Morning VC Brief丨2024.08.09

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/ Google DeepMind develops a table tennis robot

2/ Amazon Enlists TikTok, Pinterest to Sell Everywhere

3/ Hugging Face acquire XetHub

4/ Laundry businesses SaaS Cents raises 40M Series B

5/ Business storytelling startup Napkin AI raises 10M Seed Round

6/ DAF payment solution Chariot raises 11M Series A

7/ Extended reality startup Metadome AI raises 6.5M Series A

8/ Plant-base cheese startup Plonts raises 12M Seed Round

01. Tech News

1/ Google DeepMind develops a table tennis robot

In a newly published paper titled “Achieving Human Level Competitive Robot Table Tennis,” Google’s DeepMind Robotics team is showcasing its own work on the game. The researchers have effectively developed a “solidly amateur human-level player” when pitted against a human component.

The system’s biggest shortcoming is its ability to react to fast balls. DeepMind suggests the key reasons for this are system latency, mandatory resets between shots and a lack of useful data. Link

2/ Amazon Enlists TikTok, Pinterest to Sell Everywhere

TikTok will enable users to buy items from Amazon advertisements without leaving the TikTok app. Amazon also recently struck a similar arrangement with Pinterest, which has long wanted to make its scrapbooking app easier to shop from.

Traditionally, people who want to buy items shown in the ads Amazon has purchased on apps like TikTok and Instagram have had to click a link that redirects them to Amazon’s website. Link

4/ Hugging Face acquire XetHub

XetHub’s goal is to enable ML teams to operate like software teams, by scaling Git file storage to TBs, seamlessly enabling experimentation and reproducibility, and providing the visualization capabilities to understand how datasets and models evolve. Hugging Face describes the acquisition as its largest to date. XetHub was backed by Madrona. Link

02. Venture News

1/ Laundry businesses SaaS Cents raises 40M Series B

Cents provides POS, online ordering, payments hardware, marketing tools, and business management software for all garment care and vended laundry businesses including laundromats, dry cleaners, alterations, and shared laundry rooms. The platform currently powers over 2,700 retail laundries, about 1 in 14 laundromats in the US. This round was led by Camber Creek with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners and Tiger Global. Link

2/ Business storytelling startup Napkin AI raises 10M Seed Round

Napkin AI transforms text such as business plans, pitch decks and newsletters into imagery that can better communicate the complex ideas they detail. To get started, users paste their existing document into Napkin’s text box, click the spark icon on any part of the text, and it will transform the selected text into a series of recommended visuals. This round was led by CRV and Accel. Link

3/ DAF payment solution Chariot raises 11M Series A

Chariot’s a payment option that nonprofits can add to their website, allowing donors to ‘one-click’ give with their Donor Advised Fund. A donor-advised fund (DAF) is a specialized financial account used for the purpose of charitable giving. This round was led by Maveron with participation from Spark Capital, SV Angel and Y Combinator. Link

4/ Extended reality startup Metadome AI raises 6.5M Series A

Metadome helps companies render high fidelity content across all devices for various use cases across 3D, AR, and VR shopping. This round was led by Siana Capital with participation from Alteria Capital, 3to1 Capital and Chiratae Ventures. Link

5/ Plant-base cheese startup Plonts raises 12M Seed Round

Plonts produces plant-based cheese to promote sustainable foods. Plant-based cheeses are made from microorganisms, like bacteria, yeast and fungi. Plonts claims its cheese has around three grams of protein per one-ounce serving versus the often zero protein of other kinds of plant-based milks. This round was led by Lowercarbon Capital with participation from Accelr8, Litani Ventures and Pillar VC. Link