Startups Weekly: It’s buying season

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From acquiring stealth startups to larger ones, and from funding Series A to Series G rounds, buyers and investors made for a busy news cycle.

Most interesting startup stories from the week

This week must have seemed like the perfect time for companies to announce their latest startup acquisitions.

Unlocked: Israeli phone unlocking firm Cellebrite acquired mobile testing startup Corellium for $170 million in cash, with $20 million converted to equity at closing. 

Sought and found: IBM acquired Seek AI, an AI platform that lets users ask questions about enterprise data using natural language. Its technology is set to become a key part of Watsonx AI Labs, IBM’s new NYC-based AI accelerator.

Data access: Data governance platform Collibra acquired Raito, a startup that had raised $4 million to date to help companies manage which employees and customers have access to internal data. Both Collibra and Raito are based in Brussels.

Challenger: AMD acquired Brium, a stealth startup focusing on AI software optimization, in a deal that appears intended to challenge Nvidia’s AI hardware dominance.

Crunchy: Snowflake disclosed it plans to buy Crunchy Data, a startup that helps companies build with Postgres. The cloud data platform company declined to comment on the deal’s valuation, but a source estimated it at around $250 million. 

No more pesto: Data-labeling startup Scale AI hired the team behind Pesto AI, which is shutting down after raising more than $8 million to help companies recruit developers remotely.

Hmm: Airtime, the video startup from Evernote’s founder Phil Libin, laid off dozens of employees, who won’t be invited to stay for the next “season.” The company, formerly known as mmhmm, raised nearly $135 million in venture funding across multiple early-stage rounds.

Ouch: Indian grocery startup KiranaPro confirmed that it was hacked last May. All of its data was wiped in the attack.

The legal battle continues: HR tech startup Deel accused rival Rippling of hiring an employee who spent six months impersonating a customer, but Rippling also issued an amended complaint regarding its corporate spying accusations against Deel.

Most interesting VC and funding news this week

Money once again flew uphill this week, but some funding also went to startups that hope to challenge market leaders, expand internationally, and make roads safer.

Lucky Luckey: Defense tech startup Anduril raised a gigantic $2.5 billion Series G round, including a $1 billion investment from Founders Fund, doubling the company’s valuation to $30.5 billion in the process.

Moving the cursor: Anysphere, the maker of AI coding assistant Cursor, has raised $900 million at a $9.9 billion valuation. Sources said the company has surpassed $500 million in annual recurring revenue.

Brain chips: Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain computer interface startup, secured a $650 million Series E, reportedly at a pre-money valuation around $9 billion.

Insured: Bolttech, a Singapore-based insurtech company specializing in embedded insurance, completed a $147 million Series C at a $2.1 billion valuation. 

APUs vs. GPUs: Speedata, an Israeli chip startup competing with Nvidia, raised a $44 million Series B. The company is developing an analytics processing unit (APU) to accelerate AI and data workloads, which it will showcase later this month.

From Ireland to Japan: Irish fintech startup Nomupay locked in a $40 million Series C from SB Payment Service (SBPS), a subsidiary of Japanese telco giant SoftBank Corp. It will use the capital on expanding its reach in key regions, including Asia, as well as on acquisitions.

Drive with care: Obvio, a startup using AI and cameras installed on stop signs to detect unsafe driving, raised a $22 million Series A led by Bain Capital Ventures.

Richest slice: Between February and May of this year, North American AI startups attracted $69.7 billion in venture capital across 1,528 deals, far exceeding Europe’s $6.4 billion (742 deals) and Asia’s $3 billion (515 deals), according to PitchBook data.

Last but not least

Elad Gil began investing in AI startups like Perplexity and Harvey well before most VCs recognized the trend. Now he’s placing bets on traditional businesses that AI can help reinvent and make more lucrative.