Startup Monday: Latest tech trends & news happening in the global startup ecosystem (Issue 158- April 12)

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. Q1 Global Startup Funding Posts Strongest Quarter Since Q2 2022 With A Third Going To Massive OpenAI Deal

Both the largest startup funding round ever and the largest acquisition of a venture-backed company occurred in Q1 2025, reflecting a warming startup environment but also one where capital and opportunities were concentrated among a handful of companies and sectors.

Overall, the quarter marked the strongest one for venture investment since Q2 2022.

The deal — which alone accounts for more than half of U.S. venture funding and a third of global funding last quarter — pushed global startup investment in Q1 to $113 billion, Crunchbase data shows. Funding to just the AI sector comprised more than half of last quarter’s global total.

Total startup funding in Q1 was up 17% quarter over quarter from $96 billion in Q4 2024 and up 54% year over year from $73 billion in Q1 2024.

2. As VC Funding Tightens, Founders Cut Their Own Salaries by 43 Percent

That self-sacrificing trend was the major finding in the fifth annual Founder Salary Report by startup and small-business . Its survey determined that the median salary that company accounting company Pilot in 2024 dropped a stunning 43 percent, from creators paid themselves . Average pay declined 33 percent from $135,000 to $90,000. As part of that downscaled compensation trend, the number of bosses who paid themselves less than $100,000 increased from 37 percent to 60 percent among nearly 2,000 entrepreneurs polled.$132,000 to $75,000

The reason for that recalibration appears to be a combination of founders’ increasing doubts about continued economic growth, and the tightening venture capital outlook. With funding rounds fewer in number, often with lower capital commitments, the average investment raised from these investors dropped from $11 million in 2023 to $7 million last year. Median levels declined from $4 million to $500,000 over the same period.

That, said Pilot co-founder and executive chair Waseem Daher, led a lot of business owners to tighten their belts-starting with their own. “The data is super clear-founders are rethinking compensation,” Daher said in comments accompanying the 2024 report. “We’re seeing founders make smarter calls to extend runway while figuring out reasonable personal compensation. It’s a stark contrast to previous years and signals an ecosystem getting serious about financial discipline-which is exactly what should be happening.”

Lowering their own salaries is leading founders to make other financial moves as well.

The survey found the portion of companies bootstrapping rose 77 percent over 2023 levels, making up 18.2 percent of the total last year. That higher level of self-reliance clearly contributed to the trend of decreasing founder salaries.

“Bootstrapped founders have always paid themselves less than VC-backed founders in our survey … this year, that gulf has grown,” the report said. “Of founders who pay themselves $100–200k, 90 percent are VC-backed and just 10 percent are bootstrapped. Last year, 57 percent of bootstrapped founders paid themselves $1–100k. This year, 67 percent did.”

That difference translated into average salaries of $110,000 at VC-backed companies versus $88,000 at bootstrapping startups. It also shaped the reasoning in how founders decided to pay themselves in 2024.

Nearly a third said they based their own salary calculation on “what the startup can afford,” while 22 percent used what peers at similar companies earned as a reference.

Neither that thinking nor the tighter funding perspective resulted in lower income across the board, however. The portion of founders who paid themselves nothing at all last year dropped to 5.4 percent of the total, down from 9 percent in 2023.

Where were founders making the most money located? Bay Area entrepreneurs pulled in the highest median salaries at $107,000, Pilot said, followed by $98,000 in the New York City Area, $93,000 in Boston, and $70,000 in Texas.

3. AI networking chip startup nEye Systems raises $58 million, led by Alphabet’s CapitalG fund

Emeryville, California-based nEye is developing a chip that taps optical technology to send information between AI chips in the form of light rather than electrical signals, a field that chip giants such as Nvidia and startups alike because it could are chasing for AI data centers. lower energy use

But energy efficiency is only part of nEye’s goal. The startup is focusing on a type of chip called an optical circuit switch, which allows the owner of a data center to change how its computers are connected on the fly.

NEye is now taking that concept and developing a chip for the rest of the market.

“Google is a pioneer. They led the way,” said Ming Wu, one of the firm’s co-founders and also a professor at University of California Berkeley. “Other AI companies, other hyperscaler AI data center operators, they will be looking to acquire some of this technology rather than developing it themselves.”

Neye has made prototype chips and expects to have samples of production chips next year but has not disclosed when it expects to ship in large volumes.

James Luo, the general partner at CapitalG who led the investment, said that even if the current AI data center boom does not last, the nEye chip’s advantages in energy efficiency and flexibility also apply to more traditional data centers.

“The beauty of it is as applicable to both models,” Lou said.

NEye has raised $72.5 million to date, and its other investors include M12, Microsoft’s venture fund, Micron Technology, and Nvidia, among others.

4. UK trading technology start-up TransFICC raises $25m Series B funding

UK-based trading technology start-up TransFICC has raised $25 million in a Series B funding round.

Founded by Judd Gaddie, Tom McKee and Steve Toland in 2016, TransFICC specialises in providing low-latency connectivity and workflow services for fixed income and derivatives markets.

Its core product, an e-trading API, connects banks and asset managers to multiple fixed income trading venues through a single interface.

The Series B funding arrives almost exactly a year after TransFICC bolstered its product suite with the debut of its TransACT solution, which automates the request for quote (RFQ) negotiation workflows used by banks trading on dealer-to-client venues.

Toland says the company’s new funds will be put towards “extending asset class coverage to government bonds, IRS and repo”.

5. Mira Murati’s reported $2 billion ‘seed’ funding suggests the AI boom is alive and well, even after a week of economic chaos

The report of the Murati’s mega-seed — Murati and Thinking Machines are not confirming it or commenting — seems certain to reignite the debate about the state of the AI bubble, especially amid the volatile economic climate created by Trump’s tariffs.

So if Thinking Machines does draw $2 billion from investors, it’ll be a strong signal that the AI boom still has serious legs. And, of course, AI bulls will argue that $2 billion is a drop in the bucket compared to the company’s sweeping potential.

But it’s also important to think about this in a context beyond the AI boom-seed rounds have been getting steadily bigger over time, and AI’s massive development costs have only kicked that trend into high-gear. In 2015, the largest seed deal was for femtech pharma startup Addyi, clocking in at a now paltry-looking $50 million, according to PitchBook. In 2025 so far, PitchBook names Lila Sciences as the largest closed seed deal-at $200 million.

Seed rounds getting radically bigger is both a sign of the times and a testament to the high-octane interest in Murati herself-but it’s also a trend far preceding our current economic whirlwind.

6. A fresh $100M rolls into Dig Ventures as it bids to woo early-stage European startups

The number of “operator VCs” — former founders turned VCs — has risen in Europe in recent years. This is common in the U.S., where the majority of VCs are former founders. The reverse is true in Europe, where most come from banking or finance. Recent examples in Europe include Wise founder Taavet Hinrikus, Glovo founder Oscar Pierre (Yellow Fund), and Pitch founder Christian Reber.

After exiting MuleSoft to Salesforce in 2018 for a cool $6.5 billion, founder set up initially as a family office and later transitioned it to VC. He did this with Dig Ventures , Dig partner, and the former U.K. sales lead at MuleSoft. Dig has now launched its second — and first institutional — fund closing out at $100 million, to invest in B2B SaaS, AI, and cloud infrastructure startups, at pre-seed and seed stages, mainly across Europe, but also considering startups located in Israel and the U.S. Melissa Klinger

The new fund is backed by LPs including The Hillman Company , Granite Capital, , and . The round also drew participation from Datadog founder Grove Street and a number of MuleSoft executives, among others. Olivier Pomel

With the idea that it is a fund built by former startup operators, Dig positions itself as a hands-on, operator-led fund capable of a range of things, such as go-to-market strategy and execution.

Mason and Klinger are joined by: Rytis Vitkauskas , founder of (acquired by Time Out) and former partner at Lightspeed; and , co-founder of and Scott Grimes (acquired by Warner Music).

“After MuleSoft, I saw a big opportunity to come back to Europe and build an operator-led fund,” Mason told TechCrunch. “And we managed to figure out a strategy where we could pick and meet founders quicker and earlier than most other funds.”

7. Cofertility raises a $7M Series A to make egg freezing free

In recent years, focus on career and delayed marriage age is driving some women to consider preserving their fertility through egg freezing.

Cofertility , a startup founded by former Uber executive Lauren Makler and health tech angel investor Halle Tecco, offers women no-cost egg freezing in exchange for donating half the retrieved eggs to those unable to conceive.

The idea for Cofertility stems from Makler’s fertility and health scare. A 2018 diagnosis of a rare abdominal disease led to multiple surgeries that threatened the loss of her ovaries.

In such situations, doctors sometimes suggest egg freezing for young women who want to have children, but that was not an option for Makler.

So, she started to learn as much as possible about egg donation.

She knew donors were compensated for their eggs, but she was shocked to learn how expensive the eggs could be. If she wanted an egg from a Jewish donor to match her background, it would cost more. The price increased further if she sought an egg from an educated woman.

“It felt sort of like surge pricing for egg donors, which felt icky to me,” she said, referring to Uber’s approach for charging for rides during peak-demand times.

Luckily, Makler ended up conceiving a child naturally, but that experience led her to want to build a business that matches young women who wish to preserve their fertility with people who need a donor egg.

8. A 25-year-old police drone founder just raised $75M led by Index

When it comes to the competition, Resnick tells TechCrunch that there’s plenty of room for growth in a market that is otherwise dominated by Chinese players. Beyond the Motorola partnership, he says Brinc offers its share of unique features, like the ability to break windows or deliver emergency medical devices.

9. Doctor, meet Mona: Clinomic scores €23 million to upgrade ICU care

The round was co-led by DeepTech & Climate Fonds (DTCF) and a private family office, bringing the total funding to €44.8 million.

Co-founders Dr Arne Peine and Dr Lukas Martin comment: “ As medical doctors working on the ICU, we experience it every day: Data density in high-acuity settings is increasing, leaving us less and less time for the patient.

“ We need revolutionary new approaches to deliver optimal patient care. Good future care will only be possible if we close existing digitisation gaps and consolidate all relevant data in one place. That’s why we’re building the ‘iPhone for the ICU ‘.”

Founded in 2019 by intensive care physicians from RWTH Aachen University Hospital, Clinomic developed Mona to streamline ICU workflows by consolidating, analysing, and visualising patient and operational data in real-time. This platform aims to improve patient outcomes, enhance workflow efficiency, and reduce costs for hospitals.

Clinomic plans to use the new capital to expand its international presence, enhance its AI and data capabilities, and deepen its impact on critical care delivery. The company employs over 70 professionals, including engineers, developers, data scientists, and doctors, dedicated to improving patient and provider care.

10.Investment firm Northern Gritstone secures €58 million for life sciences and DeepTech

€40 million of the new funding commitments come from Northern LGPS, the collective asset pool for Greater Manchester, Merseyside and West Yorkshire Pension Funds, with a further €17 million boost from new investors Fulcrum Asset Management and Aviva.

Northern Gritstone Chair, Lord Jim O’Neill , said: “ We are very grateful for this further support from investors in our journey to develop world winning businesses in the North of England originating from our University ecosystem and contributing to the future of higher value added activity and the North’s productivity “

Active since 2022, Northern Gritstone has already made 32 investments in early-stage businesses in the North of England, expanded its investment team and built NG Innovation Services, its venture building ‘toolkit’ offering, including: talent management; growth advice; business services; and the accelerator programme, NG Studios.

Northern Gritstone benefits from a long-term relationship with its Founding University Partners of The Universities of Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield.

The company supports areas of development and future job creation in DeepTech and life sciences, including semiconductor design and manufacturing; novel materials; secure computing; AI; HealthTech; and gene therapies.

Fulcrum Asset Management Executive Director David Merton said “ We are delighted to form a long-term partnership with Northern Gritstone. Our venture capital strategy is built around identifying and backing leading hubs of innovation. It became clear during our due diligence that Northern Gritstone’s design and focus on spin-outs from leading universities in the North of England strongly aligns with this.

“We see immense potential in their ambition to cultivate a dynamic community of science and technology businesses across the North — a vision that we are proud to support. “

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