Silicon Valley Funding News - Week of March 27, 2023. Character.AI Raised $150M Series A

I am so excited to finally announce that Race Capital $181M Fund II has closed! 🏎️🏎️🏎️ My partners and I went through war to close this fund. Everything literally happened EVERYWHERE all at once. Onward and upward!

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

• 🏎️ Race Capital Raises New $181 Million Fund Despite SVB Chaos - This week, I am so proud to announce the oversubscribed closing of our $181 million Fund II with the mission to invest, partner and support founders in the seed and pre-seed stage working on infrastructure layers of the technology stack. My partner Alfred was interviewed on Bloomberg by Hannah Miller on our experience in closing the fund. We were able to successfully pull all of our funds from Silicon Valley Bank on the morning of March 9. I almost had a heart attack!  Read more
• 📺 It’ll be difficult to find a bank as ‘startup-friendly’ as Silicon Valley Bank - SVB was not just another bank around the corner. They were the bedrock of Silicon Valley for almost 40 years. Startups should be able to find another bank to custody their fund, but they will have a hard time finding another lender that is willing to provide venture debt for startups so easily. For venture capital funds, it will be very difficult to find another bank that is so venture capital friendly. Can you imagine sending anywhere from $500K to $200M from your fund to another startup?  Watch my comment on CNBC
• 😔 Gordon Moore has passed away at the age of 94 - Moore and Robert Noyce founded Intel in July 1968. He famously forecast in 1965 that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every year – a prediction that came to be known as Moore’s Law. Read more
• 🏦 Fintech's Big Wakeup Call - To avoid the lengthy and expensive process of securing a bank license, most fintechs rely on partnerships with small banks to store customer deposits and offer loans. The fintechs build tech that sits on top of the banking services, but they aren’t regulated like banks. These partner banks are typically firms like Cross River Bank, Celtic Bank, Evolve Bank & Trust and Choice Financial Group. Since the checking and saving accounts that fintechs offer typically don’t charge fees to users, a key source of revenue for many consumer banking apps is taking a slice of what users spend on their debit cards. Read more
• 🇨🇳 Tim Cook in China - Tim Cook gave a show of support for China as a market and manufacturing base during a visit to Beijing on Saturday.  Apple and China had "grown together" over the past three decades, Cook told the government-organized China Development Forum, adding that he was thrilled to be back in the country, which only reopened its borders this year after abandoning its strict zero-Covid policy. The last time Cook visited China was in 2019. Meanwhile, TikTok's Shou Zi Chew was grilled by the US Congress for 5 hours about the app's data security and privacy practices, and having to explain "Does TikTok access the home Wi-Fi network?” So weird...

This week a total of 18 startups raised $429.1M in funding, 2 M&As:

• $187.3M goes to 5 Enterprise startups
• $6.3M goes to 2 FinTech startups
• $23.5M goes to 1 HR Tech startup
• $3.5M goes to 1 Web3/Crypto startup
• $38M goes to 2 AR/VR startups
• $22.5M goes to 1 Retail Tech startup
• $20M goes to 1 eCommerce startup
• $15M goes to 1 Transportation startup
• $44M goes to 1 Hardware startup
• $60M goes to 2 BioTech startups
• $9M goes to 1 AgTech startup