Deal of the Week
QuantumDiamonds raised $103M as a mixture of non-dilutive and dilutive funding.
As the world goes all-in on AI infrastructure, an increasing amount of capital is flowing into the semiconductor supply chain—not just into building more fabs, but also into improving the efficiency of those fabs.
QuantumDiamonds is tackling one of the industry’s biggest challenges: yield.
Semiconductor manufacturing is inherently probabilistic. Even when chips are produced on the same wafer using the same process, some will contain defects and fail. As chips become more complex. With chiplets, advanced packaging and multiple stacked layers. Finding exactly where those defects are located is becoming increasingly difficult.
QuantumDiamonds uses tiny defects inside synthetic diamonds as quantum sensors to map electrical currents within a chip. This allows manufacturers to identify hidden faults without cutting open or destroying the semiconductor, potentially improving yields, reducing waste and accelerating development cycles. Adjacently this is a great book -
I am maybe not smart enough to fully understand Quantum computing, but this seems a cool example of a use case!
I also have a small investment in this area through Berkeley founded SirenOpt that is using low temperature plazma. Different underlying technology, but a similar ambition: helping manufacturers better understand what is happening inside increasingly complex production processes.
Trump Accounts - A New Form of Philanthropy
Pretty amazing initiative to see the launch of Trump Accounts, which are effectively tax-advantaged accounts for under-18s, with the US government contributing $1,000 for children born between 2025 and 2029.
The tax advantages seem sort of so-so, but the big unlocks to me are:
Teaching children the magic of compounding. Tthe eighth wonder of the world!
Excited that my new son will be a participant in this.
I do think there is a second-order effect here that is hard to ignore: the US stock market is becoming too big to fail. As more and more household wealth moves into the stock market, can this administration or future administrations really allow it to overcorrect?
Billion Dollar PDFs
A fun concept was raised on this podcast, the idea of ‘Billion Dollar Pdfs’, where every now and then someone comes along and writes a piece that crystallizes the prevailing thoughts and zeitgest and at that point you see a big rush of capital into a particular area. Try find one of these early and get there before the crowds!
With the magic of generative AI, someone quickly jumped on this and pulled up a website (BillionDollarPDF.com) with some great examples of these.
Where are all my Pals Going (continued)?
I posted the below in December but it feels like this has accelerated even more:
It might be that I haven’t been in venture capital long enough, but I’ve noticed a concerning trend recently. A lot of the people I know are leaving. Where are they going? It seems like it’s mainly to hot AI companies, typically to be a Chief of Staff, lead Partnerships, or work in GTM. I’m seeing this across all rungs of venture capital, from junior to senior roles. I don’t have any data on this, so it’s just a feeling, but a tell-tale sign is when you get a bounce-back email and the person hasn’t sent around a note saying they’re excited to continue working with you. After all, who needs a venture friend when they’re at a hot new AI company 😞
I sort of understand why, and I do advise people that the best risk-reward right now is at a fast-scaling Series B or Series C AI startup. This is unless you love spending time searching for people and companies building the future, which I am a glutton for.
This week a partner at YC and founder of Monzo Bank joined the ranks of Anthropic, showing this trend is happening at all levels of VC. Very interesting and extremely interesting that he calls out recursive self-improvement.
The amount of talent joining Anthropic recently really is astounding. My suspicion is that there is some breakthrough and they are using this to staff up!? Or everyone is seeing that multi $T IPO incoming!?
Or maybe VCs are the new bottle water salesman (says the ex VC) 😜 .
It would be fun to be one of the last bottled person standing - just like Zhong Shanshan in China.
Quick Takes
I don’t know to much on Daniela Amodei the co-founder of Anthropic, so this was an interesting read.
Good blog post by Berkeley founded Thinking Machines. Does make you think that each of these AI model has a lot of character and so it probably makes sense to have lots of different types of characters. Horses for Courses!
As everyone becomes expert at emails, presentations with AI personal networks become even more crucial - how to improve yours.
Interesting piece from the founder of Decagon on when to use Opensource vs. Frontier.
Pretty crazy to see the volume of venture capital into the $221B of deal value vs. $11B as the next most in NYC. A lot of this is concentrated but still interesting.
Summary by the #️⃣ & 💰:
12 Berkeley-founded companies funded
$411M of capital raised from the 6th July to 12th July
💡 Got any ideas or feedback on how to improve this weekly digest? Just hit reply.
Closed Rounds
🤖 Robotera. $148M Series C 🇨🇳 General-purpose humanoid robotics. 💰 IDG Capital, HSG, Alibaba Group
🐻 Jianyu Chen, Founder. PhD Robotics. Article
💎 QuantumDiamonds. $103M 🇩🇪 Quantum semiconductor inspection systems. 💰 World Fund, Earlybird Venture Capital, First Momentum Ventures
🐻 Kristina Liu, Founder. BS Chemistry. Article
🎬 Kaon AI. $60.0M Series B 🇺🇸 Personalized generative entertainment platform. 💰 B Capital, Goodwater Capital, DCM Ventures
🧪 Bespoke Labs. $31.8M Series A 🇺🇸 Training environments for reliable agents. 💰 8VC, Mayfield, The House Fund
🐻 Alex Dimakis, Founder & CSO. Professor, EECS. Article
👕 Fleek. $25.0M Series B 🇺🇸 Wholesale secondhand fashion marketplace. 💰 Burda Principal Investments, eBay Ventures, FJ Labs
🐻 Abhi Arora, Founder & CEO. BS Business. Article
🎓 EdVisorly. $13.3M Series A 🇺🇸 AI-powered university enrollment platform. 💰 Breachway Capital, Motley Fool Ventures, Zeal Capital Partners
🐻 Manny Smith, Founder & CEO. Haas MBA. Article
🏥 Commons Clinic. $10.1M 🇺🇸 Integrated specialty healthcare platform. 💰 Founders First Capital Partners, Gaingels, Global Founders Capital
🐻 Paulo Da Costa, Co-Founder & COO. Haas MBA. Article
🐻 Ryan Brown, Co-Founder. MS Data Science.
🔥 Forge Industries. $3.9M Venture Round 🇺🇸 Waste-derived renewable industrial fuels. 💰 8090 Industries, Next Phase Capital, Golden Seeds
🐻 Chelsea Boyle, Founder & CEO. Haas MBA. Article
🧴 Neothera. $1.1M Pre-Seed 🇮🇳 Root-cause chronic acne care. 💰 Blume Ventures, Veltis Capital, Consumer Collective
🐻 Radhika Agarwal, Founder & CEO. Business Administration. Article
♻️ Regenesis Materials. Accelerator 🇮🇩 Carbon-negative recycled eyewear materials. 💰 QAI Ventures
🐻 Alex Cuthbert, Founder & CPO. PhD Mathematics. Article
🧬 Pluristyx. Series A 🇺🇸 Pluripotent cell-therapy manufacturing tools. 💰 BioLife Solutions, BroadOak Capital Partners
🐻 Jason Carstens, Founder & COO. PhD Chemical Engineering. Article
Date Built By Berkeley Started | Companies Funded | Total Raised ($M) |
7/8/24 | 798 | 227,396 |
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