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$601M Raised & A Wild Meme Coin Ride
Xan Wood
January 20, 2025
Welcome to 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. 🐻
$TRUMP & $MELANIA….On Friday night, Donald Trump tweeted that he was launching a meme coin.
In just 36 hours, its value skyrocketed by +28,000%. For context, this is more than the S&P 500 has returned in 54 years. The coin reached a $15B market cap (with a fully diluted value of $70B) and generated $2B in trading volume within 24 hours.
Donald Trump’s related entities held about 80% of $TRUMP coins fully diluted coins (in 24 hours, Trump, on paper, has made many multiples of his whole real estate career).
Some incredible stories of gains have emerged. At one point, there were six wallets with over $600M in value each. One trader invested $1.06M, which quickly turned into $406M—a staggering 372x return on investment.
Not to be outdone, on Sunday, Melania Trump launched her own coin, $MELANIA.
Shortly after, Trump’s coin lost $7.5B in value in just 10 minutes. Meanwhile, Melania’s coin reached a $1.4B market cap (with a fully diluted value of $13B).
Melania Trump’s related entities held about 88% of $MELANIA fully diluted coins.
The volumes and numbers above are simply staggering. If none of the above makes sense to you either, you are not alone!
It feels like a cultural watershed. Either we are seeing animal spirits getting released or something else entirely.
In other news, 12 Berkeley-founded companies raised $610M from drug development to high-protein chickpeas.
Summary by the #️⃣ & 💰:
12 Berkeley-founded companies funded
$610M of capital raised from the 13th January to 19th January
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Exits
🐻 Sargun Kaur, Co-Founder & CEO. BS EECS. Article
Closed Rounds
❤️ Kardigan. $300M Series A 🇺🇸 Cardiovascular drug development. 💰 ARCH Venture Partners, NexTech, Perceptive Advisors, Sequoia Heritage.
🐻 Bob McDowell, Co-Founder & Chief Scientific Officer. PhD Chemistry. Article
🧬 Tune Therapeutics. $175M Series B 🇺🇸 Epigenetic programming therapies. 💰 Emerson Collective, New Enterprise Associates, Regeneron Ventures.
🐻 Fyodor Urnov, Co-Founder & Member of Scientific Advisory Board. Professor. Article
🔄 Prophecy. $47M Series B 🇺🇸 Data transformation platform. 💰 Berkeley SkyDeck, Databricks Ventures, Insight Partners.
📈 Vividly. $30M Series B 🇺🇸 Trade promotion software. 💰 Centana Growth Partners.
🐻 Alexander Whatley, Co-Founder & CPO. PhD Computer Science. Article
🩺 Owlstone Medical. $27M Series E 🇬🇧 Breath diagnostics platform. 💰 Aviva Ventures, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, V Ventures.
🐻 David Ruiz Alonso, Co-Founder & COO. MS.
💻 Workwize. $13M Series A 🇳🇱 Digital procurement platform. 💰 Klass Capital.
🐻 Sebastiaan Scholten, Co-Founder & CTO. Venture Capital Program. Article
🌱 NuCicer. $6M Seed 🇺🇸 High-protein chickpeas. 💰 Blue Horizon, Lever VC, The House Fund
🐻 Kathryn Cook, Co-Founder & CEO. BS & MS Materials Science.
💳 SkorLife. $6M Seed 🇮🇩 Financial wellness platform. 💰 Digital Currency Group.
🐻 Ongki Kurniawan, Co-Founder & CEO. MBA. Article
📊 Daash. $5M Seed 🇺🇸 Commerce insights platform. 💰 Bullpen Capital, GFT Ventures, Red Bike Capital.
🐻 Philip Smolin, Co-Founder & CEO. Haas MBA. Article
💡 Bepo. $380K Crowdfunding 🇺🇸 Digital tipping platform. 💰 Undisclosed.
🐻 Ian Sweeney, Founder & CEO. Haas MBA.
🧩 AnnieCannons. $12K Accelerator 🇺🇸 Training for trafficking survivors. 💰 How Women Lead, REDF, Spark SF, Y Combinator.
🐻 Laura Hackney, Co-Founder & CEO. BS China Studies.
Built By Berkeley Tracker
Date Built By Berkeley Started | Companies Funded | Total Raised ($M) |
7/8/24 | 256 | 28,341 |
Our goal is to document the startup ecosystem of Berkeley-founded companies. Please share this newsletter with any Cal Bears in your network so we can crowdsource information about all investment rounds and job opportunities.
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