Wen Hsieh and Haomiao Huang, both Kleiner Perkins investors, left the firm in 2023 to start their own venture capital fund called Matter Venture Partners.
The median venture fund raised that year was around $37 million, according to a PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor report.
Matter Venture Partners invests at the large seed rounds, Series A and Series B.
He believes that Matter Venture Partner’s focus on hard tech was the reason for the oversubscription.
We like to fund them and entrepreneurs that contribute to these new innovations.”So far, Matter Venture Partners invested in six companies not made public yet.
Despite the EC ruling favoring Spotify and other streamers over Apple, the company was still cautious about how Apple would proceed.
So we’re looking forward to the next steps that will hopefully clearly and conclusively address Apple’s long-standing unfair practices,” Spotify wrote.
In 2019, Spotify first filed its antitrust complaint against the tech giant, which later led to the EU’s formal investigation of Apple’s App Store announced in 2020.
In April of the following year, the EU issued a statement of objections, accusing Apple of distorting competition in the market for streaming services.
And it noted that Spotify had a 56% share of the music streaming market in Europe, compared with Apple Music’s 11% share.
Media startup Dailyhunt is in advanced stages of talks to acquire the Bengaluru-headquartered social network Koo, two sources familiar with the matter told me.
The potential deal under discussion involves a share-swap agreement and could be finalized within weeks, the sources added, requesting anonymity as the matter is private.
The deliberation follows Koo, which has sought to become a Twitter rival, aggressively hunting for new capital throughout last year.
The social network, available in India and Brazil, is betting on the idea that its approach of supporting multiple local languages will help the eponymous app resonate broadly with the larger masses.
Dailyhunt, which was last valued at $5 billion, and Koo declined to comment.
Byju’s, once valued at $22 billion, is willing to cut its valuation to below $2 billion as it hunts for new funding, a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.
Byju’s willingness to cut the valuation is a stunning reversal of fortune for the startup, once the poster child of the Indian startup ecosystem.
Byju’s has been chasing for new funding for nearly a year.
The new funding deliberation follows BlackRock cutting the value of its holding in Byju’s, slashing the implied valuation of the Indian startup to about $1 billion, according to disclosures made by the asset manager.
Byju’s was preparing to go public in early 2022 through a SPAC deal that would have valued the company at up to $40 billion.
The deal would allow General Catalyst to tap deeper into India’s vibrant technology scene that has lured over $100 billion in startup investments since 2010.
The deal hasn’t finalized, so things may change, the sources cautioned, requesting anonymity as the deliberation is private.
The U.S. firm held conversations with many senior individuals in India last year looking to find an India-based partner, many people familiar with the matter said.
Its new focus on India follows the firm expanding in Europe last year by agreeing to merge with La Famiglia, an investor in several high-profile early-stage startups including AI firm Mistral.
Investing in India has proven uniquely challenging to many global venture firms that have entered the country or have explored such possibility, a partner at a India-based venture firm said.
And major features like multi-admin, which in theory allows Matter devices to work with every smart home platform simultaneously, remain broken pending future standards patches.
Lockly also announced at CES that its $80 Matter Link Hub, which allows users to manage older Lockly devices from Matter-supporting apps and devices, will become available later this year.
Aqara Hub M3Aqara, the smart home upstart, brought its long-teased Matter-compatible hub — the Hub M3 — to CES 2024.
Roborock S8 MaxV UltraRoborock, a longtime fixture of the robot vacuum cleaner market, launched its first Matter-compatible vacuum at CES: the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra.
But Amazon became the first to support Matter Casting, the video- and audio-beaming feature of the Matter smart home standard, on its smart displays and smart TVs this week.
But the company will be the first to support Matter Casting, the video- and audio-beaming feature of the Matter smart home standard, on its smart displays and smart TVs, Amazon announced this morning at CES 2024.
Once Matter casting comes to Amazon’s Prime Video app for Android and iOS, users will be able to cast content to supported Amazon devices — starting with the Echo Show 15 — by tapping the new dedicated Matter Casting button.
Beyond the Echo Show 15, Amazon says that Matter Casting support will arrive on Fire TVs including smart TVs from Panasonic with Fire TV built in, and — on the app side — Plex, Pluto TV, Sling TV, Starz and ZDF later this year.
Tellingly, Google announced this week that its casting tech, Chromecast, will be built into all of LG’s new TVs — but gave no mention of Matter Casting.
The Matter Casting spec — which was developed with major input from Amazon — can accomplish more than casting, in theory.
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