TheChek News Flow

Since its founding in 2021, OpenAI Startup Fund has raised $175 million for its main fund and secured an additional $114 million through five separate special purpose vehicles, which are investment pools for specific opportunities.

Unlike many sizable tech companies, OpenAI says it doesn’t use the company’s money to invest in startups. The ChatGPT maker says its OpenAI Startup Fund is raised from outside investors. This includes participation from significant OpenAI backer Microsoft, as well as “other OpenAI partners,” according to the fund’s website.

The OpenAI Startup Fund, which is managed by a dedicated team, has so far invested in over a dozen startups, according to data providers PitchBook and Crunchbase and TechCrunch’s research.

The following companies, organized alphabetically, have themselves announced investments from the fund.

1X: This Norwegian humanoid robot startup raised $23.5 million in a deal led by the OpenAI Startup Fund and Tiger Global in early 2023. However, OpenAI’s fund wasn’t named as a participant in the company when it announced its $100 million Series B in January.

Ambience Healthcare: This AI-powered medical note-taking startup announced a $70 million Series B in February 2024, co-led by OpenAI’s fund and Kleiner Perkins. Ambience is among a number of startups, including Abridge, Nabla, Suki, and Microsoft-owned Nuance, that are building AI medical scribes.

Anysphere (aka Cursor): In October 2023, OpenAI’s fund led the $8 million seed round into Anysphere, the maker of AI-powered coding assistant Cursor. OpenAI hasn’t been named as an investor in the company’s subsequent rounds.

Chai Discovery: This startup, which is developing an open source AI foundational model for drug discovery, raised a $30 million in seed round led by Thrive Capital and OpenAI’s fund last September. The deal valued the 6-month-old Chai Discovery at $150 million.

Class Companion: This edtech startup raised a $4 million seed round in 2023 from OpenAI’s fund and a host of angels. It helps teachers provide quick, personalized feedback to their students.

Descript: The collaborative audio and video editing platform raised $50 million in a Series C round led by OpenAI’s fund shortly after ChatGPT was introduced to the world in late 2022. Other investors in the round included Andreessen Horowitz, Redpoint Ventures, Spark Capital, and ex-Y Combinator partner Daniel Gross. Descript hasn’t reported any other capital raises since its Series C.

Figure AI: AI robotics startup Figure raised a $675 million Series B in February 2024 from Nvidia, OpenAI’s fund, Microsoft, and others. The round valued the company at $2.6 billion. Figure AI is now reportedly in talks to raise $1.5 billion at a $39.5 billion valuation.

Ghost Autonomy: This maker of autonomous driving software raised a $55 million Series E in April 2023, and OpenAI’s fund invested $5 million of that, according to PitchBook data. But the investment didn’t work out. A year later the company shut down.

Harvey AI: This legal tech startup raised a $21 million Series A in April 2023 from OpenAI’s fund and others. The fund also participated in three subsequent rounds, including last month’s $300 million Series D, which valued Harvey at $3 billion.

Heeyo: Educational AI chatbot for kids Heeyo announced that it raised $3.5 million from OpenAI’s fund, Alexa Fund, Pear VC, and other investors in August.

Kick: This company is developing AI agents that it says can “self-drive” bookkeeping processes. It raised a $9 million seed round co-led by General Catalyst and OpenAI’s fund in October.

Mem: This AI-powered note-taking startup raised a $23.5 million Series A round in November 2022, led by OpenAI’s fund. Mem hasn’t reported any subsequent funding rounds.

Milo: This startup is developing an AI-powered personal assistant that helps parents organize and keep track of their kids’ activities. Milo raised an undisclosed amount of pre-seed and seed funding from OpenAI’s fund, YC, and others.

Physical Intelligence: Foundational software for robots startup Physical Intelligence raised a $70 million seed round last March. OpenAI’s fund was part of that and also participated in the company’s $400 million Series A that valued the company at more than $2 billion. Other investors in the latest round included Lux Capital, Sequoia, and Jeff Bezos.

Speak: This AI-powered language learning app developer raised a $27 million Series B round in November 2022, led by OpenAI’s fund. In December, the fund participated in Speak’s $78 million Series C, which valued the company at $1 billion.

Thrive AI: Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington and OpenAI Startup Fund announced last July that they teamed up on investing and building this “AI health coach” startup. Thrive AI aimed to raise $10 million, according to a regulatory filing.

Unify: This sales technology startup secured about $19 million in seed and Series A capital from the OpenAI Startup Fund, Thrive Capital, and Emergence.

His Hedge Fund Imploded in Spectacular Fashion. His New One Has $12 Billion.

Nicholas Maounis, of the failed Amaranth, has regained investor trust at Verition

Nicholas Maounis oversaw one of the biggest hedge-fund fiascoes in history. Nearly two decades later, he is leading one of the fastest-growing funds.

In 2006, Maounis was caught by surprise by an energy-trading catastrophe at Amaranth Advisors, which he ran at the time. The firm’s collapse cost investors over $6 billion in a matter of days.

Today, Maounis is managing $11.8 billion at Verition Fund Management. The fund, which has spent years overcoming investor concerns, has grown from just around $1 billion in 2019. Maounis helps oversee Verition’s investments and risk management, much as he did at Amaranth.

Maounis’s comeback is a testament to an enduring phenomenon. Wall Street traders regularly get second or third chances, even after enormous and embarrassing losses. Those who blow up in spectacular fashion often attract the most cash for their next endeavors, a true head-scratcher.

Part of the explanation: Investors figure someone who has blown it once has likely learned important lessons. Some investors also feel that a manager who makes a huge mistake could just as easily hit it big next time.

“Every successful trader has a near-death experience,” says Peter Borish, a veteran hedge-fund investor who runs Computer Trading Corp., an investing and consulting firm. “Successful ones bounce back, enhance their risk management and potentially thrive.”

John Meriwether, who helped found Long-Term Capital Management, launched not one but two funds after the hedge fund collapsed in 1998, almost taking the financial world down with it. More recently, Adam Neumann, the executive who co-founded and led WeWork until the company ousted him in the wake of a failed initial public offering, has raised $350 million for a new firm.

It likely helps Maounis that there are investors who are well aware of what happened at Amaranth, yet didn’t experience the fund’s demise.

“Verition’s performance has been great, they have differentiated strategies, and some investors feel it makes sense to give money to someone who has learned an important lesson,” says Clinton Huff, a senior investment officer at Texas Tech University System, a Verition investor. “Fortunately, we weren’t investors in Amaranth, though.”

Maounis declined to comment.

Amaranth’s collapse was one of the most dramatic in modern history. Maounis, a veteran convertible-bond trader, built Amaranth into a $9 billion, Connecticut-based investing power. Its executives boasted of world-class risk-management systems while backing various investing strategies.

The problems came in 2006 from a successful energy trader in Calgary, Brian Hunter, who was then 32 years old. One of Hunter’s trades, aimed at exploiting the differences in price between natural-gas contracts, went awry. The fund suffered $6.4 billion of losses in a single week, and Amaranth lost over 60% that September. The firm had recorded gains earlier in 2006, so investors lost about half their money.

Amaranth clients who kept their money in the fund for its entire existence didn’t lose money, thanks to earlier gains, a person close to Maounis says.

Hunter couldn’t be reached for comment.

Maounis began plotting his comeback even as the Amaranth saga was playing out, according to someone who spoke to him at the time.

Two years later, in 2008, Maounis launched Verition with about $185 million. He hired Josh Goldstein, who had worked for Maounis’s family office, as his No. 2. Maounis told potential clients that Amaranth’s problems had resulted from an unforeseen move in near-term natural-gas futures prices compared with longer-term prices, according to a person close to the matter. He based his new firm in Amaranth’s former headquarters in Greenwich, Conn.

For years, investors were wary, and Verition’s assets were relatively stable and small. In early 2020, as the pandemic began, Verition made money while rivals suffered, and the money began to flow to the fund.

Last year, Verition rose 11.6%, investors say. That is better than the 9.75% return of the HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index, a proxy for the global hedge-fund industry, though below the 14.59% earned by Vanguard’s 60-40 mutual fund, which invests in stocks and bonds. This year, Verition is up 2.2% through Feb. 27, beating the S&P 500 index.

Verition has scored average annual returns of about 12.9% since launching, according to an investor, topping the broad market. Its “risk-adjusted returns,” or its gains relative to the risk the fund takes, are strong, and they have little correlation to other investments, says Huff, the Texas Tech University System senior investment officer.

It helps that Verition is in the hottest sector in the hedge-fund world. It is a “multimanager” firm, backing 140 trading teams, each managing a small percentage of the firm’s overall assets while betting on various markets, including such niches as Canadian convertible bonds. Other multimanager firms, including Steven Cohen’s Point72 and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, have soared in size.

Clients note that Verition has a different strategy compared with Amaranth. It also has close to three times the number of risk managers as Amaranth, and it imposes various limits on its portfolio managers, suggesting that Maounis has learned lessons from the Amaranth episode, they say.

BYD is cementing its place as the global leader in plug-in car production with new models, innovative battery tech, and rapid global expansion plans – even in the face of tariffs. BYD’s latest accolade? Record-setting sales!

CarNewsChina reports that BYD sold 322,846 vehicles globally in February, 2025. That’s up 8.9% from the 296,446 units the company sold in January, as the Chinese New Year holiday is over – but the big news is on the export side of the equation.

BYD exported a record-breaking 67,025 vehicles to overseas markets, up an almost unbelievable 187.8% (!) year-over-year. Combined with January’s figures, that means BYD has exported 133,361 vehicles so far in 2025, marking 124% YOY growth.

The surge in BYD sales can be partially attributed to the arrival of the BYD Atto 2 compact electric crossover in Europe, which combines BYD’s Blade battery tech and e-Platform 3.0 vehicle architecture into a popular B-segment body. The Atto features an 8.8″ driver display, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto support, a panoramic sunroof, ergonomic seats, and an advanced driving assistance system (ADAS) at a not insignificant savings compared to direct competitors like the Volvo EX30.

BYD’s aggressive pricing is forcing competitors to “make desperate moves,” in some markets – up to and including massive price cuts, like the nearly $20,000 Volkswagen slashed from the ID.4’s price in a bid to keep up. At the same time, the company’s massive investment in logistics infrastructure, which includes a number of high-efficiency transport ships, mean BYD sales are just getting started.

Analysts expect BYD to sell about 5.5 million cars in 2025.

A podcast series on what China has achieved with its ambitious, decadelong Belt and Road initiative and the dilemma the U.S. faces in trying to respond

In great-power rivalries, it matters who’s on your side.

For years, Washington has been either indifferent or inconsistent in its dealings with swaths of the globe. At times it has actively tested the patience of its longtime partners.

China, meanwhile, has been building influence. Since 2013, its massive Belt and Road infrastructure program has poured more than $1 trillion into projects from mines and highways to “smart cities” in some 150 countries.

So what did Beijing get in return? And what is the U.S. doing about it? The WSJ’s What’s News team set out to answer those questions in a three-part podcast series called “Building Influence: China’s Global Infrastructure Bet.”

Through interviews with WSJ reporters and editors with years of experience covering China, plus experts from around the world, you will hear how China succeeded in planting its flag around the world and accumulating influence, even in regions long considered America’s backyard.

You will then hear how Beijing has kept the program afloat despite an economic downturn and early missteps, and doubled down on its goals. And finally, we will look at what this all means for the U.S. and the West, as leaders consider whether, and how, they can compete.

Insurers retreat from liability coverage as average price tag hits record $65.7mn last year

Companies were hit with more than $40bn in damages payments stemming from US lawsuits last year, data from LexisNexis showed, as jury awards against tech groups Microsoft, Amazon and Micron fuelled a phenomenon becoming known as “nuclear verdicts”.

The price tag for trial awards is growing, data shows. The average award against a corporate defendant in cases brought in the US rose to a record $65.7mn last year, up from $41.7mn in 2023, LexisNexis said.

The trend has alarmed executives at big companies and the insurers that foot their bills. Swiss Re, for example, set aside more than $3bn in reserves in 2024 to cover US liability insurance claims.

But while big mass-tort consumer class actions grab headlines, the new skyrocketing jury awards are being driven by courtroom brawls pitting one corporation against another — particularly in the arena of intellectual property disputes. Such battles produced record payouts last year, with plaintiffs winning at trial awarded $665mn for trade secrets violations and $3.8bn for patent infringement.

John Dacey, chief financial officer of Zurich-based Swiss Re, on Thursday said “the terrible experience we and everyone else in the market has had” had deterred them from writing US corporate liability policies. He added, “we don’t see an end in sight”.

The reinsurer published a report blaming the trend on “negative societal attitudes with anti-corporate sentiments”.

Warren Buffett referred to the trend in a shareholder letter last weekend, saying it was “our job to contest ‘runaway’ verdicts [and] spurious litigation”. His holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, owns several insurance companies with exposure to rising jury awards.

In one case, an Arkansas jury sided with London Luxury, a textile supplier, and ordered Walmart to pay $101mn after finding the retail giant had breached an agreement to buy 7bn nitrile gloves in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic.

London Luxury counsel Brendon DeMay said the verdict was a win against big companies that think they can “push around their suppliers”.

IPA Technologies, the owner of patents for voice-recognition software used in Apple’s digital assistant Siri, won $242mn from Microsoft, after a court found the tech group had infringed its claim.

In another case, jurors in Waco, Texas, ordered Amazon to pay $122mn to AlmondNet, finding that the ecommerce group’s advertising infringed two of the advertising technology company’s patents.

Mass tort cases generated big payouts as well. Bayer, the parent company of Monsanto, has been hit with multibillion-dollar jury verdicts for people who said they developed cancer from the weedkiller Roundup.

Bayer said it appealed against the verdicts, even after they were reduced in size (verdicts are often reduced in post-trial motions or on appeal). Bayer declined to say whether insurance would cover the verdicts.

Business trade associations, including the Chamber of Commerce, have sought to pin blame for the rise in lawsuits on litigation funders, groups that have invested billions to turn legal payouts from an occasional windfall into an investible asset class. Commercial litigation funders counter that while their financing makes it easier to bring cases against big businesses, it has little effect on verdict size.

Others argue that the broader rise in large verdicts is a spillover effect of deregulation and inadequate enforcement of consumer protection laws. Americans have taken to the courts because of political gridlock, said Jonathan Wagner, a securities lawyer at Kramer Levin.

“It is very difficult, in a divided country, for the government to enact legislation,” he said. That leaves public matters, including healthcare standards, to be “legislated through litigation”, Wagner said.

In the 1990s, a flood of claims from asbestos and pollution in the US — stemming from a public health crisis and environmental degradation — almost resulted in the collapse of the Lloyd’s of London insurance market. As a result, insurers told the Financial Times, some groups steered clear of US liability policies, which can include exposure to harms that may not materialise for decades.

Munich Re on Wednesday said the reinsurance group had cut its exposure to most US business liability. 

However, Munich Re is still growing its exposure to some “subsegments” over shorter time horizons, “so that you’re not exposed to a very long-term trend”, chief executive Joachim Wenning added.

Shareholders in the Marmite maker say future of food business should be on Fernando Fernandez’s in-tray

One of Unilever’s biggest shareholders has said it “doesn’t make sense” for the group to retain its food business alongside its beauty, personal care and home care divisions, adding to scrutiny of the margarine-to-soap conglomerate that ousted its chief executive this week.

David Samra, partner at Artisan Capital, a top-10 shareholder in the FTSE 100 group, said Unilever should look at selling the €13.4bn-revenue food business if it would create value for shareholders, following years of smaller divestments to boost the sprawling group’s performance.

“[The division] has to stand up to scrutiny over and over again, because it doesn’t make sense to have food and other products in the same company, and food gets you a lower multiple,” Samra told the Financial Times. “If the math shows that we will get more value out of [selling it], then they should do it.”

The future of the food business will be one of the issues on the in-tray of Fernando Fernandez, described by a former colleague as a “human tornado”, who was installed as chief executive this week following the sudden removal of Hein Schumacher after just over 18 months in the role.

The group is pursuing a listing of its ice cream division and pledged under Schumacher to sell off up to £1bn in food brands, as part of a major turnaround plan aimed at focusing on higher-margin areas such as beauty. It has sold off large chunks of its food business in the past decade, including spreads and tea.

Schumacher, who headed Dutch dairy giant FrieslandCampina and worked at Kraft Heinz for more than a decade, ruled out selling the entire food business last year. Shareholders said his replacement with Fernandez, the former head of Unilever’s beauty division, reinforced the company’s pivot into beauty and home care, reviving the perennial question of whether Unilever should abandon food.

“Narrowing their focus is part of this strategic plan, and that will continue,” said Samra. “What is the cost of disentangling? That’s the math the board is running.”

If the board “started with a blank sheet of paper . . . they wouldn’t have food there”, said Sue Noffke, head of UK equities at top-15 Unilever shareholder Schroders. She added, however, that food would be “relatively small post the demerger of ice cream” and that the remaining part of the unit was important to Unilever in emerging markets.

The question of whether to sell the entire food division has long been up for debate, with Unilever previously exploring selling it to fund its failed bid for GSK’s consumer health unit, now called Haleon.

But shareholders said the cost of disentangling the division’s sprawling supply chains from the rest of the group would be a deterrent to hiving it off. The investors said the board had their support in the leadership change and strategic direction.

Artisan Capital, which led a successful activist campaign at French consumer group Danone and has called for a break-up of German conglomerate Bayer, said it was not an activist at Unilever and was “100 per cent behind” the chair.

Bankers and analysts have long speculated that Unilever might pursue takeovers in the fragmented consumer health industry, potentially buying one of the consumer businesses spun off by pharmaceutical companies such as Johnson & Johnson or Sanofi.

But in calls to investors this week Meakins said the company would not be embarking on major dealmaking in the near future. Noffke told the FT that the chair had said there was no plan for major M&A, just “bolt-ons, where it made sense”.

The board’s decision to remove Schumacher, which people familiar with the matter said was unanimous, shone a spotlight on Meakins and the lengths the chair of two years is willing to go to drive forward Unilever’s turnaround.

Schumacher, who was in the US on Tuesday for shareholder meetings, was forced to cancel his appointments.

One former Unilever executive said Meakins, who is also chair of FTSE 100 company Compass Group and the former chief of building products group Wolseley, was “hard as nails”.

“People underestimate Ian Meakins at their cost. He’s a tough old boot chairman,” said a consultant who works with the company, adding that Meakins and Fernandez had a very close relationship. “He never chose Hein, but he chose Fernando. This is Ian placing his bet on a CEO he has chosen.”

Unilever declined to comment.

Analysts and people close to the company identified Unilever’s capital markets event in November as the day that clinched Fernandez’s ascent to the top job. The Argentine has worked at Unilever for almost four decades in Latin America, Asia and in management. He had outshone his boss since becoming CFO last January, the people said.

Veteran fund manager and shareholder Terry Smith told investors this week that he had nothing against Schumacher, who was “doing a fine job”. But he said Fernandez “really stood out” and was “basically dynamite”.

Shareholders and people close to the company said that while unexpected, the board’s abrupt ousting of Schumacher and decisive bet on Fernandez signalled a more ruthless approach from the group.

“We see quite a lot of pushback from investors on UK companies as being a bit dull, lacklustre, lacking in sharp elbows, needing to have activist interest to kind of get on with doing the right thing,” said Noffke.

“And here’s a company that’s kind of doing it for itself.”

Chart Unilver :

German travel group aims to expand ‘flexibility’ deals similar to those struck with Ryanair and easyJet

Tui, Europe’s largest travel operator, has outlined plans to sell more seats on other airlines’ aircraft, betting on a “low risk” model to generate growth amid fears of a dent in consumer confidence.

Tui has traditionally sold flights on its own planes or bought seats in bulk from other airlines to sell on to consumers through its package holidays.

But the German group told the Financial Times it would expand so-called “dynamic packaging deals”, having made partnerships with airlines including Ryanair and easyJet in the UK. The arrangements allow consumers to choose from a range of providers’ flights and hotels when booking trips.

Chief executive Sebastian Ebel said he was keen to agree such arrangements with more airlines. He hoped to roll out the approach — similar to those of online travel agents such as Booking.com and Expedia — in the Nordic countries, Spain and the Americas.

Tui’s cautious approach comes as it navigates uncertainty in the travel sector, amid more unstable travel demand.

“The reason why we have been more conservative on the capacity was because we anticipated that there was maybe more risk capacity growth than the market growth,” Ebel said.

There was a “good opportunity” to grow with a low-risk model, he said, pointing out the high costs of growing via its traditional routes.

“If we put another aircraft . . . it’s a €30mn, €50mn investment,” he said.

While few major airlines have reported a dent in demand for travel, there are some signs that customers have become more price-conscious.

In a recent European travel survey by AlixPartners, 67 per cent of consumers said they intended to spend the same amount or more on travel in 2025 than they did in 2024. But almost half of respondents claimed to have less money to spend this year.

Shares in UK travel group Jet2 fell sharply in February after it warned that gloomy consumer sentiment and rising costs might put profit margins in the year ahead “under some pressure”.

Ebel said the conventional wholesale business was “always very attractive” when there was strong demand or in peak seasons. When there was oversupply, he said, dynamic packages were “very good”.

“We needed to have the flexibility in the system that we are not hit if there’s less demand,” he said.

Having its own fleet of aircraft, cruise ships and own-branded hotels was in the past a significant selling point for Tui. However, difficult market conditions during the coronavirus pandemic prompted the company to sell parts of the business that owned the assets, including Hapag-Lloyd Cruises and a minority stake in Riu hotels.

The “dynamic packaging” trend is the latest chapter in the sometimes unhappy story of relationships between budget airlines and travel agents. Ryanair engaged in a years-long row with online travel agents, which it accused of overcharging for its flights and extras such as seat selections.

The number of customers making a trip with Tui’s dynamically packaged holidays was up 18 per cent year-on-year in the three months to December, to 700,000. A fifth of all customers in the period travelled on such packages.

Ebel said he had “good confidence in the market” but acknowledged that trips to Turkey had become “slightly more challenging” because of cost increases and that some customers were choosing cheaper destinations such as Egypt.

Tui shares fell sharply after it revealed on February 11 that bookings for the summer season had slowed down from the previous year.