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Venture Capital Firm

@venturecapitalfirm

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Funds, fundraises, and the operators behind them.
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The first check changes everything. #VentureCapital #Startups #VC #Founders #Startup by @venturecapitalfirm
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3 months ago
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@cristiano and @kingjames just backed the same company — a wearable now worth $10 billion. ⌚📈 WHOOP — the screenless fitness band that tracks your sleep, recovery, and strain 24/7 — closed a $575M round at a $10.1 billion valuation, nearly TRIPLING its value since 2021. 🚀 And the cap table is stacked. 👀 Alongside sovereign wealth funds (Qatar Investment Authority, Mubadala) and healthcare giants (Abbott, Mayo Clinic), the round pulled in a global roster of athletes: @rorymcilroy ⛳, @virgilvandijk ⚽, @reggiewmiller31 🏀, @shanelowrygolf — plus musician @niallhoran 🎤. Ronaldo, who’s also a global ambassador, put it simply: “WHOOP has become one of the most important tools I use to support my long-term health.” 💪 The bigger picture: while 2025’s biggest rounds chased AI 🤖, @whoop is betting that your personal health data is its own enduring platform. With 2.5M members, a $1.1B bookings run rate, and clinical-grade features like FDA-approved ECG, the company says its next step is an IPO. 📈 Screenless, subscription-based, and backed by the biggest names in sport. Is health data the next great platform, or peak wearable hype? 👇 Photo Credits, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped): LeBron James — Erik Drost (CC BY 2.0); Virgil van Dijk — Ailura (CC BY-SA 3.0 AT); Rory McIlroy — Bryan Berlin / WikiPortraits (CC BY-SA 4.0); Cristiano Ronaldo — Bryan Berlin / WikiPortraits (CC BY-SA 4.0). #venturecapital #startups #vc #startup #lebronjames by @venturecapitalfirm
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a month ago
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A dozen pro athletes just put money into the same AI startup. Here’s what they saw. 🎙️📈 Wispr Flow — the AI app that turns your speech into clean, formatted text — just raised $280M at a $2 billion valuation, led by Menlo Ventures. It nearly TRIPLED its valuation in 9 months. The investor list is what caught our eye. Alongside heavyweight VCs like @neavc, @forerunnerventures, and Goodwater, the round pulled in a stacked roster of athletes: @klaythompson, @paulgeorge, @joeyb_9 (Joe Burrow), @livvydunne, Trae Young, Dak Prescott, DK Metcalf, Aaron Gordon, Alex Caruso, Domantas Sabonis, Kyle Hamilton — and Olympic legend @shaunwhite. Why? Because they actually use it. As three-time NBA All-Star Domantas Sabonis put it: “I use Flow every day.” The bigger bet: Wispr thinks dictation is just the entry point. Menlo Ventures argues the AI bottleneck has shifted — the models are superhuman, but the interfaces aren’t. Voice, they think, is how we’ll actually talk to machines. 60 billion words dictated. Nearly every Fortune 500 using it. And now a locker room full of athletes betting on it. Smart money, or star-powered hype? 👇 Photo credits, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped/modified): Klay Thompson — Keith Allison (CC BY-SA 2.0); Paul George — Chensiyuan (CC BY-SA 4.0); Joe Burrow — All-Pro Reels (CC BY-SA 2.0); Livvy Dunne — CCS Pictures (CC BY-SA 2.0). #venturecapital #startups #AI #startup #vc by @venturecapitalfirm
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2 months ago
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In 2019, @alexpall and @drewtaggart — the duo behind @thechainsmokers hits “Closer” and “Something Just Like This” — launched @mantis.vc , a venture capital firm. The skepticism was loud: another celebrity fund destined to fizzle. It didn’t. @mantis.vc now manages ~$225M across three funds and is raising its fourth — the point where a firm stops being an “emerging manager” and becomes just… a real VC. And the believers aren’t randoms. Mantis is backed by @mcuban, @fanatics CEO @michaelrubin, legendary VCs Keith Rabois and Ron Conway, and TPG’s Jim Coulter — with pros Jeffrey Evans and Milan Koch running it day-to-day. The portfolio proves it: 170+ startups including @moonpay , Pipe, Chainguard and Underdog — with early exits in @coinbase and Rupa Health. Their edge, in Pall’s words: they’ll “do the things other entertainers and athletes simply aren’t.” From EDM superstars to legit institutional investors. Proof celebrities can build real firms — or the exception that proves the rule? 👇 Photo credits: The Chainsmokers — Barak Shrama / Slava Blazer Photography for TechCrunch (CC BY 2.0), cropped; Mark Cuban — Philip Romano (CC BY-SA 4.0), cropped. Via Wikimedia Commons. #venturecapital #startups #vc #startup #chainsmokers by @venturecapitalfirm
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2 months ago
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Logan Paul, Andre Iguodala & Zion Williamson backed this app years ago. It just hit a $20 billion valuation. 📈🔥 @Whatnot — the live-shopping platform — just raised $545M in a Series G, nearly doubling its value to $20B in under a year. 🚀 It’s now the biggest raise in live-shopping history. Here’s the wild part: it started in 2019 as a marketplace for trading cards and collectibles. 🃏 Today it’s on track for $1B+ in annual revenue, with 650,000 new users joining every week and over $8B in goods sold in the first half of 2026 alone. 💰 The cap table is stacked. 👀 @loganpaul, NBA champion Andre Iguodala (@andre) and @zionwilliamson 😳 Behind them sits a who’s-who of venture: @a16z (early in @coinbase, Airbnb & more), @ycombinator (@airbnb, Stripe, @doordash ), SoftBank, Silver Lake, CapitalG (Alphabet’s fund), Lightspeed, ICONIQ, Kleiner Perkins — and even @animalcapitalfund , the creator-led fund we’ve covered before. Robinhood’s new ventures fund also put in $30M. 🔥 That’s a lineup with dozens of unicorns between them — now betting big that live shopping is the next commerce gold rush. 🦄 And in a Silicon Valley the CEO says is “99.99% AI right now,” Whatnot is the rare non-AI company hitting $20B. Early bet of the decade, or peak live-shopping hype? 👇 Photo credits: Logan Paul — Erik Drost, CC BY 2.0. Zion Williamson — Erik Drost, CC BY 2.0 (cropped). Andre Iguodala — All-Pro Reels, CC BY-SA 2.0. Images via Wikimedia Commons; images cropped/edited for presentation. #venturecapital #startup #whatnot #startups #vc by @venturecapitalfirm
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2 months ago
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@serenawilliams just renamed her own venture firm — and took her name off it on purpose. 🎾📈 Serena Ventures is now Starfire Ventures. To be clear: @serenawilliams isn’t going anywhere — she’s still the managing partner. She deliberately dropped her own name from the firm she founded. Why? In her words, she wanted it to “be bigger than me.” Her reasoning: when your name is on something, it can limit what it becomes — and she wants this firm to outlast her and stand on its own. And it’s already a serious operation. Starfire’s portfolio holds 16 unicorns, and nearly 70% of its companies are led by women or founders of color. Serena has called this next chapter bigger than anything she’s done — including tennis. It’s a rare move. Most people spend a lifetime building their name into a brand. Serena just took hers off — betting the mission matters more than the marquee. Building something to outlast you, or giving up a personal brand you can’t get back? 👇 Photo via Wikimedia Commons, cropped: Serena Williams/Edwin Martinez (CC BY 2.0). #venturecapital #startups #vc #investing #startup by @venturecapitalfirm
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2 months ago
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Yes, that Drake. And he’s betting on something unusual. 🏙️📈 Drake (@champagnepapi) and NBA star Chris Paul (@cp3) are among the backers of @vicusventures — a debut seed fund that just did something rare: it turned down money. Brothers @rajman100 & @sunnysandhu24 capped the fund at exactly $55M and passed on “way more” capital to keep it that size. The reasoning: in a world of mega-funds and blank checks, they’re betting founders don’t need the biggest check — they need the right people around the table. Vicus runs on a “village” model, where the LP base itself is the product. And that village is stacked — beyond Drake and Chris Paul, it includes partners from General Catalyst, Bain Capital & Kleiner Perkins, plus operators like McLaren CEO Zak Brown and former Amazon consumer chief Jeff Wilke. The $55M cap wasn’t random either — it’s a nod to the Sandhu family’s roots in Punjab, “the land of five rivers.” The bet: seed capital is now a commodity. A high-signal network isn’t. Smart discipline, or leaving growth on the table? 👇 Photos via Wikimedia Commons, cropped: * Drake / The Come Up Show (CC BY 2.0) * Chris Paul / All-Pro Reels (CC BY-SA 2.0) #venturecapital #startups #drake #vc #investing by @venturecapitalfirm
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2 months ago
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@aplusk just walked away from the $1 billion firm he spent 11 years building. Here’s why. 💡📈 Ashton Kutcher has stepped back from @soundventures — the firm he co-founded that was an early backer of @openai , @claudeai , @uber , @airbnb & @spotify — to launch a brand-new fund called Decimal Capital with Morgan Beller (ex-NFX, ex-a16z, co-creator of @meta Libra). The target: $500 million. (Reported by the WSJ — the raise is still in progress.) The interesting part is the thesis. While everyone piles into flashy AI apps, Decimal is betting one layer down — on the “picks and shovels”: AI infrastructure, energy, and deep tech. The compute, power, and hard science that every AI company depends on. It’s an amicable move — Kutcher stays on as an advisor to Sound Ventures, and Sound’s team is advising his new firm in return. He simply wanted to get back to concentrated, early-stage bets — the kind that built his track record (he was in on OpenAI and Anthropic early). Smart pivot to the real bottleneck of the AI boom, or a $500M bet that takes a decade to pay off? 👇 Photo via Wikimedia Commons, cropped: Ashton Kutcher (2023), CC BY 4.0. #venturecapital #startups #startup #vc #AI by @venturecapitalfirm
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2 months ago
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A “de-extinction” startup is reportedly in talks to hit a $30B valuation. Here’s the wild part. 🦣 @colossal — the company behind the dire wolf pups — is reportedly in talks to raise at a $20–30B valuation, per Axios. That’s up to 3x its last round of ~$10B, from just 16 months ago. The round has NOT closed — terms, lead investor, and timing are still unconfirmed. The wild part is the cap table. Backers include @tombrady, @chrishemsworth, @parishilton, @tigerwoods, Peter Jackson, @tonyrobbins, the Winklevoss twins — and George R.R. Martin, whose Game of Thrones dire wolves the company then genetically recreated in real life. What are investors actually buying? Far more than mammoths. The real bet is the underlying tech: gene editing, artificial wombs, and spinouts like Astromech (an AI firm already valued at $2B) and Form Bio — plus revenue from conservation partnerships with the U.S. government and beyond. At a $30B valuation, investors are betting this becomes one of the most important biotech platforms in the world. 🧬 Genius long-term bet, or ahead of its time? 👇 Photos via Wikimedia Commons, cropped: Tom Brady/Jack Newton (CC BY-SA 2.0); Chris Hemsworth/WikiPortraits (CC BY 4.0); Paris Hilton/Office of Rep. Ro Khanna (Public Domain); George R.R. Martin/Henry Söderlund (CC BY 4.0). #venturecapital #startups #colossal #vc #investing by @venturecapitalfirm
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2 months ago
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Nobody expected a supplement brand to pull this off. 💊📈 IM8 — the supplement brand co-founded by @davidbeckham — just secured $1 billion in growth financing from @generalcatalyst, one of the largest deals its Customer Value Fund has ever done. The twist: it’s not a typical raise. General Catalyst funds up to 70% of IM8’s marketing spend and gets repaid through a capped share of revenue — no equity taken. It ranks in the top 1% of all wellness financings ever by size. What makes IM8 different is the cap table: instead of paying athletes to endorse, it made them owners. @giannis_an34 took his stake entirely in equity — no cash. @arynasabalenka (world No. 1) and F1’s Ollie Bearman are shareholders too — over 200 million followers combined, all invested, not just endorsing. The numbers back it: $100M+ in annualized revenue in 11 months, sold in 30+ countries, ~$160M in liquidity and zero debt. From footballer to founder of a billion-dollar supplement brand. Is athlete-equity the new endorsement? 👇 Photos via Wikimedia Commons, cropped: David Beckham/UNICEF Ethiopia (CC BY 3.0); Giannis Antetokounmpo/Keith Allison (CC BY-SA 2.0); Aryna Sabalenka/Hameltion (CC BY-SA 4.0). #venturecapital #startups #vc #startup #investing by @venturecapitalfirm
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3 months ago
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Nobody would take their call. Now they’re worth $10 billion. 💻📈 Etched just closed a $300M Series C at a $10.3B valuation — the highest @sequoiacapital has ever backed at Series C — doubling its value in about seven months. The bet: its Sohu chip does exactly ONE thing — run transformer AI models (the tech behind ChatGPT & Claude) — by hardcoding it into silicon. The payoff: up to ~10x faster than @nvidia’s best GPUs on inference. The cap table is a who’s-who: Peter Thiel (Palantir, Founders Fund), Andrej Karpathy (ex-Tesla/OpenAI), Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, Stanley Druckenmiller, @dylanjfield of @figma, @amjad_masad of @repl.it, and @bryanjohnson_ — with @sequoiacapital leading, plus a16z, Jane Street & SK Hynix. The kicker: in 2023, founders Gavin Uberti & Robert Wachen couldn’t get a single investor to take their call. Today they’ve booked $1 billion in orders and are shipping this summer. And these weren’t passive checks — Karpathy, Hinton and others actually tested the chip before investing. The most expensive bet in AI chips yet. Genius or overhyped? 👇 Photos: Bryan Johnson/Kernel (CC0); Peter Thiel/Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 3.0); Andrej Karpathy/Gladwin Analytics (CC BY 3.0); Dylan Field/TechCrunch (CC BY 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons. #venturecapital #AI #startups #startup #investing by @venturecapitalfirm
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3 months ago
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Lacrosse just landed the biggest raise in its history. 🥍📈 The @pll — @paulrabil Premier Lacrosse League — closed a $100M Series E, the largest capital raise in pro lacrosse ever, led by Ares and Alibaba co-founder / Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai. The cap table went Hollywood: @glenpowell (Top Gun: Maverick) — joining as a Creative Advisor to help launch teams in Texas — plus @robmac (Wrexham AFC co-owner), country star @warrenzeiders , and actor @tonycavalero . ESPN and 76ers co-owner David Blitzer’s Bolt Ventures bought in too. The play is straight out of the Wrexham playbook: run the “Welcome to Wrexham” model on lacrosse — turn a niche sport into a media phenomenon right as it returns to the 2028 LA Olympics. The league’s valuation now tops $500M. Founded in 2018 by brothers Paul & Mike Rabil, the PLL has now raised over $200M — and Rabil says this round may be its last. Niche sport, A-list money. Is lacrosse the next Formula 1? 👇 #lacrosse #PLL #venturecapital #VC #startup by @venturecapitalfirm
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3 months ago
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