Startup Monday: Latest tech trends & news happening in the global startup ecosystem (Issue 79- February 11)

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Top startups news to follow this week:

1. Google invests almost $400 million in ChatGPT rival Anthropic

Alphabet’s Google has invested almost $400 million in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, which is testing a rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, according to a person familiar with the deal.

Google and Anthropic declined to comment on the investment but separately announced a partnership in which Anthropic will use Google’s cloud computing services. The deal marks the latest alliance between a tech giant and an AI startup as the field of generative AI — technology that can generate text and art in seconds — heats up.

The deal gives Google a stake in Anthropic but doesn’t require the startup to spend the funds buying cloud services from Google, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the terms were confidential.

“AI has evolved from academic research to become one of the biggest drivers of technological change, creating new opportunities for growth and improved services across all industries,” Thomas Kurian, chief executive officer of Google Cloud, said in a statement. “Google Cloud is providing open infrastructure for the next generation of AI startups, and our partnership with Anthropic is a great example of how we’re helping users and businesses tap into the power of reliable and responsible AI.”

Founded in 2021 by former leaders of OpenAI, including siblings Daniela and Dario Amodei, Anthropic AI in January released a limited test of a new chatbot named Claude to rival OpenAI’s wildly popular ChatGPT.

2. Startup MindsDB Raises $16.5 Million To Power The AI Race In The Workplace

Though Bill Gates recently declared the current moment in technology as important as the advent of the PC, storied Silicon Valley firm Benchmark is taking a relatively cautious view of AI's gold rush for now. A “big majority” of startups pitching to partner Chetan Puttagunta claim to be working on machine learning, but, he told Forbes, most haven’t been able to differentiate themselves from their many competitors.

One rare exception: MindsDB, a San Francisco Bay Area-based startup that helps developers build AI applications even if they lack AI expertise. It announced Tuesday a $16.5 million Series A investment led by Benchmark, with Puttagunta joining its board of directors. The round comes at a valuation of $56 million, the company said.

Cofounder and CEO Jorge Torres is betting that AI’s moment to transform the business world has finally come. “I think there’s going to be a rebirth of a new generation of applications”—from email to CRMs—“designed with AI capabilities at the core,” he told Forbes.

Historically, companies have called upon their data teams to handle the time-consuming task of rigging up connections between their business data (stored in databases) and machine learning tech, say, an application that detects fraud or predicts patients’ health outcomes. MindsDB wants to inject the AI functionality directly into the database so that developers can do the work themselves. Torres launched the company in 2017 alongside Adam Carrigan, the company’s chief operating officer, who he met when they were students at the Australian National University. They initially built MindsDB as an entirely open-source project before launching paid services in late 2020. In 2021, Forbes named it to the annual AI 50 list.

3. Alexis Ohanian Venture Fund Plots $776 Million in New Funds

Seven Seven Six, the venture capital fund launched by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian in 2020, plans to raise $776 million for two new funds, according to investment documents viewed by The Information. The planned fundraising is more than 50% bigger than what it raised last year and will test investor appetite for bigger funds during a tough environment.

The Palm Beach, Fla.-based firm had an uneven start since its 2020 launch. It made a number of ill-timed bets on non-fungible-token projects like Yuga Labs—the startup behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection—in early 2022 as crypto prices were falling, and last year suspended fundraising for a planned crypto fund. Read more

4. Blobr raises another $5.4 million for its API monetization product

French startup Blobr raised a $5.4 million funding round (€5 million) led by German VC firm 10x Founders a couple of months ago. The company calls itself the “Shopify for APIs,” which is a good way to sum up what it does: Companies that have an API and want to start selling API access to other companies can use Blobr to run their API store.

“If you have an API, you can easily connect it to Blobr in a few clicks,” co-founder Alexandre Airvault told me. “You can then define your products, and define the consumption scenarios of the API. Once you’ve done that, you can build a business model on top of the API.”

In addition to 10x Founders, FJ Labs, another.vc, and several business angels like Charles Songhurst, Thibaud Elziere, Quentin Nickmans, Amaury Sepulchre, Matthieu Vaxelaire and Chris Adelsbach also participated in the round. Existing investors New Wave and Seedcamp also put more money on the table.

From a technical point of view, Blobr is specifically designed for companies that have already developed their own API. It won’t help you release an API as Blobr is all about commercialization. But if you’re creating an API-first product, Blobr can help you generate revenue more quickly.

When you want to start using Blobr, you first have to upload the OpenAPI technical document that defines the structure of your REST API — for now, Blobr only targets REST APIs, which is still the most popular API format.

5. Planet A Ventures comes out of the door with a €160M European, science-backed climate fund

These days climate investing is hot — if you will pardon the awful pun — but the days of just raising a fund and calling it “climate focused” are well and truly over. The market is sorting out the “wheat from the chaff” and if a VC fund can’t prove that it can back up its thesis with hard science — I mean, this is about the climate, after all — then it would be much less likely to see the success or the returns it is set out for.

That’s essentially the thinking behind the new European climate fund Planet A Ventures.

The firm has now closed its first fund at €160 million to back founders tackling the world‘s largest environmental problems. The Germany-based VC aims to take a novel “science-based” approach. It has engaged a full science team, to which it will hand the power of veto over investment decisions.

6. Rebar robotics firm Toggle adds another $3M to its fundraising tally

There’s no denying that the robotics startup world has taken a hit during the ongoing economic downturn. Recent numbers prove what we’ve all suspected for some time. But two things are true: 1) The lull is temporary; and 2) While robotics isn’t recession-proof, construction might as well be.

This is certainly a theme of late — as other categories of robotics have struggled to raise, those operating in construction appear relatively unimpacted. New York-based Toggle this morning announced that it has added another $3 million to its coffers as part of a “Series A Extension.” The initial $8 million Series A was announced back in 2021. Japanese firm Tokyu Construction is a first-time investor in the startup, whose total raise is currently at $15 million.

Toggle makes robots that bend rebar, the steel skeletal reinforcement you find in all manner of heavy construction. The company’s headcount is currently at 40, which the company plans to double over the course of the next year, following an upcoming Series B raise. Those roles will primarily be focused on engineering and operations.

Blank notes that the pandemic has contributed to an increased interest in automating difficult and expensive pieces of the construction process

7. Polish startup Plenti picks up €5 million to build a rental and subscription marketplace for electronic devices

Polish startup Plenti is helping push forward a circular approach to using electronic devices. The team has just secured €5 million to build a marketplace that offers access to electronic devices on a subscription and rental basis. 

The circular economy is spinning ahead. While more and more people look for more sustainable, and cost-effective, ways to consume, tech innovation is helping make it happen. Through subscription-based payment solutions, rental options and refurbished/second-hand marketplaces, it’s becoming easier for Europeans to access the goods they want with a minimal environmental impact.

Electronic devices are big polluters – and we’re pretty wasteful with them. As tech development continues to move fast, for some users many devices become seen as disposable when a newer model comes to market and simply tossed away despite still being usable. At the same time, accessing the latest tech devices isn’t accessible to others – high costs being the principal barrier.

Across Europe, we’ve seen a couple of different marketplaces aim to address this – offering subscription-based solutions or refurbished models. Polish player Plenti is getting in on the action and has just secured a new investment.

Funding details

• €5 million was raised in a seed round
• The round was led by 4growth VC, with the participation of Montis Capital and NIF
• New and existing business angels also participated

8. Indian EV startup Zypp Electric raises $25 mln in Gogoro-led round

CHENNAI, Feb 8 (Reuters) - Zypp Electric said on Wednesday it has raised $25 million in a series B funding round led by Taiwanese battery-swapping service provider Gogoro Inc, as the Indian electric vehicle startup looks to expand to new cities and boost its fleet size.

The funding round marks Gogoro's latest effort to expand in India, where EVs are receiving mainstream push, having partnered with the country's top bikemaker Hero MotoCorp HROM.NS and the state of Maharashtra.

"Electric vehicles are what the entire (delivery) industry is looking forward to," Zypp's Chief Executive Officer Akash Gupta told Reuters.

The startup, which provides EVs for last-mile delivery for online stores, plans on using the funds to increase its fleet size to 200,000 EVs from 10,000, and expand to 30 Indian cities including Chennai and Mumbai by 2025, up from six currently.

9. Berlin’s Planet A Ventures closes first fund at €160 million to back impactful GreenTech innovation

Planet A Ventures, which is taking a science-based approach to impact investment, has just closed its first fund at €160 million. The Berlin-based firm will back European innovators with planet-positive solutions, shaping a more sustainable future for society. 

It’s only February and already it’s clear that GreenTech will be a massive market in 2023. And it’s a positive sign to see! Investors, governments and innovative thinkers are all uniting to push forward GreenTech innovation, creating planet-positive solutions that can help us reach net zero and more sustainable life on earth.

We post a monthly GreenTech report and found that in January, as world leaders met in Davos and Ursula von der Leyen spoke of the importance of green technologies, European startups and innovators were busy coming up with new tech-based solutions, and attracting a total of €1.6 billion to do it.

Now, European GreenTech leaders have got another boost as Planet A unveils its €160 million fund.

The fund, which is the Berlin-based firm’s first, is taking a science-based approach to venture capital, prioritising genuine impact and backing disruptive founders.

Planet A has anchored science into its investment process to identify the companies that will help us reach net-zero targets. To this end, science will have veto power in investment decisions if there is no significant positive impact. Environmental impact is the priority metric, rather than just strong and scalable business models. The firm is also the first in Europe to leverage an in-house science team that will carry out life cycle assessments as part of its due diligence.

Fridtjof Detzner, Founding Partner at Planet A: “Green-tech and impact investing is no longer a niche in venture capital. But in order to scale solutions fast enough, we need to ask ourselves what impact our investments really have on the planet. There are scientific methods and enough data to do that, we just need to use them to empower founders that make a difference. That’s exactly what we do at Planet A.”

10. Anthropic, an A.I. Start-Up, Is Said to Be Close to Adding $300 Million

Anthropic, a San Francisco artificial intelligence start-up, is close to raising roughly $300 million in new funding, two people with knowledge of the situation said, in the latest sign of feverish excitement for a new class of A.I. start-ups.

The deal could value Anthropic at roughly $5 billion, though the terms were still being worked out and the valuation could change, one of the people said. The start-up, which was founded in 2021, previously raised $704 million, valuing it at $4 billion, according to PitchBook, which tracks private investment data.

Silicon Valley has been gripped by a frenzy over start-ups working on “generative” A.I., technologies that can generate text, images and other media in response to short prompts. This week, Microsoft invested $10 billion in OpenAI, the San Francisco start-up that kicked off the furor in November with a chatbot, ChatGPT. ChatGPT has wowed more than a million people with its knack for answering questions in clear, concise prose.

Even as funding for other start-ups has dried up, investors have chased deals in similar A.I. companies, signaling that the otherwise gloomy market for tech investing has at least one bright spot.

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