A purported plan to build the "iPhone of artificial intelligence," aided by SoftBank

Jony Ive, the renowned designer of the iPhone, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have been discussing building a new AI hardware device, says The Information. Per the report: "It is not clear what the device would be or if they will decide to build it. But the two leaders, who are friends, have been discussing what new hardware for the age of AI could look like. It is also unclear whether any new device would be made by OpenAI or a new company. OpenAI has raised $11 billion to date from high-profile investors including Khosla Ventures and Microsoft." 

A separate, newer report from the FT says that OpenAI is talking with both Ive and with SoftBank to launch a venture to build the “iPhone of artificial intelligence," fueled by more than $1 billion in funding from the Japanese conglomerate.

ChatGPT can now search the internet like Google's Bard.

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Industry Ventures prides itself on trying to zig when others zag. When the outfit was first founded in San Francisco in 2000, the startup market was red hot, and its first product — a secondary fund — was a curiosity more than anything. The idea of selling one’s shares to another buyer wasn’t yet seen as a smart way to take some money off the table. It was viewed as a way to quietly dump distressed assets. Of course, the next year, when the market famously crashed, Industry Ventures was able to pick up some of the pieces on the cheap.

So it has been over the years, with Industry launching product after product, including many more secondary funds, funds to make direct investments, and funds to invest in other funds. According to firm founder Hans Swildens, Industry Ventures now has stakes in a stunning 600 other firms, including, per the firm’s website, Cowboy Ventures, Blumberg Capital, Bling Capital and Boldstart.

Because Industry Ventures more recently delved into the world of smaller tech buyouts – it just closed on $260 million in new capital commitments for a second fund to invest in smaller software companies — we wanted to talk with Industry about the opportunity it sees bubbling up. We also talked about its brand-new secondary fund, which boasts $1.45 billion in capital commitments. (Altogether, the firm’s assets under management are now a little more than $7 billion.) We’ll have the longer conversation for you in podcast form later this week; in the meantime, edited excerpts of that chat follow.

When I last talked with you, a year-and-a-half ago, you had stakes in 450 funds and you’d said that distributions were down 90%. After some boom times, you said that you were no longer receiving checks from your investors every week or two weeks.

That’s right. Our distributions at one point dried up. Now, I would say that it’s probably 75% off from 2021, so distributions are happening, but they’re smaller. They’re less frequent than in 202 or 2022 or even 2018, just because the IPO market has been closed.

Are the checks you’re still receiving coming from secondary sales, meaning the funds you invest in are selling off some startup holdings?

We’ve had distributions coming from secondary sales. We’ve had distributions come in from IPOs that were done two years ago with a GP still holding the securities but who, if they’re on the board, they can’t get out of their position. A lot of the VCs who had big holdings in companies that went public two years ago couldn’t sell their whole stake, so they got stuck with selling and distributing in windows. So we still have shares of companies that are being distributed to us from prior IPOs.

I forget that board members of publicly traded companies can’t just give their investors their shares when the company goes out.

More here.

Arc, a two-year-old Los Angeles startup that recently rolled out a $300,000 electric boat, raised a $70 million Series B round from Menlo Ventures as well as previous investors Eclipse, Andreessen Horowitz, Lowercarbon Capital, and Abstract Ventures. The company has now raisede more than $100 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Sierra Space, a two-year-old startup based in Louisville, Co., that's developing an inflatable space station habitat in conjunction with with Blue Origin, Boeing, and others, raised a $290 million Series B round at a $5.3 billion valuation. The deal was co-led by MUFG, Kanematsu Corp., and Tokio Marine & Nichido, with additional participation from Coatue, General Atlantic, Moore Strategic Ventures, BlackRock, and AE Industrial Partners. The company -- which was spun out of the 60-year-old private aerospace company Sierra Nevada Corp. -- has already raised a total of $1.7 billion. TechCrunch has more here.

Cartwheel, a one-year-old startup based in Cambridge, Ma., that partners with school systems to offer pediatric digital mental health services, raised a $20 million Series A round led by Menlo Ventures, with Reach Capital as well as previous investors General Catalyst, BoxGroup, and Able Partners also taking part. Behavioral Health Business has more here.

Evvy, a three-year-old New York startup that helps women diagnose vaginal infections through an at-home microbiome test, raised a $14 million Series A round led by Left Lane Capital, with General Catalyst, Labcorp Venture Fund, RH Capital, Ingeborg Investments, G9 Ventures, Virtue, and Amboy Street Ventures also piling on. The company has raised a total of $19 million. Vator has more here.

Gem Security, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based cloud detection and response company, just raised a $23 million Series A round led by GGV Capital, with participation from IBM Ventures and Silicon Valley CISO Investments. It was only in February that Gem announced its $11 million seed round led by Team8, which also participated in this new round. TechCrunch has more here.

Kolena, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that is building tools to test, benchmark, and validate the performance of AI models, raised a $15 million round led by Lobby Capital and including SignalFire and Bloomberg Beta. The company has raised a total of $21 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Lumu, a four-year-old startup based in Doral, FL, that attempts to detect network threats and provide details about compromised assets, raised a $24 million Series B equity round and $6 million in debt. Forgepoint Capital was the deal lead. TechCrunch has more here.

Resourcify, a five-year-old Hamburg startup that analyzes the different ways companies can recycle the materials that they use rather than dispose of them as waste, raised a $14.9 million Series A round at a $53.4 million valuation, according to TechCrunch. Vorwerk Ventures led the transaction, while Revent, Ananda Impact Ventures, Speedinvest, BonVenture, and WEPA Ventures also contributed. The company has raised a total of $24.5 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Revefi, a two-year-old startup based in Redmond, WA, that automates data management processes such as data ingestion, data transformation, and data quality checks, raised a $10.5 million seed round led by Mayfield, with additional funds provided by GTMfund and Neythri Futures Fund. VentureBeat has more here.

Slope, a two-year-old business-to-business payments platform for enterprise companies, has raised $30 million in fresh funding. Union Square Ventures, which co-led the outfit's $24 million Series A last year, led the new round, which included "major participation" from OpenAI’s Sam Altman, says the company. More here.

Timeline, a five-year-old UK startup that provides financial advisers with tools to use with their clients, raised a $12.1 million Series B round led by Blackfin Capital Partners, with MTech Capital also chipping in. FinTech Global has more here.

Traydstream, an eight-year-old London startup that digitizes and stores trade finance documentation, extracts the data, and checks it against trade and compliance rules, raised a $21 million Series B round. Pivot Investment Partners and e& capital were the co-leads. Global Trade Review has more here.

Cygnetise, a seven-year-old London startup that uses blockchain technology to manage the signing of documents, raised a $3 million seed round led by Adjuvo, with Massive also ponying up. The company has raised a total of $4.4 million. EU-Startups has more here.

EchoMark, a one-year-old startup based in Bellevue, WA, that watermarks documents in order to identify leakers, raised a $10 million seed round. Craft Ventures was the deal lead. GeekWire has more here.

Meeno, a one-year-old San Francisco startup that aims to fight loneliness through an AI-powered chatbot app, raised a $3.9 million seed round led Sequoia Capital, with AI Fund and NEA also getting in on the deal. The company has raised a total of $5 million. TechCrunch has more here.

NorthStar Care, a three-year-old Seattle startup that provides virtual substance abuse treatment, raised a $6 million seed round co-led by Tony Robbins and Starting Line. More here.

Pontoro, a five-year-old startup based in Mountain View, CA, that is developing a platform that will allow investors to access a diversified pool of bank loan assets, raised a $4.6 million Seed II round led by Ulu Ventures and joined by Illuminate Financial, Nevcaut Ventures, and W11 Capital. The company has raised a total of $10.8 million. More here.

Senser, a two-year-old Tel Aviv startup that uses machine learning to identify the causes of outages and service degradations, raised a $9.5 million seed round led by Eclipse, with Amdocs also chipping in. TechCrunch has more here.

StretchDollar, a San Francisco startup founded this year that enables small employers to set a fixed pre-tax monthly stipend of their choosing that employees apply to their health insurance premiums, raised a $1.6 million pre-seed round. Investors included Precursor Ventures, Elefund, v1vc, Kindergarten Ventures, and Westerly Ventures. More here.

Vega, a London startup that allows high net worth individuals to build portfolios across private asset classes such as private equity, venture capital, private credit, and real assets as well as public equities, fixed income, and commodities, raised an $8.3 million seed round led by Motive Ventures, with Picus Capital and Citi Ventures also anteing up. Fintech Finance has more here.

Faire, a six-year-old San Francisco startup that operates a B2B retail marketplace, received an undisclosed investment amount from Shopify. Faire, which counts Sequoia Capital and Dragoneer as investors, last raised money at a $12.6 billion valuation. As part of the deal, Shopify is naming Faire its “recommended wholesale marketplace.” PYMNTS has more here.

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Cyberstarts, a five-year-old Israeli VC firm that focuses on seed deals in the cybersecurity space, just raised a new $480 million opportunity fund. It now boasts total assets under management of $663 million. 

Lululemon is partnering with Peloton to produce digital content and ditching its Mirror device. (Lululemon bought Mirror for $500 million in June of 2020. Undeniably, it was a great deal for investors and founder Brynn Putnam, but we kind of liked the idea of it eventually becoming a portal for doctor's visits and more.)

Amid a tense interview at the Code Conference in Laguna Nigel, Ca., today, X CEO Linda Yaccarino said that the company (formerly known as Twitter) will be profitable by early 2024.

Spencer Ware has been named the head of Sherwood Advisory Services, a new advisory group started by workout firm Sherwood Partners. 

Six years ago, while she was still a student at Yale Law School, Lina Khan published an article in The Yale Law Journal about Amazon's monopolistic ways. Now, as chair of the Federal Trade Commission, she and Jeff Bezos are facing off after the FTC filed suit against the corporate giant yesterday.

Felicis, the Bay Area-based globally focused venture firm, has promoted three employees: Jake Storm and Ryan Isono are now partners; the outfit also promoted James Detweiler to deal partner. 

Microsoft alum Panos Panay has been tapped to lead Amazon’s Devices & Services business, the e-commerce giant confirmed today. Panay was previously with Microsoft for over 19 years.

Mark Zuckerberg on Threads, the future of AI, and the Quest 3 headset.

Forty-one percent of CFOs say current rates have pushed them to scale back capital expenditures. Still, most finance chief have a positive outlook on the U.S. economy, per a new survey published today.

A dispute between Ford and GM about Ford's use of Chinese battery technology could have a monumental impact on the U.S. EV industry.

Generative AI is placing so much pressure on computing resources that it's changing how chips are designed. 

TikTok’s e-commerce ambitions are stalling as a global backlash grows.

What marriage language do you speak?

Miami NBA star Jimmy Butler can't deal with how expensive it is to fill up his $3 million Bugatti. "I'm going electric," he says.

Asking a tennis player to play pickleball.

A Bear Grylls-backed Brompton bike for explorers.

Sinking ship drinking glass.

Imagine yourself in a spacesuit from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The key to finding and closing the highest quality deals—especially in a tighter market—lies in your network. But is your network the dealmaking machine it could be? Find out in Affinity’s new guide, which examines the art and science of VC relationships and how they impact 5 critical workflows. Get actionable best practices now.