Morning VC Brief丨2024.09.05

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/ Sutskever's new safety-focused AI startup SSI raises $1B at $5B

2/ AI Search Engine You.com raises $50M Series B

3/ Japan AI Startup Sakana AI raises $100M Series A

4/ Cellular Agriculture Platform Galy raises $33M Series B

5/ AI Data Engineer Startup Revefi raises $20M Series A

6/ Image Manipulation Startup Wombo raises $9M Series A

7/ AI Software Development Startup Blitzy raises $4.4M Seed Round

8/ Paylocity Acquired Corporate Spend Startup Airbase for $325M

9/ Anthropic Launches Claude Enterprise

01. Venture News

1/ Sutskever's new safety-focused AI startup SSI raises $1B at $5B

Safe Superintelligence (SSI) co-founded by OpenAI's former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. SSI aims to help develop safe artificial intelligence systems that far surpass human capabilities. This round was Backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and more. Link

2/ AI Search Engine You.com raises $50M Series B

You is an AI-powered search and productivity platform. The company reports serving over 1 billion queries since its launch and claims a staggering 500% revenue growth since January. This round was led by Georgian with participation from Nvidia, Salesforce Ventures, Day One Ventures, and more. Link

3/ Japan AI Startup Sakana AI raises $100M Series A

Sakana sets out to train low-cost generative AI models using small datasets. Its algorithms can help automate the creation of AI models that process language or images by mimicking natural selection when they combine, test and discard data, reducing the amount of human input required. This round was led by New Enterprise Associates, Khosla Ventures, Lux Capital with participation from Nvidia. Link

4/ Cellular Agriculture Platform Galy raises $33M Series B

Galy is a climate tech company pioneering the development of first-of-its-kind sustainable cellular agriculture products. The flagship product, “GALY Cotton,” uses 99% less water and 97% less land than traditional cotton while emitting 77% less CO2. This round was led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures with participation from H&M Group and Inditex, and more. Link

5/ AI Data Engineer Startup Revefi raises $20M Series A

Revefi is the creator of Raden, the world’s first AI data engineer. Raden augments data teams with expertise in data architecture, observability, system performance, optimization and cost management. This round was led by Icon Ventures with participation from Mayfield, GTM Capital, StepStone Group, and more. Link

6/ Image Manipulation Startup Wombo raises $9M Series A

Wombo has gained popularity for its ability to turn selfies into videos of users lip-syncing to popular songs. Wombo’s apps—which today include viral text-to-image generator Wombo Dream and selfie-to-political meme creation tool Wombo Meme—have collectively surpassed more than 200M downloads. This round was led by IRound13 Digital Asset Fund with participation from Nvidia and CoreWeave. Link

7/ AI Software Development Startup Blitzy raises $4.4M Seed Round

Blitzy provides a platform that takes the requirements for a new product, runs it through its proprietary orchestration tool, and automates large portions of the software development process, with a goal to achieve full autonomy. This round was backed by NFX, Bessemer Venture Partners, Asymmetric, Flybridge, and more. Link

02. Tech News & Updates

1/ Paylocity Acquired Corporate Spend Startup Airbase for $325M

Airbase was founded by Thejo Kote in 2017 to provide software to midsized companies seeking to better manage their spending. Airbase was valued at $600M post-money in 2021 at the peak of the market.

HR and payroll software company Paylocity is publicly traded and has a current market capitalization of just under $9B, with about 40,000 customers. Link

1/ Anthropic Launches Claude Enterprise

Anthropic is launching a new subscription plan for its AI chatbot, Claude, catered toward enterprise customers that want more administrative controls and increased security. Claude Enterprise will compete with OpenAI’s business-specific solution. Claude Enterprise has 500,000 tokens context window, meaning Anthropic’s models can process up to 200,000 lines of code, dozens of 100-page documents or a two-hour audio transcript in a single prompt. Link