Morning VC Brief丨2024.08.29

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/ AI Phone Agent Startup Bland AI raises $16M Series A

2/ Decentralized Database Space and Time raises $20M Series A

3/ Immigrant-Focused Neobank Comun raises $21.5M Series A

4/ Robotics Startup Swiss-Mile raises $22M Seed Round

5/ GovTech Startup Pryzm raises $2M Pre-Seed Round

6/ OpenAI in Talks to Raise Funding over $100B Valuation

7/ Meta Considers MR Glasses Code-Named ‘Puffin’

8/ Google Release Game Generator GameNGen

01. Venture News

1/ AI Phone Agent Startup Bland AI raises $16M Series A

Bland’s LLM-based AI phone agents enable enterprises to offer the sort of flexible voice interaction at-the-moment-of-demand that their consumers seek. This round was led by Scale Venture Partners with participation from Y Combinator, Max Levchin the founder of Paypal, Piotr Dąbkowski the CTO of Eleven Labs CTO, Jeff Lawson the founder of Twilio, and others. Link

2/ Decentralized Database Space and Time raises $20M Series A

Space and Time gathered some of the brightest minds across zero-knowledge (ZK), artificial intelligence (AI), data warehousing, and blockchain to deliver the first ZK-proven database that enables trustless data processing at scale. This round was led by Framework Ventures, Lightspeed Faction, Arrington Capital and Hivemind Capital. Link

3/ Immigrant-Focused Neobank Comun raises $21.5M Series A

Comun is a digital bank focused on serving immigrants in the United States. Comun grew monthly revenue by “50x” in the first six months of 2024. This round was led by Redpoint with participation from ANIMO Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, South Park Commons, and more. Link

4/ Robotics Startup Swiss-Mile raises $22M Seed Round

Swiss-Mile aims to relieve humanity from strenuous and tedious tasks by connecting AI with the physical world, creating truly autonomous robots. This round was led by Bezos Expeditions and HongShan with participation from Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund and Armada Investment. Link

5/ GovTech Startup Pryzm raises $2M Pre-Seed Round

Pryzm provides an AI-driven platform designed to simplify and accelerate the process of capturing government contracts. This round was led by XYZ Venture Capital and Amplify LA with participation from First In, Forum Ventures. Link

02. Tech News & Updates

1/ OpenAI in Talks to Raise Funding over $100B Valuation

Thrive Capital would lead the round and would invest $1 billion. Microsoft is also participating in the round. Earlier this year, OpenAI was valued at a reported $80B from $29B the prior year. Annualized revenue reportedly surpassed $2B earlier this year. Link

2/ Meta Considers MR Glasses Code-Named ‘Puffin’

Meta Platforms is planning a new mixed reality device that resembles a bulky pair of glasses. As it’s currently envisioned, Puffin would be a much smaller device than Meta’s existing Quest headsets. The device has been described internally as resembling bulky glasses, estimated to weigh less than 110 grams. The new project, which is still in the early stages and could fall through, is currently earmarked for release in 2027, source said. Link

3/ Google Release Game Generator GameNGen

Google researchers developed GameNGen, an AI that can simulate DOOM at over 20 fps. It works by predicting each frame in real time with a diffusion model. This achievement marks the first time an AI has fully simulated a complex video game with high-quality graphics and interactivity. Link