Bye, bye, "block"; Bain Capital dines out on a new restaurant; and new snafus for Cruise drive the outfit backward

Friday, hot damn.

It's teen central over here as we segue into the weekend (sleepover). Before we shut it all down, we do have a StrictlyVC Download for you that we recorded earlier today and think you'll enjoy. Our featured guest this week: VC Erin Price-Wright of Index Ventures, who invests in enterprise and AI startups from the global firm's San Francisco office and who talked with us about how Index struck a deal to ensure its GPU-starved startups don't miss out on the AI boom. (You can also find some excerpts of our chat below.)

If you don't want to miss SaaStr's Bay Area cloud event, note that it's coming up in just a few weeks: September 6th through the 8th. According to SaaStr, here will be more than 1,000 VCs at the event (which is a lot?!), so if you are looking to wheel and deal, it's probably worth checking out. More here.

Cruise, the self-driving car subsidiary of GM, has been asked to reduce its robotaxi fleet by 50% in San Francisco following a crash last night with a fire truck. The California Department of Motor Vehicles requested the reduction in operations. Cruise has had a series of snafus in the eight days since it won approval from the California Public Utilities Commission to expand commercial operations in San Francisco. Last Friday night, 10 of its driverless cars reportedly stalled and blocked traffic for some period; the latest Cruise incident occurred yesterday when a Cruise robotaxi and an emergency vehicle crashed and left a passenger injured. TechCrunch has more here.

A federal judge today upheld a finding from the U.S. Copyright Office that a piece of art created by AI is not open to protection. Copyright law has “never stretched so far” to “protect works generated by new forms of technology operating absent any guiding human hand,” U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell found. The Hollywood Reporter has more here.

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Earlier this week, the New York Times shone a light on some of the desperation that founders are experiencing as they try and fail to secure compute power for their nascent artificial intelligence startups, thanks to the big companies (and even rich nations) racing to snatch them up. One founder reportedly said of the graphics processing units, or GPUs, that he needs for his company: “I think about [them] as a rare earth metal at this point."

According to that Times piece, founders are trying numerous measures to amass the chips, including calling in favors from friends at large equipment vendors that might have GPUs to spare, and navigating an obscure U.S. government program called Access.

At least one firm, the global investor Index Ventures, happened on an additional idea, it told the outlet. To help ensure its portfolio companies aren't hamstrung by the shortage, it struck a deal with Oracle to provide its founders with some of these sought-after chips (specifically Nvidia’s H100 chips and Nvidia's A100 chips).

To learn more about the arrangement -- one that other venture firms are undoubtedly trying to replicate -- we talked earlier today with Erin Price-Wright, a Bay Area-based partner with Index who focuses on enterprise software and AI and who, before joining the venture firm in 2019, was the head of product for Palantir’s data analytics and machine learning platform. Excerpts from our chat have been lightly edited for length and clarity below; you can hear our longer conversation here.

More here.

Sangon Biotech, a 20-year-old Shanghai company that provides research services, reagents, and kits for the Chinese life sciences industry, raised a $290 million round led by Novo Holdings, with additional participation from GL Capital, CPE, Greenwoods Asset Management, Huagai Capital, CDB Venture, and China Merchant Health. The company has raised a total of $296.6 million. FierceBiotech has more here.

Viome Life Sciences, a seven-year-old startup based in Bellevue, Wa., that sells at-home kits that analyze the microbial composition of stool samples and provide food recommendations as well as supplements and probiotics, raised an $86.5 million Series C round. Khosla Ventures and Bold Capital co-led the deal. The company was founded by serial entrepreneur Naveen Jain. GeekWire has more here.

Arccos, a 12-year-old company based in Stamford, Ct., that can measure golf shots via a smartphone app, raised a $20 million Series C round led by the PGA Tour, with Ping, TaylorMade, Cobra Puma Golf, and Topgolf Callaway Brands also (no pun intended) chipping in. Golfweek has more here.

Dcbel, an eight-year-old Montréal startup that makes a solar and stationary battery inverter it claims can predict energy needs and secure the cleanest electricity at the lowest cost, raised a $50+ million Series B round. Backers included Idealist Capital and Investissement Québec as well as previous investors Volvo, Coatue, and Real Ventures. The company has raised a total of $90 million. More here.

Jinx, a four-year-old Los Angeles startup that sells dog food to health-conscious dog parents, raised a $17.8 million Series B round co-led by The Merchant Club and Align Ventures, with AF Ventures, ERA Ventures, and Range Group also contributing. The company has raised a total of $51.5 million. More here.

ProjectDiscovery, a three-year-old San Francisco startup whose platform detects vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in codebases, raised a $25 million Series A round led by CRV, with Point72 Ventures, SignalFire, Rain Capital, Mango Capital, Accel, and Lightspeed also piling on. The company has raised a total of $26.7 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Visana Health, a four-year-old Minneapolis startup that operates a virtual women’s health clinic addressing a broad range of health issues ranging from menstruation to menopause, raised a $10.1 million seed round co-led by Flare Capital Partners and Frist Cressey Ventures, with InHealth Ventures, Oxeon Partners, Pixel Perfect Ventures, and Venture Investors also anteing up. The company has raised a total of $13.6 million. Femtech Insider has more here.

CityPay.io, a three-year-old startup based in Tbilisi, Georgia, that allows businesses to receive crypto payments via traditional channels such as email, raised a $2.2 million round. Investors included Tether and Presto Ventures. The company has raised a total of $2.8 million. Tech.eu has more here.

SportsVisio, a two-year-old Miami startup that uses computer vision and deep learning applications to allow players, fans, and coaches to film games and tally key stats, raised a $3 million seed round. Sapphire Sports was the deal lead. The company has raised a total of $6.1 million. Yahoo Sports has more here.

Vegapay, a one-year-old startup based in Gurgaon, India, that aims to help banks and fintechs reduce the time it takes them to bring new financial products like credit cards to market, raised a $1.1 million pre-seed round led by Eximius Ventures along with DSP HMK, Capri Global, Upsparks Capital, MGA Ventures, and Climber Capital. Entrepreneur has more here.

Verdigris, a 12-year-old company based in Mountain View, Ca., whose platform provides carbon-intensive enterprises with real-time data and analysis in order to help them reduce their emissions, raised a $10 million in round co-led by led by DCVC and Solea Energy. The company has raised a total of $50.7 million. More here.

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Assembly Ventures, a venture capital group founded by Detroit and Berlin investors to fund mobility startups, says it has closed its inaugural fund with $76 million in capital commitments, including from Rocket Mortgage founder Dan Gilbert and Jeep maker Stellantis NV. The firm was founded in 2020 by Chris Thomas and Jessica Robinson, who previously founded the Detroit Mobility Lab and the Michigan Mobility Institute together. (Thomas also cofounded Fontinalis Partners with Ford's executive chairman, Bill Ford.) A third cofounder, Felix Scheuffelen, is a Germany-based investor who co-founded Beyond1435, an innovation platform. Assembly Ventures now has $94 million total assets under management. The Detroit News has the story.

Play Ventures has raised at least $78 million for its third gaming venture capital fund, according to a filing with the SEC that was spied this week by VentureBeat. The funding amount for the Singapore company indicates the amount raised as of the filing date on June 22 and doesn’t indicate the actual size of the fund. The company could not comment on the filing per SEC rules. Play Ventures was founded in 2018 and has reported invested in more than 100 early-stage gaming studios, content, tooling and game platform services companies. More here.

Bain Capital is set to acquire Brazilian steakhouse chain Fogo de Chão (VCs routinely hosted "media dinners" in the San Francisco location before the pandemic struck). Current owner Rhone Capital announced the sale in a news release earlier this week, and though terms of the deal were not released, Reuters says the sale valued Fogo de Chão at $1.1 billion. More here.

How investor Antonio Gracias became the most hardcore of Elon Musk’s loyalists.

AI expert Max Tegmark warns that humanity is failing the new technology’s challenge. “Ever since the term AI was coined in the 1950s, it was obvious to leaders in the field that if we ever succeeded in getting close to human-level AI, it was pretty likely we would face enormous risks, like extinction, but people kept thinking this was really far away," Tegmark tells the WSJ. "What’s new is not the idea. It’s that, holy guacamole, it’s happening, and we didn’t have as much time as we thought to do the safety part.”

Users of the X platform will soon lose their ability to "block" other users. TechCrunch has more here.

Twenty-one cities to spend a weekend this fall.

The 10 must-watch games on the NBA schedule.

Contrast collar shirts by Le Alfré.

Total Black Aviators.

"American Psycho" poster signed by Christian Bale.

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