Good day. Everyone in venture seems to agree that, for startups at the earliest stage, SAFEs are efficient and cost-effective for fundraising.

This has made them ubiquitous. Private-markets software company Carta says that SAFEs, which are simple agreements for future equity, were used in 93% of pre-seed deals on its platform as of the second quarter. SAFEs ease the fundraising process for a nascent company by, among other things, allowing it to collect cash from investors but settle the company’s specific valuation later.

Most pre-seed rounds have a handful of SAFEs, but a slice of very large pre-seed financings often involve 10 or more. Are founders using too many SAFEs?

Not typically, VCs say—except when there are multiple SAFEs with different valuation caps. 

This caveat doesn’t apply to most pre-seed startups. In response to a request from WSJ Pro, Carta looked at companies on its platform that raised their first pre-seed post-money SAFE in 2025.

Some 61% of these companies either didn’t raise any other post-money SAFEs or raised again only at the same valuation cap.

The remainder fell into three buckets: They raised again at a higher valuation cap, they raised again at a lower valuation cap, or they raised again at both higher and lower valuation caps.

For these startups, fundraising might get tricky when they go to raise their first priced round. Most SAFEs are structured today as post-money, which has advantages but also makes founder dilution higher.

Investors might be wary of priced rounds when the startup has lots of SAFEs at different valuation caps, possibly with founder dilution surpassing 20% or 30%. “That can be a red flag for investors who might not want to come onto a cap table that's already so complicated and diluted,” said Hamza Shad, an insights manager at Carta.

Roy Moran, a partner at the law firm Cooley, said he has noticed startups stacking SAFEs to buy more time.

“And that's when I start paying a little bit closer attention to what the eventual cap table might look like,” he said. “There's no number of SAFEs that on their own alarm me, but there is a numerosity issue that does exist if you have, in some cases, dozens of SAFEs out there before there's an equity financing.”

Moran’s advice to founders? “Pay careful attention to the amount of the company you're parting with when you work with SAFEs.”

And now on to the news ...

A $30 trillion TAM. SpaceX’s record-breaking IPO tested the limits of an obscure financial metric. Anthropic’s could push TAM, or total addressable markets, even further. The maker of Claude is likely to tell investors its potential revenue opportunities are above $30 trillion, topping SpaceX’s $28.5 trillion estimate, according to people familiar with the matter.

A key executive overseeing OpenAI’s data-center build-out, Chris Malone, left the company last week, according to people familiar with the matter, joining a wave of leadership departures ahead of a planned public offering. Malone joined OpenAI as head of data centers in March 2025, shortly after the company announced Stargate, an ambitious effort with Oracle and SoftBank to build data centers to meet its rapidly growing computing needs.

Vanguard Group has struck a roughly $4 billion deal to acquire fintech platform Altruist to further its push into financial advice, people familiar with the matter said. Altruist, founded in 2018, is an upstart competitor to Charles Schwab and Fidelity Investments in providing custodial and administrative work to independent financial advisers. It operates a self-clearing brokerage along with software for opening accounts, portfolio management, billing and reporting that serves independent wealth-management firms.

Join us at 11 a.m. ET Aug. 27 for a timely discussion featuring WSJ Pro Private Equity Bureau Chief Laura Kreutzer and Private Equity News Senior Editor Sebastian McCarthy. They’ll unpack the financial and market developments shaping corporate decision-making, from policy shifts and evolving economic conditions to emerging trends across private equity, credit and retail, and share what business leaders should be watching as we head into the next quarter.

Register here. 

Funds

MassMutual Ventures launched its second climate technology fund with $150 million in commitments to back startups in the field and in AI to improve real assets, including energy infrastructure, real estate and natural resources.

People

Advanced battery materials startup ACT-ion Battery Technologies appointed Mark McGough as chief executive officer. He succeeds Jin Lim, who will transition to chief technology officer.

Supply chain orchestration startup ketteQ appointed Jennie Vandegrift as chief customer officer. She most recently held the same position at Nuqleous.

Exits

Chipmaker Navitas Semiconductor agreed to acquire Claros, a startup developing vertical power delivery and integrated voltage regulator technology for AI data centers, in a deal valued at up to around $232.8 million.

Gatik, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based autonomous trucking startup, scored a $200 million Series D round led by Qatar Investment Authority and Koch Disruptive Technologies.

Emerald AI, a Washington, D.C.-based startup helping turn data centers into flexible assets for the power grid, secured $150 million in Series A funding co-led by Energize Capital and DCVC. The round values the company at $1.05 billion.

Alice, an AI security provider headquartered in New York and Tel Aviv, picked up a $140 million investment. The Apax Digital Funds led the financing, which included participation from Resolute Ventures, CRV, Highland Europe, Norwest and others.

Stability AI, a Los Angeles-based startup delivering generative AI tools for professional creatives across music, gaming and entertainment, snagged $76 million in Series B funding from investors including AMD Ventures, Pacific Alliance Ventures and Greycroft. 

Liner, an AI research platform, raised $36.1 million in Series C funding. LB Investment led the round, which included contributions from InterVest, Atinum Investment, STIC Ventures and Helios Private Equity.

Keenable, a Los Altos, Calif.-based startup developing web search infrastructure for AI, launched from stealth with $26 million in seed funding led by Accel.

Runable, a Dover, Del.-based AI agent platform helping small businesses, nabbed $21 million in Series A funding co-led by Susquehanna Venture Capital and Nexus Venture Partners.

Corvus Robotics, a Mountain View, Calif.-based startup building physical AI systems for warehouses and manufacturing facilities, nabbed a $20 million investment led by Catalyst Investors. The company also named Mohammed Kabir as chief executive officer. Sidney Kullar of Catalyst Investors will join the company’s board. 

Mara, a San Francisco-based developer of an automated counter-swarm platform targeting small first-person view drones, fetched $7 million in pre-seed funding led by Khosla Ventures.

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This newsletter was compiled by Matthew Strozier, Yuliya Chernova and Zachary Cole.

Share your tips, comments and questions: vcnews@wsj.com

The team: Matthew Strozier, Yuliya Chernova, Brian Gormley and Sarah Klearman.

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