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Startup Life is a story of birth and death. I checked this this week to make sure the Unicorn Round is not dead.
The most interesting startup story of the week
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It was a week of beginning and ending, as often happens in the startup world.
Thinking Machines: Thinking Machines Lab is the new AI startup from former Openai CTO Mira Murati, and has come out of stealth without seeing how much they sourced from VCS. Meanwhile, Ilya Sutskever startup Safe Superintelligence (SSI) reportedly raises around $1 billion.
Humane Killing: Humane, the hardware startup behind the flawed AI PIN, has announced that most of its assets have been acquired on HP for $116 million.
Money Back Guarantee: The San Francisco-based startup Future family has launched a new IVF insurance product in the US that will allow future parents to refund if treatment is not successful after two rounds.
Low Battery: Former Silicon Valley Darling Nicola Corporation filed for bankruptcy this week. Hydrogen-electric trucking startups were unable to find buyers or secure additional funds to keep the business running.
Most Interesting VC and Funding News This Week
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We thought that the age of counting unicorns was behind us, but not so much. Furthermore, Legal AI is hot, with the looming budget cuts impacting new biotech venture funds.
Quadricorn: Austin-based defense startup Saronic has raised a $600 million Series C to build an autonomous ship factory, reducing its valuation to $400 million from the previous round to $4 billion.
New Horn: Money Coding Startup Codeium is led by Kleiner Perkins at a $2.855 billion valuation six months after raising a $150 million Series C at a $1.25 billion valuation after Money He is giving a lecture to raise a new round.
Joining the Club: Hightouch is a startup co-founded by a former engineering manager in the segment that provides AI-powered marketing tools, closing the $80 million Series C round at a $1.2 billion valuation.
When AI-based hardware detected a factory machine malfunction, Augusty has secured $75 million in stock funding as part of a still-closed Series F round. CEO and founder Saar Yoskovitz said this is what we value a startup that costs over $1 billion.
After Billion: After raising $1 billion so far since 2015, Fintech Varo concluded $29 million of its $55 million Series G. CEO and founder Colin Walsh also recently announced that he was resigning.
Interim: Sanas leveraged AI to change the accents of call centre workers in real time, closing a $65 million funding round and valued companies over $500 million.
Legal AI: AI-powered Legal Tech Startup Luminance raises $75 million in a Series C funding round following several other deals closed by competitors, confirming space is intensifying I did.
New Fund: Amid uncertainty about funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Altitude Lab's Pre-Seed Venture Fund has qualified for a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the NIH Consider investing between $100,000 and $250,000 in a biotech startup.
Last but not least, it's important
Image credit: Steve Jennings from TechCrunch/Getty Images
Andreessen Horowitz may have $45 billion in assets under management, but Marc Andreessen “hasn't munched a bit to get the company out of its public.” Speaking about the best podcasts like this week's Invest, the co-founder of A16Z discussed his goal of building it into a permanent company.