Microsoft announced it is launching an incubator, Pegasus Program, through its platform for Azure credits, Startup Founders Hub. The incubator would provide $350,000 in Azure, GitHub, and LinkedIn credits to selected startups. More: - "Startups selling to enterprise companies are challenged with long sales cycles, complex regulatory requirements, and high demands for scalability and reliability. At the same time, enterprise companies know that disruption is coming, but want to work with startups who can meet their rigorous requirements," said Hans Yang, general manager of Microsoft for Startups.
- The tech company assigns a vertical lead to act as an advisor to selected startups.
- Yang says the program is paying extra attention to healthcare, AI, retail, and cybersecurity startups.
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What happened: Seeker Biologics, an early-stage biotech startup backed by 5AM Ventures, is shutting down operations. Seeker Biologics joins the growing list of VC-backed healthcare and biotech startups that have shut down operations in 2023 due to macroeconomic headwinds. Relevance: Seeker Biologics, formerly Fleet Therapeutics, had raised $24.1M in venture funding in total from four investors. The startup was developing therapeutics for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. Seeker Biologics was trying to raise $58.1M in funding, per Form D filing reviewed by Biz Journals. Where to see the impact: Healthcare and biotech startups initially showed resilience against the venture funding pullback that started in mid-2022. Global healthcare startups raised $5.7B in Apr. 2023, representing nearly 27% of the total VC deployed across all sectors. Despite this, several startups in the sector face trouble raising fresh funding as venture funding slowdown starts impacting the sector. Seeker adds to the long list of startups closing operations in 2023.
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Supply chain management company Pando announced a $30M Series B led by Iron Pillar and Uncorrelated Ventures. The startup plans to use the funds to expand its sales, marketing, and delivery capacity. More: - Founders Abhijeet Manohar and Nitin Jayakrishnan, who previously worked at India-based freight tech marketplace iDelivery, began the startup after seeing the resources being allocated to in-house tech by supply chain companies.
- Pando consolidates enterprise and third-party data on customers, suppliers, and logistics service providers, among other areas.
- The round included participation from Chiratae Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, and Next47.
- The current funding brings the firm's total raised to $45M.
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Ryan Breslow's new health and wellness startup Love Health launched its online marketplace Love.com. Breslow said the firm has raised $15M to date from MaC Venture Capital and Human Capital, of which $7.5M came through a seed round last year. More: - Breslow was the former CEO and founder of payments startup Bolt Financial, which was valued at $11B last year.
- He stepped down from the CEO role following "a series of fiery tweets attacking the founders of competing startup Stripe Inc. and its backers," per Bloomberg.
- Love Health was initially conceptualized as a DAO entity that would fund homeopathic and alternative pharmaceutical studies by conducting a poll where members with Ethereum-based 'Love tokens' could participate.
- Due to the prevailing market conditions, the firm curtailed its ambitions and decided to launch as a wellness marketplace first.
- The online marketplace is launching with 600 products from over 40 brands.
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The founders behind restaurant review site Urbanspoon and machine learning startup Algorithmia unveiled their stealth startup that focuses on task management for product teams, Blueprint AI. The team, which also includes the founders of RescueTime and Fresh Chalk, has been working on the product since December. More: - The company develops agents that automate tasks and produce connect notes and updates by connecting with tools such as GitHub.
- "Product development teams often struggle with communication and coordination as complexity grows. We realized that there was a solution to help teams focus on the creative aspects of product development," said Joe Heitzeberg, CEO of Blueprint, who formerly founded online meat marketplace Crowd Cow.
- The startup revealed it received pre-Seed funding in December but did not disclose the amount or its participants.
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San Francisco, Calif.-based data and AI firm Databricks acquired data governance startup Okera for an undisclosed sum. Databricks will be able to expand its product offerings, gain access to Okera's service isolation technology, and establish more APIs for its data governance partners as a result of the acquisition. More: - Okera is developing a no-code AI-powered data governance platform that can automatically classify personally identifiable information.
- Per Crunchbase, Okera had raised just under $30M from Felicis, Bessemer Venture Partners, Cyber Mentor Fund, ClearSky, Emergent Ventures, and others.
- Okera's co-founder and CEO, Nong Li, will join Databricks.
- Databricks will integrate Okera's products under its data and AI governance solution Unity Catalog.
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Quick Hits: - The company behind these surgical robots is planning to list on Nasdaq. Last day to fund your investment is on 5/10.*
- Open banking startup Tarabut Gateway secured $32M in fresh funding led by Pinnacle Capital to expand operations in Saudi Arabia.
- Partanna, a climate tech startup founded by former NBA player Rick Fox, secured $12M in pre-seed funding from Cherubic Ventures at a $190M post-money valuation.
- Early-stage generative AI startup Nova launched BrandGuard and BrandGPT. The former checks if the content produced by an organization is adhering to its brand guidelines and style guide, whereas BrandGPT lets users ask questions about a brand's content rules in a conversational manner.
- Inflection AI, a startup established by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, debuted a "personal intelligence" platform dubbed Pi. The app is free to use, with the firm currently introducing a web-based version and an iOS app.
- VC firm Accel is revamping its accelerator program in India to focus on AI startups. This month, the firm will add nearly half a dozen early-stage startups to its cohort.
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 |  | Karan Chafekar is a Management Consultant, Business enthusiast, and Licensed Pilot.
Nicolas is a Sr. Analyst at Inside, covering startups and transportation trends. He is an avid map maker and data nerd. Nicolas has worked in the shared-scooter space, as well as advised e-bike and moped start-ups. | | | | Editor | Vibha Chapparike is a Freelance Writer & Editor at Inside.com. With her post-graduation in Management and Finance completed, Vibha is expanding her knowledge in venture capital, business, startups, and technology. She has had a career in public relations and communications. An ardent reader and writer currently residing in Singapore, you can follow Vibha on Twitter @VChapparike. | |
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