Meta kills another knockoff, a surprise twist in the Twitter saga, and Marc Andreessen says he's still in the mix

Elon Musk has once again proposed to buy Twitter for the original offer price of $54.20 a share, Bloomberg News reported this morning. And Twitter has once again accepted the proposal, it disclosed later in the day. 

Twitter shares climbed as much as 12.7% on the news before being halted for volatility. Tesla’s stock meanwhile plunged, as it means Musk won’t be buying back Tesla shares. (Cathie Wood's Art Invest reportedly bought the dip.)

Of course, speculation abounds about what, exactly, changed the mind of Musk, who has been trying desperately to get out of the $44 billion deal (it seems highly likely the ongoing discovery process in Twitter's suit against Musk played a factor). 

Meanwhile, inside Twitter’s New York office, the Clash song "Should I Stay of Should I Go?" played in the background, one employee told Bloomberg. But if Twitter staffers were hoping Musk might help them answer that question today, they were out of luck. As for his plans for Twitter, Musk tweeted cryptically only that, "Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app." 

Uncharacteristically, he left it at that.

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Carbon6 Technologies, a 1.5-year-old, Toronto-based e-commerce software bundler (it acquires small SaaS businesses so it can offer merchants an all-in-one platform instead), has raised $66 million in Series A equity and debt funding. White Star Capital led the equity piece, joined by Kale Investment Fund and Benevolent Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Cellarity, a five-year-old, Somerville, Ma.-based developer of cell behavior therapies that was spun out of Flagship Pioneering, has raised $121 million in Series C funding. Kyowa Kirin Co. and Hanwha Impact Partners were joined by Flagship. FierceBiotech has more here.

Liquid Death, the five-year-old, Los Angeles-based canned sparkling and spring water brand that "murders your thirst" and, more crucially perhaps, is the exclusive water brand at Live Nation events, has raised another $70 million in funding. The capital comes from its earliest investor Science Inc., earlier backer Live Nation (thus the event tie-in), and the music group Swedish House Mafia, among others. The company, which more recently began selling flavored water, too, is already on track for $130 million in revenue this year, it says, up from $45 million in 2021. Bloomberg has more here.

onX, a 13-year-old, Missoula, Mt.-based company that sells mapping and navigation technology to outdoor recreationalists (it offers a hunting app; an off-roading and snowmobiling app; and a hiking and ski map app), has raised $87.4 million in Series B funding. Summit Partners, which led the company's Series A round in 2018, led this newest round, too. It was joined by Steve Burke's Madison Valley Partners and other earlier investors. More here.

Securiti, a four-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based data privacy and security platform, has raised $75 million in Series C funding. Owl Rock Capital led the round, joined by earlier investors Mayfield and General Catalyst. TechCrunch has more here.

Tines, a 4.5-year-old Dublin, Ireland-based no-code automation platform for security teams, has tacked on $55 million in fresh funding to its Series B round led by the venture firm Felicis, bringing the round -- originally led by Addition --  total to $81 million. Earlier backers Accel, Blossom Capital, Addition, and Lux Capital also participated. TechCrunch has more here.

Delphinus Medical Technologies, a 12-year-old, Novi, Mi.-based developer of ultrasound breast cancer screening tech, has raised $30 million in Series D funding from earlier backers Arboretum Ventures, Beringea and North Coast Technology Investors. More here.

Eclypsium, a five-year-old, Portland, Ore.-based enterprise device security company that helps detect, analyze, and prevent security threats at the firmware level, has raised $25 million in Series B funding. Ten Eleven Ventures led the round, joined by Global Brain and J Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Humaans, a 2.5-year-old London-based HR tech stack, has raised $15 million in Series A funding led by investor Lachy Groom, with participation from notable individual investors, including Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke and Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield. TechCrunch has more here.

IriusRisk, a 10.5-year-old, U.K.- and Spain-based automated threat modeling platform used to discover cybersecurity flaws earlier in the app or software development process, has raised $29 million in Series B funding. Paladin Capital led the round, joined by earlier investors BrightPixel Capital, SwanLaab Venture Factory, 360 Capital and Inveready. More here.

Katalyst, a seven-year-old, Las Vegas, Nev.-based fitness equipment startup that’s developing an electro muscle stimulation suit, raised $26 million in Series A funding led by Stripes, with participation from Incisive Ventures and Unlock Venture Partners. Axios Pro has more here.

Partake Foods, a six-year-old, New York-based maker of allergy-free cookies and snacks, raised $11.5 million in Series B funding. Backers in the deal include Cleveland Avenue, Fearless Fund, Supply Change Capital, Kaya Ventures, Marcy Venture Partners, CircleUp Growth Partners, Black Star Fund, FF2032 and Black Capital. Food Business News has more here.

Polco, a 7.5-year-old, Middleton, Wi.-based startup that offers survey tools to governments, raised $14 million in Series A funding led by Mercury Fund, with participation from BAT Ventures and Royal Street Ventures. Government Technology has more here.

Railsr, a six-year-old London-based embedded banking startup (it sells to companies that don't want to themselves build financial products like credit, payments or deposits but want to offer these to their customers), has raised $26 million in equity funding and secured another $20 million in debt. The outfit, which rebranded from Railsbank earlier this year, raised the equity funding from Anthos Capital, Ventura, Outrun Ventures, CreditEase and Moneta. Mars Capital provided the debt. TechCrunch has more here.

SingleStore, an 11-year-old San Francisco startup that provides databases for cloud and on-premises apps and analytical systems, giving customers more flexibility to perform big data analyses, has tacked on $30 million in Series F funding to $40 million in Series F funding that the outfit announced this past summer (a round that was itself an extension). Prosperity7, the venture arm of Saudi Aramco, is among the participants in this newest tranche, which brings the overall round to $146 million and SingleStore’s total funding $412 million (notwithstanding an as-yet unused $50 million credit line from Silicon Valley Bank). TechCrunch has more here.

Tegus, a five-year-old, Chicago-based research platform for institutional investors (that happens to be this week's lead sponsor!), has raised $20 million from Positive Sum. www.tegus.com

Xembly, a two-year-old, Seattle-based startup that says its software analyzes conversations across meetings, Slack and email to detect the intention behind them, then help workers execute on these tasks as might a chief of staff, has raised $15 million in Series A funding. Norwest Venture Partners led the round, joined by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Ascend, Seven Peaks Ventures and Flex Capital, bringing the startup’s total raised to $20 million. (One of the company's cofounders was the lead inventor of the conversational technology behind Microsoft's Kinect and HoloLens.) TechCrunch has more here.

Comprehensive, a year-old, San Francisco-based compensation platform that aims to help companies figure out what to pay whom, has raised $6 million in seed funding from Inspired Capital, Floodgate, SV Angel, and numerous individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Easop, a 10-month-old, Brussels-based software-as-a-service startup that helps companies manage equity incentives for employees across multiple countries, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding led by Partech and Boldstart Ventures. Kima Ventures, eFounders partners Thibaud Elzière and Quentin Nickmans, and several other individual investors joined the round. TechCrunch has more here.

Fizz, a two-year-old, Bay Area-based anonymous, college-only, Reddit-like social app, just closed a $4.5 million seed round led by CEO Rakesh Mathur (a veteran operator who joined the fledgling operation as it was getting up and running).  Lightspeed, Octane and other angels also joined the round. Mathur previously invested $750,000 into the startup. TechCrunch has more here.

Solvemed, a 2.5-year-old, London-based developer of neuro-ocular biomarkers for diagnosing neurological disease, has raised $3.5 million in funding from Atmos Ventures, APEX Ventures, Tensor Ventures, Preface Ventures and Techni Ventures. More here.

Spleet, a Lagos, Nigeria-based startup whose platform partners with apartment owners to list their properties, then offers renters options to pay rent monthly, quarterly and biannually, has raised $2.6 million in seed funding led by MaC Venture Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Starlight Cardiovascular, a 2.5-year-old, San Diego-based company that says it's developing a portfolio of interventional cardiology devices to treat babies with congenital heart defects, has closed on $9.48 million as part of an $11.45 million Series A round. Bird B, a Swiss investment firm, is leading the round. More here.

TissenBio Farms, a year-old, South Korean alt protein company (it's focused on cell-grown meat), has raised $1.6 million in seed funding. Envisioning Partners led the round, joined by FuturePlay and Stonebridge Ventures. Vegconomist has more here.

Trash Warrior, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that matches companies with waste haulers, says it has raised $8 million in "pre-Series A" funding led by AltaIR Capital. The company earlier raised $1.2 million in seed funding. Axios Pro has more here.

Affinity, the relationship intelligence platform for dealmakers, has launched a report analyzing investment trends that point toward future unicorn status. While the impact of an economic downturn can’t easily be predicted, deal activity trends can help us better understand current conditions and future outlooks. In this U.S. vs. European Unicorn report, Affinity takes a comparative look at global investment data to understand how the landscape for investors and hopeful unicorns has evolved against economic challenges and the role relationship intelligence plays in these transactions. Read the report.

Activate Capital, a five-year-old,  San Francisco-based climate tech venture and growth equity firm, tells Axios that it closed its second fund with $500 million in capital commitments. (That's way up from its $157 million debut fund.) More here.

Algebra Ventures, a six-year-old venture firm focused on startups in Egypt, the Middle East and North Africa, says it has held a first close on $100 million in capital commitments, and that it expects to end its fundraising by the end of the first quarter of next year. It's unclear how much it is targeting altogether; the firm closed its second and most recent fund with $90 million in capital commitments last year. TechCrunch has more here.

VC Sarah Guo today announced the first close of a $101 million debut fund for her new investment firm Conviction Partners. After spending nine years at Greylock, where in 2018 she became just the second female general partner in the firm's 57-year history, Guo left the firm in June. With Conviction, she plans to invest in AI startups up to the Series A stage with check sizes between $1 million and $10 million. Guo is starting out as a solo investor, but plans to build a team around her that’s tailored to AI’s research-heavy nature, reports Forbes.

Fidelity registered a notable new vehicle today withe SEC; the asset management giant filed paperwork for the Fidelity Ethereum Index Fund. Decrypt has more here.

Industry Ventures, the 22-year-old, San Francisco-based investment firm with stakes in more than 450 venture funds, has raised $300 million for its third "direct" fund, capital it plans to invest in early to mid-stage tech companies. More here.

Ridgeline, a two-year-old, Memphis, Tn.-based venture firm that invests in B2B companies, has closed its debut fund with $52 million in capital commitments from LPs based in Middle America, it tells TechCrunch. The firm's areas of interest more specifically include manufacturing, supply chain logistics, retail tech and data analytics, among others. More here.

Duolingo has acquired its first-ever startup, buying Gunner, an animation studio that has created art for the language learning app and the likes for Amazon, Dropbox, Spotify and Google. Terms of the deal to acquire the Detroit-based business are not being disclosed. (Duolingo went public last year so details might surface later, notes TechCrunch.) More here.

Juul Labs is beginning talks regarding funding for a potential Chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to Bloomberg. It says the e-cigarette maker has engaged in informal talks regarding so-called debtor-in-possession financing.

Before it gets reported otherwise, Marc Andreessen would like you to know that he is not stepping back from the firm he cofounded in 2009 -- though he's spending a lot more time reading these days and feels conflicted about staying in California, which he says his family almost left behind during the pandemic. 

Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio stepped down as co-investment chief of the largest U.S. hedge fund firm, nearly five decades after he started it in his Manhattan apartment. The move, finalized Friday following a tumultuous yearslong succession process, leaves a handful of Dalio associates in charge of the firm, which has $150 billion under management. Mr. Dalio remains on the Bridgewater board. The WSJ has more here.

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey took a dig at Facebook in text messages with Elon Musk. "Looks like there's a 'verified' account in the swamp of despair over there," Dorsey texted on April 6, flagging a fake account for Musk. Dorsey's diss was made public last week as a part of the pretrial discovery process for Twitter's lawsuit against Musk (who also famously hates Facebook and who responded, "Haha").

An analysis by Protocol of layoffs and funding rounds by more than 400 startups between seed and series E revealed that, on average, firms conducted layoffs just three months after publicly announcing funding rounds. More here.

The overlooked titan of social media.

Scientists have discovered a new set of blood groups.

Meta is pulling the plug on another knockoff. It said today it will shutter its newsletter platform Bulletin in early January, less than two years after it was launched to compete with venture-backed Substack. In June, Meta also shuttered its podcast business and merged its short-form live audio feature, which was meant to compete with Clubhouse, into Facebook Live.

A damning investigation by Chess.com. 👀

An historic bridge that eats vehicles by the dozens.

The best bar in the world . . . is hidden behind a pastrami shop in Barcelona.

Retired semiconductor exec Sass Somekh is selling his family's waterfront Maui home for $35 million.

The bubble car reborn.🫧

Trippy tiles.