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Boldstart Ventures Says New Fund Keeps It Nimble in AI Race
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By Marc Vartabedian, WSJ Pro
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Good day. Venture capital deals for hot artificial intelligence startups are happening at lightning speed. That, in part, is why Ed Sim, founder and general partner of Boldstart Ventures, wanted to keep his newest fund small and nimble.
Miami-based Boldstart has closed a $250 million fund to double down on the firm’s strategy of backing entrepreneurs at the earliest stages of company development—most of the time little more than a back-of-the-envelope business plan. It isn’t uncommon for Sim to meet a founder and shake hands on financing the same day, he said.
“With our fund size, we only have to be there as partners for a small select group, maybe 10 to 12 new founding teams per year between three partners,” Sim said. “For people who want to work with us and we want to work with them, we can move very fast.”
Founded in 2010, Boldstart will target sectors including AI infrastructure and application layer startups, cyber and crypto. Boldstart reached out mostly to institutional investors in raising the fund, Sim said.
The vehicle, called Fund VII, is Boldstart’s 10th fund. Initial checks will be from $500,000 to $15 million, and Boldstart can write follow-on checks via its existing $175 million Opportunities III fund. Sim said Boldstart has roughly $1.1 billion in assets under management. The firm is also led by General Partner Eliot Durbin and Partner Ellen Chisa.
Recent Boldstart exits include cybersecurity startup Protect AI, which in April said it would be acquired by security giant Palo Alto Networks. This month, AI editing company Grammarly said it would acquire email efficiency startup Superhuman—Boldstart made early investments in both companies, Sim said.
Read the full article.
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And now on to the news...
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PHOTO: ZUMA PRESS
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FTX’s Chinese customers in limbo. Hundreds of millions of dollars of FTX customer claims are at risk of being held up or potentially not being paid because the account holders live in China, Afghanistan or 47 other areas that restrict cryptocurrency activity, WSJ Pro reports. A creditor trust set up by the defunct crypto exchange said last week that it shouldn’t make distributions to customers in those “potentially restricted” markets until it determines that it can do so without breaking foreign laws.
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FTX last week asked the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., to approve procedures for payouts in the regions that would include hiring local lawyers to advise whether the distributions could be made legally to residents or financial institutions there.
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Meta Hires Top Apple AI Expert, Continuing Recruitment Push
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Mark Zuckerberg added another big name to Meta Platforms’ new “Superintelligence” AI division, hiring a top Apple AI researcher as part of a weekslong recruitment push, according to a person familiar with the hire, The Wall Street Journal reports. Ruoming Pang is the first big name from Apple to jump over to Meta’s Superintelligence Lab, a blow to the iPhone maker, which is working to improve its own AI products. Pang, who led Apple’s foundation model team, is set to receive a pay package from Meta in the tens of millions of dollars, said the person.
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How Unilever Used AI to Make Soap Go Viral
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Unilever is turbocharging its influencer marketing efforts in an attempt to make products like Dove soap go viral on social media—and it’s using artificial intelligence to do it, WSJ reports. Currently the company works with tens of thousands of influencers and is aiming to grow that by 10 to 20 times over the next year, said Chief Enterprise and Technology Officer Steve McCrystal. To equip its army of influencers, Unilever needs to create exponentially more “assets,” or visual components. That’s where AI comes in.
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President Trump posted letters on new tariffs to the leaders of Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and others by Monday afternoon. PHOTO: MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES
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Trump pushes global trade war back to the top of his agenda. President Trump reignited his global trade war Monday, renewing his threat to hit partners with punishing tariffs even as he announced a three-week extension to negotiate deals.
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Funds
Phosphor Capital has launched with a focus on investing in early-stage companies that have participated in Y Combinator. To date, the San Francisco-based firm has raised and invested $34 million.
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Qedma, a Tel Aviv-based startup tackling quantum computing errors, picked up $26 million in Series A funding led by Glilot Capital Partners.
Bumo, a Los Angeles-based on-demand child care marketplace, was seeded with a $10 million investment led by Offline Ventures and True Ventures.
Chloris Geospatial, a climate-technology company involved in satellite-based measurement of forest carbon and ecosystem change, said it has raised $8.5 million in Series A financing. Future Energy Ventures led the round. Chloris said it will use the funding for tasks such as accelerating product development and expanding its commercial and technical teams.
North.Cloud, a New York-based cloud optimization platform, closed a $5 million Series A round led by Companyon Ventures.
Zango AI, a London-based financial compliance automation startup, emerged from stealth with a $4.8 million investment led by Nexus Venture Partners.
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A Tesla Cybertruck on display during an April consumer-products exposition in Hainan, China. PHOTO: IMAGO/ZUMA PRESS
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