Silicon Valley Funding News - Week of September 11, 2023. Imbue Raised $200M Series B

Hello from Asia!  Hong Kong tuned into a giant water park with water slides and lazy rivers this past week!  Check out this video

Here are a few great reads, watch, etc for this week:

• 💰 💰 Visa Expands Stablecoin Settlement Capabilities to Merchant Acquirers Visa expands Stablecoin settlement capabilities with Circle’s USDC, adding pilot programs with merchant acquirers Worldpay and Nuvei, and utilizing the Solana blockchain. This is a big announcement for both Visa and Solana. Read more on Visa
• 💪 💪 FTC is losing their focus - This expansive agenda raises questions of whether regulators have become overambitious. The 5 largest tech firms pay for 25% of all research and development in America. It's true that corporate concentration has risen across the decades, but that does appear to have been caused mainly by growing economies of scale from technology, not market power. Size alone should not warrant alarm. Needless scrutiny uses up regulators' resources and damages their credibility. Many other industries (e.g. healthcare) with high profits and low innovation deserve attention.  Read more on the Economist.
• 👑 👑 The unfulfilled ambitions of Jamie Dimon, Wall Street’s King - I really enjoy this interview by the Economist with the boss of JPMorgan on US-China rows, banking woes, what he does next and Dimonomic (instead of Bidenomics).  Watch here
• 📈 📈 Discord’s Midjourney Deal Could Supercharge Its Revenue - Midjourney (one of my favorite AI tools) is built on Discord (valued at $15 billion), meaning subscribers type prompts into a Discord server, or chat group, then wait for an image to appear. Using Discord, they can discuss their art and build relationships with fellow AI enthusiasts. In exchange for those social tools and the additional resources Discord has provided to help it expand, Discord takes a slice of Midjourney’s revenue. Read more on TheInformation
• 📺 📺 Edith on CNBC on IPO and AI startup investing - I had a fun chat with Tanvir Gill and Will Koulouris on CNBC.  I don't think the world is ready for TanvirGPT, WillGPT or EdithGPT yet, but I do think #GenAI is having an iPhone moment. Watch on CNBC

This week a total of 23 startups raised $849.8M in funding, 1 M&As:

• $368M goes to 7 Enterprise startups
• $163.8M goes to 4 FinTech startups
• $24M goes to 1 InsurTech startup
• $17M goes to 2 EdTech startups
• $7M goes to 1 Travel startup
• $6.9M goes to 1 Healthcare startup
• $214.6M goes to 4 BioTech startups
• $15M goes to 1 AutoTech startup
• $3.5M goes to 1 Space Tech startup
• $30M goes to 1 Energy startup