Happy Monday from Singapore!

Last week, over 500+ events were held in Singapore including the Milken Institute’s Asia Summit, Token 2049, Solana's Breakpoint, PayFi Summit, Asia PE-VC Summit, B Bryan Johnson’s Don’t Die Summit, The Network State Conference, F1 and more!

If that’s not enough, this week I will be speaking at SuperReturn Asia, and attending the Runway to Web Summit in Singapore.

Looking forward to connecting with many of you there and hopefully get a chance to catch up!

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

💰 Venture Capital Industry Cheers Fed Rate Cut — The rate cut isn’t likely to have an immediate effect but it could encourage limited partners, to be more optimistic about the asset class. Capital will flow more freely at lower interest rates. Read more on WSJ.

💼 How to Do Great Work — Four steps: choose a field, learn enough to get to the frontier, notice gaps, explore promising ones. This is how practically everyone who's done great work has done it, from painters to physicists. The factors in doing great work are factors in the literal, mathematical sense, and they are: ability, interest, effort, and luck. Read more on PG’s blog (thank you Kate Myers for your suggestion!)

🔊 Best Talks at Solana’s Breakpoint 2024 — Congrats to the Solana team for the amazing Breakpoint conference 2024. Solana by the numbers:

• 37 billion validated transactions

• 1377 validators

• $384M transaction fees collected

• Partnerships with Paypal, Visa, Citi and Franklin Templeton

Some of the best talks include Fast Forward From Frankendancer to Firedancer by Kevin Bowers and Solana 2.0 Fireside Chat with Anatoly Yakovenko.

 What is Jony Ive up to the Days?  — Setting up his new LoveFrom office in the Jackson Square neighbourhood of San Francisco - near The Battery. I admire Jony’s dedication & contribution to San Francisco. Read more on the NYTimes.

💰 Notable AI Deals — Lionsgate has a partnership deal with AI firm Runway to develop an exclusive video model, trained on the film studio’s library of film and TV content. OpenAI & T-Mobile are custom-building the first intent-driven AI-decisioning platform of its kind, called IntentCX.

🛍️ Amazon Launches “Amelia” — an AI assistant for third-party sellers Read on CNBC.

This week a total of 18 startups raised $636.5M in funding, 2 M&As:

• $125.8M goes to 7 Enterprise startups

• $130M goes to 1 FinTech startup

• $10M goes to 1 Blockchain startup

• $58M goes to 2 HR startups

• $16M goes to 1 Healthcare startup

• $68M goes to 1 BioTech startup

• $12M goes to 1 Travel startup

• $3.2M goes to 1 Construction startup

• $4M goes to 1 Lifestyle startup

• $209.5M goes to 2 CleanTech startups

If you love this newsletter, forward it to someone who would also enjoy it and have them subscribe.

Edith
X, LinkedIn

Funding (300 miles radius from Silicon Valley)

Enterprise

• Picus Security (security validation) raised $45M Series C Led by Riverwood Capital

• Orb (modern billing platform) raised $25M Series B led by Mayfield

• Fathom (meeting intelligence platform) raised $17M Series A led by Telescope Partners

• DeltaStream (serverless stream processing platform) raised $15M Series A from NEA, Galaxy Interactive and Sanabil Investments

• Fal (generative media platform for developers) raised $14M Series A led by Kindred Ventures

• c/side (cybersecurity on focusing on third-party scripts) raised $6M Seed led by Uncork Capital

• Opnova (security & compliance operations optimization platform) raised $3.8M Seed led by Faber, Preface Ventures, ScaleX Ventures

HR

• Mercor (remote work hiring platform) raised $30M Series A led by Benchmark

• TeamBridge (workforce operating system) raised $28M Series B led by Mayfield

FinTech

• AtoB (payment platform for transportation) raised $130M Series C led by Bloomberg Beta, General Catalyst

Blockchain

• Yellow (decentralized clearing network) raised $10M Seed led by Chris Larsen

Healthcare

• Ferrum Health (AI deployment platform for health systems) raised $16M Series A led by Foundry Group

BioTech

• Nura Bio (small molecule drugs for neurodegeneration) raised $68M Series A led by The Column Group

Travel

• Mindtrip (AI-powered travel platform) raised $12M Seed led by Costanoa Ventures, Forerunner

Construction

• Sitewire (construction finance platform) raised $3.2M Seed led by Zacua Ventures

Lifestyle

• Schmooze Dating (AI-driven dating platform) raised $4M Series A led by Elevation Capital

CleanTech

• Twelve (carbon transformation) raised $200M Series C led by TPG Rise Climate

• Zeno (battery-as-a-service platform) raised $9.5M Seed led by Lowercarbon Capital, Toyota Ventures

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

• Workday acquired Evisort (AI-powered contract management platform)

• Gruve acquired NetServ (cloud services provider)