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| Here’s your daily Startups briefing: - 👤 Getir dismissed its chief strategy officer amidst a deepening shareholder dispute
- 🌉 Bay Area AI startups bagged 50% of the global venture funding in 2023
- 🚀 Cruise founder launched a robotics startup with seed funding from VCs
Thank you. Karan
p/karan-chafekar | |
| 1 | | Grocery delivery startup Getir dismissed its chief strategy officer, Derya Erdemli. The move comes amidst a rising conflict between the founders and shareholders. According to sources, Erdemli supported the foreign investors' downsizing strategy. More: - The Turkish startup recently shut down its foreign operations after having difficulty implementing its quick 10-minute delivery service overseas.
- Getir has raised about $2B in total funding from investors, including Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global.
- Abu Dhabi's wealth fund, Mubadala, is the biggest shareholder, holding a 30% stake in Getir.
- CEO and co-founder Nazim Salur has a 25% stake in the company.
- Since last December, Mubadala and Salur have been involved in a dispute over the former's proposal to downsize international operations and lower cash burn.
- Mubadala agreed to provide an additional sum of $200M, contingent upon the changes in the board, a revamp of senior management, and Getir meeting certain targets.
- The investment firm has already disbursed $90M of the committed sum, but Getir has not yet called a meeting to determine the new board.
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| 2 | | AI startups headquartered in the Bay Area bagged more than 50% of the total global venture funding invested in the sector in 2023, per Crunchbase. 
What the numbers say: VC firms invested $27B in Bay Area AI startups, nearly double than 2022's tally of $14B. In 2022, AI startups in the Bay Area had secured 29% of all AI funding. Bay Area startups represented 17% of the global rounds in the sector in 2023. What happened: Investor interest in the AI sector skyrocketed after the debut of OpenAI's ChatGPT platform in Q1 2023. 100M users started using the platform months after its launch. Microsoft committed $10B to OpenAI, further accelerating the VC funding invested in the sector. Relevance: Three of the leading foundation AI model companies, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Inflection AI, are based in the Bay Area and have raised more than $1B each from VCs. | | | |
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| 3 | | Kyle Vogt, the founder and former CEO of self-driving company Cruise, co-founded a new robotics startup called The Bot Company. The startup secured $150M in seed funding from Quiet Capital, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, Stripe co-founder John Collison, and Spark Capital's Nabeel Hyatt. More: - Other founders include former Tesla AI tech lead Paril Jain and Cruise software engineer Luke Holoubek.
- According to sources, the newly formed company has a post-money valuation of $550M.
- The startup reportedly plans to make robots that can do household chores, like housekeeping and laundry.
Zoom out: - Vogt established Cruise in 2013 and sold it to GM in 2016.
- Vogt stepped down from the CEO role at Cruise after one of its robotaxi struck and dragged a woman in October.
- Regulators suspended the company's license to operate in California, after which the company halted operations in all three states.
- Vogt also co-founded a live-streaming service called Twitch.
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| 4 | | Robotics startup Terrahaptix will shut down its defense division and focus completely on the global commercial market. Starting today, the company will stop developing or researching military systems. Co-founder Nathan Nwachuku said, "Since we launched this company, the board has been deliberating what kind of legacy we want to leave behind. We do not want ethical disasters in our hands." More: - The robotics startup reported $1M in revenue from commercial customers within four months of the launch of its commercial operations.
- Terrahaptix recently unveiled its flagship surveillance drone, Archer, and automation operating software, Artemis.
- The strategy pivot comes ahead of the launch of its Abuja manufacturing facility.
- The startup wants to produce low-cost, mobile robots and automate core industries globally.
Zoom out: - Automation and robotics for core industries, such as energy, construction, mining, and agriculture, is expected to become a $268.4B market globally.
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| 5 | | Mexican fintech startup Aplazo secured $45M in Series B funding led by QED Investors. The firm will use the fresh capital to further develop its omnichannel payment platform and expand its reach, in both online and offline channels. More: - Aplazo provides buy-now-pay-later services to users in Mexico without a credit card or credit history.
- The fintech startup uses data and technology to limit credit losses, leveraging AI to underwrite each transaction.
- The company tripled its revenue last year.
- CEO Angel Peña claims the startup was close to cash-flow breakeven in the last few months.
- New investor Volpe Capital and existing investors Oak HC/FT, Kaszek, and Picus Capital participated in the funding round.
- The latest round brings the firm's total equity funding raised to date to $100M and debt funding to $75M.
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| 6 | | Generative AI startup Anthropic launched its AI assistant Claude in Europe. The firm also added support for "multiple languages," including French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Co-founder and president Daniela Amodei confirmed that the firm is in the process of raising additional capital to capitalize on the heightened investor interest in the AI sector. More: - Anthropic recently opened its API to developers in Europe looking to build apps and integrate AI models.
- The startup has raised nearly $8B from investors, of which $7B came in the last year.
- Anthropic last raised capital at a post-money valuation of $18.4B.
- Nearly 60 investors have backed Anthropic to date, including Amazon, Google, Salesforce, SAP, and Zoom.
- The firm has 40 employees in its London office and is gearing up to hire more staff at its upcoming office in Dublin.
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| 7 | | Quick Hits: - Pepper, an e-commerce platform for food distributors, raised $30M in Series B funding led by ICONIQ Growth. New investor Harmony Partners participated in the round, joined by existing backers Index Ventures, Greylock, and Imaginary.
- 01.AI, a Chinese AI startup founded by technology pioneer Kai-Fu Lee, is about to launch a free productivity assistant called Wanzhi, to help users create spreadsheets, documents, and presentations more quickly.
- AI technology startup NICO Labs appointed Rich Castaldo as its new CEO.
- Cybersecurity startup Rezilion is seeking the court's approval to sell its assets to GitHub for $7.3M, which will give the firm enough capital to cover all its debts and avoid bankruptcy.
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 | Analyst | | Karan Chafekar is a Management Consultant, Business enthusiast, and Licensed Pilot. | | This newsletter was edited by Karan Chafekar | |
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 | JobsOhio exists to help companies and their people thrive and make Ohio your competitive advantage. | |
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