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| Here's your daily Startups briefing: - 🚀 Chip startup SiFive expects licensing revenue to increase this year
- 👥 Total net headcount for startups declined for the first time in five years in 2023
- 🚗 Phantom Auto will shut down after failing to secure additional funding
Thank you. Karan
p/karan-chafekar | |
| 1 | | Chip startup SiFive reported a net operating loss of $113.1M on $38.2M in revenue in 2023, per documents seen by Bloomberg. The startup expects to increase its revenue by $60M this year by inking lifetime royalty deals worth at least $180M. Additionally, the firm expects another revenue boost from its second-generation chip for AI servers. More: - SiFive is led by former Qualcomm Inc. executive Patrick Little.
- The startup designs chips for AI, automotive, and computing applications.
- SiFive uses an open-source standard called RISC-V to make the chip design cheaper and more accessible.
- The startup expects to rake in $16M in revenue in the first quarter of this year, which could potentially surge to $43M in Q2, $103M in Q3, and $79M in Q4.
- After summing up all the royalty contracts, the company could potentially get between $240M and $280M in revenue this year.
Zoom out: - SiFive was last valued at $2.5B in 2022 when it raised a $175M funding round from investors.
- The firm has been backed by Intel and Qualcomm.
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| 2 | | The total net headcount for startups declined for the first time in five years in 2023, which means more people left startups than joined them in the year, per Carta. 
What happened: Carta attributes the negative net headcount trend to the funding slump and a higher dependency on AI tools, which has made many roles redundant. Everywhere Ventures' managing partner and co-founder Jenny Fielding believes that startups have become capital-efficient and leaner due to employee reductions and operational changes. The reduction in headcount has helped several startups extend their cash runways. What the numbers say: 267,818 new employees joined companies on Carta last year, while 286,195 departed. Amongst the people who departed, 47% were laid off, while 53% left voluntarily. Relevance: Startups still hired for engineering, sales, and operations roles, which accounted for a higher percentage of new hires. On the other hand, new hiring in customer success, support, and product functions declined. | | | |
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| 3 | | Remote driving startup Phantom Auto is reportedly shutting down after failing to secure additional funding, per TechCrunch. The startup was close to securing fresh funding, but negotiations for the new round ultimately fell through. More: - Phantom Auto started in 2017 as a teleoperation platform allowing remote drivers to operate autonomous vehicles on public roads.
- In 2019, it pivoted to making a remote driving system for logistics vehicles, yard trucks, and autonomous sidewalk delivery robots.
- The startup had raised $95M in total funding from investors, the last of which came in the form of a $25M funding round in 2023.
- Notable backers include Bessemer Venture Partners, Maniv Mobility, ArcBest, and ConGlobal.
- While the company had enough traction on the customer deployment side, it needed external funding to sustain and scale operations.
- Phantom Auto had inked customer agreements with Maersk, CJ Logistics, ArcBest, and Serve Robotics.
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| 4 | | Surf Beyond acquired bankrupt scooter startup Superpedestrian's European business for about €5M ($5.5M), per Sifted. With the acquisition, the Norwegian mobility startup will get Superpedestrian's tech stack, 25,000 electric scooters, and 40-50 staff members. The move will help it grow in Europe and compete with established brands in new markets. More: - Surf Beyond currently has 30,000 e-scooters, which are deployed across cities in Norway.
- The startup was last valued at £37M ($47.3M).
- Investor Songa Investments helped finance the deal in return for a 22% stake in the company.
- On the other hand, U.S.-based Superpedestrian has a presence in Portugal, Spain, France, the U.K., Italy, Austria, Switzerland, and Germany.
- It last raised a $125M Series C round in 2021 from General Catalyst and other investors.
- Superpedestrian filed for bankruptcy last December and had been searching for a buyer for its European business.
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| 5 | | Pecan AI has laid off a third of its workforce, or approximately 30 employees, as part of its organizational restructuring, per Calcalist. The layoffs primarily impacted its workforce in Israel. This is Pecan AI's second round of layoffs after it let go of 30 employees at the start of 2023. More: - "This difficult decision stems from a series of actions undertaken by the company to ensure its sustained long-term growth," the firm said in a statement.
- The company's workforce strength has reduced from 130 a year ago to 60 employees.
- The layoffs come shortly after it launched a Predictive GenAI product, which combines generative AI functions with predictive machine learning.
- Pecan AI has raised $117M in total funding to date, the last of which came in through a $66M Series C round in February 2022.
- Insight Partners led the Series C round, joined by GV, S-Capital, GGV, Dell Technologies Capital, Mindset Ventures, and Vintage Investment Partners.
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| 6 | | Biotech startup Pearl Bio is set to collaborate with pharma giant Merck to discover and develop anti-cancer biologic therapies. Pearl Bio is set to receive $1B from the deal in upfront fees, milestone payments, and royalties on advanced drug candidates emerging from the collaboration. More: - The goal of the collaboration is to create "multi-functionalized therapeutic candidates with tunable properties solving for some of the key shortcomings confronting biologics," per Pearl Bio's co-founder and president Amy Cayne Schwartz.
- Pearl Bio is building upon the work done by Farren Isaacs and Michael Jewett for using genomically recoded organisms to create better drug molecules.
- The startup emerged from stealth mode in June 2023 and has raised a $4.1M seed round led by Khosla Ventures.
- The company is in the process of raising a Series A round, which it intends to use to pursue clinical trials and further differentiate its technology.
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| 7 | | Quick Hits: - Attention busy professionals & feline owners: Meowtel has the largest elite network of insured cat sitters who tailor to your cat's every need.*
- Business workflow automation solutions startup Nanonets raised $29M in Series B funding. Accel led the round, with additional support from Y Combinator, Elevation Capital, and others.
- Water bottle startup Kadeya is one of the 10 startups joining the BREW (Business, Research and Entrepreneurship in Water) 2.0 Water Technology Accelerator program.
- Founders Julian Anjorin, Derek King, Richard Rogers, Mitchell Skomra, and Jacob Walsh plan to shut down their property crowdfunding platform, Common Owner, by the end of this year. After winding down operations, the founders will join Pittsburgh-based firm Small Change as partners.
- Body scan startup Prenuvo is introducing whole-body scans in partnership with care provider Sollis Health.
- Atomic Canyon emerged from stealth mode with an AI-powered platform to help nuclear developers gain approvals from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The startup has trained its AI platform on all 52 million pages available on NRC's Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS) database.
- Everyone wants to move fast. But you need a strong DevOps foundation to accelerate your AWS workloads & release pipelines. Jump start DevOps with DoiT.*
*This is sponsored content. | | | |
 | Analyst | | Karan Chafekar is a Management Consultant, Business enthusiast, and Licensed Pilot. | | This newsletter was edited by Aaron Crutchfield | |
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