New funding rounds confirm that money attracts money

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Money attracts money, as the saying goes. This week seemed to confirm it, with a couple startups announcing new rounds of funding only months after their previous ones, and familiar names launching new ventures.

Most interesting startup stories from the week

Whether it’s about IPOs, lobbying, or launching in public, finding momentum is key to success.

Confetti time: Salva Health won the Startup Battlefield competition at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 with the promise to lower breast cancer mortality thanks to an affordable screening device. The four other finalists out of the initial 200 shortlist were Gecko Materials, Luna, MabLab, and Stitch3D.

Half Zomato: India’s largest food delivery and quick-commerce scale-up Swiggy is looking to go public at a $11.3 billion value, less than half the market cap of its rival Zomato.

Wait and see: Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman declared that she wasn’t surprised that we haven’t seen a resurgence in startup IPOs yet. However, she thinks these will start to return with momentum in 2025.

EU Inc momentum: A petition calling for a new legal form for European startups is gaining momentum, with hopes of fostering Pan-European tech champions, but there are many hurdles to overcome along the way.

Eaten up: Generative AI unicorn ElevenLabs hired the team behind open source read-it-later app Omnivore. The team will now focus on ElevenReader, ElevenLabs’ own reader app.

Most interesting fundraises this week

If the names below sound familiar, it’s because several of these startups raised their previous rounds quite recently.

Chatbots: Sierra, an AI customer service startup co-founded by OpenAI chairman Bret Taylor and longtime Google exec Clay Bavor, is valued at $4.5 billion after raising $175 million.

Threat intelligence: French cybersecurity startup Filigran secured a $35 million Series B round of funding for its threat management suite of products, which includes both open source and enterprise offerings.

More bots: Read AI, whose AI bot summarizes meetings and more, released a Chrome extension and announced it raised $50 million in a Series B funding round, only six months after its $21 million Series A.

Protein cages: Archon Biosciences emerged from stealth and announced it raised $20 million in seed funding. The biotech startup is applying AI to drug development, with a focus on addressing shortcomings of antibody treatments.

Chip demand: GMI Cloud, a U.S.-based startup providing GPU cloud infrastructure, raised a Series A round of funding consisting of $15 million in equity and $67 million in debt financing. The round was led by Headline Asia, with participation from strategic investors based in Asia. 

Hot wave: Brightwave, a startup that developed an AI agent for asset managers, raised a $15 million Series A only four months after its seed round.

Most interesting VC and fund news this week

Wilde bets: Actor and director Olivia Wilde quietly launched a venture firm late last year, according to Bloomberg. Called Proximity Ventures, it is already investing in the consumer and enterprise sectors.

Same thesis, more capital: African venture capital firm Janngo Capital closed its oversubscribed second fund at €73 million (around $78 million) and plans to keep on writing checks ranging from €50,000 to €5 million.

New frontiers: Crosscut’s $100 million sixth fund will invest in “frontier tech,” including energy and power, space and underwater exploration, advanced manufacturing, advanced materials, and security and defense.

Horizon Europe: The European Innovation Council will dedicate €1.4 billion (about $1.5 billion) to European deep tech research and startups next year, a €200 million budget increase in comparison with 2024.

Last but not least

AI is often present in funding stories these days, but aggregate data adds more nuance to the picture. Of the nearly 240 mega-rounds into U.S. startups that Crunchbase tracked so far this year, 87 went to biotech and healthcare, placing this category ahead of pure AI, although crossovers are common — for instance, in AI-enabled drug discovery. Xaira Therapeutics is one example; it raised a $1 billion mega-round earlier this year.