How US startups like Oakland-based Brimstone are racing to develop sources of raw materials that the US needs for tech, an industry China has long dominated
Startups and venture capital are joining the nationwide push to develop new sources of metals the U.S. desperately needs
US startups are increasingly adopting open-weight Chinese AI models, which are cheaper, more customizable, and sufficiently capable compared to frontier US ones
PitchBook: the Al frenzy has led to the fastest investment pace since 2021, with $30B+ invested into US startups so far this quarter and $50B more in the works
George Hammond / Financial Times :
Yann LeCun says DeepSeek “profited from open research and open source” like Meta's Llama and is proof that open source models are surpassing proprietary ones
“Marc Andreessen, a co-inventor of the pioneering Mosaic web browser, co-founder of the Netscape browser company and current general partner at the famed Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) venture capital fir...
PitchBook: investors put $74.6B into US startups in Q4 2024, up from an average of $42B in the prior nine quarters, with $32B invested across just five deals
After two years of relatively muted investment activity, it seems that VCs are starting to pour capital into startups at pandemic-era levels once again.
Global venture funding rose 3% YoY to nearly $314B in 2024; US startups got ~57%, or $178B, of which $90B was invested in Bay Area startups, due to the AI boom
Gené Teare / Crunchbase News :
PitchBook: US startups raised $209B in 2024, up ~33% from 2023; AI startups raised $97B, the largest portion on record; VCs raised $76.1B, the lowest since 2019
Sarah McBride / Bloomberg :
PitchBook: the number of VCs investing in US startups fell from a peak of 8,315 in 2021 to 6,175 in 2024; 9 firms raised 50%+ of the $71B raised by VCs in 2024
Risk-averse financial institutions concentrate money on biggest Silicon Valley VCs in trend that threatens smaller groups Bluesky: @radiobeartime.com Bluesky: Mark O'Neill / @radiobeartime.com : There...
PitchBook: US startups raised $56B in Q2 2024, up 57% YoY and the highest three-month haul in two years; AI startups raised $27.1B, nearly half of the total
here's where investors are piling in Krystal Hu / Reuters : AI deals lift US venture capital funding to highest level in two years, data shows Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat : First look at Q2 2024 vent...
How Ukraine deemed US startups' drones glitchy and pricey, and turned to cheaper Chinese drones; PitchBook: ~300 US drone startups have raised ~$2.5B since 2022
Drones from American startups have been deemed glitchy and expensive, prompting Ukraine to turn to alternatives from China