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☆ Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop undergoes second round of layoffs in two months
▼ + stars: | 2024-11-01 | by ( Madeline Berg | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle brand Goop conducted another round of layoffs, Business Insider learned. AdvertisementGwyneth Paltrow's Goop has conducted its second round of layoffs in as many months, Business Insider has learned. Goop Beauty revenue is up 21% over last year, and G. Label revenue is up 45%, she said. Earlier this year, the company hired consultants from a company called WestView to streamline business, the company told BI. These include in-house clothing brand G. Label, beauty lines Goop Beauty and Good Clean Goop, and delivery-only Goop Kitchen restaurants.

Persons: Gwyneth Paltrow's, —, Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop, Goop, Lauren Johnston, Gwyneth Paltrow, Paltrow, WWD, Felix Capital, you've, I've, It's Organizations: Business, Service, NEA, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Forbes, Netflix Locations: WestView

☆ A payments startup hoping to take on Stripe and Square just raised $75 million with this pitch deck
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-24 | by ( Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Finix is a startup that works with merchants so they can accept and manage payments. On Thursday, it raised a $75 million Series C that included Lightspeed Ventures and Acrew Capital. AdvertisementSome of the industry's biggest fintech investors just backed an up-and-coming payments startup challenging Stripe and Square. The San Francisco-based startup raised $75 million in a Series C funding round, the company announced Thursday. AdvertisementFinix processes billions of dollars every month for tens of thousands of merchants, Serna said.

Persons: —, Richie Serna, Finix, Serna, " Serna Organizations: Lightspeed Ventures, Acrew, Service, Acrew Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners Locations: San Francisco, Finix's, Serna

☆ Shiv Rao's Abridge has become the AI healthcare startup to watch
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-24 | by ( Rebecca Torrence | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: 1 min

Abridge has quickly become the healthcare AI startup to watch. Rao founded Abridge in 2018 to automate medical notetaking with its large language models. It's also gotten buy-in from major investors, including CVS Health Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Abridge in February announced it raised $150 million in Series C funding at an $850 million valuation. And in August, the startup got its biggest customer yet, notching a deal to provide its tech to Kaiser Permanente's clinicians.

Persons: Abridge, Rao, it's, It's, Kaiser Organizations: Sutter Health, Yale New, Yale New Haven Health, CVS Health Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Abridge Locations: Yale New Haven

☆ After rejecting Google takeover, cyber firm Wiz says it will IPO 'when the stars align'
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-18 | by ( Ryan Browne | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

LONDON — Cybersecurity firm Wiz is seeking to hit $1 billion of annual recurring revenues next year, the company's billionaire co-founder Roy Reznik told CNBC, adding that the firm will go public "when the stars align." Earlier this year, the company rejected a $23-billion acquisition bid from Google , which would have marked the tech giant's largest-ever takeover. At the time, Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport said the startup was "flattered" by the offer, but would remain an independent company and aim to list instead. "We've already broken a few records as a private company, and we believe we can also break a few more records as an independent public company as well," Reznik said. Four-year-old Wiz has raised $1.9 billion in venture capital to date, including $1 billion secured this year in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Thrive Capital at a valuation of $12 billion.

Persons: Wiz, Roy Reznik, Assaf Rappaport, Reznik, Andreessen Horowitz Organizations: CNBC, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google, Lightspeed Venture Partners Locations: Tel Aviv, Israel, London

☆ AI coding startups are becoming a hotspot for VCs. Here are the 12 copilots that have landed funding from funds like a16z, Lightspeed, and Menlo Ventures.
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-14 | by ( Samantha Stokes | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

VCs are investing in generative AI coding and copilot startups. AI coding tools automate coding tasks, allowing developers to focus on creativity. BI has identified which startups in the space have so far raised the most funding from VCs. AdvertisementThe AI revolution shows no signs of slowing down, and some VCs are turning their attention to a new corner of the market: generative AI coding and copilot startups. "I'm really high on AI coding assistants," Menlo Ventures partner Tim Tully recently told Business Insider.

Persons: —, Tim Tully, Kanu Gulati, PitchBook, Elad Gil Organizations: Service, Menlo Ventures, Business, Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners Locations: VCs, Korbit, PitchBook

☆ Suki just raised $70 million for its healthcare AI assistant to beat out rival Abridge. See the 17-slide pitch deck it used.
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-10 | by ( Rebecca Torrence | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Suki just raised $70 million in Series D funding led by Hedosophia for its medical AI assistant. It's competing with hot startups like Abridge as VCs scramble to place their bets in healthcare AI. The startup just landed a $70 million Series D round led by Hedosophia, a secretive UK-based VC firm led by Ian Osborne. Suki's biggest competitor is healthcare AI startup Abridge, which raised a $150 million Series C at a $850 million valuation in February and is backed by big names like Lightspeed Venture Partners and CVS Health Ventures. Here's the pitch deck Suki used to raise $70 million from Hedosophia.

Persons: Suki, Hedosophia, —, Punit Singh Soni, It's, Ian Osborne, transcribes, Kleiner Perkins, Abridge, Soni, EHR, he's Organizations: Service, Flare, Breyer Capital, InHealth Ventures, Fund, Suki's, Lightspeed Venture Partners, CVS Health Ventures, Veterans Health Administration Locations: Abridge, Hedosophia

☆ Business Insider is seeking nominations for the 2024 rising stars of venture capital
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-09 | by ( Samantha Stokes | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

Insider is putting together a list of the best up-and-coming venture capitalists of 2024. Go to newsletter preferences Thanks for signing up! AdvertisementWe are seeking nominations for Insider's yearly list of rising stars of venture capital, and we want to hear from you. We're looking for US-based venture capitalists who are working hard to find and fund the next big startups. In the past, we've had people with various roles and experiences from VC funds like Founders Fund, Greylock Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Tiger Global, and Spark Capital.

Persons: —, we've Organizations: Service, Founders, Greylock Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Tiger Global, Spark

☆ Exclusive: Healthcare AI startup Tennr is raising fresh cash from Lightspeed Venture Partners just months after its A16z-led Series A
▼ + stars: | 2024-09-24 | by ( Rebecca Torrence | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Read previewTennr, an A16z-backed startup using AI to replace faxes in healthcare, is raising a Series B round just seven months after its Series A. The startup is grabbing fresh cash from Lightspeed Venture Partners, according to two people with knowledge of the efforts. Those two people said Lightspeed preempted the fundraising efforts, approaching Tennr before the startup set out to raise more money. AI startups like Perplexity and Groq are reportedly tacking on more funding right now after closing big deals earlier this year. Some investors are taking the same approach with healthcare AI startups.

Persons: —, Tennr, Andreessen Horowitz, clamor, Forbes Organizations: Service, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Lightspeed, Business, Menlo Ventures, A16z Locations: Tennr, A16z . New York

☆ Indian ed-tech startup Physics Wallah bags $2.8 billion valuation amid sector troubles
▼ + stars: | 2024-09-20 | by ( Arjun Kharpal | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Indian education technology startup Physics Wallah announced on Friday that it had raised $210 million as it looks to expand its business, in part via acquisitions, amid troubles in the sector. The funding, led by Hornbill Capital, and involving Lightspeed Venture Partners, GSV and WestBridge, values the company at $2.8 billion, a significant increase from its last valuation of $1.1 billion. Physics Wallah, founded in 2020, is one of India's many education technology, or ed-tech firms, that offers free and paid-for courses for various competitive examinations in India. Pandey said the company is open to acquisitions provided it gives them access to new content and users. Last year, Physics Wallah brought a 50% stake in Xylem Learning, an ed-tech company headquartered in Kerala in south India.

Persons: …, Alakh Pandey, Pandey, Wallah Organizations: Hornbill Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, CNBC, YouTube Locations: India, Kerala

☆ AI-powered search startup Glean doubles valuation in new funding round led by Altimeter
▼ + stars: | 2024-09-10 | by ( Riley De León | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

AI-powered search startup Glean said Tuesday it has raised $260 million in a funding round that values the tech company at $4.6 billion — more than double its last reported valuation. Glean competes with a herd of well-financed generative AI startups and tech giants, attempting to compete with Microsoft Copilot and chatbot Amazon Q. Glean's Series E round, led by Altimeter and DST Global, includes Craft Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, all new investors in the company. Founder and CEO Arvind Jain started Glean in 2019 with other former Google engineers as an enterprise search engine. The company soon transitioned to generative AI.

Persons: Arvind Jain, Glean, Catalyst, Kleiner Perkins, Jain Organizations: CNBC, Glean, Microsoft, DST Global, Craft Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, Latitude, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, IDC Locations: Lisbon, Portugal, Palo Alto , California

☆ Engineers have found a way to bootstrap their way to smarter AI models as they wait for Chat GPT-5
▼ + stars: | 2024-08-23 | by ( Emma Cosgrove | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Read previewChat GPT-5, the next version of OpenAI's language model that changed everything, is on the way. As AI developers wait to test GPT-5, some have found a new way to bootstrap their way to more advanced AI without an entirely new model. Fewer idle GPUs then translate to more affordable computing, as Davis explained on the No Priors podcast released Thursday. When Davis and his co-authors used the compound AI method, the layered model produced the correct answer 37% of the time — a nearly 10-fold increase. "I think people are getting more sophisticated at thinking about cost in more of a life-cycle way," Davis said.

Persons: —, Jared Quincy Davis, Davis, Sarah Guo, Elad Gil, iterating Organizations: Service, Business, Foundry, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, Systems

Wiz has walked away from a $23 billion deal to be acquired by Google, in what would have been the search giant's largest-ever deal, telling employees it would pursue an initial public offering as it initially planned. The deal would have nearly doubled the $12 billion valuation of the startup from its most recent round of funding. Alphabet's cloud segment has been under pressure to grow amid competition from frontrunners Microsoft and Amazon, something the Wiz deal would have helped with. The shift benefited Wiz, which can flag security issues for applications and data on the Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle public clouds. In an interview with CNBC's Sara Eisen and Carl Quintanilla at the New York Stock Exchange last year, Eisen asked Rappaport if he wants to take the startup public.

Persons: Sundar Pichai, Wiz, Assaf Rappaport, Rappaport, Thomas Kurian, Brendan Burke, It's, Doug Leone, Covid, Sid Trivedi, CNBC's Sara Eisen, Carl Quintanilla, Eisen Organizations: Alphabet Inc, Government, Society, Google, CNBC, Microsoft, Index Ventures, Insight Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia, PitchBook, Intuit, Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Wiz's, Wiz, Oracle, Foundation Capital, Motorola, Lenovo, New York Stock Exchange Locations: Stanford , California, Sequoia

☆ Startups are building robots that can perceive the human world. Here's why VC firms like Khosla and a16z say that spatial intelligence will be the next big thing in AI.
▼ + stars: | 2024-07-09 | by ( Samantha Stokes | Emma Cosgrove | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Spatial intelligence allows robots to navigate and interact with their environment more efficiently, which means that robots can perform more complex tasks with higher precision and adaptability. AdvertisementEven so, investors say that spatial intelligence represents a quantum leap for the robotics industry, a space already benefiting from an AI boom. Lior Susan, CEO and founder of Eclipse Ventures, is betting that the difficulty of building AI with spatial intelligence will yield bigger returns in the future. "You see this boom of generative AI startups that are actually buying a lot of compute that do not have a business model yet," Susan said. Big tech is rolling in, tooBigger tech companies are also gearing up to compete in robotics' spatial intelligence race—both as builders and investors.

Persons: —, Andreessen Horowitz, Catalyst, Howard Morgan, Max Rimple, Erin Price, Wright, Fei, Fei Li, Kanu Gulati, Khosla, –, Gulati, Lior Susan, Susan, Jeff Bezos, Jensen Huang Organizations: Service, Khosla Ventures, Business, B Capital, Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Coatue Management, Stanford University, Eclipse Ventures, Intelligence, Lux, Sequoia Capital, Microsoft, Nvidia, Carbon Robotics, AIs Locations: LLMs, OpenAI, Lux Capital, Taipei

☆ Why AI deals in healthcare have grown faster than other areas of tech — and what VCs are paying close attention to
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-11 | by ( Rebecca Torrence | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Healthcare AI companies raised $2.8 billion in the first quarter of this year, according to the SVB report titled "The AI-powered Healthcare Experience." SVB projects funding to AI healthcare companies to total $11.1 billion in 2024. While healthcare AI startups might have it better, they're not out of the woods. Healthcare startups using AI for administrative tasks have grabbed $6.6 billion since 2021 and made up 42% of healthcare AI deals in the first quarter of this year, according to SVB. AdvertisementIn some cases, Big Tech companies are pushing healthcare startups forward.

Persons: —, Raysa Bousleiman, they're, Siva Namasivayam, Galym, Bousleiman, Shiv Rao Abridge, Lynne Chou O'Keefe, Lightspeed's Imanbayev Organizations: Service, Silicon Valley Bank, Business, Big Tech, Abridge, Health, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Google, Fathom, Nvidia, Ventures, Technologies Locations: Cohere, Abridge, SVB .

☆ Food startup Hungryroot uses AI to reduce waste, a major climate offender
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-07 | by ( Diana Olick | In Dianaolick | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Food waste is so prolific in the U.S. that roughly one-third of the amount produced ends up in landfills rather than stomachs. A recent study published in the journal Science found food production accounts for 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Food delivery services like HelloFresh, Blue Apron and EveryPlate reduce that somewhat by sending consumers what they need for specific recipes. The company says its processes help lead to 80% less food waste at its facilities compared with a traditional supermarket. In addition to Lightspeed, Hungryroot is backed by L Catterton, Crosslink Capital, Karp Reilly and Lerer Hippeau.

Persons: Ben McKean, Hungryroot, Jeremy Liew, They've, L, Karp Reilly, Lerer, Lisa Rizzolo Organizations: CNBC, Investors, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Crosslink Locations: U.S, York, Brussels

☆ Email startup Beehiiv just raised $33 million to build a big ad business and differentiate itself from rival Substack
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-02 | by ( Lauren Johnson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

download the appSign up to get the inside scoop on today’s biggest stories in markets, tech, and business — delivered daily. The firm closed a $33 million round of Series B funding, with the bulk of the money going toward building out its advertising business, CEO Tyler Denk told Business Insider. With the new round of funding, Beehiiv hopes to make $5 million from ads in 2024, he said. AdvertisementBeehiiv acquired the email ad platform Swapstack and launched its ad network that places ads in newsletters during the third quarter of 2023. Beehiiv's Denk said that Beehiiv has a "difference in philosophy" on ads than Substack does.

Persons: —, Tyler Denk, Beehiiv, Denk, Boston Globe Media's, Beehiiv's cofounders, Substack, Jesse Singal, Beehiiv's Denk Organizations: Service, Business, NEA, Sapphire, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Boston Globe, Morning, Netflix

☆ The next phase of AI is here — and it's not looking pretty
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-26 | by ( Hasan Chowdhury | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

AI companies run into hurdlesOne of the more eye-opening developments of this new phase came last week from a barely two-year-old OpenAI rival named Inflection AI. Related storiesIt has quickly become apparent that Inflection AI wasn't the only one struggling, however. Stability's Mostaque, meanwhile, seems to have conceded that Big Tech companies wield unassailable power in AI. In a post on X, he said that centralized AI was not going to be beaten with "more centralized AI". Not going to beat centralized AI with more centralized AI.

Persons: —, Bill Gates, Mustafa Suleyman, DeepMind, Suleyman, Reid Hoffman, Gates, Eric Schmidt, Emad Mostaque, Googlers —, Ali Barr, Pi, Cohere, Stability's Mostaque, ike C oatue Organizations: Service, Nasdaq, Business, Big Tech, Microsoft, Nvidia

☆ In Silicon Valley, Venture Capital Meets a Generational Shift
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-13 | by ( Erin Griffith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Reid Hoffman, a founder of LinkedIn and a longtime venture capitalist, is no longer the public face of the venture firm Greylock. Michael Moritz, a force at Sequoia Capital for 38 years, officially separated from the investment firm last summer. They are among the most recognizable of a generation of Silicon Valley investors who are getting out of venture capital at the end of a lucrative 15-year upswing for the industry. Investors at Tiger Global, Paradigm, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Emergence Capital and Spark Capital have all announced plans to step back. Foundry Group, a venture firm in Boulder, Colo., that has backed 200 companies since 2006, said in January that it would not raise another fund.

Persons: Reid Hoffman, Michael Moritz, Jeff Jordan, Andreessen Horowitz Organizations: LinkedIn, Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Spark, Foundry Group, Apple, Google Locations: Silicon, Boulder, Colo, —

☆ Fijoya is bringing AI to employer-sponsored healthcare benefits. Here's the pitch deck it used to raise $8.3 million.
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-07 | by ( Samantha Stokes | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Digital health benefits startup Fijoya just came out of stealth and announced an $8.3 million seed round from Team8, the Israeli venture group that creates startups and invests in existing ones across the cyber, data infrastructure, fintech, digital health, and AI industries. As Americans are spending more than ever on healthcare, Fijoya is one of many healthtech startups cropping up to tackle the financial aspects of healthcare. Now, out of stealth, Fijoya is focusing on giving employees an easier way to choose healthcare benefits that best suit their lifestyles. "This end-to-end approach signifies our commitment to simplify health benefits by offering a wide range of options with a seamless discovery, selection, and payment process.'" Check out the 15-slide pitch deck Fijoya used to raise its seed funding round.

Persons: Team8, Baruch Levy, Levy Organizations: Business, Health, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners Locations: Team8, Israel

☆ Has the LA scene fizzled? SoCal has fallen further behind the Bay Area, NYC and Boston for startup funding: 'People deep in AI are just not in LA'
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-23 | by ( Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

But last year, the LA tech scene stalled, according to Carta data. Startup funding plummeted everywhere, but nowhere experienced a steeper decline than LA, where funding declined 65% from 2022. CartaLA's startup funding dropped 65% last year, a steeper decline than the Bay Area, New York or Boston. "They're very deep AI companies, but they're being applied to a vertical, which is one of the strengths of LA," Ingersoll said. Bird goes bust and Snap snaps backThere was more bad news for LA's startup scene in 2023 than just the dismal funding numbers.

Persons: Ethan Aldrich, Aldrich, there's, Andreessen Horowitz, a16z, Katia Ameri, Ameri, VCs, Nikita Bier, Bier, Mark Suster, Suster, LA's, we're, Palmer Luckey, Minnie Ingersoll, Ingersoll, Bird, Zillow, Spencer Rascoff, Evan Spiegel ERIC PIERMONT, Ishan Singh, Singh Organizations: Stanford, Business, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Coatue Management, LA Tech, LA, Carta, Honest Company, New, Boston, Microsoft, Clark, SpaceX Locations: Santa Monica, Southern California, LA, Santa, Hayes, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York, New York, Boston, Carta, San Diego, Seattle, Hawthorne , CA, Costa, Bay

☆ Here's why a top VC says healthcare investors should make growth-stage bets right now — and where he's looking for those deals
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-18 | by ( Rebecca Torrence | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

As a multi-stage VC fund, Lightspeed has an advantage in its exposure to both early-stage and later-stage healthcare markets, Imanbayev said. And many later-stage healthcare startups still have plenty of room to grow, he said. The first one to three years are often slow-moving for a healthcare startup, too, as it works to get its first partnerships with payers or providers, he said. But they also tend to be less risky, since later-stage startups should have revenue streams or partnerships that demonstrate their value. Lightspeed led value-based care startup Aledade's $260 million Series F in June 2023, an unusually large deal as other investors cut much smaller checks.

Persons: —, Galym, Imanbayev, I'm, There's, Farzad Mostashari, Aledade Tom Sandner, VCs, Abridge, he's, Chris Severn Organizations: Business, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Lightspeed, CVS, Health, Turquoise Health, Pharma, FDA, pharma

☆ GPT and other AI models can't analyze an SEC filing, researchers find
▼ + stars: | 2023-12-19 | by ( Kif Leswing | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Patronus AI co-founders Anand Kannappan and Rebecca Qian Patronus AILarge language models, similar to the one at the heart of ChatGPT, frequently fail to answer questions derived from Securities and Exchange Commission filings, researchers from a startup called Patronus AI found. "That type of performance rate is just absolutely unacceptable," Patronus AI co-founder Anand Kannappan said. It feels like just testing by inspection," Patronus AI co-founder Rebecca Qian said. Here's some examples of questions in the dataset, provided by Patronus AI: Has CVS Health paid dividends to common shareholders in Q2 of FY2022? How the AI models did on the test

Persons: Anand Kannappan, Rebecca Qian Patronus, OpenAI's, ChatGPT, they're, Rebecca Qian, FinanceBench, Qian Organizations: Securities, Exchange, CNBC, SEC, Bloomberg, JPMorgan, McKinsey, Microsoft, Facebook, Meta, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Patronus, CVS, AMD, Coca

☆ After closed door OpenAI drama, open source AI backed by Nvidia, Eric Schmidt, could emerge winner
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-22 | by ( Rebecca Fannin | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

The Hugging Face website on a laptop arranged in New York, US, on Thursday, Aug. 17, 2023. "We should encourage all companies to build on disruption-proof AI technology that only open source can offer." To be clear, big bets made on open source AI pre-date last Friday when news first broke of Sam Altman's removal as OpenAI CEO, and those bets include an open source AI model controlled by one dominant tech company, Meta Platforms ' Llama. Open source and AI governanceFormer Google CEO Eric Schmidt is behind Mistral AI, another open source rival to OpenAI's ChatGPT. A third open source AI startup, Poolside AI, recently pulled in $126 million co-led by French telecom and internet billionaire Xavier Niel and U.S. VC firm Felicis Ventures.

Persons: Gabby Jones, Eric Schmidt, Sam Altman, Microsoft —, Mike Gualtieri, Forrester, Marc Benioff, Delip Rao, Sam Altman's, Thomas Wolf, We've, Wolf, Linus Torvalds, Paul Drews, OpenAI's, Arthur Mensch, Mistral, Xavier Niel Organizations: Nvidia, Bloomberg, Getty Images Tech, Salesforce, Qualcomm, Microsoft, Twitter, Google, Meta, IBM, Intel, Sequoia Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Mistral, alums, Lightspeed Venture Partners, French, . VC, Felicis Ventures Locations: New York, France

Mistral, a tiny AI startup that aims to be Europe's answer to OpenAI, is in discussions to raise a major round of funding that could push its valuation above $2 billion. Its cofounders are in talks with venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz to raise further funds, seven sources familiar with proceedings told Insider. Mistral is set to raise around $400 million at a valuation of at least $2 billion, which could rise to as high as $2.5 billion, three sources said. The deal is not yet finalized and the round size, valuation figures, and participants could still change. Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Mistral, Abstract Ventures, and Bezos Expeditions did not respond to Insider's request for comment.

Persons: Andreessen Horowitz, Catalyst, Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample, Timothée Lacroix, Jeff Bezos, Xavier Niel Organizations: Mistral, Meta, DeepMind, Bezos Expeditions, Amazon, Catalyst, Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners Locations: Paris

The creator economy buzz has simmered down but some startups are still catching investors' attention. Insider asked over a dozen VCs and angel investors to share which startups are on their radar. Here are 14 startups to watch in the creator economy as 2023 comes to a wrap. Yes, the buzz around the creator economy has fizzled out and consolidation has swept through the industry, but some startups are still catching the attention of investors. Insider asked more than a dozen venture capital and angel investors specializing in the creator economy, from firms including Hustle Fund, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and MaC Ventures, about the creator startups they think are most promising this year.

Organizations: Hustle Fund, Lightspeed Venture Partners, MaC Ventures

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