Silicon Valley Funding News - Week of June 19, 2023. Primer Raised $69M Series D

I am excited to be coming to Canada 🇨🇦 🇨🇦 🇨🇦 and speak at Collision Toronto on June 26 -28!  Alfred and look forward to meeting early stage founders in Canada and we (Race Capital) are also co-hosting an invite-only Founders and Investors cocktail hour with Panache Ventures 👉 👉 👉 Apply to attend. 

Here are a few great reads for the week:

• 😡 Reddit users are pissed  - Reddit recently announced it was time to charge for access to its APIs, both to recoup the costs of running the API and to help the company become more profitable ahead of its planned IPO. This decision led to Apollo (a popular Reddit reading app) to shut down on June 30th as it will cost about $20M for Christian Selig (the creator) to continue to operate.  Reddit users are super upset by this decision and decided to push back by turning 9,000 subreddits dark for over 48-hour. Then Reddit CEO said "It’s time we grow up and behave like an adult company", which pissed off the users even more.  Perhaps the bigger question in this debate centers around who really owns the user generated content?  The users or the platform? One thing for sure slamming your users is NOT a path to an IPO. 
• 🇨🇳 Bill Gates meets Xi Jinping - Bill Gates met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Friday. The meeting, which was Gates' first with a Chinese leader since 2015, came amid rising tensions between the United States and China. Gates  announced that his foundation would be investing $50 million in China to support research into infectious diseases. Xi Jinping welcomed Gates to China and said that he hoped the two countries could work together to address common challenges. The meeting between Gates and Xi Jinping is seen as a sign that China is still open to engagement with the United States. Watch their interaction
• ❤️ Hong Kong loves Web3 - I did a one hour interview with King Leung, Head of Fintech at InvestHK this past week.  It's super fascinating to watch how Hong Kong is being so open in promoting Web3. From launching new crypto license regime, potentially launching its own Stablecoin to seeing Chinese Insurance company setting up Web3 funds. Watch here
• 💰 SEC Chair Gary Gensler on His Crypto Crackdown - Great interview by WSJ with Gary Gensler on his thoughts on Crypto.  The part I don't believe is THAT he actually does not own any Crypto himself.  How to regulate something you have never used before? Take a listen
• 💪 Age of Enterprise AI has begun - As Bill Gates would say, the Age of Enterprise AI has begun . Enterprise AI will help change the way businesses communicate with their customers, users and partners externally and employees internally. Entire industries will reorient around it. In the future, Fortune 500 companies can only differentiate themselves by how well they use AI.  And I believe Vectara will be THE company to help them get there. Read more on Techcrunch 

This week a total of 17 startups raised $246M in funding, 0 M&As:

• $111.2M goes to 6 Enterprise startups
• $18.5M goes to 3 Crypto/Web3 startups
• $20.6M goes to 2 Electric Vehicle startups
• $10.5M goes to 1 Energy startup
• $14M goes to 1 Textile Manufacturing startup
• $10M goes to 1 Interior Design startup
• $4M goes to 1 Social Media startup
• $5.2M goes to 1 BioTech startup
• $52M goes to 1 Healthcare startup