Happy Monday!

💰 The State of the SaaS Capital Markets 2025 — I really enjoyed reading the "State of the SaaS Capital Markets" report by Sapphire Ventures. It's fascinating to learn that 33 private companies, including Databricks with $3B in ARR, have surpassed $250M ARR, creating a strong pipeline of IPO candidates for 2025-2026. Also congratulations are in order to CoreWeave on its U.S. IPO filing, aiming for a $35B valuation after reaching $1.92B in revenue in 2024, up from $228.9M the previous year.

Yet most companies are still delaying their IPOs. As some say, going public isn't about timing the market—it's about winning the market.

🦋 Introducing Manus: The General AI Agent — Manus made waves in China this past week, with some calling it the "second DeepSeek moment." Developed by Butterfly Effect, the company has raised $10 million from ZhenFund, Sequoia China, and Tencent. Butterfly Effect was founded by Xiao Hong, a 2015 graduate of Wuhan’s Huazhong University of Science and Technology, who previously launched Monica.ai, a popular AI browser extension. Read more on SCMP.

😊 Consumer AI's Tipping point — I don't necessarily agree with BVP that the consumer tipping point for AI is here yet. Most of the so-called AI-focused consumer apps yet fundamentally changing our daily habits. Instead, AI is primarily enhancing existing features and experiences rather than creating entirely new behaviors. That said, I do agree that these three key factors will drive more creativity:

• Decreasing model costs: Cost of a token on the model has decreased by 85% to 95% since ChatGPT-4 was released in March of 2023.

• Advancements in multimodal and real-time models: Real time or near real time speech recognition and voice generation (OpenAI, Rev, Eleven Labs), and image and video (Black Forest Labs, RunwayML, Google’s Veo) create new possibilities.

• The rise of sophisticated AI agents: Open AI’s Operator, Zep AI, Zetta, etc

Read more.

💰 The Very First White House Crypto Summit 2025 — ​On Friday, March 7, 2025, President Trump hosted a White House Summit to engage with leaders in the cryptocurrency industry. Notable attendees included:

• David Sacks: Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology

• Scott Bessent: United States Secretary of the Treasury

• Howard Lutnick: United States Secretary of Commerce Incumbent

• Kelly Loeffler: Administrator of the Small Business Administration

• Other attendees include Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (Co-founders of the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange), Michael Saylor (CEO of MicroStrategy), Brian Armstrong (Co-founder of Coinbase), Chris Dixon (GP at a16z Crypto) and Bo Hines (Executive Director of the President's Council of Advisers on Digital Assets).

The event was announced just hours after President Trump signed an executive order establishing a Cryptocurrency Strategic Reserve. According to the White House, the reserve will be funded with Bitcoin previously forfeited to the Department of Treasury through criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings. The executive order also stated: "Premature sales of Bitcoin have already cost U.S. taxpayers over $17 billion."

🇺🇸 President Reagan's Radio Address on Free and Fair Trade in 1987 — When someone says, "Let's impose tariffs on foreign imports," it may seem like a patriotic move to protect American products and jobs. And in the short term, it can sometimes have that effect—but only temporarily.

What eventually happens is this: First, domestic industries start relying on government protection through high tariffs. As a result, they stop competing and fail to make the innovative management and technological advancements needed to thrive in global markets.

Meanwhile, an even bigger problem emerges. High tariffs almost always lead to retaliation from foreign countries, sparking trade wars. This results in escalating tariffs, rising trade barriers, and decreasing competition.

Before long, artificially high prices—driven by tariffs that prop up inefficiency and poor management—cause consumers to stop buying. Then the worst happens: Markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industries shut down, and millions of jobs are lost.

What President Reagan said 38 years ago still holds true today. Read the full transcript.

Last week a total of 15 startups raised $465.5M in funding, 0 M&A:

• $107M goes to 8 Enterprise startups

• $13.8M goes to 1 FintecTech startup

• $4.7M goes to 1 InsurTech startup

• $30M goes to 1 Healthcare startup

• $50M goes to 1 Renewable Energy startup

• $30M goes to 1 Environment startup

• $190M goes to 1 Public Safety startup

• $40M goes to 1 Hardware startup

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Edith
X, LinkedIn

Funding (300 miles radius from Silicon Valley)

Enterprise

• GRAID Technology (GPU-based RAID data storage performance) raised $30M Series B led by HH-CTBC Partnership

• Auxia (agentic customer journey orchestration platform) raised $23.5M Series A led by VMG Partners

• LlamaIndex (agent development platform) raised $19M Series A led by Norwest Venture Partners

• Ceramic (AI model training for enterprises) raised $12M Seed led by New Enterprise Associates

• MaxIQ (AI-powered customer journey management platform) raised $7.8M Seed led by Dell Technologies Capital

• Beacon (enterprise AI action orchestrator) raised $7M Series A led by Sorin Investments

• Intangible (3D creative tool) raised $4M Seed from a16z Speedrun, Crosslink Capital, Karman Ventures

• Momentic (end-to-end testing platform for developers) raised $3.7M Seed led by FundersClub

FinTech

• Zocks (AI-driven client intelligence platform for financial advisors) raised $13.8M Series A led by Motive Ventures

InsurTech

• Outmarket AI (commercial insurance intelligence platform) raised $4.7M Seed led by Fika Ventures

Healthcare

• Freed (AI clinician assistant) raised $30M Series A led by Sequoia Capital

Renewable Energy

• Tandem PV (high-efficiency solar panels) raised $50M Series A led by Eclipse Ventures

Environment

• Spiritus (carbon removal) raised $30M Series A led by Aramco Ventures

Public Safety

• Peregrine Technologies (public safety data intelligence platform) raised $190M Series C led by Sequoia Capital

Hardware

• Atmosic (wireless communications chip) raised $40M Series D led by Sutter Hill Ventures

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

• N/A

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