Acquiring AI talent in bulk | TechCrunch

Welcome to Startups Weekly — a weekly roundup of everything you can’t miss from the startup world.

This week we look at small startup acquisitions, two new unicorns, AI wearables, and VCs backing Kamala Harris. Let’s take a look.

This week’s top startup stories

With the IPO market all but dead, we can’t help but keep an eye on what’s happening with another type of exit: mergers and acquisitions. While they’re not always the outcomes founders or investors were hoping for, we’re certainly hearing about more startups selling out.

Canva draws inspiration from Leonardo:Graphic design platform Canva has acquired AI-based generative imagery startup Leonardo.ai, which has raised nearly $39 million in venture capital since it was founded 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 stack, and Leonardo is another piece of that puzzle. read more

Airtable Acquires Dopt: The war for AI talent is raging right now, so Airtable, a collaboration company, decided to buy that talent in bulk. This week, it acquired Dopt, a startup specializing in AI onboarding. At the new location, Dopt’s team will focus on building out a variety of AI capabilities and will likely work on Airtable’s recently launched AI app builder, Airtable Cobuilder. read more

Clutch catches Plaiced:Four-year-old Clutch, a marketplace that connects creators with businesses, raised $2 million in funding from investors including Precursor Ventures and at one point had more than 200 creators on the platform and 3,000 people on a waiting list. But the road eventually became rocky. The startup restructured and laid off employees to achieve profitability. Still, the startup’s co-founder decided the best path forward for Clutch was to sell itself to online social network Plaiced. read more

Bending Spoons acquires WeTransfer: Bending Spoons, the Italian tech company known for acquiring high-profile but struggling startups like Evernote and Meetup, has made another acquisition: file-transfer service WeTransfer. 15-year-old WeTransfer had been considering an IPO in 2021 but pulled the plug when the IPO window closed in early 2022. read more

This week’s top fundraisers

It’s a bike, it’s a taxi, it’s a unicorn:Rapido, an Indian bike-taxi startup, has achieved unicorn status with a $120 million round led by WestBridge Capital. The funding shows Rapido is taking on India’s long-standing mobility duopoly of Uber and Ola. read more

Flo Health raises $200 million: The fertility-focused period-tracking app has raised a Series C led by General Atlantic at a $1 billion valuation. TechCrunch spoke with Flo co-founder and CEO Dmitry Gursky about the latest funding, women’s health, and more. read more

Fighting Loneliness with Artificial Intelligence: It might sound like something out of a sci-fi book or an episode of “Black Mirror,” but Harvard dropout Avi Schiffmann believes that constant companionship is one of AI’s killer use cases. He’s built a device called Friend, a necklace that listens to you at all times and responds via text message. Priced at $99 and set to ship in January 2025, Friend has raised $2.5 million in VC funding at a $50 million valuation from investors including Raymond Tonsing of Caffeinated Capital, Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity, and Anatoly Yakovenko, founder of Solan. read more

The bee too:The wearable AI that listens to and interacts with its owner has another entrant, Bee. The company, founded by former Twitter employees, has raised $7 million to develop an AI assistant that can take notes, display contextual reminders, and create lists. read more

Knowde takes the cut:Knowde, backed by Sequoia, has raised $60 million in a round that values ​​it lower than the $500 million it raised in 2021. The chemicals and raw materials marketplace founded by a former DuPont chemist has raised more than $150 million in venture capital funding. read more

The hottest news from the VC and fund industry 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’ve created a group called VCsForKamala and are using a website to solicit donations for the current vice president. As of this writing, 645 venture capitalists have pledged their support for Harris. read more

Cook leaves Tiger: Tiger Global has seen a number of high-profile departures in the past few years, including John Curtius, a software investment leader, and Scott Shleifer, who moved to an advisory role. The latest exodus comes from partner Alex Cook, who focused on many of Tiger’s investments in India. read more

Moxxie raises third fund: Fundraising is tough for emerging VC firms, but Moxxie Ventures defied the odds to easily exceed its fundraising goal for its third fund. The underrepresented founder-focused firm, led by Katie Jacobs Stanton, a seasoned investor with a strong network, raised $95 million in fresh capital. read more

Not less important

Applied Intuition, a startup focused on autonomous vehicle software, raised $250 million in a Series E round a few months ago. Now, the company has raised $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 Bond growth fund. read more