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| Here's a look at today's Startups briefing. - 🚀 MIT-spinout Liquid AI emerged from stealth with $37.5M.
- 🇪🇺 Median VC deal size for European serial founders is higher than for first-time founders.
- 🤝 Bootstrapped startup Airship AI is set to go public via SPAC merger.
Thank you. Karan
p/karan-chafekar | |
| 1 | | Carbon capture startup Lithos Carbon inked a $57.1M agreement with Frontier to remove around 154,000 tons of carbon. Lithos Carbon will remove the carbon from the atmosphere between 2024 and 2028. More: - The San Francisco, Calif.-based startup uses the enhanced rock weathering (ERW) technique, which involves spreading basalt and olivine rocks across large farmlands.
- These rocks speed up the CO2 absorption process after reacting with rainwater, which, after being washed away, is stored in oceans for centuries or longer.
- "We take these soil samples, bring that to our laboratories to understand how fast the rock that we've applied is dissolving [and] how fast it is capturing carbon," per Lithos founder and CEO Mary Yap.
- Lithos does the soil sampling process every six to seven months to precisely estimate the amount of CO2 removed.
Zoom out: - Frontier is a carbon removal initiative led by 12 organizations, including Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, McKinsey, JPMorgan & Chase, and Autodesk.
- Frontier plans to spend about $1B on carbon removal services by 2030.
- The firm has inked three other contracts totaling $100M.
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| 2 | | In 2023, serial founders in Europe raised median VC rounds of €4.7M ($5.07M), more than double the €1.9M ($2.05M) raised by first-time founders, per Pitchbook. 
What happened: Pitchbook believes investors are willing to invest higher sums in repeat founders since they have already demonstrated their track record in building and exiting at least one company. Additionally, serial entrepreneurs will likely have more experience with fundraising and may have a more extensive network of investors than first-time founders. Along with larger deal sizes, repeat founders are also able to fetch higher valuations. What the numbers say: The number of VC rounds for first-time founders in Europe dropped by 40%, while serial founders faced a slightly lower decline of 37.3%. Deal value for novice and repeat founders plunged by 55% and 45.5%, respectively. Relevance: Novice founders took 2.2 years to raise their first round of funding, which is nearly double the time taken by serial founders who were able to raise their first round in 1.2 years. Having a shorter span to raise the funding round helps give serial founders a headstart while growing their businesses. | | | |
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| 3 | | MIT-spinout Liquid AI emerged from stealth with $37.5M in seed funding. The startup is building a general-purpose AI system using a liquid neural network. Liquid AI bagged a post-money valuation of $303M. More: - Investors that provided the capital include OSS Capital, PagsGroup, Automattic, Samsung Next, Bold Capital Partners, and ISAI Cap Venture.
- The Palo Alto, Calif.-based firm also has a presence in Boston, Massachusetts.
- Liquid AI currently has 12 employees, which CEO Ramin Hasani expects to grow to 20 early next year.
Zoom out: - Liquid neural networks are smaller than traditional AI models and require much less computing power.
- OpenAI's GPT-3 AI model contains 175 billion parameters, while liquid neural networks typically contain less than 20,000 parameters.
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| 4 | | Redmond, Wash.-based AI startup Airship AI is reportedly planning to go public via a SPAC merger with BYTE Acquisition Corp. The bootstrapped AI startup is eyeing a $200M valuation at the public listing. "When you bootstrap, you get to try on your own dime and your own timeframe. Nobody is going to rush you," said co-founder Victor Huang. More: - While revenue plummeted 40% YoY in the first nine months of 2023, the firm expects to outperform its figures from last year.
- In the first three quarters of this year, the firm reported a $6.5M loss on $8.1M in revenue.
- Airship reportedly has a sales pipeline of $162.9M, per regulatory filings.
Zoom out: - Per Airship AI, the combined edge AI hardware and software market is forecasted to reach $7B by 2029.
- So far this year, only 29 SPAC listings have been completed, a fraction of the 613 deals completed in 2021.
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| 5 | | Data privacy solutions provider Osano acquired competitor WireWheel for an undisclosed sum. Osano will fully integrate WireWheel's data privacy tools into its platform. More: - The company had previously attempted to acquire WireWheel but backed out because it already had a strong lineup of investors.
- WireWheel has raised $44M in total funding to date from NEA, Rise of the Rest fund, Sands Capital Ventures, and Grotech Ventures.
- Osano has also raised $44.4M in equity funding to date, the last of which came in the form of a $25M Series B round led by Baird Capital earlier this August.
Zoom out: - Exit activity has declined in 2023 due to economic uncertainty.
- So far this year, Washington-based companies have seen exits worth $22.02M, a fraction of the $622.97M exits recorded at the same time last year.
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| 6 | | Solar startup Sunsave received approval from the U.K.'s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to provide solar panels and batteries on a subscription model. The British firm secured £5.4M ($6.7M) in seed funding from Norrsken, IPGL, Plug and Play, and other angel investors. More: - The latest capital injection brings the firm's total amount raised to date to £9.2M ($11.5M).
- Sunsave is following the flexible, loan-based subscription model used by U.S. and European organizations.
Zoom out: - Sunsave's competitors in this space include Germany's Enpal and Spain's SolarMente.
- Enpal raised $464M in debt funding in June, while SolarMente raised €50M ($53.9M) in debt and equity in April.
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| 7 | | Quick Hits: - Want to master Kubernetes? The Kubernetes Cookbook is a must-have guide to discover guidance on cloud architecture analytics, optimization, governance, and more.*
- Andreessen Horowitz led a $34M funding round into Air Space Intelligence, a startup that leverages AI to optimize flight routes. The firm was valued at around $300M in the recent round.
- Indian generative AI startup Sarvam raised $41M in Series A funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Institutional investors participating in the round include Khosla Ventures and Peak XV Partners.
- AI and computer vision-based weed removal machine maker Carbon Robotics extended its Series C round by an additional $8M. Names of the investors were not disclosed.
- Toast to 2024: Key affiliate marketing trends to help your campaigns start off on the right foot in the new year. Get the free report.*
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 | Analyst | | Karan Chafekar is a Management Consultant, Business enthusiast, and Licensed Pilot. | | This newsletter was edited by Vibha Chapparike | |
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