The big news in AI this week was undoubtedly Microsoft’s huge $1.5 billion strategic investment in United Arab Emirates-based artificial intelligence firm G42 — the biggest private round to go to an AI startup this year.

Of course, Microsoft betting big on AI firms is nothing new. Just a couple weeks ago, we covered the Redmond, Washington-based tech titan’s recent deals involving chatbot startup Inflection AI, AI robotics firm Figure, Paris-based generative AI company Mistral AI, and many others just this year. That is to say nothing of Microsoft’s well-publicized relationship with OpenAI.

However, the G42 deal is another big mile-marker for Microsoft that illustrates what it is willing to do — and invest — to win the AI race.

The G42 investment seems to have presented several unique issues.

First, there is mounting U.S. concern about some Middle Eastern countries — including UAE — strengthening their ties to China, which obviously make such a deal more difficult given the current environment.

Secondly, G42 has Chinese ties — something it reportedly has divested itself from — which has raised significant concern in the U.S.

The companies were able to work past that and offered promises to both the U.S. and UAE about their development of AI.

However, along with the $1.5 billion investment, the deal also will support a new $1 billion developer fund that is intended to create an AI workforce and talent pool to drive innovation in the region.

While there has been no shortage of stories involving money from sovereign wealth funds in the UAE looking to invest in U.S. startups, not much has been said about U.S. firms, funds or companies looking to invest in UAE-based startups.

In fact, per Crunchbase data, only 18 U.S.-based firms have taken part in any deals this year involving a UAE-based company and none have taken part in more than one deal.

Those 18 firms have participated in only nine total unique rounds in the UAE, the largest being a $23 million Series A for social discovery app Hunch last month led by U.S. firms Alpha Wave Ventures and Hashed.

Last year the numbers were only slightly higher with about 60 U.S. firms doing business with startups in the region. Techstars actually led the way with six deals.

Of course, there are likely several reasons for the lack of participation by U.S. firms and funds in the UAE’s burgeoning tech startup ecosystem, but there is little question some of it likely is due to political concerns that apparently are no obstacle for Microsoft.

However, Microsoft’s deal for a minority stake in G42 could help increase those investment numbers. Microsoft is obviously planting seeds for other tech investments in the booming region — likely centering on AI — by announcing the developer fund.

The projects that will receive that funding — along with Microsoft’s vast amount of computing resources — no doubt are likely to birth more startup ventures that could attract VC or corporate money. That is especially true since those projects will most assuredly be AI related.

It also could be a case where Microsoft has shown the way that investment in the region is possible, even if those deals take some brokering.

When one considers the new partnership with G42 also includes the company using Microsoft’s cloud services to run its AI applications, it definitely seems like a win for the Windows maker. It may also be a big win for the region.

Things that caught our eye and other stuff:

• Starting a generative AI startup does not guarantee smooth sailing. This week it was reported (and later confirmed by the company) that Tome, a developer of a generative AI presentation tool launched a couple of years ago, is laying off staff. Tome said the cut is 20% of its nearly 60 people. The company has raised more than $75 million across a few rounds. Its latest Series B was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. We’ve not heard a lot about AI startups laying off staff, but more could come especially if funding slows.
• New York-based HumanX raised more than $6 million in funding this week led by Primary Venture Partners. The round is interesting because the startup isn’t a generative AI company, per se, but is rather striving to be an AI strategist and thought leader through conferences that bring top AI leaders together. The company was founded by the team behind the Money20/20 conference. The startup’s inaugural gathering will be hosted in March 2025. HumanX also will offer advisory services and AI regulation and policy advocacy.

Related Crunchbase Pro list:

• Microsoft’s AI Investments

Related reading:

• Microsoft Goes Big In AI Again, Invests $1.5B In UAE-Based G42
• Eye On AI: Microsoft Remains Infatuated With AI Startups, And It’s Not Just Inflection And OpenAI

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The Palo Alto, California-based startup, which specializes in small business insurance products, has now raised more than $1.1 billion since being founded in 2016, per the company.

The deal forms a new strategic partnership with Allstate and deepens an existing reinsurance relationship with Allianz.

“We founded NEXT because we saw an opportunity to help millions of small and microbusinesses across the U.S. and made it our mission to help entrepreneurs thrive,” co-founder and CEO Guy Goldstein said in a release. “Building on our existing support, we are excited to welcome Allianz X and Allstate as investors, deepen our reinsurance relationship with Allianz Re, and foster a meaningful partnership with Allstate to offer millions of their customers our one-stop-shop small business insurance offering.”

Interestingly, Next did not offer a valuation with the new round. The company was valued at $4 billion in April 2021 when it raised a $250 million Series E led by FinTLV and Battery Ventures. Many valuations of startups, however, have dropped since then.

Next, which uses AI and machine learning to help with the purchasing process and provide coverages, serves more than 500,000 business owners. It has committed to serving the more than 33 million small businesses in the U.S. moving forward.

Insurtech funding

The round is one of the largest raised this year in the insurtech industry.

Per Crunchbase data, insurtech startups have raised nearly $11 billion this year — however, $6.5 billion of that was Stripe’s Series I raise in March.

Last year, startups in the sector raised almost $9.2 billion, while in 2021 — a record year for venture funding — insurtech firms saw nearly $16 billion in funding.

Related reading:

• The 10 Biggest Rounds Of March: Stripe Raises Huge $6.5B Round, HR-tech Startup Rippling Lands $500M

Related Crunchbase Pro query:

• Insurtech Funding In 2023

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Certainly not any AI startup at this point. On Thursday, three such startups announced more than $1.5 billion in investments — led by “personal AI” startup Inflection AI’s huge $1.3 billion round.

That funding, led by Microsoft, Reid Hoffman, Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt and new investor Nvidia, values Inflection AI at $4 billion, according to Forbes, which first reported the news. The new funding brings the total raised by Inflection to more than $1.5 billion, per the company.

Inflection AI, with its partners CoreWeave and Nvidia, is building what it says will be the “largest AI cluster in the world” and has created large language models to allow people to interact with its AI-powered assistant called Pi, or Personal AI. Pi lets people quickly receive relevant information and advice on their interests.

Founded last year, the generative AI platform is a competitor to other AI firms such as OpenAI and Google. It was co-founded by Mustafa Suleyman, who previously co-founded the Google-owned AI lab DeepMind and serves as CEO at Inflection.

But that’s not all

Of course, one big round is not newsworthy in AI — even though Inflection’s raise is the second-largest in AI this year, behind only Microsoft’s massive $10 billion investment in OpenAI.

New York-based Runway also raised a $141 million extension to its December $50 million Series C from Google, Nvidia, Salesforce Ventures 1 and existing investors, among others.

The round was first reported about two months ago by Business Insider. At that time, it was reported the money was from a cloud service provider and would value the company at $1.5 billion.

Runway helped develop the AI image generator Stable Diffusion, and launched its video-to-video generative AI app in April. The app lets users transform videos into different styles, such as claymation or watercolors.

Founded in 2018, the company has raised nearly $240 million, per Crunchbase.

Finally, San Francisco-based generative AI startup Typeface — which launched in February with a $65 million raise — also announced on Thursday it has raised a $100 million Series B.

The round was led by Salesforce Ventures with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Madrona, GV, Menlo Ventures and M12 (Microsoft’s venture fund).

The company’s AI platform helps with enterprise content creation such as product shots, blog posts, social media ads and job posts that meet brand specifications.

Big money, big names

While the dollar numbers are eye-catching, so are the names of the investors.

Inflection’s round includes some of the biggest names of individuals in tech, and also includes Microsoft. Microsoft’s VC arm also invested in the Typeface round.

Nvidia, whose stock price has shot up thanks to the importance of its chips in the AI process, took part in both the Inflection and Runway raises.

Google — or GV — and Salesforce Ventures both participated in the rounds for Runway and Typeface.

It seems like no tech giant wants to be left behind in AI — no matter the price.

Related Reading

• Salesforce Ventures Doubles Down On AI Investments
• Corporates Are Getting Aggressive In AI Deals — Who Could Be Next?
• AI Investing Boom Is Not New To Tech Giants (At Least Not Their VC Arms)

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MosaicML, a San Francisco-based generative AI platform, had raised $64 million to date since launching in 2021, per reports. Its investors included DCVC, Lux Capital and Playground Global.

MosaicML allows customers to build generative AI tools using its own proprietary data — eliminating the need for users to incorporate their own data with OpenAI’s proprietary models that use public data.

“Every organization should be able to benefit from the AI revolution with more control over how their data is used. Databricks and MosaicML have an incredible opportunity to democratize AI,” said Ali Ghodsi, Databricks’ co-founder and CEO, in a release.

Getting bigger

San Francisco-based Databricks last raised in 2021, locking up a $1.6 billion Series H led by Morgan Stanley’s Counterpoint Global at a $38 billion valuation — making it one of the most valuable private companies in the world.

The deal for MosaicML could be another step toward the public market for the decacorn, as it looks to expand its portfolio of offerings and cash in on an exploding AI market.

While the Databricks deal is one of the first big M&A transactions in the AI space this year, the sector has seen a flood of funding dollars invested in it. 

In January, Microsoft invested $10 billion in OpenAI. In March, San Francisco-based Adept AI raised $350 million in a Series B at a reported post-money valuation of at least $1 billion. In May, Anthropic — a ChatGPT rival with its AI assistant Claude — raised a $450 million Series C that reportedly valued the company at $5 billion.

And that is only a handful of the funding deals the AI has seen since the beginning of the year.

Databricks just recently talked about surpassing a milestone of $1 billion in annual revenue and has talked about a potential IPO in the past. 

Founded in 2013, Databricks has raised more than $3.5 billion, per Crunchbase. Its investors include Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, T. Rowe Price, BlackRock and many others.

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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)

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A day after investors flooded $700 million into two AI startups — Builder.ai and Anthropic — Turkey-based AI marketing platform Insider locked up another $105 million.

Insider CEO and co-founder Hande Cilingir told Bloomberg the company’s valuation had increased “very much closer to $2 billion.”

The company previously raised a $121 million Series D at a $1.22 billion valuation in March 2022 — first minting it as a unicorn.

The new round was from existing investors, Qatar Investment Authority and Esas Private Equity.

In a space where every investor seems to fear being left behind, Qatar Investment Authority seems determined to not let that happen. The sovereign wealth fund led London-based Builder.ai’s Series D of more than $250 million on Tuesday.

Let’s go shopping

Insider offers a platform that allows its more than 1,200 customers to connect customer data across channels and systems, predict future behavior with an AI-enhanced engine, and provides an individualized customer experience.

The company plans to use the new cash for M&A dealmaking. In January, Insider made its first acquisition, buying Turkey-based messaging platform MindBehind.

“At Insider, we have successfully achieved hyper-growth via organic means, until now. Now, we are looking to achieve unparalleled levels of growth with an M&A-focused strategy,” Cilingir said in a release. “These funds will be used exclusively for the purpose of acquiring exceptional product companies to further complement our technology and create product synergies. 

“Unlike our $121 million Series D investment in 2022, which has bolstered our capital reserves for operational spending in the coming years, this latest round will specifically serve to fuel inorganic growth through M&A,” she added.

Founded in 2012, Insider’s total funding amount is now $274 million, per the company.

Further reading:

• AI Craze Hits New Level As Anthropic Locks Up $450M, Builder.ai Closes $250M Round

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Global funding reached $21 billion, down 56% from $47.8 billion in a year-over-year comparison. This is the second-lowest amount recorded in a single month since July 2022 when venture capital started to scale below $30 billion. 

The slowdown has impacted all funding stages. Seed was down more than 50% year over year, while early-stage funding dropped 48%. Late-stage funding was down the most at 62%. 

Month-over-month funding amounts were also down, in large part due to an increase in late-stage funding in March 2023 with Stripe‘s $6.5 billion funding.

Health care leads

Health care was the sector that raised the largest amounts with close to $5.7 billion invested. Companies that raised large rounds at the early stages include RNA-based medicine provider Orbital Therapeutics, medical robotics company Noah Medical and drugs from plants developer Enveda Biosciences. 

Companies active in AI raised around $2.8 billion, close to 13% of funding this past month. They include OpenAI, which raised a further $300 million. CoreWeave raised $221 million, Pinecone and AlphaSense each raised $100 million, and Replit raised $97 million. 

Financial services companies raised just over $2.7 billion, down from $7.7 billion raised in the same month a year ago. Companies that raised large rounds at Series A and B include capital markets infrastructure provider Clear Street, mobile payments TerraPay and LatAm B2B expense tracking Clara. 

Funding to unicorns tails off

Meanwhile,  new unicorns total in the single digits, compared to 40 new unicorns in April 2022. 

Of the $21 billion raised this past month, $4.4 billion was invested in unicorn companies. This is a smaller percentage than previous months in 2023, when unicorns averaged a third of all funding. 

Unicorn fundings include BYJU’S, a leading edtech company in India that raised $700 million at a flat valuation of $22 billion led by sovereign wealth funds and private equity firms. The company laid off 2,500 employees.

And medical supply drone delivery company Zipline raised $330 million at an increased valuation of  $4.8 billion, according to Forbes, up from its 2021 funding which valued the company at $2.8 billion.  

Since the latter half of 2022, deal sizes have come down from seed through Series C fundings. The interest in AI is driving larger funding rounds, but not enough to lift the funding slowdown. 

Methodology

The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and is based on reported data. Data reported is as of May 2, 2023.

Note that data lags are most pronounced at the earliest stages of venture activity, with seed funding amounts increasing significantly after the end of a quarter/year.

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.

Glossary of funding terms

We have made a change to how we include corporate funding rounds in our reporting as of January 2023. Corporate rounds are only included if a company has raised an equity funding at seed through a venture series funding round. 

Seed and angel consists of seed, pre-seed and angel rounds. Crunchbase also includes venture rounds of unknown series, equity crowdfunding and convertible notes at $3 million (USD or as-converted USD equivalent) or less.

Early-stage consists of Series A and Series B rounds, as well as other round types. Crunchbase includes venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $3 million, and those less than or equal to $15 million.

Late-stage consists of Series C, Series D, Series E and later-lettered venture rounds following the “Series [Letter]” naming convention. Also included are venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $15 million.

Technology growth is a private-equity round raised by a company that has previously raised a “venture” round. (So basically, any round from the previously defined stages.)

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There are simply too few doctors in the U.S., and too many patients who need them. 

Amid doctor burnout and long waitlists to see specialists, a niche in technology that saw slow adoption rates was suddenly in high demand: medical imaging AI used to aid in diagnostics. Such technology could help prescreen patients or work alongside physicians to scan images and help find problems that may have gone unnoticed by the tired, overworked human eye.

Funding for startups with this technology jumped from $348 million to over $1 billion between 2020 and 2021, per Crunchbase data. Though that number has dipped to $883 million so far in 2022, it’s still the second-largest year of funding for AI in diagnostics to date. 

“[Adoption] was pretty slow up until COVID,” said Sara Choi, a biotech investor at Wing VC. “Now, I think there’s been a renewed focus on anything that fixes physician or clinician burnout.”

And yet, despite its inherent advantages, doctors are still apprehensive about this new technology. 

“It really requires a quite nuanced understanding of: How is this going to fit into a doctor’s workflow?” said Jacob Effron, a health care-focused investor at Redpoint Ventures. “How does it fit into the incentives of different people in the system?”

An answer to doctor burnout

America’s doctor shortage has effectively turned every clinic, doctor’s office and care organization into need-based systems where only the most urgent patients could see a physician in a timely manner. 

“Humans are missing a lot of diseases because there is an inherent mindset where they’re thinking, ‘Can I treat this patient tomorrow?’” said Kaushal Solanki, CEO and founder of medical imaging AI startup Eyenuk. “And that’s not the preferred threshold.”

Doctors are juggling large patient panels every day, unable to spend enough time with each patient to better treat them. This leads to burnout, which in turn translates into low-quality care. Most importantly, patients who can’t see a doctor frequently are treated for problems that could have been avoided if caught early. 

That’s where companies like Eyenuk come in. The 12-year-old California-based company’s platform can autonomously diagnose diabetic retinopathy, a disease that quietly grows behind the eyes and can worsen without immediate medical intervention. It was granted FDA clearance in 2020 and has processed around 2 million images to date. Eyenuk raised $26 million in Series A funding in October led by AXA Investment Managers, according to Crunchbase data. 

Eyenuk’s platform prescreens patients and allows ophthalmologists to prioritize who to see based on need. But the goal is to one day put the device in hospitals and primary care offices so doctors can check patients’ eyes instead of referring them to a hard-to-find specialist. 

“This could be operated by anybody with a high school diploma and produce an actionable report that can define next steps for the patient, whether they are referred to an ophthalmologist or an eye care specialist, or they would be seen next year for repeat screening,” Solanki said.

This type of medical imaging technology is used in a slew of other sectors as well. Pearl, a venture-backed dentistry startup based in California that has raised $11 million, has a platform called Second Opinion (can you guess why?) that scans teeth imaging to point out a variety of tooth ailments to doctors. Israel-based Aidoc offers radiology-focused artificial intelligence tools to customers that scan radiology images to look for potential issues. The company has raised over $237 million.

Adoption still lags

While adoption spiked during the pandemic, rollout of medical imaging AI is yet to be as widespread as its visionaries would have hoped.

“It’s actually not a problem of the technology not being sophisticated enough,” said Choi. “It’s an adoption problem, and really proving out the use cases to convince providers that there’s business value as well as clinical value to these solutions.”

Provider buy-in is paramount for almost any kind of health care offering, but running through a packed schedule of patients makes it difficult to learn and embrace a new technology that may impede workflow, especially if they don’t think it will add much value.

There’s good reason for that skepticism. The American College of Radiology found that most AI platforms aren’t independently validated, calling into question the accuracy of these platforms. The Food and Drug Administration doesn’t have consistent qualifications for how big or diverse the training data set ought to be.

“We need these models to work transparently and be explainable. And that’s the difference that clinicians are looking for — because a doctor deserves to know how these machine-learning models are reading their patients,” said William Padula, an assistant professor of pharmaceutical and health economics at the University of Southern California. “The fear here is that while the programmer knows what they’ve done to create the model, it’s unclear how exactly it’s looking at the patient.”

But the promise of AI can’t be understated. In a post-pandemic health system, easy-to-access diagnostic resources are going to be important. Public health officials are pushing for more at-home or accessible diagnostic tests for all sorts of illnesses. And diagnostics accounts for 70% of all health care decision-making. 

“We believe that the technology has to be good enough to work on its own. And that actually creates value for the system,” Solanki said. “Now there’s one less thing that the specialists have to worry about, which is routine screening.”

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Rounds were not that big this week, as only a handful were $100 million or more. Much like last week, investment was all over the board, as storage, grocery and energy startups led the way in what was a pretty down week.

1. Wasabi Technologies, $125M, storage: The cloud services sector is dominated by the big tech names we all know. Boston-based Wasabi would like to change that, and just this week became a unicorn as it travels down that road. The “hot” cloud storage company raised $125 million in Series D equity led by L2 Point Management at a valuation of $1.1 billion. The company also expanded its existing debt facility to $125 million. The startup claims it can offer its hot cloud storage—which refers to data that is readily available—at a fifth of the price of the big guys and now has 40,000 customers in over 100 countries. The cloud data market is big, but dominated by incumbents not likely to let new players in. We’ll see if Wasabi can heat things up. Founded in 2015, the company has raised more than $535 million, according to Crunchbase.

2. GrubMarket, $120M, grocery: It was reported this week that San Francisco-based GrubMarket raised $120 million from new investors including General Mills’ venture arm. The company develops software and has an e-commerce platform that connects farmers and wholesalers with customers. It’s been quite busy in the last few years, making 60 acquisitions in the last four years and just last year raised $200 million at a $1.2 billion valuation. Per the story, GrubMarket now has an annual run rate of about $1.5 billion. Founded in 2014, the company has raised approximately $500 million, according to Crunchbase.

3. Moxion Power, $100M, energy: Sustainable and cleaner alternatives for power has been a big theme this year for investors. So far this year, the cleantech industry has seen 17 funding rounds worth $100 million or more, according to Crunchbase. This week included one of those rounds, as Richmond, California-based Moxion Power locked up a $100 million Series B led by Tamarack Global. Moxion manufactures mobile batteries and energy storage to enable last-mile electrification in sectors that include construction, transportation, events and entertainment, film production and telecommunications. Although venture capital in general has slowed this year, cleantech is on pace to see a slight uptick from last year, according to Crunchbase. Last year, VC-backed cleantech startups saw $7 billion of investmentment, while already this year investors have poured more than $6.6 billion into the sector. Founded in 2020, the company has now raised just more than $113 million, according to Crunchbase.

4. Strike, $80M, payments: While digital payments can be convenient, they can also be slow and cluttered with fees. Chicago-based Strike, built on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, is looking to allow customers to avoid those hassles. The Lightning Network is known for fast transactions and could be a solution to Bitcoin’s scalability issues. Strike is looking to leverage that and make cheaper, faster, global payments a real thing for everyone. To that end, the company raised an $80 million funding round led by Ten31, its first funding round, according to Crunchbase. The company will look to use that new cash to attract large merchants, marketplaces and financial institutions to its payments platform.

5. Ventus Therapeutics, $70M, biotech: Waltham, Massachusetts-based Ventus Therapeutics announced an exclusive license agreement with Novo Nordisk and received an upfront payment of $70 million in cash as part of the deal. Under terms of the agreement, Novo will help develop and commercialize therapies from Ventus’ portfolio. Ventus has developed a platform to identify and develop small molecule therapeutics for a broad range of diseases. Ventus will be eligible to receive up to an additional $633 million in potential milestone payments as well under the agreement. Founded in 2019, the company has raised $370 million, according to Crunchbase.

6. Sitetracker, $66M, SaaS: Montclair, New Jersey-based Sitetracker, a developer of deployment operations software servicing critical infrastructure, closed a new round of equity and debt financing totaling $96 million.The round includes $66 million in equity and was led by Energize Ventures. Sitetracker has raised nearly $200 million since 2013, per the company.

7. Workstream, $60M, human resources: San Francisco-based Workstream extended its Series B funding round with an additional $60 million, bringing the total Series B to $108 million. The extension was led by GGV Capital. The company had developed a mobile-first hiring and onboarding platform for the deskless workforce. Founded in 2017, Workstream has raised $118 million to date, according to Crunchbase data.

8. (tied) Flatfile, $50M, cloud data services: Denver-based Flatfile, a AI-assisted data exchange platform, locked up a $50 million Series B funding led by Tiger Global. Founded in 2018, Flatfile has raised $100 million, per the company.

8. (tied) Unravel Data, $50M, big data: Palo Alto, California-based observability platform startup Unravel Data closed a $50 million Series D led by Third Point Ventures. Founded in 2013, the company has raised $107 million, according to the company.

10. Candle Labs, $48M, blockchain: Santa Barbara, California-based blockchain technology platform Candle Labs raised a $48 million funding round. Lead investors in that round were not disclosed. The startup develops software for decentralized services in sectors like finance.

Big global deals

Rounds were on the small side this week for U.S.-based startups. However, there was a large global deal.

• Saudi Arabia-based Almosafer, a flight booking firm, raised a $1 billion venture round.

Methodology

We tracked the largest rounds in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the seven-day period of Sept. 24 to 30. Although most announced rounds are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as some rounds are reported late in the week.

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Vetted, which was formerly known as Lustre, uses artificial intelligence to help online shoppers find the products they’re looking for that are the most highly-recommended by other users. The company, which was founded in 2019, uses reviews from platforms like YouTube, Reddit, and review websites to recommend products, according to a press release from the company.

“Shoppers shouldn’t have to spend hours sifting through indistinguishable products littered across thousands of ad-infested sites loaded with fake reviews and unreliable information,” Vetted co-founder Stuart Kearney said in a statement. 

“That’s why we’re building Vetted. Our users get a smart guide aligned with their best interests, transforming e-commerce into the simple and trustworthy experience everyone wants – especially today, when every dollar counts.”

Online shopping has seen a boom since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with more consumers buying everything from clothes to groceries online. But searching for items, like consumer electronics, often comes with having to read multiple buyer reviews, along with recommendations from review websites, such as Wirecutter. It’s not uncommon for buyers to have to do research on their own before settling on a product.

More than 330,000 online shoppers have used Vetted, and users buy the products recommended by Vetted 70% of the time, according to Hanna Jung, the company’s VP of Marketing. Jung added that users are also “asking for help beyond our initial focus on consumer electronics.”

The new Series A funding will help Vetted, which is based in San Francisco, expand its product and retailer coverage to other areas, Jung added in her statement.

Vetted last raised a seed round in August 2020, according to Crunchbase. The company is backed by investors including Index Ventures, Golden Ventures, and Bling Capital.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

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