18 Silicon Valley Startups Raised $636.5M - Week of September 16, 2024
💰 VCs Cheer to Fed Rate Cut 💼 How to Do Great Work 🔊 Best Talks at Solana’s Breakpoint What is Jony Ive Up To? 🛍️ Amazon introduces Amelia
Happy Monday from Singapore!
Last week, over 500+ events were held in Singapore including the Milken Institute’s Asia Summit, Token 2049, Solana's Breakpoint, PayFi Summit, Asia PE-VC Summit, B Bryan Johnson’s Don’t Die Summit, The Network State Conference, F1 and more!
If that’s not enough, this week I will be speaking at SuperReturn Asia, and attending the Runway to Web Summit in Singapore.
Looking forward to connecting with many of you there and hopefully get a chance to catch up!
Here are a few great things to read/watch this week:
💰 Venture Capital Industry Cheers Fed Rate Cut — The rate cut isn’t likely to have an immediate effect but it could encourage limited partners, to be more optimistic about the asset class. Capital will flow more freely at lower interest rates. Read more on WSJ.
💼 How to Do Great Work — Four steps: choose a field, learn enough to get to the frontier, notice gaps, explore promising ones. This is how practically everyone who's done great work has done it, from painters to physicists. The factors in doing great work are factors in the literal, mathematical sense, and they are: ability, interest, effort, and luck. Read more on PG’s blog (thank you Kate Myers for your suggestion!)
🔊 Best Talks at Solana’s Breakpoint 2024 — Congrats to the Solana team for the amazing Breakpoint conference 2024. Solana by the numbers:
37 billion validated transactions
1377 validators
$384M transaction fees collected
Partnerships with Paypal, Visa, Citi and Franklin Templeton
Some of the best talks include Fast Forward From Frankendancer to Firedancer by Kevin Bowers and Solana 2.0 Fireside Chat with Anatoly Yakovenko.
What is Jony Ive up to the Days? — Setting up his new LoveFrom office in the Jackson Square neighbourhood of San Francisco - near The Battery. I admire Jony’s dedication & contribution to San Francisco. Read more on the NYTimes.
💰 Notable AI Deals — Lionsgate has a partnership deal with AI firm Runway to develop an exclusive video model, trained on the film studio’s library of film and TV content. OpenAI & T-Mobile are custom-building the first intent-driven AI-decisioning platform of its kind, called IntentCX.
🛍️ Amazon Launches “Amelia” — an AI assistant for third-party sellers Read on CNBC.
This week a total of 18 startups raised $636.5M in funding, 2 M&As:
$125.8M goes to 7 Enterprise startups
$130M goes to 1 FinTech startup
$10M goes to 1 Blockchain startup
$58M goes to 2 HR startups
$16M goes to 1 Healthcare startup
$68M goes to 1 BioTech startup
$12M goes to 1 Travel startup
$3.2M goes to 1 Construction startup
$4M goes to 1 Lifestyle startup
$209.5M goes to 2 CleanTech startups
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Edith
X, LinkedIn
Funding (300 miles radius from Silicon Valley)
Enterprise
Picus Security (security validation) raised $45M Series C Led by Riverwood Capital
Orb (modern billing platform) raised $25M Series B led by Mayfield
Fathom (meeting intelligence platform) raised $17M Series A led by Telescope Partners
DeltaStream (serverless stream processing platform) raised $15M Series A from NEA, Galaxy Interactive and Sanabil Investments
Fal (generative media platform for developers) raised $14M Series A led by Kindred Ventures
c/side (cybersecurity on focusing on third-party scripts) raised $6M Seed led by Uncork Capital
Opnova (security & compliance operations optimization platform) raised $3.8M Seed led by Faber, Preface Ventures, ScaleX Ventures
HR
Mercor (remote work hiring platform) raised $30M Series A led by Benchmark
TeamBridge (workforce operating system) raised $28M Series B led by Mayfield
FinTech
AtoB (payment platform for transportation) raised $130M Series C led by Bloomberg Beta, General Catalyst
Blockchain
Yellow (decentralized clearing network) raised $10M Seed led by Chris Larsen
Healthcare
Ferrum Health (AI deployment platform for health systems) raised $16M Series A led by Foundry Group
BioTech
Nura Bio (small molecule drugs for neurodegeneration) raised $68M Series A led by The Column Group
Travel
Mindtrip (AI-powered travel platform) raised $12M Seed led by Costanoa Ventures, Forerunner
Construction
Sitewire (construction finance platform) raised $3.2M Seed led by Zacua Ventures
Lifestyle
Schmooze Dating (AI-driven dating platform) raised $4M Series A led by Elevation Capital
CleanTech
Twelve (carbon transformation) raised $200M Series C led by TPG Rise Climate
Zeno (battery-as-a-service platform) raised $9.5M Seed led by Lowercarbon Capital, Toyota Ventures
IPO & M&A (300 miles radius from Silicon Valley)