Morning VC Brief丨2024.08.15

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/ Grok’s image generator powered by Black Forest Labs

2/ Fei-Fei Li’s new AI startup valued over $1B

3/ Housing AI Assistant EliseAI raises $75M Series D at $1B

4/ Nuclear Energy Startup Aalo Atomics raises $27M Series A

5/ Decentralized AI Platform Sahara AI raises $43M Series A

6/ Global Payment Solution Sling Money raises $15M Series A

7/ Collaborative 3D Design Platform Spline raises $10M Series A

8/ RAG-as-a-Service Ragie AI raises $5.5M Seed Round

01. Tech News

1/ Grok’s image generator powered by Black Forest Labs

xAI announced it is working with Black Forest Labs to power Grok’s image generator using its FLUX.1 model. Black Forest Labs recently came out of stealth with $31 million in seed funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz.

According to Artificial Analysis, Black Forest Lab’s FLUX.1 models surpass Midjourney’s and OpenAI’s AI image generators in terms of quality, at least as ranked by users in their image arena.

This lack of safeguards is likely a major reason Musk chose this collaborator. Musk has made clear that he believes safeguards actually make AI models less safe. Link

2/ Fei-Fei Li’s new AI startup valued over $1B

Fei-Fei Li is best known for her work on ImageNet, a dataset that revolutionized computer vision. She is currently on partial leave until December 2025. She cofounded World Labs in April. World Labs is working on building AI models that can accurately estimate the three-dimensional physicality of real-world objects and environments, enabling detailed digital replicas without the need for extensive data collection. According to multiple reporters, the latest round let by NEA valued the company over $1B. Link

02. Venture News

1/ Housing AI Assistant EliseAI raises $75M Series D at $1B

EliseAI’s multimodal AI platform has revolutionized customer interactions in the housing industry, serving millions of rental units nationwide. In 2023, EliseAI brought its technology to healthcare. This round was led by Sapphire Ventures with participation from Navitas Capital, Point72 Private Investments and Koch Real Estate Investments. Link

2/ Nuclear Energy Startup Aalo Atomics raises $27M Series A

Aalo Atomics is on a mission to make small nuclear reactors in gigafactories. Since last round, Aalo Atomics has finished conceptual design of the Aalo-1 and signed a siting Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the DOE. This round was invested by Fifty Years, Valor Equity Partners, Harpoon Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Jeff Dean, and more. Link

3/ Decentralized AI Platform Sahara AI raises $43M Series A

Sahara AI offers a platform where contributions are valued, protected, and fairly rewarded, whether you're a research scientist looking to share a groundbreaking model, an enterprise seeking tailored AI solutions, or an individual wanting to monetize your data safely. This round was led by Binance Labs, Pantera Capital and Polychain with participation from Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners, and more. Link

4/ Global Payment Solution Sling Money raises $15M Series A

Sling Money designed to make the global transfer of money instant, easy and low-cost. Transfers on Sling Money are performed using Pax Dollar (USDP), which is a US dollar-backed stablecoin issued by Paxos Trust Company. This round was led by Union Square Ventures with participation from Slow Ventures and Ribbit Capital. Link

5/ Collaborative 3D Design Platform Spline raises $10M Series A

Spline is dedicated to revolutionizing 3D design by making it accessible to anyone with a web browser. Spline community has already designed more than 7 million scenes. This round was led by Third Point Ventures with participation from Gradient Ventures, Y Combinator and Firestreak. Link

6/ RAG-as-a-Service Ragie AI raises $5.5M Seed Round

Ragie AI enables developers to build AI applications connected to their own data. RAG leverages a company’s own data to generate more insightful content. This round was led by Craft Ventures with participation from Chapter One Ventures, Valor Equity Partners and Saga VC. Link