$1B for Ilya Sutskever
Telegram FAQ updates, Elon leading government audit, Claude Enterprise, and Salesforce's biggest M&A after Slack.
🗞 In the Know
Safe Superintelligence (SSI), an AI startup co-founded by ex-OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever, has secured over $1B in funding from investors such as NFDG, a16z, Sequoia, DST Global, and SV Angel. SSI informed Reuters that the funds will be allocated to acquiring computational resources and recruiting researchers and engineers, however, the company has not yet disclosed specific details about the focus of their research.
Should Donald Trump win the presidency, Elon Musk has committed to heading a commission to audit the entire government, a position that could grant him sway over the federal agencies overseeing his companies, such as SpaceX and Tesla, raising concerns about potential conflicts of interest.
Visa promises to launch a smart upgrade to the current pay-by-bank model with the launch in the UK of Visa A2A, a rules-based system for bill payments and subscription management. Visa says that under the current model, billions of pounds are lost or withheld from consumers due to problems such as unauthorized auto-renewals or the lack of flexibility.
Anthropic is rolling out Claude Enterprise, a new subscription service for its AI chatbot, designed to rival OpenAI's ChatGPT Enterprise, which targets business users. Claude Enterprise offers enhanced administrative controls and advanced security features, enabling companies to integrate their proprietary information into Anthropic's AI platform.
Ouch, following Pavel Durov's arrest, Telegram updated its FAQ. Previously, it stated that private chats were not subject to moderation. Now, the FAQ notes that users can report illegal content via a "Report" button. Telegram also removed the People Nearby feature due to “issues with bots and scammers” and disabled new media uploads to its blogging tool, Telegraph.
🏁 VentureVista
Mintlify, a startup focused on helping companies produce and maintain software documentation, has secured an $18.5M Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures and Y Combinator.
Mintlify offers developers support in creating guides, API references, SDK documentation, and AI-powered chatbots (leveraging OpenAI's API) to clarify their software and services. It features built-in components and templates for standard document formatting and organizes documentation to be seamlessly embedded within a codebase.
All Hands AI, a startup creating open-source tools to assist software developers in incorporating AI agents into their projects, has raised $5M in a seed funding round led by Menlo Ventures, with additional participation from Pillar VC, Betaworks, and Rebellion.
“AI is going to completely change how developers work. But it’s not going to change their preference for adopting open source, especially when it comes to technology that affects their day-to-day work,” Joff Redfern, a partner at Menlo Ventures and former chief product officer at Atlassian told TechCrunch. “By building in the open, All Hands is helping the software engineering community work toward an ideal AI-powered development experience.”Blitzy, a startup with an AI-driven platform that automates tasks such as data entry, document processing, and decision-making for sectors like finance, insurance, and real estate, has raised $4.4M in funding. Investors in the round include Link Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Flybridge, NFX, Picus Capital, and Asymmetric.
The startup employs AI copilots that claim to significantly shorten the time required to develop enterprise applications, transforming a typically months-long process. The approach is likened to an airline autopilot, where software handles the bulk of the work while humans manage critical actions. Blitzy was co-founded by Sid Pardeshi, a former Nvidia engineer serving as CTO, and Brian Elliott, a serial entrepreneur and CEO, who met at Harvard Business School after they collaboratively developed an app for a local bakery in a single night.Paradigm, a startup leveraging AI agents to automate web searches and fill spreadsheet cells at a rate of up to 500 cells per minute, has secured $2M in seed funding from Y Combinator, Soma Capital, and Pioneer Fund.
A promotional video released by Paradigm demonstrates its functionality through a scenario where a user, possibly a Paradigm recruiter, creates a new spreadsheet using the software and directs it to search GitHub for the most active engineers, listing them by productivity. The platform utilizes AI agents—based on proprietary and open-source generative AI models from third parties like OpenAI's GPT-4 and Meta's Llama family, as reported by Fortune—to find the required information online and automatically populate the spreadsheet cells.Steerlab, a startup focused on automating responses to RFPs and security questionnaires, has secured a $1.9M pre-seed funding round led by Dreamcraft VC, with additional investments from Heartfelt and Lumière AI Ventures.
The company utilizes fine-tuned language models and multi-modal agentic AI systems to streamline and elevate the response process for RFPs and security questionnaires. Steerlab aims to empower sales teams within B2B software companies by enabling them to efficiently generate high-quality, competitive proposals while offering actionable insights to improve their chances of winning more deals.
🔥 Exits:
HR and payroll software company Paylocity has agreed to acquire corporate spend startup Airbase for $325M.
Airbase was serving midsized companies seeking to better manage their spending. Its platform included bill payments, corporate cards, and employee reimbursements, among other things.Salesforce acquires data management firm Own Company for $1.9B in cash.
The acquisition of Own marks Salesforce's largest deal since its $27.7B purchase of Slack in 2021. In a press release, Salesforce GM Steve Fisher emphasized that the acquisition “underscores Salesforce’s commitment to providing secure, end-to-end solutions that protect our customers’ most valuable data.”
💡Innovation Spotlight
PayPal is integrating its debit card with Apple Wallet to enter the in-store payment arena. The company announced its omnichannel “PayPal Everywhere” letting users pick a monthly category of spending, such as groceries or clothing, to receive 5% cash back. In addition, PayPal has introduced a feature called auto-reload that lets users set a balance threshold that automatically tops up if it drops below the customer’s chosen amount.
Google Photos’ AI-powered search feature, “Ask Photos,” is rolling out to users. Google’s Gemini AI model, Ask Photos lets users search their photos using natural language queries that leverage the AI’s understanding of their photo’s content and other metadata.
📈 Insightful Data
Almost two-thirds of startup employees say managers are unprepared to take on the roles. Here are the results of the startup survey of what employees think about their managers:
63% of respondents said that only a minority of the managers they've had at startups were prepared to take on the role, with some reporting that their managers were poor communicators or simply did not know how to lead.
Just 4.5% of respondents feel their managers across the board have set them clear goals; 54% said a minority of their managers have done so.
Career development is also a biggie: only 9% of respondents said their managers at startups helped them develop their careers.
Venturized is compiled and written by Ivan Taranenko, Associate at Roosh Ventures.
Roosh Ventures is a Kyiv-based entrepreneurs-led, generalist VC firm investing in Pre-seed to Series A across EU and US markets. Powered by Roosh.
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