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Bessemer Venture Partners has invested in the NFT marketplace OWND, which it found through its DAO. Better yet, this DAO had the backing of one of Silicon Valley's blue-chip venture firms, Bessemer Venture Partners. Bach Ryhl read all the crypto-related articles he could find on Medium and took a Web3 course on Udemy. Lunau Liechti, in particular, had been following the efforts of brands such as Nike and LVMH to launch NFT versions of their physical products. "We want to make it as easy to buy a Nike NFT as it is to buy a Nike sneaker online," Lunau Liechti said.
Worklife Ventures founder Brianne Kimmel is launching a bootcamp for AI startups. Her firm has pledged $20 million to invest in those AI companies that complete the bootcamp. As part of the AI bootcamp, her firm is committing $20 million to invest into companies that complete the program. "I grew up in northeast Ohio, and a lot of friends from my high school are using this technology," Kimmel said. Formerly a grant program, AI Grant now makes $250,000 investments in AI companies.
A bunch of high-profile Wall Street investors just piled into a startup that pledges to fix a major issue in the crypto industry. And while plenty of those bets blew up — the most spectacular of which was crypto exchange FTX — that hasn't stopped Wall Street. Click here to read more about a new crypto startup that's got backing from some of Wall Street's top trading firms. For a breakdown of all the key partnerships between Wall Street and cloud partners, check out our running list of more than 30 deals. Cheman Cheung left Wall Street after his father passed away to recover from a state of "mental chaos."
The crypto exchange C3 has raised $6 million in seed funding led by Two Sigma Ventures. A series of bankruptcies — FTX, BlockFi, Celsius, Voyager, Genesis — has exposed major flaws within several crypto financial institutions. Michel Dahdah believes his company, the crypto exchange C3, can fix one big challenge these crypto companies face: the custody question. C3 has raised $6 million in seed funding led by Two Sigma Ventures, the venture-capital arm of the hedge fund Two Sigma Investments. In the traditional finance world, custody and exchange are separate functions, and crypto needs to follow suit, he said.
Herrod, the former CTO of VMWare, will build enterprise startups in areas like AI and cybersecurity. Herrod is joining the venture studio Juxtapose, where he will focus on creating enterprise software startups, he told Insider exclusively. Though Juxtapose's portfolio includes a range of industries such as fintech, insurance, and healthtech, the firm hasn't had a long reach within enterprise software. He told Insider he sees ample opportunity within segments such as cybersecurity, open-source software, software supply-chain management, and artificial intelligence — several of which are receiving a hefty amount of attention from VCs right now. Now the venture world is full of former tech executives who have made the switch to backing startups.
After the 2021 boom in venture capital investing, startups are cutting costs and slashing jobs. More than 3,000 US startup employees lost their jobs in January, according to data from Layoffs.fyi. By contrast, in January 2022, only about 180 startup employees faced layoffs. Many of these companies raised large sums of venture capital funding before the market pullback. Here's the full list of the US startups that conducted layoffs in January, according to data from Layoffs.fyi.
Unicorns Clari and Workato are among the latest startups to cut jobs. Workato laid off 10 percent of its workforce, and Clari had its second round of cuts in a year. Clari's layoffs caught the startup's staffers off guard, according to one employee Insider spoke to. Though the layoffs were unexpected, the former Workato employee said, they appreciated the way the company delivered the news. The former Clari employee Insider spoke with said that the spate of layoffs had prompted them to reconsider their dedication to the tech industry.
Tekin Salimi, the founder of the VC firm Dao5, sources many of his deals through academic research. Salimi's venture capital firm, Dao5, counts several university professors among its advisors and has backed several startups founded by academics. His budding interest in crypto eventually brought him to Silicon Valley, where he joined the crypto VC firm Polychain Capital in 2018. When he left Polychain to launch Dao5 last year, Salimi sought to build academic research into the firm's deal-sourcing process. Dao5 cut ties with Kwon after the collapse, and he never had any financial involvement in the firm, Salimi said.
The startup Wally Health provides dental cleanings and preventative care for $199 a year. Take a look at the pitch deck Wally used to raise a $3 million seed round led by Bling Capital. That experience inspired the creation of his startup, Wally Health, which has raised $3 million in a seed round led by Bling Capital. Years before Wally, Burnett had launched businesses in media and fintech back in his native Canada. After raising a pre-seed round, Burnett and his cofounders started building Wally's proof of concept about a year ago in an office in New York's Upper East Side.
Investors are conducting more rigorous due diligence on crypto startups in the wake of FTX's blowup. Founders told Insider VCs are asking for background checks and more detailed performance metrics. But loose accounting standards in the industry make it hard for investors to vet company financials. After a series of bankruptcies in the crypto industry, venture capitalists are looking much more closely into the inner workings of blockchain and Web3-related startups before they cut a check. The collapse of FTX exposed serious flaws in its investors' due diligence process, several VCs and founders said.
Despite a string of high-profile collapses in the crypto industry, Web3 founders remain optimistic. They said they believed Web3 can make the global economy more accessible and enhance creativity. Yet little of this seems to faze the people seeking to build crypto and Web3 businesses in this environment, despite some venture capitalists reconsidering their level of investment in crypto and Web3. Countless founders have insisted that crypto has gotten too much attention for its excesses and blowups and not enough for its potential. So we decided to ask a few founders why they're still so bullish on crypto even after the turmoil of the past year.
Construction-tech startup Suppli has raised $3.1 million in seed funding led by Equal Ventures. But his new startup, Suppli, is also at the forefront of a hot investment trend this year. Suppli, which makes credit-management tools for companies that sell and procure construction materials, has raised a $3.1 million seed round led by Equal Ventures. Having that customer list turned out to be critical a year later as they raised their seed round, Ayers said, given the shift to caution among investors. That's the same opportunity Skafidas and Ayers saw when they decided to take the plunge into entrepreneurship.
Web3 infrastructure company QuickNode has raised $60 million at an $800 million valuation. That's illustrated by the blockchain infrastructure company QuickNode, which just announced $60 million in Series B funding at an $800 million valuation. That's helped QuickNode quadruple its revenue over the past year, Alex Nabutovsky, QuickNode's CEO and cofounder, told Insider. QuickNode's founders decided it was best to put off raising a Series B and focus on their company's growth. Back then, QuickNode's founders received a term sheet in a matter of days, capped off with a meal at the trendy restaurant Carbone.
Crypto tokens were once a quick way for Web3 founders to cash in. Just over a year ago, Web3 startups regularly raised money by selling their own cryptocurrencies directly to the public. But now, the crypto crash has made it an inauspicious time for them to launch tokens. Common has since postponed its token launch indefinitely. Georgen said that his aspirations to launch tokens weren't primarily motivated by cashing in.
We're less than two weeks into 2023, and it's already become clear that OpenAI's ChatGPT will be the defining technology of the year. But it just goes to show you how much confidence Microsoft and others have in the future of AI. Still, that $29 billion valuation is rich for a company with limited revenue and the high costs of running advanced AI. Read Insider's list of the top 12 AI tools that are helping content creators do their work, from dubbing to writing copy, according to industry insiders. Read Insider's guide on how to take a Snapchat screenshot without alerting the other party.
Open Forest Protocol, a Web3 climate-tech startup, has raised $4.1 million in pre-seed funding. An environmental engineer by trade, he launched a nonprofit devoted to helping reforestation projects find funding. Open Forest ProtocolFournier, Open Forest Protocol's CEO, cofounded the startup with Aureline Grange, a fellow environmental engineer at his nonprofit, and Michael Kelly, an early contributor to the Near blockchain. But on Open Forest Protocol, they can do so at no upfront cost. Here's an exclusive look at a version of the pitch deck Open Forest Protocol used to raise $4.1 million:
This year's economic caution marked a huge contrast to 2021's exuberance and record VC funding. Insider spoke with six founders about how they've handled the abrupt switch from market exuberance to economic caution. But at the same time, they said, they've sought to pounce on new opportunities created by the economic downturn. ElektraShifting landscapes, changing prioritiesAfter a year of record venture capital funding, the abrupt shift in investor sentiment hit hard in 2022, founders told Insider. Artificial intelligence startups are the latest beneficiary of VC hype, buoyed by breakthrough software tools such as DALL-E and ChatGPT.
Insider spoke with 13 VCs who invest in crypto about the industry trends they expect to see in 2023. Among their predictions: the era of big exchanges like FTX is over, but NFTs will gain new life. While funding will likely slow down, more and more companies will embrace Web3, VCs said. It's been a tumultuous year for cryptocurrency and Web3 companies, and even boosters of the industry have had to own up to some hard truths about its shortcomings. Insider asked 13 VCs who invest in crypto about what trends they believe 2023 will bring to the industry.
We asked investors from firms like Accel, Sequoia, IVP, and Lightspeed to share their forecasts. Party rounds are out, unicorns are in, and the venture market will get worse before it gets better. Sign up for our newsletter for the latest tech news and scoops — delivered daily to your inbox. Loading Something is loading. We asked them to reveal the hot sectors they're eyeing, the trends that will fizzle, and the new realities of fundraising — for both startups and venture fund managers — in a tech downturn.
Argus, which makes compliance software for crypto funds and trading firms, has raised $2.8 million. After FTX's fall, crypto firms are focused on compliance but worried about costs, Argus' CEO said. To prevent insider trading, Argus checks employee trades against a list of restricted assets, looking for overlap. Although other startups, such as ComplySci, also offer financial compliance software, Rapaport says that Argus distinguishes itself through its focus on crypto, where compliance procedures are relatively new terrain. "And so they're probably not thinking, 'Can we bring on a new compliance software?'
A filing on Monday shows that Alameda Research owes $55,319 to Margaritaville's Bahamas resort. Alameda Research, Sam Bankman-Fried's trading firm, filed for bankruptcy in November alongside FTX. That's not great news for the Margaritaville Beach Resort in Nassau, Bahamas, to which Bankman-Fried's bankrupt trading firm, Alameda Research, owes more than $50,000. Unlike secured creditors, unsecured creditors do not have access to collateral that they can seize when the money they are owed goes unpaid. Alameda Research and Margaritaville have not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.
Investors told Insider that they welcome regulation and more guidance at the federal level. In Lizárraga's view, many crypto companies have not only replicated the flaws of the traditional finance industry, but they've made them worse by operating in a regulatory gray area. Instead, crypto companies can protect both themselves and their customers by embracing regulation rather than seeking to sidestep it, he said. She decided to partner with the fintech company Apex for Zingeroo's crypto offering rather than a pure-play crypto exchange because she felt more confident that Apex would follow proper compliance. But others, including some venture capitalists, have suggested that federal regulators have not provided enough clarity to crypto companies.
Indeed, as Insider reported last week, Mark Zuckerberg isn't ruling out the possibility of more layoffs at Meta. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy Dan DeLong/GeekWire1. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg Photo by Liu Jie/Xinhua via Getty2. The tech titans are known for paying the big bucks, but that's not the only way to make it in tech. Tech leaders like Ancestry CEO Deb Liu and Scale AI CEO Lucy Guo will appear on stage.
Investors stuck to crypto startups they considered "safe bets," but FTX's failure challenges that idea. Crypto startups held yacht parties through the summer and into early fall at events such as NFT.NYC and Messari Mainnet. "The whole crypto space is a high-leverage space, and it's susceptible to cascading failures." The events of the past week are unlikely to whet risk-averse LPs' appetite for crypto, investors told Insider. Even so, several investors who have backed crypto startups told Insider that despite the industry's recent travails, they remain believers in the technology.
Crypto lender BlockFi said Monday that it had "significant exposure" to the bankrupt exchange FTX. FTX had given BlockFi an emergency $250 million loan in June after the summer's crypto crash. Even so, the company said, "the rumors that a majority of BlockFi assets are custodied at FTX are false." A crypto investor told Insider that Alameda Research requires several of those portfolio companies to hold assets with FTX. Alameda Research is not a BlockFi investor, but the firms are closely tied because of BlockFi's loan with FTX.
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