News linked to both this project and an event.
Odaily reports: AI compute startup General Compute has completed a $100 million Series A funding round, led by Blackbird Ventures and Abstract Ventures, with a post-money valuation of $800 million, a significant increase from the $60 million valuation after its seed round in May this year. The funding was driven by an order from a large customer with $100 million in annual recurring revenue.General Compute focuses on AI inference compute, using specialized chips from NVIDIA competitors, and has reached a $400 million chip procurement agreement with SambaNova, with suppliers also including Positron and Cerebras. Unlike the traditional approach of building large data centers, the company deploys AI compute by leasing data center space, utilizing smaller-scale power resources, and retrofitting Bitcoin mining farms, with plans to deploy 75 megawatts of compute capacity by 2027. Amid CoreWeave's stock falling to near a 12-month low and Elon Musk's prediction that more than 200 new cloud service providers will undergo elimination and consolidation, General Compute co-founder and CEO Finn Puklowski believes that market fears of a chip-induced industry collapse are severely exaggerated, and customer demand for various chips and compute remains strong.PANews, October 27: According to reports, AI compute startup General Compute has completed a $100 million Series A funding round, led by Blackbird Ventures and Abstract Ventures, with a post-money valuation of $800 million, a significant increase from the $60 million valuation after its seed round in May this year. Currently, General Compute focuses on AI inference compute, using specialized chips from NVIDIA competitors, and has reached a $400 million chip procurement agreement with SambaNova, with suppliers also including Positron and Cerebras. (TechCrunch)
Luca Netz posted on X that Abstract is gradually shutting down, and its parent company Igloo Inc. will shift all of its focus to Pudgy Penguins, Pudgy NFTs, and PENGU. Igloo has continued to provide funding support for Abstract over the past 18 months. Over its two years of operation, the project has accumulated losses in the tens of millions of dollars and has still not found product-market fit (PMF).He said that Abstract had previously processed over 300 million onchain transactions, launched Portal and AGW, and attracted multiple global brands to join, but issues such as an insufficient DeFi ecosystem, limited liquidity, low institutional participation, high costs, and declining demand for related products continued to constrain growth. In the end, Igloo Inc. could no longer continue diverting funds from the Pudgy Penguins business to support Abstract, and it did not choose to raise funds through token issuance or an ICO.
Atum has announced the end of its stealth phase and completed a $13.5 million funding round backed by investors including Variant, PayPal Ventures, and Abstract Ventures. Atum connects payment companies, developers, and enterprises through a unified coordination layer, responsible for payment authorization, routing, and confirmation, but does not issue currency, operate a blockchain, or hold customer funds. Its network supports cross-chain and stablecoin settlements and is compatible with agent payment protocols such as x402 and MPP.
: NewLimit, a longevity technology startup co-founded by Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong, announced the completion of a $435 million Series C funding round, achieving a valuation of $3.1 billion. The round was led by Peter Thiel's fund, Founders Fund, with continued participation from Abstract Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, NFDG, Eli Lilly Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, and others. New investors introduced in this round include Thrive Capital, Greenoaks, and Quiet Capital.In 2021, Brian Armstrong, along with former GV partner and bioengineer Blake Byers and stem cell biologist Jacob Kimmel, jointly invested $110 million to establish NewLimit in South San Francisco.
AI social app Status AI has announced the completion of a $17 million seed and Series A funding round, with participation from General Catalyst, Y Combinator, LightShed Partners, and Abstract.The project primarily focuses on developing a gamified AI social media application that allows users to play any role in a virtual world, transforming social media into an interactive entertainment experience. (TechCrunch)
Odaily News: Daniel Edrisian, a former engineer from the OpenAI Codex team, has announced his departure to found AI hardware company Blackstar Computers. The company has completed a $12 million seed funding round led by Abstract, with participation from SV Angel, Naval Ravikant, Chapter One, and Timeless.Blackstar positions itself as a new type of computing device, aiming to redefine the computing experience from the hardware, software, and interaction levels. Edrisian stated that while current software development is mature, further enhancement of human-AI interaction requires innovation at the operating system level. The company currently has a team of about 8 people, distributed between San Francisco and Shenzhen, and has not yet launched a public product.