyle has more here.
VerAI Discoveries, a three-year-old Boston startup that claims to use AI to pore through magnetic, gravimetric, electromagnetic, and seismic data in order to locate mineral deposits, raised a $12 million Series A round from T. Rowe Price Associates, Orion Resource Partners, Chrysalix Venture Capital, and Blumberg Capital. More here.
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Metrika, a four-year-old startup based in Cambridge, Ma., that helps financial institutions manage digital asset risk, raised a $4 million Series A extension round, increasing the total size of the round to $22 million. M12 and previous investor Nyca Partners led the deal. Axios has more here.
Ramp, a five-year-old London startup whose platform helps businesses forecast revenue, raised a $5 million seed round co-led by AlbionVC and Eurazeo, with Triple Point Ventures also pitching in. More here.
Renovate Robotics, a New York startup that is building robots to install roof shingles, raised a $2.75 million pre-seed round led by Alley Robotics Ventures; additional investors included Grit Ventures, SOSV’s HAX, Newlab, Uphonest Capital, and Climate Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
Rubi Labs, a startup based in San Leandro, Ca., that is making lyocell yarn from converted CO₂, raised an $8.7 million seed round co-led by Talis Capital, Patagonia's Tin Shed Ventures, and H&M Group, with Collaborative Fund and Necessary Ventures also contributing. The company has raised a total of $13.5 million. Vogue Business has more here.
Ryse Health, a two-year-old startup based in Arlington, Va., that provides in-person and virtual care for patients with Type 2 Diabetes, raised a $6.5 million round led by Route 66 Ventures, with additional participation from W Health and CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield. The company has raised a total of $9.9 million. More here.
SafKan Health, a seven-year-old Seattle startup that has built a device resembling a pair of headphones that can remove excess earwax (it's for clinical use but anyone can buy one), raised an $8 million Series A round. Unorthodox Ventures was the deal lead. More here.
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From pipeline quality to fundraising forecasts and showcasing value to portcos, your CRM data holds valuable insights. Learn about the top 7 VC platform metrics to track, and how to get started with them, on the Affinity blog.
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Founders Fund, cofounded by Peter Thiel, has cut the size of its eighth venture capital fund in half, from around $1.8 billion to around $900 million, Axios reported today. It isn't the first to slim down the amount of capital it expects to invest right now (Felicis basically just cut down on the money it will be managing over the next few years); it also won't be the last. More here.
David Hoffman and Ryan Sean Adams, hosts of a crypto podcast and newsletter, "Bankless," are raising a $35 million venture fund, says CoinDesk. More here.
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Coinbase is expanding into a less-volatile corner of the cryptocurrency ecosystem with the purchase of One River Digital Asset Management, reports Bloomberg. The outfit, founded by macro trader Eric Peters as a unit of his hedge fund, has built a business to serve only the needs of institutional clients such as pension funds, avoiding retail customers altogether, explains the outlet. Terms of the deal aren't being disclosed. More here.
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| Twitter's market cap January, 2025? |
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LinkedIn founder and Greylock partner Reid Hoffman is leaving the nonprofit board of OpenAI, he announced in a post today. Hoffman said he wants to invest in companies using OpenAI’s software, which could cause a conflict of interest. “I started to wonder: Will my position as a 501c3 board member of OpenAI potentially look like it’s leading to differential economic advancement? To be clear, since the start, OpenAI and its board has been very careful to monitor and avoid any conflicts to date,” Hoffman wrote. “But by stepping off the board, I can proactively put to rest any downstream potential issues for both OpenAI and all Greylock portfolio companies I’ve backed.” Hoffman is also an investor in OpenAI. CNBC has more here.
In separate, startling news, Zoom abruptly terminated the employment of President Greg Tomb, a former Google executive who had only started at the firm in June. Tomb will receive severance benefits in accordance with arrangements that are payable upon a “termination without cause,” the company said in a regulatory filing, which suggests to us that he'll get everything he was promised. (That's pure speculation, to be clear.) Everything he was promised, for what it's worth, includes a $45 million stock grant that would vest over four years in addition to a $400,000 base salary with an 8% bonus target, according to a June filing. Bloomberg has the story here.
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Twitter just reported a decline of about 40% year-over-year for the month of December in both revenue and adjusted earnings for the month. The WSJ has more here.
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Can TikTok convince the world it's not a tool for China?
The cameras know who you are. Now they want to use AI to find your friends, too.
Elon Musk is running into an obstacle in his relentless drive to cut costs at Twitter: some of the same vendors that Twitter is squeezing to save money are also its advertising clients. Amazon -- which is owed money for an AWS contract that Musk has been attempting unsuccessfully to renegotiate -- is among them, reports The Information.
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