A strange SEC announcement, Elon Musk's college girlfriend, and a look into Launch House (it isn't pretty)

Twitter shareholders are poised to approve the $44 billion takeover that Elon Musk is now trying to exit, according to the WSJ. Reportedly, early votes show investors approving the deal by a wide margin, though there is always a chance that the results could change as shareholders can alter their votes through a meeting scheduled for tomorrow (Tuesday), at 1 p.m. Eastern time. More here.

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The world of enterprise software is often a little staid. Not today, however. The Securities and Exchange Commission today said it has charged the cloud computing giant VMware for "misleading investors about its order backlog management practices, which enabled the Palo Alto, Ca.-based technology company to push revenue into future quarters by delaying product deliveries to customers, concealing the company’s slowing performance relative to its projections."

An investigation by the agency found that, "beginning in fiscal year 2019, VMware began delaying the delivery of license keys on some sales orders until just after quarter-end so that it could recognize revenue from the corresponding license sales in the following quarter." More, said the SEC in a news release, "VMware shifted tens of millions of dollars in revenue into future quarters, building a buffer in those periods and obscuring the company’s financial performance as its business slowed relative to projections in fiscal year 2020. Although VMware publicly disclosed that its backlog was 'managed based upon multiple considerations,' it did not reveal to investors that it used the backlog to manage the timing of the company’s revenue recognition."

The full order is pretty damning. According to the SEC, VMWare fudged the numbers, by a lot, during the aforementioned time period. Meanwhile, analysts who inquired about the continued trend in backlog reduction – with VMware’s investor relations staff or with VMware executives at organized IR events – were told that “[b]acklog only represents a small subset of our future revenues,” without any disclosure regarding the largely discretionary nature of VMware’s backlog and VMware’s use of
backlog to manage its quarterly total and license revenue, says the SEC.

Before you jump to any conclusions about what can happen when a company the size of VMWare is charged with fraud, the matter, adds the SEC, has already been settled. Indeed, without admitting or denying the findings in the SEC's order, VMWare has already consented to a cease-and-desist order and will pay an $8 million penalty, says the SEC. Just $8 million! (VMWare, which boasts a $52 billion market cap right now, probably paid its lawyers the same amount.)

More here.

Gotham Greens, a 13-year-old startup based in Brooklyn, that grows produce for commercial use in urban greenhouses, raised a $310 million Series E round co-led by BMO Impact Investment Fund and Ares Management; additional investors included Commonfund, RockCreek, Kimco Realty Corporation, Manna Tree Partners, and The Silverman Group. The company has raised a total of $440 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Nimbus Therapeutics, a 13-year-old startup based in Cambridge, Ma., that is working on three clinical inflammatory and autoimmune disorder programs, including a phase 3 psoriasis study, raised a $125 million round co-led by Bain Capital Life Sciences and SV Health Investors, with additional investment from previous investors Access Biotechnology, Atlas Venture, BVF Partners, Bill Gates, Lightstone Ventures, Pfizer Ventures, RA Capital Management, and SR One. FierceBiotech has more here.

Pretzel Therapeutics, a three-year-old startup based in Waltham, Ma., that aims to use gene editing to develop therapies for rare genetic disorders and diseases of aging such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, raised a $72.5 million Series A round co-led by Arch Venture Partners and Mubadala Capital, with HealthCap, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Cambridge Enterprise, Angelini Ventures, GV, Invus, Eir Ventures, GU Ventures, and Karolinska Institutet Holding also chipping in. BioPharma Dive has more here.

Bachan’s, a three-year-old startup based in Sebastopol, Ca., that
produces a Japanese barbecue sauce, raised a $13 million Series A round led by Sonoma Brands Capital, with additional participation from Prelude Growth Partners and New Fare Partners. The company has raised a total of $17 million. North Bay Business Journal has more here.

Cledara, a four-year-old London startup that gives clients insights into their use of third-party SaaS applications and associated costs, raised a $20 million Series A round led by CommerzVentures, with Carbide Ventures, Massive, and previous investors Nauta Capital and Notion Capital also chipping in. The company has raised a total of $24.3 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Diveplane, a five-year-old startup based in Raleigh, NC, whose software creates a "digital twin" of data that companies can use to analyze the data that goes into machine learning algorithms without revealing personal or sensitive information, raised a $25 million Series A led by Shield Capital, with additional capital provided by Calibrate Ventures, L3Harris Technologies, and Sigma Defense. Axios has more here.

Lumafield, a three-year-old startup based in Cambridge, Ma., that offers low-cost CT scans for product designers and engineering teams, raised a $35 million Series B round led by Spark Capital, with previous investors Lux Capital, Kleiner Perkins, DCVC, and Future Shape also participating. The company has raised a total of $67.5 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Kippa, a one-year-old startup based in Lagos, Nigeria, that has built a bookkeeping platform for small- and medium-sized businesses in sub-Saharan Africa, raised an $8.4 million seed round. Investors included Goodwater Capital, TEN13 VC, Rocketship VC, Saison Capital, Crestone VC, VentureSouq, Horizon Partners, and Vibe Capital. The company has raised a total of $11.6 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Venture capital firms and their investors have realized that a fund administrator without best-in-class technology is no longer acceptable. But experienced firms also know that when it’s crunch time and that capital call needs to go out now, no technology can replace the need for an expert, highly responsive fund accountant working with you. Meet Juniper Square: the first technology-driven fund admin built for sophisticated venture capital firms.

Less than 10 days after announcing its $8 billion purchase of home health company Signify Health, CVS Health has unveiled a dedicated corporate venture capital fund that will invest in and partner with early-stage healthcare companies. The CVS Health Ventures fund will initially launch with $100 million allocated for investments. Healthcare Innovation has more here.

EQT, the private equity and venture firm based out of Stockholm, says it has closed a €2.2 billion ($2.2 billion) fund that it will invest in European and Israeli founders and startups focused on enterprise, consumer, health and climate tech. It plans to participate in rounds that range from €50 million to €200 million with the fund. EQT partner Carolina Brochado will help invest the money. Brochado was most recently an investor with Atomico and, before that, with SoftBank Vision Fund (and before that, Atomico again). TechCrunch has more here.

Early Spotify investor Northzone has raised over 1 billion euros (around $1 billion) in fresh capital in one of the largest fundraises in Europe since the onset of this year's economic downturn. The fundraise – the London-headquartered venture capital firm's tenth and largest to date – will be used to back founders at the helm of both consumer and enterprise startups across Europe and the U.S. Business Insider has more here.

Baltimore's RareBreed Ventures is partnering with two other venture capital firms to create a special purpose vehicle (or SPV) that will exist separately from the three participating VC firms, which besides Rarebreed include Portland, Oregon's Rogue Women's Fund and VITALIZE Venture Capital in Chicago. (Interesting way to think about SPVs. These aren't usually collaborative endeavors.) More here.

Game developer AppLovin says it’s giving up on its effort to buy Unity. After Unity shareholders rejected the $20 billion bid last month, AppLovin said today that it won’t submit another proposal to acquire the video game software company. CNBC has more here.

Bolt, the one-stop checkout company valued by VCs at $11 billion, has scrapped its $1.5 billion purchase of Wyre, a blockchain-based payments company. According to Axios, the final call was made by Bolt CEO Maju Kuruvilla, who was hired shortly before the original deal was announced; its source says Bolt wasn't required to pay a termination fee. More here.

FotoNotes, a 13-year-old,  Oakland, Ca.-based outfit that makes mobile software for residential property field operations, has acquired SiteCapture, a 8.5-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based field operations platform for the solar industry. More here.

Google has announced that its proposed $5.4 billion bid to buy cybersecurity firm Mandiant is now complete. The internet giant revealed plans to acquire publicly traded Mandiant back in March, less than a year after Mandiant was spun out of its previous owner FireEye as part of a $1.2 billion deal with private equity firm Symphony Technology Group. TechCrunch has more here.

Zynga, a unit of Take-Two Interactive, has acquired Storemaven, an Israeli maker of mobile growth and app store optimization software that was backed by 500 Startups and Kima Ventures, among others. VentureBeat has more here.

Peloton announced Friday that John Foley — the company's cofounder and longtime CEO (he stepped down in February but remained as executive chair) — has resigned from the company altogether, alongside fellow founder and Chief Legal Officer Hisao Kushi. Foley’s resignation goes into effect today, while Kushi’s is planned for October 3. TechCrunch has more here.

Melinda French Gates said she’s "completely committed" to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and to working with her ex-husband a year after the pair’s divorce threw into question her role at the $70 billion philanthropic behemoth. Bloomberg has more here.

Goldman is planning to cut several hundred jobs, starting this month, as it resumes its annual cull of low-performing staff, says Bloomberg.

Josh Harris, the co-founder of Apollo Global Management, quietly announced more details about his new firm, which is focused on private equity, credit and insurance, in a statement last week. Called 26North Partners, the outfit launches with more than $5 billion in assets, it says, and more than 40 employees. It was 16 months ago that Harris began the process of leaving Apollo after being sidelined by then-CEO Leon Black, who stepped down owing to his ties to Jeffrey Epstein and who ceded his role to another co-founder of the firm, Marc Rowan. Bloomberg has more here.

Five years after the Fyre Festival, convicted fraudster Billy McFarland is out of jail and ready for his next move (aided by the publicist who helped him line up this New York Times story about next steps).

Jury selection began today in the fraud trial of Trevor Milton, the founder and former CEO of the electric truck company Nikola. Milton was indicted last year on charges of securities fraud and wire fraud and making false claims about the company's tech. TechCrunch has more here.

Elon Musk’s ex-girlfriend from the University of Pennsylvania is auctioning off photos of him and other mementos from college to pay for her stepson's own college education.

Mackenzie Scott handed over two of her luxe Beverly Hills mansions to charitable causes in July. The California Foundation has announced that the ex-wife of the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos donated two “single family residences” with a combined estimated value of $55 million. The nonprofit has confirmed that 90% of the funds from the homes' sale will go towards creating affordable housing grants, with the remaining 10 percent allocated to establishing an immigrant integration program in Los Angeles. The Robb Report has more here.

The Republicans have a Peter Thiel problem.

Debt remains a small slice of total venture funding, but its share of the market is increasing, reports Bloomberg. Citing Pitchbook data, it reports that venture debt volumes in the U.S. hit $17.1 billion in the first six months of 2022, up 7.5% from the same period in 2021. VC funding is down 8% over the same period to $147.7 billion.

Instagram is stumbling in its push to mimic TikTok, reports the WSJ."

Launch House, an a16z-backed startup, sounds . . .bad. (Courtesy of Vox.)

What makes Carlos Alcaraz so good.

Why pine nuts are so expensive.

The Wax Dog Coat by Barbour.

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