Get ready: rate cuts are coming! Zuck joins Musk against OpenAI, $1B+ market map of the world’s 1290 unicorns + new open deals ??
Welcome to Issue #12 (#62 on Substack) of Startup Deal Desk!
Here’s what you can expect in today’s edition:
Keep reading to see the latest deals, news and trends ??.
What to know ahead of Wednesday’s expected rate cuts - This week is a big one for central banks – the Federal Reserve (Fed), the Bank of England (BoE), and the Bank of Japan (BoJ) are all set to announce interest rate decisions. The Fed trimmed a half-percentage-point this September, followed by a smaller quarter-point cut in November. With inflation still running faster than it’d like, the central bank is widely expected to make another quarter-point snip. When it comes to the BoE and BoJ, investors widely expect both to hold borrowing costs steady.
Zuckerberg joins Musk in the battle against OpenAI - Meta is asking California Attorney General Rob Bonta to block OpenAI’s planned transition from a non-profit to for-profit entity, joining Elon Musk in the battle against the AI giant, which has been going on for months now. Meta says that OpenAI “should not be allowed to flout the law by taking and reappropriating assets it built as a charity and using them for potentially enormous private gains.” However, OpenAI fired back at Musk on Friday, publishing a series of emails and texts that the company claims show Musk wanted the company for-profit. Oh, the drama…
$100B plan to create 100,000 AI jobs - SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son made a joint announcement with Donald Trump to invest $100B in the U.S. over the next four years to create a minimum of 100K jobs in AI and related fields. This is not the first time such an announcement was made. Son and Trump made a similar announcement in 2016 after Trump was elected president for the first time, with the Japanese firm agreeing to invest $50B in the U.S. with the aim to create 50,000 jobs. Will it come to fruition this time?
1B+ market map of the world’s 1249 unicorns - 2024 has seen 72 companies become unicorns, and 32 of these (44%) are AI startups. AI aside, over one-third of the 1,200+ current unicorns haven’t raised funding since 2021, and over 100 of these companies were last valued at exactly $1B — meaning a down round would take their unicorn status away altogether. Among today’s unicorns, 110 stand out with IPO probabilities above 20%, and another 25 have equally high M&A probability scores.
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Fintech’s big week - Fintech startups have struggled raising money this year, but they’re closing out the year with some pretty big rounds. Overall, mega-deals (over $100M) were plenty in 2024, so it’s a big surprise that among the AI and biotech frenzy, the biggest winner of the week is Walmart-backed fintech One ($300M), followed by credit underwriting startup Zest AI ($200M) in the #3 spot.
Record M&A activity in AI drug discovery - AI drug discovery M&A is surging, with 8 of the 10 largest deals in the sector occurring since 2023. The 10 total M&A exits during that time have more than doubled the industry’s historical M&A activity. All 10 of the largest big pharma players globally have partnered with AI drug discovery startups since 2023, while 9 out of 10 are simultaneously developing in-house AI capabilities. Biologics developers using AI have secured $1.6B in 2024 — more than double 2023 funding.
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