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Several startups announced new rounds this week without revealing their valuation. That’s not to say these were bearish rounds, but it does confirm that our collective focus has shifted away from unicorns: these days, $1 billion could be the ARR (annual recurring revenue) number a company wants to achieve before going public.
The most interesting startup stories of the week
IPOs are starting to return to the conversation, but not everyone regrets their absence.
second hand: Vinted was valued at €5 billion in a secondary share sale. The Lithuanian second-hand market joins the growing number of European startups that have taken this route to open up liquidity to stakeholders in the absence of IPOs on their roadmap.
The bright side: Ro CEO Zaccaria Reitano said in a recent interview that he would “never say never” to take a telehealth company public, but he believes the benefits of being a private company are growing.
Checkboxes:Checkboxes: Wiz hopes 2025 will be the year its ARR reaches $1 billion, a number its co-founders see as a prerequisite for the cybersecurity company to go public after it rejected a $23 billion acquisition by Google.
Big moves: Fintech Groww is one of several Indian startups moving their headquarters to India to better comply with local legislation and potentially go public more easily, TechCrunch’s Manish Singh reported.
Tailwind: US federal regulators have cleared the way for electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft to share US airspace with planes and helicopters, a big win for startups in this category.
Most interesting fundraiser this week
Just a few AI-related funding rounds this week, but AI will be central to some really big rounds that could be around the corner.
Anti tape: A year after becoming a payment processor, fintech startup Finix has raised a $75 million Series C funding round, which will help it grow in the US and expand to more countries.
Money circle: Concentric AI recently raised a $45 million Series B round. The San Mateo-based startup is in the data security posture management space, which has seen several mergers and acquisitions in recent years.
Open checksSocket has raised $40 million to discover vulnerabilities in open source code, which software companies increasingly rely on.
The booster: Fixify closed a $25 million Series A round to help IT teams deal with ticket overload thanks to a combination of automation and human analysts.
Rumors: AI search engine Perplexity is reportedly seeking to raise $500 million. Mira Murati, former CTO of OpenAI, is also said to be fundraising for a new AI startup.
The most interesting venture capital and funds news this week
Ducks in a row: Privacy-focused DuckDuckGo will invest in like-minded startups in the early stages and will consider acquisitions. Its previous investments include AI model training platform EverArt, TechCrunch has learned.
Breathing room: Andreessen Horowitz is making a special GPU suite available to AI startups in its portfolio through a program called Oxygen, the venture capital firm confirmed this week.
Partners onlyBenchmark is raising $170 million for a new fund, filings reveal. TechCrunch understands that this will be a partner-only fund, with most of the funding coming from the company’s historical and current partners.
Old and new: Veteran US venture capital firm General Catalyst has raised $8 billion in new funds. As for the new venture capital firm Chemistry, it has raised $350 million for its first fund.
Last but not least
The race for AI foundational models has only just begun, and small startups still have a chance, Accel partner Philippe Botieri told TechCrunch. This includes European countries, despite the gap in fundraising with their US counterparts.
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