That 23andMe breach gets worse, OpenAI puts a pin in its GPT Store, and a thief steals more "dough" than intended

I had the pleasure of interviewing Sanna Marin, Finland's former prime minster, at the Slush event earlier this afternoon. (She is clearly as popular as ever!)

We'll share highlights from that conversation on Monday. In the meantime, a giant thank you to the team at Felicis, the global early-stage venture firm, for partnering with us on our first StrictlyVC event of the year, happening in San Francisco on January 24. Thank you, team Felicis! 

Like a lot of these data breaches, the news about the hack at 23andMe just keeps getting worse. Now the company has revealed that data for up to 14,000 of its customers has been compromised. 

The S&P Dow Jones Indices announced that Uber will join the S&P 500 this month, triggering a 5% jump in the stock.

OpenAI’s app store for AI, the GPT Store, will not launch this year as previously announced, but rather on an unspecified date in early 2024, the company said. TechCrunch notes that the delay is almost certainly due to the leadership shakeup that occurred in November, just after the initial announcement.

Today, the federal judge overseeing the Epic v. Google trial vowed to investigate the fact Google automatically deleted chat messages between employees, and that employees all the way up to CEO Sundar Pichai intentionally used that to make certain conversations disappear. Pichai, and many other employees, testified last month that they did not change the auto-delete setting even after they were made aware of their legal obligation to preserve evidence. “I am going to get to the bottom of who is responsible,” said the judge, adding somewhat strangely that he would pursue these issues “on my own, outside of this trial.”

In an update on the automation software sector, Allied Advisers offers insights on key trends, the transactional market, and active players. Automation tech is expanding across industries, bolstered by its potential for productivity gains and error reduction. This trend is reinforced by rising labor and operational costs, along with advancements in AI, machine learning, IIoT, and cloud technologies. The growing adoption of automation will require investments in technology skills, while some low-skill jobs may be replaced. Learn more here.

Yesterday in Helsinki, this editor interviewed four of the six general partners at Benchmark, the nearly 30-year-old Silicon Valley firm that’s known for some notable bets (Uber, Dropbox), paying each general partner exactly the same way, and for continuing to raise similar-size funds over its many years rather than balloon in size.

We were speaking at Slush, a major yearly event for the European startup ecosystem, so I naturally asked why the firm was making such a big showing, given that it’s hard enough getting the Benchmark team to appear in Silicon Valley together.

Victor Lazarte, a gaming company entrepreneur who joined Benchmark five months ago as its newest GP, admitted that there was “no business reason” for Benchmark to come other than its interest in understanding all things “exceptional.” (Helsinki is truly gorgeous.)

Larzarte was equally candid when the conversation turned to soaring valuations in recent years, and I asked about his own gaming company, Wildlife Studios. It raised a $60 million Series A round from Benchmark in 2019 at a $1.3 billion valuation and, less than a year later, was assigned a valuation of $3 billion when Vulcan Capital led a subsequent $120 million round. Larzarte said the company had really made “like, no progress” in between rounds, but that because Benchmark had funded the company, “everyone” subsequently wanted to invest in the company. (He said that, in retrospect, taking on too much money at too high a valuation so quickly was a “mistake.”)

Not last, we talked about how strange it is to be living through a general downturn and a boom in AI investing at the same time. On this front, the team was clear in its assessment that today’s high-flying but closed large language model companies aren’t going to be the breakaway winners that many expect them to be. (Worth noting: Benchmark is not an investor in such closed LLM companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic.) You can catch our conversation in this longer broadcast; meanwhile, you can find some excerpts below, lightly edited for clarity.

Regarding Benchmark’s views on the sweeping trend of AI in everything, partner Miles Grimshaw said we’ll be collectively astounded at how backwards our current use of software will look just a few years from now.

I think if we look back at ourselves in a few years — maybe even a year — it will feel like we were primates kind of mashing rocks together to make fire. In two years, it’ll be weird that you had to click all these buttons in Salesforce and navigate around and that it didn’t do more for you. User expectations of what’s possible are ratcheting up, and you’ve got tectonic forces at play for imaginative, creative founders to take advantage of.

I think the question [ties to] the startup opportunity versus an incumbent opportunity. You can never tell founders where they should go — that’s not what we do. But one of the places to maybe avoid — the traps — is: don’t be Microsoft. Don’t be [part of] the Copilot game [meaning Microsoft’s AI-productivity tool that’s powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT]. That’s what they’re doing. It serves their business model. It serves their product environment very well. But be more creative and ambitious than just Copilot.

Peter Fenton, the most senior member of Benchmark’s team, weighed in to add that:

We didn’t invest in a large language model. Maybe this is unique to Benchmark, but our view is the capital intensive [companies are tricky]. We’ve been in some — we all took Ubers here [to the event] today [and that was a Benchmark portfolio company]. And capital-intensive businesses and venture backed companies have historically not been great partners. . .

More here.

mylight150, a nine-year-old startup based in Lyon, France, that produces smart solar panels and batteries, raised a $108.9 million round co-led by Eiffel Investment Group, Azora Capital, and Andera Partners, with additional participation from Elevation Capital Partners. GamingDeputy has more here.

Paysend, a six-year-old London startup that focuses on reducing the time and cost of cross-border payments for small- to medium-sized businesses, raised a $65 million round. Investors included Growth Capital, One Peak, Hermes GPE Innovation Fund, and Mastercard. PYMNTS has more here.

AnotherBall, a one-year-old Singapore startup whose platform is designed to help online entertainment creators connect with fans and monetize their content, raised a $12.7 million seed round co-led by Hashed and ANRI, with Global Brain, Globis Capital Partners, Sfermion, HashKey Capital, Everyrealm, Ethereal Ventures, and Emoote also piling on. Metaverse Post has more here.

Arrivo Bioventures, an eight-year-old startup based in Morrisville, N.C., that is developing two drugs to treat a major depressive disorder and severe acute pancreatitis, respectively, raised a $45 million Series B round led by Orlando Ventures, with Solas BioVentures Emerging Healthcare Fund, and Rex Health Ventures also participating. The company has raised a total of $100 million. More here.

Bright Uro, a one-year-old startup based in Irvine, Ca., that has developed a wireless and catheter-free device that gathers urological data, raised a $23 million Series A round. Laborie Medical Technologies was the deal lead. The company has raised a total of $29 million. MassDevice has more here.

Enfuce, a seven-year-old startup based in Espoo, Finland, that handles card issuing and payments processing for its customers, raised a $9.3 million round led by Vitruvian Partners, with Maki.vc and Visa also investing. PYMNTS has more here.

Kahuna Workforce Solutions, a nine-year-old Houston startup that provides skills training for frontline workers in energy, manufacturing, and healthcare, raised a $21 million Series B round. Resolve Growth Partners led the transaction. More here.

Safi, a two-year-old London startup that has built a B2B marketplace for trading recyclable materials such as plastic, paper, and metal, raised a $19.5 million Series A round led by Nosara Capital, with previous investors LowerCarbon and Transition also taking part. Business Insider has more here.

Stensul, a seven-year-old New York startup that says it offers a no-code/low-code approach for teams to collaboratively create marketing assets in minutes, raised a $34.5 million Series A round led by Sageview Capital, with additional participation from USVP, Javelin Venture Partners, Uncork Capital, Edith Harbaugh, and Lowercase Capital. The company has raised a total of $57.5 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Culmination Bio, a 23-year-old company that licenses access to a data lake covering over 40 years of de-identified patient electronic health records and biospecimen data, raised a $10 million round from Merck Global Health Innovation Fund and Amgen Ventures. HIT Consultant has more here.

iPeakoin, a three-year-old Singapore startup that is attempting to bridge traditional finance and the crypto industry by providing a crypto wallet for enterprises and cross-border payment services, raised a $10 million Series A round. ZhenFund was the deal lead. The Paypers has more here.

Picklebet, a nine-year-old startup based in Brisbane, Australia, whose betting platform encompasses traditional sports such as racing, as well as esports, raised a $10 million Series A round led by Discerning Capital, with Drive by DraftKings, Manifest Investment, and former Hollywood exec Jeff Sagansky also pitching in. Esports Insider has more here.

Valid8 Financial, a nine-year-old startup based in Boulder, Co., and Seattle that says it employs AI to parse data from numerous sources for financial matters and white-collar crime investigations, raised an $8.5 million Series A round led by Silverton Partners, with Touchdown Ventures, First Trust, CPA.com, and Capital Midwest also stepping up. More here.

If you experienced whiplash as an investor in 2023, you’re not alone. Which is why we’re happy to present you with some (cautious) optimism in our 2024 Private Capital Investment Predictions Report. Affinity asked 700+ dealmaking professionals what they’re seeing for the upcoming year and uncovered why investors are anticipating higher deal volume in 2024, how investors are shifting priorities to snap up high quality deals, and how artificial intelligence is predicted to change venture capital. Get the report to inform your 2024 planning.

Not every SPAC is a dog, argues TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm in reference to pet care company Rover's plan to accept a $2.3 billion buyout offer from Blackstone and go private.

Vinod Khosla, now 68, says he works 80-hour weeks and plans to keep investing for another 25 years. 

Speaking of Khosla, veteran reporter David Kirkpatrick profiles the legendary investor, who was prescient enough to invest early in OpenAI but was just as blindsided as everyone else when the company's board tried to sack cofounder and CEO Sam Altman.

The inside story of Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI.

A Brazilian city council recently approved an ordinance written entirely by ChatGPT. 

Why Tesla could be in big trouble if its new Cybertruck doesn't take off.

Amazon, which is trying to get a Starlink-like service called Project Kuiper (yes) off the ground, has hired rival SpaceX to transport some of its satellites to space.

In a Stanford University study involving 22 pairs of identical twins, the twin that stuck to a vegan diet experienced significant health benefits in just eight weeks compared to the twin that ate like an omnivore. 

Police cast a dragnet for 10,000 stolen doughnuts.

Three American climbers complete the greatest Alpine climb ever.

Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé is out, and it's currently rocking a 100% Tomatometer rating. 

It's not cheap, but this new portable base station from Iridium will keep you connected no matter where you go.

Caviar-topped doughnuts?! Oh my! 

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