Morning VC Brief丨2024.08.20

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/ Chip Startup Fabric Cryptography raises $33M Series A

2/ Global P2P Shopping Platform Grabr raises $5.4M Venture Round

3/ Content Management for Game Studio Mudstack raises $4M Seed Round

4/ Climate Tech Startup Root Global raises €8M Seed Round

5/ Metal Foams Cooling Solution Apheros raises $1.85M Pre-Seed Round

6/ AMD acquire Server Builder ZT Systems for $4.9B

7/ Bill Gates’ BEV III secures $839M

01. Venture News

1/ Chip Startup Fabric Cryptography raises $33M Series A

Fabric Cryptography is on their to accelerate all cryptographic operations with the world’s first VPU. The VPU apart is its unique combination of programmability, flexibility, and performance. This round was led by Blockchain Capital and 1kx with participation from Offchain Labs, Polygon, and Matter Labs. Link

2/ Global P2P Shopping Platform Grabr raises $5.4M Venture Round

Grabr connects shoppers and travelers who help each other access the world. Now, Grabr has 2M registered users. This round was backed by ICU Ventures, Social Discovery Group.

3/ Content Management for Game Studio Mudstack raises $4M Seed Round

Apheros providers file versioning and asset management tools for the game industry. It shortens development times by improving communication and collaboration across all members of the team. This round was led by Anthos Capital with participation from Khosla Ventures, A16Z GAMES, Pioneer Square Labs, and Hyperplane. Link

4/ Climate Tech Startup Root Global raises €8M Seed Round

Root Global helps companies across the food system manage their climate footprint and reduce GHG emissions. Root has onboarded some of Europe's biggest Food & Beverage players, including the largest dairy plant in Europe and the largest fast-food chain in the world. This round was led by Point Nine with participation from Project A, HelloWorld, Arc Investors, and more. Link

5/ Metal Foams Cooling Solution Apheros raises $1.85M Pre-Seed Round

Apheros is pioneering metal foam-based liquid cooling solutions. It aims to revolutionize thermal management, reducing energy consumption and environmental impact in data centers, high-performance computing, and mobile devices. This round was led by Founderful. Link

02. Tech News & Updates

1/ AMD acquire Server Builder ZT Systems for $4.9B

AMD plans to acquire server maker ZT Systems for $4.9 billion as the company seeks to expand its portfolio of artificial intelligence chips and hardware and battle Nvidia. Stringing together the vast numbers of chips has meant the makeup of whole server systems has become increasingly important, which is why AMD is acquiring ZT Systems.

Currently ZT Systems generates annual revenue of roughly $10 billion, most of which is derived from its manufacturing unit. Link

2/ Bill Gates’ BEV III secures $839M

Bill Gates’ climate-focused venture capital initiative belongs to a larger group known as Breakthrough Energy. The billionaire launched it after realizing that we need more than VC funding to combat climate challenges. This fund launched BEV III in July 2023, making it the largest climate fund closed so far in 2024. The company’s investors include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Alibaba’s Jack Ma, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Michael Bloomberg. Link