Good day. For this week’s question, we’d like to hear from you on openings in manufacturing. Anduril, for example, this week said it would use the $1.5 billion proceeds of its Series F financing to “hyperscale defense manufacturing.” The fundraising, which valued the company at $14 billion, will go to build a new 5 million square-foot production facility, the company said.

Is manufacturing largely the purview of mega companies like Anduril? How has the policy landscape affected the possibilities for startups in manufacturing now? Email responses to vcnews@wsj.com.

Last week we asked about investing overseas. Here are responses, edited for length and clarity:

• Jenny Fielding, co-founder and managing partner of New York-based Everywhere Ventures: About 30% of our investing activity is outside the U.S. When we see a business model and new product category that is working within the U.S., we look for it elsewhere. Now, with fewer “tourist” investors competing for these international deals, we have a blue ocean of well-priced and highly differentiated opportunities coming our way.
   
• Paul Hsu, founder and chief executive of Chicago-based crypto-focused venture firm Decasonic: About half of our investment dollars are going abroad this year, about the same as last year. If you had asked me in January, we were expecting to invest more overseas. What’s changed is the evolving U.S. regulatory landscape.
  
  Some of the deal flow we are seeing now abroad includes: consumer applications building on the Telegram messaging app, with the center of excellence in Dubai and the Middle East; decentralized finance–we are seeing opportunities in Hong Kong, Singapore and Switzerland, driven by regulatory clarity; and AI–we have a portfolio company in Paris and are connecting with that geography for other deal leads, given the public and private sector collaborations.
   
• John Cassidy, general partner, London-based seed venture firm Kindred Capital: Major U.S. funds are swooping in to hot deals we are looking at. I think there is a realization that the U.K. is truly a superpower when it comes to AI. Then, on the later end of the spectrum, from Series B onwards, we see a lot of U.S.-headquartered funds being aggressive in pursuing the best opportunities in Europe. This is partly due to a lack of scale-up capital originating from the continent itself.

And now on to the news...

AI Regulation. California has become ground zero in the fight over artificial-intelligence regulation, The Wall Street Journal reports.

• AI startups and tech giants are rallying to kill a bill ascending through the state legislature that they say would impose impossibly vague constraints in the name of safety. Though some in the industry have called for government regulation, they say it should be done at the federal level with more specificity.
   
• The bill is widely viewed as crucial for how the technology will be regulated across the U.S., as California is home to many AI companies and often has an outsize effect on laws in other states. Proposals to regulate AI nationally have made little progress in Washington.

Enterprise AI company Glean is in advanced discussions for a deal that would double its valuation from six months ago to $4.5 billion, a sign of how fast-growing AI startups are still attracting intense investor interest, WSJ reports.

• Glean is set to raise $250 million in the financing, people familiar with the matter said. The venture firm DST Global, founded by Israeli investor Yuri Milner, is in talks to lead the round, some of the people said. The investment details aren’t finalized and could change.

U.K. antitrust officials are probing whether Amazon.com’s multibillion-dollar investment in artificial-intelligence company Anthropic poses a threat to competition, the latest foray by European regulators into ties between U.S. tech giants and AI startups, WSJ reports.

• Amazon poured about $4 billion into Anthropic, gaining a minority ownership position in the startup as it jockeys for position in the AI arms race to compete with the likes of Alphabet’s Google, Microsoft and ChatGPT maker OpenAI. Google last year agreed to invest up to $2 billion in Anthropic.

Funds

Boston-based Flint Capital raised a total of $160 million for its third early-stage fund and a later-stage vehicle.

People

Portage, a fintech-focused venture and growth equity investor, hired AJ Okereke as a principal. He was previously a vice president at Insight Partners.

VAST Data named Amy Shapero as the AI data platform’s first chief financial officer.  She was previously CFO at Shopify.

FLYR, a San Francisco-based travel technology provider, picked up a $295 million investment. WestCap led the funding, with Managing Partner Laurence A. Tosi joining the company’s board.

Stori, a Mexico City-based provider of consumer finance products and services, raised $105 million in equity from investors including Notable Capital, along with $107 million in debt funding.

Cents, a New York-based business management platform for the garment-care industry, closed a $40 million Series B round led by Camber Creek.

Neon, a San Francisco-based open-source database startup, landed a $25.6 million strategic investment led by M12.

Anjuna, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based enterprise cybersecurity platform, secured $25 million in Series B2 financing led by M Ventures, SineWave Ventures and Alpha Intelligence Capital’s U.S.-based fund. M Ventures’ Ilja Aizenberg and SineWave’s Patricia Muoio will join the board.

H3X, a Louisville, Colo.-based manufacturer of electric motors for the aerospace, defense and marine sectors, closed a $20 million Series A round led by Infinite Capital.

NeuroTherapia, a company developing oral, small-molecule drugs to address neuro-inflammatory conditions of the central nervous system, collected $12.3 million in the first close of its Series B round from investors including Brain Trust Accelerator Fund II. 

Chariot, a New York-based payments startup dedicated to donor-advised fund giving, raised an $11 million funding round led by Maveron.

Lenovo’s ThinkPad laptop hasn’t changed much over the years. Corporate technology leaders say that’s why they love it.

Several companies have said the accountant shortage has contributed to deficiencies in their financial reporting. It could ding CFOs as well.

California and Massachusetts could soon enact laws that would likely be the strongest curbs in the nation on private equity’s activities in healthcare.

JD Vance’s track record during his short-lived career as a venture capitalist was mixed, reflecting the realities of early-stage startup investing.

🎧 Listen to Vinod Khosla, whose Khosla Ventures was an early investor in OpenAI, discuss the potential good in AI, the future of capitalism and the political climate in the U.S.

• FTX Trading, Alameda Research ordered to pay $12.7 billion, CFTC says
   
• Big pharma cuts R&D, sending shudders through industry
   
• U.S. lawmakers move to restrict trade provision favored by China’s e-commerce giants
   
• Delta to CrowdStrike: don’t blame us for tech outage problems
   
• Advertising initiative shuts down following X lawsuit over spending pullback
   
• The business world’s favorite laptop has barely changed in 30 years
   
• Nasdaq has hundreds of penny stocks. Now it’s trying to purge them.
   
• Zillow promotes operating chief Jeremy Wacksman to chief executive role
   
• Indeed and Glassdoor owner posts profit rise

   

• Flint Capital raises $160 million through an unusual fund-raising strategy (TechCrunch)
   
• Lowenstein Sandler adds Goodwin venture capital vet in California (Law360)

   

This newsletter was compiled by Marc Vartabedian, Yuliya Chernova 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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