16 Silicon Valley Startups Raised $1.35B - Week of May 12, 2025
👁️ The World Landed in San Francisco 🇨🇳 Make China Great Again 💰 AI’s Threat to Google Just Got Real 💻 Amazon Go Quantum 💰 Palantir Surpassed Salesforce 💰 Can Benchmark Invest in Manus AI
Happy Monday!
It was an incredibly fun week in Silicon Valley, with both Stripe and Figma hosting their annual conferences in San Francisco.
Here are a few great things to read/watch this week:
👁️ The World and the Orb Have Landed in San Francisco - I recently visited the sleek World/Orb store in San Francisco's Union Square. Visitors are invited to gaze into metallic orbs that scan their irises, creating a unique digital identity securely stored on the blockchain. This is the latest venture by World (formerly Worldcoin), co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, designed to establish a global, verifiable identity system in an era increasingly shaped by AI.
What surprised me the most? Over 12.7 million people across more than 100 countries have already participated — exchanging iris scans for 16 Worldcoin tokens (now valued at $1.21 per token.) Additionally, this initiative has sparked the creation of over 200 applications within its ecosystem, from financial services (crypto wallets), games (Worldle) to social platforms like Reddit.
Would you trust Sam Altman enough to hand over your iris scan? Read more on Wired.
🇨🇳 Trump is Making China Great Again - From World War II through the dawn of the 21st century, American dominance in science and technology seemed unshakeable. But in 2025, this longstanding partnership between federal agencies and academic institutions—a relationship that propelled America to unprecedented heights of innovation—is suddenly facing an existential crisis. Just as China transitions from being merely a "fast follower" to an authentic leader in innovation, the White House has launched an assault on both pillars of America's innovation system: the government and academia.
Funding cuts targeting leading institutions like Columbia ($400M), Harvard ($2.2B) and NSF ($5.1B) are troubling signs. Even more disconcerting, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has halted all mRNA-related research funding and triggered sweeping layoffs at the NIH, FDA, and CDC. Consider this: 57% of America's STEM postdocs are foreign nationals. More than 1,200 scientists surveyed by Nature are now seriously contemplating leaving the United States due to these policy disruptions. Meanwhile, China has been meticulously borrowing from America's playbook — not just technology, but its very method of innovation — a public-private partnership through research universities. Ironically, the Trump administration is rapidly paving the way for America's successor in global scientific leadership. China, undoubtedly, will be grateful.
Read this great article “Crippling America’s Innovation Economy” written by Bill Janeway. Bill also spoke at our Race Capital Venture Capital Summit last year.
💰 US Treasury vs. Benchmark Capital + Manus AI - The U.S. Treasury Department is scrutinizing a $75 million investment in the Chinese startup Manus AI, led by Silicon Valley’s Benchmark Capital. The focus stems from the Outbound Investment Security Program — introduced through a 2023 executive order by President Joe Biden — which requires American investors to alert the Treasury when backing technologies, such as AI, that might inadvertently bolster competitors against U.S. interests.
Benchmark, advised by several top U.S. law firms, believed Manus AI was safely outside these restrictions, as the startup doesn't create original AI models. Rather, Manus is classified as a "wrapper"—the kind of company that cleverly packages existing AI technologies into user-friendly products. But as always, definitions matter—and now, so does the interpretation by the Treasury.
💰 AI’s Threat to Google Just Got Real - AI hasn’t just enhanced search—it’s altering the very behaviour behind it. A noticeable decline in Safari searches may seem like a footnote, but it could signal something deeper: a rewiring of how users discover information. That shift is both subtle and seismic.
Yes, Google is still the default search engine on Safari. And yes, Apple’s Cue reportedly loses sleep over the risk of losing that $20 billion deal—arguably the most profitable partnership in Apple’s ecosystem. But if user behavior is migrating away from traditional search altogether, the real risk isn’t just losing Google, it’s that search as we know it, is becoming legacy. This isn’t just about technology—it’s about human habit. And when habits change, markets follow.
I don't think AI is killing search per se—it's augmenting how we seek information. We're moving beyond traditional search; we're now providing our AI assistants (like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Deepseek, and Manus) with deeper context (the why and when) and clearer intent (the who and to whom). As a result, the entire research landscape is expanding right before our eyes.
💻 How Amazon is Winning the Quantum Computing Market - Amazon gave CNBC exclusive access to its Caltech Quantum Labs in California and unveiled its quantum chip, Ocelot — signalling not just an entry into a new technological frontier but a clear belief that quantum computing is no longer theoretical. It’s commercial. Quantum isn’t simply about faster processing but it’s about solving problems that today's computers literally can't. As investors, here are a few things we should pay close attention to:
Global quantum computing market is projected to reach $65B by 2030
By 2035, it is forecasted that quantum computing will grow to become a $450B - $850B market worldwide
Amazon, through AWS, is already working with customers like Volkswagen and BMW to explore quantum logistics and material science.
💰 Palantir Surpasses Salesforce - Palantir jumped about 8% on Thursday, bringing its valuation to $281 billion. That puts it ahead of Salesforce. Palantir, founded in 2003 by Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, has benefitted from a booming government business, which grew 45% to $373 million last quarter. That includes a $178 million contract to build artificial intelligence-enabled systems for the U.S. Army. Last year, the company joined both the S&P and Nasdaq. Palantir trades at one of the highest price-to-earnings multiples in software and last traded at 520 times trailing earnings. Read more on CNBC.
Last week a total of 16 startups raised $1.345B in funding, 4 exits:
$987M goes to 10 Enterprise startups
$18.3M goes to 1 Healthcare startup
$218M goes to 3 BioTech startups
$4.5M goes to 1 Environment startup
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Edith
X, LinkedIn
Funding (300 miles radius from Silicon Valley)
Enterprise
Anysphere (AI coding tool) raised $900M Series C led by Thrive Capital
Recraft (image generation and editing tool) raised $30M Series B led by Accel
Wisdom AI (AI data analytics) raised $23M Seed led by Coatue
Fastino (task-specific language models) raised $17.5M Seed led by Khosla Ventures
RightRev (automated revenue management) raised $13M Series A led by Cheyenne Ventures, Innovius Capital
Agree (AI-powered e-signature platform) raised $7.2M Seed led by Pelion Venture Partners
Korl (customer data management platform) raised $5M Seed led by MaC Venture Capital, Underscore VC
Tesseral (authentication infrastructure for B2B software companies) raised $3.3M Seed led by Y Combinator
Operand (AI-enabled management consulting) raised $3.1M Seed led by Felicis Ventures
CodeAnt AI (AI code review platform) raised $2M Seed led by Y Combinator
Healthcare
Carta Healthcare (clinical data abstraction and analytics) raised $18.3M Series B led by UPMC Enterprises
BioTech
NewLimit (age-reversing therapies) raised $130M Series B led by Kleiner Perkins
Inductive Bio (small molecule drug discovery AI platform) raised $25M Series A led by Obvious Ventures
Trilobio (automated robotic lab-in-a-box for biologists) raised $8M Seed led by Initialized Capital
Environment
CNaught (carbon credit platform) raised $4.5M Seed led by Bow Capital
IPO & M&A (300 miles radius from Silicon Valley)
OpenAI acquired Windsurf (AI-assisted coding tool) for $3B
Coinbase to acquire Derbit (crypto option trading platform) for $2.9B
ServiceNow to acquire Data.World (data governance platform)
SKY Leasing acquired JetBlue Ventures (travel and transportation)
Employer acquired MainStreet (tax credit platform)
Recurly acquired Redfast and Prive (subscription management platform)