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Cathay Innovation Reloads With a $1 Billion AI-Focused Venture Fund
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By Marc Vartabedian, WSJ Pro
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Good day. Venture-capital firm Cathay Innovation has closed a $1 billion fund to back artificial-intelligence startups, another instance of the competitive frenzy under way in red-hot AI deals.
The fund is the largest raised by the Paris-based firm since its founding in 2015. The new capital will go into global AI startups aiming to upend a handful of sectors: digital health, financial technology, consumer applications and energy and mobility.
Denis Barrier, co-founder and chief executive of Cathay Innovation, said the firm needed a larger fund to break into competitive AI deals and provide companies with the necessary backing to build capital-intensive products quickly. “With AI, you better have deep pockets,” he said.
Cathay Innovation said it is focused on investing in application-layer AI companies rather than those building large language models, such as OpenAI or Anthropic.
Read the full article here.
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And now on to the news...
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A Starship launch in Texas earlier this year. PHOTO: SCOTT SCHILKE/SIPAUSA/AP
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SpaceX’s bet on Starship. SpaceX is shifting personnel and resources to its powerful new rocket, hoping to have the vehicle ready for a Mars mission next year, The Wall Street Journal reports. Elon Musk’s space company is making an enormous bet on Starship, which stands roughly 400 feet tall at liftoff and remains in an experimental phase. SpaceX is aiming to address the technical challenges ahead with Starship while continuing to fly the operational spacecraft and rockets that made the company a powerhouse.
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This year, SpaceX struggled with back-to-back Starship flight tests that ended in explosions. SpaceX is planning another test flight of the vehicle on Tuesday.
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$437 Billion
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The amount U.S. exchange-traded funds have collected in new assets so far this year.
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Shein Breaking EU Consumer Protection Rules, Watchdog Says
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European Union regulators said China-founded e-commerce platform Shein’s sales tactics fall foul of EU law and that the company could face fines if it doesn’t adjust its behavior, WSJ reports. The EU’s executive arm said on Monday that consumer protection regulators found that a number of Shein’s practices breach rules against false discounts, deceptive product labels, misleading information and website designs that pressure customers to complete purchases. A Shein spokesperson said the company is working with national authorities and the commission to show its commitment to complying with EU laws.
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Rent-Setting Algorithms Find Legal Lifeline
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Data company RealPage is confronted with state and local efforts to ban its algorithmic pricing system for landlords in the rental-apartment market.Now, a provision buried in House Republicans’ mega tax bill is throwing the company a lifeline, WSJ reports.The bill that the House passed last week would prevent state and local governments from regulating artificial intelligence and automated decision systems for 10 years. That decadelong moratorium faces an uphill battle in the Senate. And the bill would do little to halt class-action lawsuits that allege RealPage violated antitrust and consumer-protection laws. But if the House tax bill becomes law, it would provide RealPage with significant legal relief. The provision would effectively
muzzle some of the dozens of local and statewide efforts to outlaw algorithmic pricing systems, including RealPage.
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Funds
Munich Re Ventures raised $125 million for its latest fund, bringing the firm’s assets under management to $1.2 billion.
People
Data security startup Concentric AI named Lane Sullivan as the company’s new chief information security and strategy officer. He was most recently senior vice president, chief information security officer at Magellan Health.
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Monarch, a San Francisco-based personal finance app, scored $75 million in Series B funding co-led by Forerunner Ventures and FPV Ventures.
CX2, an El Segundo, Calif.-based startup building machine learning-powered electronic warfare technology, secured $31 million in Series A financing led by Point72 Ventures.
Filed, a New York- and Stockholm-based AI tax preparation platform, launched with $17.2 million in pre-seed and seed funding from investors including Northzone and Day One Ventures.
Pixee, a Baltimore-based startup that automates security fixes in software development using AI, was seeded with a $15 million investment led by Decibel and Wing VC.
Rhizome, a Washington D.C.-based climate resilience planning platform for the power grid, closed a $6.5 million seed round led by Base10 Partners.
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PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: JOHNNY SIMON/WSJ, ISTOCK
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Khosla Ventures among VCs experimenting with AI-infused roll-ups of mature companies (TechCrunch)
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VC dollars to female founders stabilizes (Axios)
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