Connie Loizos
Silicon Valley Editor
The Latest from Connie Loizos
T. Rowe Price has marked down its stake in Canva by 67.6%
Last summer, Blackbird, one of Australia’s largest venture operations, marked down the value of one of its most prized stakes, in the Sydney-based design platform Canva. Valued at $40 billion by
As part of AI push, Chinese tech giant Baidu is now rolling out an AI venture fund
Here comes yet more money for AI startups. Today, the Chinese search giant Baidu announced that it plans to establish a venture fund with 1 billion yuan ($145 million) to back startups focused on cont
Explaining Blockchain Capital’s big bet on an eyeball-scanning orb
This week, Worldcoin, an outfit that aims to serve as proof of personhood in a world where it’s harder by the day to distinguish a human from a bot, raised $115 million in Series C funding. Led
This Stanford grad is taking on pawnshops with a new credit card startup
In recent years, there’s been no shortage of startups offering credit lines to the underbanked. Most talk about their mission to help people establish credit, which is noble, but they’re a
VC firm Neo looks to up the ante with $235M across two new funds
Neo, a six-year-old, Bay Area–based outfit founded by renowned serial entrepreneur and investor Ali Partovi, is announcing that it has garnered $235 million in capital commitments across two new fun
Gary Marcus is happy to help regulate AI for US government: ‘I’m interested’
On Tuesday of this week, neuroscientist, founder and author Gary Marcus, sat between OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Christina Montgomery, who is IBM’s chief privacy trust officer, as all three testified
NewLimit, co-founded by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, raises $40M to extend life
NewLimit, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based, 17-person company that aims to increase the number of healthy years each person lives by epigenetically reprogramming cells, is today announcing that it
Renowned investor Elad Gil on how the great AI race will likely shake out
Elad Gil, a successful founder and prolific investor, has already been called Silicon Valley’s biggest solo venture capitalist, given the massive amounts of capital he has been investing in rece
Austin Russell became the youngest self-made billionaire in 2021; now he owns Forbes
Austin Russell is on quite a run. The 28-year-old founder and CEO of Luminar, which develops vision-based lidar and machine perception technologies primarily for self-driving cars, told The Wall Stree
Sound Ventures has already plugged half its new $240 million AI fund into three companies
Sound Ventures, the eight-year-old, Beverly Hills, California-based venture firm led by general partners Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary and Effie Epstein, announced a new $240 million AI fund just last we
Elizabeth Holmes, left to her own devices
Critics are flaming The New York Times for posting earlier this morning what they say is an overly empathetic 5,500-word profile of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. But writer Amy Chozick is in on t
In Europe, Accel banks on a turnaround over the next 6 to 9 months
It’s been almost five years since this editor sat down with longtime VC Harry Nelis and three other investors from Accel’s London office to talk about the trends rippling through the ventu
Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes isn’t headed to jail tomorrow after all
Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes will not be heading off to prison tomorrow to begin serving an 11-year sentence, as first reported by the WSJ. Though earlier this month U.S. District Court Judge Edw
‘GPT’ may be trademarked soon if OpenAI has its way
If the startup OpenAI is feeling protective about its brand lately, it’s understandable. ThreatGPT, MedicalGPT, DateGPT and DirtyGPT are a mere sampling of the many outfits to apply for trademar
We all contribute to AI — should we get paid for that?
In Silicon Valley, some of the brightest minds believe a universal basic income (UBI) that guarantees people unrestricted cash payments will help them to survive and thrive as advanced technologies el
Microsoft kicks Twitter in the teeth
Microsoft is dropping Twitter from its advertising platform next week, nearly two months after Twitter announced that it will begin charging a minimum of $42,000 per month to users of its API, which i
Talking with Future Ventures about its new fund, AI hype and Siri sucking (still)
For a firm whose bets are largely unpredictable, the early-stage venture firm Future Ventures has become very formulaic in its fundraising. Now entering its fifth year, the firm just closed a $200 mil
Eclipse eclipses previous fundraises with a whopping $1.23 billion across two new funds
The market may be be tightening, but not for Eclipse, a Palo Alto-based venture firm that just raised $1.2 billion across two new funds. One fund, with $720 million in capital commitments, will be inv
In a slowing market, venture investor Canaan still closes $850M across two new funds
The market is slowing down, but that’s not stopping Canaan, a 35-year-old early-stage venture firm that invests in both tech and healthcare. It just closed on $850 million in capital commitments
That slowdown you’re feeling, by the numbers
It’s more than a feeling. According to new data coming out from the research firm PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), venture firms are raising — and deploying &