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- 💰BA Startups hit $2.1B 🤖 AI: From Silicon Valley 💿 to Silicon Beach ⛱️ Capital Soiree in Historic San Jose 🍸
💰BA Startups hit $2.1B 🤖 AI: From Silicon Valley 💿 to Silicon Beach ⛱️ Capital Soiree in Historic San Jose 🍸
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🤖 AI: From Silicon Valley 💿 to Silicon Beach ⛱️
AI has broken free from its traditional tech industry confines, making waves across diverse sectors from entertainment to retail. This technological migration is creating unprecedented bridges between Silicon Valley's tech giants and entertainment hubs like Hollywood – or as some call it, from Silicon Valley to Silicon Beach.
The retail sector, in particular, has emerged as a powerful adopter of AI technologies. From personalized shopping experiences to sophisticated inventory management, retailers are discovering that AI isn't just a novelty – it's becoming a necessity for staying competitive in today's market. This transformation is will be discussed in the upcoming CXO INSIGHTS event, where industry leaders from NVIDIA and Supermicro will gather with retail innovators to explore the practical applications of AI in retail environments.
Major brands like Campbell Soup Company are joining the conversation, signaling a significant shift in how traditional consumer goods companies view AI technology. These companies aren't just dipping their toes in the water; they're diving deep into AI implementation, recognizing its potential to revolutionize everything from supply chain management to customer engagement.
The entertainment industry isn't far behind. Hollywood studios increasingly leverage AI for tasks ranging from content recommendation algorithms to special effects production. This convergence of entertainment and AI technology is fundamentally changing how content is created, distributed, and consumed.
However, this expanding AI adoption across verticals brings new challenges, particularly in terms of infrastructure requirements. As more industries embrace AI, the demand for robust, specialized computing infrastructure grows exponentially. Front-of-house AI applications, such as personalized customer experiences, require low-latency edge computing solutions. Meanwhile, back-end applications demand powerful data center capabilities with efficient power and cooling solutions.
The growing infrastructure needs are creating an interesting dynamic between traditional tech hubs and emerging AI adopters. Silicon Valley's expertise in AI infrastructure development is becoming increasingly valuable to industries like retail and entertainment. This has catalyzed a new kind of cross-industry collaboration, where technology providers are working closely with retail and entertainment companies to develop tailored AI solutions that meet their unique needs.
As we witness this expansion of AI across verticals, one thing becomes clear: the future of AI isn't confined to any single industry. Instead, it's about creating connections between technology hubs and traditional industries, fostering collaborations that drive innovation and growth. The journey from Silicon Valley to Silicon Beach is just beginning, and the possibilities are boundless.
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💵Bay Area Startups Secured Over $2.1B
This was another week in which AI dominated – four of this week's largest deals went to AI infrastructure companies. Two of those were megadeals – Lambda Labs and Together AI – that totaled $785M. The other two – BaseTen and Arize AI – accounted for another $150M. Altogether, AI companies collected almost $1B of the week's total. Note: on our graph this week, AI is split into Compute & Computer Hardware and Artificial Intelligence.
This week's $2.1B in fundings takes February-to-date to $5.5B. With one week to go, this month has already exceeded the February 2024 total of $4.5B
On exits: IPOs continue to be absent, but acquisitions continued at a steady pace this week, with the majority for undisclosed amounts. Of note was the $119M Humane acquisition by HP. This was essentially an acqui-hire, with HP immediately discontinuing the Humane AI Pin - which never made it as an "Intelligent Companion" – and focusing on the Humane software platform and the AI engineers. Humane investors put $230M into the company and won't be putting the company into their "wins" column.
Follow us on LinkedIn to stay on top of what's happening in 2025 in startup fundings, M&A and IPOs, VC fundraising plus executive & investor activity.
Early Stage:
Millie closed a $12M Series A, a new kind of maternity clinic, “built by moms and care providers who’ve been there,” that is re-imagining the standard of maternity care in the United States.
Singulr AI closed a $10M Seed, an enterprise AI governance and security platform that helps streamline and secure enterprise AI use at scale.
MirrorTab closed a $8.5M Seed, a cyber security company providing advanced web security solutions that defend web applications against cyber threats like hacking and malware.
CTGT closed a $7.2M Seed, their platform eliminates barriers to production-ready AI with automatic hallucination mitigation and model steering for LLMs.
Lingo.dev closed a $4.2M Seed, Lingo.dev turns weeks of localization work into automated pull requests.
Growth Stage:
Lambda Labs closed a $480M Series D, their GPU cloud and on-prem hardware enables AI developers to easily, securely and affordably build, test and deploy AI products at scale.
Together AI closed a $305M Series B, is the leading AI Acceleration Cloud, it empowers developers and enterprises to train, fine-tune and run inference for generative AI models — delivering unparalleled performance, control, and cost-efficiency.
Verkada closed a $200M Series E, the largest cloud-based B2B physical security platform company in the world.
BaseTen closed a $75M Series C, the leader in infrastructure software for high-scale AI products, offering the industry's most powerful AI inference platform.
Arize AI closed a $70M Series C , a unified AI observability and LLM evaluation platform that helps teams develop and maintain more successful AI.
CIRRASCALE: THE AI INNOVATION CLOUD
Cirrascale Cloud Services is transforming the AI landscape with its AI Innovation Cloud—a platform that integrates leading AI accelerators from NVIDIA, AMD, Cerebras, and Qualcomm. Designed for generative AI, large language models (LLMs), and high-performance computing (HPC), Cirrascale provides the bare-metal infrastructure needed to handle the most demanding workloads with unmatched speed, scalability, and reliability.
What Sets Cirrascale Apart
All-in-One AI Acceleration
Brings together the best AI accelerators to fuel cutting-edge projects.Bare-Metal Performance
Purpose-built for high-demand AI and HPC workloads, eliminating the overhead of virtualization.Flat-Rate Pricing
Transparent, predictable costs with no hidden fees—removing the complexity of traditional cloud billing.
Why Cirrascale?
Cirrascale isn’t just another cloud provider—it’s a partner in AI innovation. With a foundation built on transparency and simplicity, Cirrascale allows organizations to focus on AI breakthroughs without worrying about cloud complexity or unpredictable costs.
Contact Cirrascale
📧 Email: [email protected]
🌐 Website: https://www.cirrascale.com/
Around The Valley
Capital Soiree // FEB19 San Jose
We were thrilled to partner with Josephine Zhou and Matthew Herrick to host Capital Soirée, an exclusive gathering of investors and founders in the picturesque backyard setting of Historic Alameda. The intimate garden venue provided the perfect atmosphere for deep conversations, new connections, and valuable insights.
Why Attendees Joined:
🌟 Meet Potential Investors – Angels and LPs gathered to discuss opportunities, making this an ideal setting for founders to pitch their ideas and gain valuable feedback.
🍷 Relaxed & Inviting Atmosphere – Hosted in Herrick’s private office patio, the ambiance encouraged organic conversations, supported by great drinks and appetizers.
💡 Engage in Meaningful Discussions – Attendees shared their visions, exchanged insights, and built new relationships with like-minded professionals passionate about innovation and growth.
A huge thank you to everyone who joined us for this unforgettable evening of networking and collaboration.
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Logan Lemery
Head of Content // Team Ignite
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