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A newsletter for communities, investors, angels, and founders
Power in Numbers
July 05, 2024
Welcome to PIN’d - our weekly newsletter where we pin (lol, bear with us) the most important tech/startup news of the week for aspiring angels, vc’s, startup investors, founders, etc. Expect a new weekly roundup from us every Friday morning!
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📰 This week’s best news
Robinhood is acquiring Pluto Capital Inc., an artificial intelligence research platform. This move will provide more tailored investment strategies and analysis to retail brokerage users. Robinhood has recently expanded its services to include cryptocurrency, retirement products, and credit cards while maintaining a focus on average retail traders.
Venture capital firm Matrix Partners has rebranded its regional entities in India and China, a similar move to the one made previously by Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital. The firm's operations in India are now named Z47, while the China affiliate will be renamed MPC, short for Matrix Partners China. The original US entity will continue to use the Matrix Partners name.
Anthropic is launching a program to fund new benchmarks for evaluating the performance and impact of AI models, including generative models like Claude. They plan to pay organizations capable of effectively measuring advanced AI model capabilities. Interested parties can submit their applications.
Revolut, a UK challenger bank, is considering an IPO in light of record profits, with pretax profits of £438 million for 2023. London seems an unlikely IPO destination, though, due to the absence of a local banking license and listing restrictions. If the IPO does take place in London, it could become the largest UK tech listing on record.
Industry Ventures raised a $900 million early-stage hybrid fund to invest in emerging managers and back growth-stage companies. The fund will also buy a secondary interest in emerging managers from other limited partners. This is their seventh hybrid fund and is over 50% larger than its predecessor, a $575 million vehicle raised in 2021.
Union Square Ventures is targeting $275 million for its 2024 vintage fund, according to a regulatory filing.
💰 Funding announcement highlights
Phaidra, a startup that develops control systems to optimize the performance of industrial facilities, including data centers, has raised a $12 million round. Index Ventures was the main investor.
Prodia, a startup whose API and large-scale GPU infrastructure allow developers to integrate AI-powered image generation into their applications, raised a $15 million seed. Dragonfly Capital led the deal, with HashKey Capital, Web3.com, Index Ventures, Symbolic Capital, OKX Ventures, EV3, Artichoke, TRGC, Folius, Tangent Capital, Southern Equity, Balaji Srinivasan, and Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal also contributing.
Redactive AI, a startup that helps enterprises deploy generative AI applications by offering tools for data synchronization, raised a $7.5 million seed round from Felicis Ventures, Blackbird Ventures, Atlassian Ventures and Zapier.
Steep raised a $4.3 million seed round from Connect Ventures, Inventure, Alliance VC, Antler, and Greens. It enables users to query data in natural language and generate visualizations, making data exploration and analysis more accessible.
Sentient raised an $85 million seed round from Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, Framework Ventures, Robot Ventures, Delphi, Republic, and Arrington Capital. The startup is developing an open-source AI platform aimed at building community-driven artificial general intelligence.
📚 Interesting reads of the week
Rak Garg, at only 27 years old, has been promoted to partner at Bain Capital Ventures. He joined as an associate and was promoted within three years. During that period, he became a trusted adviser and friend to early-stage founders, offering deep insight, an extensive network, and boundless energy to help them build their businesses.
Mary Meeker, known for her annual "Internet Trends" reports, is among Silicon Valley's most influential figures. In her latest document, Meeker argues that the U.S. has taken the lead in AI development from China and that the only way to stay ahead is to collaborate between the tech industry and universities to maintain this lead.
Palmer Luckey, founder of Anduril and a protégé of Peter Thiel, is leading a new wave of defense technology in Southern California, backed by billions from his first company. Through a series of LLCs with names such as Luckey Arms, Luckey Air Transport, and Luckey Ground Technology, he owns a couple of submarines, a Black Hawk helicopter, and a fleet of motorcycles and cars.
Konstantine Buhler, Ana Marshall, and Jason Calacanis discuss VCs not raising new funds, their impact on the market, and the current state of venture capital on the “This Week In Startups” podcast. They also address challenges for new fund managers, power laws, and investment strategies.
While June started slow, it ended in a flurry of massive-money deals. Cruise and AlphaSense led the way regarding the biggest rounds raised by U.S. startups last month. Biotech startups also secured some big funding.
💪 Tech mafia of the week
Highlights:
💰 Most money raised: Udemy
🤑 Total money raised by the TechCrunch Mafia: $590 million
Weekly tech mafia leaderboard
The TechCrunch alumni network has built some amazing companies, so we took a look at the top companies.
The TechCrunch Mafia takes the 56th spot, with 120 companies founded and $590 million raised.
PS: Are you a TechCrunch employee/alum interested in getting your community together to invest in the community (and earn carry/other benefits along the way)? Or are you a member of another community that you think would make for an amazing startup investment community?
Learn more about us and sign up for the waitlist here.
📌 PIN tweet of the week
.@hdubugras is the co-founder Brex, an online payment solution valued at $12 billion.
He:
→ started coding at the age of 12 by hacking video games
→ co-founded his first startup, Pagar.me, at the age of 16
→ dropped out of Stanford University after just a… x.com/i/web/status/1…
— PIN (@getpinxyz)
2:07 PM • Jul 2, 2024
💼 Who’s hiring in VC?
Looking to get into VC? Below are this week’s curated VC job openings.
11 Tribes Ventures is looking for an Associate.
MassMutual is looking for an Associate, MMV Climate Technology Team.
FanDuel is looking for a New Ventures Director.
14Peaks Capital Advisors is looking for a Venture Capital Investment Associate.
New Form Capital is looking for an Investment Associate.
📠 Fun fact of the week
Rak Garg became Bain Capital Ventures' youngest partner at just 27 years old. Garg joined the firm as an associate and was promoted to partner in three years.
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