Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of every part you possibly can’t miss from the world of startups. Need it in your inbox each Friday? Enroll right here.
This week in startup information, we have now some contrarian bets, funding rounds from all all over the world, new VC funds, and a last phrase of warning.
Most fascinating startup tales from the week
A number of tales this week remind us that simply because one thing didn’t work earlier doesn’t imply it isn’t price attempting from a special angle. Plus, one M&A that provides us a break from different WordPress information.
New wave: A brand new wave of desalination startups is engaged on deep-sea reverse osmosis, a expertise that’s changing into simpler to deploy and will deliver financial savings, with projections that it may produce water utilizing 30% to 50% much less vitality than onshore reverse osmosis.
Filling the hole: YC’s newest batch had loads of AI startups, and some fascinating enterprise ones, however the accelerator has diminished its concentrate on growing markets. In Africa, native accelerators backed by African YC alumni are taking this as a possibility with new packages.
Bett(h)er: WaveForms AI, a brand new audio massive language mannequin (LLM) firm, hopes to make AI extra personable with its personal foundational fashions. Its founder, Alexis Conneau, is obsessive about the film “Her,” but additionally pondering arduous about how to not create a dystopia. “We need to do exactly the alternative of what the corporate in that film does,” he instructed TechCrunch.
Automated for the bots: WPAI, a startup that builds AI options for WordPress, is getting acquired by Automattic. Its group will lead WordPress’ AI efforts.
Most fascinating fundraises this week
With the top of the yr quick approaching, this week introduced us many funding rounds, so right here’s a pattern that additionally showcases their vary, each in dimension and in geographic distribution.
Taking off: Archer Aviation, a startup constructing vertical takeoff and touchdown (VTOL) plane, raised $430 million in contemporary fairness funding that introduced its whole financing to almost $2 billion. Archer additionally closed an unique partnership with Anduril to collectively construct protection plane.
Stealthy no extra: Berlin-based startup Upvest, which makes a stock-trading API utilized by a few of Europe’s largest fintech firms, raised a €100 million Collection C spherical ($105 million) led by once-secretive VC agency Hedosophia.
Robotic steps: Swiss robotics firm Anybotics, an ETH Zürich spinout constructing quadruped autonomous inspection robots for industrial purposes, raised one other $60 million, bringing its Collection B spherical of financing to a complete of $110 million. The capital will assist it increase within the U.S., the place it just lately opened an workplace in San Francisco.
Robust credentials: Flare, a Canadian menace publicity administration startup, closed a $30 million Collection B spherical of funding led by Base10 Companions. The corporate needs to assist SMBs and mid-market firms thwart the rise of info-stealer malware, or software program that collects login credentials, as occurred within the Snowflake incident earlier this yr.
Crossing the Channel: Aqemia, a French startup within the sizzling AI-enabled drug discovery house, raised its second fundraise of the yr: a brand new $38 million spherical led by Cathay Innovation, which it should use to rent and open an workplace in London.
Letting VCs in: Numia, a startup from Argentina that brings offline and on-line buyer interplay knowledge into one place, introduced a $3.5 million seed spherical led by Cometa. CEO Gustavo Lauria mentioned the corporate is already worthwhile however determined to boost outdoors capital for the primary time to achieve prospects which are additionally restricted companions in enterprise funds.
Most fascinating VC and fund information this week
Open to confusion: The OpenAI Startup Fund raised over $44 million for its fifth particular objective automobile (SPV), which a spokesperson mentioned “will probably be used to help quite a lot of current portfolio firms and to make new investments.” Regardless of its identify, the fund says it doesn’t have OpenAI as an investor however that its backers embrace Microsoft and different OpenAI companions.
New dimension: Dimension Capital raised an oversubscribed $500 million fund to maintain on investing on the intersection of tech and life sciences. Portfolio firms embrace AI biotech firms Chai Discovery and Enveda Biosciences.
Paper tiger: Identified for the “spray and pray” technique that led it to put money into over 315 startups in 2021 alone, the fifteenth fund of hedge fund Tiger carried out notably poorly, with paper losses standing at greater than 15%, in response to a current disclosure.
Final however not least
In an interview, Lead Edge Capital founder and managing companion Mitchell Inexperienced instructed TechCrunch editor-in-chief Connie Loizos that there’s “an excessive amount of cash chasing too few firms which are overvalued.” This makes his agency more and more steer away from typical enterprise capital offers and towards buyout-like “management offers” extra generally related to personal fairness. “I additionally refuse to put money into firms at 100 instances or 200 instances or 500 instances income. That recreation will finish badly,” he predicted.
