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Kindred Adapts to Evolving Market With $355 Million in Fresh Funds
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By Yuliya Chernova, WSJ Pro
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Good day. San Francisco venture firm Kindred Ventures raised $355 million in new funds, buoyed by strong performance in the artificial-intelligence sector.
Led by managing partners Steve Jang and Kanyi Maqubela, Kindred invests in AI models, infrastructure, apps, robotics, biology, energy and other sectors.
The question facing Kindred’s partners, and many others in early-stage venture capital, is how to stay on top of the game in a market that is very different from a few years ago.
“The ceiling on valuations and revenue growth has been broken,” Jang said.
Kindred was early into the AI market, helping its 2022-vintage $200 million Fund III reach $958 million in gross fair market value as of March 31, per the firm’s financials. The fund is still investing from reserves.
Its total value to paid-in capital, a common metric for measuring a venture fund’s performance net of fees, stood at 5.1, the firm said. That compares with 1.72 for the 2022 venture funds in the 90th percentile by performance, according to data aggregated by Carta, a private-markets software and services provider.
Investments that boosted returns in that fund include generative-media company Fal, insurance startup Corgi, and PlayAI, a voice AI company bought by Meta last year. Kindred’s early investment in AI search company Perplexity came out of its first growth fund.
“The 2022 vintage was about catching the first wave of AI,” Maqubela said. “We hope to catch the second set, but there’s more acceleration now.”
Read the full article.
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And now on to the news...
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PointFive's founders are, from left, Gal Ben David, Alon Arvatz and Amir Hozez. EYAL MARILUS
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AI cost control. Early-stage investor Accel led a $60 million growth investment in PointFive, betting that the startup can help companies control the rising and often wasteful spending tied to the artificial intelligence boom. The deal valued the two-year-old software company at $500 million. Other participants included Perpetual Investors, the investment office of Germany’s Wilsdorf family of Rolex fame. Existing backers Index Ventures and Salesforce’s venture-capital arm also joined the transaction.
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The cost of running AI applications is becoming one of the largest expenses companies face, said Philippe Botteri, the Accel partner who led the deal.
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$3.4 Trillion
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A projection for SpaceX’s revenue in 2040, according to a Morgan Stanley analysis shared with top investors Thursday.
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How Comms Execs Stormed the C-Suite
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Communications professionals, previously relegated to the periphery, are now front and center in the C-suite, partly emboldened by CEOs’ fears that even the smallest misstep can swiftly balloon into a corporate disaster. The bleeding together of investor memos, advertising copy, press releases, company social-media accounts and most recently large language model results has sent business leaders scrambling to better control the corporate narrative at the very top.
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Nearly half of chief communications officers surveyed in 2025 said they report directly to their company’s CEO, up from 40% in 2023 and 37% in 2015, according to research from executive recruiter and consulting firm Korn Ferry.
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WSJ Sports: The Next Sports Economy
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WSJ Sports: The Next Sports Economy will bring together investors, team owners, executives and advisers at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall in New York July 15-16 for conversations on the forces transforming the business of sports. Join leaders from across finance, media, ownership and operations as they sit down with WSJ reporters to explore the future of investment, governance and value creation across the global sports landscape.
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People
Forbion, a global venture-capital firm that invests in biotechnology, promoted Jon Edwards and Regina Salvat to general partner and partner, respectively, and appointed John McDonald as operating partner. Edwards and Salvat each joined Forbion in 2025. McDonald joins Forbion from Novo Nordisk, where he served as global head of business development and M&A.
Congruent Ventures, a San Francisco-based early-stage climate-focused venture firm, said it promoted Tanuj Dutta to general partner. He joined the firm in 2022.
Motive Partners has added Ulrich Körner as an industry partner at the firm to focus on financial technology and tech-enabled business services. Körner most recently served as group chief executive officer at Credit Suisse, where he led the bank through a restructuring period that led to its ultimate combination with fellow bank UBS.
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Helion Energy, a fusion-energy company, said it raised a $465 million Series G round to accelerate commercial deployment of fusion, scale manufacturing capacity and expand its ability to deliver clean electricity to customers. Thrive Capital led the round. This financing brings Helion’s total funding to $1.5 billion and its valuation to $15.5 billion, the company said.
PhysicsX, a U.K.-based physics AI company for industrials, raised a $300 million Series C round at a valuation of approximately $2.4 billion. The round was led by Temasek. The company said the new funding will support global expansion, platform advancement and frontier research, including the development of pre-trained physics AI models.
Airspeed, an agent-native model for go-to-market execution, said it raised a $20 million Series A round. DN Capital led the financing. The capital will be used to scale Airspeed’s technology, hiring and expanding its U.S. presence, the company said.
Offroad, a startup building AI agents to help enterprises recognize and mitigate identity security risks, closed a $7 million seed round led by Ibex Investors and Skywell Capital Partners.
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Juan Hernandez says his SpaceX shares have ‘put me in a comfortable position for life.’ MICHELLE BRUZZESE FOR WSJ
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