Enterprise Weekly #499: China’s New AI Model, Our Latest Investment, and More
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This week, we saw the release of two Chinese AI models:
Bytedance released an update to its flagship AI model, Doubao-1.5-pro, which is said to outperform OpenAI's o1’s ability to respond to complex reasoning instructions, which was previously thought to be the best reasoning model on the market.
DeepSeek rolled out an open-source reasoning model called DeepSeek-R1 that is also said to rival OpenAI's o1 on several performance benchmarks and putting pressure on Meta to innovate faster with less resources. Experts estimate that it cost $6 million to rent the hardware needed to train the model, compared with Meta’s Llama 3.1 $60 million, which used ~11x the computing resources. Similarly, while DeepSeek hasn’t released the full cost of training R1, it is charging customers ~95% less than OpenAI’s o1. The firm has also created mini ‘distilled’ versions of R1 to allow researchers with limited computing power to play with the model.
These releases come at a unique time when the U.S. is both enforcing controls that limit Chinese firms’ access to state-of-the-art GPUs and doubling down on homegrown compute infrastructure with a $500 billion commitment in Stargate. To put this into perspective, despite the U.S. committing hundreds of billions, China is outperforming with only a fraction of that investment.
The big question now is if LLM scaling laws are no longer constrained by compute capacity, what are the downstream implications for customers, AI research labs, hardware developers, and inference providers?
Lastly, we're excited to lift the covers on our latest investment, DryRun Security! We led the Pre-Seed and doubled down on the Seed led by LiveOak Ventures, alongside Cannage Capital, for a total of $8.7M raised. Founded by two longtime appsec leaders - James Wickett and Ken Johnson - DryRun Security helps application security teams cut through thousands of code changes to find critical vulnerabilities by combining contextual analysis with natural language security policies.
📚 Read more news:
TechCrunch: Here Are the Types of AI Companies Enterprise VCs Want to Back in 2025
WSJ: OpenAI’s Stargate Deal Heralds Shift Away From Microsoft
📚 Read more (th)reads:
Company: GovWell
Role: Founding Backend Engineer
Technology: Modern Software For Local Government
Funding: $4.5M from Work-Bench, Bienville Capital
Egregious raises $1M led by Fuel Ventures and Oxford Capital
Risk / Security • Pre-Seed • London, UK
Glue raises $2M led by Fortive
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Pre-Seed • Seattle, WA
Qumis raises $2.2M led by Armory Square Ventures
Future of Work • Pre-Seed • Chicago, IL
Pipeshift raises $2.5M led by Y Combinator and SenseAI Ventures
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Riley AI raises $3M led by Vertex Ventures US
Sales / Marketing • Seed • San Francisco, CA
SquarePeg raises $3.5M led by Next Frontier Capital
HR Tech • Seed • Salt Lake City, UT
Aslan raises $5M led by Notion Capital
HR Tech • Seed • London, UK
Kaya AI raises $5.3M led by 53 Stations, Suffolk Technologies, and Soma Capital
Future of Work • Pre-Seed • New York, NY
Doti AI raises $7M led by F2 Venture Capital
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • Tel Aviv, Israel
Nexos.ai raises $8M led by Index Ventures
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • Vilnius, Lithuania
DryRun Security raises $8.7M led by Work-Bench and LiveOak Ventures
Risk / Security • Seed • Austin, TX
Grepr raises $9M led by a16z and Boldstart
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Coram AI raises $13.8M led by Battery Ventures
Risk / Security • Series A • Sunnyvale, CA
LeapXpert raises $20M led by Portage
Collaboration / Productivity • Series B • New York, NY
Sereact raises $26M led by Creandum
Future of Work • Series A • Stuttgart, Germany
Mitiga raised $30M led by SYN Ventures
Risk / Security • Series B • New York, NY
Clay raises $40M led by Meritech Capital
Sales / Marketing • Series B • New York, NY
Rhino.ai raises $50M led by Koch Disruptive Technologies
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Series A • Washington, D.C.
Vertice raises $50M led by Lakestar
Future of Work • Series C • London, UK
Render Services raises $80M led by Georgian
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Series C • San Francisco, CA
Netradyne raises $90M led by Point72 Private Investments
Future of Work • Series D • San Diego, CA
Instabase raises $100M led by QIA
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series D • San Francisco, CA
Rokt acquires mParticle for $300M
Sales / Marketing • Acquisition • New York, NY