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
PO clarous Director General Zoom also uses AI avatar during a quarterly connection

General directors at the moment are so immersed in artificial intelligence that they send their avatars to cope with quarterly connections from earnings as a substitute, a minimum of partly.
After AI Avatar CEO CEO appeared on the investor’s conversation firstly of this week, the final director of Zoom Eric Yuan also followed them, also Using his avatar for preliminary comments. Yuan implemented his non -standard avatar via Zoom Clips, an asynchronous company video tool.
“I am proud that I am one of the first general directors who used the avatar in a call for earnings,” he said – or fairly his avatar. “This is just one example of how Zoom shifts the limits of communication and cooperation. At the same time, we know that trust and security are necessary. We take seriously the content generated AI and build strong security to prevent improper use, protect the user’s identity and ensure that avatars are used responsibly.”
Yuan has long been in favor of using avatars at meetings and previously said that the corporate goals to create Digital user twins. He just isn’t alone on this vision; The CEO of transcript -powered AI, apparently, trains its own avatar Share the load.
Meanwhile, Zoom said he was doing it Avatar non -standard function available To all users this week.
(Tagstranslat) meetings AI
Technology
The next large Openai plant will not be worn: Report

Opeli pushed generative artificial intelligence into public consciousness. Now it might probably develop a very different variety of AI device.
According to WSJ reportThe general director of Opeli, Altman himself, told employees on Wednesday that one other large product of the corporate would not be worn. Instead, it will be compact, without the screen of the device, fully aware of the user’s environment. Small enough to sit down on the desk or slot in your pocket, Altman described it each as a “third device” next to MacBook Pro and iPhone, in addition to “Comrade AI” integrated with on a regular basis life.
The preview took place after the OpenAI announced that he was purchased by IO, a startup founded last 12 months by the previous Apple Joni Ive designer, in a capital agreement value $ 6.5 billion. I will take a key creative and design role at Openai.
Altman reportedly told employees that the acquisition can ultimately add 1 trillion USD to the corporate conveyorsWearing devices or glasses that got other outfits.
Altman reportedly also emphasized to the staff that the key would be crucial to stop the copying of competitors before starting. As it seems, the recording of his comments leaked to the journal, asking questions on how much he can trust his team and the way rather more he will be able to reveal.
(Tagstotransate) devices
Technology
The latest model AI Google Gemma can work on phones

It grows “open” AI Google, Gemma, grows.
While Google I/O 2025 On Tuesday, Google removed Gemma 3N compresses, a model designed for “liquid” on phones, laptops and tablets. According to Google, available in a preview starting on Tuesday, Gemma 3N can support sound, text, paintings and flicks.
Models efficient enough to operate in offline mode and without the necessity to calculate within the cloud have gained popularity within the AI community lately. They will not be only cheaper to make use of than large models, but they keep privacy, eliminating the necessity to send data to a distant data center.
During the speech to I/O product manager, Gemma Gus Martins said that GEMMA 3N can work on devices with lower than 2 GB of RAM. “Gemma 3N shares the same architecture as Gemini Nano, and is also designed for incredible performance,” he added.
In addition to Gemma 3N, Google releases Medgemma through the AI developer foundation program. According to Medgemma, it’s essentially the most talented model to research text and health -related images.
“Medgemma (IS) OUR (…) A collection of open models to understand the text and multimodal image (health),” said Martins. “Medgemma works great in various imaging and text applications, thanks to which developers (…) could adapt the models to their own health applications.”
Also on the horizon there may be SignGEMMA, an open model for signaling sign language right into a spoken language. Google claims that Signgemma will allow programmers to create recent applications and integration for users of deaf and hard.
“SIGNGEMMA is a new family of models trained to translate sign language into a spoken text, but preferably in the American sign and English,” said Martins. “This is the most talented model of understanding sign language in history and we are looking forward to you-programmers, deaf and hard communities-to take this base and build with it.”
It is value noting that Gemma has been criticized for non -standard, non -standard license conditions, which in accordance with some developers adopted models with a dangerous proposal. However, this didn’t discourage programmers from downloading Gemma models tens of tens of millions of times.
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(Tagstransate) gemma
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