Morning VC Brief丨2024.08.02

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/ Runway Release Gen-3 Alpha Turbo

2/ Microsoft says OpenAI is now a competitor in AI and search

3/ Suno claims training model on copyrighted music

4/ Chemicals Marketplace Knowde raises 60M Series C

5/ Text-to-Image startup Black Forest Labs raises 31M Seed Round

6/ Kids Chatbot startup Heeyo raises 3.5M Seed Round

7/ Multi-model routing startup Not Diamond raises 3.5M Seed Round

8/ Parenting tech startup Joy raises 10M Seed Round

9/ Space-energy generation startup Star Catcher raises 12.25M Seed Round

01. Tech News

1/ Runway Release Gen-3 Alpha Turbo

Runway Gen-3 Alpha Turbo can generate videos 7x faster than the original Gen-3 Alpha, while matching its performance on many use cases. Gen-3 Alpha Turbo redefines the efficiency frontier for high-fidelity video generation, unlocking many new possibilities of near real-time interactivity. Link

2/ Microsoft says OpenAI is now a competitor in AI and search

Microsoft’s annually updated list of competitors now includes OpenAI, a long-term strategic partner. Some companies choose to pay OpenAI for access to its models. Others go through Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service.

An OpenAI spokesperson said that nothing about the relationship between the two companies has changed and that their partnership was established with the understanding that they would compete. Microsoft remains a good partner to OpenAI. Link

3/ Suno claims training model on copyrighted music

The RIAA filed the lawsuit against Udio and Suno on June 24, alleging that the companies trained their models using copyrighted music. Suno admitted in a court filing that it did, in fact, train its AI model using copyrighted songs. But it claimed that doing so was legal under the fair-use doctrine.

Suno CEO said, “We train our models on medium- and high-quality music we can find on the open internet… Much of the open internet indeed contains copyrighted materials, and some of it is owned by major record labels. Training AI model from data on the “open internet” is no different than a “kid writing their own rock songs after listening to the genre.” Link

02. Venture News

1/ Chemicals Marketplace Knowde raises 60M Series C

Knowde is an online marketplace for chemicals and polymers. The marketplace currently has more than 8,000 chemical suppliers and works with such brands as Unilever, Johnson & Johnson and P&G. This round was led by Sequoia Capital with participation from Blue Cloud Ventures and Point72 Private Investments. Link

2/ Text-to-Image startup Black Forest Labs raises 31M Seed Round

Black forest labs is founded by the original creators of Stable Diffusion, unveiled its brand new FLUX.1 text-to-image model suite, injecting new life into the open-source artificial intelligence community. This round was led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Garry Tan, Brendan Iribe and Michael Ovitz. Link

3/ Kids Chatbot startup Heeyo raises 3.5M Seed Round

Heeyo offers children between the ages of 3 and 11 an AI chatbot and over 2,000 interactive games and activities, including books, trivia and role-playing adventures. Founder Qu noted that Heeyo is COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) compliant. This round was backed by OpenAI Startup Fund, Alexa Fund, Pear VC and other investors. Link

4/ Multi-model routing startup Not Diamond raises 3.5M Seed Round

Not Diamond automatically calls the best model for any prompt and improves in real-time based on your feedback, continuously learning your preferences. This round was led by defy.vc with participation from the world’s leading AI scientists, engineers, and executives including Jeff Dean (Google), Julien Chaumond (Hugging Face), Ion Stoica (Anyscale, Databricks) , and many more. Link

5/ Parenting tech startup Joy raises 10M Seed Round

Joy offers 24/7 expert-led support for parents. The flagship product is Joy On Call, which delivers on demand personalized guidance to parents via SMS, leveraging real experts and practitioners, as well as relevant AI-powered insights spanning a range of Joy-curated and developed content. This round was led by Forerunner Ventures with participation from Magnify Ventures, Obvious Ventures. Link

6/ Space-energy generation startup Star Catcher raises 12.25M Seed Round

Star Catcher is positioned to help eliminate power constraints on space operations through the construction of its Star Catcher Network, the world’s first space-based energy grid. This round was led by Initialized Capital and B Capital with participation from Rogue VC. Link