Summer In Review: Databricks Buys Mosaic, VC Firms Slow Down Their Investments, Sequoia's Shakeup & Other Top Stories from June & July
Also: New Relic Take-Private, Zipline Fundraising & Top AI Charts
Even though venture capitalists tell me that they’re on vacation and we’re on track for what looks to be another slow summer in startup land, that doesn’t mean this has been a boring summer in Silicon Valley. There have been two big AI acquisitions, a shakeup at Sequoia, and roiling drama with X née Twitter.
Here’s a roundup of some of the top Newcomer stories from the past two months along with a few of our favorite technology stories.
Newcomer’s Top Stories of the Summer
$650 Million for Casetext & $1.3 Billion for MosaicML + Massive New AI Funding Rounds Mean Great Week for Generative AI
Two major AI startup acquisitions and three large AI funding rounds — all announced this week — only amplified the excitement for generative artificial intelligence startups.
“This is not crypto. This is real,” Naveen Rao, the CEO of MosaicML, who just sold his startup to Databricks, told me this week.
While the large fundraising rounds for artificial intelligence companies have become par for the course, the acquisitions are something new.
I talked to some key investors at Casetext and MosaicML, along with the companies’ CEOs.
Here Are The Venture Capital Firms That Are Investing Much Less
It can be difficult to know which investors are really open for business.
As the startup slowdown drags into its second year, a number of investors have quietly gone dark, cutting down on their investments and taking long and lazy summer vacations.
I’ve got my hands on a list of ten investors that have slowed down the pace of their investing most dramatically.
Venture Capital Returns, Zipline's Mega Round & Updates from Silicon Valley
The other day I made a public records request with UTIMCO, the Texas public investment fund with over $65 billion in assets under management.
I'm not the first reporter to go ferreting through UTIMCO's disclosures for insights about performance of venture capital funds. But this data — from a report dated February 28, 2023 — gives an updated snapshot on the state of venture capital returns. And we tried to organize them nicely for you.
A Bleak VC Outlook, Andreessen Roots for a Fight, A Ripple Win & Liquid Death IPO Talks
The generative artificial intelligence mania has been a nice narrative respite from the overall downturn in startups and venture capital. Paired with a rebound in big public technology stocks and overall promising economic performance, the startup panic has been more muted than it would be in an alternative universe where struggling startups were getting all the attention.
But a fresh report from PitchBook, data from Crunchbase, and other recent writings show that the startup funding situation remains bleak.
14 Charts That Tell the Story of AI Right Now
So much is happening in artificial intelligence right now.
There’s the race between OpenAI and Anthropic.
Open source projects are hard at work to show they’re still relevant.
A gusher of money is flowing into the space.
And we’re already seeing projects ascend into hyped up glory, only to plummet back to Earth a month later.
We wanted to put some data behind everything that’s going on to make sense of what’s happening.
Newcomer Podcast: Musk & Zuck Go Head to Head, Vying to Rule Global Online Discussion (with Katie Notopoulos & Tom Dotan)
Former BuzzFeed reporter Katie Notopoulos spent the first few days posting on Meta’s Twitter copycat, Threads, as if she were the editor-in-chief of the new app.
“As EIC, it’s a lot of work! I’m personally curating the feed for users based on all of Meta’s information on them to bring each person a hand-curated feed that I’ve approved,” Notopoulos posted on Threads.
I invited her on the show, along with Dead Cat podcast defector Tom Dotan, who abandoned our old podcast in favor of a gig at the Wall Street Journal. Together, we made sense of the Threads-Twitter rivalry.
Newcomer Podcast: Psychedelics, Micro Nuclear Reactors & Venture Turbulence (with Rebecca Kaden)
Union Square Ventures has some of the best performing funds in the venture capital industry.
As I’ve reported, USV-backer UTIMCO disclosed in a recent filing that USV had delivered the public investment fund an internal rate of return of 59%. And that number will likely go up over time.
I invited USV managing partner Rebecca Kaden onto the Newcomer podcast to talk about how USV consistently invests in unconventional companies.
We also discussed USV’s $200 million climate fund strategy, her interest in the AI application layer, and how rising interest rates are effecting the venture capital asset class.
I Got Married
A personal update: I got married on June 17 in the Hudson Valley! We had a blast.
I’m back in the full swing of things. My new wife, Sara Joe Wolansky, and I will go to Japan on our honeymoon in October. (If you have a great sushi hookup let me know.)
Until then, I’m back hunting for stories for you. So please send me your tips and ideas. You can always reach me at eric@newcomer.co. Scoops are the ultimate wedding present.
For those of you who are interested, I thought I’d share a little bit about how I met Sara Joe and about the wedding.
