Happy Monday!

San Francisco had a 6.3-magnitude earthquake last weekend, I hope everyone is safe.

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

💰 Who is Paul Atkins: The New Nominee for the Chairmanship of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission?

• Former Commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from 2002 - 2008 (6 years).

• Currently the co-chair of the Token Alliance, a cryptocurrency lobbying group.

• Known for advocating reduced regulatory burdens and promoting financial innovation.

• WSJ said Paul Atkins Is the Anti-Gensler for the SEC.

👑 Who is David Sacks: New Nominee of the White House AI and Crypto Czar?

• Former COO of Paypal. Founder of Yammer and Craft Ventures.

• He is supportive of integration of AI into warfare and national security tools.

• He is against AI models displaying any sort of censorship.

• He has invested Solana, BitGo and Bitwise.

• Read Time Magazine on “What Trump’s New AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks Means For the Tech Industry.”

💰 5 Potential Pricing Models for AI Agents — Labor pricing at a discount basis, per-outcome basis, AI costs + small margin basis or more. Read this comment by Aaron Levie.

😔 RIP Brian Thompson — Very sad to see UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot dead in New York City last week. The words "delay," "deny" and possibly "depose" appeared on the shell casings recovered from the scene of the shooting. Law enforcement officials are examining whether the words relate to a possible motive involving insurance companies and their responses to claims. In 2019, 66.5% of all American bankruptcies were tied to medical issues. This chart has been circulating on the internet this past week showing UnitedHealthcare denies 32% of all claim.

💰 Hong Kong to Introduce Stablecoin Bill to Regulate Virtual Token - The government published the Stablecoins Bill in the Gazette on December 6; the first reading of the nearly 300-pages will be at the Legislative Council on December 18. Read more on SCMP.

Last week a total of 16 startups raised $1.354B in funding, 2 M&As:

• $174.1M goes to 7 Enterprise startups

• $6M goes to 1 InsurTech startup

• $2M goes to 1 Healthcare startup

• $276M goes to 2 BioTech startups

• $28.6M goes to 2 Logistics startups

• $700M goes to 1 Hardware startup

• $150M goes to 1 Environmental startup

• $17M goes to 1 Energy Storage startup

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Edith
X, LinkedIn

Funding (300 miles radius from Silicon Valley)

Enterprise

• Axiado (hardware-anchored platform security) raised $60M Series C led by Maverick Silicon

• Yurts Technologies (AI integration platform) raised $40M Series B led by XYZ Venture Capital

• Tuskira (security defense platform) raised $28.5M Series A led by Intel Capital, SYN Ventures

• Enterpret (customer feedback intelligence) raised $20.8M Series A led by Canaan Partners

• BRM (vendor management and procurement platform) raised $15M Series A led by Caffeinated Capital

• Across AI (agentic AI for enterprise workflows) raised $5.8M Seed led by Cota Capital, Village Global

• Lica World (AI tool for product presentations) raised $4M Seed led by Accel

InsurTech

• StretchDollar (small business health insurance) raised $6M Seed led by Fika Ventures, Oscar Health

Healthcare

• Offcall (financial and career platform for physicians) raised $2M Seed from Bloomberg Beta, Roar Ventures

BioTech

• Nuvig Therapeutics (immunomodulatory therapeutics) raised $161M Series B led by Cowen Healthcare Investments, Norwest Venture Partners, Sanofi Ventures

• Maze Therapeutics (small molecule therapy) raised $115M Series D led by Deep Track Capital, Frazier Life Sciences

Logistics

• Happyrobot (voice AI for logistics) raised $15.6M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz

• Vooma (AI agent for logistics) raised $13M Series A led by Craft Ventures

Hardware

• Tenstorrent (computer and chip manufacturer for AI) raised $700M Series D led by AFW Partners, Samsung Securities

Environmental

• Heirloom (commercial carbon removal solution) raised $150M Series B led by Future Positive, Lowercarbon Capital

Energy Storage

• Zitara (battery management software) raised $17M Series A led by Salesforce Ventures

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

• Uniphore acquired Infoworks (zero data AI cloud)