TheChek News Flow

It was a huge week for startups raising big. A company had to raise nine figures to make the list this week and five raised $200 million or more. It’s unlikely the short week next week will see these kinds of rounds, so don’t expect the same type of dollar figures in the next seven days.

1. Sila Nanotechnologies, $375M battery: A next-generation battery materials company led the way this week with a huge round. Alameda, California-based Sila, a next-generation battery materials company, announced it raised a $375 million Series G led by existing investors Sutter Hill Ventures and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates. The new cash will help the company finish construction of its Moses Lake, Washington, plant — scheduled for the first quarter of next year — for the production of its Titan Silicon anode material. Founded in 2011, the company has raised $1.4 billion, per Crunchbase.

2. Formation Bio, $372M, biotech: Every week there is a big biotech raise and this week’s is really big. Formation Bio, an AI-enhanced pharma company, raised a $372 million Series D led by a16z. The New York-based startup, launched in 2016 as TrialSpark, has built AI-enabled platforms and processes to accelerate drug development and clinical trials — integrating large language models, AI models and applications throughout its platform. More and more biotech startups are using AI to help with their drug processes and investors are clearly taking note. Founded in 2013, the company has raised $528 million, per Crunchbase.

3. CData Software, $350M, data integration: A round that likely skipped under most folks’ radar was data connectivity company CData Software’s massive $350 million growth round from two big-named firms. The round was led by Warburg Pincus, with participation from Accel. The Chapel Hill, North Carolina-based company develops data products and connectivity solutions that provide access to live data from hundreds of on-premises and cloud applications. Founded in 2016, the company has raised $510 million, per Crunchbase.

4. (tied) Creatio, $200M, customer relationship management: Low-code and no-code startups are not seeing the funding they did a couple of years ago, but it clearly has not dried up completely. Creatio achieved unicorn status after landing a $200 million round led by Sapphire Ventures. The new cash, a minority investment, values the startup at $1.2 billion and will be used to help the company expand globally as it continues to grow revenue 50% year to year. The Boston-based startup is a developer of a no-code platform to automate customer relationship management and enterprise workflows. Not surprisingly, the company has an AI angle — creating a new generative AI copilot to help automate different marketing and sales tasks. Founded in 2014, Creatio previously raised $68 million in 2021 in a round led by Volition Capital, per Crunchbase.

4. (tied) Foodsmart, $200M, healthcare: Foodsmart locked down a massive $200 million round led by TPG’s global impact investing platform, The Rise Fund. The San Francisco-based company has developed a telenutrition and food benefits management platform. Founded in 2010, Foodsmart helps those facing chronic disease and food insecurity by partnering with health plans and providers to give patients access to affordable healthy eating options, virtual nutrition counseling and meal plans. Foodsmart has raised nearly $315 million, per Crunchbase.

6. Sidecar Health, $165M, healthcare: Healthcare is a mess — nearly everyone can agree on that. Sidecar Health, a health insurance company providing major medical coverage to businesses, closed a $165 million Series D led by Koch Disruptive Technologies to try to untangle it at least a little bit. The El Segundo, California-based startup offers plans that eliminate the need for prior authorizations, referrals and networks for doctors — allowing patients to go where they want. Sidecar Health believes a free-market approach will ensure healthcare is more accessible and affordable. Founded in 2018, the company has raised $328 million, per Crunchbase.

7. EvolutionaryScale, $142M, biotech: It was a big week for biotech. New York-based EvolutionaryScale, which has developed a large language model for creating novel proteins, raised a $142 million seed funding, led by Daniel Gross, Lux Capital and Nat Friedman. Amazon Web Services and NVentures, the venture capital arm of Nvidia, also took part in the round. While the company’s AI can be used for accelerating drug discovery, it also believes it can be used for other other applications such as breaking down plastics.

8. Etched.ai, $120M, semiconductor: Etched.ai became the latest startup to ride the wave of investor enthusiasm for AI chips. The San Francisco-based startup locked up a $120 million round led by Positive Sum and Primary Venture Partners. The startup is the creator of the transformer-specialized AI chip Sohu, used to train and deploy large language models that are the underpinning of generative AI. Etched has announced a partnership with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to produce the chip, which will be a direct competitor to chip giant Nvidia — which dominates the market in AI. However, the large energy consumption of AI remains a concern, and Etched believes it can provide a more cost-effective and energy-efficient chip that is faster.

9. Bright Machines, $106M, manufacturing: San Francisco-based Bright Machines, a developer of software-defined manufacturing, raised $126 million in a Series C funding — with $106 million in equity led by investment from funds and accounts managed by BlackRock. Founded in 2018, Bright Machines has raised more than $400 million, per the company.

10. (tied) Hebbia, $100M, artificial intelligence: New York-based Hebbia, a startup using generative AI to search large documents and find answers, raised nearly $100 million in a Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz. Founded in 2020, the company has raised more than $130 million, per Crunchbase.

10. (tied) LanzaJet, $100M, fuel: Chicago-based LanzaJet, a sustainable fuels technology company, announced a $100 million growth equity round. Investors included Mitsubishi UFG Financial.

Marketing and sales software giant HubSpot said on Friday that it’s investigating a cybersecurity incident.

On Friday, rumors of some kind of cyberattack against HubSpot began circulating on social media. When reached for comment, HubSpot spokesperson Camille Uzel told TechCrunch that on June 22 the company “identified a security incident that involved bad actors targeting a limited number of HubSpot customers and attempting to gain unauthorized access to their accounts.”

“HubSpot triggered our incident response procedures, and since June 22 we have been contacting impacted customers and taking necessary steps to revoke the unauthorized access and protect our customers and their data,” Uzel said.

HubSpot is a U.S.-based company that specializes in customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation software, and has a market cap of almost $30 billion as of Friday.

At this point, it’s unclear what’s the extent of the incident and how many HubSpot customers were affected.

As a changing climate makes southern counties ripe for viticulture, the largest producers are attracting investment from overseas

US president’s team says he will take part in September debate despite disastrous Thursday performance

Joe Biden said on Friday that he was pressing on with his re-election bid despite mounting calls by Democrats for him to bow out after a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump.

The US president told supporters at a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, that he was there for “one reason, because I intend to win this state in November”. The crowd responded with a chant for “four more years”.

In comments that sought to address his poor performance in Thursday’s debate, Biden said: “I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious. I don’t walk as easy as I used to . . . I don’t debate as well as I used to.”

He added: “But I know what I do know, I know how to tell the truth . . . I know how to do this job . . . When you get knocked down you get back up.”

The president’s comments came as Democrats reported widening panic in the party on Friday after a “disastrous” debate performance, with supporters concluding Biden would struggle to beat Trump at the ballot box in November.

“The only way it could have been more disastrous was if he had fallen off the stage. Big donors are saying . . . he has to go,” one Democratic operative said. “If Biden stays in, we will have to watch him on a trapeze wire until November.”

Top Democratic lawmakers, donors and party insiders were rattled on Thursday night after the president frequently stumbled over his words in the debate, gave rambling answers and in some instances appeared to lose his train of thought.

The debate, which CNN said was watched by 48mn television viewers and streamed by another 30mn, was considered a crucial opportunity for Biden to turn around his faltering re-election campaign, which has been weighed down by concerns about his age and the cost of living. He trails Trump in most national and swing state opinion polls.

Before Thursday’s debate, predictive polling models saw a close race, with FiveThirtyEight calling it a coin flip. But political betting markets moved dramatically against Biden during and after the debate — and a Real Clear Politics average of betting odds on Friday showed Biden with just a 19 per cent chance of winning the presidency.

The Democratic operative said the easiest path forward for the party would be if Biden’s wife, Jill, or other longtime political advisers in his inner circle convinced him to drop out.

Other Democrats have quietly called for former President Barack Obama or former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, the former Democratic presidential nominee, to persuade Biden to step aside.

But Obama squashed suggestions Biden should step aside on Friday in a statement posted to social media.

“Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know. But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself,” Obama said. “Last night didn’t change that.”

Yet behind closed doors, many more remained skeptical.

“There’s lots of gallows humour among Democratic members this morning. The talk about whether Biden continues is fully out in the open,” a Democratic congressman told the Financial Times on Friday morning.

“We need a new nominee,” said another Democratic lawmaker.

A top New York financier said that a small number of influential donors had reached out to Ron Klain and Mike Donilon, two of Biden’s closest longtime advisers, urging the president to do “the right thing for the party and country”. 

“Ultimately it will be Jill [Biden] who makes the decision,” said another top financier. “She’s the voice of reason and I can’t imagine she will want to go through four months of this . . . Joe will listen to her.”

The Biden team sought to project confidence on Friday, saying the president had raised $14mn on Thursday and Friday morning. It said that the hour after the debate was the single best of grassroots, or small-dollar, fundraising since Biden launched his re-election bid.

After his rally in North Carolina on Friday, the president was set to attend several closed-door meetings with deep-pocketed donors, including a campaign event on Friday night in Manhattan and two on Saturday in the Hamptons and New Jersey.

Trump is set to hold his own rally on Friday afternoon in Virginia, a state he lost to Biden by 10 points in 2020 but where the latest opinion polls show the two men in a statistical tie.