Startup Monday: Latest tech trends & news happening in the global startup ecosystem (Issue 138- August 31)
Welcome to Startup Monday, my weekly newsletter that recaps the week in the global startup ecosystem. To have this newsletter emailed to you, you can sign up here.
Top startup news to follow this week:
1. Robot Ventures raises $75m for early-stage crypto fund
The $75 million fund is nearly three times bigger compared to Robot Ventures’ previous funds. According to the VC platform’s general partner Tarun Chitra, the jump from $22 million to the latest raise comes amid growing interest in crypto from institutional investors.
What crypto sectors are seeing huge VC interest?
Some recent venture capital raises across the crypto market have suggested a fresh outlook.
Key sectors include real-world assets projects, zero-knowledge proofs, decentralized physical infrastructure networks, and artificial intelligence. The decentralized finance market, capital markets, and Bitcoin economy ecosystem are also notable sectors.
2. Investors are already valuing OpenAI at over $100B on the secondaries market
It turns out investors have already proven they are willing to value the company that high to get on OpenAI’s coveted cap table. Multiple companies that track or facilitate secondaries deals — where investors buy shares from existing investors, not directly from the company — have seen investors pay prices that indicate an over $100 billion valuation.
Still, securities trader Rainmaker Securities has seen investors bidding on OpenAI stock at prices that value the company up to $143 billion. Caplight, a secondary data tracking platform, estimates that the company is currently worth more than $111 billion based on both secondaries activity and past traditional financing rounds.
“There are a lot of investors that really want to be part of this story and want to be an investor in this company,” Glen Anderson, co-founder and managing partner at Rainmaker Securities, told TechCrunch. “So a $100 billion valuation, is it rich? Maybe. But, I mean, if OpenAI can live up to [its] potential, it may be a steal.”
“Obviously it is hard to put a proper valuation on OpenAI, but we are seeing a lot of demand,” Martin said. “There is a fear of missing out on the premium the company is getting. There is certainly a cogent argument that the company could be worth a trillion dollars some day.”
While OpenAI’s next official valuation is still yet to be determined, one thing is already for sure — this funding round will spark more secondaries activity around OpenAI and other AI competitors, Martin said. He predicts it will also give a valuation boost to companies including Anthropic, Cohere, Hugging Face and more.
“It generates buzz. It generates excitement. It resets market expectations,” Martin said.
3. Lemniscap secures $70M to back early-stage Web3 startups
The new fund will back startups working on blockchain-based solutions, including zero-knowledge infrastructure and emerging Bitcoin ecosystems.
The new fund is also backed by Accolade Partners, a fund of funds that also targets early-stage ventures in the blockchain industry.Lemniscap is known for targeting early-stage startups in the crypto space. The venture firm launched its first fund in 2017, just before the 2018 crypto market crash. Since then, it has backed several popular protocols across the industry, including Avalanche, Fairblock, Celestia, EigenLayer, Euler, ParaSwap, and Axelar, among others. To date, the firm has made over 130 investments in the Web3 space.
The company’s thesis prioritizes “long-term success rather than short-term gains,” focusing on products and services based on blockchain innovation. According to Lemniscap, startups in their portfolio are supported both with capital allocations and strategic guidance.The Web3 startup ecosystem has seen a resurgence in 2024 following the downturn the previous year, which was marked by bankruptcy cases, regulatory uncertainty and a slump in crypto token prices.
4. Exclusive: Microsoft-backed Space and Time raises $20 million to merge AI and blockchain
As AI continues its dominance of corporate attention-and venture capital investment-the once-beloved sector of blockchain has sometimes felt like a spurned child. Still, many crypto proponents argue that blockchain can still solve the most pressing problems posed by AI, from confirming personhood to preventing deepfakes. That’s why one startup, Space and Time, is building software to bring the immutability of blockchain to AI applications-and it will have ample resources to build out its vision, with a $20 million Series A led by the crypto-focused venture firms Framework Ventures, Lightspeed Faction, Arrington Capital, and Hivemind Capital.
“[We’re] moving to an AI-powered world, meaning you don’t know what is being generated by AI and what is being generated by a person or corporations,” Nate Holiday, the cofounder and CEO of Space and Time , told Fortune in an interview. “We think it’s super critical to sit right in the middle of this to ensure that as applications are being built in this new world, powered by Space and Time, you have this verifiability, trust, and transparency.”
Space and Time’s pitch is simple, at least in technological terms. The promise of crypto is that data can be coded directly onto blockchains without the need for intermediaries, meaning it cannot be tampered with or misinterpreted, as long as you know how to interact with it and what to look for. When you send a transaction from one Bitcoin wallet holder to another, there does not need to be a bank or broker sitting in the middle who might misrepresent what happened.
AI, in many instances, is the polar opposite. The applications we have become used to, such as ChatGPT, are black boxes-we ask them a question and get an output, but receive almost no insight into the process and have no way of finding out. This means that, when the answer is incorrect, there is no way of understanding how the agent came up with the would-be solution.
On a high level, Space and Time is tackling that thorny issue of verifiability. Its technology aspires to ensure that when an AI application provides an output, you can confirm where it came from and, ideally, that it’s correct. Holiday argues the way to do that is through blockchain, which is essentially just a type of database that is theoretically more immune from human meddling.
Initially, Space and Time pitched its solution just to blockchain firms, positioning itself as a kind of decentralized version of the data storage service Snowflake. In other words, it would serve as a data warehouse, but unlike other crypto-native solutions such as Filecoin, Space and Time would be designed to allow applications to retrieve and access data quickly. That plan proved appealing to companies building in the world of DeFi, which revolves around financial platforms that must store massive amounts of user information that require constant updates, such as lending apps.
Michael Anderson, the cofounder of Framework Ventures, said the Web3 Snowflake analog is what initially drew him to Space and Time, as he realized the use cases could be expanded. He said the idea now is to take the advantages of blockchain verifiability and apply it to non-blockchain-based applications, like traditional financial institutions, which can use blockchain-native tools (namely ZK proofs) to cross-reference third-party data, such as personally identifiable information (PII). For example, if banks and DMVs integrated with Snowflake, Space and Time could help the banks use DMV data to verify someone’s age without having to store the data themselves.
AI represents the next frontier. As AI agents begin to complete tasks for us on the internet, such as booking flights, they will need to be able to transact programmatically with rules around using credit cards or verifying that data is accurate. In this future world, Space and Time wants to be the blockchain-native database that new applications, and the AI agents that interact with them, rely on.
Of course, with crypto and AI still both in nascent phases, a lot has to go right for this type of technology to achieve widespread adoption. Still, Space and Time is making enough progress to draw investment from some of the top blockchain venture funds, as well as , which is aiming to compete with other so-called like hyperscalers and . Along with its database solutions, Space and Time is also Microsoft’s generative AI products to build blockchain app development tools available to its customers.
5. India’s Agrim snags $17.3M to help farmers get inputs like seeds and pesticides more easily
Additionally, India’s agri-inputs landscape is different from that of the U.S. and Europe due to its fragmented market structure, diversified demand and seasonal nature of crops.
Agrim aims to address all these discrepancies by building a just-in-time supply chain to help agri-input retailers buy inputs from a specific manufacturer.
The marketplace helps take the order to the manufacturing warehouse the moment it comes from a retailer, co-founder Mukul Garg said in an exclusive interview.
Garg, a second-time entrepreneur who co-founded the travel app Tripigator in 2013, founded Agrim along with Avi Jain in April 2020. He has also headed products and growth at logistics company BlackBuck and was responsible for building its on-demand trucking marketplace.
Agrim deals with retailers and manufacturers that have not used an e-commerce platform before, offering a minimalistic user interface along with the ability to let retailers set the pricing. The portal also includes a custom-designed order management system that allocates a manufacturer to every order it gets and ensures the pickup and delivery timelines are matched. Further, the startup works with multiple third-party logistics service providers to handle last-mile delivery.
The startup currently offers its catalog in four categories: seeds, agrochemicals, nutrition and tools. Each category also includes subcategories (600 subcategories in total), such as herbicides, fungicides and pesticides for crop protection, and 70 subcategories in the equipment segment, including hand tools and motor-operated tools.
Agrim uses a pricing intelligence model to set appropriate prices for products it gets from manufacturers. There are system algorithms to set prices based on factors including demand and supply to provide dynamic pricing on its platform. The startup takes anywhere between 10% to 60–70% of margins, Garg said, after giving a certain price to the manufacturer.
Agrim also offers lending to retailers, who usually do not get access to credit through traditional channels, and about 10% of its retail base currently uses that credit offering, Garg told TechCrunch. It hopes to grow that business to 30% of retailers in the next few years, in part by extending the credit period from 30 days to up to 45 days.
Similarly, the startup plans to expand its catalog by adding two new categories: animal feed covering cattle, fish and shrimp feed and testing out irrigation equipment.
Agrim also seeks to enter into the market of private-label agri-inputs within the next six months in order to help farmers get inputs at retail prices instead of paying a premium.
“We are trying to democratize as a platform,” said Garg. “We are seeing a lot of demand and supply mismatches. So with private labels, we want to solve for unmet demand or supply.”
Agrim claims a base of 1,200 manufacturers and 25,000 retailers serving 15 million farmers. The startup generated more than $36 million in the last financial year and is on the annual revenue run rate of nearly $60 million.
The all-equity Series B round also included participation from existing investors Accion Venture Lab, India Quotient, Kalaari and Omnivore.
6. GitHub Copilot competitor Codeium raises $150M at a $1.25B valuation
Codeium’s co-founder and CEO, Varun Mohan, told TechCrunch that Codeium hasn’t even touched the $65 million Series B tranche it raised in January yet. Back then, just eight months ago, Codeium was valued at half a billion dollars.
“Even though we’ve barely made a dent in our existing funding, we believe that this injection of capital will allow us to significantly ramp up R&D and growth while making even larger strategic bets,” he said.
Codeium was founded in 2021 by Mohan and his childhood friend and fellow MIT grad, Douglas Chen. Prior to Codeium, Chen was at Meta, where he helped to build software tools for VR headsets like the Oculus Quest. Mohan was a tech lead at Nuro, the autonomous delivery startup, responsible for managing the autonomy infrastructure team.
“Despite the influx of generative AI tools, developers are still struggling with time-consuming coding tasks,” Mohan said. “Many of the AI-driven solutions provide generic code snippets that require significant manual work to integrate and secure within existing codebases. That’s where our AI coding assistance comes in.”
Codeium’s platform, powered by generative AI models trained on public code, serves up suggestions in the context of an app’s entire codebase. It supports around 70 programming languages and integrates with a number of popular development environments, including Microsoft Visual Studio and JetBrains.
To attract devs away from Copilot and other rivals, Codeium has released a generous free tier to start. The strategy seems to have worked: Today, the startup has more than 700,000 users and over 1,000 enterprise customers, including Anduril, Zillow and Dell.
Quentin Clark, managing director at General Catalyst, implied that Codeium won some of its larger contracts by embracing a steadfastly client-centric approach to product research.
“The team’s approach has always been to follow its customers, leading the company to build solutions on their terms — deployable in any environment and supporting more languages than anyone else,” Clark said in a statement. “What Codeium has created isn’t just a demo, an announcement, or an idea — this is a fully scaling business, with large enterprises adopting the product across their entire organizations.”
7. Fast-growing immigrant-focused neobank Comun has secured $21.5M in new funding just months after its last raise
This is a crowded space, filled with a number of startups, including , , Bloom Money , , and . So the fact that Welcome Tech was able to raise capital in back-to-back rounds in such a short amount of time is notable. estimated its previous valuation, after its last raise, to be $62 million. CEO and co-founder Andres Santos said PitchBook’s valuation was “inaccurate” and that the company’s current valuation “has increased by more than 50%.”
The New York-based startup’s traction is what drew investors to double down. Comun grew monthly revenue by “50x” in the first six months of 2024, according to Santos. While that growth implies that its initial revenue was low, it does show a fast rate of adoption. He also said the company has grown in users and increased revenue per user by about 4x since the start of the year after launching new products.
Santos and his co-founder Abiel Gutierrez started Comun in late 2021 after facing financial exclusion in the U.S. when they migrated from Mexico. They set out to offer digital banking services, including instant payments and cash withdrawal at numerous locations, check deposits and early paychecks, to Latino immigrants.
For instance, they provide native Spanish-speaking reps seven days a week, and allow customers to apply for an account using 100 ID types from Latin America, including foreign country passports. Most traditional banks require customers to have a U.S. Social Security card or proof of address, for example a mortgage or utility bill.
“The Latino community is underserved,” Santos told TechCrunch, adding that his research shows that many such immigrants simply choose not to use a bank. So his startup’s application process is designed to “remove many of the friction points immigrants typically face while also blocking fraudulent actors.”
Comun is winning them over, too, as their primary bank account, he said, and is particularly growing in California, Florida, Georgia, New York and Texas.
8. London-based Arāya Ventures completes the first close of its Super Angel Fund at €9.8 million
Arāya Ventures , founded and led by entrepreneur-turned-investor Rupa Popat, has successfully completed the first close of its Arāya Super Angel Fund, raising over €9.8 million . This marks a significant milestone for the fund, which aims to ultimately secure €22.5 million to invest in early-stage startups across sectors such as health tech, fintech, climate, commerce, and the future of work.
This first amount raised will be deployed to support pre-seed and seed-stage companies, with individual investments ranging from €180,000 to €490,000. Arāya Ventures plans to invest in up to 60 startups over the next four years. This initial close reflects strong investor confidence in Arāya’s community-powered approach, which emphasizes not just financial backing but also substantial strategic support for portfolio companies.
The fund’s early success is bolstered by a roster of high-profile investors, including Bridgerton actress Charithra Chandran, former Credit Suisse CEO Phil Cutts, and former Browns CEO Holli Rogers. These investors, along with many others, have been drawn to Arāya’s unique model that promises to deliver more than just capital, providing startups with critical value-added services and strategic guidance.
A Community-Powered Approach
Arāya Super Angel Fund’s community-powered model is designed to address a growing need in the venture capital ecosystem, where many founders feel underserved by traditional investors. A recent Forward More than Money report highlighted a disconnect, with 92% of VCs claiming to be value-add investors, but only 61% of founders agreeing. Arāya aims to bridge this gap by leveraging its network of investors, entrepreneurs, and industry experts to provide comprehensive support to its portfolio companies.
The $10.6 million raised will be allocated through a flexible investment strategy, accommodating both Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and non-EIS investments. The fund plans to make 10 to 15 investments annually, ensuring a diversified portfolio. Additionally, 25% of the fund is earmarked for repeat founders who have demonstrated prior success in building businesses.
Rupa Popat stated: “Raising over €9.8 million in our initial close is a strong validation of our approach and mission. This is just the beginning, and we are committed to providing not only financial support but also the strategic value that can help early-stage founders succeed. We look forward to continuing to build on this momentum as we work towards our €22.5 million target.”
9. Zurich-based Swiss-Mile secures over €19.8 million in seed funding, co-led by Jeff Bezos and HongShan
, a pioneering company connecting AI with the physical world using autonomous machines, announced today the successful closure of over €19.8 million seed funding round. This round was notably co-led by Jeff Bezos, through Bezos Expeditions, and HongShan, with additional participation from the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund and Armada Investment. The round also saw continued support from existing investor Linear Capital, underscoring the strong belief in Swiss-Mile’s vision and potential.
Founded in April 2023, Swiss-Mile was established with a bold mission: to free humanity from laborious and repetitive tasks by bridging the gap between artificial intelligence and the physical world. The company’s primary focus is on developing truly autonomous robots that can perform complex tasks in dynamic environments. By assembling a team of world-class experts in embodied AI and robotics, Swiss-Mile has quickly made a name for itself in tackling some of the most challenging aspects of mobility, autonomy, and manipulation.
In just its first year, Swiss-Mile has achieved significant milestones, including pilot deployments with key customers in areas such as last-mile delivery in smart cities and security for critical infrastructure. These customers have experienced firsthand the capabilities of Swiss-Mile’s innovative wheeled-legged robots, which are powered by advanced neural networks. The robots’ ability to navigate and perform tasks autonomously has set a new standard in the industry, drawing significant attention from both media and industry leaders.
Investor confidence and Industry leadership
“Swiss-Mile, utilizing their cutting-edge algorithms and deep research expertise, has developed a product that stands out in this industry,” said Caroline Fu, a partner at HongShan. “We are thrilled to observe the technological advancements the company has achieved, and are confident it will play a leading role in transforming the embodied intelligence industry.”
Swiss-Mile is a spin-off from the renowned Robotic Systems Lab at ETH Zurich and has been at the forefront of integrating artificial neural networks into robots with both legs and wheels. The company’s technology allows robots to walk, drive, stand upright on two legs, and manipulate objects with wheeled end effectors. This versatility is key to addressing real-world challenges in both mobility and manipulation, positioning Swiss-Mile as a leader in the next wave of robotic automation.
The company’s embodied AI has already garnered significant media attention, with a notable showcase at the GTC 2022 keynote by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang. Beyond its scientific contributions, Swiss-Mile has demonstrated the practical applications of its technology, having been part of the winning team in the DARPA Subterranean Challenge-an event the Washington Post referred to as “The Super Bowl of Robotics.”
“Swiss-Mile stands out as one of the leading embodied AI companies globally, founded by pioneers who initiated this trend,” said Harry Wang, founder and CEO of Linear Capital. “Their international and customer-centric mindset from the very beginning will enable them to leverage global resources, making Swiss-Mile a leading power in the next wave of the physical AI revolution.”
10. Copenhagen-based Uniqkey secures €5.35 million aiming to fortify European cybersecurity
In a world where digital threats are escalating at an alarming rate, the need for robust cybersecurity measures has never been more critical. By 2024, global losses due to cybercrime are expected to reach a staggering $9.5 trillion, a sharp rise from $3 trillion in 2015. European companies are particularly vulnerable, with German firms alone losing €205.9 billion to cyberattacks in 2023. The European Union as a whole faces similar risks, having lost €268 billion to cybercrime in 2018.
Rising geopolitical tensions, particularly between Russia, Ukraine, the US, and China, have further intensified the pressure on the EU to bolster its cybersecurity capabilities. Years of underinvestment in digital infrastructure have left Europe heavily reliant on foreign technologies, challenging its digital sovereignty. Startups like Uniqkey are now playing a pivotal role in reducing this dependence and securing Europe’s digital future.
Uniqkey’s strategic role
Uniqkey is committed to scaling its military-grade cybersecurity solution across Europe, with an ambitious goal of becoming a market leader in password management within three years. The company currently protects over 500 SMEs across the continent and has experienced 100% year-over-year growth over the past two years. With the new funding, Uniqkey aims to expand its reach to thousands of companies, strengthening their defenses against cyber threats.
Uniqkey’s CEO and Founder, Hakan Yagci, emphasizes the importance of the company’s approach: “Today, everybody’s got a mobile phone. Mobile phones have become an essential way we access our everyday life online. That is exactly why we’ve made the mobile phone central to Uniqkey’s security solution, and a big part of why we’re seeing great demand for our solution. In the same fashion as mobile apps have changed the way we send money instantly or access our bank accounts, Uniqkey will change the way we access systems internally within the company — easy, fast, and secure.”
Addressing the SME Security Gap
The European economy heavily relies on its 24.3 million SMEs, which make up 99.8% of all companies in the region. However, with over 12 million of these businesses lacking a cybersecurity plan, the entire economy is at risk. The impending NIS2 and DORA regulations will soon hold company directors and boards personally accountable for their cybersecurity measures, much like GDPR has transformed data privacy practices.
Uniqkey’s solution addresses a significant vulnerability in company defenses: poor password management. With 81% of data breaches resulting from weak or compromised passwords, Uniqkey’s encrypted password protection provides a robust defense mechanism. The company’s solution integrates seamlessly with mobile devices, requiring a mobile app for system logins, akin to local ID apps used for banking across Europe.
BackingMinds, known for investing in “blind spots”-overlooked areas with significant potential-sees Uniqkey as a standout opportunity in the cybersecurity sector. “With less than 1% of all founders in Cyber security being immigrants and with only 2% of all Cyber security startups coming from the Nordics, Uniqkey stands out as a hidden gem,” says Susanne Najafi, Founding Partner at BackingMinds. Her colleague, Sara Wimmercranz, adds, “After tracking 500+ cybersecurity startups across Europe, it was clear that Uniqkey stood out. We have been impressed by Hakan, the company’s management team, their technical expertise and are very happy to support them in their mission to protect Europe from the growing cyber threat.”
For Uniqkey, this investment is not just about scaling their business-it’s about safeguarding Europe’s digital future. As Simon Cederstråhle Hellstrøm-Melander, CMO of Uniqkey, puts it, “This new funding will help accelerate the way we scale our technology to thousands of companies across Europe in the coming years. Protecting SMEs is at the heart of what we do and hopefully we can play an important part in Europe’s rising cyber landscape.”
As Europe braces for a future where digital security is paramount, Uniqkey’s vision extends beyond password management. The company aims to become a digital security guard for employees, enhancing cybersecurity awareness and protecting businesses from the inside out.
