Wanna control a computer with a brain?
NVIDIA priced at $2 trillion, Reddit drops shares to users at IPO, FTX selling Anthropic, and more.
š In the Know
Elon Musk claims that the first patient to receive a Neuralink implant can control a computer mouse with his brain. "Progress is good, and the patient seems to have made a full recovery, with no ill effects that we are aware of," Musk said. "Patient is able to move a mouse around the screen by just thinking."
On its Q4 earnings call last week,Ā Nvidia said it pulled in a stunning $22.1B in quarterly revenueĀ as more and more companies use its chips for their AI models. The indicator went up 22% from Q3 and up a stunning 265% from a year ago, reaching a record full-year revenue of $60.9B, up 126%. As a result, Nvidia hit a $2 trillion market cap last week.
Reddit finally filed to go public last week and revealed its plans to allocate a significant portion of its IPO shares to its users. According to the WSJ,Ā the company plans to reserve an as-yet-undetermined number of shares for 75,000 of its most prolific redditors when it goes public next month at its IPO price.
GoogleĀ is shutting down its standalone Google Pay app. Google has declared it will discontinue the service in the US to enhance user experience by simplifying the app. All users will be migrated to Google Wallet, with services in other countries remaining unaffected.
A bankruptcy judge has ruled that FTX can sell its 7.84% stake in Anthropic, a hot AI startup that is focused on developing ethically rigorous LLMs. As a reminder ā FTX invested $500M in Anthropic in 2021.
š VentureVista
Orkes, a startup thatĀ provides tools for managing and orchestrating workflows across microservices, making it easier for developers to build and scale applications composed of multiple smaller services,Ā raised a $20M Series A roundĀ led by Nexus Venture Partners, with participation from previous investors Battery Ventures and Vertex Ventures US.
Orkes CEO Jeu George added that what people were clearly looking for was āa layer above the cloudā that would help them focus less on the infrastructure and orchestration challenges and more on building the applications. Today, thousands of companies rely on Conductor (built by Orkes) to manage much of their tech stack.Monite, a startup that offers online tools to help SMBs automate the sending of invoices and the processing of bills, raised a $6M seed extension co-led by Valar Ventures and Third Prime.
Monite optimizes the manner in which B2B platforms offer secure revenue and spending management workflows to their customers within 4-5 weeks by leveraging flexible APIs and SDKs.Spektr, a provider of a platform that automates and streamlines compliance tasks for businesses, raised ā¬5M in seed funding led by Northzone, Seedcamp, and PreSeed Ventures.
Spektr wants to launch aĀ no-code solutionĀ that automates risk processes, sets up monitoring, resolves alerts instantly, and integrates easily with vendors. By automating 90% of risk and monitoring tasks, the company boosts operational efficiency and drive higher conversion rates for a business.
Nodeshift, a startup that offers a decentralized cloud computing service, presenting what it believes to be a cost-effective alternative for GPU-powered virtual machines, storage, and compute deployments, raised a $3.2M round led by Inovo.vc, with Notion Capital, 10X Founders, and Kestrel0x1 also anteing up.
NodeShift provides a single API for access to excess compute, storage and graphics accelerators from independent data center operators and through connections to low-cost decentralized web services like Akash and Filecoin. The company promises that it can save its users well over 70% in computing costs compared to the large cloud providers. That includes access to Nvidia accelerators like the ever-in-demand A100 GPUs at a significant discount.VectorShift, a startup that claims it can enable users without deep technical knowledge to build AI-powered search engines, assistants, and chatbots, raised a $3M seed round. Investors included 1984 Ventures, defy.vc, Formus Capital, Y Combinator, Soma Capital, 468 Ventures, and Pioneer Ventures.
VectorShift provides enterprises with an end-to-end AI platform where users can simply drag and drop components to build, deploy, and maintain production-grade LLM workflows, search engines, assistants, and automation.Arkis, a prime brokerage firm accelerating DeFi adoption in large institutions, closed a $2.2M pre-seed round led by gumi Cryptos Capital, with participation from Roosh Ventures, G1 Ventures, and Blocklabs.
āArkis creates the perfect interaction between borrowers and lenders in the DeFi space. Smart contracts, which are the backbone of Arkis technology, provide a new level of transparency, security, and efficiency in debt transactions with crypto assets. Weāre very thrilled to support Ukrainian founders in achieving their ambitious goals,ā comments Adam Hashchyshyn, Principal at Roosh Ventures
š„ Exits:
Capital One plans to acquire Discover for $35.3B. If approved by regulators, the deal would combine two of Americaās largest credit card companies, making Capital One the U.S.ās largest credit card company by loans (leapfrogging JPMorgan) and its third-largest by purchasing volume.
Xalts, a fintech startup founded just 18 months ago, has acquired Contour Network, a digital trade platform set up by eight major banks, including HSBC, Standard Chartered, and BNP. The startup plans to turn Contour into a rail connecting banks, corporations, and other institutions and integrate it with Xaltsā platform.
š”Innovation Spotlight
Stable Diffusion 3 arrives to solidify the early lead in AI imagery against Sora and Gemini. Stability AI has announced Stable Diffusion 3, the latest and most powerful version of the companyās image-generating AI model. The model is based on a new architecture and will work on a variety of hardware.
Turkey's Garanti BBVA has rolled out a Mastercard contactless credit card with a built-in fingerprint scanner. To make a payment with the Bonus Platinum Biometric Card, shoppers tap a contactless terminal and put their finger on the sensor. Customers can also choose to add a password requirement.
š Insightful Data
Founder CEOs weigh up precarious future. Maddy Cross, partner at Erevena, looked at 300 VC-backed European companies founded between 2010 and 2020 that have raised $50M or more.
She found that 244 (81%) are still led by their original founder CEO, with the remaining 56 led by a replacement chief executive (either a cofounder or an external hire).Ā
Of those 56 companies, 36% saw their original founder CEO resign last year. Even 2020 ā arguably the other most turbulent year in recent times ā saw fewer founder CEO resignations from this cohort.
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.Ā
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