Silicon Valley Funding News - Week of April 19, 2021. SambaNova Raised $676M Series D

Hello from the beautiful and sunny San Francisco! 

This week I can feel the hope and energy in the air as more and more people are getting vaccinated (including me) in California. Offices are slowly reopening. And, Coinbase’s IPO was a watershed moment for crypto and now valued at $63 billion.

I started a new Zoom class this week at Harvard on the topic of Family Office Wealth Management and, it is super fascinating. I particularly like the case study of endowments at both Yale and Harvard. These endowments are the largest source of income for both universities and are both super well run.

Unlike other university endowments, both Yale ($31B AUM) and Harvard ($41B AUM) put high emphasis on venture capital and have, over time, been increasing their allocations. It's also super interesting to see the high allocation in foreign (non-US) equities, absolute returns and very surprisingly, a very small allocation on domestic equities (US). They are committed to a very high diversified portfolio which are mostly long-duration, less liquid and complex asset classes all with external managers.

I love the feeling of being a student again. =)  Read the full Yale and Harvard Endowment Report 2020 by click here and here.

This week a total of 22 startups raised $1.9853B in funding, 2 exits:

• $726.5M goes to 5 Enterprise startups
• $153M goes to 1 EdTech startup
• $4.8M goes to 1 Marketplace startup
• $220M goes to 1 Wellness startup
• $12.5M goes to 1 Real Estate startup
• $24M goes to 1 Construction startup
• $50M goes to 1 Media startup
• $7.7M goes to 1 Pet Care startup
• $250M goes to 1 Telecommunication startup
• $81.3M goes to 2 Healthcare startups
• $63M goes to 1 BioTech startup
• $20M goes to 1 Pharmaceutical startup
• $320M goes to 2 Hardware startups
• $49.5M goes to 2 Aerospace startups
• $3M goes to 1 Other startup