24 Silicon Valley Startups Raised $10.2 Billion - Week of December 16, 2024

💰 Databricks About to Raise $9.5B 🍟 Wow Willow 🏎️ Ford CEO loves Xiaomi EV 💰 Trump's Billionaires Set to Take Government by Storm 👑 Who is Andrew N. Ferguson 💰 Janet Yellen’s Exit Interview

Dec 16, 2024

Happy Monday!

Congrats to Databricks (a Race Capital portfolio company) for nearing a $9.5 billion fundraising deal that could become one of the largest venture capital funding rounds in history, as many investors have shown a strong appetite to own a piece of this company, which reminds me of Alfred’s discussion with Matei Zaharia (Co-founder of Databricks & CTO) earlier this year.

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

🍟 Wow, Willow is Google’s Quantum Chip — Google Quantum AI team announced Willow, their latest quantum chip - a major step toward building a useful, large-scale quantum computer. Willow achieved two major milestones:

Willow can reduce errors exponentially as quantum processors scale up using more qubits. This cracks a key challenge in quantum error correction that the field has pursued for almost 30 years.
Willow can perform a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s most powerful supercomputers 10 septillion years! That is 10^25 or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years — a number that vastly exceeds the age of the universe.

Watch Google AI Director of Hardware, Julian Kelly’s talk:

🏎️ Ford CEO loves Xiaomi EV — Ford CEO Jim Farley is facing backlash after publicly sharing he’s been driving the Chinese brand Xiaomi EV. The comment, made during an appearance on the “Fully Charged” podcast, comes as the Ford Motor Company has emphasized its commitment to American manufacturing. At the same time, he doesn't want to give up the Xiaomi Speed Ultra 7 he's been driving for past 6 months. Read more on Business Insider.

💰 Trump's Billionaires Set to Take Government by Storm - President-elect Trump has assembled an administration of unprecedented, mind-boggling wealth — smashing his own first-term record by billions of dollars. Read more on Axios.

👑 Who is Andrew N. Ferguson - The New Nominee for the Chairmanship of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)

Ferguson was sworn in April 2, 2024 as a Commissioner of the FTC.
Former solicitor general of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Former chief counsel to U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
In June 2024, he dissented when the Commission issued a final rule banning non-compete clauses in most employment contracts.
In September 2024, Ferguson dissented when the Commission conditioned approval of the $53 billion acquisition of Hess Corporation by Chevron.
Watch this podcast with The Federalist Society to learn more about his background.

💰 Janet Yellen’s Exit Interview with Bloomberg - Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says the US is looking for creative ways to curb Russia’s oil revenue. Yellen also discusses the $20B support for Ukraine, US-China relations, her prediction on how tariffs would impact the US economy, currencies and US fiscal policy.