- Coatue Management has raised $331 million for its third fund focused on early-stage startups, which is a third less than its target and its previous early-stage fund.
- This shows that firms that raised large funds during the pandemic investing boom are struggling to meet their fundraising goals or are choosing to raise smaller funds.
- Coatue Management had planned to raise $500 million for its third early-stage fund by the end of 2022 and focus on artificial intelligence startups.
- The recent filing represents an interim close, and the firm expects to raise additional capital for the fund.
- Coatue Management has previously made successful early-stage investments in companies like Figma and Ramp.
Main topic: Founders Factory Africa raises $114 million to scale its model and support African tech startups.
Key points:
1. Founders Factory Africa combines venture studio and VC models to support early-stage founders in Africa.
2. The firm has partnered with corporates and impact investors to run programs in healthtech, fintech, and agritech sectors.
3. The raised capital will be used to hire talent, bolster support structures, and provide follow-on funding to existing startups.
Hint on Elon Musk: This article does not mention Elon Musk.
Penn State College of Medicine has awarded $225,000 in pilot funding to researchers as part of its strategic plan to apply artificial intelligence and informatics to advance biomedical research and address health challenges. Nine investigators received seed funding for projects that aim to use cutting-edge technology and computational innovation to develop new therapeutics, diagnostics, and preventive strategies.
AI21 Labs, a text-generating AI startup, has raised $155 million in a Series C funding round, bringing its total raised to $283 million and valuing the company at $1.4 billion, with plans to expand its workforce and accelerate its R&D efforts.
AI has garnered immense investment from venture capitalists, with over $40 billion poured into AI startups in the first half of 2023, raising concerns about who will benefit financially from its potential impact.
Zurich-based fintech platform GenTwo has raised $15 million in a Series A funding round led by Point72 Ventures, with plans to expand internationally and develop its financial engineering platform.
Global venture funding in August 2023 reached $22 billion, a 19% increase from the previous month but a 16% decrease from July 2022, with late-stage funding experiencing a year-over-year increase for the first time in 18 months, according to Crunchbase data. However, early-stage funding nearly halved and seed funding was down by around one-third compared to the previous year, while deal counts in August 2023 were almost half of the previous year. The largest fundings were in transportation, sustainability, and biotechnology, and the hope for the startup funding landscape lies in upcoming IPOs of well-funded venture-backed companies.
European AI startup Druid has raised $30 million in a Series B funding round to support its U.S. growth, which currently accounts for the majority of its revenue, as it expands its conversational business applications powered by generative AI.
Artificial intelligence and analytics firm Databricks has raised over $500 million in a Series I funding round, including strategic investor Nvidia, as it prepares for an anticipated IPO and expands its partnership with Nvidia to focus on generative AI. The fundraising round values Databricks at $43 billion and positions it as the eighth-most valuable private company globally. The company is closely monitoring the IPO market but will not be quick to go public, waiting for the macro environment to stabilize.
Databricks raises over $500 million in a Series I, Generate Biomedicines secures $273 million in a Series C, and Lyten raises $200 million in a Series B, among other large funding rounds for U.S.-based startups in the week of Sept. 9 to Sept. 15, 2023.
San Francisco-based AI startup Writer has raised $100 million in a funding round led by Iconiq Growth, bringing its valuation to $500 million, and aims to help businesses use large language models to generate content across different departments.
