November 22nd Newsletter

Amidst the Q3 earnings season and persistent high interest rates, Fed Chair Jerome Powell indicates rate cuts are still on the horizon, but there's no rush to implement them. President-elect Donald Trump continues his “daily“ appointment routine by tapping billionaire Howard Lutnick as Commerce Secretary and the search for Treasury Secretary drags on with WSJ reporting that Trump is considering Kevin Warsh with the understanding he may later be nominated to lead the Federal Reserve. Trump's DOGE appointees, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, have expressed support for abolishing the Department of Education. In a historic move, the DOJ is pushing for Google to sell its Chrome browser and to restrict its Android mobile OS, potentially reshaping the tech landscape. In the business world, Super Micro's stock rebounded 31% after appointing BDO as its new auditor and submitted a plan to Nasdaq detailing its efforts to regain compliance with the exchange after EY’s resignation last month. Meanwhile, Apple is directly selling ads in Apple News for the first time.

"In 8 days, ChatGPT will celebrate the 2nd anniversary of its public debut"

As 2024 comes to an end, National Geographic releases its Pictures of the Year.

Top 5 AI highlights

[1] 💰 Elon Musk's xAI is securing $5 billion in funding, valuing the company at $50 billion. The funds, supported by Qatar Investment Authority and investors like Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, will be used to procure an additional 100,000 Nvidia chips to transform the Memphis Colossus into a unified 200,000 H100/H200 training cluster, enhancing model development infrastructure. This move further strengthens xAI's chatbot, Grok, as a formidable competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT. Read more.

[2] 🛒 Perplexity launched a shopping hub to challenge Google's search dominance. The new feature offers product cards with visuals in response to shopping queries, powered by integrations like Shopify. It includes a visual search tool and a merchant program, initially launching in the US, demonstrating the potential of AI in e-commerce. More information.

[3] 🤖 DeepSeek, a Chinese AI Lab, has launched the R1-Lite-Preview, a high-performance reasoning-focused language model available through its DeepSeek Chat. Known for open-source innovations, it aims to provide advanced reasoning with "chain-of-thought" reasoning capabilities, offering transparency and performance that rivals OpenAI’s o1 model. This could lead to more US restrictions on AI chips. Additional details.

[4] 🧠 Mistral AI has significantly upgraded its free AI platform with web search, image generation, and visual analysis capabilities. The update includes improved document analysis, an enhanced language model, and a coding-focused LLM. Mistral's Le Chat now rivals or surpasses paid offerings from major competitors like ChatGPT and Perplexity. This move further fuels the debate on Sovereign AI. Click here to learn more.

[5] 🚀At the Ignite conference, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emphasized AI’s rapid growth, highlighting key shifts like multimodal interfaces and enhanced reasoning and noted that its capabilities “double every six months or so.”. Meanwhile, Microsoft partner d-Matrix unveiled Corsair, a GPU alternative for AI inference, promising faster token processing and improved efficiency for large language models in data centers. Backed by Microsoft's venture arm, d-Matrix targets enterprise AI infrastructure scalability and energy efficiency. Read more here and here.

Founder’s Corner

 Interview with former CFO of OneStream on their IPO journey

What we read and listened to this week

• Blackstone acquires a majority stake in Jersey Mike's Subs, valuing the chain at $8B, including debt (PB).

• Comcast to spin off cable channels like MSNBC and CNBC, retaining NBC network and Peacock streaming service (BBG).

• Joanna Stern, WSJ tech reporter, takes four AI voice bots on a test run in the wilderness. Watch her trip on (YouTube).

• McDonald's invests $100M to aid franchisees after an E. coli outbreak linked to recalled slivered onions (CBS).

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman joins San Francisco Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie's transition team to drive innovation and key partnerships (TC).

• SpaceX plans a $135 per-share tender offer, boosting valuation to over $250 billion. On Tuesday, SpaceX launched its Starship rocket from Texas, advancing spaceflight abilities but failing to land its booster with President Trump in the audience (Silicon).

• Spirit Airlines files for bankruptcy but assures travelers of uninterrupted operations during holiday season flights (CNN).

Special Section: Q3 Earnings Highlights

• Nvidia reported $35.1 billion in revenue, a 93.6% YoY increase, surpassing expectations. Despite strong results and optimistic Q4 guidance, shares dipped slightly due to high expectations. The company highlighted strong demand for its Blackwell GPU platform, with CEO Jensen Huang confirming production is now "in full steam." (Forbes)

• Walmart topped Q3 expectations, with $169.59 billion in revenue and shares rose about 3% on Tuesday, seeing continuous success in their e-commerce and advertising operations (BBG).

• Target's sales and profit missed expectations, with Q3 revenue rising 1.1% but net income dropping 12%, leading to a 22% share decline and lowered earnings forecast for the holiday season. Analysts attribute struggles to inflationary pressures and shifting consumer spending priorities (CBS).

  Costco, Target, and Walmart: 5-Day Stock Price % Change

• Snowflake shares surged 32% after beating Q3 earnings estimates, with 28% revenue growth and higher guidance. Stocks surged to the best day since going public in 2020 (CNBC).

AI M&A and Fundraising news

November 21:

• New Lantern: Radiology copilot, raised a $19M Series A round.

November 20:

• Converge Bio: Biotech LLMs, raised a $5.5M Seed round.

• Cyera: AI-powered data security platform, raised a $300M Series D round.

• Federato: AI-powered insurance risk analysis, raised a $40M Series C round.

• Juna.ai: AI agents for industrial process control, raised a $7.5M seed round.

• Prompt Security: GenAI security platform, raised an $18M Series A round.

• Roboflow: Vision AI startup, raised a $40M Series B round.

• Twine: AI employees for cybersecurity teams, raised a $12M Seed round.

November 19:

• BrightAI: AI-powered asset management for businesses, raised a $15M seed round.

• Calvin Risk: AI safety startup, raised a $4M seed round.

• Citizen Health: AI-driven health platform, raised a $15.5M seed round.

• Distyl: AI-driven workflows tailored for organizations, raised a $20M Series A round.

• Enfabrica: High-performance networking chip maker, raised a $115M Series C round.

• Gemesys: Analog computer chips to enhance AI on devices, raised a $9.1M pre-seed round.

• Jimini: AI-supported mental health therapy, raised an $8M pre-seed round.

• Kong: Cloud API technology developer, raised a $175M Series E round.

• Promise: Generative AI entertainment studio, raised an undisclosed funding round.

• Revv: AI-driven platform for auto repair shops, raised a $20M round.

• Rox: AI agents for salespeople, raised a $50M seed and Series A round.

• Selector: AI for IT incident response, raised a $33M Series B round.

• Spines: AI platform for assisting authors in publishing books, raised a $16M Series A round.

November 18:

• Accelsius: Efficient cooling for AI data centers, raised a $24M funding round.

• ChapsVision: AI-based data processing company, raised a $90M funding round.

• CommBox: Omnichannel AI customer experience platform, raised $15M funding.

• Gendo: Architectural AI platform, raised a $5.5M seed round.

• Linkup: Web access for AI, raised a $3.3M seed round.

• Moonvalley: Generative AI creative models, raised a $70M seed round.

• Pruna AI: AI model compression, raised a $6.5M seed round.

• Revisto: AI-powered compliance for life sciences marketing, raised a $4M seed round.

• SuperAnnotate: Data management software for large-scale AI datasets, raised a $36M Series B round.

November 15:

• Skydio: AI-powered autonomous drones, raised a $170M Series E extension.

Attached to this email, you’ll find a summary of this week’s highlights and the financial performance of select public companies, providing you with a snapshot of recent market movements.