Weekly Download #6

Nvidia Makes History: Chip giant hits $3.92T, becoming the most valuable company ever

Elon's AI War: Musk's xAI raises $10B to battle his former company OpenAI

VC AI Gold Rush: Menlo Ventures raises $1.5B specifically for AI investments

Figma's Revenge Plot: Design platform files for IPO after Adobe's failed $20B acquisition

Grammar Meets Email: Grammarly acquires premium email client Superhuman to expand productivity suite

Enterprise Software Revolution: AI-powered ERP startups raise millions to challenge SAP and Oracle

The Numbers are Impressive: Currently, Nvidia remains strong at $3.89T, comfortably ahead of Microsoft ($3.71T) and Apple ($3.19T). To put this in perspective, Nvidia's market value now exceeds the value of every public company in the UK combined.

The Backstory is Wild: Just three years ago, Nvidia was valued at $360B, but when ChatGPT barged onto the scene, everyone realized they needed AI chips for their data centers, and Nvidia skyrocketed from $360B to $3T in that time.

Plot Twist: While Nvidia is printing cash, Microsoft is scaling back its in-house AI chip ambitions after its next-gen chip ("Braga") was delayed by at least six months. The delays are due to design changes, staffing shortages, and high employee turnover.

The Numbers Tell a Story: Being one of the largest funding rounds ever, xAI sits at a $45-50B valuation with its total funding to $12B in just two years.

The Competition: It puts xAI in the big leagues behind Anthropic ($18.2B raised, $61.5B valuation) and OpenAI ($17.9B raised, $300B valuation). 

The Infrastructure & Talent Play: With this capital, xAI can pursue ambitious research and attract top AI talent. Also, they plan to build a 1M GPU facility in addition to the 200,000 GPUs at their Colossus supercomputer in Memphis.

The Breakdown: They're splitting this into $650M for early-stage AI startups and $850M for later-stage companies to diversify between "wild AI experiments" and "actually profitable AI businesses."

But Wait, There's More: Menlo launched a $100M "Anthology Fund" with Anthropic that gives startups money plus $25K in compute credits and access to cutting-edge AI models.

The Plot Twist: Figma dropped its S-1 filing, officially announcing plans to list on the NYSE under the ticker "FIG."

The Numbers are Spicy: Figma pulled in $749M in revenue last year (up 48% from 2023) with 13M monthly active users and a huge 91% gross margin. Compare that to Adobe's $21.5B revenue but only 11% growth, Figma is 3% the size but growing 4x faster.

What Makes Figma Special: Their sales efficiency is 1.0, meaning every dollar spent on sales and marketing in 2023 generated a dollar of new gross profit in 2024. Adobe's more traditional model only hits 0.39. Also, Figma's R&D spend nearly equals its marketing spend, and the product essentially sells itself.

But There's More: Figma mentioned AI over 150 times in their filing, and they're holding $69.5M in Bitcoin ETFs. Their 132% net dollar retention puts them in the top decile of SaaS companies.

The Backstory: Back in 2019, Superhuman founder Rahul Vohra charged $30 monthly for an email app optimized for keyboard shortcuts. The waiting list hit 200,000 people who wanted to feel like hackers while checking email.

Why This Makes Sense: Grammarly is pivoting from "the thing that fixes typos" to "the AI that handles all communication." After ChatGPT, Grammarly's 30M daily users faced a choice: polish drafts or let AI write everything.

Case in Point: Tailor raised $22M to reimagine company operations with a "headless" ERP. They separated the user interface from the backend, allowing companies to select interfaces while the backend handles inventory, accounting, and workflows.

The Timing is Perfect: CEO Yo Shibata predicts AI will handle 90% of operational tasks soon (currently 50%), so businesses want adaptable systems. Their system, Omakase, lets AI agents automate tasks via API.

Plot Twist: Another ERP startup called Campfire just raised $35M for a similar AI-first approach. The "boring business software" space is having a moment.

Skarbe: Raised $600K Pre-Seed led by Firstpick for an AI sales assistant that helps founders close deals.

Cekura AI: Raised $2.4M Seed led by YC for AI-based developer tools to observe and test AI voice agents.

TextQL: Raised Seed led by Dropbox Ventures for a platform that simplifies the data-to-insight process.

Rocketable: Raised $6.5M Seed for a holding company that acquires existing software products and operates them using AI agents.

GrowthBook: Raised $22.6M Venture Round for an open-source feature flagging and experimentation platform.

Fastino: Raised funding in Seed led by Dropbox Ventures to enable developers everywhere to do more with AI.

Bild AI: Raised $3.1M Seed led by Khosla and YC for AI that understands construction blueprints, materials, and cost estimation.

Anoki AI: Raised $10M Seed for CTV multimodal AI technology.

Autosana: Raised $500K Seed for mobile app QA agent automation.

Levelpath: Raised $55M Series B led by Battery Ventures for an AI-native procurement platform that streamlines procurement.

Wisq: Raised $15M Venture Round for guiding people to success and happiness at work.

Gallant Therapeutics: Raised $18M Series B led by Digitalis Ventures for animal health biotechnology.

Maui Imaging: Raised $14.7M Venture Round for ultrasound capability that can see into, through, and around bones, metals, and more.

Soteris: Raised $8M Venture Round for ML services that offer AI pricing tools to the insurance business.

Civ Robotics: Raised $7.5M Series A led by AlleyCorp for construction tech startup aiming to revolutionize land surveying.

Castelion: Raised $350M Series B led by Altimeter Capital and Lightspeed to apply modern hardware dev and manufacturing to national security.

Rune Labs: Raised $11.2M Venture Round for a software and data platform for neuromodulation and brain therapies.

Campfire: Raised $35M Series A for consumer entertainment and social technology.

Alec's Ice Cream: Raised funding in Series A for consumer food and beverage innovation.

Airial Travel: Raised $3M Seed led by Montage Ventures for an AI travel agent designed to simplify the flight booking process.

Interfere: Raised Pre-Seed for cybersecurity and threat detection solutions.

Skylark Labs: Raised $2M Seed for creating superIntelligence or edge intelligence beyond human limits.

Symbia: Raised funding in Pre-Seed for a biotech startup that automates the preparation of new drug applications.