Silicon Valley Funding News - Week of December 18, 2023. Essential AI Raised $56.5M Series A

Very slow week in Silicon Valley with only 10 startups raising less than $170M...

Here are a few great things to read/watch this week:

• 🔮 2024 Predictions: State of Venture Capital and Startups - Alfred and I are hosting this fireside chat on January 3, 2024 at 5 pm. 2023 was not a great year for venture capital and tech startups. For the first three quarters of 2023, global funding reached $221 billion, marking a 42% decline year over year so far, down from the $381 billion invested in the same timeframe in 2022. Join us 
• 💰 End of rate hikes can trigger M&A turnaround in 2024 - M&A activity is not expected to skyrocket anytime soon, but it should start to pick up. The extremely small number of transactions in 2023 will make year-over-year comps in 2024 easy to surpass. Large deals will continue to face hurdles, especially in the US where antitrust concerns have been a focus of regulators. Read the M&A report
• 💰  IPO weren't expected to return in full force until 2024 - Overall, 107 U.S. IPOs this year raised $19.4 billion in proceeds, according to Renaissance Capital data. That's up from 71 IPOs raising $7.7 billion in 2022, but roughly on par with 2016's IPO market — the second-slowest year in the past decade. Companies are anxious to hit the market — and investors (and their backers) are anxious to cash out. Read more
• 📺 Jeff Bezos 2-hour Interview with Lex Fridman - Jeff talked about tis childhood,Amazon, space, the future of humanity and much more. He thinks AI is more likely to help us and save us than to hurt us and destroy us. We humans, have a lot of other ways to make ourselves extinct.  So the people who are overly concerned is a valid debate. I think that they may be missing part of the equation, which is how helpful they could be in making sure we don’t destroy ourselves. Watch here
• 🗺️ Google Mafia Map- 1231 companies have been founded by ex-Google employees since 2018, raising a combined $22B in total. But only 21 of them have reached unicorn status since then. More than 800 of them have received venture capital backing, recording an average total funding of $26M and a median total funding of $5M. Read more

This week a total of 10 startups raised $169M in funding, 0 M&As: 

• $84.6M goes to 5 Enterprise startups
• $6M goes to 1 FinTech startup
• $13.5M goes to 1 Web3/Crypto startup
• $50M goes to 1 Healthcare startup
• $9.9M goes to 1 BioTech startup
• $5M goes to 1 Aerospace startup