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. 🐻

Wild week in stock and bond market….Last week felt like several months' worth of action crammed into just a few days. Easily one of the most volatile stretches in recent stock market history. The main catalyst? Ongoing tariff uncertainty. By the end of the week, tariffs on a wide range of Chinese goods had surged, many reaching 145%, with some climbing as high as 245%

Markets hate uncertainty, and it showed. The yield on U.S. Treasuries (aka government debt) spiked. This is an unusual move, since yields typically drop during times of uncertainty as investors flock to Treasuries for their safe-haven appeal. This time, though, things flipped. It seems we are starting to see some softening on the tariff stance with Apple products among certain others that are temporary excluded from the tariffs. Expect a large gain for Apple stock (Founded by Berkeley Alum Steve Wosniak) next week. Although this respite may only be temporary.

So the big question is what next? The simple answer eloquently written in this piece is that Nobody Knows. Although a big player in this will be the bond market and how it reacts all the news.

James Carville, a Clinton-era political advisor, once said something about the bond market that still hits today:

"I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or as a . 400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.

Why does the bond market matter so much? Because it effectively regulates the cost of U.S. government debt. When that debt is over $34 trillion, that cost really matters.

Summary by the #️⃣ & 💰:

• 6 Berkeley-founded companies funded

• $154M of capital raised from the 7th April to 13th April

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Closed Rounds

🧬 Pheast Therapeutics $76M Series A 🇺🇸 Macrophage-targeted immunotherapies. 💰 ARCH Venture Partners, Catalio Capital Management, Rsquared

🐻 Roy Maute, Co-Founder & CEO. BA Molecular & Cell Biology. 

🔬 NEYE Systems $58M Series B 🇺🇸 Silicon photonic MEMS switches. 💰 CapitalG, M12, Nvidia

🐻 Tae Joon Seok, Co-Founder & CTO. PhD Electrical Engineering. Article

🔥 Zero Industrial $10M Series A 🇺🇸 Thermal energy storage projects. 💰 Evok Innovations, Rusheen Capital Management

🐻 Ted Kniesche, Founder & CEO. BA Economics. Article

📚 SigIQ.ai $9.5M Seed 🇺🇸 AI-powered personalized learning. 💰 Courtyard Ventures, GSV Ventures, The House Fund

🐻 Karttikeya Mangalam, Founder & CEO. PhD Artificial Intelligence. Article

📦 CubeWorks $0.5M 🇺🇸 Wireless sensing tags. 💰 Boston Millennia Partners, Intel Capital, Momenta Ventures

🐻 Prabal Dutta, Co-Founder & Advisor. PhD Computer Science.

🤖 Thoughtful.ai Series B 🇺🇸 AI for revenue cycle management in healthcare. 💰 Drive Capital, New Mountain Capital

🐻 Alex Zekoff, Co-Founder & CEO. Haas MBA. 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.

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Built By Berkeley is not affiliated with UC Berkeley, but maybe we will be one day if we get enough subscribers….