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Welcome to Startups Weekly — a weekly roundup of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want this in your inbox every Friday? Register here.
In startup news this week, we’ve got some contrarian bets, funding rounds from around the world, new VC funds and a final word of caution.
The most interesting startup stories of the week
A few stories this week remind us that just because something didn’t work before doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying again. Plus, an M&A that gives us a break from other WordPress news.
New wave: Desalination is the new wave of startups deep sea works on reverse osmosiswith predictions that the easier-to-deploy and cost-effective technology could produce water using 30% to 50% less energy than land-based reverse osmosis.
Fill in the blank: YC’s last batch had many AI startups and some interesting businessesbut the accelerator has reduced its focus on emerging markets. In Africa, local accelerators supported by African YC alumni they take it as an opportunity with new programs.
Bed(h)er: WaveForms AI, a new sound large language modeling (LLM) company, hopes to make artificial intelligence more engaging with its foundational models. Its creator, Alexis Conneau, is passionate about Her, too thinks a lot about not creating a dystopia. “We want to do the exact opposite of what the company in this movie is doing,” he told TechCrunch.
Automatic for bots: WPAI is a startup that develops artificial intelligence solutions for WordPress Powered by Automattic. His team will lead WordPress’ AI efforts.
This week’s most exciting fundraisers
With the end of the year fast approaching, this week has brought us a slew of funding rounds, so here’s a sample that showcases their range, both in terms of size and geographic distribution.
Flight: Archer Aviation, a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft startup, Raised $430 million in new equity financing this brought its total funding to nearly $2 billion. Archer also entered into an exclusive partnership with Anduril for joint production of defense aircraft.
It’s not a secret anymore: Upvest, a Berlin-based startup that created the stock trading API used by some of Europe’s biggest fintech companies, Raised €100 million Series C round ($105 million) was managed by the once secretive VC firm Hedosophia.
Robot steps: Swiss robotics company Anybotics, spinout at ETH Zurich, building autonomous quadrupedal inspection robots for industrial applications, raised another $60 millionraised its Series B funding to a total of $110 million. The capital will help it expand in the US, where it recently opened an office in San Francisco.
Strong credentials: Flare, a Canadian threat exposure management startup, It closed a $30 million Series B funding round led by Base10 Partners. The company wants to help SMBs and mid-market companies prevent the rise of data-stealing malware or credential-harvesting software like the Snowflake incident earlier this year.
Crossing the Channel: Agemia, a French startup in the hot AI-enabled drug discovery space, has raised its second funding of the year: A new round of $38 million It is managed by Cathay Innovation and will use it to recruit and open an office in London.
Let VCs in: Numia, a startup from Argentina that brings together offline and online customer interaction data, Announced a $3.5 million seed round Run by Cometa. CEO Gustavo Lauria said the company was already profitable, but for the first time decided to raise outside capital to reach clients who were limited partners in venture funds.
This week’s most interesting VC and fund news
Open to confusion: OpenAI Startup Fund raised more than $44 million for its fifth special purpose vehicle (SPV), a spokesman said, “will be used to support various existing portfolio companies and make new investments.” Despite its name, the fund says it does not have OpenAI as an investor, but its backers include Microsoft and other OpenAI partners.
New size: Size Capital raised fund of over $500 million continuing to invest at the intersection of technology and life sciences. Portfolio companies include AI biotech companies Chai Discovery and Enveda Biosciences.
Paper tiger: Fund 15 of hedge fund Tiger, known for its spray-and-pray strategy that has seen it invest in more than 315 startups in 2021 alone, performed particularly poorly. paper losses more than 15%according to the latest statement.
Last but not least
In an interview, Mitchell Green, founder and managing partner of Lead Edge Capital, told TechCrunch Editor-in-Chief Connie Loizos that “Lots of money chasing too few overvalued companies.” This is leading his firm to increasingly move away from typical venture capital deals and toward more private equity-like buyout-like “control deals.” “I also refuse to invest in companies at 100 times or 200 times or 500 times earnings. That game will end badly,” he predicted.
