19 Silicon Valley Startups Raised $756.2M - Week of July 14, 2025
đ§ The Browser Isnât the Future of AI Search đ What I Learned From Professor Alvin Cheung đ The WindsurfâOpenAI Deal Is Off. Google Gets the CEO. đ Whoâs Winning in Hong Kongâs Tech IPO Boom
Happy Monday!
First up, congrats to Kumar Saurabh and the AirMDR team for raising $10.5M Seed led by Race Capital! AirMDR is the future of MDR service for enterprise!
đ What I Learned From Professor Alvin Cheung â Last week, I had the pleasure of hosting Professor Alvin Cheung from UC Berkeleyâs RISE Lab for dim sum and a chat about AI at the FoundersHK Summer Social â and I havenât stopped thinking about the conversations that came out of it.
The room was buzzing â familiar faces, and new ones â all part of Hong Kongâs founder, operator, and investor community here in the Bay Area.
Here are a few ideas that have been echoing in my head since:
đ§ 1. AI wonât just change the game â itâll reshape the field
Especially in sectors like fintech, health, infrastructure, and government, where the systems are old and the inefficiencies are deep.
𧎠2. Prompting isnât magic â itâs systems thinking
We love to obsess over clever prompts. But Alvin reminded us: âGarbage in, garbage outâ still applies. Behind every great prompt is someone who understands the problem deeply.
đŁď¸ 3. Natural language may be our next programming language
From punch cards â assembly â Python⌠and now, maybe we just describe what we want. Not code â conversation.
đď¸ 4. Classrooms should feel more like startups
Why ask students to memorize theory when they could be building MVPs â powered by AI agents? Learn by doing, not reciting.
𧰠5. Coding isnât just a job skill â itâs a way of thinking
In a world where AI can write code, our job is to understand the system behind it. That might matter more than ever. Some say AI may ever slow down experienced open source developers.
Check out our photos on Linkedin.
đ§ The Browser Isnât the Future of AI Search â This week, both OpenAI and Perplexity launched their own AI browsers, bold moves in a crowded space, but I think itâs just noise.
Now, I say this as someone whoâs been in the trenches. Years ago, I helped build Dolphin Browser on Android â we took it from zero to 150 million installs. No small feat. But even then, one thing was clear: the browser isnât the future.
On mobile especially, changing your default browser is near-impossible for most users. The numbers speak for themselves. Samsung has spent two decades trying to break through and still holds just 3.4% of the global share. Brave, launched by Mozillaâs former CEO in 2016, sits at around 1%.
This isnât a failure of vision or execution. Itâs a reflection of how deeply embedded the browser interface is â and how tough it is to displace.
The real opportunity? The future of AI-powered search lives in conversation â not behind tabs or address bars. If AI is going to change how we access information, it shouldnât live in yet another browser no one uses. It should live inside the apps we already talk to: chat apps, voice interfaces, even messaging threads.
If these companies want to shape the future, theyâll need to meet users where they already are â not ask them to reset defaults most people canât even find.
đ The WindsurfâOpenAI Deal Is Off, but Google Gets the CEO â In a twist that feels both inevitable and surprising, the WindsurfâOpenAI deal is dead â and Windsurfâs CEO is headed to Google.
At first glance, itâs easy to score it like a game: Google wins. OpenAI loses.
But zoom out, and the real loss might belong to the developer community.
Windsurf wasnât just another AI startup. It was beloved by developers. For a brief moment, it looked like it might become the platform for AI-assisted coding â a GitHub Copilot challenger with momentum and heart.
Now? The company is fractured. The productâs future is unclear. And the investors â once bullish on its potential â are left holding what looks like a skeleton crew and an unknown roadmap.
This isnât a new story in tech. Weâve seen it before: An aggressive acquirer. Founders get excited. And somewhere along the way, the magic gets lost.
Windsurf couldâve been the crown jewel of AI tooling. Oh wellâŚ
đ Whoâs Winning in Hong Kongâs Tech IPO Boom â As I mentioned last week, when itâs time to take your company public, look to the Popmart ($43B) and Xiaomi ($197B) playbook: list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, build traction in Asia, and turn to global capital on your own terms.
So far in 2025, IPO volumes on HKEX have jumped 8x â from just $1.8B in H1 2024 to $14B in H1 2025, with projections of 100 IPOs and total fundraising exceeding $25.5B by year-end.
Here are some standout companies that seized the HK IPO window this year:
CATL â The worldâs largest EV battery maker (38% global market share), and key supplier to Tesla, BMW, Ford, and Mercedes-Benz.
đ IPO: May 2025 | đ° Valuation: ~$20B USD / $154B HKD | Read more.CaoCao â Chinaâs #2 premium ride-hailing platform (behind Didi Premium), backed by Geely (parent of Volvo and Lotus).
đ IPO: June 2025 | đ° Valuation: ~$2.4B USD / $18.8B HKD | Read more.Unisound AI â Leading Chinese voice recognition and NLP startup, backed by Qiming Venture Partners and Qualcomm Ventures.
đ IPO: June 2025 | đ° Valuation: ~$3.7B USD / $29B HKD | Read more.Lens Technology â Key display and glass supplier to Apple, Tesla, Samsung, and BMW.
đ IPO: July 2025 | đ° Valuation: ~$15B USD / $117B HKD | Read more.GeekPlus â Robotics startup powering warehouse automation for clients like Nike, Walmart, DHL, and JD.com.
đ IPO: July 2025 | đ° Valuation: ~$3B USD / $24B HKD | Read more.
The signal is clear: Asia-first companies are raising at scale on their home turf and using Hong Kong as a global capital gateway.
Last week a total of 19 startups raised $756.2M in funding, 3 exits:
$461.7M goes to 8 Enterprise startups
$6.6M goes to 1 Fintech startup
$38M goes to 1 Edtech startup
$4.5M goes to 1 eCommerce startup
$23M goes to 1 Real Estate startup
$139.4M goes to 4 BioTech startups
$8M goes to 1 Climate Tech startup
$55M goes to 1 Transportation startup
$20M goes to 1 Construction startup
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Edith
X, LinkedIn
Funding (300 miles radius from Silicon Valley)
Enterprise
MaintainX (AI-powered maintenance and asset management platform) raised $150M Series D led by Bessemer Venture Partners, Bain Capital Ventures
Harmonic (mathematical superintelligence engine) raised $100M Series B led by Kleiner Perkins
LangChain (AI orchestration framework) raised $100M Series B led by IVP
Spacelift (infrastructure orchestration platform) raised $51M Series C led by Five Elms Capital
Sundial (AI-powered data analytics platform) raised $23M Series A led by GreatPoint Ventures
Foundation EGI (engineering general intelligence platform) raised $23M Series A led by RRE Ventures, Translink Capital
AirMDR (AI-powered MDR service for enterprise) raised $10.5M Seed led by Race Capital
ZeroEntropy (adaptive AI data retrieval engine) raised $4.2M Seed led by Initialized Capital
Fintech
Layer (embedded accounting platform for SMB) raised $6.6M Seed led by Emergence Capital
eCommerce
OneText (shopping by text) raised $4.5M Seed from Khosla Ventures, Coatue, Citi Ventures, Y Combinator, Good Friends
Edtech
Honor Education (AI learning platform) raised $38M Series A from Alpha Edison, Wasserstein & Co, Audeo Ventures, Interlock Partners, New Wave Capital
Real Estate
BioTech
Renasant Bio (small molecule treatments for polycystic kidney disease) raised $54.5 Seed led by 5AM Ventures
Centivax (universal immunity platform) raised $45M Series A led by Future Ventures
Aqtual (rheumatoid arthritis treatments) raised $31M Series B from Bold Capital, Bold Longevity Growth Fund, Genoa Ventures, Manta Ray Ventures, and Yu Galaxy
Synfini (small molecule drug discovery) raised $8.9M Seed led by JSL Health Capital
Climate Tech
WaHa (atmospheric water generation systems) raised $8M Series A led by Christian Tiringer, Mike Phillips
Transportation
ServiceUp (vehicle repair management platform) raised $55M Series B led by PeakSpan Capital
Construction
Parspec (construction supply chain platform) raised $20M Series A led by Threshold Ventures
IPO & M&A (300 miles radius from Silicon Valley) Â