Welcome to Startups Weekly, your weekly roundup of everything you can't miss in the world of startups.
This week, we'll be looking at small startup acquisitions, two new unicorns, wearable AI devices, and the VCs backing Kamala Harris. Let's dive in.
The most interesting startup stories of the week
Now that the IPO market is all but dead, we can't help but keep an eye on what's happening with the other type of exit: mergers and acquisitions. While they may not always turn out the way founders or investors hoped, we're certainly hearing about more startups selling themselves.
Canva drawings about LeonardoGraphic design platform Canva has acquired generative AI image creation startup Leonardo.ai, which has raised nearly $39 million in venture capital since its founding two years ago. While we don’t know how much Canva paid for Leonardo, we do know that the design giant is busy building out its AI suite, and Leonardo is another piece of that puzzle. Read more
Airtable acquires Dopt:There’s a war for AI talent these days. So collaboration company Airtable decided to buy that talent in bulk. This week, it acquired Dopt, a startup that specializes in AI onboarding. At its new headquarters, Dopt’s team will be tasked with developing a variety of AI capabilities and may work on Airtable Cobuilder, an AI-powered app-building tool that Airtable recently launched. Read more
Clutch grabs PlaicedClutch, a four-year-old platform that connects creators with businesses, has raised $2 million from investors including Precursor Ventures and at one point had more than 200 creators on the platform and a waitlist of 3,000 people. But the going got tough. The startup restructured and laid off staff to reach profitability. Still, the startup’s cofounder decided the best path forward for Clutch was to sell itself to the online social network Plaiced. Read more
Bending Spoons acquires WeTransfer:Bending Spoons, an Italy-based tech company known for acquiring well-known but struggling startups like Evernote and Meetup, has made another purchase: file transfer service WeTransfer. The 15-year-old WeTransfer was eyeing a public debut in 2021 but pulled its plans when the IPO window closed in early 2022. Read more
This week's most interesting fundraisers
It's a bike, it's a taxi, it's a unicorn.Indian bike-taxi startup Rapido has reached unicorn status with a $120 million investment led by WestBridge Capital. The funding shows Rapido is encroaching on India’s long-standing duopoly of Uber and Ola. Read more
Flo Health raises $200 million:The fertility-focused period tracking app has raised a Series C funding round led by General Atlantic at a $1 billion valuation. TechCrunch spoke to Flo co-founder and CEO Dmitry Gurski about the latest funding, women's health and more. Read more
Fighting loneliness with AI:It may sound like something out of a science fiction book or an episode of “Black Mirror,” but Harvard dropout Avi Schiffmann is convinced that constant companionship is one of the most widely used uses of AI. He’s created a device called Friend, which is a necklace that always listens to a person and responds by text. Friend, which costs $99 and is expected to be available in January 2025, has raised $2.5 million in venture capital funding at a $50 million valuation from investors including Caffeinated Capital’s Raymond Tonsing, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas and Solana founder Anatoly Yakovenko. Read more
Bee too:Wearable AI hardware that listens to and interacts with its owner has another entrant, Bee. Founded by former Twitter employees, the company has raised $7 million to develop an AI assistant that can take notes, display contextual reminders and create lists. Read more
Knowde gets a cutSequoia-backed Knowde raised $60 million in a round that values it below the $500 million valuation it achieved in 2021. The company, a marketplace for buying chemicals and raw ingredients founded by a former DuPont chemist, has now raised more than $150 million in total venture funding. Read more
The most interesting VC and funding news of this week
VC for Kamala:With the 2024 presidential election just months away, many venture capitalists are choosing sides, publicly. This week, Reid Hoffman, Vinod Khosla, and Mark Cuban pledged to vote for Kamala Harris. They created a group called VCsForKamala and are using the website to solicit donations for the current vice president. As of this writing, 645 venture capitalists have pledged their support to Harris. Read more
Cook leaves Tiger:Tiger Global has seen several high-profile departures in recent years, including software investment leader John Curtius and Scott Shleifer, who moved into an advisory role. The latest exodus is due to partner Alex Cook, who focused on many of Tiger's India investments. Read more
Moxxie raises its third fundFundraising is tough for emerging venture capital firms, but Moxxie Ventures defied the odds by easily surpassing its fundraising goal for its third fund. The underrepresented, founder-focused firm, led by Katie Jacobs Stanton, a seasoned investor with a strong network, has raised $95 million in fresh capital. Read more
Last but not least
Applied Intuition, a software startup for autonomous vehicles, raised $250 million in a Series E funding round a few months ago. Now, the company has sold $300 million in a secondary sale, adding Fidelity Management & Research Company to its long list of existing investors, which includes Lux Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Mary Meeker’s Bond growth fund. Read more
