Dogs are the most popular pet in the U.S.: 65.1 million households have one, according to the American Pet Products Association.
Sonya Petcavich, the founder of cat-sitting app Meowtel, thinks that cats, and cat people, deserve more.
“Rover had been around for a few years, and Wag was picking up steam, but they were so dog focused.
Meowtel has made it to this point raising just under $1 million in venture capital.
ImpriMed, a dog oncology startup, raised $23 million in November, and Fi, a smart dog collar, has raised more than $40 million in venture capital.
EnerVenue, a startup that has developed an alternative to lithium-ion batteries for long-duration renewable energy storage, is raising $515 million in fresh equity, per an SEC filing seen by TechCrunch.
The company is in the process of building a gigawatt-scale factory in Kentucky to produce its nickel-hydrogen batteries, an endeavor that’s estimated to cost $264 million.
So far, EnerVenue has raised $308 million of the $515 million target, the filing says.
Nickel-hydrogen batteries aren’t as energy dense as lithium-ion, meaning they won’t be competing for space in electric vehicles quite yet.
The next challenge will be completing the factory, scaling production and sending its novel batteries out into the world.
Climate investor Bay Bridge Ventures is raising a new $200 million fund, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
Bay Bridge filed paperwork Monday for the new climate fund with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
And Congruent Ventures raised a $275 million fund in 2023, turning down $325 million in additional LP interest.
Bay Bridge Ventures is new, having been founded in 2022 with a focus on ESG more broadly and sustainability in particular.
Still, that doesn’t mean Bay Bridge lacks experience.
New Summit Investments is raising a new $100 million impact fund, according to documents filed with the SEC.
This is the firm’s fifth fund and marks a sizable jump from the $40 million its previous fund, which closed back in 2022.
New Summit has supported marginalized fund managers by launching initiatives like its partnership with investment firm Gratitude Railroad to source and underwrite underrepresented fund managers.
New Summit Investments’ was founded in 2016 as an impact investment firm focusing on climate, health, and economic opportunities.
New Summit Investments’ first fund closed for $20 million in 2016, followed by $36 million in 2018, according to Pitchbook.
Once the baby is born, the nutrition guessing game continues on what foods are ideal for postpartum and nursing.
The product roadmap is evolving, too, extending from the postpartum program to eventually serve the full women’s health journey.
The 40-days postpartum program, which includes three meals per day, starts at $69 per day.
“For example, we started with the first 40-days postpartum program.
Other participants in the round include Ingeborg, Union Heritage Ventures, Peterson Ventures, Detroit Venture Partners, Palette Ventures, and The Helm.
AI is a data problem.
Now Cyera is raising up to $300M on a $1.5B valuation to secure itA cybersecurity startup called Cyera is betting that the next big challenge in enterprise data protection will be AI, and it’s raising a big round of funding as demand picks up for it.
Previous to this, Cyera — pronounced “Sierra” and headquartered in San Mateo and with roots in Israel — had raised a total of $160 million with its current $500 million valuation dating from last year.
Cyera, Coatue and Sequoia declined comment.
A source said that AI right now is a “huge driver” for business at Cyera.
In June 2023, Inflection announced it had raised $1.3 billion to build what it called “more personal AI.” The lead investor was Microsoft.
Today, less than a year later, Microsoft announced that it was essentially eating Inflection alive (though I think they phrased it differently).
Co-founders Mustafa Suleyman and Karén Simonyan will go to Microsoft, where the former will head up the newly formed Microsoft AI division, along with “several members” of their team as Microsoft put it — or “most of the staff,” as Bloomberg reports it.
Ultimately Microsoft got a bit of extra leverage on the company instead of eating it alive.
Whether it was OpenAI or Inflection, Microsoft was feeding their cash and compute addictions, whispering in their ear about partnerships, and then as soon as they tripped, out came the hidden fork and knife.
If accurate, this latest injection of capital would value Moonshot AI at $2.5 billion – the largest single funding round for Chinese LLM developers on public record.
Co-leading the round are e-commerce giant Alibaba and HongShan – the VC firm formerly known as Sequoia China, according to South China Morning Post.
Other in the round included Chinese “super app” Meituan and Xiaohongshu (sometimes called China’s answer to Instagram), according to Chinese tech blog LatePost.
Pink Floyd Fan turned AI trailblazerYang Zhilin had a long list of achievements to his credit even before starting Moonshot.
The total amount raised by China’s AI firms amounted to roughly $2 billion, 70% less than the year before.
Kost Capital, a new Danish venture capital fund, is out to bring better food to more people.
That’s because Kost Capital shares space with Kost Studio, a food development studio that doubles as a test kitchen for universities and markets to collaborate and develop novel food products.
Kost Capital invests in pre-seed and seed startups across Europe, focusing on B2B inputs in the future of food.
Sidén’s journey to venture capital started in a quite unique place.
Acknowledging a growing population, climate change, food waste, health issues and policy changes, Sidén says more funding is needed into food tech.
In fact, in the midst of raising the firm’s fourth fund, he seems to be positively cheery about the state of the crypto market despite how things are going.
With over $1.2 billion in assets under management, 10T counts major crypto entities like Gemini, Kraken, Yuga Labs and Animoca Brands as part of its portfolio.
And 1Roundtable Partners (1RT), Tapiero’s growth-stage firm, is also raising a not-insignificant amount for its upcoming fund: a minimum of $200 million and up to $800 million.
As the bear market thaws, Tapiero sees few other growth equity investors dedicated to the crypto space at this point in time.
Taking the long viewWith the new fund, 1RT plans to make about 10 to 15 additional investments with hopes of gaining another five to 10 board seats across those portfolio companies, Tapiero said.
