May 15, 2024

I gotta feeling

Hi there,

After more than doubling its dealmaking in 2021, Andreessen Horowitz’s activity has gradually come back to earth.

As it’s become more choosy, AI is making up a greater portion of its investment activity.

Over a quarter (28%) of a16z’s deals in 2024 have gone to AI startups, compared to 15% in 2021.

Here are 10 notable AI rounds it's backed in 2024 so far:

Udio ($10M seed) — AI music generation
Tennr ($18M Series A) — Healthcare workflow automation
Hippocratic AI ($53M Series A) — LLMs for healthcare
Applied Intuition ($250M Series E) — ADAS
Kaedim ($15M Series A) — 3D content generation
Ideogram AI ($80M Series A) — Text-to-image generation
Freenome ($254M Series F) — Cancer detection
Rasa ($30M Series C) — Conversational AI
BioAge Labs ($170M Series D) — Drug discovery
Ambience ($70M Series B) — AI healthcare assistant

Two notable themes emerge across its recent activity as highlighted by CBI investment insights:

Generative AI (no surprises there): content generation (across audio, images, and more)
AI in healthcare: a16z Bio + Health team backed the two largest digital health deals in Q1 — Freenome and BioAge Labs

Also keep an eye out for its adjacent AI infrastructure investments.

Last month, a16z joined OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and other investors in backing renewable energy startup Exowatt’s $20M seed round. The company is focused on powering AI data centers.

CB Insights customers can check out all of a16z’s AI deals here.

Open book

OpenAI is everywhere.

We just released a report that contains an in-depth scouting report on each of this year’s AI 100 winners.

And while OpenAI is one of those profiled winners, it is also mentioned in scouting reports on dozens of other winners.

The relationships these cos have with OpenAI vary — for example, some:

Compete directly with OpenAI
Specialize to differentiate themselves from OpenAI
Work with OpenAI to enhance their own offerings
Were founded by folks who worked at OpenAI
And the list goes on

Find out just how far-reaching OpenAI’s influence is in our AI 100 Book of Scouting Reports.

Risk takers

We recently analyzed our acquisition, investment, and partnership data on 15 P&C insurance leaders.

And the results show that cyber risk is the top tech priority among leading insurers.

What other technologies are in focus for insurers — and how heavily are they being prioritized?

From generative AI to climate tech, we break it all down in this report.

Taking charge

Data centers already gobble up a ton of electricity.

And computing workloads for new tech like genAI are only driving this energy consumption skyward.

But new technologies are emerging that could help reduce data centers’ environmental impact.

Learn more about them in this report.

I love you.

Anand

@asanwal

P.S. Applications are now open for the Insurtech 50 — our annual list of the 50 most promising insurtech startups. Submit your applications here by July 11.

Get started with CB Insights

Start your free trial

CB Insights' emerging technology insights platform provides all the

analysis and data from this newsletter. Our data is the easiest way to discover and respond to emerging tech.

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here