Technology
VC mega deals are booming, and artificial intelligence is surprisingly not the most popular category
Ask any VC if we are still in a enterprise capital bear market and the investor will almost actually say no, that funds are still flowing into good corporations.
This may sound like a stretch, as there are loads of anecdotes about how difficult this task is for those currently upping the ante. And for good reason. Downside rounds, which are raises at a lower valuation than the previous one which founders wish to avoid unless they haven’t any selection, continued to stay at near-record levels in the first half of 2024, in response to the data. Beacon of the Aumni Expedition report. According to Aumni’s report, roughly 39% of late-stage deals failed. This applies to series B and subsequent ones, with the highest percentage of rounds lost in series C and later.
Even Stripe – whose success nobody disputes – hasn’t fully recovered to its $95 billion valuation for 2021, stemming from a big secondary transaction that took place in July. Although by then it had grown to $70 billion.
But despite this sort of gloom, the statistics for the end of 2024 are also filled with excellent news. For example, recent data from Crunchbase it actually shows a boom in megadeals – financing rounds price $100 million or more.
Crunchbase has recorded almost 240 mega rounds for US startups this 12 months, which is already greater than the 210 raised in all of last 12 months.
What’s much more interesting is that Crunchbase’s most popular category for these deals wasn’t AI. Biotech and healthcare startups closed 87 mega-deals, in comparison with 26 for the second-place AI category.
Some of those rounds are admittedly cross-border: corporations working on artificial intelligence for healthcare. For example, Crunchbase lists AI drug discovery company Xaira Therapeutics as certainly one of its notable medtech megadeals. Xaira launched in April with a large $1 billion round led by ARCH Venture Partners and Foresite Labs (each known for biotech), but the round also included classic Silicon Valley VCs comparable to NEA, Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners , SV Angel, and others.
We’d probably call Xaira an AI company and put it on our current list tracking AI startup megadeals.
But there have been also offers like: Superluminal Medicines’ $120 million Series A roundhosted by Eli Lilly. While it also uses machine learning to speed up drug development, its focus is on finding drugs for specific small molecule receptors on cell membranes. This is a hot area in biotech at once – no AI cleanup required. The deal was backed by classic tech investors Insight Partners and Gaingels, in addition to NVentures (Nvidia’s enterprise capital arm), which appears to be in all places today.
Other Series A and B biotech megadeals include the finalized $120 million Series B deal field therapy, who also works on small molecule drugs; and 100 million series A Judah Bio landed to cope with kidney meds. It looks like every week a brand new biotech megadeal is announced.
Apart from medical technologies and artificial intelligence, one other sector that is having fun with great interest is cybersecurity – 16 such transactions have been concluded up to now this 12 months. Examples include email security startup Kiteworks, which raised $456 million, data security startup Cyera, which raised $300 million, and cloud security startup Wiz, which raised a whopping $1 billion.
There are several other trademarks for earlier stage founders. Aumni found that pre-launch valuations improved barely for seed and Series A deals in the first half of the 12 months.
Deal closing in 2024 also appears to be at an identical pace to 2023, in response to the Q3 survey. Venture PitchBook-NVCA monitor. In 2023 almost 16,000 transactions were concludedwhich is barely higher than the average annual activity before the pandemic and ZIRP-fueled madness in 2020-2021.
For those concerned about learning more, TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 will feature a session on the Builders Stage titled “What You Need to Raise a Series A Today” and one other on “How to Raise in 2025 If You’ve Broken, Failed or Round extending.”
Technology
US medical device giant Artivion says hackers stole files during a cybersecurity incident
Artivion, a medical device company that produces implantable tissue for heart and vascular transplants, says its services have been “disrupted” resulting from a cybersecurity incident.
In 8-K filing In an interview with the SEC on Monday, Georgia-based Artivion, formerly CryoLife, said it became aware of a “cybersecurity incident” that involved the “compromise and encryption” of information on November 21. This suggests that the corporate was attacked by ransomware, but Artivion has not yet confirmed the character of the incident and didn’t immediately reply to TechCrunch’s questions. No major ransomware group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
Artivion said it took some systems offline in response to the cyberattack, which the corporate said caused “disruptions to certain ordering and shipping processes.”
Artivion, which reported third-quarter revenue of $95.8 million, said it didn’t expect the incident to have a material impact on the corporate’s funds.
Technology
It’s a Raspberry Pi 5 in a keyboard and it’s called Raspberry Pi 500
Manufacturer of single-board computers Raspberry Pi is updating its cute little computer keyboard device with higher specs. Named Raspberry Pi500This successor to the Raspberry Pi 400 is just as powerful as the present Raspberry Pi flagship, the Raspberry Pi 5. It is on the market for purchase now from Raspberry Pi resellers.
The Raspberry Pi 500 is the simplest method to start with the Raspberry Pi because it’s not as intimidating because the Raspberry Pi 5. When you take a look at the Raspberry Pi 500, you do not see any chipsets or PCBs (printed circuit boards). The Raspberry Pi is totally hidden in the familiar housing, the keyboard.
The idea with the Raspberry Pi 500 is you could connect a mouse and a display and you are able to go. If, for instance, you’ve got a relative who uses a very outdated computer with an outdated version of Windows, the Raspberry Pi 500 can easily replace the old PC tower for many computing tasks.
More importantly, this device brings us back to the roots of the Raspberry Pi. Raspberry Pi computers were originally intended for educational applications. Over time, technology enthusiasts and industrial customers began using single-board computers all over the place. (For example, when you’ve ever been to London Heathrow Airport, all of the departures and arrivals boards are there powered by Raspberry Pi.)
Raspberry Pi 500 draws inspiration from the roots of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a non-profit organization. It’s the right first computer for college. In some ways, it’s a lot better than a Chromebook or iPad because it’s low cost and highly customizable, which inspires creative pondering.
The Raspberry Pi 500 comes with a 32GB SD card that comes pre-installed with Raspberry Pi OS, a Debian-based Linux distribution. It costs $90, which is a slight ($20) price increase over the Raspberry Pi 400.
Only UK and US keyboard variants will probably be available at launch. But versions with French, German, Italian, Japanese, Nordic and Spanish keyboard layouts will probably be available soon. And when you’re in search of a bundle that features all the things you would like, Raspberry Pi also offers a $120 desktop kit that features the Raspberry Pi 500, a mouse, a 27W USB-C power adapter, and a micro-HDMI to HDMI cable.
In other news, Raspberry Pi has announced one other recent thing: the Raspberry Pi monitor. It is a 15.6-inch 1080p monitor that’s priced at $100. Since there are quite a few 1080p portable monitors available on the market, this launch is not as noteworthy because the Pi 500. However, for die-hard Pi fans, there’s now also a Raspberry Pi-branded monitor option available.
Technology
Apple Vision Pro may add support for PlayStation VR controllers
According to Apple, Apple desires to make its Vision Pro mixed reality device more attractive for gamers and game developers latest report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
The Vision Pro was presented more as a productivity and media consumption device than a tool geared toward gamers, due partly to its reliance on visual and hand controls moderately than a separate controller.
However, Apple may need gamers if it desires to expand the Vision Pro’s audience, especially since Gurman reports that lower than half one million units have been sold to this point. As such, the corporate has reportedly been in talks with Sony about adding support for PlayStation VR2 handheld controllers, and has also talked to developers about whether they may support the controllers of their games.
Offering more precise control, Apple may also make other forms of software available in Vision Pro, reminiscent of Final Cut Pro or Adobe Photoshop.
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