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. 🐻

What do Pokémon Go and Google Maps have in common…they were both created by Haas MBA John Hanke.

This week, Niantic founded by John and creator of Pokémon Go sold Pokémon Go to game maker Scopley for $3.5B. John has had an amazing run, starting with a company called Keyhole, which formed the basis for Google Maps. Using location-based technology was key to the success of Pokémon Go. Following the sale of its gaming division, Niantic is going back to its roots and will focus on spatial technologies. Congrats to John a true 🐐.

M&A is back baby. Last couple of weeks:

• Wiz bought by Google for $32B and some VCs made 222x. Check out Cyberstarts on these VCs unique model that has paid off big time.

• Moveworks bought by ServiceNow for $2.9B

• Weights and Biases acquired by Coreweave for $1.7B. Coreweave are prepping for a big IPO.

• Ampere Computing acquired by SoftBank for $6.5B

• NinjaTrader bought by Kraken for $1.5B

• NextInsurance bought by Munich Re for $2.6B

Quick rant to any Uber employees out there and I am sure a few subscribe to this…it feels grossly unfair that Uber seems to do some pretty aggressive discriminatory pricing. The other day I switched between Uber Business and Uber personal and the price effectively went up 68% for the exact same journey see below:

Someone has got to call them out on this…

Shout out to the The House Fund who announced this week that they will be running the The House AI Accelerator again this summer! Applications are open and more information can be found on their website here. 

Summary by the #️⃣ & 💰:

• 7 Berkeley-founded companies funded

• $103M of capital raised from the 3rd March to 8th March

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Acquistions

Niantic. $3.5B Acquisition 🇺🇸 AR mobile gaming platform. 💰 Scopely

🐻 John Hanke, CEO & Founder. Haas MBA Article

💩 Dieta Health. Acquisition 🇺🇸 Digestive health platform. 💰 Undisclosed

🐻 Asaf Kraus, Founder & CEO. BA Economics & Maths Article

Closed Rounds

⚖️ Cicero. $105M Series A 🇺🇸 AI for legal ops. 💰 B3 Capital, Everywhere Ventures, Sierra Ventures

🐻 Omar Haroun, Co-Founder & CEO. BA Economics Article

🚚 Augment. $25M Seed 🇺🇸 AI for freight ops. 💰 8VC, Applico Capital

🐻 Artur Rivilis, CTO & Co-Founder. BA Maths & CS Article

🔋 Coreshell. $24M Series A 🇺🇸 Battery tech platform. 💰 Berkeley SkyDeck, Industry Ventures, Translink Capital

🐻 Jonathan Tan, Co-Founder & CEO. BA Chemical Engineering Article

📦 Anywhere Robotics. $12M Seed 🇺🇸 Autonomous unloading robots. 💰 Alumni Ventures, Foothill Ventures, GFT Ventures

🐻 Thomas Tang, Co-Founder & CEO. PhD Robotics Article

☀️ Trende. $7.2M Corporate 🇯🇵 Renewable energy retailer. 💰 Tokyo Century, Toshiba, Zen-Noh

🐻 Jeffrey Char, Founder & Director. JD Law Article

📊 MENA Analytics. Early Stage 🇵🇸 AI for market research in MENA. 💰 Flat6Labs, Ibtikar Fund, Innovative Private Sector Development

🐻 Yousef Srouji, Founder & CEO. Masters of Development Practice Article

🪙 Plume Network. Accelerator 🇺🇸 Asset tokenization infra. 💰 Brevan Howard Asset Management, Galaxy Digital Holdings, SV Angel

🐻 Teddy Pornprinya, Co-Founder. Haas Business Admin 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….