Morning VC Brief丨2024.08.22

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/ IT Observability Startup Grafana Labs Raises $270M D+ Round at $6B

2/ IP-Focused Blockchain Startup Story Protocol Raises $80M Series B at $2.25B

3/ Foundation Model for the Brain Piramidal Raises $6.5M Seed Round

4/ Space Tech Startup Starpath Raises $12M Seed Round

5/ AI Physical Simulation Startup BeyondMath Raises $8.5M Seed Round

6/ OpenAI announces content deal with Condé Nast

7/ Anthropic hit with class-action lawsuit over copyright infringement

8/ Ideogram Launch new text to image model

9/ D-ID launches an AI video translation tool

01. Venture News

1/ IT Observability Startup Grafana Labs Raises $270M D+ Round at $6B

Grafana Labs is squarely focused on helping enterprises visualize and analyze data from their various infrastructure services. It has now moved past $250M in ARR and has more than 5,000 paying customers. This round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from its existing institutional investors. Link

2/ IP-Focused Blockchain Startup Story Protocol Raises $80M Series B at $2.25B

Story’s blockchain network allows IP owners to store their IP on the platform, embedding terms to use it — such as licensing fees — into smart contracts. This round was led by a16z crypto with participation from Polychain, and more. Link

3/ Foundation Model for the Brain Piramidal Raises $6.5M Seed Round

Piramidal is building technology that bridges the gap between research and real-world EEG applications. This round was invested by Y Combinator, Adverb Ventures, Lionheart Ventures, and more. Link

4/ Space Tech Startup Starpath Raises $12M Seed Round

Starpath Robotics harvests liquid oxygen (LOX) refined from lunar water ice. LOX is a crucial component of propellant for some vehicles like rockets and spacecraft like lunar landers. This round was led by 8VC and Fusion Fund. Link

5/ AI Physical Simulation Startup BeyondMath Raises $8.5M Seed Round

BeyondMath provides AI-first approach to simulating the physical world. Their first product is a “digital wind tunnel” that provides near-real-time simulation of airflow over a complex surface at a fidelity. This round was led by UP Partners with participation from Insight Partners and InMotion Ventures. Link

02. Tech News & Updates

1/ OpenAI announces content deal with Condé Nast

OpenAI announced a partnership with Condé Nast, in which ChatGPT and SearchGPT, will be able to display content from Vogue, The New Yorker, Condé Nast Traveler, GQ, Architectural Digest, Vanity Fair, Wired, Bon Appétit and other outlets. OpenAI announced a similar partnership in May with New crop., and partner with Reddit to train AI models on Reddit content. Link

2/ Anthropic hit with class-action lawsuit over copyright infringement

The lawsuit states that Anthropic has downloaded and copied hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books taken from pirated and illegal websites. In another case against Anthropic, Universal Music sued the startup over “systematic and widespread infringement of their copyrighted song lyrics”. Link

3/ Ideogram Launch new text to image model

Ideogram release new frontier text to image model with industry leading capabilities in generating realistic images, graphic design, typography, and more. The launch also includes the release of the Ideogram iOS app, the beta version of the Ideogram API, and Ideogram Search. Link

4/ D-ID launches an AI video translation tool

AI video creation platform D-ID launched a tool for translating videos into other languages. D-ID also clones the speaker’s voice and changes their lip movements to match the translated words as part of the AI editing process. Link