Meta's slowing revenue, the clash behind the crash at Netflix, and a mountebank on the Upper East Side

Shares of Facebook parent Meta jumped about 20% in extended trading today on better-than-expected profit, the company’s business has flatlined and doesn’t look like it will rebound at least until the second half of the year, observes CNBC. More here.

Apple opened its Self Service Repair online store earlier as the “right to repair” movement has put pressure on U.S. regulators to give consumers more control over their products.

Today, Elon Musk used his powerful Twitter account to elevate conservative criticism of two executives at the social media company, inflaming Twitter employees -- and users --- who are already concerned about his potential stewardship of the company. (He later shifted to joke mode.)

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0x Labs, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based decentralized exchange infrastructure provider, has raised $70 million in Series B equity funding led by Greylock. The round also included earlier backer Pantera Capital, Jump Capital, OpenSea, and actor Jared Leto. Previously, 0x raised $24 million in a ZRX token sale in 2017 and $15 million in a Series A equity round led by Pantera. Last week, Coinbase launched an NFT marketplace powered by 0x's technology. Forbes has more here.

Anduril Industries, the five-year-old, Costa Mesa, Ca.-based startup that sells AI–powered defense technology and was founded by Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey, is raising at least $500 million for a Series E round that could boost its pre-money valuation from $4.6 billion to more than $7 billion, reports The Information. To date, the company has raised $835 million from VCs, including Elad Gil and investment firms including Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, General Catalyst and D1 Capital Partners. More here.

Ashvattha Therapeutics, a seven-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based developer of hydroxyl dendrimer therapeutics, has raised $69 million in Series B funding. Huadong Medicine led the round, joined by earlier investors Natural Capital, Plum Alley and Tribe Capital. More here.

Biofourmis, a seven-year-old, Boston-based virtual care and digital medicine-focused company, has raised $300 million in Series D funding led by General Atlantic. CVS Health and earlier investors also joined the round. FierceHealthcare has more here.

FreeWire Technologies, an eight-year-old, San Leandro, Ca.-based outfit that makes chargers that include embedded batteries for energy storage, has raised $125 million from BlackRock, Riverstone and earlier investor BP.  The WSJ has more here.

Johnnie-O, a 17-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based men's lifestyle apparel brand, has raised $108 million from Wasatch Global Investors and Ares Management. WWD has more here.

Mavrck, an eight-year-old, Boston-based influencer marketing platform for enterprise consumer brands, has raised $135 million led by Summit Partners. The company has also acquired Later, a social media scheduling tool. TechCrunch has more here. 

Spotawheel, a six-year-old, Athens, Greece-based used-car platform, has raised €100 million in equity and debt funding. VentureFriends led the equity piece, with participation from Adevinta Ventures, UNIQA Ventures, Rockaway Ventures, Velocity Partners, FJ Labs, and Collective Spark, among others. TechCrunch has more here.

Reveal, a three-year-old, Paris, France-based partner ecosystem startup, has raised $50 million in Series A funding. Insight Partners led the round, joined by Eight Roads, Chalfen Ventures, Dig Ventures, LocalGlobe, and Ventech. The capital brings the startup’s total funding to $54 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Taxfix, a six-year-old, Berlin-based robo-tax service, has raised $220 million in Series D funding led by Teachers’ Venture Growth (the prolific tech investor formerly known as the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan). Earlier backers Index Ventures, Valar Ventures, Creandum and Redalpine also joined the round, which brings the company's total funding to $330 million. (Index led its Series C in 2020; Valar led a round in 2018). TechCrunch has more here.

Veza, a two-year-old, Bay Area-based data security platform whose subscription software helps businesses see which of their employees have access to certain customer or corporate data and what they’re able to do with the data, has raised $50 million in funding led by Accel. The Information has more here.

Eurora Solutions, a four-year-old, Tallinn, Estonia-based cross-border e-commerce compliance platform, has raised $40 million in Series A funding. Connected Capital led the round, joined by Change Ventures and Equity United. Sifted has more here.

Minka, a Bogota, Colombia-based payments infrastructure startup, has raised $24 million in a funding round co-led by Tiger Global Management and Kaszek. TechCrunch has more here.

Pyka, a five-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based electric autonomous airplane startup, has raised $37 million in Series A funding led by Piva Capital and Prelude Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Seaplane, a two-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based cloud app optimization startup, raised $15 million in Series A funding. Sequoia Capital led the round, joined by 8VC and Atlantic Bridge. VentureBeat has more here.

South 8 Technologies, a seven-year-old, San Diego, Ca.-based company that makes a gaseous electrolyte component for lithium-ion batteries, raised $12 million in Series A funding. Anzu Partners led the round, joined by LG Technology Ventures, Shell Ventures, Foothill Ventures and TNSC. Axios has more here.

Waltz Health, a year-old, Chicago-based startup whose first offering is a search engine that pharmacies can provide to their consumers that uses data from different drug discount programs to find lower-cost medications, has raised $35.4 million in Series A funding. GV led the round, joined by Define Ventures, Echo Health Ventures and Blue Venture Fund. MedCity News has more here.

Zeno Power, a four-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based developer of radioisotope power systems, has raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Tribe Capital. Axios has more here. 

Afriex, a three-year-old, Lagos, Nigeria-based developer of a blockchain-based payments platform, has raised $10 million from Dragonfly Capital, Sequoia Capital and Stellar. The Y Combinator alum had raised $1.2 million in seed funding last year. Forbes has more here.

BattGenie, a five-year-old, Seattle-based battery charging startup, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding co-led by Powerhouse Ventures and VoLo Earth Ventures. More here.

Dat Bike, a three-year-old, Vietnam-based maker of electric motorbikes, has raised $5.3 million in Series A funding led by Jungle Ventures, with participation from Wavemaker Partners. The outfit has now raised $10 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Frame Fertility, a two-year-old, New York-based virtual reproductive support startup, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by Looking Glass Capital. Other backers in the round include Flare Capital Partners, Great Oaks Venture Capital, Healthworx and Brand Foundry Ventures. More here.

JustiFi, a year-old, St. Paul, Mn.-based startup that makes a suite of embedded fintech tools for vertical SaaS platforms, has raised $4 million in funding led by Crosslink Capital, with participation from Rally Ventures and Emergence Capital. The company has now raised $10.6 million altogether. Tech.mn has more here.

Pillsorted, a three-year-old, London-based automated prescription delivery startup, has raised $6 million in seed funding from Pear VC, Hoxton Ventures and Edison Partners. Business Insider has more here.

Ravio, a two-year-old, London-based compensation insights platform, has raised $10 million in seed funding led by Northzone, with participation from Cherry Ventures and Spark Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Streamlined, a 2.5-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based invoicing and payments startup, has raised $3 million in seed funding co-led by Greycroft and earlier backer SignalFire (which previously led a $1 million pre-seed round). Unusual Ventures and others also joined the new round. TechCrunch has more here.

Sumutasu, a four-year-old, Tokyo, Japan-based proptech startup that offers a direct online real estate purchase service, has secured $8.2 million in equity and $1.6 million in debt. World Innovation Lab (WiL) and new investor Mobile Internet Capital co-led the Series B round. TechCrunch has more here.

Vertex Protocol, a seven-month-old, Singapore-based decentralized foreign exchange protocol for multi-currency spot and derivatives trading, has raised $8.5 million in seed funding from investors including Hack VC, Dexterity Capital, Jane Street, Hudson River Trading, GSR, Huobi, Collab+Currency, JST Capital, Big Brain, and Lunatic Capital. CoinDesk has more here.

Yotta Energy, a six-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based maker of modular storage storage, has raised $3.5 million in extended Series A funding from inverter OEM partner APsystems, among others. The tranche brings the round total to $16.5 million. More here.

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Dragonfly Capital, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based crypto-centered investment firm, closed its third venture fund with $650 million in capital commitments, the firm’s managing partner, Haseeb Qureshi, tells TechCrunch. The fund's limited partners include Tiger Global, KKR, Sequoia China, Ivy League endowments, Invesco, Top Tier Capital Partners and an undisclosed Southeast Asian state-owned investment company. More here.

One of the top VC firms in Beijing, Gaorong Capital, recently raised about $1.8 billion from investors in the U.S. and elsewhere, according to The Information. Meanwhile Shanghai-based Qiming Venture Partners, an early backer of smartphone giant Xiaomi and a major venture investor in healthcare, has raised more than $2 billion for two new funds, mostly from U.S. investors, says the outlet. More here.

Lightspeed India Partners, the 14-year-old, Bangalore, India-based offshoot of the U.S. firm, is looking to raise more than $500 million for its fourth fund, says TechCrunch. The ongoing discussions are part of Lightspeed's global push to raise about $6 billion for a number of its funds, according to the outlet's sources. More here.

MassMutual Ventures, the eight-year-old, Boston-based multistage investor, has launched a $300 million new fund to back early-stage companies in Asia and Europe. The MMV Asia and Europe team’s third vehicle will invest in startups across digital health, financial technology, enterprise SaaS and cybersecurity, managing director of MMV Ryan Collins said in an interview with TechCrunch. More here.

Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Crown Prince of Dubai, has approved the launch of a $100.73 million (AED 370 milion) Venture Capital Fund for Startups to bolster and sustain startup projects and entrepreneurs in the emirate. Arabian News has more here.

Turbulent financial markets have forced India’s government to slash the size of the country’s largest-ever IPO by roughly two-thirds, sharply reducing the contribution that the deal will make to the public purse. The IPO of state-owned Life Insurance Corp. of India comes as "global markets are confronting a series of challenges, including high inflation, slowing growth, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the prospect of rapid rises in interest rates," notes the WSJ. World IPO volumes, it adds, have tumbled 72% year-over-year to $67.2 billion so far in 2022, according to Dealogic data. More here.

The country’s largest lender is looking to reduce its workforce amid a shrinking mortgage market following two years of record loan volume. Officials said Monday that Detroit-based Rocket Mortgage and Amrock, its title company, are offering voluntary buyouts to 8% of employees. Rocket Companies, which includes Rocket Mortgage, employs 26,000, mostly in Detroit. The Detroit News has the story.

Data compiled by The Verge from social media statistics site Social Blade shows that in the two days since Twitter deal was announced, influential conservative accounts have increased their follower counts at roughly ten times the average daily rate for the month leading up to the acquisition, while popular liberal accounts have collectively lost hundreds of thousands of followers. The shifts appear to be an organic reaction to the news, says the outlet, with users either joining or leaving the platform in anticipation of Musk’s ownership.

A simplified version of the Archegos story.

Hacked crypto startups are seeing capital infusions from investors as they try to restore trust -- and save face.

PayPal is shuttering its San Francisco office as it evaluates its global office footprint. (One major consideration, presumably: at $82, the company's shares are less than a third of what they were valued during a peak last year of roughly $308 per share.) TechCrunch has more here.

A Delaware judge has sided with Elon Musk in a hefty lawsuit brought by Tesla shareholders, which accused the executive of coercing the company’s board into buying SolarCity back in 2016. While the court found that Musk “was more involved in the process than a conflicted fiduciary should be,” it ultimately ruled in his favor on all counts. TechCrunch has more here.

The worst boyfriend on the Upper East Side.

How the Hotel Chelsea has kept its cool.

The power clash behind the crash at Netflix.

Live like Mark Wahlberg at a Beverly Hills estate that he is trying to sell for a whopping $87.5 million. (And it's still not among the 25 most expensive homes in the world on sale right now.)

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