January 26, 2024

E90: xAI $6b raise at $20b valuation!, Kaspi.kz IPO at $17b, Klarna eyeing IPO at “triple digit” growth or valuation?, Figma down 50% after Adobe deals crumbles, ElevenLabs AI $1b valuation, Brex fires 282, Chipmaker Cerebras considering IPO | Pre-IPO Sto

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00:09 | ElevenLabs AI $1b valuation
- AI-powered browser-based app for generating lifelike voices; applications for audiobooks, film dubbing, game character voices, marketing
- $80m Series B at $1.0b+ valuation; co-led by Andreessen Horowitz, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman
- 10x increase vs last round in Jun 2023
- co-founded in 2022 by ex-Google and ex Palantir employee

02:00 | Kazakhstan fintech Kaspi.kz IPO at $17b
- Kazakhstan fintech offering payments, e-commerce, buy now pay later, and e-grocery products
- $17.5b IPO last week on the London Stock Exchange
- $1b raise that went to founders/CEO, no $s to company
- Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, and Citigroup underwrote the deal

03:13 | Klarna eyeing IPO at “triple digit” growth or valuation?
- Klarna offers buy now pay later, debit, and marketplaces services
- Potential $15b IPO coming soon
- US market is largest business segment with Klarna Plus launching this week; $7.99 premium service
- CEO Siemiatkowski stated that his investors need a “triple digit” IPO; unclear if this means $100b+ valuation or 100%+ return on investment
- Klarna closed rounds at $45.6b, $31.0b, and $10.7b over the last four years so some investors current have a negative return
- Current secondary market valuation is $8.1b, +20.5% vs last primary round in Jul 2022

04:51 | Brex fires 282 employees
- 20% reduction in staff
- cash burn rate of $17m/month in Q4, down from $22m/month in Q4 2022
- annualized net revenue reached $279m in Q4, +32% yoy but stagnating in 2H 2023
- enough cash to last through Mar 2026
- $3.7b secondary market valuation, -70% from last primary round at $12.3b valuation in Jan 2022

06:08 | Figma down 50% after Adobe deals crumbles
- Figma offers designs tools for technologists
- Adobe was acquiring Figma for $20b, deal was killed by European regulators
- recent hires are being offered equity at a $10b valuation, -50% from the Adobe offer
- longer-servicing employees will receive additional shares in the Fall
- company is offering a voluntary exit program; 3 months pays and vested equity

07:05 | xAI $6b raise at $20b valuation!
- xAI is Elon Musk’s AI-large language model that is training and distributed though X (Twitter)
- originally raising $1.0b, xAI is now raising $6.0b
- $20b valuation is at the top of the previously announced $15b-$20b range
- X owns 25% of xAI so X stands to see a $5b valuation pop once the xAI round closes

08:03 | Chipmaker Cerebras considering IPO
- AI chips are hot right now in the public markets, good time for Cerebras to IPO
- looking to IPO north of its $4b valuation it posted in 2021
- current investors; Abu Dhabi Growth Fund, Altimeter, Benchmark, Coatue

08:59 | Pre-IPO +1.88% for week
- Week winners: Notion +24.2% (…on the back of its new calendar product launching), ConsenSys +14.2%, Hugging Face +7.9%, Klarna +7.9%, Bytedance +5.7%
- Week losers: Airtable -8.6%, OpenAI -7.1%, Anthropic -1.9%, Deel -0.71%, Databricks -0.31%
- Top valuations: ByteDance $282b, SpaceX $182b, OpenAI $93b, Stripe $56b, Databricks $48b lead in current valuation

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