As we reflect on 2024, the economic landscape is showing signs of renewed energy, driven by improving macroeconomic conditions and developments across key areas like venture capital investments, IPOs, and M&A activity.
2024 marked the best year for U.S. initial public offering (IPO) activity since 2021. With over $41 billion raised, according to Dealogic, the IPO market has outperformed the prior two years ($24 billion in 2023 and $22 billion in 2022). Still far from the $317 billion peak in 2021, the numbers indicate a rebound trend and improving equity market conditions.
In early-stage VC, funding remains strong, with a focus on sectors like AI, climate tech, and healthcare. As we look ahead, we continue to be bullish on the application of AI across consumer and business use cases, increasing commercialization of the autonomy stack, and regulatory tailwinds for fintech.
We expect to see foundation models move towards commoditization (e.g. Chinese models are 10x cheaper and 90% as good ), and this is driving insight behind our Fund II investments in Nim, which is democratizing the latest open source video models, and Locaal (putting AI models on edge devices at scale). With Nvidia stock movement driven by the latest news on Deepseek R1, we feel fairly bullish on how we've positioned One Way's Pand expect a year of increasing momentum for our companies and funds.
New Investments in Q4
Locaal.ai | AI
Locaal.ai is revolutionizing AI by bringing it on-device – so offline, private and with no cloud latency. This enables companies to slash cloud costs while ensuring privacy and reliability. The platform provides ready-to-deploy AI models and empowers businesses to optimize their own for seamless performance across devices, networks, and hardware configurations. Trusted by industry leaders like Amazon, Corsair, and others, their platform is already helping companies save millions on cloud AI expenses.
Portfolio Highlights
🖥️ Brelyon unveils Visual Engine, a new generative screen augmentation architecture powered by NVIDIA NIM. This AI-driven platform enables real-time interface adaptation, enhancing user experience and immersion across applications and gaming. Visual Engine will launch as standalone software in 2025.
📊 Tabs raised an oversubscribed $25M Series A in Q4 that closed in October. General Catalyst led the round, with ongoing support from Primary Ventures and Lightspeed. This funding came less than six months after Tabs' seed round.
📦 Corvus Robotics launched Corvus One in 2024, the first fully autonomous warehouse inventory drone, delivering 10x the speed at lower costs compared to manual processes. Corvus also added major Fortune 500 customers and now has over 150 devices deployed.
🏦 Ribbon has partnered with First City Credit Union to launch the first-ever online inheritance portal for credit union members. Traditionally a complex and lengthy process, inheritance claims can now be initiated entirely online, eliminating the need for branch visits or long wait times.
🏥 Impilo, a digital health platform revolutionizing at-home care, has raised an $11.5 million Series A led by Construct Capital, with participation from One Way, alongside 2048 Ventures and others. Impilo’s tech integrates logistics, connected devices, and real-time monitoring, making high-quality healthcare accessible anytime, anywhere.
🚚 Tive, a leading provider of supply chain and logistics visibility technology, has raised $40 million in a Series C funding round to accelerate its mission of delivering real-time shipment tracking and monitoring solutions.
☕ Compound Foods has launched a beanless instant oat milk latte packed with L-theanine, pea protein, and calibrated caffeine to support women's wellness. The sustainable formula cuts carbon emissions by 86% while offering a smooth, jitter-free energy boost.
