Morning VC Brief丨2024.10.17

Morning VC Brief is an expert daily curation of tech and venture news. Feel free to forward; the sign-up is here

00. TL;DR

1/ Photonic Supercomputing Startup Lightmatter raises $440M Series D at $4.4B

2/ AI Support Automation Platform Capacity raises $26M Series D

3/ Sales Management Platform Everstage raises $30M Series B

4/ Retail Demand Forecast Startup Autone raises $17M Series A

5/ First Response Drone Startup Paladin raises $5.2M Seed Round

6/ AI Financial Analyst Concourse raises $4.7M Seed Round

01. Venture News

1/ Photonic Supercomputing Startup Lightmatter raises $440M Series D at $4.4B

Lightmatter invented the world's first 3D-stacked photonics engine, Passage, capable of connecting thousands to millions of processors at the speed of light in extreme-scale data centers for the most advanced AI and HPC workloads.. The round was led by T. Rowe Price with participation from Fidelity, Google Ventures, and more. Link

2/ AI Support Automation Platform Capacity raises $26M Series D

Capacity helps more than 2,500 companies build stronger customer relationships with an AI-powered platform. The round was backed by TVC Capital and Toloka. Link

3/ Sales Management Platform Everstage raises $30M Series B

Everstage relieves Ops teams from the grind of admin-heavy tasks. The round was led by Eight Road Ventures with participation from Elevation Capital, and more. Link

4/ Retail Demand Forecast Startup Autone raises $17M Series A

Autone aims to forecast demand, and aid sales, while cutting waste and manual tasks. The round was led by General Catalyst with participation from Speedinvest, Y Combinator, Motier, and more. Link

5/ First Response Drone Startup Paladin raises $5.2M Seed Round

Paladin is designed to help first responder teams from cities with populations as small as 50,000 or as large as 500,000 or more. The round was led by Gradient Ventures with participation from Khosla Ventures, Paul Buchheit, Y Combinator, and more. Link

6/ AI Financial Analyst Concourse raises $4.7M Seed Round

Concourse works alongside finance teams to assist in day-to-day operations by taking on the most manual and time consuming work. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and CRV with participation from Y Combinator, Box Group, and more. Link