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Built By Berkeley
More IPOs & Apple Wants a Search Engine
Xan Wood
June 30, 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. 🐻
Built By Berkeley Shout Out…Chancellor Rich Lyons highlighting some of our data.
Congratulations to Lime (founded by Haas MBA alum Brad Bao), which is headed for an IPO. Having recently been in London, I really think e-bikes have transformed transportation in cities like London and NYC. As mentioned last week, IPOs are back!
Apple (co-founded by Berkeley alum Steve Wozniak) has been late to the AI game but seems ready to take a swing. Rumored to be looking Perplexity (founded by Berkeley alum Aravind Srinivass), the AI-powered search engine last valued at $14B. I actually talked about them on a podcast recently. I think the team is iterating incredibly fast and building world-class products.
If Meta is willing to spend $14B to acuhire Alexandr Wang, Apple buying Perplexity (albeit at a high cost cost) for both the product and a product-centric maestro to help catch up in the ongoing AI race doesn’t sound so wild.
In related news, Perplexity and Databricks co-founder Andy Konwinski has pledged $100M to launch the Laude Institute, focused on advancing AI research. Its first project: a new AI Systems Lab at Berkeley. His recent Berkeley commencement speech is well worth a watch.
Slow week for fundraising with $35M raised from 4 companies.
Summary by the #️⃣ & 💰:
4 Berkeley-founded companies funded
$35M of capital raised from the 23rd June to 29th June
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IPO
🚲 Lime IPO 🇺🇸 Global micromobility network. 💰 Andreessen Horowitz, Atomico, Bain Capital Ventures
🗺️ UrbanFootprint Acquisition 🇺🇸 Location‑intelligence platform. 💰 LightBox
🐻 Joe DiStefano, CEO & Co‑Founder, BA History. Article
Closed Rounds
🐻 Sammy Sidhu, Founder & CEO. Article
📡 AURA Network Systems $11.2M Undisclosed 🇺🇸 Nationwide autonomy network. 💰Fortress Investment Group, Mudrick Capital Management, Tracker Capital Management
🐻 Bill Tolpegin, Founder & Advisor, BA
🛠️ Mahalo $2.6M Seed 🇺🇸 AI post‑purchase support. 💰 Bridge Finance Venture Fund, Diagram Ventures, Motivate Venture Capital
🐻 Robert Lowe, Founder & CEO, PhD Economics. Article
🌙 Endolumik $1 M Seed 🇺🇸 NIR‑lit bariatric device. 💰 Calypso Holdings & Investments, Texas Medical Center, Varia Ventures
🐻 Mara McFadden, Founder & CEO, BS Mechanical Eng
Date Built By Berkeley Started | Companies Funded | Total Raised ($M) |
7/8/24 | 406 | 71,743 |
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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