Startup Trends: The 4 top funded startups of Q2 2024
Four firms with links to AI — CoreWeave, Scale AI, Formation Bio, and Vercel — ranked among the highest in funding hauls in the second quarter of 2024.
CoreWeave
CoreWeave, a specialized cloud provider for AI, announced in May of 2024, that it raised $1.1 billion in a Series C funding round.
Coatue led the funding round, which included Magnetar (which led CoreWeave's last primary round). Other investors included Altimeter Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, and Lykos Global Management.
CoreWeave, based in Roseland, New Jersey, said the funding will support rapid growth across all business areas and expansion into new geographic regions to meet the strong demand for GPU-accelerated cloud infrastructure worldwide.
CoreWeave’s Forge Price™ as of May 30, 2024, is $779.05, which implies a valuation of $19 billion, the same as its last funding round. The Information also reported in May that the company was planning a potential IPO in early 2025, according to people familiar with the matter.
Scale AI
Scale disclosed in May 2024, that it closed on a $1 billion financing transaction, bringing it to a $13.8 billion valuation.
The Series F financing was a mix of primary and secondary investors, led by existing investor Accel along with the participation of nearly all of the company’s other existing investors: Y Combinator, Nat Friedman, Index Ventures, Founders Fund, Coatue, Thrive Capital, Spark Capital, NVIDIA, Tiger Global Management, Greenoaks, and Wellington Management. New San Francisco-based investors participating in this round include Cisco Investments, DFJ Growth, and Intel Capital.
Scale, whose mission is to accelerate the development of AI applications, aims to deliver value from AI investments faster with better data by providing an end-to-end solution to manage the entire machine learning lifecycle.
Scale’s Forge Price™ as of June 10, 2024, is $17.89, which implies a $16.97 billion valuation, an increase of 23% from its May 2024 funding round.
Formation Bio
Formation Bio, an AI-native pharma company, announced in June 2024 that it raised $372 million of Series D financing. Formation Bio works to bring new treatments to patients faster through a proprietary, tech-driven, AI-native platform.
a16z led the financing round, with “significant participation” from Sanofi. Current investors Sequoia, Thrive, Emerson Collective, and Lachy Groom joined the financing. New investors SV Angel Growth and FPV Ventures also participated. According to the company, this round reflects a material step up from the company's Series C valuation.
The New York-based company will allocate the new funds toward acquiring and in-licensing candidate drugs and expanding its AI capabilities.
Vercel
Vercel, a software startup, announced in May 2024 that it had raised $250 million in Series E funding, valuing the company at $3.25 billion. According to Reuters, Accel led the company's latest round of funding, which included existing investors CRV, GV, Notable Capital, Bedrock, Geodesic Capital, Tiger Global, 8VC, and SV Angel.
Vercel’s frontend cloud allows companies to build web applications in the cloud. Vercel recently topped $100 million in annual revenue, according to Reuters. Each month, more than 1 million software developers use the San Francisco-based company’s Next.js technology, an open-source framework for building web applications. Vercel will use the Series E funds to develop its v0 product, which leverages generative artificial intelligence to create user interfaces from text descriptions.
Vercel’s Forge Price™ of $73.27 as of May 16, 2024, implies a valuation of $3.25 billion, the same as the last funding round.
