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. 🐻

We’ve been on a tear with new subscribers, recently. Thank you! if you know a Berkeley friend who’d enjoy these updates, please forward! Also a recent podcast on the Berkeley ecosystem.

AI PhDs paying off… I once heard that every Berkeley PhD in your seed-stage startup was worth an extra $10M on your valuation. These days, if you're a top AI researcher, you can reportedly get paid $10M per year to join Meta. Personally recruited by Mark Zuckerberg himself.

That’s pocket change compared to Meta’s $14.3B investment into Scale AI that looks a little like an Accuhire of Alexandr Wang who will be leading Meta’s AI lab. Congrats to friends of the newsletter Accel, Index and other investors for backing Scale early. Accel expect about $2.5B back from the deal - not bad! Not to be outdone on the hiring front OpenAI also paid out $6.5B for Jony Ive of Iphone fame.

So who is winning the AI talent wars? It appears Anthropic who have the highest retention rate of 80% after two years, although I am sure those $10M offers with a sweetener from Mark might make a few people move to Meta.

From Databricks to OpenAI - Berkeley PhD-born unicorns

Berkeley PhDs have a long history of founding some of the world’s most iconic AI companies. Along with many of the rising stars. It’s no surprise the war for talent is heating up.

Berkeley professors at the hear of AI Companies

It’s not just Berkeley PhDs—many of the professors are also deeply involved in today’s leading AI companies.

Summary by the #️⃣ & 💰:

• 9 Berkeley-founded companies funded

• $265M of capital raised from the 9th June to 15th June

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Closed Rounds

🕒 Laurel. $100M Series C 🇺🇸 AI timekeeping platform for professional services. 💰 AIX Ventures, DST Global, First Round Capital

🐻 Ryan Alshak, Founder & CEO. BA Political Science Article

🌍 Lilt. $45.4M 🇺🇸 AI translation platform. 💰 California Innovation Fund, In-Q-Tel, Intel Capital

🐻 John DeNero, Co-Founder & Chief Scientist. PhD CS Article

🛰️ Logos. $50M Series A 🇺🇸 Satellite broadband provider. 💰 US Innovative Technology Fund

🐻 Milo Medin, CEO & Founder. BA Article

🛌 Somnee. $23M Seed Round 🇺🇸 Neurotech sleep wearable. 💰 10X Capital, Gaingels, Khosla Ventures

🐻 Ram Gurumoorthy, Founder & Chief Sleep Scientist. PhD Philosophy Article

🧬 Othram. $22M Series C 🇺🇸 Forensic genomics lab. 💰 GigaFund, Illumina Ventures, Nimble Ventures

🐻 Steve Hsu, Co-Founder & BoD. PhD Physics

💳 Turnstile. $22.8M Series A 🇺🇸 Revenue automation platform. 💰 First Round Capital, Flex Capital, Reform Ventures

🐻 Jordan Zamie, Co-Founder. BS EECS

🏡 RetroRate. $2.2M Seed Round 🇺🇸 Assumable mortgage platform. 💰 Eniac Ventures, Interlock Capital, Swift Ventures

🐻 Andy Taylor, CEO & Co-Founder. Haas MBA Article

🧪 Ruby Bio. Seed Round 🇺🇸 Yeast-based biomanufacturing. 💰 Alumni Ventures, Fusion Fund, Joyance Partners

🐻 Charlie Silver, Founder & CEO. Haas MBA

🌞 ThermoShade. Seed Round 🇺🇸 Passive cooling tech. 💰 Clinton Foundation, Larta Institute, Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator

🐻 John Carl, Co-Founder & COO. BA MEngBuilt 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….