Morning VC Brief丨2025.04.11

Week15 Highlights丨Nuro, Base Power, Blackbird Labs, Artisan AI, Solve Intelligence, 8Flow, Plug

Author

eric gu
April 11, 2025

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

TL;DR

01. Venture News

1/ Autonomous Vehicle Startup Nuro raised $106M Series E at $6B

  • Product: Licenses self-driving technology to automakers and commercial fleets, pivoting from its original delivery robot business

  • Highlight: Level 4 autonomous driving experience with deployments in California and Texas; partnerships with Uber and Toyota’s Woven Capital

  • Investor: T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Tiger Global, Greylock

  • Source

2/ Battery-Powered Home Energy Provider Base Power raised $200M Series B

  • Product: Builds next-gen battery-powered home energy service to enhance grid resilience and affordability

  • Highlight: Partnered with Lennar (top homebuilder) and Bandera Electric (utility); expanded across Texas metros; plans first Texas factory for scaling

  • Investor: Addition(Lead), Andreessen Horowitz(Lead), Lightspeed (Lead)

  • Source

3/ Blockchain-Powered Restaurant Loyalty Platform Blackbird Labs raised $50M Series B

  • Product: Connects restaurants and diners via a blockchain-based payments & loyalty app, rewarding check-ins with $FLY tokens

  • Highlight: Operates Flynet L3 blockchain, serving 1,000+ restaurants across NYC, SF, and Charleston

  • Investor: Spark Capital(Lead), a16z, Coinbase Ventures

  • Source

4/ AI BDR Startup Artisan AI raised $25M Series A

  • Product: Develops autonomous AI employees (Artisans) to fully replace human roles, starting with outbound sales via AI BDR "Ava"

  • Highlight: Success-based pricing (paid only for actual outcomes like meetings/pipeline)

  • Investor: Glade Brook Capital(Lead), HubSpot Ventures, Day One Ventures

  • Source

5/ AI Patent Platform Solve Intelligence raised $12M Series A

  • Product: Collaborative AI platform for patent drafting, prosecution, and invention harvesting, aiming to cover the entire patent lifecycle

  • Highlight: 25% month-on-month customer growth since 2023 launch; 200+ global IP teams adopted

  • Investor: The Twenty Minute VC(Lead), M12, Thomson Reuters

  • Source

6/ AI Workflow Automation Startup 8Flow raised $10M Series A

  • Product: Enterprise workflow mapping platform that analyzes and optimizes human behaviors to train AI agents for automating support and back-office processes

  • Highlight: Tracked 600M+ workflow events, strategic partnerships with ServiceNow/Okta

  • Investor: Caffeinated Capital(Lead), ServiceNow Ventures, Okta

  • Source

7/ EV Wholesale Auction Platform Plug raised $6.7M Seed

  • Product: An EV-exclusive wholesale auction platform, launched "Trade Desk" to help dealers price and sell used EVs efficiently using proprietary EV-specific criteria

  • Highlight: Facilitated $15M+ in EV sales since 2024; serves 400+ dealers

  • Investor: Floodgate(Lead), Autotech Ventures(Lead), A*(Lead)

  • Source