Built By Berkeley

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. 🐻

It was a slow week with two companies raising. Affiniti and Trek Health raised a total of $28M. Big congratulations to both, especially Affiniti (where both founders are Berkeley alum!), if this tweet is accurate the company is super impressive!

Although no direct Berkeley association apart from this award for financial reporting in 2007 I feel we have to pay an ode to Warren Buffett who announced his retirement at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in Omaha over the weekend.

I went to this event a few years back and it really is the Woodstock for Capitalists and just generally so fun. I effectively watched two 90 year olds (Warren and Charlie Munger) sitting on stage for 9 hours just chatting - this is way more fun than it sounds. 😂

Why is This Interesting?

• Berkshire from small origins as a textile manufacturer is now at the centre of the US Economy owning GEICO, BNSF Railway and large positions in companies like Coca Cola, Apple.

• The company has a market cap of approx. $1.15T dollars.

• If you invested $1,000 in Berkshire Hathaway in 1964 you would have $55,000,000 in 2024 if you invested the same $1,000 in the S&P500 you would have $390,540.

What is crazy is that the compound annual gain of Berkshire was 19.9% in this period vs. 10.4% for the S&P. The magic of compound interest!

Berkshire Hathaway is Really a Beast - a few fun facts:

• In 2024 the company paid $26.8B in taxes the most ever by one company in a year (reportedly 5% of all corporate taxes)

• Berkshire Hathaway is currently the largest non-government owner of US T-Bills holding around 5.1% of the total t-bills - $314B. This is also more than the federal reserve!

If anyone has time I would highly recommend reading the Berkshire Hathaway annual letters here for some clear sighted thinking.

Other

Myself and some good friends from Thomvest and Fiat Ventures are hosting a Cal Cafe event this thursday. This is the 3rd event we have done and is an open invitation for all Berkeley funders, founders and friends to grab breakfast and chat - sign up here.

Finally an interview I recently did for VC Uncovered.

Summary by the #️⃣ & 💰:

• 2 Berkeley-founded companies funded

• $28M of capital raised from the 28th April to 4th May

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Acquisition

🧬 NeuroMetrix Acquisition 🇺🇸 Bioelectronic therapies for chronic pain. 💰 electroCoreI

🐻 Shai Gozani, CEO & Founder. BA/MS EECS & PhD Neurobiology. Article

Closed Rounds

🧾 Affiniti $16.6M Series A 🇺🇸 Finance platform for SMBs. 💰 Eniac Ventures, Gilgamesh Ventures, Montage Ventures

🐻 Aaron Bai, CEO & Founder. BA EECS.

🧠 Trek Health $11M Series A 🇺🇸 AI-powered healthcare platform. 💰 Madrona Ventures, Correlation Ventures, LifeX Ventures

🐻 Dilpreet Sahota, Founder & CEO. BA. Article

Built By Berkeley Tracker

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….