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🚀Startups Nuts

• African women-led health startups raised $167M in VC funding in 2023, up 2,000% compared to the previous year, per a report from Salient Advisory commissioned by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 31% of the funding, or $52M, went to startups led solely by women. 

• 95 global startups entered the unicorn club in 2023 by bagging more than $1B in valuations, per Crunchbase. 

• Areteia Therapeutics, a biotech startup developing novel inflammation and immunology therapies for severe asthma, extended its Series A round by $75M.

• Antithesis, an automated testing platform for software raises $47M.

• Walmart in talks to buy Vizio, a smart TV maker, for more than $2 billion.

• Lilac Solutions, a lithium tech startup, raised $145 million 

• Latigo, a biotech focused on pain, raised $135 million

• Global Payments in talks to buy Takepayments for $250 million 

🏭Business Nuts 

• Canva's chief financial officer, Damien Singh, has resigned from the role, concluding an eight-year stint at the graphic design firm. The firm is on the lookout for a successor to Singh. 

• Uber announces $7B buyback after first profitable year, stock pops more than 14%. The news comes a week after Uber reported fourth-quarter results that beat Wall Street’s earnings and revenue estimates.

• Lyft CEO David Risher took responsibility for the major error that appeared in the company’s fourth-quarter earnings release. During its investor call, Lyft CFO Erin Brewer said the company reported an incorrect figure for margin expansion.

• KKR & Co has agreed to acquire a stake in Cotiviti from investment manager Veritas Capital, the healthcare technology firm. KKR and Veritas will have equal ownership stakes in Cotiviti. For KKR this deal would value the company between $10 billion and $11 billion for 50% stake.

NVIDIA overtakes Alphabet and ranks 4 in terms of Market cap

📱Tech Nuts

• Former Apple engineer Zhang Xiaolang was charged with a single count of trade-secret theft for stealing the tech giant's proprietary information while going to a Chinese autonomous EV startup.

• Apple have unveiled Keyframer, a prototype generative AI animation tool that enables users to add motion to 2D images by describing how they should be animated.

• Airbnb will use GamePlanner.AI, the startup it acquired for ~$200m in November, to build a personalized, adaptive interface “like the ultimate concierge,” per CEO Brian Chesky.

• OpenAI is working on a web search to compete more directly with Google. It is unclear if the product will be standalone or part of ChatGPT. Competition in the search space is filling up quickly with the addition of Copilot on Bing, newcomers like Perplexity, and Google's Gemini Copilot.

• Stability AI introduced a research preview of Stable Cascade, a new image generation model with a new architecture for more efficient and detailed image creation.

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🎁Miscellaneous

MagicLab's humanoid can toast marshmallows, fold clothes, and dance

MagicLab has unveiled MagicBot, a humanoid robot that can roast marshmallows and dance. The robot has exceptional balance and dexterity - it has the capability to execute somersaults. MagicBot has sub-millimeter positioning accuracy and a load capacity reaching several kilograms. Videos of the robot in action are available in the article.

💡What else are we reading and seeing?

• The most valuable AI use cases for business

• Requests for Startups

• The rise of virtual influencers

• Investor expectations for interest rate cuts keep slipping into the future

• Why Silicon Valley is fascinated with drugs

• Bitcoin’s market cap breaks $1T, taking overall crypto market to $2T

• Big Tesla investors turn bearish

• KKR acquired a stake in health tech firm Cotiviti

• Why your happiness increases with age

• How to tell if you’re a good listener

😎Fun Fact

53% of Americans are expected to partake in Valentine’s Day festivities, spending roughly $26 billion in aggregate

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