Happy Monday!

First, big congrats to Zendata (a Race Capital Topline company) who just announced their $2M seed round. Zendata provides data protection for the enterprise to make sure they remain compliant with evolving regulations around privacy and AI governance.

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

📝 Hong Kong Web3 Report 2023-2024 - I presented this report including all the latest on Hong Kong & Web3 this past Friday at Consensus Austin. Enjoy reading. I missed adding newly minted unicorn Humanity Protocol into the deck.

📺 2024 Venture Investment Landscape with Dr. Bill Janeway - The author of Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy and a Special Limited Partner at Warburg Pincus spoke at our Race Capital Summit 2024! Thank you, Bill! Watch Bill for his thoughts on the bubbles, AI, 2024-2025 global outlook for venture investment, Open-source vs Closed-source, and much more.

👂 The Big Short: China Edition - For years, China’s real estate market was booming. Developers, home buyers and Western banks rushed to invest. But the boom turned into a bubble, starting with the liquidation of heavily indebted Evergrande. Have a listen to the whole story on WSJ.

📺 How To Create a Killer Go-To-Market Strategy for your AI Product. I like this video by TK Kader. Are you positioning your AI products as 1) Co-pilot, 2) Prediction or 3) Automation?

This week a total of 13 startups raised $6.2128B in funding, 1 M&As:

• $6.042B goes to 3 Enterprise startups

• $23.5M goes to 3 FinTech startups

• $16.7M goes to 2 Blockchain startups

• $39M goes to 2 Healthcare startups

• $3.5M goes to 1 Aerospace startup

• $8.1M goes to 1 Hardware startup

• $80M goes to 1 Manufacturing startup

📚 The Venture Mindset Fireside Chat with Ilya Strebulaev - Join me and Ilya, the author of The Venture Mindset LIVE this Wednesday night in San Francisco. Apply to attend.

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Edith
X, LinkedIn

Funding (300 miles radius from Silicon Valley)

Enterprise

• xAI (R&D infrastructure of future AI technologies) raised $6B Series B from Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital

• Transcend (next-gen data privacy platform) raised $40M Series B led by StepStone Group

• Zendata (AI governance and data privacy solution) raised $2M Seed led by Altari Ventures, Firsthand Alliance, Geek Ventures, PayPal Ventures

FinTech

• Felix (cross-border payment platform via Whatsapp) raised $15.5M Series A led by Castle Island Ventures

• Kintsugi AI (sales tax compliance automation platform) raised $6M Series A led by Link Ventures

• 11thestate (investment recovery platform) raised $2M Seed led by Social Leverage

Blockchain

• GaiaNet (decentralized AI infrastructure network) raised $10M Seed from Generative Ventures, Republic Capitalm 7RIDGE, EVM Capital, Mantle EcoFund and ByteTrade Lab.

• Aperture Finance (DeFi platform) raised $6.7M Series A led by Blockchain Founders Fund, Krypital Group, Skyland Ventures

Healthcare

• Valor Labs (bladder cancer dectection) raised $22M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, DCVC Bio

• Plenful (AI workflow automation platform for pharmacy and healthcare) raised $17M Series A led by TQ Ventures

Aerospace

• Basalt Tech (spacecraft OS) raised $3.5M Seed led by Initialized Capital

Hardware

• Rain AI (AI-chip maker) raised $8.1M Series A led by Epic Venture Partners

Manufacturing

• Frore Systems (thermal cooling solution for consumer devices) raised $80M Series C led by Fidelity

IPO & M&A (300 miles radius from Silicon Valley)  

• Harness acquired Split Software (software delivery platform)