16 Silicon Valley Startups Raised $513.3M the Week of May 20, 2024

🏀 How OpenAI Played Hardball with Their Employees and Scarlet Johansson. 📺 Microsoft Broke the Innovators Dilemma Cycle 🇭🇰 Hong Kong Web3 Report 2024. 💹 SEC Approves 8 Ethereum ETFs

May 27, 2024

Happy Memorial Day!

I will be heading to Consensus 2024 later this week speaking on Doing Blockchain Business in Hong Kong with my friends Casey Lau and Yat Siu on Thursday and Hong Kong Web3 Report 2024 on Friday! Join us.

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

📺 NPU versus GPU - My partner Alfred Chuang did a great job on CNBC analyzing that the AI battle is really NPU versus GPU. Inferences chip set will hope a much more important role in the world of chipset. The future will not be just about training. The future will be heavily driven by inferences - once you do most of the training, the most important thing will be to empower applications to respond in Inferences (what is inferred by the AI model is just like a human). Watch Alfred on CNBC Meanwhile, Jensen Huang’s net worth swelled from $3 billion to $90 billion in five years with Nvidia shares up roughly 28X in the past five years. Good for him!

🏀 How OpenAI Played Hardball with Their Employees and Scarlet Johansson - When an employee leaves OpenAI, they are asked to sign a separation and nondisclosure agreement within 7 days or their vested equity may vanish at the sole and absolute discretion of the company. For a company to threaten to claw back already-vested equity is very egregious and unusual… Read the full story and documents on Vox. Meanwhile, the company is trying to blow past ethical concerns and operating with impunity with Scarlet Johansson. Altman posted a cheeky, one-word statement on X: “Her” on May 13, then issued an apology on May 20. Read more in the Atlantic.

A cartoon illustration featuring Black Widow in a dynamic fight with a Silicon Valley geek. Black Widow should be in her iconic black suit, showcasing her agility and combat skills, while the Silicon Valley geek is depicted without glasses, wearing a hoodie, and holding tech gadgets. They should be engaged in combat, with Black Widow delivering a kick or punch and the geek countering with a gadget. The background should be a tech-themed environment, filled with futuristic devices and code screens. The scene should be action-packed, with vibrant colors and exaggerated expressions to emphasize the cartoon style.

(Credits: Made by DALL-E & Edith)

📝 Beyond Benchmarks Report by Emergence - I enjoyed reading this report. Here are a few highlights / reminders that stood out for me:

Duration between early stage rounds are getting longer - 22 months between Seed to Series A & 25 months between Series A to Series B (P.22)
Public market investors value growth at 2-3X profitability and this mindset trickles down to the private market. No more “Growth at All Cost”. (P.17)
If you revenue is less than $1M and your ARR is not growing 400%. You will NOT be considered as top quartile by your investor. (P.25-26)
Top companies retain ~90% of their ARR

💹 SEC Approves 8 Ethereum ETFs including BlackRock and Fidelity - The SEC on Thursday approved applications from the Nasdaq, CBOE and NYSE to list ETFs tied to the price of Ethereum (up 110.28% in past 12 months). The 8 SEC approved 19b-4 forms are from BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale, Bitwise, VanEck, Ark, Invesco Galaxy and Franklin Templeton. Read more on The Block

This week a total of 16 startups raised $513.3M in funding, 2 M&As: