Deal of the Week
Starlink has been a game changer for communications and internet access in remote locales, with about 12M subscribers. It is also a game changer on the battlefield. In Ukraine, where most forms of communication are blocked, Starlink remains active, and Ukraine is now trying to add Starlink to attack drones. They now also have their eyes on becoming a mobile network (if I were a cable boss, I’d be sweating a little), although they claim not.
Other companies, such as Amazon, are also at it. So lots happening here. In steps Berkeley-founded Hubble Network, which just raised $30M for a different take on this.
They are building a low-cost network for IoT devices. Think supply chains, etc. That can connect to any Bluetooth-enabled device and grab important data. Pretty cool, and you can see the use cases: vehicle tracking, shipping, etc.
Congrats to Ben Wild and team.
The space race is heating up!
American Opensource and $60M per AI Engineer?
Nvidia, after having their ears burning in last week's edition, are at it again. This time, it is open source and a potential investment into Berkeley-founded Perplexity at a $30B valuation. Apparently they have gone from $250M to $750M this year, wow! People seem to be loving Perplexity computer.
The bigger news is the $7B deal for Poolside AI, an open-source AI model lab, in a fairly whacky structure. $6B will be for a non-exclusive license to the product… which, on the face of it, makes no sense. But then it seems 100 or so employees will be offered roles at Nvidia, so basically Nvidia are paying $60M per engineer++. Another $1B will be invested into Poolside at $12B, and the founders will stay. Got to love the ingenuity here.
We need these footballer (soccer) style transfer numbers in venture capital too 😵💫!
So why do this? Nvidia is making stronger moves into open source. The idea here is likely to spread AI as fast and as wide as possible and make sure it all runs on Nvidia hardware. So now Nvidia are effectively competing with their biggest customers, who are also competing with them, with all the big labs and hyperscalers building their own AI chips.
A few things are interesting here. A lot of these ‘Neolabs’ were funded at very high valuations on the idea that if it works out, everyone is very happy (duh), and if it doesn’t, you will likely get your investment back via an acquihire. I am not sure anyone expected this kind of acquihire.
In this case, it seems likely that Poolside does not have a ton of revenue, but I am sure the investors all did extremely well. The company was founded in 2023 and was last valued at $2.5B. In AI, revenue and enormous exits all seem to happen at warp speed.
Bottom line: expect more neolab funding!
Data centres. No in my backyard.
We touched on various bottlenecks in the data centre buildout, but it seems the biggest bottleneck might end up being AI’s public relations problem. Politicians from both sides of the aisle are now lining up to bash them or ban them.
Interestingly, a few months ago I was chatting to the founder of a startup that transcribes local government meetings. He told me that local sentiment towards data centres was even more poisonous than the news was suggesting at the time. It seems he was right, and politicians are now taking notice.
I don’t really get this, as it seems data centres don’t use a ton of water and bring a lot of benefits to the local area. But it seems the Chinese CCP may be funding some of the opposition to data centre buildouts.
In any case, this is going to be a big problem, and the big tech + AI companies really need to go on the charm offensive.
Quick takes
Cursor completed a $60B acquisition by SpaceX last week - read out report on their narrative violation earlier this year. Well done!
The CAPEX estimates of the big players keeps going up and up. If power or permits don’t slow the build out the freight train of capital will keep on rolling.
Summary by the #️⃣ & 💰:
4 Berkeley-founded companies funded
$67M of capital raised from the 17th August to 23rd August
💡 Got any ideas or feedback on how to improve this weekly digest? Just hit reply.
Acquisitions
🐻 Robert Wahbe, Founder & CEO. Computer Science, UC Berkeley. Article
Closed Rounds
🛰️ Hubble Network. $30.0M Series C 🇺🇸 Satellite-powered Bluetooth network. 💰 Seraphim Space, Samsung NEXT, Convective Capital
⚡ Flash. $29.0M Series D 🇧🇷 Employee benefits management platform. 💰 Battery Ventures, Endeavor Catalyst
🐻 Ricardo Salem, Founder & CEO. Haas MBA
🛡️ Aerdos. $6.6M Seed 🇺🇸 AI-powered national security intelligence. 💰 Scribble Ventures
🐻 Auren Hoffman, Co-Founder. BSE Industrial Engineering & Operations Research. Article
🧠 Blueprint. $1.0M Seed 🇨🇦 Behavioral health outcome software. 💰 Andreessen Horowitz, Founders, Inc
🐻 Pranav Seelam, Co-Founder & CTO. BS EECS.
Date Built By Berkeley Started | Companies Funded | Total Raised ($M) |
7/8/24 | 840 | 233,242 |
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.
Did we miss a company or want to announce a round? Add it here, and we will post it next week.
Do you have a job you want to post from a Berkeley Company? Add here.
Is there someone in the Berkeley ecosystem that you would want us to do a profile on? A founder, funder, or general startup person? Add here.
Built By Berkeley is not affiliated with UC Berkeley, but maybe we will be one day if we get enough subscribers….
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. 🐻
