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Just a mention that we're on a semi-break this week (entertaining friends) so if we're especially slow to get back to you, this could be why. 🎉
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In an internal memo sent yesterday afternoon to Reddit staff, CEO Steve Huffman addressed the recent blowback directed at the company around its decision to charge for access to its (previously free) application programming interface, telling employees, "There’s a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we’ve seen. Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well." Now, Reddit communities with millions of followers now plan to
extend the blackout indefinitely to protest Reddit's new pricing scheme, which is expected to take effect July 1. The blackout was originally expected to last from Monday until Wednesday. The Verge has more here.
OpenAI is upgrading its text-generating models while reducing pricing, as the competition in the generative AI space grows fiercer.
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Research: 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.
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Kate Therapeutics, a San Diego-based outfit developing gene therapies to treat genetically defined muscle and heart diseases, has raised $51 million in Series A funding. Westlake Village BioPartners and Versant Ventures co-led the round, joined by Osage University Partners and UF Innovate | Ventures. The San Diego Tribune has more here.
Mistral AI, a Paris-based outfit spun up just a month ago to compete with the likes of OpenAI by former Meta and Google AI researchers Timothee Lacroix, Guillaume Lample and Arthur Mensch, has already raised 105 million euros ($113.4 million). Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round, joined by Eric Schmidt, Xavier Niel, JCDecaux Holding, Motier Ventures, La Famiglia, Headline, Exor Ventures, Sofina, First Minute Capital and LocalGlobe among others. TechCrunch has more here.
Synthesia, a six-year-old London-based AI video creation platform for enterprises whose software allows people to make their own digital avatars to deliver corporate presentations, training videos — or even compliments to colleagues in more than 120 different languages, has raised $90 million in Series C funding at a post-money valuation of $1 billion. Accel led the round, joined by NVentures, which is NVIDIA’s venture capital arm, and participation from earlier investors Kleiner Perkins, GV, Firstmark Capital, Scale AI CEO Alex Wang, and Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel. CNBC has more here.
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| Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings |
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Fernride, a four-year-old, Munich-based developer of autonomous electric trucks that move cargo on private sites, raised $31 million in Series A funding from 10x Founders, Promus Ventures, Fly Ventures, Speedinvest, Push Ventures, HHLA Next, Schenker Ventures and Krone. Tech.eu has more here.
The Green Coffee Company, a six-year-old Medellín startup that is seeking to become the world’s largest individual producer of arabica coffee, raised a $25 million Series C round from a group of angels. The company has raised over $60 million. Daily Coffee News has more here.
Helixintel, a 2.5-year-old, Buffalo, N.Y.-based online platform to manage building and equipment maintenance and repair, has raised $11 million in Series A funding led by National Grid Partners. Munich Re Ventures, Stellifi, and Motivate Ventures also joined the round. More here.
Indifi, an eight-year-old, India-based digital lender to small and mid-size businesses, has raised $35 million in Series E funding led by ICICI Venture. Earlier backers also joined the round, including British International Investment, OP Finnfund Global Impact Fund I, Omidyar Network India, Flourish Ventures and CX Partners. TechCrunch has more here.
Kodem, a two-year-old, Israeli application security startup, has raised $18 million in Series A funding co-led by TPY Capital and Greylock. TechCrunch has more here.
Nocnoc, a five-year-old, Uruguay-based cross-border payments startup focused on Latin America, raised $14 million in Series A funding led by PayPal Ventures. Other backers in the round included Mouro Capital, Quona Capital, Caravela Capital, Broadhaven and Ignia. TechCrunch has more here.
Pebble Mobility, a year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based EV startup that says its first product will be a medium-size towable all-electric travel trailer equipped with tech that’s similar, but not exactly the same, as the advanced driver assistance systems found in today’s modern vehicles, has raised $13.6 million in seed and Series A funding. Its backers include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Vision+ and UpHonest Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
Proclaim, a six-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based maker of at-home teeth cleaning devices, has raised $15 million in Series B funding from Khosla Ventures, Global Asset Capital, Ensemble Innovation Ventures, SpringRock Ventures and Revere Capital. Axios has more here.
Salonkee, a seven-year-old, Luxembourg-based maker of salon booking and management software, raised €28 million in funding. PeakSpan Capital led the round, joined by Fortino Capital, Newion Partners, Expon Capital, and LBAN. EU Startups has more here.
Striveworks, a five-year-old Austin, Tex.-based machine learning operations platform, raised $33 million from Centana Growth Partners. TechCrunch has more here.
Ten Thousand, a seven-year-old New York startup that makes activewear clothing, raised a $21.5 million Series A round led by Provenance, with additional funds provided by Fernbrook and Alfa. More here.
Vectara, a month-old startup that aims to provides AI-powered, API-based search tech that can handle queries of an arbitrary length, level of ambiguity and language across troves of multilingual documents, has raised $28.5 million in seed funding led by Race Capital with participation from Emad Mostaque, the founder of Stability AI. TechCrunch has more here.
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Albert Invent, a year-old, Bay Area-based collaborative, secure, end-to-end R&D platform, has raised $7.5 million in seed funding led by Index Ventures, with participation from Homebrew and F-Prime Capital. More here.
Apron, a year-old, London-based startup that provides a supplier payments platform for small businesses, has raised $5.5 million in funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from angel investors. More here.
Atoa Payments, a two-year-old, British open banking startup, has raised $6.5 million in seed funding led by Valar Ventures. The Irish Times has more here.
Climate Vault, a three-year-old, Seattle-based outfit that buys carbon allowances from markets to reduce the amount of carbon available, then invests into carbon removal technologies, has raised $9.4 million in Series A funding. Inclusive Capital Partners Foundation led the round, joined by King Philanthropies, Valor Siren Ventures, and ThirdStream Partners. More here.
Finch, a four-year-old San Francisco startup whose API allows companies to connect to different employment services, raised a $3.5 million round from Intuit Ventures. The company has raised a total of $58.6 million. VentureBeat has more here.
Rex, a two-year-old, New York-based new app that aims to make it easy to discover, keep track of, and share beloved places with friends, has raised nearly $4 million in seed funding. Accel, on whose early investment team founder and CEO Aliza Rosen spent four years, led the round, joined by Khosla Ventures and Future Positive. TechCrunch has more here.
Sol Reader, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company that makes a wearable reading device in the form factor of glasses (it intends to eliminate distractions), has raised $5 million in seed funding led by Initialized Capital, with investments from Founders Fund, Elementum Ventures, Long Journey, Anorak, Kevin Hartz, Liquid2, and Long Family Ventures. More here.
tem, a two-year-old London startup that soffer businesses a way to bypass utility companies and buy clean energy from renewable generators based on specific needs, raised a $3.15 million seed round led by AlbionVC, with Revent also contributing. UKTN has more here.
Wherobots, a Scottsdale, Az.-based data platform for geospatial analytics and AI, has raised a $5.5 million seed funding round. The round is co-led by Wing Venture Capital and Clear Ventures. More here.
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Affinity's analysis of 2022 activity data revealed that top VCs on their platform booked 15% more meetings than across all firms. See how your firm compares with these five venture-focused
benchmarks.
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The Engine, a venture firm that spun out of MIT in 2016 to focus on "tough tech," is raising up to $350 million for its third fund, per an SEC filing first flagged by Axios. The Engine closed its second fund with $230 million in the fall of 2020 anchored by MIT, though it also counts Harvard as a limited partner. More here.
Kaya Founders, a two-year-old, a Philippines-based venture firm focused on regional startups, has garnered $12 million in capital commitments across two new funds that are targeting $25 million altogether. The outfit's anchor limited partner is the Gokongwei family. (John Gokongwei was the founder of JG Summit, which has interests in airlines, telecom, banking, food, power, and property.) TechCrunch has more here.
Secondaries investor StepStone Group has garnered $1.6 billion in capital commitments for its newest flagship fund, per SEC filings. More here.
Voima Ventures, a four-year-old, Helsinki-based pre-seed and see-stage venture firm that focuses on “deep tech” startups from across the science sphere, says it has held an initial closing of €90 million in capital commitments for its third fund, which has a final target of €120 million. TechCrunch has more here.
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FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried wants to make his case to the Bahamas that some of the U.S. fraud charges he faces over the collapse of the crypto-exchange violate the terms of his extradition from the island nation. U.S. prosecutors need consent from the Bahamas to proceed with charges that were added after Bankman-Fried was transferred to U.S. custody. The WSJ has the story.
Rob Bearden, the CEO of Cloudera, reportedly told employees in a virtual town hall meeting today that he is stepping down. Bearden said that it's his decision to leave the company. His departure comes two years after the once-public company, which sells data management software, was acquired by private equity firms KKR and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice for about $5.3 billion in cash. The Information has the story.
Oracle founder Larry Ellison, 78, passed Bill Gates to become the world’s fourth-richest person with a net worth of $129.8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. It’s the first time that Ellison is richer than Gates, whose net worth is currently $129.1 billion, and the first time Ellison has ranked higher than fifth on the list, according to Bloomberg data.
Sir Paul McCartney says he has employed AI to help create what he calls “the final Beatles record." The BBC has the story here.
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A survey of developers by coding Q&A site Stack Overflow has found that AI tools are becoming commonplace in the industry even as coders remain skeptical about their accuracy. Per the survey, which reportedly received 90,000 responses, 77% of respondents say they feel favorably about using AI in their workflow, with 70% already using or planning to use AI coding tools this year. Only 3% of respondents said they “highly trust” AI coding tools, with 39% saying they “somewhat trust” them. Another 31% were undecided, with the rest describing themselves as somewhat distrustful (22%) or highly distrustful (5%). The Verge has the story.
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Microsoft’s Satya Nadella is betting everything on AI. "I'm not at all worried about [superintelligence] showing up, or showing up fast. Great, right? That means 8 billion people have abundance. That's a fantastic world to live in." He talks with Wired here.
Toyota’s latest engineering feat is an electric vehicle that behaves as if it has a stick shift, complete with revving sounds and faux gear shifts. In the WSJ.
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If you read StrictlyVC and are an early stage fintech founder, you’re obviously very smart. The team at Restive wants to work with you. Apply now to join their elite network of operators, partners,
and leaders in financial services. Restive respects founders and invests on market terms - so whether they’re your first check or a late addition to a competitive round - you can count on them to help you build the future of financial services! 🚀
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