This week’s roundup spans four continents and three very different bets: a Texas semiconductor startup racing to reinvent how chips get made, a Chilean wealth management fintech pushing into Argentina and an Indian cooling-as-a-service company chasing national scale.
Sept. 9 — Fab2, the semiconductor startup formerly known as Atomic Semi, closed a $500 million Series A led by Fundomo at a $3.7 billion valuation. Duquesne Family Office, the investment vehicle of Stanley Druckenmiller, joined a roster that included Corner Capital, Paradigm, Maverick Silicon, StepStone Group, Protagonist, UDC Ventures and angel investor Naval Ravikant. Founded in 2022 by chip designer Jim Keller and Sam Zeloof, who built his first working chip as a teenager in his family’s garage, Fab2 designs and manufactures every piece of equipment that goes into its fabs, then mass-produces the fabs themselves — an approach the founders call a “fab fab.” The company has now raised its valuation nearly 37-fold since its $100 million seed round in 2023, and it operates alongside a growing cluster of well-funded startups, including Substrate and xLight, all racing to break up the semiconductor equipment market long dominated by ASML and TSMC. (WOWTALE)
Sept. 8 — Betterplan, a Chilean wealth-management fintech, raised $1.1 million to fund its expansion into Argentina. The Anastassiou family office led the round, joined by a second, undisclosed family office and existing backer Fondo Vulcano. The raise brings Betterplan’s total funding to roughly $4 million since its 2020 founding; the company manages about $150 million across some 2,000 clients, having doubled assets under management in each of the past two years. Co-founder JoaquÃn Rhodius, a decade-long LarrainVial veteran, joined to help lead the Argentina push. (Dealroom)
Sept. 8 — Circolife, an Indian cooling-as-a-service platform, secured $4.5 million in a Pre-Series A round anchored by Bharat Jaisinghani, Joint Managing Director of Polycab India. Family office Vyom Wealth, the vehicle of Ramesh Jaisinghani, also participated, alongside investors including Nazara Technologies founder Nitish Mittersain and family office S N Damani. Circolife rents AC units to businesses across five Indian cities, with sensors feeding a predictive-maintenance system the company plans to extend into digital twins of client properties. The capital is meant to take the company from roughly 10,000 active subscriptions to 40,000 within 24 months. (CXO Voice)