Happy Monday!

Summer is here and Silicon Valley is keeping busy!

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Databricks bought Tabular (data management) and then, brought 16000 people to San Francisco for a huge Data+AI Summit. Meanwhile, Apple hosted WWDC 2024 at Apple Park with all kinds of Apple Intelligence (AI) announcements and pushed its stock value to over $3.26T. Trillion!

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

📢 How to Pitch Your Fund to LPs - I presented this report including my 7 Fundraising Habits of Effective GPs. Enjoy reading!

💰 How to Pitch Your Startup to US Investors - I am hosting this Webinar for FoundersHK this coming Wednesday 6 pm PST / 9 am HKT Thursday. My talk is geared towards helping founders in Asia who want to pitch investors in Silicon Valley. I will focus my conversation on cultural differences in terms of fundraising. Join me.

 Apple-OpenAI deal sets Microsoft back? - CNBC's Deirdre Bosa gives the Apple/Open AI’s ChatGPT partnership a new perspective. Apple to "Pay" OpenAI for ChatGPT through distribution, is a huge win for OpenAI being able to tap the world’s largest pool of user data for training.

🏎️ Tesla’s $46 Billion Pay Package for Elon Musk - To get individuals voting shares, the company offered a raffle for fans of Elon: a chance for a tour of its Texas production plant with him. This is for sure a super creative way to get your shareholders to vote for you! Take a listen

🇨🇳 China Has Become a Scientific Superpower - China now contributes to ~40% of the world’s research papers on AI, compared with ~10% for America and 15% for the EU/Britain combined. One of the most highly cited research papers of all time, demonstrating how deep neural networks could be trained on image recognition, was written by AI researchers working in China, albeit for Microsoft, an American company. Read more on the Economist.

💸 Tempus AI went IPO and now valued at $6B - Tempus AI is a healthcare data AI company based out of Chicago that went public on Friday. I am bullish on AI applying to healthcare and it’s great to see Tempus AI rise as much as 15% during its market debut on the Nasdaq. Read more on CNBC

This week a total of 13 startups raised $409.1M in funding, 4 M&As:

• $118M goes to 2 Enterprise startups

• $4.3M goes to 1 FinTech startup

• $29.5M goes to 2 Blockchain startups

• $12M goes to 1 Gaming startup

• $50M goes to 1 Hospitality startup

• $10.9M goes to 1 Media startup

• $10.4M goes to 1 Wellness startup

• $14M goes to 1 Healthcare startups

• $125M goes to 1 BioTech startup

• $27M goes to 1 Renewable Energy startup

• $8M goes to 1 Manufacturing startup

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Edith
X, LinkedIn

Funding (300 miles radius from Silicon Valley)

Enterprise

• Cyberhaven (data detection and response) raised $88M Series C led by Adams Street Partners and Khosla Ventures

• Learn to Win (enterprise training platform) raised $30M Series A led by The Westly Group

FinTech

• InScope (automated financial reporting) raised $4.3M Seed led by Lightspeed Venture Partners

Blockchain

• Nexus Labs (zero-knowledge cryptography) raised $25M Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Pantera Capital

• Ava Protocol (private autonomous transactions) raised $4.5M Seed led by BingX, Bloccelerate VC, Electric Capital, Shima Capital, Taisu Ventures

Gaming

• Astrocade AI (AI-powered social gaming platform) raised $12M Seed from AME Cloud Ventures, NVIDIA Ventures, Venture Reality Fund, Eric Schmidt, Niccolo De Masi, John Riccitiello, David Baszucki, Jerry Yang, Mike Abbott.

Hospitality

• Canary Technologies (hotel guest management platform) raised $50M Series C led by Insight Partners

Media

• Particle News (AI news reader app) raised $10.9M Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners

Wellness

• Grayce (social care management platform) raised $10.4M Series A led by Maveron

Healthcare

• Better Health (medical supply and support platform) raised $14M Series A from Healthworx, UHealth and Mosaic General Partnership

BioTech

• Santa Ana Bio (precision immunology for autoimmune diseases) raised $125M Series B led by Google Ventures

Renewable Energy

• Swift Solar (advanced solar technology) raised $27M Series A led by Eni Next, Fontinalis Partners

Manufacturing

• Aepnus Technology (electrochemical platform) raised $8M Seed led by Clean Energy Ventures

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

• Databricks acquired Tabular (data management company)

• Fortinet acquired Lacework (cybersecurity platform)

• Incode Technologies acquired MetaMap (identity verification)

• Brightside Health acquired Lionrock Recovery (substance and mental healthcare)

• Intuit acquired Zendrive (usage based insurance)