Friday, February 7, 2025

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can't miss from the world of startups.

This first week of February was busy on the geopolitical front, as well as in the world of startups and VC news, with many announcements and significant amounts of capital changing hands.

Most interesting startup stories from the week

Image Credits: Waabi

Startups took different views on the recurring dilemma of whether to partner or not. Plus, a cautionary tale on high burn rates, and IPOs ahead.

Joining forces: Following a similar partnership with Aurora Innovation, Volvo Autonomous Solutions partnered with self-driving truck startup Waabi to jointly develop and deploy autonomous trucks. Commercial pilots are set to launch in Texas soon, with a driverless demonstration on public roads planned for the end of the year.

And space startups OurSky and PlaneWave merged to create Observable Space, a new company that aims to create the next generation of telescopes.

Going solo: Robotics company Figure AI exited its deal with OpenAI, choosing instead to focus on in-house AI owing to a "major breakthrough." The startup is developing a general-purpose humanoid robot for commercial and residential use.

And Google's X spun out Heritable Agriculture, a startup using AI to improve crop yield. The "moonshot factory" has been spinning off several ventures under the leadership of Astro Teller.

Takeover: XOi, a startup that builds software for maintenance people, acquired competitor Specifx to expand its datasets on repairs. The acquisition was made for an undisclosed sum and funded by a $230 million round that the company also announced this week.

High burn: Failed Canada-based accounting startup Bench burned through $135 million over the years before filing for bankruptcy, records revealed.

IPOs ahead: TechCrunch compiled a list of tech companies that could go public this year, including two space and defense tech startups that filed to go public last month: Karman and Voyager Technologies. Deel was not on the list, but a major secondary sale suggests that the IPO the fintech/HR startup previously teased for "the 2025/2026 time frame" is getting closer.

Most interesting VC and funding news this week

Image Credits: Aparna Jayakumar / Bloomberg / Getty Images

This week also brought us interesting funding news: deal rounds, but also new funds, and even funds of funds.

Adtech: Canadian programmatic advertising startup StackAdapt raised a $235 million growth funding round led by Teachers' Venture Growth (TVG), the investment arm of the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan.

FoF: India announced a new $1.15 billion fund of funds for startups as part of its federal budget for 2025-26. The FoF is meant to have an "expanded scope" compared to previous startup funding programs, and New Delhi will explore creating a separate deep tech FoF.

Indian LLMs: Ola billionaire founder Bhavish Aggarwal announced that he would invest $230 million into Krutrim, the AI startup he created in a push for Indian LLMs.

Deep tech: Munich-based CVC Hitachi Ventures secured $400 million for its fourth fund, which will keep on targeting Series A investments into deep tech startups, but with 55% of the capital reserved for follow-on investments.

Ozempic effect: Berry Street and Fay, two startups that match dietitians with patients, each raised a $50 million funding round, as GLP-1 drugs created tailwinds for nutrition counseling.

Riot! French startup Riot raised a $30 million Series B round to expand its focus beyond educating employees about cybersecurity risks, and now nudge them further into minimizing threats. With a post-money valuation north of $170 million according to sources, the company reached $10 million in annual revenue in 2024.

Cherry on top: German VC firm Cherry Ventures raised a new $500 million fund to make early-stage and follow-on investments. Its previous fund, announced in 2022, had closed at approximately $312 million.

First fund: European VC firm Emblem, which is based in Paris, raised $85 million for its initial fund. Its general partners previously invested in companies like Gourmey and Sorare, among others.

Last but not least

Image Credits: Andriy Onufriyenko / Getty Images

European AI startups collectively raised $8 billion in 2024, according to the French AI Report. Released jointly by early-stage VC firm Galion.exe, growth investment firm Revaia, and advisory firm Chausson Partners, it also revealed that 70% of that capital went into seed to Series B rounds, suggesting that the figure could increase as the scene matures.