|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
New Research Tools Help VCs With Startup Diligence
|
|
By Yuliya Chernova, WSJ Pro
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Good day. Recently launched startup-research websites offer venture investors help with making sense of the fast-moving market.
There’s Altis, which sees itself as an AI-enabled company providing “diligence-as-a-service,” said Chris Freeberg, founder and chief executive of the New York startup, and a former managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
Altis writes reports on private companies based on public sources as well as exclusive information from interviews of experts done by its staff or running proprietary surveys. It employs human analysts and augments their work with AI, Freeberg said.
“In the past, if you wanted to go really deep, you had to pay BCG $500,000. We sell something that’s 80% as good for $2,000,” he said.
Altis emerged from stealth in February and this year expects to produce 200 in-depth reports and more than double that next year, Freeberg said. Its most popular report so far is one comparing two legal-tech startups, Harvey and Legora, he said. Altis is backed by Primary Venture Partners.
“We don’t replace all the diligence,” Freeberg said. Altis “should be the starting point for an efficient process.”
Another AI-assisted resource out there is Startuply.vc, launched last month by Decile Group, which runs a venture-fund accelerator and provides fund-operations tools.
Users can enter the name of a startup and Startuply will generate a free, AI-created report based on public data from LinkedIn, Glassdoor and other sites. The site seems to be gaining traction, according to Adeo Ressi, chief executive of Decile. “There was a huge spike of company research in the last 24 hours, so we are now at 2,570 profiles with many more research projects underway,” he said on Friday.
|
|
|
And now on to the news...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The U.S. government is trying to stimulate shipbuilding investments in places like Hanwha Philly Shipyard. RACHEL WISNIEWSKI FOR WSJ
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bet on U.S. maritime revival. Warehouse giant Prologis and the American Bureau of Shipping will anchor a $200 million venture-capital fund betting on a U.S. revival in maritime and logistics. Marina Hadjipateras, a founder and managing partner of New York-based venture-capital firm TMV, said the fund will tap in to growing government and private sector interest in supply-chain efficiency, port logistics and the broader maritime industry.
-
Both the Biden and Trump administrations have warned in recent years of China’s growing dominance of the global shipping industry and the urgency of a U.S. maritime revival.
-
The Trump administration and a bipartisan coalition in Congress are pushing tax incentives and new revenue streams to spark U.S. maritime investment.
|
|
Private Loans to Venture-Backed Startups Surge
|
|
|
Venture-debt firms are expanding beyond their software industry core into a wider range of sectors and businesses following concerns of disruptions tied to advances in artificial intelligence. While backing AI and software-as-a-service providers still anchors activity by lenders to startups and growth-stage companies, loans to healthcare technology, clean-energy and asset-heavy businesses are taking a bigger slice of the pie.
-
Deal value for financing provided to companies backed by venture capital rose almost 12% to $68.8 billion across more than 1,000 transactions last year in the U.S. from $61.5 billion in 2024, according to a joint report from venture-debt specialist Runway Growth Capital and industry researcher PitchBook.
|
|
Pope Leo Compares AI Threat to Biblical ‘Tower of Babel’
|
|
|
Pope Leo XIV warned that artificial intelligence “threatens to normalize an anti-human vision” and said that the concentration of immense digital power in the hands of a few private actors must be countered. The pontiff’s encyclical letter—a text that is poised to define Leo’s papacy—reads like a sharp warning to Silicon Valley executives and humanity more broadly about the future of civilization as new technologies rapidly advance. The risk, he said, is that humans will be reduced “to mere cogs in a system driven toward ever greater efficiency.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
“USA250: The Story of the World’s Greatest Economy” is a yearlong WSJ series examining America’s first 250 years. Read more about it from Editor in Chief Emma Tucker.
People in Silicon Valley talk about waves of innovation. Venture capitalist John Doerr calls them tsunamis—and they come about every 13 years.
Doerr’s timeline starts in 1980 with the personal computer and microchip revolution, followed by the browser and the internet, the iPhone and cloud computing.
Now comes what he believes is the biggest tsunami of them all: generative artificial intelligence. “Just three years after ChatGPT was launched, 50% of Americans say they use generative AI, and the value creation is off the charts,” Doerr says.
Doerr has tracked these innovation tsunamis as an investor at venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. He joined Kleiner in 1980 as a partner and has backed a long list of groundbreaking founders, including those at Alphabet’s Google and at Amazon.com. Doerr became Kleiner’s chairman in 2016, and he now invests through his family office. He also is on the board of Alphabet.
The Wall Street Journal asked Doerr, age 74, to discuss how he finds and funds innovation. Read edited exerpts here.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
People
Legal-writing platform BriefCatch appointed Yoel Lavie as chief operating officer. He previously served as general counsel at VIDAA and held leadership roles at Rezilion.
Anaveon, a biotechnology startup focusing on the treatment of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, appointed Eric Zanelli as chief scientific officer and Jill Jene as chief business officer.
|
|
|
|
|
Modal, an AI infrastructure startup, scored $355 million in Series C funding at a post-money valuation of $4.65 billion. General Catalyst and Redpoint Ventures led the round, which included participation from Menlo Ventures and others.
Stord, an Atlanta-based e-commerce fulfillment technology startup, raised nearly $250 million in Series F funding from investors including Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund and Lux Capital at a $3 billion valuation.
Farther, a wealth management platform headquartered in New York and San Francisco, secured $150 million in Series D funding led by General Atlantic.
Accro Bioscience, a developer of novel therapeutics for inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, closed a $50 million Series C round from investors including OrbiMed and TCG Crossover.
Brami, an Italian food brand, nabbed $33 million in Series B funding led by VMG Partners.
The Path, a San Francisco-based AI therapy app, was seeded with a $14.3 million investment led by Prime Movers Lab.
Texture, a startup building an operating system for the energy industry, grabbed a $12.5 million Series A investment. VoLo Earth Ventures and Equal Ventures led the funding, which included participation from Lerer Hippeau.
Stilta, a Stockholm-based startup bringing agentic AI to patent litigation, collected a $10.5 million investment led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Squid, a crypto platform, picked up a $6 million investment led by North Island Ventures.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
JOE MAGEE FOR WSJ
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
