Yash

1/ Excited to share I’ve raised a $26M venture fund to back early-stage founders. @Mercury is still my 100% focus but I’m formalizing my angel investing in this fund.🧵

Announcing Lio's $30M Series A, led by Andreessen Horowitz! Procurement still operates like an administrative back-office function: rigid software, manual workflows and endless headcount. Enterprises spend over $180 billion annually on procurement talent and roughly $10 billion on procurement software, yet the problem persists. More software hasn't solved it. More hiring won't either. Introducing @Lio_Technology (formerly askLio) the world's first multi-agent system for procurement. Our virtual workforce is already deployed at some of the world's largest enterprises, taking over the manual work that buries buyers, shared service centers, and BPOs today. But Lio doesn't just do the same job - it does work that was never humanly possible: renegotiating every contract, sourcing across every category, and preparing as well as analyzing every negotiation, all at once. Lio's AI agents operate on top of existing procurement software and ERPs - no rip-and-replace - autonomously executing workflows end to end. The results speak for themselves: -   95% adoption rate -   85% reduction in manual work -   10% incremental savings -   100% customer retention Lio isn't a dashboard or a copilot. It's the execution layer for enterprise procurement. As one Head of Procurement put it: "Lio is a cheaper, more scalable, and faster-to-onboard alternative to outsourcing." Lio’s agents are already managing billions of dollars in enterprise spend across dozens of Global 2000 and Fortune 500 companies – from manufacturers to reinsurers to huge industrial conglomerates. This raise accelerates our US expansion and the growth of our agent ecosystem as we build the infrastructure powering AI-driven procurement. A huge thank you to our incredible team, customers, and advisors. Proud to have outstanding investors on board: the round was led by @a16z - special thanks to @seema_amble - with participation from SV Angel, @HarryStebbings, @ycombinator, and a group of leading procurement executives and successful founders. Additional thanks to @BKRoberts, @arampell, @jamdac, @zephratic and @t_blom. Whether as an enterprise partner or a new team member — join our mission now!

David AI has raised a $50M Series B from Meritech and NVIDIA to establish the data layer for audio AI. Audio is the front-end interface for real-world AI. At David AI, we’re creating the data that powers the models bringing these use cases to life. withdavid.ai/news/announcin…

Episode #93: Michael Kim @ Cendana @MKRocks is the Founder of @CendanaCapital, making anchor investments in very early stage VC funds. We talk 204x DPI funds, characteristics of the top performing venture investors, how Cendana does diligence on fund managers, portfolio construction best practices + Michael’s 60x rule, and why a high ownership to fund size ratio drives outlier returns. We also get into how VCs are using AI, the competition between Seed and multi-stage investors, why US endowments are under siege, and how secondaries are driving most early stage venture returns today. Michael also opens up about the early days of starting Cendana, the 18 month grind raising Cendana Fund 1, the day he almost died, and ranking in the top 2% globally in Call of Duty. Shoutout to @infoarbitrage, @kevinhartz, @semil, @jeff, @Beezer232, @jaltma, @jmj, @pitdesi, @nwischoff, @tedalling, and @Rick_Zullo for their help putting this together. Thanks @boltdotnew for supporting this episode (check out their Hackathon with $1m in prizes!) Full episode here on X, or grab a link in the replies. Timestamps: 4:24 The day Michael almost died 5:10 Call of Duty & video games 9:34 Hiring @ Cendana 10:31 How Cendana uses structured and unstructured data 16:51 How VCs are using AI 19:55 Why secondaries are driving most early stage venture returns 22:01 Deciding when to sell secondaries 24:28 Best performing venture funds ever 27:26 The best VCs have amazing access to the best founders 33:42 Why Cendana backs Solo GPs 35:57 How to invest over time and hype cycles 41:35 Why multi-stage firms are investing earlier 44:45 Cendana’s current thesis: High ownership % to fund size 45:51 Why Cendana started backing non-lead VCs 48:41 How Cendana does diligence on fund managers 52:22 VC NPS Scores and Ron Conway’s Silver Bullet 53:49 Good vs bad new VC firm strategies 56:36 Determining defensibility of a strategy 57:57 “Messy middle” software buyout fund 1:03:25 Portfolio construction best practice 1:08:11 Michael’s 60x Rule 1:14:28 How Seed funds compete with multi-stage funds 1:20:05 Should you collect logos writing small checks? 1:21:07 Becoming an LP for the city of SF 1:24:42 Taking 18+ months to raise Cendana Fund 1 in the GFC 1:26:48 Warehousing the first Cendana Fund 1 investments 1:29:56 How to do a first close 1:34:29 Why it’s hard to kill a VC firm 1:37:00 What happens to ZIRP tourist fund managers 1:40:22 How to raise a Fund 2 or 3 today 1:42:07 “US endowments are under siege” 1:44:55 What the best GP LP relationships look like 1:46:41 What Fund of Funds get wrong 1:50:43 The three most interesting trends in venture today

our CTO @rbehal1729 sat down and built an entirely new startup in a day i recorded a pre and post game interview because no one believes me when I say he's as productive as 10 engineers he also refuses to buy a new shirt

Today, we’re announcing a $300 million Series C in a mix of primary and secondary funding at a $3.5 billion valuation. We’re excited to bring on @Sequoia as our lead investor in the round, with participation from @sparkcapital, @MarathonMP, @coatuemgmt, @CRV, & @a16z.

Excited to announce that @onyx_dot_app has raised a $10M seed round led by @khoslaventures and @firstround! Today, we’re helping thousands of teams answer millions of questions a month by making all their internal knowledge instantly accessible from a single location. 1/6

Excited to announce our $5M seed round led by First Round! withdavid.ai/blog/announcin…

Excited to share that we've raised $36m from @martin_casado at @a16z along with @saammotamedi @GreylockVC @eladgil @basecasevc to further our mission of helping developers build AI products that work. A bit more on what we're up to 🧵

Thrilled to announce our $6.7M seed round to help you replace GPT-4 with your own fine-tuned models! Round was led by @costanoavc alongside @ycombinator, @OfficialLoganK, @alexgraveley, @Altimor, @mojombo, @immad, @Austen and many others. ❤️ openpipe.ai/blog/announcin…

Today, we're excited to announce our $16M seed round. We are thankful to all of our investors, supporters and customers who believe in our vision to build a better, open source cloud for everyone. Join us on our journey! #cloud #opensource techcrunch.com/2024/03/05/ubi…

1/ Hello world 👋 Today, we’re thrilled to announce Mythos Ventures Fund I. We’ve raised $14M to back founders building early-stage transformative AI companies. open.substack.com/pub/mythosvent… bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

1/ Today we're announcing @BankMercury's Series B We raised $120m @ $1.62b led by Coatue @a16z, @crv, @sapphirevc participated as did incredible entrepreneurs like @typesfast, @mathildecollin, @jaltma +we are including a $5m crowdfund for our customers twitter.com/BankMercury/st…