OpenAI doubles revenue in 6 months
A huge round for Paris-based Mistral, Apple Intelligence, BeReal acquisition, and more.
🗞 In the Know
A huge round for the Paris-based AI giant - Mistral. Just a year after raising a massive $112M Seed round, the company finalized its $640M fundraising at a valuation of $6B. “I am delighted to see new and existing investors renew their confidence in our business and provide new support for its expansion. This new round puts us in a unique position to push the frontier of AI and bring state-of-the-art technology to everyone’s hands,” Mistral AI co-founder and CEO Arthur Mensch said in a statement.
OpenAI is reportedly now achieving an annual run rate of $3.4B, which is double the figure it reached just 6 months ago in late 2023, TheInformation reports. Most of OpenAI’s revenue comes from subscriptions to its chatbots as well as fees from letting software developers access its models through an application programming interface. Microsoft has typically taken a cut from some of OpenAI's sales of AI models because those models run on Microsoft's cloud.
Apple introduced Apple Intelligence, its generative AI offering, which also features its highly anticipated partnership with OpenAI. TechCrunch mentions Apple Intelligence will be integrated into most of the company’s apps. That includes things like the ability to help compose messages inside Mail (along with third-party apps) or just utilise Smart Replies to respond.
Lightspeed Venture Partners is shifting its focus to the secondary market. As part of its shift to secondaries, Lightspeed has set up a data platform to monitor secondary markets and find “discreet” opportunities to buy private company stock, according to the firm
Since fintech startup Brex’s inception in 2017, co-founders Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi have served as co-CEOs. But now the company will transition to a more traditional model with a single CEO. Pedro Franceschi will assume the role of sole CEO, while Henrique Dubugras will become chairman of Brex’s board. The co-founders announced this change in an exclusive interview with TechCrunch, stating it aims to make the company more agile.
🏁 VentureVista
Light, a startup specializing in automating general ledger tasks for businesses using AI, has raised $13M in a seed round. The funding was led by Atomico, with participation from Cherry Ventures, Entrée Capital, and Seedcamp.
“Our mission is to be the first automated ledger for global companies,” Sanders told TechCrunch. “We believe CFOs and finance teams deserve the full benefits of AI, gaining the full knowledge and expertise of a large enterprise organization when it comes to accounting and taxes, something that they have been denied to date.”Astrocade has raised $12M in a seed funding round. The company's platform enables users to create games and interactive experiences using AI. Investors in this round include AME Cloud Ventures, NVIDIA Ventures, and Venture Reality Fund, along with angel investors such as Eric Schmidt, John Riccitiello, Jerry Yang, and Mike Abbott.
Astrocade’s platform leverages generative AI to enable gamers to create their own games using text-to-image prompts, which can then be shared with the community for others to play. Whether users want their games to feature marshmallows or battles, Astrocade can generate them in moments. Similar to how TikTok has inspired billions to become video creators, Astrocade AI aims to empower billions of people to become game creators, VentureBeat reports.Particle, a startup that has developed an AI-powered news reader that curates and personalizes news content for users, raised $10.9M in a funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Axel Springer.
Particle’s goal is to provide news consumers with more than just AI summaries – шt aims to enhance understanding by using AI to analyze and present various perspectives on a story, offering a more comprehensive view of the news. “Part of Particle’s thesis is … how a story is being reported from all sides of the spectrum,” Particle co-founder Sara Beykpour, previously a senior director of product management at Twitter, explained TechCrunch. “We think that’s important.”Sidekick, a WealthTech startup, raised £4.5M in equity led by Pact VC and TheVentureCity and included Octopus Ventures, Seedcamp and more. It also raised £4M in debt from Columbia Lake Partners.
Sidekick offers a modern approach to wealth management for those looking to do more with their money and benefit from the financial advantages typically reserved for the ultra-wealthy. It provides financial strategies designed to maximize returns and navigate market complexities.InScope has raised $4.3M from Lightspeed and Better Tomorrow Ventures to expand its innovative financial reporting and auditing platform.
The company is dedicated to transforming the traditional processes involved in financial reporting and auditing for private companies. InScope utilizes advanced technologies to automate and streamline the compilation of financial statements—a task historically prone to errors and extensive manual effort.
🔥 Exits:
Voodoo, a French mobile game and app developer, has acquired the photo-sharing startup BeReal for €500M. The deal aims to help BeReal develop new features and reinvigorate its growth. Voodoo plans to leverage its expertise to support BeReal, whose popularity had waned after initial success. BeReal's founder, Alexis Barreyat, will assist in the transition, with Aymeric Roffé taking over as CEO.
Pluxee, quite a big player in the Employee Benefits and Engagement Platforms market, announced its agreement to acquire Cobee, a Spanish digital-native company operating in Employee Benefits. This acquisition marks the first milestone in Pluxee's targeted and disciplined M&A strategy as part of its strategic growth plan.
💡Innovation Spotlight
Apple has unveiled a Tap to Cash feature that lets people send each other money simply by tapping their iPhones. Rolled out as part of iOS 18, Tap to Cash lets users send and receive Apple Cash without having to share any personal details. The feature is similar to Tap to Pay, which launched a couple of years ago and lets merchants accept payments with a tap to an iPhone.
LinkedIn leans on AI to do the work of job hunting. New features include using more natural prompts to look for jobs or suitable candidates, and then providing generative AI tools to help people with their job applications; AI to surface relevant learning material; and generative AI to search all of LinkedIn to find what you need more quickly.
📈 Insightful Data
Early-stage startup funding is on the up. Dealmaking activity was higher in May than April, with VCs investing €1.7B across 407 pre-seed, seed and Series A rounds. That’s compared to April’s €1.4B across 307 rounds.
France took the early-stage crown for the most funding in Europe, Germany was second and the UK slipped to third after coming out on top in April.
The three sectors that brought in the most early-stage funding were climate tech (€478M), deeptech (€377M) and healthtech (€352M). Innovate UK, Speedinvest and Carbon13 were the three most active investors last month.
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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