Natasha Mascarenhas

San Francisco

Venture Capital and Startups Reporter at The Information

venture capital and startups reporter @theinformation signal: nmasc.03 or 925 271 0912 all about numbers, nuance and new coffee shops!

Articles

Safe Superintelligence Inc Raises $2 Billion at a $32 Billion Valuation

1 week ago | theinformation.com | Natasha Mascarenhas

Source: Financial TimesSafe Superintelligence Inc., the secretive artificial intelligence lab started by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, has raised $2 billion in capital at a $32 billion valuation, including the investment, according to a report from the Financial Times. The funding is double the amount that SSI was looking to raise as of two months ago, The Information previously reported.
IVP Says Founders Shouldn’t Delay Raising Capital Given ‘Uncertain Market’

1 week ago | theinformation.com | Natasha Mascarenhas

Source: The InformationIVP, the 45-year-old firm known for investments in Brex and Perplexity, is advising startup founders to re-adjust their annual budgets and raise capital, even if they have to forgo a valuation increase.
Honeycomb Acquires Code Cleanup Startup

2 weeks ago | theinformation.com | Natasha Mascarenhas

Source: The InformationHoneycomb, a San Francisco-based startup that helps engineers identify and resolve bugs, has acquired Grit, a coding startup that helps companies maintain their software and codebase, Honeycomb CEO Christine Yen confirmed. Grit raised a $7 million seed round in 2023 from firms such as Founders Fund and 8VC.
How Charles Hudson’s Precursor Is Navigating the IPO Drought

2 weeks ago | theinformation.com | Natasha Mascarenhas

Charles Hudson’s Precursor Ventures, a nine-year-old firm specializing in writing the first investment checks to nascent startups, just raised $66 million for its fifth fund. That’s 20% less than Hudson raised for his firm’s fourth fund, in 2021, and shows the rising challenge of VC fundraising these days. Since venture funds can’t rely on startup acquisitions or initial public offerings to return cash to their limited partners, he expects the tough fundraising environment will persist.
Andreessen Horowitz Plots $20 Billion Artificial Intelligence Fund

2 weeks ago | theinformation.com | Natasha Mascarenhas

Source: ReutersAndreessen Horowitz is raising $20 billion, its largest fund in the firm’s history, to back mature artificial intelligence companies, according to a report from Reuters. The fundraising efforts come as the firm has been busy stockpiling several AI bets, from coding assistant Cursor to Elon Musk’s xAI. The fundraising haul, if closed, would be a significant step up from the firm’s most recent fund raise, a $7.2 billion pool of capital split across five different funds in April 2024.
Announcing The Information’s 2025 List of Next General Partners

3 weeks ago | theinformation.com | Natasha Mascarenhas

Amid a prolonged slump in initial public offerings, venture capital firms are shrinking planned funds and abandoning once-promising strategies. That’s heightened competition for the premier positions at venture firms—the general partners who make investment decisions and get a share of the firm’s gains. But some people are navigating the turbulence well.
OpenAI Confirms It’s Raising $40 Billion at $260 Billion Valuation

3 weeks ago | theinformation.com | Natasha Mascarenhas

Source: The InformationOpenAI said Monday it was raising $40 billion in new funding at a pre-investment valuation of $260 billion, confirming earlier reports about the round. The ChatGPT maker also confirmed that SoftBank Group, an existing OpenAI investor, was involved in the funding efforts.
Cursor Hits $200 Million in Annual Recurring Revenue

3 weeks ago | theinformation.com | Natasha Mascarenhas

Source: The InformationSan Francisco-based startup Anysphere, the maker of popular coding assistant Cursor, is generating $200 million in annual recurring revenue from the subscriptions it expects over the next 12 months. That’s up from $50 million in annual recurring revenue it was generating in November. The revenue milestone, which The Information reported today, comes as the business is talking to investors about a financing round that would value the company at $10 billion.
Move Over, OpenAI: How the Startup Behind Cursor Became the Hottest, Vibiest Thing in AI

3 weeks ago | theinformation.com | Natasha Mascarenhas

Every so often, a flashy startup hurtles to the white-hot center of the Silicon Valley zeitgeist, presenting an extraordinary encapsulation of a moment in time. For the past few years, it has been OpenAI. Now, arguably, it’s Anysphere, an AI startup run by four founders, all under age 30, that remained little known until quite recently.
Magnetar Capital In Talks for OpenAI’s $40 Billion Financing

4 weeks ago | theinformation.com | Natasha Mascarenhas

Source: BloombergOpenAI is close to raising its $40 billion financing. In addition to SoftBank’s previously reported investment, investors including Magnetar Capital, Coatue Management, Founders Fund and Altimeter Capital Management are in talks to participate in the deal, according to Bloomberg. Magnetar Capital could contribute up to $1 billion for the round, according to the same report. Magnetar Capital has previously backed model developer Cohere and is one of the largest backers of CoreWeave.