【Tech Events in SF Bay Area from 12/21 to 1/4】Highlights of the Week 🗞
This week, my friends, who recently IPOed in Japan, visited me in San Francisco. As they are establishing a $120M fund in 2025, I hosted a dinner event to introduce them to VCs, angel investors, and notable founders in the Bay Area.
They are looking for 2 things:
Promising AI startups to invest in.
A full-time GP for their fund in the Bay Area.
If you know anyone who you think would be the best fit for these, please let me know!
I also hosted a dinner for fintech founders and investors. While I often organize larger events, my favorite format is smaller, more intimate gatherings. I plan to organize more events like this. Let me know what kind of group you'd be interested in, and I'll customize it for you.
I have summarized the 14 Tech Events in SF from 12/21 to 1/4 in Air Table, hope its useful!
👉Event Lists (There are tabs for AI events,VC and Investor events and Hackathon)
🗓️Join our Friday Founder's Gatherings(12/27 Fri 4pm)
Highlights of the Week 🗞
AI coding assistant Cursor (by Anysphere) has secured a $100M Series B funding at a $2.6B valuation, showing exceptional growth in just 4 months.
$100M Series B at $2.6B valuation, up from $400M in 4 months
Revenue growth: $4M ARR in April to $4M monthly ($48M ARR) by October
50x+ revenue multiple on valuation
Led by Thrive Capital with a16z participating
6.5x valuation increase since last round
Pricing: $20/month pro tier, $40/month business subscription
Notable users include OpenAI, Midjourney, Perplexity, Shopify, Instacart
Founded in 2022 by MIT students
Previous funding: $60M Series A at $400M valuation
Initial seed funding led by OpenAI Startup Fund
Offers 2-week free trial
Competing with GitHub Copilot in AI coding assistant market
Backed by Patrick Collison, Nat Friedman, and others
Salesforce is launching Agentforce 2.0, an enhanced enterprise AI platform for digital labor, with automated agents handling complex tasks.
Full release scheduled for February 2025
Sales Skills available now at $2 per conversation
Solving 83% of customer queries without humans
60M+ annual help page visits
Currently handling double the weekly conversations
90% automation rate at 1-800 Accountant
Supporting 60M European members at Secret Escapes
Pre-built skills across CRM, Slack, and Tableau
MuleSoft integration for cross-system workflows
Natural language agent creation capability
Enhanced Atlas Reasoning Engine
Slack integration coming January 2025
Major clients include Accenture, IBM, Indeed, Finnair
Indeed targeting 50% reduction in hire time
Unity University scaling from 10K to 50K students
Enhanced RAG and reasoning available February 2025
SandboxAQ raises over $300 million at $5.6 billion valuation, leveraging quantum and AI technologies for scientific research.
Funding amount: $300+ million
Company valuation: $5.6 billion
Year founded: Spun out from Alphabet in 2022
Total team size: 150+ (80+ Ph.D.s and 70+ software engineers)
Initial funding: $500 million raised in 2022
New investors: Alger, Yann LeCun
Notable backer: In-Q-Tel (US intelligence agencies)
Primary revenue sectors: Biopharma, life sciences, chemicals, and materials
Technological focus: Quantum-inspired algorithms and large quantitative models
Processing capabilities: Currently on GPUs, future plans for quantum processing units (QPUs)
Would you like to be part of our event team ?
👉 Details >
Have a wonderful day everyone :)
Kyosuke