Microsoft is putting new AI assistant tools in everything. Will it change the way we use computers?

Elon Musk said today that he will interview Florida Governor Ron DeSantis tomorrow, promising “a major announcement.” According to the WSJ -- which interviewed Musk remotely during one of its executive summits -- DeSantis is expected to announce his 2024 presidential bid via that chat with Musk, which will happen via live audio in a Twitter Spaces chatroom. Bloomberg separately notes the move opens Twitter up to more criticism and a potential row with one of its biggest advertisers, Walt Disney Co., which is engaged in an escalating dispute with DeSantis over his policies in the state.

The White House said today it would ask workers how their employers use AI to monitor them, as it allocates federal investments in the technology, which is expected to change the nature of work. The White House will hold a listening session with workers to understand their experience with employers' use of automated technologies for surveillance, monitoring and evaluation. The call will include gig work experts, researchers, and policymakers, reports Reuters. More here.

Round and round it goes. Where it will stop, nobody knows.

New report: the state of venture capital in 2023. While the slowdown began in 2022, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in early March shook the venture industry and shined a brighter-than-ever light on the space. To go beyond the headlines, Juniper Square surveyed nearly 100 venture capital investors about their concerns, plans, and focus areas for the rest of the year. See what they had to say about the state of the industry. Download The State of Venture Capital: 2023 Benchmark Survey now.

Neo, a six-year-old, Bay Area-based outfit founded by renowned serial entrepreneur and investor Ali Partovi, is announcing that it has garnered $235 million in capital commitments across two new funds. According to Partovi, $180 million will be invested in seed deals and via accelerator programs spun up by Neo; the rest, $55 million, will be funneled into later-stage investments.

The capital brings Neo's assets under management to more than $600 million and could more or less be viewed as an endorsement of what Neo has assembled, which is traditional in some ways -- and also very far from it.

On the one hand, Neo invests in startups on similar terms as traditional VCs, including via a three-month-long accelerator program that accepts 20 technical teams each spring. But Neo also invests heavily in mentoring that extends well beyond the founders to whom it writes checks. Sometimes, it has meant bringing engineering students into the fold who wind up at big tech companies; at other times, it has meant pointing them toward other startups getting off the ground.

All of these "Neo Scholars," 30 of whom are selected each year, will help Neo over time as much as it helps them, is the thinking. Some might eventually launch startups and Neo wants to be their first phone call. Others may help tighten Neo's relationship with other companies. Partovi says, for example, that Neo made "late-stage investments in companies like Ramp, Watershed, and MosaicML after helping them recruit Neo Scholars that have become among their highest-performing engineers."

We talked about Neo's latest funds last week with Partovi, who says more than $100 million, or 45% of Neo's capital deployed to date, has been committed to startups led by women and underrepresented CEOs. He also told us that Neo has 51% gross IRR (used to estimate the profitability of investments) across its funds. Though investors are typically focused on net IRR, meaning after fees and other costs, Neo's newest backers -- including Eric Schmidt, Henry Kravis, Joe Gebbia, Max Levchin, and Sheryl Sandberg -- seem happy enough. Indeed, they are so numerous that Partovi offered to create a visual collage for this editor.

More from our exchange follows:

You say funds have earned 51% IRR since inception, pointing to investments in Ethena, Forethought, Kalshi, Kepler, Pavilion, and Vanta. Have any raised follow-on funding in 2023? Clearly, a lot of companies are seeing their valuations reset right now.

Among those six companies, almost all raised follow-on funding in the second half of 2022, after the stock market reset in May 2022, and none of them needed to raise more in 2023. The 51% IRR figure is based on more than a hundred investments across two portfolios. The majority of the portfolio has raised follow-on funding in the last 12 months. In some cases, we've also proactively marked down valuations even if the company didn't have a down round, to keep in sync with the market.

Neo is very young, of course. Have any of its portfolio companies already been sold or gone public?

None yet. Thankfully, Neo is still very young. In this market, I’m really grateful to be working with earlier-stage companies.

You have long focused on CS students because these are often the people who wind up building startups or making them work. Are you worried -- or should CS students be worried -- that this is changing because of generative AI?

More here.

Anthropic, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that says its mission is to "build safe and beneficial artificial general intelligence," raised a $450 million Series C round led by Spark Capital, with additional participation from Google (which is Anthropic's preferred cloud provider), Salesforce Ventures, Sound Ventures, Zoom Ventures, and Menlo Ventures. The Information reported back in March that this round was coming together. The company has raised a total of $1.45 billion. It isn't clear what has or will happen with the stake of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who led Anthropic's $580 million Series B investment last year. TechCrunch has more here.

Builder.ai, a seven-year-old London startup whose platform allows businesses to build a web or native mobile app in a modular fashion, raised a $250 million Series D round led by Qatar Investment Authority, with Iconiq Capital, Jungle Ventures, and Insight Partners also taking part. The company has raised over $450 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Go, Japan's leading taxi-hailing company, is now a "unicorn" thanks to ¥10 billion ($72.3 million) round it just collected from Goldman Sachs Group. According to Bloomberg, the company has also just secured a ¥3 billion loan line from MUFG Bank and a ¥1 billion line of credit from Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank. More here.

Quanta Therapeutics, a five-year-old San Francisco startup whose mission is to to develop novel small molecule cancer medicines by selectively targeting so called "protein-protein interactions" that are key to oncogenic RAS activity, raised a $50.7 million Series D round led by Avidity Partners, with Sofinnova Investments, Vida Ventures, Surveyor Capital, Longitude Capital, BVF Partners, AbbVie Ventures, GC&H Investments, and WS Investment Company also piling on. The company has raised a total of $142 million. Endpoints News has more here.

ReNAgade Therapeutics, a two-year-old startup based in Cambridge, Ma., that aims to enable the delivery of RNA medicines to previously inaccessible tissues and cells in the body, raised a $300 million Series A round. MPM BioImpact and F2 Ventures co-led the deal. More here.

TISSIUM, a ten-year-old Paris company that is developing biomorphic programmable polymers for tissue reconstruction, raised a $54 million Series D round. Investors included Fonds Stratégique des Transitions, Mérieux Développement, Cathay Health, Credit Mutuel Innovation, and Sofinnova Partners. The company has raised a total of $210.2 million. EU-Startups has more here.

Tyme, a four-year-old Johannesburg startup that operates a digital banking platform that's focused on the South African market, raised a $77.8 million "pre-Series C" round. Norrsken22 and Blue Earth Capital co-led the deal, while previous investor Tencent also participated. The company has raised a total of $246.8 million. TechCrunch has more here.

ClearMotion, a 14-year-old outfit based in Billerica, Ma., that claims its suspension technology cancels unwanted car motion, raised a $32 million round from NewView Capital, Acadia Woods, BAI Capital, NIO Capital, and Liberty Street. The company has raised a total of $349.8 million. More here.

Lifeforce, a Santa Monica startup co-founded by lifestyle guru Tony Robbins that creates bespoke health programs for consumers based on regular blood tests, raised a $12 million Series A round co-led by M13 and Peterson Ventures, with additional investors including Ridgeline Ventures, Rosecliff Ventures, and Seaside Ventures. Sports Business Journal has more here.

Logik.io, a two-year-old Chicago startup whose software integrates with different commerce platforms to explain how products should be configured, raised a $16 million Series A round led by Emergence Capital, with ServiceNow Ventures and Salesforce Ventures also chipping in. The company has raised a total of $26 million. More here.

Volition, a four-year-old San Francisco startup that helps engineers and supply chain teams to more efficiently find and buy off-the-shelf components, raised an $11 million seed round. Newark Venture Partners and previous investor Quiet Capital were the co-leads. TechCrunch has more here.

Ballerine, a one-year-old Tel Aviv startup that has developed an open source application to help financial institutions comply with Know Your Customer regulations, raised a $5 million seed round led by Team8, with additional funds provided by Y Combinator and Vera Equity. TechCrunch has more here.

CyberVadis, a seven-year-old Paris startup that provides companies with third-party cyber security risk assessments and a standardized cybersecurity rating that they can share with others, raised a $7.6 million Series A round. Zobito was the deal lead. Tech.eu has more here.

Faye, a four-year-old Tel Aviv startup that offers travel insurance to consumers, raised a $10 million Series A round led by Munich Re Ventures, with additional participation from Viola Ventures, and F2 Venture Capital. The company has raised a total of $18 million. Calcalist has more here.

Minoa, a German startup that claims it can give SaaS vendors deep customer insights that lead to higher close rates, larger deal sizes, and lower churn, raised a $2.7 million pre-seed round. 468 Capital led the transaction; Mischief, AirAngels, Alumni Ventures, and Fidi Ventures also participated. Tech.eu has more here.

Smartbax, a Munich startup that is developing antibiotics to address the increasing spread of multidrug-resistant bacteria, raised a $1.3 million seed round. BIVF and High-Tech Gründerfonds co-led the deal. The company has raised a total of $2.1 million. More here.

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Matrix Partners India has closed on $518 million for its fourth fund, per an SEC filing first flagged by TechCrunch. The outfit had closed its third fund in 2019 with $300 million, so this is a meaningful step up. More here. 

Moonfire Ventures, a four-year-old, London-based, seed-stage venture firm that was founded by Mattias Ljungman, who previously co-founded Atomico, has closed its second fund with $115 million in capital commitments. The firm had closed its debut fund with roughly half that amount, or $60 million. More here.

QED Investors, cofounded in 2007 by Nigel Morris (he also co-founded Capital One Financial Services in 1994), says it has closed two new funds totaling $925 million in capital commitments. One is a $650 million early-stage fund – its eighth. The other is a $275 million growth-stage fund -- the second of its kind. Both are aimed at backing fintech companies primarily in the U.S., the United Kingdom and Europe, Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia. TechCrunch has more here.

Courtesy of TechCrunch: "Meta has finally found a willing buyer for Giphy, the animated GIF search engine it acquired for $400 million three years ago. Shutterstock announced today that it has entered into an agreement with Meta to buy Giphy in a transaction that “consists of $53 million of net cash paid at closing,” meaning Facebook’s parent company has recuperated just 13% of its money. Shutterstock said it expects the deal to close next month, with Meta also signing a commercial agreement to continue accessing Giphy’s content across its product suite. The announcement comes some seven months after the U.K.’s antitrust authority issued a final order for Meta to sell Giphy, on the grounds that the merger reduced dynamic competition." More here.

Alibaba's cloud arm is laying off 7% of its total workforce, or around 1,000 employees, as the unit prepares for a full spinoff and eventual public listing, according to Nikkei Asia. The move comes days after Alibaba Group Holding announced a full spinoff of the Cloud Intelligence Group within 12 months, after which Alibaba will not hold any stake in the company, as all of the equity that Alibaba owns in the cloud business will be returned to existing shareholders by way of a dividend. The cloud arm reportedly has less than 20,000 staff. More here.

TMZ is calling Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos “Sanchezos.”

B Capital, the U.S. and Singapore-headquartered multi-stage investor, has announced the appointment of Don Wood as a venture partner, focused on climate tech. Wood is based in Palo Alto, Ca., and spent most of his investing career -- 17 years -- with DFJ. FinanceAsia has more here.

Microsoft is putting new AI assistant tools in everything. Will it change the way we use computers?

Netflix has begun its password sharing crackdown in the U.S. and global markets.

More layoffs are set to come tomorrow at Meta -- the final round in a staggered layoff process that has been ongoing since March. Already, more than 4,000 people in recruiting and technology have lost their jobs in two previous rounds of cuts. This next round will impact more than 5,000 workers throughout business divisions at the company, says Business Insider.

The castle where future queens drop the royal act.

The "Tiger King of Provence."

"SNL" just wrapped its 48th season. Time to cruelly rank its musical guests.

Why wealthy homebuyers are flocking to Puerto Rico. (It's not just crypto people, though it's still mostly crypto people.)

Sliding House.

Where the most successful startups are based, and what industries they represent, is changing. This infographic from Affinity reveals the latest unicorn trends by geography, sector, and investment size. Take a look at the data.