CB Insights - puff puff pass

Here is this week in charts.

Words will always hurt me. After an 8-minute speech by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, US billionaires lost a collective $78B in a single day, including Jeff Bezos (-$6.8B), Elon Musk ($-5.5B), and Bill Gates (-$2.2B). Contrary to speculation that the US central bank would start to ease back on interest rates, Powell stated that it plans to keep hiking them up, which sent jitters through the stock market.

But are education outcomes getting better? Over the past 50 years, the cost of attending a public college in the US has risen at a faster rate than inflation, which has helped drive up the student debt total to $1.6T. As increasing numbers of students turn to loans, alternative lenders enabling employers to offer student debt repayment benefits are gaining traction.

Calculated risk. Late-stage investors are risk-off right now. So far in 2022, they’ve pulled back on Series D and E+ rounds, with late-stage deal volume projected to fall 29% YoY by year-end. For those deals that do happen, investors increasingly are negotiating greater downside protection. See more in our Tech Valuations Report.

Off the charts. The cost of natural gas in Europe is now 10x greater than in the US due to mounting geopolitical tension between the EU and Russia. Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden predicts that the European energy crisis will be long-lasting and has strongly advised that alternative solutions be built out quickly.

Kush life. Nearly half of Americans have tried marijuana — up from the 4% who claimed that they had tried it in a 1969 Gallup survey. Since then, comfort with experimentation has closely coincided with key historical events. For example, use increased with the rise of “hippie culture” in the '70s but plateaued amid the war on drugs starting in the late '80s.

I see red. Your income tax is around 3 to 14 somethings, unless you live somewhere like Texas or Washington, in which case it’s gold. Your income tax is gold — you’re welcome.
 

I love you.

P.S. We’re looking for an emerging tech aficionado to be our Senior Research Analyst, Cybersecurity & Enterprise IT. If that sounds like you, apply here.

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