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AI Bill Killed + Latest Startup, VC News
TECH IN THE NEWS
AI Bill Killed - California Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed the SB 1047 bill seeking to hold AI developers liable for safety by preventing “critical harms.”
More China Cuts - China's central bank will tell banks to cut mortgage rates by the end of October, and major cities will ease home-buying curbs to boost the market.
Wall Street Super Teams - Big banks and private equity giants like Citigroup and Apollo are joining forces to capture a bigger slice of the $1.7T private credit market.
ETF Boom - Assets in actively managed ETFs have topped $1T worldwide, boosted by easier regulations and a wave of product innovation including crypto ETFs.
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DEALS WE’RE WATCHING
Closed Deals:
MASSIVE DEALS
Connected Fitness Tech - German fitness equipment and software maker EGYM raised a $200M Series G at $1.2b+ post-money.
AI SaaS Infrastructure Tools - San Mateo, CA startup Observe raised a $145M Series B co-led by Madrona and Evolution Equity to help businesses manage and monitor their SaaS infrastructure.
Fusion Power - Washington startup Zap Energy raised $130M led by Soros Fund with BAM Elevate, Emerson Collective, and prior backers Breakthrough, Chevron, DCVC, EIP, Lowercarbon, and Shell.
Fleet Fuel/Expense MGMT - San Francisco payments startup raised a $130M Series C in equity and debt co-led by General Catalyst and Bloomberg Beta, with support from Mastercard.
Digital Transformation - San Jose startup WhatFix closed a $125M Series E led by Warburg Pincus and backed by SoftBank’s Vision Fund for a strategic acquisition.
Scalable Modular Blockchain Infrastructure - Blockchain startup Celestia Foundation raised $100M led by Bain Capital Crypto.
LARGE DEALS
O-S Firebase Alternative - San Francisco Postgres database startup Supabase raised an $80M Series C, and 40% of startups in the latest YC class use it.
Cloud-Based Contact Centers - San Francisco AI Agent startup Ujet raised a $76M Series D led by Sapphire, with KeyCorp and IonPacific and prior backers GV, Kleiner Perkins, Citi, DCM, and Ericsson joining.
Math Superintelligence - Palo Alto AI startup Harmonic raised a $75M Series A at $325M led by Sequoia with Index, Jasper Lau’s Era Funds, GreatPoint, DTS, Nikesh Arora and Jared Leto.
Robotic Needle-based Procedures - San Mateo, CA biotech startup Mendaera raised a $73M Series B led by Threshold, with Lux, PFM, and Frederic Moll joining.
Automating Enterprise Cybersecurity - Portland startup Torq raised a $70M Series C led by Evolution with Bessemer, Notable, Greenfield and Strait joining.
Low-Carbon Cement - Somerville, MA startup Sublime Systems raised $75M in equity and pre-payments from major building material companies Holcim and CRH.
Laser-Powered Fusion - German fusion startup Marvel Fusion closed a $70M Series B led by HV Capital for its experimental Colorado fusion energy facility.
SMALLER DEALS
EV Autonomous Aircraft - Alameda defense/agriculture aircraft startup Pyka raised a $40M Series B led by Obvious Ventures, with Prelude Ventures, and YC taking part.
Autonomous Trucks - Houston startup Bot Auto raised a $20M pre-Series A round to commercially deploy autonomous trucking.
Automated Enterprise Workflows - San Francisco startup Distyl AI raised a $20M Series A at a $200M+ valuation backed by previous investor Coatue.
Landbase - World’s 1st agentic AI designed for go-to-market, exited stealth with a $12.5M Seed co-led by A*, 8VC, and First Minute, with General Catalyst and others.
MemGPT Maker - Letta, a much-anticipated AI startup from UC Berkeley’s Labs startup factory emerged from stealth with a $10M seed at $70M post-money led by Felicis’ Astasia Myers with angels like Google’s Jeff Dean.
AI Product Creation Copilot Platform - San Francisco creation/retail platform startup Arcade raised $17M from Reid Hoffman, Brit Morin, Heretic Ventures, and Ashton Kutcher.
AI Ops for Veterinarians - Canadian medtech startup Scribenote raised an $8.2M seed led by Andreessen Horowitz joined by Inovia Capital and Velocity Fund.
Mortgage Marketplace/Credit Card - Austin startup Mesa raised a $9.2M seed for products like its 1% cash back on loans and a rewards points on mortgages.
AI Private Equity Associate - San Francisco AI-powered virtual assistant startup Mako AI raised a $1.55M seed from Khosla.
Exit Watch:
OctoAI - Nvidia acquired the Seattle startup which makes tools for running gen AI models, for around $165M. It was previously valued at ~$900M.
Smartsheet - Vista and Blackstone are acquiring the SaaS workplace collaboration and management platform for $8.4b in cash.
Zoomin - Salesforce will acquire the Israeli data management provider for a reported $450M.
Clumio - The Santa Clara cloud-native data backup and recovery services startup is being acquired by Commvault.
Fractal - India’s first AI unicorn is reportedly weighing a $500M IPO in Mumbai at an estimated $3.5b valuation.
Companies to Watch:
Scale AI - The data labeling startup’s sales ~4x to ~$400M for H1, driven by enterprise LLM improvement services including major clients Meta and Google. Scale now has $980M in cash after raising $1b in May at $13.8b.
CACI - Virginia tech firm with US government clients saw Q4 revenue grow ~20% to $2.04b and acquired radar and comms equipment maker Azure Summit for $1.28b to bulk up its defense business.
Oportun - The mission-driven FinTech has provided $18.7b in responsible, affordable credit, and saved members $2.4b+ in interest and fees. It just extended its warehouse facility led by Goldman Sachs to $306M.
Landbase - World 1st agentic AI designed for go-to-market, exited stealth with a $12.5M Seed co-led by A*, 8VC, and First Minute, with General Catalyst and others. It claims a 7x higher conversion rate, 70% reduction in time spent per lead.
The Funding Buzz
Arch Venture Partners - Chicago VC firm that invests in early-stage life sciences deals, has raised a $3b fund, its thirteenth.
Pangaea Ventures - A Phoenix VC firm has closed on an $85M fund to invest in "hardtech innovation" with a focus on planetary health in the US, Japan and Canada.
Acurio Ventures - A generalist Spanish VC firm with $330M AUM, has closed a third fund of $166M to back startups throughout Europe. .
Pear - The Palo Alto seed-stage firm announced the Pear Emerging Manager in Residence program, which brings three up-and-coming pre-seed and seed venture funds into Pear’s offices for collaboration, such as deal flow sharing and due diligence.
Nebius Group - Amsterdam-based VC firm, which emerged from the split of Russian tech giant Yandex will invest over $1b in AI infrastructure across Europe by mid-2025, including GPU clusters and data centers.