Pink sauce, Moonswatches, and the toll from Twitter's legal fight with Musk shows up in its earnings report

Friday! As mentioned in previous emails, we're taking a quick, annual break, but we'll be back and ready for action on August 8. 

Before we flip off all the switches, we leave you with this week's StrictlyVC Download, with special guest Danny Rimer, cofounder of the venture firm Index Ventures, with offices in San Francisco, London, Geneva, and, more newly, New York. We talked with Rimer about a range of things, from why VCs seem to have no trouble closing gigantic funds right now, to what happened to an Index-backed startup that abruptly shut down earlier this year, to Index's "tiny portfolio of web3 companies," which, from the sound of it, will likely remain tiny. (Sorry about the opening audio, by the way; we put this one together with chewing gum and baling wire this week while on the road.)

Giant thanks to this week’s sponsor, Synaptic. Synaptic says it unifies alternative data from proprietary and custom sources and layers it with an analytics toolkit to make investment research more efficient. Schedule a quick demo to learn how a whole lot of VCs, PEs, and hedge funds use Synaptic to benefit their own deal sourcing, company tracking, and due diligence.

More in a couple of weeks.:)

Twitter today revealed the toll from its legal fight with Elon Musk as he tries to back out of his proposed plan to buy the company. In an earnings report, the company said that macroeconomic troubles have hurt its business, along with uncertainty caused by Musk. Twitter’s quarterly revenue declined for the first time since 2020 as it struggled to be a destination for advertisers and swung to a net loss.

South Carolina state senators have introduced legislation that would make it illegal to “aid, abet or conspire with someone” to obtain an abortion. Provisions would outlaw providing information over the internet or phone about how to obtain an abortion. It would also make it illegal to host a website or “[provide] an internet service” with information that is “reasonably likely to be used for an abortion” and legal scholars say the proposal is likely a harbinger of other state measures.

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IQM Quantum Computers, a four-year-old, Espoo, Finland-based developer of superconducting quantum computers, has raised €128 million ($128 million) in Series A2 funding led by World Fund. Silicon Canals has more here.

Medical Microinstruments, a seven-year-old, Pisa, Italy-based microsurgery robotics company whose device is designed to access and suture small, delicate anatomy like veins, has raised $75 million in Series B funding. Deerfield Management led the round, joined by RA Capital Management, Biostar Capital, Andera Partners, Fountain Healthcare Partners, Panakès Partners, and Sambatech. Mass Device has more here.

Anvilogic, a three-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based cybersecurity detection automation company, has raised $25 million in Series B funding led by Neuberger Berman. Other backers in the round included Xerox Ventures, Foundation Capital, Point72 Ventures, G Squared, and Cervin Ventures. SecurityWeek has more here.

CivicEye, a Charlotte, N.C.-based cloud-based public safety software provider for law enforcement, prosecutors, and courts, has raised $12.4 million in Series A funding. Cercano Management led the round, joined by Relevance Ventures and individual investors. More here.

Quantifi Photonics, a 10-year-old, Auckland, New Zealand-based photonics test and measurement company, raised $15 million in Series C funding led by Intel Capital. Lightwave has more here.

Zededa, a six-year-old, Santa Clara, Ca.-based computer orchestration startup, raised $26 million in Series B funding from a mix of new and earlier investors (it had raised a $12.5 million Series A round last year). Among them: Coast Range Capital, Lux Capital, Energize Ventures, Almaz Capital, Porsche Ventures, Chevron Technology Ventures, Juniper Networks, Rockwell Automation, Samsung Next, and EDF North America Ventures invested in the round. TechCrunch has more here.

Equals, a 1.5-year-old, Bay Area-based remote-based spreadsheet analytics platform, has raised $6.6 million in seed funding. Craft Ventures led the round, joined by BoxGroup, Worklife Ventures, and numerous notable individual investors, including the Intercom founders, Front’s Mathilde Collin, and Lattice’s Jack Altman, among others. More here.

Oncoustics, an eight-year-old, Toronto-based ultrasound-based cancer treatment assessment tech company, has raised $4.3 million (USD) in seed funding. Creative Ventures and Saltagen Ventures led the round, joined by NorthSpring Capital Partners, Fraser Kearney Capital, Pallasite Ventures, and Dr. Chen Fong. BetaKit has more here.

Senzo, an eight-year-old, London and Newton, Pa.-based life sciences company developing diagnostic technologies, has raised $2 million in funding led by BioAdvance. Technical.ly has more here.

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Portage Ventures, a six-year-old, Toronto-based venture firm focused on fintech startups, has collected $655 million in capital commitments for its third flagship fund, its largest to date. The plan is to invest in seed- through Series C-stage fintech in the United States, Europe and Canada. Crunchbase News has more here.

FTX, the crypto trading platform co-founded by billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, is in advanced talks to buy Bithumb, which is among the South Korean crypto exchanges whose offices were raided this week by local prosecutors as part of a widening investigation into Terraform Labs following the May collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin. Bloomberg has the story here. 

FTX also said today that it is planning to offer Voyager Digital's customers access to some of their funds, the latest relief measure by the Sam Bankman-Fried-led cryptocurrency exchange for the ailing crypto industry. Under the plan, Alameda Ventures, the trading firm also founded by Bankman-Fried, would purchase all of Voyager's digital assets and digital asset loans, except the loans to bankrupt crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capitals. Voyager customers who take the offer will have an opening cash balance funded by an early distribution on a portion of their bankruptcy claims, says FTX; they will also be able to withdraw the cash immediately or use it to purchase digital assets on FTX. Voyager customers won't be required to participate in the plan. More here and here (and below).

Jay Carney, who was White House press secretary under President Obama, will move from Amazon to Airbnb as global head of policy and communications. He succeeds Chris Lehane, who joined the crypto-focused venture firm Haun Ventures earlier this year. Axios has the story here.

For Mark Cuban, "Shark Tank" has been good for business, but he has yet to profit from his investments on the show.

Google has fired Blake Lemoine, the engineer who said early last month that he believed the company's LaMDA conversational technology was sentient. The Big Technology newsletter has more here.

Instacart founder Apoorva Mehta will step down as chairman once the company completes its IPO, the grocery delivery company said today. CEO Fidji Simo, who joined Instacart as CEO in August 2021, will become chairwoman once Instacart becomes a public company . . . though Instacart hasn’t said when that might be. In May, it announced it had confidentially filed for an IPO, less than two months after cutting its valuation by nearly 40%. The WSJ has more here.

Billionaire investor Peter Thiel’s support for Arizona Senate candidate (and former Thiel employee) Blake Masters has now grown to $15 million as Thiel continues to pour money into the race to boost Masters’ cash-strapped campaign. Politico has more here.

Tesla will go to a settlement conference to negotiate a possible end to the securities fraud case over Elon Musk’s 2018 tweets about taking the company private. The meeting, to take place in October, comes as investors suing Tesla and Musk have made steady progress in the case, which is set to go to trial in January. Bloomberg has more here.

After five weeks in hiding, the founders of Three Arrows Capital spoke extensively with Bloomberg about the implosion of their edge fund, saying their bungled crypto speculation unleashed cascading margin calls on loans that should never have been made. More here.

Investors take a sink-or-swim approach to crypto startups.

The war against dark stores may not even need angry politicians.

The secret history of Hollywood's most enviable marriage.

What to do if you get Covid on a family vacation.

Pink sauce went viral on TikTok. Then it exploded (literally).

The 20 best wines under $20.

Moonswatches.

"The Reserve."