Welcome to Startups Weekly, a weekly roundup of all the news you can't miss in the startup world.
This week we're looking at small startup acquisitions, two new unicorns, wearable AI devices, and a VC backing Kamala Harris. Let's get started.
The most interesting startup stories of the week
With the IPO market all but dead, we can’t help but follow what’s happening with other types of exits: mergers and acquisitions. While that’s not always the outcome founders or investors were hoping for, we’re certainly hearing more startups are selling themselves.
Leonardo painting by Canva: Graphic design platform Canva has acquired Leonardo.ai, a generative AI-based image creation startup that has raised about $39 million in venture capital since its founding two years ago. It’s unclear how much Canva paid for Leonardo, but we do know that the design giant is busy building out its AI stack, and Leonardo is another piece of that puzzle. Read more
Airtable Acquires Dopt: There’s a war going on over AI talent these days, so collaboration company Airtable has decided to buy it wholesale. This week, it acquired Dopt, a startup specializing in AI-based onboarding. At its new headquarters, the Dopt team will be tasked with developing a range of AI capabilities, including potentially working on Airtable Cobuilder, Airtable’s recently launched AI-based app creation tool. Read more
Clutch catches the play seed: Clutch, a four-year-old marketplace connecting creators and businesses, had raised $2 million from investors including Precursor Ventures and at one point had more than 200 creators on its platform and a waiting list of 3,000. But eventually the road got tough. The startup restructured and laid off employees in an effort to become profitable. Still, the startup’s co-founders decided the best path forward for Clutch was to sell it to online social network Plaiced. Read more
Bending Spoons has brought WeTransfer to you.: Bending Spoons, the Italian-based tech company known for acquiring well-known but struggling startups like Evernote and Meetup, has made another acquisition: file transfer service WeTransfer. The 15-year-old WeTransfer had been considering an IPO in 2021, but scrapped the plan when the IPO window closed in early 2022. Read more
The most interesting fundraising activities of the week
It's a bike, a taxi, and a unicorn.: Indian bike taxi startup Rapido has achieved unicorn status with a $120 million funding led by WestBridge Capital. The funding shows that Rapido is taking on India’s long-standing mobility duopoly of Uber and Ola. Read more
Flo Health raised $200. million: A fertility-focused period tracker app has raised a $1 billion Series C led by General Atlantic. TechCrunch spoke with Flo co-founder and CEO Dmitry Gurski about the latest funding, women's health, and everything in between. Read more
Overcoming loneliness with AI: It might sound like something out of science fiction or an episode of “Black Mirror,” but Harvard dropout Avi Schiffmann is convinced that a constant companion is one of AI’s killer use cases. He created a device called Friend, a necklace that always listens to what you’re saying and responds with an SMS. Priced at $99 and due to ship in January 2025, Friend has raised $2.5 million in VC funding at a $50 million valuation from investors including Caffeinated Capital’s Raymond Tonsing, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, and Solana founder Anatoly Yakovenko. Read more
The bees: Another entrant into the wearable AI hardware that listens to its owner and interacts with him is Bee. Founded by former Twitter employees, the company has raised $7 million to develop an AI assistant that can write notes, display contextual notifications, and make lists. Read more
Nouda takes his share: Sequoia-backed Norwood has raised $60 million in a round that valued it lower than the $500 million it earned in 2021. The company, a marketplace for buying chemicals and raw materials founded by a former DuPont chemist, has raised more than $150 million in venture funding to date. Read more
The most interesting VC and fund news of the week
Kamala's VC: With the 2024 presidential election just months away, many VCs are taking sides publicly. This week, Reid Hoffman, Vinod Khosla, and Mark Cuban pledged to vote for Kamala Harris. They created a group called VCsForKamala, and are using the website to raise money for the current vice president. As of this writing, 645 venture capitalists have pledged their support for Harris. Read more
Cook leaves Tiger: Tiger Global has seen a number of high-profile departures in the past few years, including software investment director John Curtius and Scott Shleifer, who has moved to an advisory role. The most recent departure comes from Alex Cook, a partner who focused on Tiger’s India investments. Read more
Moxxie Raises Third Fund: Fundraising is a tough task for a VC startup, but Moxxie Ventures has defied the odds by easily surpassing its fundraising goal for its third fund. Led by Katie Jacobs Stanton, a seasoned investor with a strong network, the underrepresented, founder-focused firm has raised $95 million in new capital. Read more
finally
Applied Intuition, a self-driving car software startup, raised $250 million in a Series E a few months ago. Now, the company has sold $300 million in a secondary offering, adding Fidelity Management & Research Company to its existing list of investors, including Lux Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Mary Meeker’s growth fund Bond. Read more
