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☆ Bret Taylor’s AI startup Sierra raises funding at $4.5 billion valuation
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-28 | by ( Kate Rooney | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Bret Taylor, co-CEO of Salesforce, speaks at the Viva Technology Conference in Paris on June 15, 2022. Artificial intelligence startup Sierra, co-founded by ex-Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor, is more than quadrupling its valuation to $4.5 billion in a fresh funding round. The San Francisco-based company, which was valued at $1 billion in January, raised $175 million in a funding round led by Greenoaks Capital. Sierra is focused on helping enterprises like home security company ADT , Sonos , Weight Watchers and Casper personalize and implement AI agents for customer service. Taylor describes Sierra as "conversational AI," and bristles at the word "chatbot," even banning the phrase in the company's downtown San Francisco office.

Persons: Bret Taylor, Sierra, Taylor, Marc Benioff, Elon Musk, Clay Bavor, Casper personalize, Bavor, ICONIQ, Josh Kushner’s Organizations: Salesforce, Viva Technology Conference, Greenoaks Capital, Twitter, Elon, Google, Sierra, Google Labs, CNBC Locations: Paris, San Francisco

☆ Amazon, Meta back Scale AI in $1 billion funding deal that values firm at $14 billion
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-21 | by ( Riley De León | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Artificial intelligence startup Scale AI said Tuesday that it has raised $1 billion in a Series F funding round that values the enterprise tech company at $13.8 billion — almost double its last reported valuation. 12 on this year's CNBC Disruptor 50 list, has now raised $1.6 billion to date. Existing investors including Y Combinator, Nat Friedman, Index Ventures, Founders Fund, Coatue, Thrive Capital, Spark Capital, Nvidia, Tiger Global Management, Greenoaks, and Wellington Management also participated in the round. Scale AI is playing a key role in the rise of generative artificial intelligence and large language models, with the data — whether it is text, images, video or voice recordings — needing to be labeled correctly before it can be digested and used effectively by AI technology. Scale AI has evolved from labeling data used to train models that powered autonomous driving to now helping to improve and fine tune the underlying data for nearly any organization looking to implement AI, powering some of the most advanced models in use.

Persons: Elad Gil, Y Combinator, Nat Friedman, Alexandr Wang Organizations: CNBC, Accel, Cisco Investments, Intel Capital, ServiceNow Ventures, AMD Ventures, WCM, Color Genomics, Meta, Ventures, Founders Fund, Spark Capital, Nvidia, Tiger Global Management, Wellington Management Locations: San Francisco, AGI

☆ Here's the playbook tech companies like AllTrails, Canva, and Kayak are using to dominate the charts in OpenAI's new GPT Store.
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-20 | by ( Samantha Stokes | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

Its GPT, which generates images from text prompts, is currently ranked second overall on the GPT Store. And all three companies' GPTs have been highlighted at the top of the GPT Store website as "OpenAI's Picks." Advertisement"Sometimes finding trails can be overwhelming because there are so many different places to go," Graham told Business Insider. In addition to GPT Store, companies are thinking more broadly about how AI fits into their business models. "Now we're also investing time in using AI to make our team faster and more efficient, too."

Persons: —, OpenAI, Canva, Anwar Haneef, Matthias Keller, James Graham, Sam Altman, Graham, GPTs, Sam Altman's, Keller, we're, Haneef Organizations: Service, Business, Uber, Sequoia Capital Global, Bessemer Venture Partners, Greenoaks, Booking Holdings, OpenAI, Economic, Canva Locations: Davos, Canva, ChatGPT

☆ Rippling CEO Parker Conrad dishes on why the startup is sitting on a massive $750 million war chest
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-14 | by ( Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. To this day, Rippling hasn't touched the money it raised in that emergency package, Conrad told Business Insider. Rippling will invest hundreds of millions of dollars from the balance sheet into research and development this year, according to CEO Parker Conrad. Parker Conrad says Rippling hasn't touched any of the venture capital it raised over the last two rounds. Shepherding the startup through this next growth phase is new chief product officer Eisar Lipkovitz, Rippling told Business Insider exclusively.

Persons: Parker Conrad, Conrad, Rippling hasn't, Kleiner Perkins, Rippling, Amy Osborne, Mamoon Hamid, they've, TechCrunch, Eisar Lipkovitz, Lipkovitz, Deel, Melia Russell Organizations: Business, paychecks, Bedrock, Washington Post, JPMorgan, Google Locations: Silicon, San Francisco, Asia, Lyft, Rippling

March 17 (Reuters) - HR and payment software startup Rippling said on Friday it has raised $500 million in a new funding round initially intended to help customers make payroll in the immediate aftermath of Silicon Valley Bank's collapse. The round, led by technology investor Greenoaks Capital, gave Rippling the same valuation of $11.25 billion it had clinched after its previous capital raise last year, the company said. Unclear if customers' funds would be recovered by Monday, Conrad started to seek more capital from investors, whose funds were also partly stuck with SVB. Growth equity firm Greenoaks was one of Rippling's investors that have funds available to wire on Monday. Rippling offers services to businesses to manage their human resource and information technology operations such as employees' onboarding and payroll management.

☆ Exclusive: Union Square Ventures warned startup founders in November to diversify their deposit holdings after alarm over Silicon Valley Bank
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-14 | by ( Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Union Square Ventures warned portfolio companies in November to diversify their bank deposits. The warning, which has not been previously reported, never specifically mentioned SVB. "If you read the SVB financial statements, which most people don't do, you could see an impending liquidity crisis," said one source. Venture investment firm Greenoaks Capital Partners also warned its startup founders of potential problems at SVB last November, Bloomberg reported. In December, a New York banker at a large financial institution started getting calls from current Silicon Valley Bank startup founders asking to open accounts, Insider previously reported.

☆ Two big Silicon Valley banks failed when the easy money ran out - and that could be just the start.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-13 | by ( Hallam Bullock | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Before we jump into the newsletter, the Silicon Valley Bank saga is continuing to unfold, so let's quickly break down the latest. "No losses associated with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank will be borne by the taxpayer," policymakers added. The fall of SVB and Signature bank means the Fed's aggressive interest-rate hiking regime has now taken sizable casualties. A $15 billion venture capital firm had warned its startups of Silicon Valley Bank's red flags months ago. Greenoaks Capital Partners told clients in an email back in November that SVB, as well as other firms, could see problems in a high-interest-rate environment, Bloomberg reported.

☆ A $15 billion VC firm warned its startups of Silicon Valley Bank's red flags months ago and they withdrew $1 billion ahead of the turmoil
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-10 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Greenoaks Capital Partners warned its startups about Silicon Valley Bank in November, Bloomberg said. More than a dozen Greenoaks startups withdrew an estimated $1 billion from SVB over recent months, according to Bloomberg. Shares of SVB have plunged more than 86% over two days as other VCs urged their startups to pull deposits from the bank. Mehta, whose firm has $15 billion under management, also said in November that First Republic Bank faced a similar risk. Silicon Valley Bank going under would be exponentially worse.

☆ Israeli cyber security firm Wiz raises $300 mln, valued at $10 bln
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

JERUSALEM, Feb 27 (Reuters) - U.S.-Israeli cyber security startup Wiz said on Monday it raised $300 million in a private funding round that values the firm at $10 billion. The late stage round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and existing investors Greenoaks Capital Partners and Index Ventures. Since its founding three years ago, Wiz, which focuses on cloud security and has 650 employees globally, has raised $900 million from investors, including Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, Blackstone and G Squared. It said it plans to open new offices in Austin, Dallas and Washington D.C. Reporting by Steven Scheer Editing by Ari RabinovitchOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Exclusive: How Pigment, a business-planning startup, raised $65 million in Series B funding from IVP and Meritech Capital without a pitch deck
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-28 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Pigment's cofounder shared how the team raised $65 million in Series B funding without a pitch deck. That inspired her to cofound Pigment, a startup based in France that recently raised $65 million in Series B funding from IVP and Meritech Capital. The capital was an extension of a Series B round in late 2021. Pigment — which competes against software companies like SAP, Oracle, Workday, and Anaplan — raised $73 million in Series B funding led by Greenoaks in November. Crespo told Insider that the company hadn't been planning to raise additional funding but was contacted by IVP and Meritech, which had heard about Pigment from customers.

☆ Exclusive: TripActions has filed confidentially for an IPO, targeting a $12 billion valuation, a rare exception in the frozen IPO market
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-28 | by ( Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

TripActions, which was last valued at $7.25 billion, aims to modernize business travel. Founded in 2015 by Ariel Cohen and Ilan Twig, the Palo Alto-based company helps businesses manage travel, company cards and expenses for employees. At the time, Cohen said TripActions had originally planned to go public this year but delayed those plans when the market went south. TripActions raised $275 million in series F funding last fall at a $7.25 billion valuation in a deal led by Greenoaks. Andreessen Horowitz first invested in TripActions in 2018, when it led the company's series C funding round at a $1.1 billion valuation.

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