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| Here's a look at today's Startups briefing. - 💰 AI21 extends Series C round with an additional $53M.
- 🇪🇺 Overall hiring rate for European startups dips to 37%
- 💵 Pocket FM touches $160M in ARR, as it starts raising an additional $80M.
Thank you. Karan
p/karan-chafekar | |
| 1 | | Enterprise-focused AI solutions startup AI21 extended its Series C round by another $53M. The fresh sum brings the total raised under the round to $208M. The generative AI and large language model maker was valued at $1.4B at the latest round, the same as before. The firm will use the proceeds to accelerate product development and increase its team size by 100 in 2024. It currently employs around 260 people. More: - The fresh funding brings the firm's total capital raised to date to $336M.
- Intel Corp's venture arm, Intel Capital, and Comcast's VC division, Comcast Ventures, participated in the funding round.
- AI21's Jurassic-2 AI models power the AI21 Studio and multilingual reading and writing AI assistant Wordtune.
- AI21 Studio is the firm's flagship product that helps businesses build apps by providing text-based prompts.
- AI21 appointed Tom Nides, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, as the company's first independent director.
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| 2 | | The overall hiring rate for European startups has slowed down from 60% last year to just 37% this year, per a new report by HR tech firm Ravio. 
What the numbers say: The slowdown is more pronounced for late-stage startups, which have reduced the hiring rate to 31%. The hiring slowdown has impacted engineering and product roles more severely than commercial roles, such as sales and account management. What happened: Startups across all stages have slowed down hiring due to the slump in VC funding, plunging public market valuations, and closed IPO markets. Where to see the impact: 55% of the startups surveyed by Ravio stated employee counts will remain flat in H1 2024. Meanwhile, the remaining 44.8% of respondents said they would increase their headcount over the next six months. Early-stage companies were less likely to add new roles over the next six months, with most (67%) only replacing leavers. | | | |
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| 3 | | Audio entertainment startup Pocket FM crossed $160M in annual recurring revenue. The firm is also in talks with investors to raise an additional $80M in funding, sources informed TechCrunch. Existing investor Lightspeed is reportedly set to lead the new round. More: - The firm recently expanded into the U.S. and started offering customers a non-subscription offering.
- According to sources, the fresh funding could value the startup at nearly $800M.
- Pocket FM was able to increase its ARR by six to seven fold compared to last year.
- The firm had previously announced its intention to reach $100M ARR by the end of 2023.
- Per Tracxn, the firm has raised $93M in total funding to date from investors, the most notable of which are Tencent and Times Internet.
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| 4 | | Crypto data firm CoinGecko acquired British NFT data startup Zash for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition will help CoinGecko become a one-stop solution for all cryptocurrency data. CoinGecko will integrate Zash's API into its own products by Q2 2024. More: - Zash aggregates data from one million different NFT collections and marketplaces from 87 different blockchain networks, including Ethereum, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, and Solana.
- Per Crunchbase, Zash had raised an undisclosed amount through a pre-seed funding round earlier this year.
- Investors WWVentures and Cogitent Ventures backed the round.
Zoom out: - CoinGecko's founder and COO, Bobby Ong, is confident about the prospects of NFTs despite the recent waning interest.
- Ong said, "We believe that NFTs will continue to innovate beyond PFPs, GameFi and unlock new opportunities and use-cases worldwide."
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| 5 | | Web3 infrastructure startup Privy bagged $18M in Series A funding. The firm intends to use the proceeds to expand its team size and grow its library of on-chain solutions for developers. More: - Crypto-focused investment firm Paradigm led the round, joined by existing investors Sequoia Capital, Blue Yard, and Archetype.
- Paradigm's co-founder and managing partner Matt Huang joined Privy's board of directors.
- Privy helps established organizations develop blockchain-based services.
Zoom out: - Privy has recently collaborated with Web3 loyalty app Blackbird, which raised a $24M Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz earlier last month.
- Blackbird uses Privy's wallet solutions to reward long-time customers with perks and rewards.
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| 6 | | French startup Osium AI bagged a $2.6M seed round from Y Combinator, Singular, Collaborative Fund, Raise Fund, and other investors. The startup is leveraging AI for research and development in material science. The firm has only two employees and will use the proceeds to expand its team size. More: - Osium AI was founded by Luisa Bouneder and Sarah Najmark.
- Najmark spent three years working on robotics and deeptech at Google's moonshot division Google X.
- She said, "Our users saw that our solution could enable them to accelerate both the development and analysis of materials by a factor of 10. So right from the start of our testing, we saw that we were bringing value."
- The firm is talking to 30 industrial companies to become clients.
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- Colossal Biosciences, a startup working on bringing back the extinct dodo bird, partnered with the nonprofit Mauritian Wildlife Foundation to "collaborate on the restoration of critical ecosystems through invasive species removal, revegetation and community-awareness efforts."
- Distributed data processing startup, Expanso bagged $7.5M in seed funding co-led by General Catalyst and Hetz Ventures.
- Stable Diffusion released a new product called Stable Video Diffusion, which will allow users to create video from a single image.
- Swedish fintech startup ArK Capital has raised an undisclosed sum from Blackstone's former senior managing director, John McCormick. The funding will help the firm gear up for its expansion into the U.S. market.
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Term of the Day Marketing plan: A marketing plan is a comprehensive document that outlines an organization's marketing objectives, strategies, and tactics for a specific period Question of the Week What perks would convince you to return to the office? Join the conversation |
 | Analyst | | Karan Chafekar is a Management Consultant, Business enthusiast, and Licensed Pilot. | | This newsletter was edited by Vibha Chapparike | |
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