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| 1 | | AR/VR startups are counting on Apple's upcoming mixed reality headset —set to be unveiled on Monday next week— to revive the industry. Per WSJ, several startups struggled last year to raise funding after the investors' interest in the AR/VR domain waned. More: - Investors' interest has been piqued again by the rumors surrounding Apple's latest product.
- Acequia Capital's venture partner Todd Hooper said, "I think VR will be up for a renaissance with Apple."
- Apple's headset has reportedly been in development for the past seven years.
- It is expected to be launched with a $3,000 price tag, with initial estimates for shipments at launch ranging between 200,000 to 300,000, per Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.
- Grant Anderson, the founder of a virtual tabletop-game startup Mirrorscape, said, "It's kind of a make or break moment because Apple, out of any company in the world, has the ability to make this a must-have consumer item."
Zoom out: - Investors' interest in the AR/VR domain has ebbed and flowed over the recent years, mostly driven by Facebook's acquisition of VR headset maker Oculus for $2B and its rebranding to Meta Platforms.
- VCs invested $4.8B into VR startups in 2022, down a quarter from its peak of $6.3B in 2019, per Pitchbook.
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VCs deployed $380M in North American startups between pre-seed and Series A stages this week from 29 May to 2 June, per Pitchbook data. Pharmaceutical startups raked in 24% of the funding this week. AI, fintech, and blockchain startups nabbed 20%, 9%, and 6% share of the financing, respectively. Here are the 10 largest rounds announced this week: Pharmaceutical - Canadian radiopharmaceuticals manufacturing startup AtomVie Global Radiopharma raised $90M in Series A funding. Investors' names were not disclosed.
AI - Generative AI search startup Vectara raised $28M in seed funding led by Race Capital.
- Open-source AI project MindsDB extended its seed funding round with additional financing of $25M led by Mayfield. The funding brings the total raised under the seed round to $41.5M.
Web3 - Web3 payments startup Transak nabbed $20M in Series A funding led by CE Innovation Capital.
SpaceTech - SpaceTech startup Hubble Network, which intends to connect Bluetooth devices via satellite networks, received $20M in Series A funding led by Transpose Platform, with participation from Y Combinator, Yes.VC, Convective Capital, and others.
Machine learning - Low-code machine learning platform maker Predibase raked in $12.2M through a Series A extension funding round led by Felicis Ventures Management.
InsurTech - Miami, Fla.-based insurtech startup Ole Life raised $12M in Series A funding co-led by Mundi Ventures and AV8 Ventures.
Robotics - Canadian robotics startup Human in Motion Robotics closed its Series A round with $10M in funding led by Beno Holdings.
FinTech - Alternative investment fintech platform RealBlocks raised $10M in Series A extension funding co-led by Crosslink Capital and Left Lane Capital.
Cybersecurity - Cybersecurity startup Galvanick raised $10M in seed funding from MaC Venture Capital, Founders Fund, Village Global, 8090 Industries, and others.
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| 3 | | AI chatbot company Character.ai says it reached 1.7 million new installs within a week of launching. The mobile version went live for iOS and Android on May 23. More: - The company claims users have created more than 10 million characters for chatting.
- The startup claims it reached 700,000 Android installs within the first 48 hours, with the trend continuing due to large amounts of users in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Brazil.
- Character.ai was founded by Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, who previously built LaMDA models at Google.
- The company raised a $150M Series A in March led by Andreessen Horowitz, valuing Character at $1B.
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| 4 | | Aurum is acquiring Indian proptech startup NestAway for $10.9M. The transaction price represents a nearly 95% drop over its peak valuation of $227M in 2019. More: - Aurum initially acquired NestAway's unit for $6.8M.
- It is now adding another $3.6M to stabilize NestAway's business, per TechCrunch.
- NestAway's troubles can be partially attributed to the pandemic, due to which rental listings on its platform dropped from 50,000 to 18,000 properties.
- As a result, the company's revenues tanked to $3M in 2022, down from $9.5M two years ago.
- The acquisition deal marks almost a complete write-off for investors.
- The firm had raised $115M in VC funding from Sequoia Capital India, Tiger Global, Goldman Sachs, Chiratae Ventures, and others.
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| 5 | | Semiconductor startup iDEAL hopes to curb wasteful power conversion with a new higher-efficiency power chip. The startup has developed a silicon chip using SuperQ technology that can improve performance metrics by almost 500%. More: - iDEAL has been working in stealth mode since its founding in 2017.
- The startup emerged from stealth with a $75M funding round in May.
- The firm is backed by semiconductor company Applied Material's investing division.
Zoom out: - Per iDEAL's CEO Mark Granahan, the average efficiency of power conversion devices is typically 84%, with the rest dissipated due to heat.
- With iDEAL's SuperQ technology, power conversion wastage can be reduced from 16% to 12.8%.
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| 6 | | Xonai, a British startup that reduces cloud costs by optimizing data infrastructure, raised $3.5M in seed funding. Kadmos Capital led the funding round with participation from Adara Ventures, Deep Science Ventures, Nauta Capital, Notion Capital, and others. More: - The startup's platform currently supports Apache Spark, with integrations with other packages in the pipeline.
- Co-founder and CTO Leandro Vaz said, "We are helping organizations that need to scale data- and AI-driven products to reduce cost, and accelerate time to value."
- Xonai's automated platform leverages hardware acceleration to increase the speed and efficiency of workloads using fewer resources.
- Their solution caters to the adtech, financial services, retail, and gaming sector. However, it can be applied to any data-heavy industry.
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- Polish VC firm ff Venture Capital's new "ff Red & White" fund has secured capital commitments worth €32M ($34.2M) against a target of €60M ($64.2M). The fund is aimed at late-seed and Series A stage startups within enterprise software, industrial tech, and sustainability transformation sectors across Central and Eastern Europe.
- German biotech startup Ariceum Therapeutics acquired British competitor Theragnostics for $2.5M in upfront cash. The latter is set to receive an additional $41.5M contingent on achieving certain milestones.
- Swedish EV startup Luvly is looking to bring its first tiny urban EV, dubbed Luvly O, to market by the second half of this year.
- Fusion VC reached the final close of its latest fund at $20M. The fund will invest in pre-seed startups in Israel.
- Invest in Ripple, innovating global finance with over 300 connected financial institutions across 40 countries.*
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INSIDE STARTUPS LEADERBOARD (7 DAYS) |
 | Analyst | | 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.
| | This newsletter was edited by Vibha Chapparike | |
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