Another big month of big rounds. A startup needed to raise $200 million or more to break into this list for the April edition. April also saw a half-dozen rounds of a quarter-billion dollars or more, including a $1 billion round for an AI-enhanced biotech. Let’s take a look.

1. Xaira Therapeutics, $1B, biotech: The biggest round in April was really big. Xaira Therapeutics came out of stealth and announced it had secured more than $1 billion of committed capital from lead investors Arch Venture Partners and Foresite Capital — both of which jointly incubated the company — as well as several other big-name investors including Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The San Francisco-based biotech firm is led by founding CEO Marc Tessier-Lavigne, who previously served as president of Stanford University but resigned last year after questions arose concerning his scientific research. Xaira is the latest — although likely best-funded — startup to try to use AI models to find new drugs.

2. Pine Gate Renewables, $650M, energy: Pine Gate Renewables locked up a $650 million investment from Generate Capital, the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan and HESTA. The Asheville, North Carolina-based solar and energy storage product developer plans to use the new cash to help finance the creation of three gigawatts of clean energy infrastructure in communities across the United States by next year. Founded in 2014, the company has raised $1.7 billion, per Crunchbase.

3. PsiQuantum, $620M, quantum computing: PsiQuantum landed the biggest founding round thus far this year for any quantum startup, beating out Quantinuum’s $300 million equity fundraise at a pre-money valuation of $5 billion in January. The Palo Alto, California-based company landed a financial package of $620 million from the Australian Commonwealth and Queensland governments to build a quantum computer at a strategically located site near Brisbane Airport in Brisbane, Australia. Founded in 2016, the company has raised more than $1.3 billion, per Crunchbase.

4. Cyera, $300M, cybersecurity: While it is true cybersecurity funding has significantly slowed, it certainly has not dried up. Data security startup Cyera raised a $300 million Series C led by Coatue at a $1.4 billion valuation. The round nearly triples the New York-based startup’s valuation from its $100 million Series B last June that valued it at $500 million. Founded in 2021, Cyera has raised $460 million to date, per the company. Cyera offers a platform that helps security teams at companies understand what data they have and how it’s used, as well as how to secure it — all of which has become more important with companies relying on data to drive AI initiatives. The startup also uses AI in its platform to assess risks a company’s data represents regarding security, privacy and regulatory compliance.

5. Metsera, $290M, biotech: New York-based Metsera, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical startup emerged from stealth last month with $290 million in funding led by Arch Venture Partners. The company is exploring medicines for obesity and metabolic diseases with a collection of oral and injectable incretin, nonincretin and combination therapies.

6. Rivos, $250M, semiconductor: Semiconductor startups are seeing big money, in part thanks to the explosion in generative AI. Santa Clara, California-based chip startup Rivos raised more than $250 million in April in a Series A-3 funding led by Matrix Capital Management. The company develops power-optimized chips targeting the data analytics and generative AI markets. Of course, chip startups have seen increasing interest recently. Late last month, Santa Clara-based optical interconnectivity startup Celestial AI raised a massive $175 million Series C led by Thomas Tull’s US Innovative Technology Fund. Also last month, Astera Labs — a Santa Clara-based developer of data center connectivity technology with use cases in generative AI — soared after its initial public offering on the Nasdaq.

7. Augment, $227M, artificial intelligence: AI coding startups are making a big splash. AI coding assistance startup Augment emerged from stealth last month and locked up a $227 million Series B round at a $977 million post-money valuation. The round included cash from the likes of Sutter Hill Ventures, Index Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The Palo Alto, California-based company helps developers and software teams by giving them AI coding assistance. Founded in 2022, Augment’s total funding now stands at $252 million, per the company, following its $25 million Series A led by Sutter Hill Ventures in January.

8. Monad Labs, $225M, blockchain: New York-based Monad Labs locked up the biggest Web3 funding round of the year thus far, collecting a $225 million funding round led by Paradigm. Monad is a layer-1 blockchain that is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine but can process transactions using the same set of rules faster. The round is reminiscent of the 2021-22 era when layer-1 protocols like Aptos Labs raised big. Founded in 2022, the company has raised $244 million, per Crunchbase.

9. (tied) Blackrock Neurotech, $200M, neuroscience: Stablecoin issuer Tether invested $200 million in Blackrock Neurotech to take a majority stake in the brain-to-computer interface startup. The Salt Lake City-based company creates brain-to-computer interfaces and implants that allow people to control computers and neuroprosthetics. The company had only raised $10 million before the new round from Tether, according to Crunchbase. The round values Blackrock Neurotech at about $350 million, per Reuters. The deal is also the latest headline concerning brain-computer interface technology, which has been pushed by Elon Musk’s Neuralink. That company recently live-streamed a quadriplegic man playing video games using its implant and has raised nearly $700 million, per Crunchbase.

9. (tied) Rippling, $200M, human resources: HR startup Rippling wrapped up a huge $200 million round that valued the San Francisco-based startup at $13.5 billion. The deal also included a $590 million secondary offering for employees to sell their private shares to investors. The new equity round was led by Coatue. The company offers a workforce management platform that combines HR, information technology and finance to help customers streamline operations. The new round represents about a 20% uptick in valuation for Rippling, which was last valued at $11.3 billion in March 2023.

Big global deals

Xiara was the biggest raise of the month, but the runner-up came from China.

• Hozon, an electric-vehicle startup, locked up a $690 million venture funding round.

Methodology

We tracked the largest rounds in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the month of April 2024. Although most announced rounds are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as some rounds are reported late in the month.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

That has seemed only to accelerate this month, as Salesforce Ventures 1 — Salesforce’s venture arm — announced it will double the size of its Generative AI Fund to $500 million just three months after establishing it. That was followed by AI startup Synthesia raising a $90 million Series C at a $1 billion valuation that included an investment from NVentures — Nvidia’s venture capital arm.

However, while everyone already knows Nvidia and Microsoft are making strong bids to be dominant players in the AI ecosystem with their startup investments, there are several other tech giants that also quietly have placed some bets in AI and others who have made surprisingly few.

Let’s take a look at some companies and their VC arms not covered last month and what they’ve done:

Qualcomm Ventures

Nvidia isn‘t the only U.S.-based semiconductor giant that has been looking at AI startups for the last handful of years.

Qualcomm Ventures, Qualcomm’s investment arm, has taken part in 34 funding deals since the start of 2019 involving startups using AI, per Crunchbase data.

The firm’s most active year was — not shockingly — 2021 when it invested in nine startups using AI. That included taking part in a $235 million Series C investment in Israel-based AnyVision — now called Oosto – a vision AI and facial recognition company. Those nine deals totaled $714 million in total (although Qualcomm Ventures’ stake is not known).

This year, the venture arm has made four deals in the AI space, including investing in Union City, California-based DeepHow, which develops an AI-powered learning platform for manufacturing and repair, and Brazil-based Aravita, which uses AI to try to solve waste issues.

Those deals this year, however, have been relatively small, totalling only $37 million.

Cisco Investments

Few corporate VC arms are as old as Cisco Investments — founded 30 years ago — and few have the breadth of their investment portfolio.

For some reason it is sometimes easy to pass over the networking giant and its VC arm, but they don’t overlook much — including AI. Just this week, Cisco Systems launched its own networking chips for AI supercomputers that would compete with offerings from the likes of Broadcom and others.

While not nearly as active as some other VC arms, Cisco Investments has made eight different deals that would fall into the AI sector, per Crunchbase data.

Its most recent deals include participating in a $4.7 million round for Israel-based Voiceitt, an automatic speech recognition technology platform last December, as well as a huge $140 million Series D for Palo Alto, California-based Uniphore, a startup specializing in conversational automation, in March 2021.

The deals the investment arm participated in last year totaled $78 million — actually down from 2021 when it took part in two rounds that totaled $160 million.

Amazon Alexa Fund

Another company one would logically think has its eye on AI would be retail and web giant Amazon. However, for the most part Amazon and its AWS division have only made a select few investments in AI-related startups. 

However, its Alexa Fund has been quite active in making AI deals — participating in 20 different rounds since the start of 2019, per Crunchbase data.

The fund has not made any deals this calendar year, but made a handful even last year, including participating in a $55 million Series D for Irvine, California-based Syntiant, a deep learning tech company that develops AI voice and sensor solutions, in March 2022.

That same month, the fund also participated in a $24 million Series A in London-based Logically. The startup uses artificial intelligence and expert analysts to detect and assess disinformation that can harm companies and governments.

The deals the fund participated in last year totaled $85 million.

The others

Some other big tech goliaths also have made a select few deals in the AI space — although logic would dictate they will make more.

Social media and advertising giant Meta made a handful of deals between 2021-22, but none this year, per Crunchbase data.

However, its deals were rather intriguing. Meta took part in a $19 million Series A for Paris-based PhotoRoom, an AI-enabled image capturing app which creates studio-quality product pictures.

Meta also was included in Mountain View, California-based Inworld AI’s $7.2 million seed round. The metaverse startup is a developer platform for AI-driven virtual characters and immersive realities.

Oracle is another company that has not made too much noise investing in AI startups through the years, but the company did make a couple this year — its only, per Crunchbase data.

Most notably, Oracle took part in Toronto-based Cohere’s $270 million round in May. The startup’s AI platform competes with OpenAI.

It also took part in a pre-seed round for New Haven, Connecticut-based ChestAi, which provides AI-based image analysis for chest diseases. ChestAi:

Just like the other companies and VC arms mentioned above, expect the number — and value — of the AI deals the likes of Meta and Oracle will participate in to significantly increase in the coming months. 

Further reading:

• AI Investing Boom Is Not New To Tech Giants (At Least Not Their VC Arms)

Illustration: Dom Guzman

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The Menlo Park-based firm — known as an early backer of such startups as Lyft, Marketo and Poshmark — announced its $580 million Mayfield XVII and the $375 million Mayfield Select III funds.

The firm last announced new funds in March 2020, when it raised $750 million across two funds. The firm now has $3 billion in total assets under management.

The Mayfield XVII fund will primarily be used for early-stage investing — mainly seed and Series A rounds. The Mayfield Select III will be for follow-on rounds, as well as investments in new companies, primarily at the Series B stage.

Some themes the firm is looking to invest in include human-centered AI, the developer-first technologies, semiconductors, cybersecurity and more.

“We are grateful for the continued support of our limited partners and for the fortitude of entrepreneurs which brings us to work every day,” said Managing Partner Navin Chaddha in a statement. “We believe that the current economic uncertainty presents an opportunity for the bold and a time to lean forward into the next era of innovation. We are excited about partnering with inception and early-stage founders looking for a people-first investor to build a bright future together.”

Recent dealmaking

While some big-name firms such as Tiger Global, Insight Partners and many more significantly slowed their investment pace last year, Mayfield continued a deliberate and consistent cadence.

According to Crunchbase data, the firm completed 26 financing deals in the salad days of 2021, and 23 last year — when the venture and investing market was substantially easing.

So far this year, Mayfield’s pace has been a little slower, with just five deals announced. That includes a $51 million Series E for San Francisco-based database developer InfluxData.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

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Of the five companies, three are U.S.-based. The U.K. and China each count for one new unicorn this past month.

Dropped 

Two companies were dropped from the unicorn board. 

Tonal raised $130 million in funding at a valuation between $550 million and $600 million according to the WSJ, which removed it from the unicorn board. The company previously raised funding at a $1.6 billion value in March 2021. 

And Cybereason, an endpoint security company, raised $100 million led by SoftBank which valued the company at $350 million, a 90% discount from its prior funding in July 2021 which valued the company at $3.2 billion. 

Earlier this year, online media company Vox Media received a lowered valuation in February 2023 at $500 million, down from $1 billion. In December 2022, online grocery retailer Oda was removed from the board with a new valuation of $350 million, down from $1.2 billion. 

As unicorn companies continue to raise funding, we expect more down rounds and for companies to drop off the list. 

We find around half of the unicorn board has raised funding since the beginning of 2022. Around 40% of the 1,400+ unicorn board companies last raised funding in 2020 and 2021. These companies will be coming back to raise funding from the private markets as startups typically raise funding every 18 months to two years. 

Here are the new unicorns:

AI

• New Jersey-based CoreWeave, a cloud infrastructure company that pivoted from Ethereum mining, raised a $221 million Series B led by Magnetar Capital. The funding valued the company at $2.2 billion.
• Quantexa, a London-based data analytics company that uses AI, raised a $129 million Series E funding. The funding was led by Singapore-based Sovereign Wealth Fund GIC which valued the company at $1.8 billion.
• San Francisco-based Replit, a developer platform that uses AI to complete code, raised a $97 million Series B funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. The company was valued at $1.2 billion. 

Energy

• Nevada-based Ohmium, a hydrogen producer of green energy, raised a $250 million Series C funding which valued the company at $1 billion, led by TPG Rise Climate Fund.

Semiconductor

• B&C Chemical , a materials chip maker based in China, raised an $87 million funding valuing the company at $1 billion. The funding was led by China Development Bank Capital and Zhongping Capital.

Unicorn queries

• Unicorn leaderboard (1,453)
• Unicorns in the U.S. (718)
• Unicorns in Asia (460)
• European unicorns (196)
• Emerging unicorn leaderboard (367)
• Exited unicorns (426)

Methodology

The Crunchbase Unicorn Board is a curated list that includes private unicorn companies with post-money valuations of $1 billion or more and is based on Crunchbase data. New companies are added to the Unicorn Board as they reach the $1 billion valuation mark as part of a funding round. 

The unicorn board does not reflect internal company valuations — such as those set via a 409a process for employee stock options — as these differ from, and are more likely to be lower than, a priced funding round. We also do not adjust valuations based on investor writedowns, which change quarterly, as different investors will not value the same company consistently within the same quarter. 

Funding to unicorn companies includes all private financings to companies that are tagged as unicorns, as well as those that have since graduated to The Exited Unicorn Board. 

Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Crunchbase converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to Crunchbase long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

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The funding consisted of both institutional and strategic investors — including Phaistos Investment Fund, Strategic Development Fund, EDBI, Iron Grey, ST Engineering, Yaletown, ClearSky and other existing investors.

EdgeQ anticipates using the fresh capital to ramp up production of chips that can unify both 4G and 5G onto a single chip, and can scale in performance and features via software upgrades. The chip provides both connectivity and compute at the edge for public and private networks and can be used for things ranging from industrial automation projects to satellite communications.

“By removing the friction and price premium that traditionally accompanies cellular deployment, we have envisioned a new backbone that is simple, intuitive and open,” said co-founder and CEO Vinay Ravuri. “And this disruption is available now.”

Founded in 2018, the startup has raised $126 million, according to Crunchbase data.

Semi heat

Due to a variety of issues that run the gamut from inconsistent demand to production costs, semiconductor startups are often left behind in the race for VC dollars. Even the $52 billion Chips Act did not seem to spark the startup industry.

However, there could be an increased appetite as the AI explosion continues. New chips with better processing will be needed to train large language models for AI. Nvidia is leading the charge, although recent news suggests Microsoft is looking to build its own AI chip.

The race for better AI and the general growing interest in the domestic semiconductor industry could help startups raise cash in an unsteady economic environment.

Last year saw U.S.-based, VC-backed semi startups raise only $1.7 billion in 57 deals — down from $2.3 billion in 68 deals in 2021, according to Crunchbase data.

So far this year, less than $200 million has been raised by such startups — with EdgeQ leading the way.

Bigger numbers could be on the way.

Related Crunchbase queries

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