Deal of the Week
More robots, this time the best kind of robots: those in data centres!
It seems like Berkeley-founded Watney is focused on building robots for data centre operations, like cable swaps and server restarts. Meta is already a customer!
We previously looked at some of the big questions around robotics. One of those was humanoids (general purpose) vs. specialised robots as the form factor. As with so many things, the answer is probably both, but it does seem that, in the short term, specialised might offer the faster ROI.
For a complex environment like a data centre, where the stakes and scale are high, a company like Watney developing specialised robots seems to make perfect sense.
Congratulations to Watney, Berkeley founder Sean Cheong, and the team on the $80M Series A. The Berkeley robotics renaissance continues.
Side note: We recently laid out our bull case on Meta (here). Seems like the stock market might finally be taking interest 🙂
Love to see this post on LinkedIn that captures a post we did last year titled Berkeley Professors Build Big. See the image below of Pieter Abbeel’s linked students.
Who ate all the data centres?
I saw the below image and thought it was fascinating. The US is really going all in on data centres compared to the rest of the world, even, interestingly, China. Also interesting to see Malaysia there, which some may argue is really Chinese hyperscalers ;).
In any case, the implication here, if data centres = intelligence, is that the US will really be the dominant force in the world. And if not, then the US has massively overbuilt. Time will tell!
Note: Did not get to verify this chart but giving benefit of the doubt.
Inflation Nation
Feels like a big wave of inflation is coming down the pipes. Freight costs are near pandemic highs, and US diesel prices are now at record highs. The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve is approaching levels not seen since 1982.
Prices are on the up!
Jev and shifting paradigms
TypeSafe AI, from the co-inventor of ChatGPT, launched Jev. A new form of AI model that is meant to be much faster and cheaper. Some details here. What is Jev and why might it matter.
In simple terms, rather than generating an answer token by token, Jev tries to jump more directly to the decision by working from confidence rather than generating all the intermediate text. They call this System One thinking. A nod to Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow (give this a read!).
The interesting part is what this could mean for latency and cost. If you can get to the answer faster and with less compute, that could unlock a whole new set of use cases. Developers seem to love it too (see the uptick below).
More broadly, it is another reminder of just how early we still are in AI. There are going to be many more techniques, architectures, and approaches worked out from here. I stand by my post from a year or so ago: Intelligence Continues to Get Cheaper & Cheaper.
Quick Takes
The magic of compound interest and Warren Buffet
Have a startup? ICONIQ who do some great research released their Pacesetter Index that highlights what the fastest growing firms are showing. Wow it is fast!!!
Summary by the #️⃣ & 💰:
5 Berkeley-founded companies funded
$378M of capital raised from the 14th September to 20th September
💡 Got any ideas or feedback on how to improve this weekly digest? Just hit reply.
Closed Rounds
🤖 Factory. $200M 🇺🇸 Autonomous software development agents. 💰 Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners
🐻 Matan Grinberg, Co-Founder & CEO. PhD Physics Article
🦾 Watney Robotics. $80M Series A 🇺🇸 Autonomous data-center robotics. 💰 Hummingbird Ventures, Conviction
🐻 Sean Cheong, Co-Founder. BA EECS Article
🌧️ Raindrop. $34.5M Series A 🇺🇸 AI agent reliability platform. 💰 CRV, Figma Ventures, Scribble Ventures
🐻 Zubin Singh Koticha, CEO & Co-Founder. BA EECS Article
🏗️ Adaptive. $30.0M Series B 🇺🇸 AI construction accounting platform. 💰 Tidemark, Andreessen Horowitz, Emergence Capital
🐻 Henry Bradlow, Co-Founder & CTO. BA EECS Article
⚡ Liquid Compute. $15.0M Seed 🇺🇸 Regulated AI compute exchange. 💰 Chemistry, FirstMark, Night Capital
🐻 Aarav Patel, Co-Founder & President. BS EECS Article
🧬 Tempo Therapeutics. $14.5M Series B 🇺🇸 Regenerative biomaterials for tissue. 💰 Mesa Verde Venture Partners, Gideon Strategic Partners
🐻 Dino Di Carlo, Co-Founder & Scientific Advisor. PhD Bioengineering Article
🧫 Affinity Biosensors. $4.8M 🇺🇸 Rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing. 💰 Founders Capital Partners, Rose Ventures
🐻 Ken Babcock, Co-Founder & CEO. AB Physics Article
Date Built By Berkeley Started | Companies Funded | Total Raised ($M) |
7/8/24 | 864 | 236,412 |
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Built By Berkeley, where we announce all the funding rounds by Berkeley-founded companies. This is a community effort, so please let us know if we missed a company here. 🐻
