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Shein's 75% Haircut, a16z's $1.1B Bet & the IPO Timing Trap
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Shein's Hong Kong debut at a $25B valuation — down from $100B — is the cautionary tale every late-stage founder needs to hear today. Plus: Andreessen Horowitz's Machine Age Fund, Clipto's profitable AI raise, European fleet and surgical AI rounds, and BitGo's NYDIG acquisition.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Airwallex is IPO-ready and knows it. The company's president Lucy Liu has said so directly.
While late-stage companies navigate exit timing, early-stage capital is moving with conviction. Andreessen Horowitz launched its Machine Age Fund this week, raising one-point-one billion dollars focused specifically on AI compute infrastructure.
At the application layer, Clipto raised fifteen million dollars at a two-hundred-and-fifty million dollar valuation. The San Francisco startup has thirty million users and fifteen million dollars in annual recurring revenue, which puts it in the rare category of AI companies that are actually profitable at this stage.
Two European raises this week point to a pattern worth tracking. Irish fleet intelligence company CameraMatics closed up to forty-nine million euros for AI video analytics that identifies driver fatigue and vehicle risk across transport fleets.
Two acquisitions closed quietly this week that say something about where consolidation is heading. BitGo acquired the institutional trading operations of NYDIG, deepening its position in Bitcoin infrastructure for large financial players.
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