| Hey Insiders, Today's newsletter covers: - Sesame's partnership with Costco
- Dip in cultivated protein startups funding
- Amazon's $4B investment in AI startup Anthropic
If you find this newsletter useful, please share it with your friends and colleagues. Thank you. Karan
p/karan-chafekar | |
| 1 | | Medical care startup Sesame inked a partnership with Costco. The New York-based startup connects uninsured individuals with primary care and mental health clinicians for appointments. With the new partnership, Sesame will provide primary care visits to Costco members at $29. More: - The startup raised $27M last year and is backed by GV, Virgin Group, General Catalyst, and Giant Ventures.
- The firm has over 3,500 clinicians on its platform.
- Costco will be able to increase its healthcare service options with the new partnership.
- The firm is looking to boost sales and has 125 million members.
- In its most recent fiscal quarter, Costco increased net sales by 1.6% to $52.6B.
Q: What are the common challenges and opportunities that startups encounter when forging partnerships with large corporations? Join the conversation here. |     | |
| 2 | | Funding for cultivated protein startups dropped for a second year in a row, per a new Axios report. 
What the numbers say: Venture capitalists have invested just $500M in 34 lab-grown meat startups so far this year, per Pitchbook data seen by Axios. The funding activity is the slowest since 2020. What happened: The drop in funding is due to the high upfront costs associated with cultivated protein startups. Challenges have been further exacerbated due to the global venture funding pullback trend. Where to see the impact: Sustainability concerns have caused Eat Just, one of the prominent startups in the sector, to potentially consider selling its production facility in Singapore. The firm has had a very high cash burn to create its lab-grown chicken product. Pitchbook says, "The current standard methods of animal protein production are resource-intensive and environmentally unsustainable." | | | |
| 3 | | Construction company Procore Technologies announced the acquisition of Seattle-based mapping software startup Unearth Technologies. Unearth develops the OnePlace mobile software, which combines geographic information systems and construction project data. More: - Unearth has raised a total of $11.6M since its inception, including a $7M Series A in 2019 and $3M in debt financing in 2021.
- Founded in 2016, the startup was launched by Brian Saab, Amy Hutchins, and Nate Miller, who previously worked at travel software company Buuteeq, which was acquired by Priceline in 2015.
- Procore, which has over 15,000 customers, reported $229M in revenue for Q2, constituting a 33% YoY increase.
- A total approximating $50B was invested in architecture, engineering, and construction tech between 2020 and 2022, per McKinsey.
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| 4 | | Amazon announced its plans to invest up to $4B in generative AI startup Anthropic. The retail and cloud giant will invest an initial $1.25B. More: - Anthropic's model, Claude, was already available through AWS Bedrock, Amazon's foundation model API service.
- "We have tremendous respect for Anthropic's team and foundation models, and believe we can help improve many customer experiences, short- and long-term, through our deeper collaboration," said Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.
- As part of the deal, Anthropic will use the AWS cloud and custom chips to train its models for chatbots and other products.
- The investment follows Microsoft's $13B strategic investment in OpenAI. Google had also previously invested ~$400M in Anthropic.
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| 5 | | Climate technology startup Peregrine Hydrogen raised $7.8M in seed funding led by Bidra. The Santa Cruz, Calif.-based startup will use the proceeds to scale its technology, expand into commodity chemical markets, accelerate technology development, and expand its team size. Peregrine Hydrogen manufactures green hydrogen and other valuable chemicals using a novel electrolyzer technology. More: - Builders, Gates Frontier, Presidio Ventures, RiSC Capital, and Schox participated in the funding round.
- The startup spun out from Orca Sciences, a climate technology incubator funded by Bill Gates and affiliated to his investment firm Breakthrough Energy, in Jun. 2023.
- Peregrine is led by CEO and co-founder Friðrik Lárusson, a physicist and electrical engineer who previously worked at innovation hub Intellectual Ventures.
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| 6 | | Correcto, a Madrid-based grammar tool for Spanish, announced a $7M Seed round led by London-based Octopus Ventures. The startup shifted from using rules-based natural language processing to large language models for correcting grammar. More: - Correcto claims 120,000 downloads and 70,000 active users through its freemium app.
- The company initially launched a Chrome extension to test demand.
- Correcto is also developing a feature to write on behalf of its users using a preferred tone using OpenAI's API.
- Other participants in the round included Carya Venture Partners and River Park Ventures.
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| 7 | | 
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| 8 | | Quick Hits: - Revolutionize your no-code apps with AI-enhanced experiences. Learn how integrating PerfectApps’ web apps with ChatGPT can supercharge your customer experiences.*
- Digital transformation company KaarTech acquired customer experience solutions consultancy firm Dunn Solutions Group for an undisclosed sum.
- Continuum Industries, a British startup providing AI-powered infrastructure development platform for power, utility, and renewables companies, locked in $10M in Series A funding. Singular led the latest funding round with additional backing from Credo, Playfair, Techstart Ventures, and others.
- Financial wellbeing startup Mintago raised $4.75M in fresh funding led by BlackLion Ventures, with participation from Love Ventures and Cur8 Capital.
- Austrian storage and logistics startup Storebox extended its Series B funding round, bringing the total raised under the round to €67.5M ($71.7M). Existing backers Wille Finance, Kineo Capital, Urban Pioneers, ActivumSG, Hansi Hansmann, and Markus Ertler participated in the current round.
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Term of the Day Dry powder: Dry powder is a slang term used to denote the cash reserves available for investment with venture capital and private equity firms. Question of the Week Do you share details about your salary with your coworkers? Join the conversation |
INSIDE STARTUPS LEADERBOARD (7 DAYS) |
 | Analyst | | Karan Chafekar is a Management Consultant, Business enthusiast, and Licensed Pilot.
Nicolas is a Sr. Analyst at Inside, covering startups and transportation trends. He is an avid map maker and data nerd. Nicolas has worked in the shared-scooter space, as well as advised e-bike and moped start-ups. | | This newsletter was edited by Vibha Chapparike | |
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