Why Bet Billions on Zero Revenue?
Hi, and welcome to a new edition of The Daily Dealflow — the 5-minute briefing that gives you clear context on capital flows and market-moving trends across the Americas, from Silicon Valley's garages to Buenos Aires' cafés. Let's dive in.
🏆 Deal of the Day
Nvidia will invest multiple billions of dollars in Safe Superintelligence (SSI), the AI lab co-founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, under a long-term strategic partnership unveiled monday that also gives SSI early access to Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin GPU platform — TechCrunch.
Why This?: The deal underscores how heavily US chip capital now underwrites the hemisphere's entire AI buildout, from Silicon Valley labs to the data-center expansion plans riding the same Nvidia hardware cycle across the region.
Positive Context:
- SSI has now raised $7B total at a $32B post-money valuation, backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Alphabet, Sequoia and GV.
- The partnership is expected to boost SSI's compute "by an order of magnitude," letting the two-year-old lab scale research it calls "worthy" of the bet.
Yes, but:
- Two years after founding, SSI still hasn't shipped a commercial product, betting its "straight shot" research approach outlasts rivals racing to monetize.
- Neither company disclosed exact terms; the multi-billion figure comes from a source familiar with the deal, not an official filing.
Zoom in: The announcement lands days after OpenAI disclosed that one of its own pre-release models broke out of its sandbox to hack Hugging Face during testing, sharpening the contrast between SSI's safety-first pitch and the industry's shipping pace.
The comment: "We have research that is worthy of scaling up, and having access to a big Nvidia computer will let us do so." — Ilya Sutskever, TechCrunch.
💰 Venture Capital
Genius AI (US) – $44M, Series D, AI-driven operating system automating scheduling, payments, marketing and client management for beauty and wellness businesses (formerly GlossGenius) – VentureBurn.
Siigo (Colombia) – $103.5M, capital raise, SME software provider expanding cloud accounting and business tools for small businesses – The Investor Society.
Imagi (US) – $4.5M, Seed, K-12 edtech platform that helps schools teach AI literacy and vibe coding – The Investor Society.
🏛️ Private Equity
Expand Energy Corporation (US) – $1.25B, carve-out, acquires Twin Eagle's asset-backed natural gas marketing and optimization business from Five Point Infrastructure – StockTitan.
argenx (US) – $2.2B, merger (tender offer), acquires Forte Biosciences to add first-in-class anti-CD122 antibody FB102 to its immunology pipeline – Reuters.
Telecom (Argentina) – $1.25B (original deal value), divestment/carve-out, ordered to shed 6 million mobile and broadband customers as a condition of its Telefónica Argentina acquisition, with a monitoring agent now named to run the sale process – La Nación.
Berkshire Hathaway (US) – $8.5B, acquisition (enterprise value $8.5B), national homebuilder serving entry-level, move-up, and resort-lifestyle buyers – The Investor Society.
🏢 Middle Market
Conversica (US) – deal size undisclosed, majority recapitalization, Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital takes control of the AI-driven auto-retail revenue platform while founding management retains a significant ownership stake – Auto Remarketing.
Gopass (Colombia) – acquisition, mobility fintech buying Pluxee Flotas Colombia, an 18-million-gallon-a-year fleet fuel expense management business – Latam List.
Payward (US) – deal size undisclosed, carve-out, Kraken's parent acquires Magic Labs' embedded-wallet infrastructure business to expand its B2B crypto custody platform – Cointelegraph.
Notion (US) – undisclosed, acquisition, AI search infrastructure startup with reranking models for Notion AI and other search workflows – The Investor Society.
📈 Public & Capital Markets
Apnimed (US), a Cambridge, Mass.-based developer of a pill for obstructive sleep apnea, set IPO terms to 10m shares at $14-$16. It would have a $665m fully diluted value, were it to price in the middle, and plans to list on the Nasdaq (APMD). The company raised over $430m from firms like Morningside, Alpha Wave, and Sectoral Asset Management. – Via Axios / SEC & FW Pharma.
Navitas Semiconductor (US) – Q2 earnings, revenue of $10.5M (+22% sequential) as the chipmaker's pivot from mobile to AI-infrastructure and grid power gains traction, though a $203M non-cash earnout charge drove a large GAAP net loss – StockTitan.
El Brocal (Peru) – H1 earnings, net profit nearly tripled to $104.9M on a 179% surge in silver prices and a 46% rise in copper, the Buenaventura-controlled polymetallic miner reported – Rio Times.
📅 Web Archive
On this day in 1981, IBM announced its first desktop computer, the System/23 Datamaster, priced at $9,830 and built around Intel's 8086 processor, just weeks before the IBM PC's debut.
Kalshi sent Netflix a cease-and-desist letter over the trailer for a new documentary on prediction markets, alleging it includes misleading footage that depicts the company facilitating an illegal sports trade in Nevada.
Adults aged 18 to 29 are more than four times as likely to say they're online "almost constantly" as those 65 and older, 63% versus 14% – DataReportal.
See you tomorrow,
Jose Kont
The human behind The Investor Society.
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