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The world’s most popular password manager says it was hacked. LastPass says a hacker recently stole source code and proprietary information after breaking into its systems. The company doesn’t believe any passwords were taken as part of the breach, but . . . you might still want to change your password.
A federal judge said today the Cleveland State University violated the Fourth Amendment when it used software to scan a student’s bedroom, a practice that has grown during the Covid-19 pandemic. The use of virtual software to remotely monitor test takers exploded during the first years of the coronavirus pandemic, when millions of students were suddenly required to take classes online to minimize the spread of the disease. The New York Time has more here.
Elon Musk's demands for Twitter user details were rejected as "absurdly broad" by a judge today, although the billionaire will get some data as he pursues his bid to end his $44 billion acquisition of the company. Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of Delaware's Court of Chancery said many of Musk's data demands amounted to trillions of data points that "no one in their right mind has ever tried to undertake such an effort." Reuters has more here.
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| Flexible, Shorter-Term Apartment Startups are Gaining More Traction |
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Startups looking to make it easier for people to rent apartments on a flexible, shorter-term basis are gaining momentum thanks in part to the rise of remote work. Last week, Dealbook reported that a flexible living startup, Flow, founded by WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann, has locked down $350 million from Andreessen Horowitz. Earlier today, TechCrunch reported that an online rental marketplace, Zumper, just raised $30 million in a Series D1 round of funding led by Kleiner Perkins to help it better serve people looking for short-term rental options.
Now, Landing, a startup that is making it possible for its customers to rent a fully furnished apartment on its platform for as short a period as one month, says it, too, has secured fresh funding: $75 million in equity funding and another $50 million in debt.
Delta-v Capital led the equity piece, joined by new and earlier investors, including Greycroft and Foundry. Landing has now raised $237 million in venture funding and $230 million in debt since its launch in 2019.
We told you a bit last week about Landing's founder Bill Smith, a serial entrepreneur who we dubbed the "anti-Adam Neumann," given that he's decidedly understated, he's conservative when it comes to raising venture funding and his two past companies have only made investors money. Neumann, in comparison, is a forceful personality, and not everyone came out ahead, famously, on WeWork's path to becoming a publicly traded company last year.
More here.
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Aktis Oncology, a one-year-old startup based in Cambridge, Ma., that is developing new class of targeted alpha radiopharmaceuticals designed to treat a range of solid tumors, added $84 million to the $72 million Series A it originally closed in early 2021. Investors included Merck, Cowen Healthcare Investments, ArrowMark Partners, Mirae Asset Venture Investment, Timefolio Capital, and Pappas Capital as well as previous investors MPM Capital, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Novartis. The company has now raised a total of $161 million. FierceBiotech has more here.
Lunar Energy, a two-year-old, Mountain View, Ca., startup that's attempting to build the full ecosystem of hardware and software needed to make homes completely energy independent, announced over the past two years it raised $300 million in two rounds from Sunrun and SK Group. Nasdaq has more here.
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| Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings |
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Avenda Health, a five-year-old Los Angeles startup that says it uses AI to uncover prostate cancer that might go undetected by traditional MRI mapping, then treats it in-office with a system that employs lasers and ultrasound guidance, raised a $10 million Series B round. VCapital was the deal lead. The company has raised a total of $19.3 million. More here.
Fair Square Medicare, a three-year-old San Diego startup that helps seniors find the right Medicare coverage, raised a $15 million Series A round led by Define Ventures, with additional participation from Slow Ventures and Y Combinator. The company has raised a total of $19 million. Forbes has more here.
Goldcast, a three-year-old startup based in Allston, Ma., that helps B2B marketers create digital and hybrid events, raised a $28 million Series A round led by WestBridge Capital, with Unusual Ventures also participating. The company has raised a total of $40 million. More here.
Plume, a three-year-old Denver startup that offers virtual care for transgender patients, raised a $24 million Series B led by Transformation Capital, with additional funds supplied by General Catalyst and Town Hall Ventures. The company has raised a total of $38 million. MobiHealthNews has more here.
SaNOtize Research & Development Corp., a five-year-old, Vancouver-based anti-infective-focused therapeutics company, raised $24 million in Series B funding co-led by Horizons Ventures and OurCrowd, with Agricultural Bank of China International also piling on. The company has raised a total of $26.5 million. More here.
Thirdweb, a one-year-old San Francisco and London startup that has created a development toolkit to make it easier to build and launch web3 products such as blockchain games, NFTs, DAOs, and marketplaces, raised a $24 million Series A at a $160 million valuation. The deal lead was Haun Ventures, with additional investment from Coinbase Ventures, Shopify, Protocol Labs, Polygon, Shrug VC, and longtime investor Joe Lacob. The company has raised a total of $29 million. TechCrunch has more here.
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Clarity Movement, an eight-year-old startup based in Berkeley, Ca., that provides governments, campuses, businesses and communities with monitoring hardware and software to understand and respond to air pollution, has raised $9.6 million co-leads Amasia and the Active Fund, as well as Spero Ventures, SOSV, Launch Fund, and The Climate Syndicate. The company has raised a total of $16.7 million. More here.
CompScience, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based startup whose software platform integrates with existing video cameras and uses computer vision to quantify risk and prevent accidents in industrial operations, has raised $6 million in seed funding. Investors in the outfit include Working Capital Fund, Preface Ventures, Hustle Fund, Pathbreaker Ventures and others. More here.
Distributed Finance, an eight-year-old, New York-based crypto startup that aims to promote the growth of NFTs and DAOs in the Algorand ecosystem, raised a $2.5 million seed round led by Borderless Capital. The Block has more here.
Headroom, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that attempts to make virtual meetings more dynamic by analyzing attendees' video, audio, and text in order to gauge the “real-time meeting energy,” raised a $9 million round led by Equal Opportunity Ventures, with Gradient Ventures, LDV Capital, AME Cloud Ventures, and Morado Ventures also pitching in. TechCrunch has more here.
Hello Clever, a one-year-old startup based in Surry Hills, Australia, whose app aims to help Australians track their income and spending and make payments with their own money as an alternative to credit-based buy-now-pay-later services, raised a $3.2 million seed round led by Vectr Fintech Partners, with CrossFund, Yolo Investments, Magnivia Ventures, Son Tech Ventures, and Boson Ventures also contributing. StartupDaily has more here.
Latú Seguros, a São Paulo startup focused on providing various types of insurance coverage to Latin American businesses in minutes, raised a $6.7 million pre-seed round co-led by CRV and Monashees, with additional investment from ONEVC, Latitude, and SVAngel. Fintech & Finance News has more here.
SubsBase, a three-year-old Cairo startup that helps MENA subscription businesses manage invoicing, payments, and notifications, raised a $2.4 million seed round led by Global Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
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Ethereum layer-two scaling platform Polygon raised $450 million earlier this year in its first major financing round. Now, the protocol’s co-founder, Sandeep Nailwal, is launching Symbolic Capital, a venture fund built by and for web3 founders. Nailwal, alongside Cere co-founder Kenzi Wang, has raised $50 million from investors, including other venture firms, crypto exchanges, family offices and institutions, though they did not share specific names. TechCrunch has more here.
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Startups that cater to homebuyers are struggling as interest rates and inflation climb and inventory shortages continue in many markets. The latest casualty in the space is Reali, which announced that it has begun a shutdown and will be laying off most of its workforce on September 9. Since inception, the company has raised more than $290 million in debt and equity funding; its last raise was a $100 million Series B in August of 2021. TechCrunch has more here.
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Months after an MIT professor Gang Chen was cleared of spying for China, he helped make a major scientific discovery, but he says that he says the success has bittersweet. “I hope it will draw the attention of the scientific community. I hope it will draw more attention of the government to fund more research in the area. But for me, I’m stopping that research,” Chen, a Chinese immigrant, told NBC Asian American. “Basically, I’m done with federal funding.”
Amid cybersecurity concerns and a battle with Elon Musk, Twitter's VP of engineering, Sandeep Pandey, is leaving the company. Pandy, who joined Twitter more than a decade ago as a staff engineer, is off to Meta. Insider had the news first; TechCrunch has more here.
Mark Zuckerberg sits down with Joe Rogan. “It’s almost like everyday you wake up and you’re punched in the stomach," he says of running Facebook.
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Major U.S. and Canadian pension funds are cutting back investments in office buildings, betting that prices will likely fall as the five-day office workweek becomes a thing of the past, reports the WSJ. Retirement funds are still buying property, but those investments are more focused on warehouses, lab space, housing and infrastructure such as airports. The WSJ has more here.
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Twitter is officially delving into the world of podcasts. The social network announced today that it’s integrating podcasts into its platform as part of its newly designed Spaces tab.
Who's cashing in on the Ethereum merge.
Andreessen Horowitz takes Tinseltown.
Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX Ventures denied a Bloomberg report today that the venture capital arm of FTX and the VC operations of sister company Alameda Research would be merging. The report said the move was made to consolidate parts of Bankman-Fried's empire during the extended decline in crypto prices, but both FTX Ventures chief Amy Wu and Bankman-Fried said it was inaccurate that the two groups were merging. Coindesk has more here.
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An absurdly expensive Apple Watch 7 case with 400 diamonds.
Paul Allen's $1 billion art collection is coming up for auction next month.
Ice Barrel Ice Bath. It's the missing piece in your backyard, said no landscape architect ever, (but hey, it's still an interesting idea!).
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