Massive AI seed round, autonomous trucks, more money for French startups, and many more...
What's Up Tech? #142
Welcome to our 142nd newsletter. It was written with 🖤 by Justine Pelisson and Angèle Sahraoui
In 2023, baby vc is proudly sponsored by OneRagtime which will fund enrolment fees for the 2023 VC bootcamps participants, to promote diversity and inclusivity in the VC ecosystem — giving everyone the opportunity to succeed, regardless of their background.
OneRagtime is a European Seed & Series A venture capital fund with 40+ portfolio companies like Jellysmack, Homa Games and Zenly.
Follow OneRagtime on LinkedIn and check their website!
Fundraisings from last week with Mistral AI, Fernride and Synthesia
News from last week with some announcements from the French President at VivaTech and Apple’s Vision Pro
Internship & Job offers of the week
Wishing you a pleasant read 🖤
😲 Mistral AI raised $113M to take on OpenAI (🇫🇷)
Unreal $113M fundraise last week by Mistral AI — a French startup founded less than 2 months ago — whose mission is to to offer a European alternative to Microsoft and OpenAI… 🚀
Created by three French researchers in their early thirties with respective backgrounds at Meta and Google DeepMind, the company’s seed fundraising (the biggest ever carried out in the EU!) was led by the American VC fund Lightspeed Venture Partners, as well as large French names including Xavier Niel, JCDecaux Holding, Rodolphe Saade, Motier Ventures and BPIfrance… that were joined by La Famiglia and Headline in Germany, ExorVentures in Italy, Sofina in Belgium, FirstMinute Capital and LocalGlobe in the UK. The seed round was made at a $260M valuation! 😳
The startup should release its first models in early 2024 — which will be large language models similar to ChatGPT, open source, and specifically developed for the needs of enterprises to easily integrate in their innate systems and maintain control over their data. ✔️
France’s Mistral AI blows in with a $113M seed round at a $260M valuation to take on OpenAI
🚛 Fernride raised $31M to reach autonomy for its yard trucks (🇩🇪)
Fernride — a Munich-based startup — has just announced a $31M series A round led by VC firms 10X Founders, Promus Ventures, Fly Ventures, SpeedInvest, Push Ventures, as well as corporate investors HHLA Next, DB Schenker and Krone.
The startup, specialized in yard trucks tailored to move trailers and containers around ports, terminals and distribution facilities, has now reached a “level 4 autonomous capabilities” allowing its trucks to drive themselves almost fully autonomously in specific use cases validated with its first customers (what they call a “human- assisted autonomy” situation where there still is a remote driver able to monitor several self driving trucks at the same time). They are already working with several customers like Volkswagen’s internal logistics unit VW Group Logistics, as well as BSH and HHLA. 🙌
The money raised will allow Fernride to accelerate its commercial scaling to reach 1,000 trucks (they are today operating with a fleet of 6 trucks) in order to become a leader in the category of yard automation and secure additional enterprise customers. 🚀
Fernride nudges yard trucks toward full autonomy with $31M in new funds
📹 Synthesia raised $90M to help companies create AI & avatar-driven videos (🇬🇧)
New fundraising alert in the generative AI field! Synthesia, a UK-based startup allowing companies to easily create video presentations leveraging custom avatars generated by their AI model, has just announced its series C round.
The $90M round, led by Accel, and joined by Nvidia, Kleiner Perkins, GV, FirstMark Capital and MMC, brought Synthesia’s total amount raised up to date to $156.6M — and raising its valuation at $1 billion post money! 🤫
The startup’s technology offers its customers more than 140 generic avatars able to speak in 120 languages, as well as the ability to create their own avatars based on real people (such as the company’s leadership!) to launch hyper-personalized training videos for employees, as well as marketing content or onboarding materials… among many other use cases. 👌🏼
Today, it has produced more than 12 millions videos and works with more than 50,000 clients — including the 100 biggest American firms like Amazon, Accenture or PWC. The financing round will be leveraged to refine the avatar’s expressions as well as to augment the Synthesia platform’s efficiency. 💫
Yet, some concerns are arising about the use of the likes of Synthesia’s technology to create deepfakes for unethical purposes, as Synthesia was already misused to produce propaganda in Venezuela as well as in China to create false news reports to be promoted by pro-China social media accounts… 🤔
🇫🇷 French President Emmanuel Macron announces more money for French startups
During his quick visit to VivaTech, Emmanuel Macron unveiled a new initiative for French startups named Tibi 2. Through this initiative, nearly €7 billion has been committed by 28 institutional investors (including insurance companies) to continue supporting French startups—a figure that E. Macron has already stated he would like to see reach €10B. Specifically, this amount will be dedicated to late-stage rounds but also early-stage ones (which was not previously the case with Tibi 1).
During his speech, E. Macron also announced his intention to double down on AI, especially by deploying over €500M to build new "AI clusters" in France. He further stated that a new €50M fund, managed by Bpifrance, will also target AI startups. 🎯
👓 Apple announces its VR headset
Just over a week ago, Tim Cook unveiled Apple's Vision Pro AR — a highly anticipated mixed reality headset set to hit the market in early of next year with a hefty price tag of $3,499. 🔍
Undoubtedly, this marks Apple's riskiest venture since the iPhone, and the unveiling of the Vision Pro comes after an extensive seven-year period of development. 🧠
The fact that it is a mixed reality headset and not a "traditional" VR headset simply means that users will be able to seamlessly perceive their surroundings while wearing the device, and notably maintain visual contact with other individuals in the room.
According to TechCrunch, the initial focus of the product appears to be geared towards enterprise and work-related applications, rather than being solely gaming-oriented. That said, a partnership with Disney is already ongoing and Disney+ will be available once the Vision Pro will be available for sale.
Undoubtedly, the launch of the Vision Pro will serve as a litmus test for Apple, testing the firm’s design and manufacturing capacities like no other product before.
Jobs
Associate Nordics - Balderton (London)
Deal Flow Operations Analyst - Connect Ventures (London)
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Take care, and see you next week,
The whole baby vc crew 🖤