💰 Shaking things up: Fintech Varo has closed on $29 million in funding, bringing its total raised well over $1 billion. It's not a small amount of money, but not as much as Varo had been hoping to raise. Read More
🐞 Sticking together: Swizzle Ventures closed Fund I at $6.6 million, well bypassing its original target of $3 million. The fund will target women's health and wealth startups. Remember, folks, focusing on women is not "DEI" — we're half the population with half the spending power. Read More
🛺 A smaller cut: Uber is moving away from its commission-based model for three-wheel autorickshaw drivers in India and instead embracing a daily rate structure. That's the model Uber's local rivals Rapido and Namma Yatri use, and puts the power to set fares back into the drivers' hands. Read More
🧑💻 Valuation inflation: Codeium, an AI-powered coding startup, is raising a new round at a $2.85 billion valuation. That's about 70 times Codeium's ARR, which puts the startup's generous valuation ahead of competitors like Anysphere, which investors say is the leader in this space. Read More
🧫 Does it check for bird flu? Spore.Bio has secured a $23 million Series A round after seeing real customer interest for its microbiology testing product. The Paris-based startup is targeting the food and beverage industry by speeding up contamination testing. Perfect timing! Read More
🏭 Pocket-sized reactors: Valar Atomics is the latest small modular nuclear reactor company to hit the market. The startup came out of stealth with a whopping $19 million in seed funding to develop its first test reactor, and aims to build the nuclear plant equivalent of a gigafactory. Read More
