2024-10-29
Congrats to Moniepoint on the $110m Series C financing. The team has done a fantastic job building out its infrastructure & finserv. Glad to see a blend of international & local investors stepping up to help propel another African fintech unicorn. https://techcabal.com/...
Financial Times
Nigeria-based Moniepoint, which offers bank accounts, loans, and POS terminals, raised $110M led by DPI, sources say at a $1B+ valuation, after raising $55M
Company raises $110mn from investors including Google despite slowdown in fundraising for African start-ups
2024-04-06
Grateful that so many YC companies are focused on AI. We'e gonna need more AI to cure this problem of too many jobs being created. The way things are going we might not get a decent rate cut until Xmas. Enough is enough! Time to make unemployment great again. We ride at dawn. [image]
Fortune
Some investors say YC's winter 2024 batch was stronger than in previous years, noting consumer AI as a key trend; YC says ~50% of this batch is working with AI
2024-04-02
‘Tiger Global has raised $2.2b for its latest venture capital fund, roughly a third of the $6b target it touted to investors when it first announced the fund in 2022.’ Took 9 mos to raise $200m for final close. Article doesn't address status of sales of fund secondaries. Rough. [image]
Bloomberg
Sources: Tiger raised ~$2.2B for its latest fund, well short of the $6B target and its smallest fundraising haul in about a decade, after raising a $12.7B fund
Hema Parmar / Bloomberg :
2024-02-16
No conflict no interest https://www.axios.com/...
Axios
Filings: Sam Altman is the sole owner of the OpenAI Startup Fund, which reported $175M in total commitments in May 2023; Microsoft is an outside limited partner
2024-01-01
So roughly an average of 7m subs paying $20/mo. $0-5b in 3 years is astonishing. Great progress but still hasn't quite blown the doors out as a paid consumer product. $1.6b in annualized revs is the gross number but we never hear what each dollar of revenue actually costs #OpenAI
The Information
Sources: OpenAI recently topped $1.6B in annualized revenue, up from $1.3B in mid-October; some OpenAI leaders believe OpenAI can reach a $5B ARR by 2024's end
It's effectively an imaginary number. It isn't the revenue made this year. … X: Ant Stanley / @iamstan : Annualized Revenue is a VC metric and different from Annual revenue. It is...
2023-11-18
Buncha Black folks in tech I know probably waiting outside my door right now, stacking a bunch of “we toldja that dude been straight shady from jump and you didn't believe us.” https://openai.com/... This was unexpected. Truly a Friday night dump.
OpenAI
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman departs the company and leaves its board after a board review found he wasn't “consistently candid in his communications with the board”
The board of directors of OpenAI, Inc, the 501(c)(3) that acts as the overall governing body for all OpenAI activities …
2023-09-19
Instacart prices at top end of range ($30) raising $660m (+ $175m from PepsiCo in a convertible preferred deal). FD valuation comes in at $10.2b. https://www.axios.com/... Congrats to the $CART team and investors. Big win.
CNBC
Instacart prices its 22M shares at $30 a piece, raising $660M in its IPO at a fully diluted valuation of ~$10B; Instacart was valued at $39B in 2021
the company isn't just an app. @apoorva_mehta and the team had to build an e-commerce, labor management and ad platform. He also had to construct an enterprise system for retailers...
2023-07-27
Long but well written and worth a read. The bits about el0n are unsurprising and, oddly enough, key in on the energy field that he silently projects, which is loneliness. A malaise that's more common than we all acknowledge. Glad you are looking up, Esther.
@esthercrawford
Ex-Twitter Director of Product Management Esther Crawford on the “culture of fear”, Elon Musk's strengths and weaknesses, the sleeping bag incident, and more
Like seemingly everyone on this app I have plenty of opinions about Twitter > X and figure now is a good time to open up a bit about my experience at the company. I tweeted for yea...
2023-05-25
Shares of Nvidia, the world's most valuable listed semiconductor company, rocketed as much as 28% after the bell to trade at $391.50, their highest level ever, increasing its stock market value by about $200b to over $950b. https://www.reuters.com/... $NVDA be, 1 trilli here we come.
CNBC
Nvidia reports Q1 revenue down 13% YoY to $7.19B, vs. $6.52B est., Data Center revenue up 14% YoY, and a Q2 revenue forecast above estimates; NVDA jumps 25%+
- Nvidia reported first-quarter earnings for its fiscal 2024 on Wednesday, with a stronger-than-expected forecast that drove shares up 26% in extended trading.
2023-05-01
ARM is going public & has confidentially filed w/ the SEC https://www.reuters.com/... I think this will be a bellwether IPO for several reasons, one of which is to serve as a blocking fullback for smaller tech companies to brave the market conditions & put toes in the IPO/DPO waters.
Reuters
Arm confidentially filed with regulators for a US IPO; sources say Arm seeks to raise between $8B-$10B on the Nasdaq, which is expected to be 2023's largest IPO
2023-04-30
ARM is going public & has confidentially filed w/ the SEC https://www.reuters.com/... I think this will be a bellwether IPO for several reasons, one of which is to serve as a blocking fullback for smaller tech companies to brave the market conditions & put toes in the IPO/DPO waters.
Reuters
Arm confidentially filed with regulators for a US IPO; sources: Arm seeks to raise between $8B-$10B on the Nasdaq, which is expected to be 2023's largest IPO
2023-03-16
'grats to Stripe on its $6.5b raise at $43.5b pre. https://www.axios.com/... The market turmoil can't have helped. Looks like this wasn't an outside lead otherwise big-dollar-check folks I know would have proposed a downward revision to the final valuation. https://www.axios.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Axios
Stripe raised a $6.5B+ Series I at a $50B valuation to help its employees cover tax obligations for the expiration of RSUs and to fund a new stock tender offer
Digital payments firm Stripe on Wednesday announced that it has raised more than $6.5 billion at a $50 billion valuation.
2023-03-01
.@eladgil's excellent post on #startup decoupling. https://blog.eladgil.com/... Still marvel at how much flak I took b/c the frothy 20s made no sustainable sense to me. Reminded of a lesson my brother learned at $MSFT. Focus on a) building proprietary assets b) get to critical mass. https://twitter.com/...
Elad Blog
Mid-to-late stage tech startups will likely face a reckoning in late 2023 to 2024, as companies run out of cash from “free rounds” fueled by low interest rates
The coming reset in mid-to-late stage startups in 2023-2024 is at this point likely largely decoupled from interest rates and inflation.
2023-02-23
What will be available at launch on the new 2024 Mercedes-Benz E-Class are third-party apps that don't require smartphone mirroring through Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. The E-Class will offer Zoom, Webex & even TikTok. https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Reuters
Mercedes-Benz partners with Google to bring navigation software and YouTube to its next-gen car OS and strikes a multibillion-dollar sensor deal with Luminar
2023-02-07
Softbank Vision Fund suffered a ~$6b loss in Q4 on valuation writedowns. https://www.cnbc.com/... ‘[It] made just $2.76b in new & follow-on investments in the nine months to Dec. 31, a “significant reduction” from $39.24b in 2021.’ Cataclysmic drop! First is a good slide though. https://twitter.com/...
Bloomberg
SoftBank reports a ~$5B loss for its Vision Fund in Q3, its fourth straight quarterly loss, and investments of less than $350M in only a few startups
SoftBank Group Corp.'s first earnings report without founder Masayoshi Son went a lot like those he presided over the past few years …
2023-02-01
Intel Cuts Pay For Employees https://www.semianalysis.com/ ... Ooof! If true this is grim. Wouldn't a 20% RIF have been a better strategy? It's been done before & it helped the company. In this ultra competitive semiconductor market, it can't delay the structural fixes req'd. $intc
Bloomberg
Intel cuts employee compensation to preserve cash for a turnaround plan, including 25% for CEO Pat Gelsinger, 15% for leadership, and 5% for mid-level managers
Intel Corp., struggling with a rapid drop in revenue and earnings, is cutting management pay across the company to cope …
2023-01-31
Interesting story, this. So Stripe is raising $2.5b, led by Thrive (😳) @ a $60b valuation, ostensibly to pay a tax bill & to offer employee liquidity. https://www.nytimes.com/... At ~$3b net revs, sounds like a generous multiple for what growth rate? Curious why equity & not debt? https://twitter.com/...
New York Times
Sources: Stripe is aiming to raise ~$2.5B at a $55B to $60B valuation, led by Thrive Capital, which has committed $1B; Stripe was valued at ~$95B in March 2021
Thrive has committed $1 billion, which would value the payments provider Stripe at about $55 billion to $60 billion, people with knowledge of the matter said.
2023-01-19
Thiel doesn't always get the timing right but when he does, grand slam! 'FF's shift on crypto, which had been one of its core positions, was one of about nine big exits the venture fund made between 2020 & the end of last yr that allowed it to return roughly $13b to investors.' https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Financial Times
Sources: Peter Thiel's Founders Fund sold most of its crypto portfolio by the end of March 2022, before the crypto market crash, generating ~$1.8B in returns
Billionaire was early mainstream investor in the digital currency but VC fund no longer has significant exposure
2022-11-18
$4.7b IOU? What an epoch. Folks just throwing billions around like they ain't. Quantitative easing led to quantitative fleecing. Or some'n. https://twitter.com/...
Financial Times
Analysis: Masayoshi Son personally owes SoftBank close to $5B due to its growing losses; his stake in the Vision Fund 2 is worthless, down from $2.8B in 2021
Financial Times :
2022-11-08
Balanced thread. Chris notes it is autobiographical b/c he too was guilty of some of the failings he sugg @ElonMusk has. Very true. Twtr also made him a ton of money when he mopped up secondaries as an insider. But the issue about sycophants is a real one. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Platformer
Sources: Elon Musk pitched charging most or all Twitter users for a subscription; internal estimates show Blue could lose the company ~$6/user/month in the US
Will he go through with it? PLUS: Botched layoffs, how the new Blue could lose money, and more