Venture funding in the Bay Area was a bit uneven this week — to say the least.
After local startups announced no new rounds of funding Monday, 11 venture-backed Bay Area companies reported raising $376.45 million in new deals over the following two days. Now, over the ensuing two days, seven startup announced they'd raised $210.5 million in new funding rounds.
At the top of the list in this end-of-the-week funding wrap-up is a big round that was initially reported to be in the works last week. That would be the new deal raised by Tools for Humanity Corp., the company behind the cryptocurrency Worldcoin. But the Financial Times, which reported that Tools was working on a megadeal, got one big thing wrong: The startup, which was co-founded by OpenAI LLC CEO Sam Altman, ended up raising 15% more than the outlet said it would.
Here's more on the Tools' new round and the other Bay Area funding deals at the end of the week:
- Tools for Humanity Corp, San Francisco, $115 million, Series C: Blockchain Capital led the round for the developer of Worldcoin and an iris scanning device used to authenticate the cryptocurrency's users. Andreessen Horowitz's a16z crypto fund, Bain Capital Crypto and Distributed Global also invested.
- Elementl Inc., San Francisco, $33 million, Series B: Georgian Partners led the round for this developer of an open-source data management service. 8vc, Human Capital, Hanover, Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures, Amplify Partners, and Slow Ventures also participated.
- Poolside, San Francisco, $26 million, Seed: Redpoint Ventures led the deal for this developer of a generative artificial intelligence service design to help write software code. The company's co-founder is Jason Warner, the former chief technology officer of GitHub Inc. who is a managing director at Redpoint.
- Kira Learning Inc., Palo Alto, $15 million, Series A: NEA and the AI Fund led the round for this provider of online computer science courses.
- PingLend, Inc. (dba Pesto), San Francisco, $11 million: Activant Capital and Plural invested in this provider of a credit card to people with limited assets or poor credit.
- WireMock Inc., San Francisco, $6.5 million, Seed: Ridge Ventures led the round for this provider of software that allows developers to create test application programming interfaces, or APIs, for their apps. First Rays Venture Partners and Scribble Ventures also participated.
- BebopBee Inc., Menlo Park, $4 million: Bitkraft Ventures led the round for this developer of the mobile game "Travel Crush." Courtside Ventures, Andover and Goal Ventures also invested.
Anthony Duignan-Cabrera and J. Jennings Moss contributed to this report. If you have funding or venture capital news, please let us know at svbjnews@bizjournals.com.
