| Hi there, Welcome to the 122nd edition of Heartcore Insights, curated with 🖤 by the Heartcore Team. If you missed the past newsletters, you can catch up here. Now, let’s dive in!
The AI landscape is buzzing with the debut of Manus, a new AI agent by China's Butterfly Effect, dubbed a 'second DeepSeek' by some for its potential to disrupt. According to MIT Technology Review, Manus combines multiple models including Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet and a tuned version of Alibaba’s Qwen, setting it apart as more of a digital assistant with agency than a typical chatbot. Manus impresses but isn't flawless; it's described as more of an intern than an autonomous assistant, capable but occasionally inaccurate, requiring oversight for precision. A notable feature is the ‘‘Manus Computer’’ window, enhancing transparency by allowing real-time interaction and corrections, a rare trait in AI tools that could enhance AI-human collaboration. Testing revealed that while Manus outperforms ChatGPT DeepResearch in intensive, research-heavy tasks, it's slower and has a higher failure rate. It also suffers from server issues and crashes, yet remains cost-effective, reportedly running at one-tenth the cost of DeepResearch. Despite its advanced architecture and innovative transparency, MIT concludes that Manus is an exciting development but not yet a revolutionary change in digital assistants, still to prove whether it will significantly alter the AI landscape or mark another progress point in AI evolution.
Billionaires in a Trump 2.0 Era: Big Expectations, Bigger Losses Despite expectations that Donald Trump’s return to the White House would benefit America’s billionaires, especially in tech, their fortunes have instead plummeted by $415B in the first eight weeks of his second term, as reported by Forbes. Despite a pro-business administration, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq dropped 7.9% and 11.8% respectively, stark contrasts to the gains during Biden’s corresponding tenure. Investor anxiety has been fuelled by Trump’s unpredictable tariff policies, including new duties on steel and aluminium imports, contributing to forecasts of a 2.8% economic contraction in Q1 2025, ominously referred to as a “Trumpcession”.
Elon Musk: The Biggest Loser (But Still No.1) Elon Musk, a notable Trump ally, faced the steepest loss, with Tesla’s stock plummeting 43%, erasing $104B from his wealth. However, he remains the world's richest person with a net worth of $330B. Analysts attribute his losses more to broader economic slowdowns and the volatile auto sector affected by tariffs than to his political stance.
The Tech Route: A $1.5T Bloodbath Together with Tesla, the “Magnificent 7” tech giants, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Apple and Microsoft, have lost over $1.5T in market value since Trump’s inauguration. High-profile tech leaders like Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin and Mark Zuckerberg have been particularly hard hit.
Looking Ahead While billionaires might have anticipated a boost from a Trump presidency, they've faced a stark market reality with tariff worries, economic fears, and tech declines overshadowing any pro-business sentiment. For now, they are learning that political alignment doesn’t always translate to financial gain.
PhaseTree, a Denmark-based material discovery platform combining physics-based modelling with AI, raises €3M with Heartocre 🖤 - link Mimo, a UK-based platform of financial management tools for SMBs and accountants, raises $8.5M with Project A - link Lovable, a Sweden-based AI-powered full-stack engineer developer, raises $15M with Creandum - link Rerun, a Sweden-based startup building data stack for physical AI, raises $17M with Point Nine - link Numeral, a France-based startup aiming to automate sales tax compliance for e-commerce and SaaS businesses, raises $18M with Benchmark/YC - link Relay, a UK-based logistics e-commerce startup, raises $35M with Plural - link
Rune, a developer of a software to improve military field logistics, raises $6.2M with a16z - link Tera AI, a provider of a spatial reasoning system for robot, raises $7.8M with Felicis - link Bridgetown Research, a startup developing AI agents to speed up due diligence, raises $19M with Accel/Lightspeed - link Multiply Mortgage, a startup offering mortgages as an employee benefit, raises $23.5M with Kleiner Perkins - link Crogl, a developer of AI agents for cybersecurity researchers, raises $25M with Menlo Ventures - link
Mews, a Netherlands-based hospitality management SaaS, raises $75M with Tiger Global/Kinnevik - link Factorial, a Spain-based provider of an all-in-one HR cloud software for SMEs, raises $120M with General Catalyst - link Peregrine Technologies, a US-based decision-support platform for public safety and law enforcement agencies, raises $190M with Sequoia - link Flock Safety, a US-based provider of computer vision-enabled video surveillance technology software, raises $275M with a16z - link Anthropic, a US-based public-benefit AI startup behind Claude, raises $3.5B with Lightspeed - link
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