Cal Café — Berkeley Founders, Funders, and Friends, hosted by Canvas Prime & Accel. Thursday, March 26 at the Accel office in South Park. Sign up here. ☕🐻
Deal of the Week
One of my predictions (number 10!) for 2026 was that it would be massive for robotics. Just two weeks after that, Skild raised a huge round, and there have been many more since.
Now this week we have two Berkeley robotics startups raising chunky rounds. First, Rhoda AI raised $450M, exiting stealth (wild that you exit stealth these days with a $450M fundraise!), although the founder Jagdeep Singh looks like an amazing entrepreneur. They are building a general-purpose robotics model.
On top of this, Sunday raised $165Mat over a $1B valuation. Sunday is building robots to help around the house and, uniquely, is looking to full-stack the process (training, building, and selling the robots).
Yikes, I am excited for when we have robots doing the dishes and laundry!
I have been saying that Berkeley is ground zero for AI for a while, but now I am adding that it is the global robotics hotbed of innovation.
From Pikachu to Robots?
In this robotics vein, it appears that Berkeley legend John Hanke (a founder of Google Maps and a Haas MBA) may have been playing chess while other companies were playing chequers.
We reported on the sale of Pokémon Go to game maker Scopley for $3.5B (and also the increase in the value of old Pokémon cards). After the sale, John spun up a company called Niantic Spatial that seems to have kept something very important: the billions of hours of data generated from the Pokémon Go phenomenon and also the geo tag related to there.
If anyone remembers random groups of people charging around cities, there is a good chance that was Pokémon Go users taking part in the virtual game, which required players to maneuver through real-world environments (the geo tags!). This appears to have generated around 30 billion images that Niantic Spatial has used to train a Visual Positioning System, which is now being resold to real-world robotics and delivery companies.
Quick Takes
It is slightly worrying the general views towards the impact of AI (see below) and also interesting that OpenClaw has taken off in China as people look to ‘Raise the Lobster’.
Everyone can understand the spike in oil prices, but there are a lot of second-order effects from the slowdown of traffic through the Straits of Hormuz. One of these is a potential squeeze in helium, where about ⅓ of global production flows through the Straits (a by-product of natural gas). This could have a large knock-on effect as major chip makers require significant helium. If the uncertainty continues, there could be inflation shocks incoming outside of the obvious oil-related ones.
Another event in March I am hosting as part of the SkyDeck Demo Day
Berkeley Alums in Ventures - In Berkeley 04/02
Check out 🐻 Bear Intros. Bo (the AI agent) has made dozens of intros. If you haven't checked it out yet, Bear Intros is an exclusive founder-investor matching platform for the Cal network. Completely free
Summary by the #️⃣ & 💰:
13 Berkeley-founded companies funded
$1.03B of capital raised from the 9th March to 15 March
💡 Got any ideas or feedback on how to improve this weekly digest? Just hit reply.
Acquisition/IPOs
⚙️ Sedemac $119.3M IPO 🇮🇳 Automotive control systems manufacturer. 💰 IPO
🐻 Shashikanth Suryanarayanan, MD. PhD Mechanical Engineering Article
🐻 Mehul Shah, CEO. PhD Computer Science Article
🚗 Cambridge Mobile Telematics Acquisition 🇺🇸 Driver behavior analytics platform. 💰
🐻 Hari Balakrishnan, CTO. PhD Computer Science
🐻 Stephen Llevano, CEO. BA Political Science Article
🛰️ ExoAnalytic Solutions Acquisition 🇺🇸 Space domain monitoring network. 💰 Anduril Industries
🐻 Douglas Hendrix, CEO. BA Physics Article
Closed Rounds
🤖 Rhoda AI $450M Series A 🇺🇸 General-purpose robotics foundation models. 💰 Mayfield Fund, MVP Ventures, Prelude Ventures
🐻 Jagdeep Singh, CEO. Haas MBA Article
🤖 Sunday $165M Series B 🇺🇸 Autonomous service robotics platform. 💰 Bain Capital Ventures, Benchmark, Coatue
📡 Calterah $145M Series E 🇨🇳 Millimeter-wave radar semiconductor chips. 💰 GAC Capital *, Gopher Asset Management, TransLink Capital
🐻 Jiashu Chen, CEO. PhD EECS Article
🏥 Alan $117.6M Later Stage VC 🇫🇷 Digital corporate health insurance. 💰 DST Global, Greenoaks Capital, Index Ventures
🐻 Charles Gorintin, Co-Founder & CTO. MFE Financial Engineering Article
💳 Kast $80M Series A 🇸🇨 Stablecoin-powered neobank platform. 💰 Left Lane Capital, Peak XV Partners, QED Investors
🐻 Daniel Bertoli, Co-Founder. BA Business Administration Article
🧑💻 Agnes AI $20M Early Stage VC 🇸🇬 Collaborative AI research workspace. 💰 Oki Ventures, Vertex Holdings
🐻 Tong (Bruce) Yang, CEO. BA EECS Article
🛡️ Escape Technologies $18M Series A 🇫🇷 GraphQL API security testing. 💰 Balderton Capital, Kima Ventures, Y Combinator
🐻 Antoine Carossio, CTO. Entrepreneurship Article
⚡ Qurrent $15M Series A 🇺🇸 AI agent development framework. 💰 Cervin Ventures, Streamlined Ventures, ThirdStream Partners
🐻 August Rosedale, Co-Founder & CEO. BSME MEng Article
🧬 Spinogenix $10.6M Series D 🇺🇸 Neurodegenerative synapse restoration drugs. 💰 Stead Impact Ventures, UC San Diego
🐻 Stella Sarraf, CEO. BA Biochemistry
📶 R2 Wireless $5M 🇮🇱 RF threat detection platform. 💰 Brimstone Hill Capital
🐻 Cordell Bennigson, Founder & US CEO. BA Political Science Article
🤖 Anyware Robotics Early Stage VC 🇺🇸 Autonomous logistics unloading robots. 💰 Naver D2SF, Foothill Ventures, Alumni Ventures
🐻 Thomas Tang, CEO. PhD Robotics Article
⚙️ Config Accelerator 🇺🇸 Robotics data infrastructure platform. 💰 MassRobotics
🐻 Minjoon Seo, CEO. BA EECS
🧪 Ruby Bio Accelerator 🇺🇸 Bio-based chemical manufacturing platform. 💰 Alumni Ventures, Fusion Fund
🐻 Charles Silver, CEO. Haas MBA
Date Built By Berkeley Started | Companies Funded | Total Raised ($M) |
7/8/24 | 688 | 209,876 |
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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. 🐻
