Quora nabs $75M to make Poe Roblox for AI
Plus Kpler at $100M ARR....
Hey, my friends, the trending signal I selected today is Poe, the AI platform created by Quora. Plus, 4 startups are reaching a new ARR milestone.
1. Quora announced a new $75M fundraising from Andreessen Horowitz
CEO Adam D'Angelo:
The funding will be used to grow Poe and pay creators of bots on the platform.
Millions of bots have been created by Poe users through prompting and by developers through API.
Poe’s role with respect to AI being similar to the role the web browser played in the early internet.
Andreessen Horowitz GP David George says Poe has a two-fold mission:
Be the best way for consumers to interact with a variety of AI products in the same workflow.
Be the easiest way for a developer to build a multi-modal AI product and reach a mass audience, whether prompting an existing model to create a bot or training a model themselves.
So, Poe’s role in AI is similar to what Roblox did for gaming:
Poe is building tools for creators to modify existing models in order to unleash the creativity in the long tail of people who want to build AI, but don’t have the resources themselves to build models.
Roblox created the game engine, providing distribution, trust and safety, infrastructure, and the opportunity for creators to earn a living. The result was a powerful network effect—the more the creators built, the more users came to play with those creations. The more users come, the more creators it attracts.
The most important is that Poe shows signs of increasing returns to scale.
4 startups reaching a significant ARR milestone:
2. ExtraHop at $200M ARR
ExtraHop is a cybersecurity company that uses machine learning to help companies prevent, detect, and eliminate threats on their networks.
With approximately $200 million in annual recurring revenue, double from what it reported in 2021.
Secured $100 million in growth capital from existing investors, ExtraHop was acquired by private equity firms Bain Capital and Crosspoint Capital in a $900 million deal in June 2021.
3. Kpler at $100M ARR
Kpler is a global trade intelligence platform providing real-time data on physical commodities, energy transition, and maritime.
Reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue, driven by organic growth and strategic acquisitions.
It covers more than 40 distinct commodity markets and owns the largest dataset in maritime, providing essential insights into global trade.
4. Axios HQ at $10M ARR
Axios HQ is an internal communications software powered by Smart Brevity® and AI.
It exceeded $10 million in ARR in 2023, has hired its first CMO, and launched integrations with Slack and Microsoft Teams.
It is the only internal communications software with a patented Smart Brevity Guidance system that makes messages clearer and more memorable, improving internal communications and employee engagement.
5. 1000 Tools at $12K Revenue in 3 months
1000.tools is an exclusive list of the 1000 best tools, carefully vetted and maintained by humans.
It did $12k in revenue in 3 months, which is estimated at ~50K.
X(former Twitter) is its main marketing channel.