Today's Venture Capital Pulse
Clip secures $500M to accelerate consumer wallet rollout
Mexican fintech Clip raised $500 million, pushing its valuation above $2.5 billion. The new capital will fund the rollout of a consumer‑focused wallet and broaden its financial‑services platform. Investors were not disclosed and the round remains under review.
Also developing:
By the numbers: Francisco Partners raises $18B for new tech funds
Potomac Tech Wire - March 19
Virginia‑based tech firms announced a wave of capital raises in March, highlighted by Sands Capital closing a $1.1 billion Global Innovation Fund III and Cape securing a $100 million Series C for its privacy‑first mobile carrier. Other notable rounds include Claros’ $30 million seed for AI‑driven power management, Knox Systems’ $25 million Series A to expand federal cloud services, and Carecubes’ $6.5 million Series A for rapid‑deployment isolation units. Chorus Intelligence added $20 million for global expansion, while marketing agency Yes& acquired Atlanta’s Metaleap Creative. The announcements underscore strong investor appetite for AI, security, and privacy solutions in the Mid‑Atlantic ecosystem.
YC’s Organic Rise: Word‑of‑mouth, Founders, and Evolving AI
Paul Graham is back on The Social Radars with @jesslivingston and @cjoneslevy. This time, they focus on what was happening behind the scenes at Y Combinator in the early years. PG shares how YC grew through word of mouth, what it...
Cerebral Valley Show Explores Future of Innovation
The Cerebral Valley Show https://lnkd.in/e8mdEjnq with Max Child and James Wilsterman
Why Verily Raised $300M to Become an Independent Precision AI Health Giant
Verily has closed a $300 million Series X Capital‑led round and re‑incorporated as Verily Health Inc., shifting Alphabet from a controlling owner to a significant minority shareholder. The funding will accelerate its AI‑native precision health platform, Verily Pre, aimed at unifying fragmented...
Verily Secures $300M, Ends Alphabet’s Majority Control
Major scoop from @ShelbyJLiv: Verily has raised $300M, ending Alphabet's majority control over the company https://t.co/6kjuC2FND7
Use YC‑style ‘Vertebrae’ for Stronger Demo Day Pitches
I'm glad she chose this excerpt about how to make a convincing Demo Day presentation. Founders would be so much more effective at fundraising if they gave their pitches YC-style "vertebrae".
Cleavr Raises €1M to Develop an AI Solution for Accounts Receivable
Cleavr announced a €1 million funding round led by Kima Ventures and other investors to accelerate its AI‑driven accounts‑receivable platform. The solution automates reminders, reconciliation, dispute handling and multi‑channel communication, aiming to cut late‑payment losses for finance teams. Already deployed with...
VC Subsidies Sustain Bubble; Truth Unsustainable, Switching Costs Negligible
People can’t handle the truth. It isn’t sustainable. Switching costs are virtually nothing. The bubble will pop when the VC subsidies stop. https://t.co/xYlztsZ1CM
Arc Secures Funding From A16z, Lowercarbon Capital
Arc received backing from a16z, Lowercarbon Capital and other venture firms in its latest fundraising round. https://t.co/gCCUtJYMpf
Excalipoint Closes $68.7M Seed Round for Cancer T-Cell Engagers
Excalipoint, a biotech focused on cancer T‑cell engagers, announced the close of a $68.7 million seed financing round. The capital, raised from leading venture firms and strategic investors, will fund the development of its bispecific antibody platform targeting solid tumors. The...
Why We Invest in Volume
Team Ignite Ventures argues that investing in a large number of pre‑seed and seed deals improves venture fund performance. AngelList data shows portfolios with more than 50 companies achieve a median IRR of about 12%, versus roughly 3% for smaller...
Afrime Studios Enters Seed Round After Raising $400,000 to Build Afrofuturistic RPG Unyverse
Afrime Studios, a majority Black‑owned US game developer, has closed an angel round of roughly $400,000 and is now moving into a seed funding phase. The studio is building a public demo of its debut Afrofuturistic sci‑fi RPG, Unyverse, to...
EquipmentShare Founders Seal $25m for Oversubscribed Sophomore Redbud VC Fundraise
Redbud VC, a pre‑seed investor, closed its sophomore fund at $25 million. The raise was oversubscribed and represents a five‑fold increase over its inaugural vehicle. The round was anchored by the founders of EquipmentShare, who joined as limited partners. The new...
Kenya: Swedfund Backs Jacaranda Maternity
Swedfund has pledged $600,000 to Jacaranda Maternity, a Kenyan provider of low‑cost maternal care, to accelerate its network expansion. The funding will finance new hospital openings, upgrade neonatal units, and improve existing facilities serving Nairobi’s low‑ and middle‑income neighborhoods. Jacaranda...
Adenia Partners Fund Reaches $180m Hard Cap
Adenia Partners announced the first close of its Adenia Entrepreneurial Fund I at a hard cap of $180 million, surpassing the original $150 million target in under a year. The fund targets control investments in small and lower mid‑cap African companies, the...
EIB Signs First Pre‑IPO Advisory Deal with Sweden’s Anocca to Boost European Market Access
The European Investment Bank (EIB) has entered its first pre‑IPO advisory agreement with Swedish biotech firm Anocca, providing governance and investor‑readiness support ahead of a potential stock‑market listing. The move expands the EIB’s toolkit beyond financing to include advisory services,...
Two Palantir Veterans Just Came Out of Stealth with $30M and a Sequoia Stamp of Approval
Edra, a New York‑based startup, announced a $30 million Series A round led by Sequoia, with participation from 8VC and A*. The company, founded by former Palantir executives Eugen Alpeza and Yannis Karamanlakis, builds an AI‑driven knowledge base that automatically extracts and...
Inside FinSight Ventures’ Bet On A Pricey Yet Durable Indian Fintech Market
FinSight Ventures, led by Pavel Gurianov, has committed roughly $20 million per deal to Indian fintech and consumer super‑app companies, backing firms such as Razorpay, Easy Home Finance, Gupshup and Car Dekho after an initial fund‑of‑funds strategy. While Gurianov acknowledges that...
Parallel Raises $20M to Scale AI Solutions for Hospital Administration
Paris‑based Parallel has closed a $20 million Series A round led by Index Ventures, following a $3.5 million seed less than a year ago. The startup’s AI agents sit on top of legacy hospital systems to automate administrative workflows, starting with medical coding...
How Mega IPOs Could Take All the Money Away From Smaller IPOs | Pitchbook
Pitchbook warns that upcoming mega IPOs could dominate market liquidity in 2026. SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic are rumored to go public, potentially becoming the three largest VC‑backed IPOs ever. Their combined valuation may surpass the total value of all VC‑backed...
Crossbow Therapeutics Secures $77 Million Series B to Accelerate T‑Bolt Immunotherapies
Crossbow Therapeutics announced a $77 million Series B financing co‑led by Taiho Ventures and Arkin Bio Capital. The cash will fund the completion of the Phase 1 CROSSCHECK‑001 trial of CBX‑250 and jump‑start development of its broader T‑Bolt platform. Investors include a...
Raven Raises $20M Seed Round
Raven.io, a runtime‑focused cybersecurity startup, announced a $20 million seed round. The round was led by Norwest with a post‑seed tranche led by Elron Ventures, and included investors such as SentinelOne, UpWest, and RedSeed. The capital will accelerate product development, expand...
Fund Analysis: Glade Brook Capital Partners
Glade Brook Capital Partners announced the closing of its Gondola Fund at over $1 billion in March 2026, marking the firm’s largest publicly disclosed vehicle to date. A concurrent Form D filing for Strategic Growth V LP on February 5, 2026 showed zero commitments, so...
VC RETURNS REVEALED: Recent Thrive & Notable Funds in a League of Their Own at UTIMCO
UTIMCO’s latest disclosures reveal that several recent venture funds have generated extraordinary internal rates of return, driven largely by AI‑focused investments. Thrive Capital’s 2022 fund posted an IRR above 126% thanks to stakes in OpenAI, Cursor, Ramp and Base Power,...
Multiply Closes $9.5M Funding
Multiply, an AI‑native media agency targeting B2B firms, emerged from stealth with a $9.5 million Series A round led by Mayfield. The funding includes contributions from Sorenson Capital, Instacart co‑founder Max Mullen, Google Gemini head Josh Woodward, and senior executives from...
Show Institutional Investors Your Consistent, Structured Approach
Institutional investors think in patterns. They look for repeatability. They look for discipline. They look for structure. They look for consistency over time. Show them that you operate this way, And they will trust you before you even ask. 🔗 Tribevest #structureisstrategy #capitalraising #raisingcapital #fundoffunds
Obin AI Emerges From Stealth with $7 Million Seed
Obin AI, an enterprise‑focused startup building an agentic AI workforce for financial institutions, announced a $7 million seed round. The financing was led by Motive Partners and supplemented by angel investors. Notable advisors Dr. Fei‑Fei Li and Lukasz Kaiser, both prominent in AI...
AI Valuations Likely Overinflated, Reset Imminent
VC Bill Gurley sees a reset coming in AI. His point is simple. When a real wave hits, a lot of money is made quickly, and that’s usually when excess builds up. The question isn’t whether AI is real. It’s whether valuations...
Bootstrapped Founders Can Attract VC Love Beyond Capital
When my friend raised $6M and I told him I was sad to lose another bootstrapper to the VC dark side, he said something that totally dumfounded me. Him: “We're building a generational company and not planning on raising any...
What's Your SaaS Company Worth in 2026?
Private B2B SaaS valuations in 2026 are now anchored to a regression‑derived formula based on 63 cash transactions. The baseline multiple ranges from 4.8x ARR for bootstrapped firms to 5.3x for equity‑backed ones, while companies with Rule of 40 above...
Thrive and Notable Funds Outperform in VC Returns
VC RETURNS REVEALED: Recent Thrive & Notable Funds in a League of Their Own at UTIMCO @maddierenbarger https://t.co/JRRnZpr6pM
OpenAI's $110 B Funding
I feel like we are underplaying the fact that OpenAI raised $110 billion in a single funding round
Boreal Ventures Closes on $43m for Fund II, Targeting $60m
Boreal Ventures announced the closing of $43 million for its second venture fund, with a target of $60 million. The fund’s limited partners include the Government of Quebec via Investissement Québec, BDC Capital, the Teralys seed fund backed by La Caisse, and...
This Startup Wants to Make Enterprise Software Look More Like a Prompt
Eragon, a San‑Francisco startup founded by former Oracle and Salesforce executive Josh Sirota, closed a $12 million Series A round at a $100 million post‑money valuation. The company is building an agentic AI operating system that lets enterprise users run and orchestrate SaaS...
Condor Software Raises $24M for Life Sciences Finance Platform
Condor Software announced a $24 million Series A round, led by Insight Partners, bringing its total funding to $36 million. The capital will accelerate development of its AI‑driven financial intelligence platform that unifies clinical, operational, and accounting data for life‑science firms. Early adopters—including...
TransFi Secures $14M Series A From Tether’s Arm
Big congratulations to @thefintechfund portfolio co @getTransFi, who just raised their $14M Series A from @Tether's investment arm, Turing Financial. https://t.co/YnhLl63Gau
Hanover Park Raises $27M to Power $100T Infrastructure
Chris, Nick, and @hanoverpark have been on a tear the past 20 months. Have never seen a company build so much trust with customers so quickly. They just raised $27M to continue assembling the dream team to build the financial infrastructure...
Swedish Legora Lands $5.55B Valuation Less than a Year After Entering the U.S.
Legora, a Swedish legal‑tech startup, closed a $550 million Series D led by Accel, pushing its valuation to $5.55 billion. The funding will fund U.S. expansion, adding offices in Houston and Chicago and scaling headcount to over 300 by the end of 2026....
Manifold Raises $8M to Secure Autonomous AI Agents on Enterprise Endpoints
Manifold, an AI detection and response startup, announced an $8 million seed round led by Costanoa Ventures to develop its endpoint security platform for autonomous AI agents. The solution monitors agent behavior on employee devices, capturing API calls, file access, and...
Excalipoint Secures $69M for Next‑Gen T‑Cell Engagers
Chinese biotech startup Excalipoint banks $69M for next-gen T cell engagers https://t.co/809RqRWJNL by @gwendolynawu #biotech #startups
Lilly-Backed China Startup Debuts With $68.7M Seed to Advance Next-Gen T Cell Engagers
Excalipoint Therapeutics, a Shanghai‑based biotech, closed a $68.7 million seed round, including a $41 million founding raise and a $27.7 million extension led by MPCi, Centurium Capital, Lilly Asia Ventures, and Eisai Innovation. The capital will fund six tri‑specific T‑cell engager candidates, notably...
Partech Picks up €300m for Debut Impact Fund Amid ‘One of the Most Challenging Fundraising Environments of the Past Decade’
Partech has closed its inaugural impact fund, raising €300 million. The capital will be deployed to European B2B technology firms that are reshaping global value chains. The close occurs amid what the firm calls one of the most challenging fundraising environments...
Tracebit Raises $20M to Scale Cloud Security Tech
Tracebit announced a $20 million Series A round, led by FirstMark, bringing its total capital to roughly $25 million. The London‑based startup offers a cloud‑native deception platform that plants realistic fake assets—called canaries—to flag malicious activity the moment an attacker interacts with them....
Exclusive: AI Cybersecurity Startup RunSybil, Founded by OpenAI’s First Security Hire, Raises $40 Million Led by Khosla Ventures
RunSybil, an AI‑driven cybersecurity startup founded by OpenAI’s first security hire, closed a $40 million funding round led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Anthropic’s Anthology Fund, Menlo Ventures and notable angels. Its flagship AI agent, Sybil, conducts continuous autonomous penetration...
R1 Therapeutics Raises $77.5m to Progress AP306 for Hyperphosphatemia
R1 Therapeutics announced a $77.5 million oversubscribed Series A round to advance AP306, a first‑in‑class pan phosphate transporter inhibitor for hyperphosphatemia in chronic kidney disease patients. The funding, led by Abingworth, F‑Prime and DaVita Venture Group, also secured an exclusive global licence...
UK Family Office, VCs Cash in on Swarmer’s Moonshot IPO
Drone software developer Swarmer completed a high‑profile IPO, attracting a consortium of UK investors. This group—including Theseus Capital Partners, D3 Venture Capital, Green Flag Ventures, R‑G AI and Radius Capital Ventures—now holds combined shares valued at $177 million. The IPO underscores...
LPs Love Consistency: Breakout Ventures’ Fishburne
Breakout Ventures’ managing partner Lindy Fishburne told VCJ that limited partners are rewarding the firm’s disciplined, seed‑stage focus. While many venture funds are launching opportunistic or growth‑oriented vehicles, Breakout has stuck to its original thesis. This consistency has helped it...
Pi Labs Leads $7M Round in VerbaFlo for AI Real Estate Platform
VerbaFlo, a conversational AI platform for residential real estate, secured a $7 million seed round led by Pi Labs, bringing its total financing to roughly $9 million. The startup automates leasing, operations, and resident engagement through purpose‑built AI agents that integrate with...
BambooBox Announces $6.6 Million to Build the Managed ABM Operating System for Enterprise Revenue Teams
BambooBox announced a $6.6 million Series A round led by Peak XV’s Surge to accelerate its Managed ABM Operating System. The platform blends AI‑driven orchestration with forward‑deployed ABM experts, aiming to solve the execution gap that many enterprises face with traditional ABM tools....
Investors Seek Insightful, Market‑Aligned Contrarians, Not Mere Rebels
everyone claims they want "contrarian" founders but what they actually want - founders with a non-obvious insight that happens to align with an explosive market This is bc contrarian + right = visionary. contrarian + wrong = unemployed