Good day. The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation each year gives about $20 million in grants to scientists. Now it plans to give them venture capital, too.

The New York-based foundation, which funds high-risk, high-reward science, has created a seed-investment program for researchers who have received its grants since 2000 and have now launched companies.

Per the initiative, it will supply $50,000 in equity toward seed financings of startups founded by Damon Runyon alumni as long as they raise at least $500,000 in the equity financing, said Damon Runyon Chair Andy Rachleff, who co-founded venture firm Benchmark but has retired from venture capital.

Damon Runyon didn’t launch the program because of cuts in federal research funding. But as equity and grants grow harder to come by, the foundation is keen to prevent good ideas from withering. Investing from its endowment, it says it expects to deploy $1 million annually in equity investments to startups.

Alumni of Damon Runyon include Feng Zhang, of the Broad Institute, who has co-founded biotechs including Beam Therapeutics, a genetic-medicine company that went public in 2020 and now has a market capitalization of $1.8 billion.

Damon Runyon plans to pour investment gains back into its grant funding, creating what it hopes will be a flywheel that leads to more scientific breakthroughs and startups.

“Sadly it’s going to take a while for that flywheel to start to take effect,” Rachleff said. “But we know over the long term it will.”

And now on to the news...

Meta Platforms is in advanced talks to invest around $14 billion into Scale AI and hire the startup’s chief executive, Alexandr Wang, to help lead its AI efforts, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing people familiar with the matter. The deal would be one of the social-media giant’s largest-ever outside investments and show the dramatic steps it is taking to revamp its AI work, which has suffered setbacks including the delayed release of a major new model. As part of the proposed deal—which is still being finalized—other Scale AI employees would join Meta alongside Wang as part of a new effort to develop advanced AI called superintelligence.

Wall Street’s push to sell private-equity and private-debt funds to individual investors risks overheating financial markets and backfiring on firms launching the funds, according to Moody’s Ratings, WSJ reports. Private-fund managers have turned to individual, or retail, investors to offset a decline in money raised from traditional clients such as pensions and endowments. But in a report viewed by the Journal, Moody’s warned that selling funds to retail clients will introduce new risks to private-asset managers, including “reputation loss, heightened regulatory scrutiny and higher costs.”

Data-security company Cyera raised just over half a billion dollars in its latest funding round, as security chiefs grapple with the implications of information proliferation in the era of artificial intelligence, WSJ Pro reports. Cyera raised $540 million in a Series E funding round led by venture-capital firms Georgian, Greenoaks and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The new round, coming around seven months after a $300 million Series D in November, values the company at around $6 billion. Yotam Segev, Cyera’s chief executive and co-founder, said that such a large raise soon after a triple-digit million Series D wasn’t planned, but existing and new investors came to the company with offers.

Funds

Early-stage investor Plug and Play closed a $50 million fintech and AI fund.

Glean, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based provider of AI assistants and agents to employees, scored $150 million in Series F funding, bringing the company’s valuation to $7.2 billion. Wellington Management led the round, which included participation from Khosla Ventures, IVP, General Catalyst, Kleiner Perkins and others.

Horizon3.ai, a San Francisco-based autonomous security platform, landed $100 million in Series D funding led by New Enterprise Associates. Lila Tretikov, partner and head of AI strategy at NEA, will join the company’s board.

Laurel, a San Francisco-based startup using AI to help professional services firms keep time and optimize work, secured $100 million in Series C financing. IVP led the round, which included participation from GV.

Linear, a project-management tool for software development teams, scored $82 million in Series C funding led by Accel at a $1.25 billion valuation.

Pactum, a Mountain View, Calif.-based agentic AI platform for enterprise procurement, raised $54 million in Series C funding. Insight Partners led the round, with Managing Director Josh Zelman joining the board.

AIM Intelligent Machines, a Bellevue, Wash.-based AI platform for earthmoving machinery, has raised $50 million in funding from Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst and others.

Beewise, a San Ramon, Calif.-based AI-powered robotic beehive creator, closed a $50 million Series D round from investors including Insight Partners and lool Ventures.

Hypernative, a Tel Aviv-based on-chain security platform built specifically for Web3, fetched $40 million in Series B funding co-led by Ten Eleven and Ballistic Ventures.

Tebi, an Amsterdam-based developer of a financial operating system for hospitality businesses, picked up a €30 million investment led by CapitalG.

Sintra, a Lithuania-based startup building AI helpers for small businesses, was seeded with a $17 million investment led by Earlybird Venture Capital.

Daybreak, a San Francisco-based supply-chain-planning startup, secured $15 million in Series A funding from TPG Growth and Dell Technologies Capital. The company also named Waleed Ayoub as chief technology officer.

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• Think twice before you click ‘unsubscribe’

• Yale is rushing to sell billions in private equity investments (New York Times)
   
• A political battle is brewing over data centers (Wired)
   
• Wayve and Uber plan London robotaxi launch after U.K. speeds up autonomous vehicle rollout (TechCrunch)

This newsletter was compiled by Matthew Strozier and Zachary Cole.

WSJ Pro Venture Capital is a premium service of The Wall Street Journal. We cover venture capital and the global startup ecosystem. Share your tips, comments and questions: vcnews@wsj.com

The Team: Matthew Strozier, Yuliya Chernova, Brian Gormley, Angus Loten and Marc Vartabedian.

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