Enterprise Weekly #467: Exits Are Back, The LLM Rundown, and More
Work-Bench is an enterprise software VC firm — if you are or know anyone thinking about founding an enterprise software startup — we’d love to meet! Please reach out to chat. 📩
We saw some notable exits this week! Is VC liquidity back? At least this week it was.
IBM bought cloud lifecycle and security management platform HashiCorp for $6.4B to double down on its cloud business as it becomes increasingly necessary to store and process the vast amounts of data employed in AI programs.
Nvidia is acquiring AI workload management platform Run:ai for a rumored $700M to $1B. With its acquisition of Run:ai, NVIDIA will bolster its DGX Cloud platform by providing access to inference and compute optimization across varying customer infrastructure, potentially increasing vendor lock in as NVIDIA can serve as a customer's one stop shop for their AI needs.
Rubrik IPOed. While the popular cloud security company has significant traction with enterprise customers and garnering subscription revenue, Rubrik’s IPO is under a watchful eye as it remains unprofitable with its losses continuing to grow…not something we’d expect to see in today’s tough IPO market.
Meanwhile this week, Snowflake released its own family of generative AI models, called Arctic. Touted as the “most open enterprise-grade LLM,” Arctic is optimized for complex enterprise workloads such as SQL generation, code generation and instruction following.
In case your head is spinning to keep up with all the LLM news, we suggest you read:
TechCrunch’s rundown of the latest LLMs and what sets each model apart
Jamin Ball’s overview of Dense Models vs. Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) models
Lastly, we caught up with Jo Engreitz, Work-Bench Next NYC Operator and Head of Product Growth at Hex to get her POV and real world examples on how to determine the best GTM motion for your product and build towards that motion for the least amount of traction.
🍺 Join more Work-Bench events:
Tuesday, May 7: Virtual Masterclass: Top Do's & Don'ts of Pricing at Seed with Rob Bailey, repeat founder and CEO of BackboneAI on his proven framework for approaching strategic pricing, drawing from real-world examples of pricing pages and sharing invaluable lessons learned along the way.
Tuesday, May 7: Taco Tuesday for early-stage enterprise founders and operators
Wednesday, May 22: NY Enterprise Tech Meetup with a female VC panel from a16z, Lux Capital and Work-Bench on what it takes to get funding and what the stickiest tech trends are in today’s environment.
Thursday, May 23: Virtual Masterclass: 5 Battle-Tested Leadership Tactics of Highly Successful Founders with David Politis, Founder of BetterCloud on his playbook of battle-tested (and practical) leadership tactics, covering crucial aspects like communication, instilling company values, optimizing meetings, and beyond
📚 Read more news:
Barron’s: Microsoft, Alphabet, and More Earnings
Carta: State of Pre-Seed: Q1 2024
TechCrunch: UnitedHealth Says Change Hackers Stole Health Fata On ‘Substantial Proportion Of People In America’
The Information: Six-Month-Old AI Coding Startup Valued at $2B by Founders Fund
WSJ: Amazon Introduces Custom AI Capabilities in Race Against Cloud Rivals
📚 Read more (th)reads:
Company: Ethos AI
Role: Founding Engineer (NYC)
Technology: End-to-End Model Risk Management for Financial Services
Funding: Unannounced
🌟 Company of the Week 🌟
Anon raises $4.5M led by Union Square Ventures and Abstract Ventures
Risk / Security • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Founders: Daniel Mason (CEO), Kai Aichholz (CTO)
BettrData raises $2.2M led by Range Ventures
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • Golden, CO
Langdock raises $3M led by General Catalyst and La Famiglia
Collaboration / Productivity • Seed • Berlin, Germany
UserHub raises $3.2M led by 468 Capital
Future of Work • Pre-Seed • New York, NY
Amplifier Security raises $3.3M led by Cota Capital
Risk / Security • Pre-Seed • Atlanta, GA
Octomind raises $4.8M led by Cherry Ventures
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Seed • Karlsruhe, Germany
Auxa Health raises $5.2M led by Zeal Capital Partners
HR Tech • Seed • New York, NY
Log10 raises $7.2M led by TQ Ventures and Quiet Capital
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Seed • San Francisco, CA
VulnCheck raises $8M led by Sorenson Capital
Risk / Security • Seed • Boston, MA
Alaffia raises $10M led by FirstMark Capital
Future of Work • Series A • New York, NY
Prophet Security raises $11M led by Bain Capital Ventures
Risk / Security • Seed • Palo Alto, CA
BforeAI raises $15M led by SYN Ventures
Risk / Security • Series A • New York, NY
Dropzone AI raises $16.9M led by Theory Ventures
Risk / Security • Series A • Seattle, WA
Framework raises $17M led by Spark Capital
Future of Work • Series A • San Francisco, CA
Nominal raises $20M led by General Catalyst
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series A • Los Angeles, CA
Sublime Security raises $20M led by Index Ventures
Risk / Security • Series A • Washington, DC
Nooks raises $22M led by Lachy Groom
Sales / Marketing • Series A • San Francisco, CA
Payflows raises $26.6M led by Balderton Capital
Future of Work • Series A • Paris, France
FlexAI raises $30M led by Alpha Intelligence Capital, Elaia Partners and Heartcore Capital
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • Paris, France
Nagomi Security raises $30M led TCV
Risk / Security • Series A • New York, NY
Tines raises $50M led by Accel and Felicis
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Series B • Dublin, Ireland
Parloa raises $66M led by Altimeter
Future of Work • Series B • Berlin, Germany
ThreatLocker raises $115M led by General Atlantic
Risk / Security • Series D • Orlando, FL
Cognition raises $175M led by Founders Fund
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Venture • San Francisco, CA
Rippling raises $200M led Coatue
HR Tech • Series F • San Francisco, CA
Augment raises $252M led by Index Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures, and Others
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Series B • Mountain View, CA
Nvidia acquires Run:ai for $700M
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Acquisition • Tel Aviv, Israel
IBM acquires HashiCorp for $6.4B
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Acquisition • San Francisco, CA
ComplyAdvantage acquires Golden for an Undisclosed Amount
Risk / Security • Acquisition • San Francisco, CA
KnowBe4 acquires Egress for an Undisclosed Amount
Risk / Security • Acquisition • London, UK
Rubrik raises $752M in its IPO
Risk / Security • IPO • Palo Alto, CA