Latest news with #SarahGuo
Time of India
4 hours ago
- Business
- Time of India
OpenAI-rival Anthropic sets limits on how investors can participate in upcoming $5 billion fundraise
Claude-maker Anthropic has told investors that the AI company does not want money coming through special purpose vehicles (SPVs) in its latest fundraising. Citing two people familiar with the matter, a Business Insider report said that one of Anthropic's largest backers, Menlo Ventures, was specifically told it must invest using its own capital and not through an SPV, as it did in a past round. The company, as per the report, is raising about $5 billion at a valuation of $170 billion. What are special purpose vehicles investment fund A special purpose vehicle, or SPV, is a legal entity that is created for a specific financial purpose, usually to make a single investment. In the world of venture capital and private markets, investors often pool their money into an SPV, and that entity then invests in a company on their behalf. This structure makes it easier for smaller investors to gain access to deals that are normally reserved for large funds. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Premium 2 & 3 BHK Apartments in Whitefield | Starts at ₹81.42 Lacs* | No Pre EMI till Possession Sowparnika Euphoria In The East Learn More Undo But companies generally prefer direct investor relationships. Recently, investors have complained that some SPVs targeting AI startups are charging unusually high fees. The BI report quotes Michelle Lim, a founder and angel investor, who posted on X 'Many friends including myself have been offered allocation into OpenAI or Anthropic SPVs this week. Minimum check sizes are $100k-$1M, with fees as high as 16%. From what I understand, folks are creating SPVs on top of SPVs and making management fees on top of them. It's like a pyramid.' Venture capitalist Sarah Guo wrote on X: 'The feeding frenzy for ownership in the AI labs has spawned a set of bottom feeding multi layered SPV brokers that have no relationship with the company, and straight up grifters," "Careful of that nonsense.' Nvidia H20 Chips for China: What's Really Going On? AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now
Business Insider
7 hours ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Anthropic, seeing voracious demand for shares, is clamping down on a certain kind of investment
Anthropic has told investors it is displeased by the prevalence of a popular kind of investment vehicle being marketed to those eager to get in on the AI boom, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter. In its latest funding round, the AI startup is raising around $5 billion at a $170 billion valuation, Business Insider has confirmed. It told one of its largest investors, Menlo Ventures, that the venture capital firm must use its own capital and not resort to a special purpose vehicle, or SPV, as it did in a previous funding round, one of the people told BI. The clampdown is a sign the AI startup has more leverage to dictate terms due to rampant demand for its private shares, according to the sources who asked not to be identified because they were discussing nonpublic information. Spokespeople for Anthropic and Menlo declined to comment. Less desirable SPVs let investors pool their funds for a single, one-off deal. While they allow speed and can be marketed to a wider range of non-institutional investors, SPVs are generally seen as less desirable because most companies prefer to have a direct relationship with investors. With so many people eager to invest in a limited number of AI companies, investors have been sharing stories on social media about being marketed SPVs with extremely high fees. "Many friends including myself have been offered allocation into OpenAI or Anthropic SPVs this week," Michelle Lim, a founder and angel investor, posted last week on X. "Minimum check sizes are $100k-$1M, with fees as high as 16%. From what I understand, folks are creating SPVs on top of SPVs and making management fees on top of them. It's like a pyramid." "The feeding frenzy for ownership in the AI labs has spawned a set of bottom feeding multi layered SPV brokers that have no relationship with the company, and straight up grifters," venture capitalist Sarah Guo wrote recently on X. "Careful of that nonsense." Guo was tweeting generally, not about Anthropic's current fundraising efforts. Still, this shows how SPVs can be considered problematic, even though they're a common tool in the venture capital toolkit. Anthropic previously allowed SPVs When Anthropic raised funding in late 2023, Menlo Ventures was the lead investor and stepped forward with a $500 million check. There was a catch, though: Half a billion dollars was too rich a sum for Menlo to use all its own capital. So part of the money came from an SPV where a pool of cash from outside investors helped fund the investment. The SPV, revealed in regulatory filings, was an effective way for Anthropic to quickly raise a lot of money to keep up with OpenAI and other competitors. This time, Anthropic is being more choosy, probably because there's so much demand from investors. The startup has seen revenue soar lately, mostly thanks to its Claude models' ability to generate, fix, and deploy software code. Anthropic has told potential investors it wants tier-one VCs who will be with the company for the long haul, according to one of the sources who spoke with Business Insider. Anthropic has more leverage now Anthropic's round is five times oversubscribed, this person added, so the company has more leverage than it did in previous funding rounds. Menlo's commitment in this latest round is set to be smaller, around $120 million, according to one of the other sources. Anthropic was last valued at $61.5 billion when it raised $3.5 billion in March. Since then, investor appetite for AI has only grown more voracious. OpenAI is reportedly seeking a $500 billion valuation in an employee stock sale, making Anthropic, even valued at $170 billion, may look like a relative bargain to some investors, in comparison.
Bloomberg
05-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Bloomberg Businessweek Celebrates the 2025 Ones to Watch in Tech
Bloomberg Businessweek celebrates its 2025 Ones to Watch in Tech list. Editor Brad Stone sits down with one of the honorees, Sarah Guo, Founder of Conviction for her take on where to invest around AI at Bloomberg Tech in San Francisco. (Source: Bloomberg)
Business Insider
26-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Legaltech startups have raised over $1 billion this year. Here are 10 companies to watch.
Legaltech startups are thriving, raising over $1 billion in funding this year. These companies leverage AI to streamline legal work, attracting significant investor interest. Despite a slowing funding market, AI-driven legaltech firms continue to secure investments. Law is having its ChatGPT moment. In recent years, a torrent of startups has emerged that use artificial intelligence to strip the drudgery from legal work. In a slowing funding market, these companies are cashing in on the AI hype. Funding to companies in the legal and legaltech industries has crossed $1 billion so far this year, according to Crunchbase data and Business Insider's estimate based on recent financings. This list highlights a select few legaltech startups that raised capital in 2025, sorted from most to least total funding. Harvey Founded: 2022 Total funding: More than $500 million The hype: In a crowded category, Harvey stands in a league of its own. Lawyers at eight of the 10 highest-grossing US law firms use the platform, sending its annual recurring revenue to more than $70 million in April. Harvey's rise hasn't gone unnoticed. "Lots of people flock to an opportunity once it's clear," said Sarah Guo, a managing partner at Conviction and Harvey investor, "but Harvey is 10X the next biggest competitor — it has breakthrough momentum." The dish: Harvey's success is fueling a growing list of competitors, and some of them look pretty similar under the hood. The company is betting that it can edge out rivals by molding the product to the client. If customization is the moat, the question becomes: how does it scale? Luminance Founded: 2015 Total funding: $165 million The hype: Luminance is seeing soaring demand for its legal contract review and drafting platform. The British-born legaltech said its core corporate product offering has grown annual recurring revenue 6x in the past two years. Driven by the company's revenue growth, investors put in another $75 million in Series C funding in February. The dish: While most legaltech startups build on general-purpose models from OpenAI, Google, or Meta, Luminance uses a patchwork of models, including a number of proprietary models designed in-house, to handle different legal tasks as required. Training a state-of-the-art model can provide a competitive edge, but it also demands a tank of capital. Legora Founded: 2023 Total funding: $120 million The hype: Legora is taking on Harvey with its solution to help bogged-down lawyers speed up legal research and drafting, and gaining ground. In two years, it's added 250 clients in 20 markets, including big-league law firms like Cleary Gottlieb, Goodwin, Bird & Bird, and Mannheimer Swartling. To fuel its growth, General Catalyst and Iconiq led an $80 million round for Legora in May, valuing the company at $675 million. The dish: In a crowded market, Legora will need to find ways to stand apart from competitors. The company is betting that the strength of its product and its ability to tightly tailor the tool to firms will continue to attract major names. Trouble is, Harvey's making the same pitch. Eudia Founded: 2023 Total funding: $105 million The hype: Eudia's custom agents promise to shrink months of legal grunt work down to days, or even minutes. Rather than chasing law firms, Eudia is laser-focused on in-house legal teams, betting that enterprises will adopt technology more readily than firms afraid of software nibbling at their bottom line. The company exited stealth in January with $105 million in funding. The dish: Since Eudia's launch, investors have showered founder Omar Haroun with cash, eager to get in on what they hope will be his next breakout. He sold his last startup, Text IQ, to legal and compliance heavyweight Relativity in 2021. But pedigree isn't performance, and it remains to be seen whether Haroun and Eudia can deliver. Supio Founded: 2021 Total funding: $91 million The hype: Rajeev Dham, a partner at Sapphire Ventures and Supio investor, says the company is building the Cursor for plaintiff law firms. The platform parses medical records, police reports, and expert opinions, then lets lawyers build medical chronologies, draft briefs, and search their files using a chatbot. Fresh off a $60 million round, Supio has quadrupled its revenue run rate and size of its customer base over the past year. The dish: EvenUp may be three years ahead of Supio in the market, but Dham argues that's exactly why Supio has the upper hand. It engineered its entire platform around artificial intelligence from day one. Still, Supio has to contend with a competitor with over a thousand personal injury law firm customers and more than twice the funding. Eve Founded: 2020 Total funding: $61 million The hype: Eve helps plaintiff firms automate away tedious tasks and resolve cases faster. The company added more than 200 law firm customers, from personal injury to employment law, over the last year. Early investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and Menlo Ventures seem pleased with its progress; Eve raised $47 million in a January Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The dish: Plaintiff lawyers, especially solo and small shops, are slow to adopt new tech unless it's proven, dead simple, and affordable. Eve may find its early adopters are tech-forward anomalies, not the norm. Spellbook Founded: 2018 Total funding: More than $30 million The hype: Zach Posner, managing director of The Legal Tech Fund and a Spellbook investor, says growth is ripping over at Spellbook, a contract drafting and review tool. Spellbook's annual contract value, which measures the average annual revenue it generates from a single customer contract, has risen for three straight years. It suggests lawyers see real value and are scaling up. The dish: This list highlights startups that have raised money so far this year. Spellbook's last round closed over a year ago, but we're including it anyway. The word on the street is that Spellbook is in talks to raise a Series B round. A person close to the company said the terms of the offering are still being negotiated. Paxton Founded: 2023 Total funding: $28 million The hype: While other legaltech startups court Big Law, Paxton is betting on the middle. Its platform targets small and midsize firms — an overlooked segment that helped drive a 14x jump in monthly recurring revenue last year, according to a company blog. The dish: Even though Paxton is targeting a different segment of the market, it still faces the challenge of convincing law firms to switch from their established systems. Law firms are notoriously risk-averse, and many will stick with what they know. Theo Ai Marveri Founded: 2023 Total funding: $3.5 million The hype: Due diligence is the bane of a young attorney's profession. To help, Marveri 's platform sucks up all of a corporation's documents and lets users analyze and query their contents. Marveri, which counts Elon Musk's lawyer Alex Spiro as an advisor, emerged from stealth in May with $3.5 million in funding. Masha Bucher's Day One Ventures, Bessemer, and a syndicate of early users participated in the deal. The dish: Marveri is going toe to toe with a Goliath of legaltech. Backed by over $160 million, Hebbia creates software for white-collar professionals to help with contract review and due diligence. Marveri will need to crush on product and customer service to woo law firms away from their existing systems.
India Today
19-05-2025
- Business
- India Today
Duolingo CEO says AI tutors will replace schools in future, schools will be only for childcare
Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn has asserted that AI could become the primary educator and schools could turn into supervised spaces for children in the future. In a recent conversation on the No Priors podcast hosted by venture capitalist Sarah Guo, von Ahn said AI tutors will eventually be more effective and scalable than human teachers, prompting a change in the purpose schools clarified that he doesn't see schools shutting down or teachers losing relevance entirely. Instead, the focus of schools could gradually move away from formal teaching and more towards providing a safe and structured environment where students are cared for, while the learning part happens through advanced AI traditional classrooms with large groups of students, providing personalised learning remains a major challenge. Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn believes AI can bridge this gap by adapting lessons to each student's individual pace and learning needs. Unlike human teachers, who may struggle to track every child's progress in a class of 30 or more, AI systems can instantly identify weaknesses and adjust content in real time, offering a level of precision that's difficult to achieve acknowledged that the transition would be slow. Education systems tend to resist change, often due to regulations, cultural expectations, and outdated infrastructure. However, he feels AI's role in classrooms is only going to expand, particularly in countries where scaling high-quality education is a pressing signs of this change are already visible in countries like South Korea. The country has introduced AI-powered digital textbooks in about 30 per cent of its schools since March this year. The update, reported by Nikkei Asia, shows a major change in how lessons are delivered. During a recent APEC education summit hosted by South Korea, officials demonstrated the use of these tools, including a live class in Jeju where students solved math problems on tablets while their answers appeared on a shared idea is to make learning more interactive and data-driven. However, there are hurdles — unequal access to digital tools in different regions and the need to train teachers to work alongside AI are among the concerns that need to be addressed. At the same time, the debate over AI's place in education isn't limited to school classrooms. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman recently spoke about how universities also need to evolve as AI becomes an inevitable part of future learning.
