Silicon Valley Funding News - Week of February 19, 2024. Lambda Raised $320M Series C

Happy Monday!  If you are in Hong Kong at the end of March, don't forget to join me at FoundersHK Week.

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

• 😲 OpenAI Startup Fund Wasn't (and isn't) Owned by OpenAI - Sam Altman is the sole owner of this fund, which he himself called a corporate venture fund. Can you imagine M12 (Microsoft Venture) solely owned by Satya Nadella or Qualcomm Venture solely owned by Cristiano Amon?  Where is the governance of this company?
• 😲 Sora is Magical - An AI model that can create video from text.  Watch here and read more about it here.  Meanwhile, a startup made a video of my Web Summit talk utilizing stock video stitched together based on the keywords I used during the speech. Not perfect, but still quite cool.
• 🏆 VCs Pick Winners Only 2.5% of the Time - Out of more than 4,000 VC investment rounds annually, the top 100 generate between 70 and 100% of industry profits. In short, VCs cannot reliably pick winners. They can, however, construct portfolios that consistently generate great returns. Portfolio construction requires weighing the benefits of diversification against a VC’s ability to generate and support high-quality investments. Striking the right balance separates great VCs from the rest.  An old article but a great reminder
• 💰 66% of Venture Firms Have Slowed Their Investment Pace - Based on a seed investment study by TrueBridge, most investors believe it is harder and taking longer to secure follow-on financing for their portfolio companies. Path to Series A is murky and the biggest risk to the seed market. 44% of all investors also believe there will be fewer funds in 5 years. If you are an early stage startup founder, please be prepared that it will take much longer (3-6 months) and higher revenue ($1M for B2B business)/traction (50-100% YoY growth) expectation for your Series A. Read more.
• 📈 Nvidia is Now Worth More than Alphabet - This week, Nvidia’s market capitalization rose to $1.79 trillion, nudging past Alphabet’s $1.75 trillion market cap. Meanwhile, Nvidia also launched RTX, a consumer-facing AI Chat. It’s a demo app (currently available for certain Windows machines) that lets you build a custom GPT LLM that’s connected to your docs, notes, videos, and other data sources. 

This week a total of 19 startups raised $1B in funding, 0 M&As:

• $442M goes to 10 Enterprise startups
• $7.6M goes to 1 FinTech startup
• $264M goes to 2 BioTech startups
• $155M goes to 2 Renewable Energy startups
• $6.2M goes to 1 Climate Tech startup
• $21M goes to 1 AgTech startup
• $52M goes to 1 Aerospace startup
• $37M goes to 1 Telecommunications startup