August 20, 2024

🔥 Hot Takes Tuesday for 2024-08-20

Tech funding, M&A, and rising interest in gov/military contracts in this rapid-fire edition.

🙏 And a big thanks to all our sponsors! 🙏

(Scroll to the end…)

Off the cuff analysis in a rapid fire format.

First… a quick nerdy aside. My Pi-hole approved list of FQDNs grows one entry at a time. Better than 1/5 of objectionable (to me) traffic is being effectively blocked. 🙏

And back to our regular Hot Takes Tuesday…

Funds, Funding, and M&A

Techmeme: Virginia-based Defcon AI, which aims to use ML to improve US DoD logistics, raised a $44M seed led by Bessemer, and has earned ~$15M in government contracts (Aria Alamalhodaei/TechCrunch)

By Aria Alamalhodaei / TechCrunch. View the full context on Techmeme.

💰 + 🪖 The amounts being raised related to pursuit of US Government / Military contracts seems to be getting more press recently as software and AI/ML becomes the latest in technological progression.

Techmeme: Fabric Cryptography, a startup working on a “verifiable processing unit” chip for cryptography, raised a $33M Series A co-led by Blockchain Capital and 1kx (Bradley Keoun/CoinDesk)

By Bradley Keoun / CoinDesk. View the full context on Techmeme.

💰 + 🔐 Seeing funding coverage for companies with “cryptography” in the name vs. cryptocurrency or $omethingCoin might just mean that nature is healing.

Techmeme: South Korean AI chip makers Rebellions and Sapeon agree to merge; Rebellions has raised $225M+, and Sapeon's shareholders include SK Telecom and SK Hynix (Joyce Lee/Reuters)

By Joyce Lee / Reuters. View the full context on Techmeme.

💰 + 🤖 M&A is alive and well in 2024 which means this pattern will likely occur a few more times before end of the year.

Techmeme: AMD agrees to buy New Jersey-based ZT Systems, founded in 1994 to design and make servers, server racks, and other infrastructure, for $4.9B, closing in H1 2025 (Asa Fitch/Wall Street Journal)

By Asa Fitch / Wall Street Journal. View the full context on Techmeme.

💰 + 🤖 Speaking of M&A, the vertical integration for solving key customer challenges is very impressive when there is a specific carve out intended to focus on the accretive value of the combination and simultaneously widen access to growth in the process for the remaining entity… and it probably anticipates regulatory approval questions before they are posed.

Note: Some images via Unsplash

Disclosure

I am linking to my disclosure.

Cuthrell Consulting LLC
Attn: Jay Cuthrell
1903 Live Oak St #92
Beaufort, NC 28516-0092

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