Morning VC Brief丨2024.08.12

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/ TSMC Sales Soared 45% in July on Strong AI Demand

2/ China’s autonomous vehicle startup WeRide seeks $5B IPO

3/ CRM Agents startup DevRev raises 100M Series A at $1.1B

4/ Waste to biochar startup Applied Carbon raises $21.5M Series A

5/ GenAI for game marketing Reforged Labs raises 3.9M Seed Round

6/ Personalized marketing startup Userled raises £4M Pre-Seed Round

01. Tech News

1/ TSMC Sales Soared 45% in July on Strong AI Demand

TSMC’s revenue rose 45% in July, accelerating its pace of growth from the June quarter and bolstering hopes for sustained strong demand for artificial intelligence chips from the likes of Nvidia. High-performance computing, led by AI, contributed 52% of TSMC’s revenue last quarter, the first time it has accounted for more than half. Link

2/ China’s autonomous vehicle startup WeRide seeks $5B IPO

WeRide, founded in 2017 and known for its diverse fleet of autonomous vehicles including taxis, vans, buses, and street sweepers, aims to raise as much as $119.4 million through the IPO. The company is currently testing and conducting commercial pilots across 30 cities in seven countries, demonstrating the global ambitions of its autonomous driving technologies.

Among the notable investors participating in this private placement are Alliance Ventures BV, the venture capital arm of the Renault Nissan Mitsubishi Alliance, and JSC International Investment Fund SPC. Link

02. Venture News

1/ CRM Agents startup DevRev raises 100M Series A at $1.1B

DevRev is an ai-native platform that unifies customer support and product development. DevRev's agents transform experiences for customer service staff, support engineers, product managers, and software developers by analyzing structured and unstructured data like customer conversations, searches, and session analytics. This round was invested by Khosla Ventures, Mayfield Fund, and Dheeraj Pandey’s family office, Param Hansa Values, bringing its valuation to $1.15 billion. Link

2/ GenAI workplace for game marketing Reforged Labs raises 3.9M Seed Round

Reforged Labs is GenAI workspace designed for game marketers. Make campaign-ready, self-improving video ads in minutes with creative and analytics AI. This round was led by DCM with participation from Y Combinator, Epakon Capital, Goodwater Capital, Phoenix Fund, Asymmetry Ventures. Link

3/ Waste to biochar startup Applied Carbon raises $21.5M Series A

Applied Carbon has developed a mobile, in-field solution that picks up agricultural crop residue left after harvesting and converts it into biochar in a single pass. Research indicates that carbon removed via biochar is one of the safest and most permanent atmospheric carbon removal methods currently available. This round was led by TO VC with participation from Congruent Ventures, Grantham Foundation, Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund and S2G Ventures. Link

4/ Personalized marketing startup Userled raises £4M Pre-Seed Round

Userled brings the power of GenAI to reshape a complex and mission-critical workflow for marketing teams. Userled has built a Cookieless Fingerprinting and Identity Layer that enables a full view of their behaviour at the account and contact level, all while being fully GDPR and CCPA-compliant. This was led by LocalGlobe with participation from Dig Ventures. Link