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Friday (finally, it has happened to me . . .) Hope you have a terrific weekend.:)
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Elon Musk told Twitter today that a $7 million severance payment to the whistle-blower who raised questions about problems at the company gives him another reason to walk away from his $44 billion purchase of the social media platform. In a filing this morning, his attorneys said as part of the purchase deal, Twitter needed to notify Musk before it spent $7.75 million in a separation agreement on June 28 with Peiter Zatko, the company’s former security chief. (If this all sounds familiar, it could be because this is the third time Musk has told Twitter officials he’s withdrawing his $54.20-per-share bid for the platform because of violations of the buyout agreement.) Bloomberg has more here.
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The signs are there – confidence in stocks and real estate at historic lows, rampant inflation, and cross-asset correlations reaching levels unseen since 2005. But avoiding the “decade of lost wealth” might be easier than you think. There’s a once-exclusive $2 trillion alternative asset class, now available to you, that has historically outperformed public equities in down economic cycles. Masterworks is the one investment platform where you can get access to this opportunity. Strictly VC subscribers can skip the waitlist. See important
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| VCs Who Cast a Wider Net Have Doubled Back to CA, Says Ex-Sequoia Partner Chris Olsen |
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Investor Chris Olsen knows the West Coast VC scene. He spent six years with Sequoia Capital in California before co-founding Drive Capital in Columbus, Ohio, in 2013 based on the theory that the “most compelling emerging market is America, just outside of Silicon Valley,” as he told us early last year.
Institutional investors have bought into that pitch. At least, they apparently trust that Olsen and firm cofounder Mark Kvamme — who logged more than twice as many years at Sequoia than Olsen — know what they’re doing. This past summer, Drive’s limited partners committed to invest $1 billion more with Drive, bringing assets at the firm to $2.2 billion.
Still, Drive hoped to sell more of its traditional peers on its vision, and while co-investors abound, no other coastal VCs have opened an outpost in Columbus despite the legwork Drive has done to
prime the area. In fact, asked last week if another non-regional firm has opened up shop nearby, Olsen told us in a new interview that the opposite is happening. “I read about [VCs coming to the Midwest] on Twitter, and I read about it in a lot of different places, but I actually see VCs doing the opposite. I see them concentrating their time back in California right now more than ever before.”
Olsen suggested that, for now at least, VCs worried about their performance are retrenching back to the terrain they know best. Said Olsen, “The reality is that if you’re a Silicon Valley-based venture firm, no LP at your annual meeting is going to ask you, ‘How did you miss company X in Columbus?’ Like, that’s not gonna happen. But they will ask you, ‘How did you miss company Y that was in Silicon Valley?’ They don’t want to miss those things in their backyard.”
Olsen insists that that’s just fine with Drive, which now employs 36 people altogether. For
one thing, Olsen says, the region is now home to more “de novo” venture firms that are being launched regionally; put another way, Drive is not the only local stop for founders, which is important in building an ecosystem.
In the meantime, using Columbus as its home base for a much broader regional strategy has certainly paid off with one of Drive’s deals: Columbus-based Root Insurance. The car insurance company was started in Drive’s offices and went on to raise many hundreds of millions of dollars from East and West Coast investors, including Ribbit Capital, Redpoint, Tiger Global and Coatue, before going public in October 2020. (Drive alone invested $67 million altogether.)
Root’s shares have since tanked . . .More here.
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Tonal Systems, the seven-year-old, San Francisco-baed maker of a home fitness business, is reportedly raising more than $100 million in new funding that would value the company at about $1.9 billion, according to Bloomberg. The outlet says the fresh funding is expected to exceed $100 million and would give Tonal the capital to continue growing as it deals with supply-chain challenges. More here.
Verily, the seven-year-old life sciences business under Alphabet, says it has raised $1 billion, capital that will be used to expand its data-driven healthcare products tailored to individuals. The round was led by Alphabet, the company said in its announcement. TechCrunch has more here.
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| Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings |
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Gameplay Galaxy, a one-year-old San Francisco startup that operates a web3 gaming network, raised a $12.8 million seed round led by Blockchain Capital, with Merit Circle, Com2uS, Mysten Labs, Solana Ventures, Yield Guild Games, and Hustle Fund also chipping in. VentureBeat has more here.
Gravitee.io, a six-year-old London startup whose open-source API management platform provides a suite of tools developers can use to manage legacy and newer streaming protocols more easily, raised a $30 million Series B round. Riverside Acceleration Capital led the round, joined by Kreos Capital and previous investors AlbionVC and Oxx also participating. The company has raised a total of $41 million. SiliconANGLE has more here.
Hebbia, a two-year-old New York startup that is launching a neural search engine that it claims can pore through billions of documents at once, including PDFs, PowerPoints, spreadsheets and transcripts, raised a $30 million Series A led by Index Ventures, with additional investment from Radical Ventures, Yahoo founder and CEO Jerry Yang, and famed angel investor Ram Shriram. The company has raised a total of $31.1 million. TechCrunch has more here.
Jobbatical, an eight-year-old startup based in Tallinn, Estonia, that manages employee relocations for tech and fintech companies, raised an $11.6 million round led by Inventure, with additional capital provided by Union Square Ventures, Swiss Post Ventures, Karma VC, Metaplanet, and Devotion Ventures. The company has raised a total of $19.6 million. TechCrunch has more here.
Netspeak Games, a three-year-old London game developer focused on creating social spaces that will soon launch a mobile game called "Sunshine Days," raised a $12 million in Series A round co-led by Lakestar and Project A, with Makers Fund also pitching in. The company has raised a total of $16 million. VentureBeat has more here.
Realtime Robotics, a six-year-old Boston startup that helps customers automate the programming, deployment, and control of their industrial robots within applications such as automotive, raised a $14.4 million round. The deal leads were Soundproof Ventures, Heroic Ventures, and SIP Global Partners. The company has raised a total of $61.8 million. The Robot Report has more here.
Taranis, a seven-year-old startup based in Westfield, In., that operates a crop intelligence platform that boasts of a data set containing more than 200 million artificial intelligence data points, raised a $40 million Series D round led by Inven Capital, with additional participation from Seraphim Space Investment Trust and Farglory Group. The company has raised a total of $99.6 million. Vegetable Growers News has more here.
Yapily, a London startup that connects to thousands of banks via API in order to make it easier for institutions to share information and manage payments, is reportedly receiving investment interest from JPMorgan Chase per Bloomberg, which has more here.
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Bits Technology, a one-year-old Stockholm startup that enables fintechs to securely manage and optimize third party integrations, raised a $1 million pre-seed round led by Cherry Ventures, with Alliance Ventures, Forward VC, and Greens Ventures also contributing. TechroundNews has more here.
Dyania Health, a three-year-old Los Angeles startup that works with hospitals to improve maternal health care, raised a $5 million seed round led by Innospark Ventures, with additional participation from Outsiders Fund, Wild Basin, and Big Pi. FierceHealthcare has more here.
Millie, a three-year-old startup based in Berkeley, Ca., that is launching what it describes as a next-generation maternity clinic, raised a $4 million seed round co-led by TMV Ventures and BBG Ventures, with additional investment from Venn Growth Partners, Looking Glass Capital, Learn Capital, and Hustle Fund. Forbes has more here.
Mysten Labs, a one-year-old startup based in Palo Alto, Ca., that is rolling out a new blockchain called Sui, raised a $300 million Series B round that values the company at more than $2 billion. The deal was led by FTX Ventures, with Andreessen Horowitz, Jump Crypto, Apollo, Binance Labs, Franklin Templeton, Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sino Global, Dentsu Ventures, Greenoaks Capital, and O'Leary Ventures also piling on. The company has raised a total of $336 million. The WSJ has more here.
Newsbridge, a six-year-old startup based in Boulogne-Billancourt, France, that uses AI to index faces, objects, logos, written texts, audio transcripts, and semantic context, raised a $7 million Series A led by Supernova Invest; Elaia Partners and angel investor Dominique Edelin also participated. Broadcast Media has more here.
Revolving Games, a three-year-old San Francisco web3 game development studio, raised a $25 million round. The deal lead was Pantera Capital, while Animoca Brands, Polygon, Dapper Labs, Kenetic Capital, Sarmayacar, DWeb3 Capital, and Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser also participated. CoinDesk has more here.
Velaris, a one-year-old London startup that is developing a CRM platform to help businesses better understand their customers, raised $5.4 million seed round led by Octopus Ventures, with Zaka and Fintech 365 also pitching in. TechroundNews has more here.
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Bloccelerate, a Seattle-based, seed-stage, crypto-focused venture outfit, is looking to raise $100 million for its second fund, according to a new SEC filing flagged by CoinDesk. The Bloccelerate VC Fund II has already garnered $20 million in capital commitments from 26 investors since the fund opened Aug. 25. While only one-fifth of the target, the amount surpasses the firm’s $12 million inaugural fund in late 2020. More here.
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FTX Ventures, the venture arm of the acquisitive cryptocurrency exchange, today announced that it will acquire a 30% stake in SkyBridge Capital, a global alternative investment firm founded by Anthony Scaramucci. More here.
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Verily, the life sciences business unit Alphabet that today announced new funding (see above), also said today that founder and CEO Andy Conrad will be replaced in the top role as it attempts to find commercial uses for its wide-ranging project portfolio. The WSJ has more here.
Meanwhile, Zipline has hired departing Verily CFO and Tesla veteran Deepak Ahuja as its first chief business and financial officer, an appointment that comes as the venture-backed drone delivery and logistics startup accelerates its global expansion in Africa, the U.S. and other regions. TechCrunch has more here.
A waterfront estate in Miami’s Coconut Grove area that just sold for $106.875 million, setting a record for Miami-Dade County, was bought by none other than Ken Griffin. The billionaire founder of Citadel has purchased hundreds of millions of dollars of real estate in Florida in recent years. The WSJ has more here.
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Tesla is looking into constructing a battery-grade lithium hydroxide refining facility that could support its electric-vehicle battery production. The car maker said in a form to the Texas Comptroller’s Office that it is looking to construct a plant with access to the Gulf Coast shipping channel, and is considering potential sites in Texas and Louisiana. The WSJ has more here.
Publicly traded software company MicroStategy is already the single largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, with over 129,000 BTC in its coffers. Now, just one month after its CEO, Michael Saylor, stepped down and one week after the Washington D.C. Attorney General sued the company and Saylor for alleged tax fraud, the company wants to buy more. Decrypt has the skinny here.
The mainstays of Twitch’s "Fortnite" era recently made big moves. The receptions were quite different.
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In the words of Tony nominee and MacArthur Fellow Anna Deavere Smith, who wrote the libretto for the new musical Ella: An American Miracle, “Ella Fitzgerald sang America through some of its most discordant times. She was America’s love song.” Come join our journey to Broadway as we celebrate Ella's fight against poverty and racism while creating some of the most memorable songs of all time. This is not an offer to invest. To learn more, please reach out to ella@evamere.com.
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