Morning VC Brief丨2024.09.13

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/ Mortgage Markets Software Startup Polly raises $25M Venture Round

2/ Identity and Access Management Startup Aembit raises $25M Series A

3/ Elder Homecare Support Startup Habitat Health raises $50M Venture Round

4/ AI GTM Platform Landbase raises $12.5M Seed Round

5/ Real Runtime Protection Startup Operant raises $10M Series A

6/ Game Studio Mother Games raises $5M Pre-Seed

7/ ChatGPT Passed 11 Million Paying Subscribers

8/ OpenAI releases o1, its first model with ‘reasoning’ abilities

01. Venture News

1/ Mortgage Markets Software Startup Polly raises $25M Venture Round

Polly operates the industry's only vertically integrated capital markets solution, adding demonstrable value to the entire mortgage value chain – from rate lock through loan sale and delivery. This round was led by 8VC with participation from Menlo Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Fifth wall, and more.

2/ Identity and Access Management Startup Aembit raises $25M Series A

Aembit’s mandate is to secure how non-human identities access each other, while removing the headaches and risks of manual secrets management. This round was led by Acrew Capital with participation from Ballistic Ventures, Ten Eleven Ventures, Okta Ventures, and more. Link

3/ Elder Homecare Support Startup Habitat Health raises $50M Venture Round

Habitat Health empower older adults to have more good days in their homes and communities. This round was backed by Town Hall Ventures, NEA, Kaiser Permanente., and more.

4/ AI GTM Platform Landbase raises $12.5M Seed Round

Landbase automates and optimizes sales and marketing, driving higher lead conversion and boosting revenue. GTM-1 Omni, the world's first and most powerful AI model designed specifically for go-to-market. This round was led by A*, 8VC, and First Minute Capital with participation from Inovia Capital, Picus, and General Catalyst. Link

5 Real Runtime Protection Startup Operant raises $10M Series A

Operant's in-line runtime protection of all data-in-use, across every interaction from infra to APIs, brings a new level of defense to your cloud-native apps with zero instrumentation, zero application code changes and zero integrations. This round was led by SineWave Ventures, Felicis with participation from Alumni Ventures, Massive, Calm Ventures, Gaingels, and more. Link 

6/ Game Studio Mother Games raises $5M Pre-Seed

Mother Games is an art and media company that creates transformative experiences designed to awaken players to their own mental programming and expand their inner worlds.. This round was led by BoxGroup with participation from Shine, Lerer Hippeau, and more. Link

02. Tech News & Updates

1/ ChatGPT Passed 11 Million Paying Subscribers

OpenAI’s ChatGPT has more than 10 million paying subscribers and another 1 million subscribers that are part of higher-priced plans for business teams. Those numbers imply that the artificial intelligence chatbot is conservatively generating more than $225 million in revenue per month, or $2.7 billion on an annual basis. Link

2/ OpenAI releases o1, its first model with ‘reasoning’ abilities

OpenAI is releasing a new model called o1, the first in a planned series of “reasoning” models that have been trained to answer more complex questions, faster than a human can. OpenAI is calling this release of o1 a “preview” to emphasize how nascent it is.

As OpenAI reportedly looks to raise more funding at an eye-popping $150 billion valuation, its momentum depends on more research breakthroughs.