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Welcome to another edition of 🔍 Startup Researcher - North America, your essential digest delivering the latest news and premium insights on startups and venture capital across the region 🌎️

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📰 Important News

• Fintech firm Solid, formerly Wise, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after raising $81 million, now seeking restructuring or a sale

• Block Inc. agreed to pay a $40 million fine over Cash App's anti-money laundering compliance issues.

• Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz is yet to be served in a lawsuit, as Rippling’s legal battle escalates with whistleblower Keith O’Brien under 24/7 guard

• Ex-OpenAI staffers filed brief opposing its for-profit transition, arguing it violates the company’s mission and governance structure.

• Elon Musk's xAI launched Grok 3 and Grok 3 Mini models via API priced higher than competitors offering reasoning capabilities.

💸 Top Funding Rounds

• Base Power raised $200 million to expand its home backup battery business and build a factory, aiming for growth in Texas and beyond.

• Caris Life Sciences secured $168 million to expand its precision medicine platform focused on cancer diagnosis and treatment.

• Nuro closed a $106 million Series E round to shift focus from delivery robots to licensing its self-driving tech to automakers and fleets.

• Merida Biosciences raised $121 million to develop precision therapies targeting autoimmune and allergic diseases.

• Rescale secured $115 million to enhance engineering software with AI to speed up simulations for designing complex systems.

💰️ Notable Exits

• Ripple is acquiring prime brokerage firm Hidden Road for $1.25B to expand into institutional finance.

• NVIDIA acquired Lepton AI to expand its vertical integration by offering AI clusters through rental services.

• Cloudflare acquired Outerbase to enhance developer database capabilities, enabling easier creation of AI-powered, full-stack applications.

• Apex Group expanded its private markets capabilities by acquiring Flow, adding $17 billion in assets under administration.

• Wealthsimple acquihired the team behind Plenty, a wealth management platform for couples, to expand its family-focused financial products.

🏦 About Investors

• Founders Fund closed a $4.6 billion late-stage venture fund with 270 investors, directed by Peter Thiel and others.

• SignalFire raised $1 billion to invest in early-stage startups, boosting its total assets under management to $3 billion with a focus on AI-driven applications.

• Ryan Smith and Accel's Ryan Sweeney launched $1 billion fund HX One to back growth-stage startups in tech, sports and experiences.

• Lerer Hippeau closed a $200 million ninth fund bringing its assets under management to $1.4 billion.

• Andreessen Horowitz is targeting a record $20 billion AI-focused growth fund to back US startups and support existing portfolio companies.

🚀 Startup of the Week

Introducing our Startup of the Week 🏆

Base Power

Base Power, a rapidly growing energy provider founded in 2023 by Zach Dell and Justin Lopas, has raised $200 million in a Series B funding round led by Addition, Andreessen Horowitz, and other investors. The company offers large home backup batteries at a significantly lower cost than traditional solutions like Tesla's Powerwall, with 25 to 50 kilowatt-hour units priced at $595 to $995, while Powerwall costs around $15,000. In addition to its affordable offerings, Base Power is rapidly expanding, with plans to scale its operations in Texas and other states, build a domestic battery factory, and tap into the grid-balancing market, which could help it further monetize its growing fleet of residential batteries.

💼 Investor of the Week

Introducing our Investor of the Week 🏆

Founders Fund

Founders Fund, the venture capital firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, Ken Howery, and Luke Nosek in 2005, has closed a $4.6 billion late-stage venture fund, named Founders Fund Growth III, with contributions from 270 investors. The fund aims to support tech companies amidst a subdued IPO market, with a significant portion of the capital coming from the firm's general partners. Known for its early investments in successful companies like SpaceX, Palantir, Facebook, and Airbnb, Founders Fund continues to back high-growth companies such as Stripe and Anduril, even in the face of market uncertainty.

🤑 Opportunity Radar

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