Slowest Quarter for Startups, Cohere Announces $270M Funding, ReadMe is a Digital Transaction Management Software, and Google Extended Passkeys to Workspace and Cloud

Hello! 🙋We have the following Product updates for you today! 📣

• Slowest quarter for Startups since 2017
• Cohere Announces $270M Series C Funding
• ReadMe is a digital transaction management software
• Google extended passkeys to Workspace and Cloud

Slowest Quarter for Startups Since 2017

In the first quarter of 2023, funding for startups and venture deals experienced a substantial decrease, with an 80% decline in funding and a 45% decline in deals as compared to the corresponding quarter of the preceding year.

In this quarter, 20% of venture investments were related to down rounds, which is the highest percentage since 2018. Such a trend resulted in a decline in median valuations and made it troublesome for companies to enhance their valuations.

Notably, a majority of companies ranging from Series A to C preferred bridge rounds for funding, with at least 40% of Series A and B investments being bridge rounds in Q1.

Acquisition activities for startups observed a 20% increase during the same quarter in comparison to the previous one, with most deals being valued at $10M or less. Challenging circumstances have prompted small startups to prefer exiting the market rather than raising new capital.

Cohere Announces $270M Series C Funding

Cohere offers sophisticated Large Language Models (LLM) and NLP tools via a user-friendly API, catering to a range of use cases such as content creation for various purposes like product descriptions and articles, enabling chat features, and facilitating comprehension of texts for search and regulation.

The company announced that it had raised $270M in new capital as part of its Series C funding led by Inovia Capital. Some of the top investors who participated in this funding round were
NVIDIA, Oracle, Salesforce Ventures, DTCP, Mirae Asset, Schroders Capital, etc.

Cohere’s artificial intelligence platform provides organizations with a flexible and reliable option for transforming their operations. This platform can be conveniently modified and installed in public clouds and in virtual private clouds and can be deployed on-site.

Some of its top customers are Spotify, bambooHR, deepjudge, casetext, Flowrite, etc.

ReadMe

ReadMe is a digital transaction management software and documentation service that employs APIs to generate and manage documents and connect with relevant processes. The platform transforms static API documentation into dynamic hubs curated for developers.

It has various features, including API playgrounds, code snippet constructors, version control, and live API logs while providing data-driven analytics. These features enable development teams to make informed updates and professionally and efficiently communicate the latest changes to users.

The company has secured a total of $9 million across four rounds from notable players in the industry, such as Y Combinator, Accel, and Eight Roads Ventures. Over 3k of the top developers place their trust in the platform, which is utilized by renowned companies like Notion, webflow, scale, Intercom, Crunchbase, and IBM, among others.

Google Extended Passkeys to Workspace and Cloud

Cyber attackers are increasingly utilizing security vulnerabilities in passwords to orchestrate phishing attacks that are becoming more widespread and complex in nature. To prevent such attacks, Google recently rolled out passkey support for consumer Google accounts.

Last week, Google announced that the support of passkeys is extended to Google Workspace and Cloud accounts.

Passkeys are highly secure replacements for passwords and multi-factor authentication. It is because passkey users can sign into websites and applications using the same logins they use for their phones, desktops, or laptops. As a result, there is no need to generate an authentication code from an app or SMS.

As per the announcement made by Google, it has been stated that over 9 million organizations will be granting their users the option to utilize passkeys for accessing Workspace and Cloud instead of traditional passwords.

For more updates, check out the Latest Tech category.