A secretive AI project inside Twitter, bad news for Elizabeth Holmes, and the plight of orphaned entrepreneurs

We talked today with Substack about the product that got it banned from Twitter (and much more) at a day-long startup event; more on that front tomorrow.

Elon Musk is said to be moving forward with an AI project within Twitter, despite recently signing an open letter calling for an industry-wide halt to any AI training for several months, reports Business Insider. Its sources say Musk recently purchased roughly 10,000 graphics processing units for the platform, and it notes that tech companies typically use GPUs to work on large AI models, given the computational workload the newer technology requires. More here. Musk has also reportedly brought new AI talent to Twitter, including engineers from DeepMind. More here.

In a first step toward potential regulation of artificial-intelligence tools such as ChatGPT, the U.S. Commerce Department today put out a formal public request for comment on what it called accountability measures, including whether potentially risky new AI models should go through a certification process before they are released. The WSJ has more here.

ChatGPT parent company OpenAI will now pay people to report vulnerabilities in its AI systems. In a post today, the company said it will pay cash rewards depending on the size of the bugs uncovered, ranging from $200 for what it calls “low-severity findings” to $20,000 for “exceptional discoveries.” Bloomberg has more here.

Venture capital firms and their investors have realized that a fund administrator without best-in-class technology is no longer acceptable. But experienced firms also know that when it’s crunch time and that capital call needs to go out now, no technology can replace the need for an expert, highly responsive fund accountant working with you. Meet Juniper Square: the first technology-driven fund admin built for sophisticated venture capital firms.

For a firm whose bets are largely unpredictable, the early-stage venture firm Future Ventures has become very formulaic in its fundraising.

Now entering its fifth year, the firm just closed a $200 million fund – its third in a row. In fact, it would have exactly $600 million under management at this point if not for special purpose vehicles -- pop-up funds, essentially -- that it has raised to plow more money into some of its more capital-intensive companies and that bring the firm’s assets under management to $925 million.

As we highlighted when the outfit closed its second fund in 2021, the team could raise far more if it wanted. Cofounder Steve Jurvetson is a veteran VC who has long been close to Elon Musk, spending more than 14 years on the board of Tesla before stepping off in the fall of 2020, holding a seat on the board of SpaceX for the past 14-plus years, and investing in Musk's tunneling concern, Boring Company.

With Future Ventures cofounder Maryanna Saenko, the pair also wrote the very first check to Musk’s neurotechnology startup, Neuralink, while Saenko, a robotics expert with degrees from Carnegie Mellon, has driven investments in a wide number of similarly ambitious companies, including Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which is aiming to build a compact fusion power plant; 64x Bio, a gene therapy manufacturing company that raised $55 million last year; and Gameto, a reproductive health company that wants to egg freezing as routine as a tooth cleaning -- and nearly as affordable.

Given their track record -- Jurvetson was also an early investor in the now public satellite data company Planet Labs -- the obvious question is why they keep raising the same, conservative amount for each fund, and the answer, suggests Saenko, boils down to strategy.

For one thing, Future Ventures has and remains focused exclusively on seed- and early-stage companies, writing initial checks of between $3 and $6 million, she says. In other words, it doesn’t need a lot of money considering what it’s putting to work.

It also helps that the firm – by its own telling – dives into startups where there isn't a lot of competition from rival outfits at the outset, either because it's a little "out there" or the time commitment is longer than most VCs can tolerate.

More here.

AlphaSense, a corporate data firm that competes with companies like FactSet and Bloomberg in providing data on businesses that can help inform corporate and investment strategies, has raised $100 million in funding led by Alphabet's late-stage venture arm, CapitalG. CNBC has more here.

Clear Street, a nearly five-year-old, New York-based non-bank prime broker that says it has built a cloud-native, clearing and custody system for use across the capital markets, just raised $270 million in the second tranche of a Series B funding. Earlier investor Prysm Capital led the financing, which brings the round total to $435 million. The company says it has now raised $700 million in equity funding (and some debt, as well). It is now valued at $2 billion, it tells TechCrunch. More here.

Infogrid, a nearly five-year-old, Waterloo, England-based startup that uses AI to collect and analyze data on things like air quality, occupancy and energy consumption, today announced that it raised $90 million in a Series B round led by Northzone. TechCrunch has more here.

Carbon Robotics, a nearly five-year-old, Seattle-based agricultural startup that makes laser weeding robots that it says can zap “500 million weeds across 40 different crops," has raised $30 million in Series C funding led by Sozo Ventures, with participation from Anthos Capital, Fuse Venture Capital, Ignition Partners, Liquid 2 and Voyager Capital. The outfit has now raised $67 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Fivecast, a nearly six-year-old, Adelaide, Australia-based startup offering AI-driven intel to identify threat actors, has raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Ten Eleven Ventures. Earlier backers also joined the round, including Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization’s (CSIRO) Main Sequence and the South Australian Venture Capital Fund, managed by Artesian. More here.

NetBox Labs, a new, New York-based maker of open source computer networking products, has raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Flybridge Capital. Other backers in the round include GGV Capital, Grafana Labs CEO Raj Dutt, Mango Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures, IBM, the Founder Collective, and Entrée Capital. More here.

Noya PBC, a San Francisco-based direct air capture startup, has raised $11 million in Series A funding co-led by Union Square Ventures and Collaborative Fund. Other backers in the round included Lowercarbon Capital, Fifty Years, MCJ Collective, EQT Foundation, Climate Capital, Nexwell Group, and a university endowment that asked not to be named. Axios has more here.

Oshi Health, a nearly three-year-old, New York-based virtual specialty care company focused on transforming gastrointestinal (GI) health outcomes and economics, has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Koch Disruptive Technologies. Earlier backers Bessemer Venture Partners, Flare Capital Partners, Frist Cressey Ventures, CVS Health Ventures and Takeda Digital Ventures also jumped into the round. More here.

DBeaver, a 4.5-year-old, New York-based maker of open-source enterprise database management software, has raised $6 million in seed funding led by the firm Headline. More here.

Graneet, a three-year-old, Paris-based startup that says it's building an all-in-one software-as-a-service product focused on small construction companies, has raised €8 million in Series A funding from its two biggest investors to date, Point Nine and Foundamental. TechCrunch has more here.

Haven Energy, an 11-month-old two-sided home energy marketplace that was founded by the founders of the direct-to-consumer mattress company Casper, has raised $4.2 million in seed funding. Lerer Hippeau and Giant Ventures co-led the round, joined by Quantum Innovation Fund and Raven One Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Whizz, a nearly two-year-old, New York-based e-bike subscription platform for last-mile delivery drivers (it says it offers long-range e-bikes, maintenance and same-day replacements), has raised $3.4 million from Joint Journey, TMT Investments and a group of angel investors. More here.

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SoftBank chief Masayoshi Son will this week sign off on an agreement with Nasdaq to list chip designer Arm, setting in motion a blockbuster initial public offering as early as this autumn, reports the FT. More here.

A federal judge has denied Elizabeth Holmes’s latest attempt to stay out of prison, ruling that she must begin serving her more than 11-year sentence on April 27, the Washington Post reported early today. The Theranos founder had argued she should be allowed to remain free while she appeals her fraud convictions for misleading investors in her now-defunct blood-testing start-up. Holmes’s former romantic and business partner, Sunny Balwani, was convicted in a separate trial of 12 counts of misleading investors and patients. He was sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison in December. The same judge also denied Balwani’s request to remain out of prison during his appeal, and the former Theranos executive is scheduled to report to prison on April 20 at a federal correctional institute in San Pedro, Calif. The Federal Bureau of Prisons has not yet confirmed where Holmes will go, says The Post.

Twitter is now called X Corp., according to a court filing in California. TechCrunch has more here.

Andreessen Horowitz has released its second ever "State of Crypto" report. TechCrunch offers some analysis here.

YouTube started presales of its NFL Sunday Ticket subscription, which will set you back $249. As a reminder, YouTube picked up the streaming rights for NFL Sunday Ticket last December in a deal that reportedly cost Google $2 billion per season. The Verge has more here.

Y Combinator-backed founders have reportedly let the organization know they're frustrated that it did away with its later-stage Continuity Fund, not least because they are losing valued board members in the deal. Reports The Information: "YC now intends to appoint new board members to Continuity-backed startups to replace the former YC partners who led the fund, Anu Hariharan and Ali Rowghani, who were laid off when the fund was closed last month. But the companies are requesting that Hariharan and Rowghani keep their board seats." We've written about so-called orphaned entrepreneurs over the years; it isn't a YC specific problem. But it definitely stinks. As entrepreneur and operator Siqi Chen once told StrictlyVC about a board member who had to leave Chen's board when the VC switched firms: "It's never easy; I can’t imagine any entrepreneur saying [that having a board member replaced] is a good thing. When entrepreneurs pitch VCs, part of it is the brand. But a large part of your decision is around the partner you’ll be working with. If that person leaves, it’s a big blow. I think any employee who has had a manager be fired or leave knows that feeling, and it’s an even bigger issue if you’re working with investors. You’re losing your biggest fan.”

Life after influencing.

It's Pedro Pascal's world now.

How one mother's love for her gay son started a revolution.

Eddie Van Halen's famous "hot for teacher" guitar (from a very different era!) is coming up for auction. Van Halen passed away in 2020; bids are due next week.

Out now Affinity’s 2023 investment benchmark report: Global unicorn edition! Get an in-depth look at the current unicorn landscape and what top private capital firms are doing to source the highest quality deals before their competition.