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Startup Helps Kids Learn AI
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By Yuliya Chernova, WSJ Pro
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Good day. Kira Learning has raised a $15 million Series A round from NEA and AI Fund at a $75 million valuation, a rare edtech financing in the current market. Edtech venture-capital investments dropped by half globally to $10.6 billion in 2022, according to research firm HolonIQ.
The company sells a computer-science curriculum with a focus on AI, as well as browser-based educational tools to schools. Kira’s chairman is AI Fund’s Andrew Ng, a serial entrepreneur, who previously led Google’s AI research team.
Kira Learning founder and CEO Andrea Pasinetti said the company attracted funding by proving it can sign up customers quickly, as well as by tapping into the growing adoption of AI technology.
“Two years ago, the idea of teaching AI to high-school students seemed a little bit far-fetched,” he said. Since then, the technology’s fast development made doing so a bigger educational imperative and helped the company raise capital, he said.
Kira, which began selling its product in September and has 11 full-time staffers, has contracts that would generate annual revenue of $1 million and expects to get to $3 million in annual recurring revenue by year-end, serving about 30,000 students, he said.
Kira said it won a competitive process to offer its curriculum and tools to public high schools and middle schools in Tennessee to satisfy the state’s requirement that schools teach computer science.
Schools in many states must teach computer science under new mandates, while they face teacher shortages and pandemic-related learning gaps among students, so they need all the help they can get, Pasinetti said.
“Computer science as a discipline is fundamentally different from the rest of K-12 and its growth will be different as a result,” Pasinetti said.
And now on to the news...
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Meta’s sale of Giphy comes as the social-media company enters its ‘year of efficiency.’
PHOTO: STR/ZUMA PRESS
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Shutterstock on Tuesday said it agreed to buy Giphy from Facebook parent Meta Platforms for $53 million in net cash, ending a yearslong legal battle that forced the sale of the social-media animated-images company, The Wall Street Journal reports.
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Shutterstock, a New York provider of licensed content, said the deal adds a mobile content platform with 1.7 billion daily users and global partners that include Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Microsoft, TikTok, Samsung, Twitter, Slack and Discord.
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Meta last year said it would sell Giphy after the U.K.’s top competition authority affirmed an earlier order to undo its 2020 acquisition of the company for $315 million.
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$26.50
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The average cost to process $100 of returned merchandise, according to Narvar, a returns-management company. Clamping down on returns has become a priority for retailers.
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SVB’s New Owner Sues HSBC for Poaching Key Bankers
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The plan was allegedly dubbed “Project Colony.” At around 9 p.m. on Easter Sunday, dozens of top bankers from the recently failed Silicon Valley Bank pressed send on an email to their new employer, First Citizens BancShares, announcing their resignation, according to a new lawsuit, WSJ reports.
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Without delay, the bankers were all hired by HSBC Holdings, the lawsuit says.
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First Citizens says the mass resignation was part of a broad plan by HSBC and a former top SVB banker to steal a hugely profitable business that First Citizens had acquired through its late-March purchase of SVB. Much of the business came from SVB’s life-sciences and technology-banking team, the lawsuit alleges.
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Elon Musk Wants to Challenge Google and Microsoft in AI
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Elon Musk said he sees the need for an artificial-intelligence business to rival Google and Microsoft that could involve different parts of his corporate empire, including Twitter, which he predicted could halt its losses as soon as next month.
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Musk made the comments during The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit in London and teased a Twitter event involving presumptive presidential candidate Ron DeSantis. The Florida governor is expected to announce his 2024 presidential bid during a Wednesday evening Twitter chat with Musk, people familiar with the move said.
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U.S. Growth Touches Fastest Monthly Rate in More Than a Year
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U.S. economic activity rose in May to the highest pace in 13 months, showing persistent resilience to rising interest rates and high inflation ahead of a debt-ceiling deadline that threatens to bring the expansion to a halt, WSJ reports.
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Economic output in the U.S. posted the sharpest rise this month since April 2022, according to data firm S&P Global’s surveys of purchasing managers released Tuesday. The gain was led by service-providing businesses, which reported stronger demand for travel, dining out, and other leisure activities. The improvement was offset by cooling activity among U.S. manufacturers.
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Funds
QED Investors has closed two new funds with combined capital commitments of $925 million. The new capital commitments comprise Fund VIII, an oversubscribed $650 million early-stage fund, and Growth II, a $275 million early growth-stage fund.
Deals
The biggest U.S. bank is making one of the biggest bets ever to remove carbon from the atmosphere as a way to fight climate change, WSJ reports. JPMorgan Chase has agreed to invest more than $200 million to purchase credits from several companies in the nascent industry, company officials said. The money and JPMorgan’s endorsement are a boost to businesses that have removed only small amounts of carbon so far.
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Logik.io, an e-commerce related startup, raised $16 million in Series A funding led by Emergence Capital.
Steno, a legal support services startup, raised a $15 million in Series B round led by Left Lane Capital, including a strategic investment from Clio Ventures.
Waterplan, a startup that helps companies measure, respond and report water risk, raised a $11 million Series A led by Base10 Partners. General Partner Adeyemi Ajao is joining the Waterplan board. Previous investors also participated, including Transition Global and Y Combinator.
Alternative investment platform Unlimited, whose chief executive is Bob Elliott, a former member of the investment committee at Bridgewater Associates, has raised $8 million in Series A financing led by FirstMark and Citi Ventures.
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A survey cited in the advisory found that 95% of teens use a social-media platform.
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES/MASKOT
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