Enterprise Weekly #458: NYC Enterprise Tech Funding, AI Videos, and More
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Just in time for the long holiday weekend, we published our latest State of NYC Enterprise Tech Funding Report, which found that while funding activity continued its decline with $3B in funding across 108 deals in 2023, two major points stand out:
#1: NYC enterprise Seed was a bright light amidst broader declines.
Seed kept pace with 2021’s peak and outperformed broader US Pre-Seed and Seed trends, which dipped 33.2% YoY.
Series Bs plummeted 73% YoY.
Out of 47 unicorns, only 7 raised up-rounds.
#2: We expect 2023 to be the low point with 2024 resuming annual growth.
We predict Series Bs to rebound in 2024 at more normalized pricing, and in turn Series A investors become more active and eager to fund opportunities from the large pool of Seed deals that got done in 2023.
Not surprisingly, we also found that Data/AI/ML was the leading sector for NYC enterprise tech unicorns. As the WSJ similarly found at its recent CIO Summit, generative AI and its potential impact on the transformation of business is leading to “enterprise tech having its moment” given the amount of productivity it can unlock for people and processes.
It’s a whole new AI world. This week, OpenAI introduced Sora, its new text-to-video model – see some examples here, here, and here. Right now, Sora is only available to “red teamers” who are assessing the model for vulnerabilities. There’s a lot to unpack here…besides getting one step closer to a digital reality, early indicators show Sora has made leaps and bounds progress beyond existing offerings from startup competitors (like Runway and Pika) and fellow tech giants (Meta and Google's Lumiere) with capacity for 60 second clips, which apparently no other company offers yet. Especially for startups building in the generative AI space, this is a reminder that industry leaders can serve as formidable competition.
🤓 Join more Work-Bench events:
Wednesday, February 21: Enterprise Sales Masterclass on How Technical Founders Can Sell Technical Products led by Work-Bench Sales Advisor Kiran Narsu who will walk through the 5 critical stages of sales
Thursday, February 22: Docker Compose Community NYC Workshop & Happy Hour on the 2024 State of Compose hosted by Shipyard
📚 Read more news:
CNBC: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Seeks As Much As $7T For New AI Chip Project
The Information: OpenAI Researcher Andrej Karpathy Departs
The Information: Canva CFO Damien Singh Leaves Ahead of Potential IPO
The Verge: A Decade Later, It’s Clear That Slack Changed Work Culture, Even At Companies That Don’t Use It
The WSJ: Early Adopters of Microsoft’s AI Bot Wonder if It’s Worth the Money
📚 Read more (th)reads:
Company: CloudQuery
Role: Head of Marketing
Technology: Open-Source ELT Framework
Funding: $18.5M from Work-Bench, Boldstart, Mango Capital, Haystack, Tiger Global Management
🌟 Company of the Week 🌟
Artie raises $3.3M led by Exponent Founders Capital
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Co-Founders: Jacqueline Cheong (CEO), Robin Tang
Zylon raises $3.2M led by Felicis
Collaboration / Productivity • Pre-Seed • Madrid, Spain
KTrust raises $5.3M led by Awz Ventures
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Seed • Tel Aviv, Israel
Motif Analytics raises $5.7M led by Felicis and Amplify Partners
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Mindy raises $6M led by Founders Fund and Sequoia Capital
Collaboration / Productivity • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Seal Security raises $7.4M led by Vertex Ventures
Risk / Security • Seed • Tel Aviv, Israel
Permit raises $8M led by Scale Venture Partners
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Series A • Tel Aviv, Israel
Quilter raises $10M led by Benchmark
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Series A • Los Angeles, CA
Knock raises $12M led by Craft Ventures
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Series A • New York, NY
Marqo raises $12.5M led by Lightspeed Venture Partners
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series A • San Francisco, CA
Scribe raises $25M led by Redpoint Ventures
Future of Work • Series B • San Francisco, CA
Rasa raises $30M led by StepStone Group and PayPal Ventures
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series C • San Francisco, CA
Meter raises $35M led by Sam Altman and Lachy Groom
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Venture • San Francisco, CA
Antithesis raises $47M led by Amplify Partners, Tamarack Global and Others
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Seed • Vienna, VA
Bugcrowd raises $102M led by General Catalyst
Risk / Security • Series E • San Francisco, CA
Sierra raises $110M led by Benchmark and Sequoia Capital
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Venture • San Francisco, CA
Lambda raises $320M led by USIT
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Series C • San Jose, CA
Armis acquires CTCI for ~20M
Risk / Security • Acquisition • Beaverton, OR
HiBob acquires Pento for ~$40M
HR Tech • Acquisition • London, UK
Notion acquires Skiff for an Undisclosed Amount
Collaboration / Productivity • Acquisition • San Francisco, CA
Salesloft acquires Drift for an Undisclosed Amount
Sales / Marketing • Acquisition • Atlanta, GA
Perforce Software acquires Delphix for an Undisclosed Amount
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Acquisition • Redwood City, CA
Zendesk acquires Klaus for an Undisclosed Amount
Sales / Marketing • Acquisition • Tallinn, Estonia