Happy Monday from San Francisco!

I had a great visit in Singapore 🇸🇬 last week at all the tech events, and was able to check out the F1 too (thank you Temasek) — congrats to Lando Norris — check out all the tech logos on his car.

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

💰OpenAI Is Growing Fast and Burning $5 Billion a Year — Hard to imagine raising $5 billion in funding would only last the company less than 18 months! Some key KPIs: 

• 2024 Estimated revenue for ChatGPT - $2.7 billion 

• 2024 Estimated revenue - $3.7 billion 

• 2025 Estimated revenue - $11.6 billion

• Monthly Revenue August 2024 - $300M (up 1700% in 12 hours)

• Paying Customers for ChatGPT - 10M 

• Net Loss for 2024 - $5 billion

• Seeking $7 billion at $150 billion

Impressive numbers and reporting by the NY Times. 

🔥 India IPO Market is on Fire & India’s President Modi is Having His Moment with Silicon Valley’s CEO — The IPO boom comes as India’s rapid economic expansion makes it a bright spot amid the challenges facing peers such as the US and China. Indian listings have already raised $8.6 billion in 2024. Most of the 240 offerings in India this year raised under $100 million. Macquarie analysts wrote in a recent note that India’s price-to-earnings ratio stands at about 21 times, compared with 10 times for emerging markets overall, 14.5 times for global markets, 17 times for the U.S., and 8 times for China. Meanwhile, President Modi met with Nvidia, Alphabet & IBM’s CEOs in in New York. Nvidia has been operating in India for past 24 years with over 10K engineers. Alphabet CEO is also committing another $20B for India.  See comment by Jensen Huang. Read more.

💪 White House Become Anchor LP for an EV Fund by Monroe Capital — Last week, the White House said it had selected Monroe Capital to run a $1 billion fund to invest in EV and other auto industry companies, backed by the U.S. Small Business Administration. This fund will invest in EV related hardware, complementary SaaS and other auto technology and business service providers that cater to the industry.

🇺🇸 Intel is Now a Corporate Actor on the Geopolitical Stage - Intel is the most visible example of those that “have become both the objects and instruments of foreign policy. Don’t forget tht TSMC started in 1987 (37 years ago) and Samsung started its foundry business in 2005 (19 years ago). Becoming a foundry business in North America is very expensive and almost impossible to do it in a few year. Read on on Fortune.

📧 How To Convert Customers With Cold Emails  — Whether it's for sales, recruiting or making new connections, cold outreach is a necessary tool for helping build your startup. But as you probably know, most cold emails either are ignored or end up in the trash. So what can you do to make sure your emails break through the noise?  Great reminder video by Aaron Epstein from Y Combinator:

This week a total of 12 startups raised $423.7M in funding, 0 M&As:

• $256.5M goes to 6 Enterprise startups

• $9.2M goes to 1 FinTech startup

• $10M goes to 1 InsurTech startup

• $73M goes to 1 Health Tech startup

• $20M goes to 1 Travel startup

• $15M goes to 1 Renewable Energy startup

• $40M goes to 1 Air Transportation startup

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

• Supabase (Postgres-centric developer platform) raised $80M Series C led by Craft Ventures, Peak XV Partners

• Ujet (generative AI cloud contact center solutions) raised $76M Series D led by Sapphire Ventures

• Harmonic (mathematical superintelligence platform) raised $75M Series A led by Sequoia Capital

• Distyl AI (generative AI solutions for enterprise) raised $20M Series A

• Platformatic (cloud-native Node.js application platform) raised $4.3M Seed led by Rialto Ventures

• Aarna Networks (open-source GPU-as-a-Service) raised $1.2M Series A led by Exfinity Venture Partners

FinTech

• Icon Savings Plan (affordable retirement savings plans) raised $9.2M Seed

InsurTech

• Arqu (wholesale insurance brokerage) raised $10M Series A led by Crosslink Capital

Health Tech

• Mendaera (handheld robotic interventional platform) raised $73M Series B led by Threshold

Travel

• Atlys (visa processing platform) raised $20M Series B led by Elevation Capital, Peak XV Partners

Renewable Energy

• AmpUp (EV charging platform) raised $15M Series A led by Touchdown Ventures

Air Transportation

• Pyka (autonomous electric aircraft) raised $40M Series B led by Obvious Ventures

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

• N/A