SoftBank hits pause on Arm's IPO, Christie's gets into the biz, and SF warily prepares for its first NFT restaurant

Thinking of our friends and readers in Europe right now. Hope you're finding ways to stay cool. 🕶️

San Francisco is getting its first NFT-based restaurant and private club," and it’s being built right in the middle of San Francisco's "ostentatious" public space, Salesforce Park, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. "In a terrifying J.G. Ballard-like dystopian metaphor come to life," continues the story, "the private lounge, which will charge a top-tier membership fee of $300,000 a pop . . .will be situated 70 feet above surrounding homeless encampments." (Salesforce Park, funded partly by taxpayers, is already seen as an "irresistible metaphor for the city’s socioeconomic tensions.") More here.

Elon Musk reportedly plans to file a counter-lawsuit against Twitter in the coming days — the tech billionaire’s latest attempt to scrap his $44 billion agreement to buy the social-networking giant, says The Post. More here.

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Delfi Diagnostics, a three-year-old Baltimore and Palo Alto, Ca.-based liquid biopsy company, has raised $225 million in Series B funding led by DFJ Growth. Other participants include Eli Lilly and Company, Point72, Brown Advisory, Menlo Ventures, and roughly 16 other backers. More here.

ForSight Robotics, a two-year-old, Israel-based maker of ophthalmic surgery robots designed to treat diseases underlying preventable blindness, has raised $55 million in Series A funding. The Adani Group led the funding round joined by earlier investors Eclipse Ventures and Mithril Capital. Numerous other new investors also participated in the deal. Calcalist has more here.

Great Minds, a 15-year-old, Richmond, Va.-based education curriculum company, has raised $100 million in funding from A-Street Ventures. A-Street also snapped up $50 million in secondary shares. GovTech has more here.

Stori, a four-year-old credit card startup in Mexico City, has raised $50 million in new funding at a $1.2 billion valuation led by BAI Capital, GIC and GGV Capital, with Lightspeed Venture Partners, General Catalyst, Vision Plus Capital, Goodwater Capital and Tresalia Capital also participating. Stori has now raised $200 million in equity funding to date, says TechCrunch. More here. 

HireArt, a 10-year-old, New York-based outfit that aims to help vet, onboard, and manage each client's entire contract workforce, has raised $26.25 million in Series B funding led by Three Fish Capital, with participation from over a “half dozen” angel investors, it says. TechCrunch has more here.

Meow, a months-old, New York-based crypto corporate treasury firm co-founded earlier this year by two former Gemini engineers, has raised $22 million in Series A funding led by Tiger Global, with participation from QED Investors, FTX and others. Pymnts has more here.

SupplyPike, a four-year-old, Fayetteville, Ar.-based retail data science company providing its customers with insights into their supply chains, has raised $25 million in Series B funding from Noro-Moseley Partners and Frontier Growth. The outfit has now raised $40 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Healshape, a two-year-old, Lyon, France-based breast reconstruction startup, has raised €6 million in seed funding led by Go Capital and Demeter, with participation from WinEquity, BPI, Credit Agricole Creation and Angels Santé. The Guardian has more here.

Sunscreen, a year-old startup in Los Angeles that has developed a compiler to make it easier for engineers to build fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) programs, just raised $4.65 million in a seed round led by Polychain Capital with participation from Northzone, Coinbase Ventures, dao5, and Naval Ravikant. TechCrunch has more here.

Syrius Robotics, a four-year-old, Shenzhen, China-based autonomous warehouse robots startup, has raised 50 million yuan ($7.4 million) in additional Series B funding from Harvest Capital. TechCrunch has more here.  

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Christie’s, the London-based auction house, is launching a venture-capital arm. Called Christie’s Ventures, the entity will aim to supply seed funding to young companies whose technologies could ultimately help collectors buy and sell more art, digital or otherwise. The WSJ has more here.

The United Arab Emirates will pour more than $800 million into space initiatives through a massive new fund, with the first investment going toward the establishment of a remote sensing satellite constellation. TechCrunch has more here.

Gbike, a South Korea-based scooter operator, is acquiring Hyundai Motor’s shared micromobility sharing platform ZET as it aims to increase its market share and create tech "synergies" via ZET’s fleet management system. TechCrunch has more here.

SoftBank has put on hold plans for a London IPO of Arm because of the political turmoil in the UK government, throwing doubt on Britain’s place as the future home of the Cambridge-based tech giant. Financial Times has more here.

Just seven weeks after crypto exchange Gemini cut approximately 10% of its workforce due to “turbulent market conditions,” the startup has made a second round of layoffs of roughly 7% more of its remaining staff (or roughly 70 people), TechCrunch has learned. More here.

With fears of a recession mounting, Goldman Sachs today warned it would slow hiring and may cull underperforming staff. More here.

Partech has promoted Andrew Whiting to partner, Laetitia Marcadé and Luis Zarate to senior associate, and Alexis Lancien to associate. More here. ​​

TikTok has started laying off staff as part of a company-wide restructuring, Wired reported earlier today. 

These were the seven most active startup investors in June.

UNC says 63% of its first-year students to enroll last fall were women.

Apple plans to slow hiring and spending growth next year in some divisions to cope with a potential economic downturn, according to Bloomberg's sources. The decision stems from a move to be more careful during uncertain times, though it isn’t a companywide policy, the outlet reported earlier today.

Elon Musk’s inner circle has been battling over who is managing his $230 billion fortune, with his wealth manager on one side and a former professional gambler on the other. The WSJ has the story here.

Netflix will ask customers in five Latin America countries to pay a fee if they want to use their account in an additional home, a test the company hopes will generate additional revenue by getting customers to pay to share their Netflix account.

Instagram’s new payments feature invites users to buy products via DMs.

Digging into BeReal. 

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The best canned wines, per Wine Spectator.