Microsoft broadens its AI bets, VanMoof goes poof, and Threads usage cools after a very hot start

Microsoft just broadened its AI bets. In addition to its deep ties to OpenAI, it will release a new version of Meta Platforms’ AI language model in a partnership that will make the software available to companies for the first time. The Meta AI model -- Llama 2 -- will be free and available to developers building software on Microsoft’s Azure cloud-computing platform; Meta previously released an earlier version of Llama to academics but hadn’t made it available for commercial use. The WSJ has the story here. (Meta’s open-source approach is not new. Companies often open-source technologies in an effort to catch up with rivals, notes the New York Times.)

After Threads' historical launch, reports show that people are using the app less. The Verge has more here.

Stay on top of your portfolio! Synaptic combines alternative datasets of your choice and aggregates 100+ company performance metrics to keep on top of your portfolio performance. Our AI platform scans and tracks your competitors and competitor portfolios, and sends automated alerts and data-backed insights on significant changes. Sign up for a free trial today and see for yourself why Ribbit Capital, Felicis, Vy Capital, Valor, GIC, and many others trust us!

Forerunner Ventures first made its name in the venture world by betting on once-nascent startups like Jet, Bonobos and Glossier when it was far easier to build a digitally native brand. Yet as commerce evolves, so does the firm.

As part of its ongoing evolution, Forerunner five years ago brought aboard veteran VC Brian O'Malley to dig into startups at the intersection of commerce and enterprise tech; to find out what's interesting to him right now, we recently swung by Forerunner's office in San Francisco's Presidio National Park (now home to a growing number of venture firms) to ask.

Our conversation was wide-ranging, but unexpectedly, O'Malley seemed the most excited about old-fashioned service businesses. Think travel agencies, therapists' offices, even plumbing companies -- all of them "sleepy but very large categories," said O' Malley. Indeed, seated in a modern, glass-lined conference room, he highlighted a startup he'd just met within the HVAC space. "A lot of these local businesses are doing $10 million, $20 million, with 20% to 30% profit margins," he enthused.

The big question, naturally, is whether they are suddenly venture fundable businesses. O'Malley explained why he thinks that, structured the right way and aided by recent advancements AI, they are. Excerpts from that chat follow, edited lightly for length and clarity.

More here.

Futureverse, a one-year-old startup that has built a suite of AI content generation tools designed to enhance the music, objects, characters, and animations for metaverse games, raised a $54 million Series A round. 10T Holdings was the deal lead, while Ripple also anted up. VentureBeat has more here.

Lambda Labs, an eleven-year-old San Francisco company that provides workstations, servers, laptops, and cloud services for AI and machine learning applications, is reportedly in the market to raise a $300 million round from investors including Nvidia, says The Information, which has more here.

Netcraft, a thirty-six-year-old company based in Bath, UK, that offers a range of subscription-based cybercrime detection, disruption, and takedown services, raised a $100 million round from Spectrum Equity. TechCrunch has more here.

PVcase, a six-year-old Lithuanian startup that helps engineers plan and design solar energy projects via its software-as-a-service 3D modeling platform, has raised $100 million in Series B funding from Highland Europe, Energize Ventures and Elephant VC. Business Insider has more here.

Sylvera, a three-year-old London startup that aims to provide trusted data and ratings on carbon offset investment projects, raised a $57 million Series B round led by Balderton Capital, with Fidelity Strategic Ventures, and 9Yards Capital as well as previous investors Index Ventures, Insight Partners, Bain & Company, Salesforce Ventures, Speedinvest, Seedcamp, and LocalGlobe also piling on. The company has raised a total of $95.5 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Tractable, a nine-year-old London startup that has built computer vision and related AI to carry out remote assessments of damage to property and cars, raised a $65 million Series E round. SoftBank Vision Fund 2 was the deal lead, while previous investors Insight Partners and Georgian also chipped in. The company has raised a total of $184.9 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Anduin, a nine-year-old San Francisco startup that digitizes processes for private market investors, raised a $15.6 million Series B round. The lead was 8VC, with GC1 Ventures and existing investors also participating. FinTech Global has more here.

Gardens, a two-year-old game studio building a new fantasy multiplayer game, raised a $31.3 million Series A led by Lightspeed and Krafton, with participation from the Nintendo Family (Yamauchi No.10), Mike Morhaime (founder and long-time CEO of Blizzard), John W. Thompson (former Microsoft Chairman), Jack Tretton (former Sony Computer Entertainment America President and CEO), Ben Feder (former Tencent President and Take-Two CEO), Annie and Jeff Strain (lead programmer of World of Warcraft), Nate Mitchell (co-founder of Oculus), V Pappas (former COO of TikTok), and others. VentureBeat has more here.

KOMI, a four-year-old London startup that specializes in building digital storefronts for content creators and celebrities, raised a $12 milion round led by RTP, Third Prime, Antler, E& Capital, Contour Ventures, and Vicus, with additional funds provided by Sony Music, Live Nation, and Laffitte Management Group. The company has raised a total of $18 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Optalysys, a 10-year-old UK company that is using optical chips to develop new kinds of encryption to enable secure data sharing between companies and countries, raised a $21.5 million Series A round. Lingotto, imec.xpand, and Northern Gritstone were the co-leads. The company has raised a total of $32.7 million. The Financial TImes has more here.

Wing Cloud, a one-year-old New York startup that is developing an open source, unified cloud programming language, raised a $20 million seed round. Battery Ventures, Grove Ventures, and StageOne Ventures were the co-leads, while Secret Chord Ventures, Cerca Partners, and Operator Partners also contributed. TechCrunch has more here.

Bureau, a three-year-old San Francisco startup that provides identity verification services to busineesses, raised $4.5 million in additional funds, increasing the total size of its Series A round to $16.5 million. Investors in this latest tranche included GMO Venture Partners and GMO Payment Gateway. The company has raised a total of $20.5 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Craftwork, a startup founded this year based in Charlotte, N.C., that provides a way for consumers to book painting jobs online, raised a $4 million seed round from Y Combinator, Lachy Groom, Immad Akhund, Louis Beryl, and Roger Dickey. More here.

Huq Industries, a nine-year-old London startup that uses mobile data to provide foot traffic information to governments, retailers, real estate owners, and financial firms, raised a $5.2 million round. 24 Haymarket was the deal lead, with ACF Investors also pitching in. The company has raised a total of $9.6 million. Tech.eu has more here.

Metafold, a three-year-old Toronto startup that is building a cloud- and API-based 3D-engineering platform for manufacturers, raised a $1.8 million seed round. Differential Ventures was the deal lead, while Active Impact Investments, Jetstream, and Standup Ventures also invested. BetaKit has more here.

Prospective, a New York-based, interactive analytics and data visualization tool for large and streaming datasets, has raised $6 million in seed funding led by Point72 Ventures, with participation from Silicon Badia, Irregular Expressions, Essence Ventures, Giant Machines, and REFASHIOND Ventures. More here.

Reworkd.ai, a Canadian startup based in San Francisco that is working on an AI agent designed to help businesses automate repetitive tasks, raised a $1.25 million pre-seed round. Panache Ventures led the transaction, which also included participation from Y Combinator. BetaKit has more here.

Tenderd, a five-year-old, Dubai-based AI powered analytics platform for fleet operations that's backed by Peter Thiel, has garnered an undisclosed amount of funding from Saudi Aramco’s venture capital arm. Bloomberg has more here.

Transform your GP operations with CaliberX. CaliberX automates investment operation workflows, digitizes data for fund administrators, and connects you to a network of LPs including RIAs and fintech companies leveraging AI powered solutions. Click here for a demo and step into the future of operations.

Polychain Capital, one of the most prominent venture capital firms in the crypto space, has raised around $200 million in the “first close” of its fourth fund, according to Fortune, which says the outfit also let go three members of its research team amid new investing priorities. The outfit reportedly plans to raise around $400 million total for the fourth fund.

An eight-year-old, Brooklyn-based venture firm called CoinFund has raised $158 million to back early-stage crypto startups, according to Bloomberg. The new fund is larger than the one CoinFund initially set out to raise, its CEO, Jake Brukhman, tells the outlet. The firm had initially aimed for $125 million, but received more interest than expected, he said.

VanMoof, the Netherlands-based maker of sleek e-bikes that attracted hundreds of millions of dollars from VCs, has officially been declared bankrupt. A Dutch court has now appointed two trustees to explore an asset sale to a third party to keep VanMoof running. TechCrunch has more here.

Logitech has acquired Loupedeck — the company behind the self-titled editing console beloved by streamers and creative professionals — for an undisclosed sum, according to a press release published on Tuesday. The Verge has more here.

After about two and a half years as CEO, Ami Gan is leaving OnlyFans. Chief strategy and operations officer Keily Blair will take over as CEO. OnlyFans is perhaps the best-known creator platform that supports adult content, and according to Gan, the company paid out $10 billion to creators while she was CEO. TechCrunch has more here.

Airbnb's Joe Gebbia sold more than $1 billion of stock so far this year as shares of the vacation home-rental company he co-founded climbed, reports Bloomberg. The outlet says Gebbia has added $2.9 billion in wealth this year driven largely by the 70% gain in Airbnb’s shares. He ranks 254th on the list of the world’s 500 richest people with a fortune of $8.8 billion.

Managers at Meta looking for a promotion in the next year or two may be stuck where they are as the company continues to change under a new era of austerity. Business Insider has more here.

Constance Wang, who served in several executive-level roles at Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX before the collapse of the digital-asset exchange, has joined crypto venture capital firm Sino Global Capital. Bloomberg has more here.

Cameo, the video shoutout app that gained in popularity during the pandemic shutdowns, told employees today that it is laying off at least 80 workers because of financial pressures, according to The Information. The cuts leave fewer than 50 people at the startup, two employees tell the outlet, down nearly 90% from its peak headcount last year. (If you want Brian Cox to tell someone to "F*ck off," maybe hurry.)

Microsoft reportedly laid off more than 1,000 employees over the past week, primarily in customer service and sales roles. The cuts go beyond the 10,000 layoffs Microsoft indicated it was planning earlier this year, according to Business Insider.

Only 1% of U.S. homes have changed hands so far this year, Redfin says.

An advanced version of ChatGPT can analyze images and is already helping the blind. But its ability to put a name to a face -- essentially to potentially become a powerful surveillance technology that spits out information about individuals and not just objects  -- is one reason the public doesn’t have access to it. The NYTimes has more here.

More than 8,000 authors have signed a letter asking the leaders of companies including Microsoft, Meta Platforms, and Alphabet to not use their work to train AI systems without permission or compensation. The letter, signed by noteworthy writers including James Patterson, Margaret Atwood and Jonathan Franzen, says the AI systems “mimic and regurgitate our language, stories, style, and ideas.” TechCrunch has more here.

Meta said today that new corporate AI tools that work with Office software, called Microsoft 365 Copilot, will cost $30 per user per month on top of what most business customers already pay.

My girl dinner lasted a decade (salami, cheese, grapes).

If you're looking for a swanky penthouse in Boston, note that Michael Dell is sellling his for $30 million. The two-story penthouse is more than 7,200 square feet with five bedrooms and a 570-square-foot private balcony, according to the listing.

AI is everywhere right now … but what it means for the private capital markets is still up for debate. Hear three expert perspectives on the future of AI in VC when you tune into Affinity’s upcoming webinar on July 25. The conversation features Adam Perelman, Engineering Manager of ChatGPT at OpenAI, Peregrine Badger, Instigator at Fifty Years, and Ray Zhou, CEO at Affinity. Save your spot for July 25.