Tesla's latest battlefront, fentanyl test strips, and OpenSea is becoming a ghost town, suggests a new report

Watching Serena Williams play and win tonight at the U.S. Open truly gave us the feels. What a joy to follow her tennis career over the last 20-plus years. (Relatedly, she's coming to TechCrunch Disrupt in late October to talk about next steps; we're so excited about this.)

Initialized Capital co-founder Garry Tan will become president and CEO of Y Combinator next year, the two organizations announced today. 

Tan will be taking over the role from Geoff Ralston, who has been with the famed accelerator since 2011 and became its president in 2019. Ralston didn't say what’s next for him, only writing: “I am leaving YC, but I’m not actually the retiring type and am looking forward to some to-be-discovered adventures.” 

As for Tan, Initialized says he'll continue to serve as a partner with the firm “with no changes to his current role” until the transition takes place next year. After that, he will become a "strategic advisor" to Initialized, which will now be managed by two of his colleagues, Jen Wolf and Brett Gibson. 

We don't know what this new title means, exactly. Initialized and Tan didn't respond to a long list of queries we sent off earlier today, but one obvious question is whether Tan's transition to “strategic advisor” could trigger a "key man" provision that would prevent Initialized from making new investments. 

Initialized declined to tell Business Insider if a key-man provision exists for Tan, while a "person familiar with the inner workings of the firm" told Insider that Initialized is in "'close contact' with its limited partners on the transition." 

We certainly hope so! In the meantime, Initialized's investors must be at least a little disappointed: the firm just secured $700 million in new capital commitments in December.

Somewhat uniquely, Initialized has had a history of its founders jumping ship. Initialized’s original partners were Tan; Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian; and Harj Taggar. (All three were partners at Y Combinator.) Taggar didn't stick around long, starting a company before returning to YC as a group partner in 2020. Meanwhile, Ohanian left Initialized in late 2020 to start yet another venture firm, called Seven Seven Six. Now, Tan is also out the door. 

At least Initialized's backers have one significant consolation prize: among others of its many bets, the firm was an early backer of Coinbase (we talked with Tan about that bet after Coinbase started trading as a public company last year); Instacart, which is reportedly still planning an IPO; and the HR and IT operations platform Rippling, valued at more than $11 billion by investors in May.  

Between us chickens, we understand the enthusiasm today's announcement generated (the CEOs of Airbnb, Stripe, and Instacart, among other YC-backed companies, all tweeted their approval) but we're wondering why Tan would leave Initialized, which was on a path to becoming a powerhouse on its own.

Perhaps, Tan -- who comes across as affable and relatively humbled by his own success -- is making the move partly out of a sense of obligation, given that YC lost a bit of sheen as its class sizes ballooned. As Tan tells Forbes: “YC is a beacon where you don’t have to know anyone … People gave me so much, taught me so much, and I need to give back.” (Indeed, in addition to Ohanian and Taggar, Tan met the founders of Coinbase, Airbnb, Cruise, Instacart and Rippling through YC.)

But he also tells TechCrunch that he thinks he can have more impact at YC, which, maybe he can. “The world has just become so much bigger and there’s so many problems to solve," said Tan earlier today. "The chance to help make more prosperity in the world, that’s a super big draw."

TechCrunch has more here and here.

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Glints, a nine-year-old, Singapore-based talent development and recruitment platform that has the biggest of its kind in Southeast Asia, just raised $50 million in Series D funding co-led by DCM Ventures, Lavender Hill Capital and returning investor PERSOL Holdings. This brings Glints’s total raised so far to $80 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Astro, a four-year-old, Austin-based startup that's helping companies to build and manage developer teams with talent from Latin America (it was formerly known as Austin Software, has raised $13 million in Series A funding from Greycroft, Obvious Ventures and other unnamed investors. TechCrunch has more here.

StarTree, a four-year-old startup based in Mountain View, Ca., that has developed an open source data analytics platform, raised a $47 million Series B round led by GG Capital; additional investors included Sapphire Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, and CRV. The company has raised a total of $75 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Vive Crop Protection, a 16-year-old startup based in Mississauga, Canada, that has create crop protection products using a nanoscale, polymer-based delivery system that it claims are more targeted than typical delivery mechanisms, raised a $26 million Series C round led by Emmertech, with additional capital provided by Business Development Bank of Canada, Export Development Canada, and Urbana Corp. The company has raised a total of $66.2 million. AFN has more here.

Carbon Counts, a two-year-old startup based in Cambridge, Ma., that has developed a casual mobile game today called EverForest and aims to use the game to plant 100 million trees around the world by 2025, raised an additional $4.5 million in seed funding co-led by Borderless Capital, Algorand, and the Algorand Foundation, with additional participation from Grantham Environmental Trust, Susquehanna Foundation, Oceans Ventures, Winklevoss Capital, and Capital Factory. VentureBeat has more here.

Deliverider, a Tel Aviv startup that says it allows e-commerce companies to offer low-cost-non-inventory products alongside their in-stock selection and fulfill it in the same basket, has raised a $2 million seed round. Millennium Group and NC Capital co-led the round. CTech has more here.

Loopworm, a three-year-old startup based in Bangalore that is looking to replace fish and krill meal with insect protein concentrate or insect meal in aqua, poultry, and pet food product, raised a $3.4 million seed round. The deal was co-led by Omniore and WaterBridge Ventures, with Titan Ventures also chipping in. The Hindu Business Line has more here.

PriceOye, a two-year-old, Pakistani startup looking to build a managed marketplace of electronics products, says it has raised (an undisclosed amount of) seed funding led by JAM Fund, a venture capital firm by Tinder founder Justin Mateen. The round also included participation of Beenext, DG Daiwa, Mantis VC, HOF Capital, Jet.com investor Palm Drive Capital, Atlas Ventures, and numerous individual investors, including renowned investor Peter Thiel. TechCrunch has more here.

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DBA Crypto, a new, New York-based crypto-focused venture firm founded by former Galaxy Digital and Genesis employees (Michael Jordan, Roshun Patel, Joshua Lim, Shane Barratt), is looking to raise up to $500 million in capital commitments for its debut fund, per an SEC filing first flagged by Axios. More here.

Seven Seven Six, the venture firm led by Alexis Ohanian, plans to raise $177.6 million for a new fund focused on investments in cryptocurrency tokens, according to fundraising materials viewed by The Information. The new fund, named Kryptós, will be the two-year-old firm’s first focused exclusively on crypto, notes the outlet. More here.

Ubiquity Ventures, a five-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based seed-stage venture firm that is focused on software in smart hardware and machine intelligence applications (founder Sunil Nagaraj spent six years with Bessemer Venture Partners as a principal before striking out on his own), is looking to close its third fund with $60 million in capital commitments, shows an SEC filing. Ubiquity closed its second fund with more than $50 million in June of last year. More here.

Sony is acquiring two-year-old mobile game developer Savage Game Studios, it announced today without disclosing financial terms. Savage Game, created by a trio of veteran game developers, is joining a newly created PlayStation Studios Mobile Division, which will focus on creating games based on new and existing PlayStation IP. Sony says the new studio, which will operate independently from console game development, aims to reach new audiences and give gamers more ways to engage with its content. TechCrunch has more here.

Porsche has lined up investor interest for its IPO at a valuation of as much as $85 billion, signaling one of Europe’s biggest-ever listings is poised to go ahead despite market headwinds, according to Bloomberg. More here.

E.Merge Technology Acquisition Corp., a blank-check company headed by former Kodak CEO Jeff Clark, is shutting down and returning its remaining cash to shareholders after being unable to find a merger partner. Silicon Valley Business Journal has more here.

Triller, a struggling video-sharing social network service, has raised $200 million in financing as it eyes an IPO of $3 billion before the end of this year. (We have so many questions about this one; we're guessing that Sony does, too.) The Wrap has more here.

James Alcorn and Dylan Reid have been promoted to partners at Zetta Venture Partners. Alcorn joined as an associate in 2018 after spending a year with Spectrum Equity. Reid joined in 2018 as a principal; earlier, he cofounded a 3D printing startup, Matter.io (it joined forces with a similar company in 2017). More here.

YouTube’s top business executive is leaving the company, reports the WSJ. Robert Kyncl will exit his position as chief business officer after more than a decade at the video platform, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki wrote in a memo to employees today. More here.

OpenSea has turned into an NFT ghost-town, suggests DappRadar, a popular blockchain analytics platform. It says the marketplace processed nearly $5 million worth of NFT transactions yesterday -- approximately 99% lower than its record high of $405.75 million on May 1. Cointelegraph has more here.

Tesla has filed suit to challenge a Louisiana law it says restricts its ability to sell electric vehicles directly to customers and violates its constitutional rights. The lawsuit, notes the WSJ, is the latest action by Tesla to try to open markets to its model of selling cars directly to consumers rather than using dealers as intermediaries. More here.

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