 ELECTRIC CAPITAL FOUNDER AND MANAGING PARTNER AVICHAL GARG Electric Capital closed a $1B fund to invest in blockchain startups, crypto networks, and web3 companies. The funds are split between $400M for equity investments and $600M for crypto tokens, classified as the firm's third and fourth fund, respectively. More: - The firm's second fund closed at $110M in Aug. 2020.
- Electric Capital leads $1M-$5M investments in pre-seed to Series A startups.
- Its portfolio includes investments into decentralized exchange DYDX, NEAR blockchain, and DAO startup Syndicate Protocol.
- The investments will be focused on DAOs, NFTs, DeFi, decentralized infrastructure, and Web3 startups.
Zoom out: - Notable VC firms have increased their commitments in Web3 and blockchain sector.
- Andreessen Horowitz committed $2.2B to crypto startups last June.
- Paradigm closed a $110M crypto fund in November.
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Accel India raised $650M for its seventh fund to invest in Indian and Southeast Asian startups. The recent funding has increased Accel’s commitment in the region to over $2B. Accel is targeting to invest in next-generation technology companies, most specifically in the domain of consumer fintech, global B2B marketplaces, SaaS, digital health, and Web3. More: - Accel India last raised $550M in 2019 toward its sixth fund and $450M in 2016 for its fifth fund.
- The investor is known to invest in the seed stage and follow up its initial investments with additional investments.
- Through its latest fund, the company aims to back over 40 companies.
- The company shortlisted 14 companies earlier this month to invest in the pre-seed stage through its Atoms program.
- Accel has backed Flipkart, Acko, BookMyShow, BrowserStack, Curefit, Ninjacart, StanzaLiving, Freshworks, Urban Clap, and several other prominent startups.
- Walmart acquired Flipkart, and Freshworks was listed on the Nasdaq last year.
Zoom out: - The firm’s competitor, Sequoia Capital, received $1.35B worth of commitments in 2020 for investing in startups in India and Southeast Asia.
- Another early-stage company VC firm, Prime Venture Partners, closed its fourth fund at $120M last week.
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 A message from LABELBOX Building labeling operations into your core MLOps strategy As more ML teams shift their focus from iterating on models to improving the quality of their training data, labeling operations is becoming a central aspect of their broader MLOps strategy. Creating, managing, and maintaining an efficient labeling pipeline that produces high-quality training data is no easy task. Teams without the right people, processes, and tools in place will likely struggle to generate the training data they need at a cost-effective rate. In this guide, you’ll learn about: - Key labeling operations roles that will benefit every ML team
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Visby Medical raised $100M Series E funding led by Ping An Voyager Partners. The Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP) joined previous investors John Doerr, Cedars Sinai Medical Center, ND Capital, Artiman Ventures, Pitango Venture Capital, Blue Water Life Science Advisors, and Nissim Capital into the fundraising. More: - The San Jose, California-based medical diagnosis company intends to use the incoming funds to scale the production capacity of its tests, add new tests, and facilitate PCR diagnostics at customers' doorsteps.
- Per Crunchbase, the medical startup has received a total of $227.8M in funding so far.
- It last received an undisclosed amount through its Series D funding in mid-2020, prior to which it received $100M Series C in 2019.
- The company has pioneered a single-use PCR platform to detect serious infections rapidly.
- Its FDA-approved Sexual Health Click Test for women detects sexually transmitted infections within 28 minutes.
- Since the onset of the pandemic, the company has added COVID-19 testing to its product portfolio.
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New York-based Connecteam raised $120M Series C co-led by Stripes and Insight Partners. The funding saw participation from Tiger Global, Qumra Capital, and O.G. Tech. Connecteam provides a customized platform for managing "deskless" teams. More: - The use-case for this platform spans "deskless" jobs across sectors such as healthcare, construction, manufacturing, and others.
- Connecteam's application is accessible via mobile for such individuals and provides access to manage schedules, communicate with coworkers, manage timesheets, and more.
- The remote team management startup last raised $37M Series B in April.
- It witnessed a 400% growth in revenue and customers last year.
Zoom out: - The company's peers have also raised additional funding recently.
- Deskless worker management app Skedulo raised $75M last July.
- Frontline worker process management platform YOOBIC raised $50M Series C last year.
- EduMe, a training app for deskless workers, raised $20M Series B in January.
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SureValley Ventures announced a $130M (£95M) VC fund to drive investments into AI, metaverse, and cybersecurity startups. The funds include a $67M (£50M) cornerstone investment funded by the British Business Bank's Enterprise Capital Funds (ECF) program. More: - The London-based VC firm has closed $114M (£85M) of its U.K. software technology fund.
- The firm will invest in 25 software companies in seed stages across the U.K., the first investment of which will be into a Belfast-based company.
- Sure Valley is expanding its presence in the U.K. by opening an office in Manchester.
- The firm already has offices in London, Cambridge, and Dublin.
- The firm has invested in notable cybersecurity, metaverse, and AI startups, namely Getvisibility, Smarttech, Nova Leah, Engage XR, War Ducks, Admix, Cameramatics, Artomatix, Ambisense, and others.
- Sure Valley boasts of assisting in scaling startups from the seed stage and claims 93% of its portfolio companies have received Series A and B investments within two years of the initial investment.
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 Tenderly App Tenderly raised $40M Series B funding led by Spark Capital. The funding round saw participation from Abstract Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Uniswap, and Daedalus, in addition to backing from existing investors Accel and Point Nine Capital. C-suite level executives and founders from Vercel, Optimism, Long-Term Stock Exchange, and LTSE Software participated in the funding. More: - The Belgrade, Serbia-based blockchain startup founded in 2018 serves as a platform to build products for the decentralized web.
- Tenderly also helps monitor the status of the decentralized applications and smart contracts via its dashboard.
- The company supports the top 100 ethereum projects and is used regularly by developers from Uniswap, Yearn Finance, Circle, Opeansea, Nexus Mutual, and others.
- Tenderly claims to process over 25 million transactions daily.
- The company had last raised a $15.3M Series A funding led by Accel in July 2021.
- While the blockchain startup did not reveal the actual revenue figures, it did report a 500% increase in YoY revenue.
- Tenderly’s customer base also reportedly grew 420% in the same period.
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- Airbus Ventures and Forever Ventures jointly led a $60M Series B investment into CesiumAstro Inc, an Austin, Texas-based firm that develops communication payloads for satellites. The company has raised $90M funding so far, with the latest financing earmarked for expanding manufacturing capabilities and accelerating product development of in-house satellites.
- Fintop Capital received a $200M commitment toward its third VC fund round. Some of the funds have already been invested into Plinqit, an app that assists users in saving and learning about personal finance. The firm expects to invest in a further seven to nine companies this year.
- NeuraLegion, rebranded to Bright Security, announced the closing of a $20M Series A led by Evolution Equity Partners. The cybersecurity company utilizes AI to find potential security exploits.
- NCX, which connects corporations to landowners to purchase carbon credits, raised a $50M Series B investment led by Energize Ventures. The funds will fuel expansion beyond the U.S. region.
- NYC-based Commsor closed a $50M community-led Series B funding. The round was led by Atomico. The incoming funds will be used to fund team expansion and product development.
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 |  | Karan Chafekar is a Management Consultant, Business enthusiast, and Licensed Pilot. | | | | Editor | Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 Ford. | |
Labelbox is a training data platform designed to increase model performance faster and with less data. | |
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