Keeping an Eye on AI…
A flurry of funding continues to flow into startups and those enhancing their products with ‘AI infusion’ to the tune of billions (yes, billions). Once again, billion-dollar raises and valuations are taking the front seat on many VC dockets. Interestingly, VCs are backing competitors as they keep an eye on AI in hopes of cashing out big.
“VCs used to stay away from overlapping investments and investing in competitors. That norm seems to have changed slightly as the venture capital industry became bigger, and now it looks like the AI craze has obliterated that rule of thumb completely.”- Crunchbase
Some notable trends this week…
- A good week for domestic deals
- Double and triple-digit funding is back
- Payments funding slows
Up next are this week’s top 5 VC deals…
1Cloover
$114.2M, Seed, Capital| Equity | Germany | Fintech | Lowercarbon Capital, 9900 Capital, QED | https://cloover.co/
LinkedIn Overview:
“Cloover’s mission is to connect 1Bn people to renewable energy. Cloover, a Berlin-based startup, is building an ecosystem designed to accelerate Europe’s mission to achieve net-zero emissions and unify the residential renewable energy industry…“
2Solutions by Text
$110M, Capital| Equity & Debt | TX | Payments | Edison Partners, StepStone Group, Stifel Venture | https://solutionsbytext.com/
LinkedIn Description:
“Solutions by Text (SBT) is the pioneer of FinText™, empowering enterprise financial services companies to compliantly engage, interact and transact with their consumers in real-time…“
3Babylon
$70M, Capital | Equity | CA | Paradigm, Bullish Capital, Polychain Capital, Hashkey Capital, Mantle, Galaxy, Hack VC, ViaBTC Capital, Amber, HTX Ventures | https://babylonchain.io/
LinkedIn Description:
“At Babylon, we envision a future where Bitcoin and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) chains thrive together. Our mission is to build a Bitcoin-driven decentralized world by evolving Bitcoin into a trusted security backbone for PoS…“
4FintechOS
$60M, Series B+ Capital | Equity | UK | Fintech | Molten Ventures, Cipio Partners, BlackRock, EarlyBird VC, OTB VC, Gapminder VC | https://fintechos.com/
LinkedIn Description:
“FintechOS is the global leader in fintech enablement, with a mission to make fintech innovation available to every company…”
5Old Well Labs
$36M, Series A, Capital |Equity | NC | Wealthtech | Nellore Capital, Ted Seides, Mike and Tom Elnick, Shubham Goel, Brian Bares | https://www.oldwell-labs.com/
LinkedIn Description:
“OId Well Labs (OWL) is an intelligence platform purpose-built to help allocators find, monitor, and connect with the world’s best investors. Our mission is to collect and organize the billions of publicly available data points about investment managers in one easy-to-use platform…“
