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So fun to see some of you at a jam-packed "women in tech" event in San Francisco tonight.:) Also, please note that our email service provider has been sending these missives out over the course of many hours lately to readers. We are often up late, but we haven't been typing away at 3 AM, is what we're saying. Hopefully it will be resolved soon. đź«
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Ye, the rapper long known as Kanye West, has reached an agreement in principle to buy the “uncancelable free speech platform” Parler, the two said in a statement today, saying the move will help individuals express their "conservative opinions" freely. Financial terms were not disclosed; the deal is expected to close in the ongoing quarter, though based on another self-described free-speech absolutist's deal to buy a much bigger social media platform, we'll see!
Speaking of Elon Musk, he tweeted on Saturday that his company SpaceX will continue funding Starlink internet service in war-torn Ukraine, apparently reversing course after SpaceX asked the United States military to pick up the tab. “No good deed goes unpunished,” Musk tweeted on Saturday. “Even so, we should still do good deeds." More here and here.
Elizabeth Holmes's bid to get a new trial is on shaky ground after a witness who helped convict her stood by his testimony today.
"I don't want to help Ms. Holmes," the witness, Adam Rosendorff, said. "She needs to pay her debt to society." Rosendorff said today that he tried to see Holmes in August because he was "distressed" that her child, born last year, might grow up without a mother. He added today that "It is my understanding that Ms. Holmes may be pregnant again." Business Insider has more here.
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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 here.
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Byju's, the 11-year-old Bangalore startup that provides tutoring services for over 150 million students and whose accounting practices have more recently come under scrutiny, raised a $250 million in a new round that includes funding from Qatar Investment Authority. (Other investors were not identified.) The capital infusion values the company at $22 billion, says Byju's, the same figure at which it raised a round in March of this year. The company, which said last week it was laying off 5% of its workforce, or roughly 2,500 people, has raised a total of $5.7 billion to date, including from Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital India, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. TechCrunch has more here.
Treeline Biosciences, a one-year-old based in Stamford, Ct., that is developing cancer drugs, raised a $260+ million Series A round led by KKR, with additional participation from Rock Springs Capital, ARCH Venture Partners, GV, OrbiMed, Access Industries, T. Rowe Price, Ajax Health/Zeus, Casdin Capital, and Aisling Capital. Company co-founder Josh Bilenker’s last company, Loxo Oncology, was purchased by Eli Lilly for $8 billion. Treeline has raised a total of $473.3 million. Nasdaq has more here.
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| Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings |
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Ambi Robotics, a four-year-old Berkeley startup whose robotics platform automates processes primarily in logistics and fulfillment, raised a $32 million SAFE co-led by Tiger Global and Bow Capital, with Ahren and Pitney Bowes also chipping in. TechCrunch has more here.
Surge Therapeutics, a startup based in Cambridge, Ma., that's developing an injectable biodegradable hydrogel that enables the extended, localized release of cancer immunotherapy at the site of surgical tumor resection, raised a $26 million Series A round led by Camford Capital; additional investors included Khosla Ventures, Intuitive Ventures, Pitango HealthTech, 8VC, Alumni Ventures, and the Cancer Research Institute. More here.
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Maplerad, a Lagos startup that partners with banks to provide tailored banking services and experiences to startups, fintechs, and large corporations, raised a $6 million seed round at a $30 million valuation. Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures was the deal lead. TechCrunch has more here.
Nucleus RadioPharma, a startup based in Rochester, Mn., that aims to produce and supply more readily available radiation drug therapies, raised a $6 million seed round from Eclipse Ventures and Mayo Clinic. Science & Enterprise has more here.
Stability AI, a two-year-old, London-based open-source AI company looking to accelerate the development of open AI models for image, language, audio, video, 3D, and more, just raised $101 million in funding. Coatue, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and O’Shaughnessy Ventures led the round. The deal values the company at more than $1 billion, reportedly. TechCrunch has more here.
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Findem uncovers the talent no one else can find with AI-powered recruiting from source to hire. We help companies source from 750+ million enriched profiles, engage without limits, and close the most interested, exceptional candidates. Talent leaders from Fortune 100 companies to startups are using Findem to massively increase their talent pipeline, raise candidate quality and diversity, and shrink their time to hire by 80%. Find the talent you’ve been missing and make amazing hires with Findem. Visit us at www.findem.ai/strictlyvc.
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Nutanix, San Jose, Ca..-based enterprise cloud computing company that went public in 2016 and boasts a market cap of $6 billion as of this writing, is exploring a sale after receiving takeover interest, says the WSJ. According to its report, the company is expected to target private-equity and industry players, though a deal is far from certain. More here.
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Instacart is slashing its valuation to about $13 billion and steering clear of a highly anticipated IPO until market conditions improve, according to Bloomberg. It says the online grocery-delivery company has set a new price of $38 a share, marking the third time it has reduced its valuation this year. Instacart cut its valuation in March by almost 40% to $24 billion and again in July to $15 billion. More here.
Intel is eyeing a significantly lower valuation than previously expected in the IPO of its Mobileye self-driving car unit, according to the WSJ. Mobileye, which was originally expected to land a roughly $50 billion valuation, is now set to target one that is under $20 billion and sell a smaller number of shares than originally planned, say its sources. By selling fewer shares at a lower price, the company and its advisers are hoping to drum up interest that will push up the shares after they start trading, the outlet adds.
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The early-stage venture firm Felicis has promoted three members of the staff to "deal partner": Ryan Isono, Tobi Coker and Jake Storm. More here.
JPMorgan Chase executive Carlos Hernandez, the 61-year-old leader of the bank’s investment banking staff and a member of Jamie Dimon’s inner management circle, will retire next year. The WSJ has more here.
If his deal goes through, Elon Musk will have absolute control over Twitter, per a shareholders’ agreement prepared by Musk’s lawyers for equity investors (that was obtained by The Information). The document reportedly shows that Musk will have “sole discretion” to decide whether to pursue a sale of the company, an IPO or some other refinancing transaction; he will also have “exclusive authority” to appoint and remove members of the board. More here.
Richard Rosenblatt, a serial entrepreneur who has founded and cofounded numerous companies, including Demand Media, iCrossing, Intermix, Myspace and iMall, is joining Andreessen Horowitz as a senior advisor to its crypto team. More here.
Saudi American Saad Ibrahim Almadi is not a dissident or an activist; he is a project manager from Florida who was at times critical of the Saudi government. Now, the 72-year-old, who was detained last November when he traveled to Riyadh to visit family, has been sentenced to 16 years in prison for those tweets.
Will Wilkerson, one of Trump Media & Technology Group’s first employees, alleges the company violated securities laws and that Donald Trump pressured executives to hand over their shares to his wife, Melania, despite that he had already been given 90% of the company’s shares in exchange for the use of his name and some minor involvement. More here.
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Three-quarters of large U.S. companies that went public during the pandemic bull market are trading below their offering price, forcing some once-promising names back into private hands -- including PE groups -- at fire-sale valuations, notes the Financial Times. Of more than 400 listings where companies raised at least $100 million between 2019 and 2021, 76% are below the price at their IPO, an FT analysis of Dealogic data shows. The group’s median return since their respective IPO dates is negative 44%
Flying to China in economy class right now will cost you $5,000.
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Cancer vaccines could be accessible to patients within the next decade, the husband and wife team behind one of the most successful Covid jabs has said. German couple Professors Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci - who co-founded BioNTech in Germany in 2008 -- say they are hesitant to say they can find a cure for cancer but that they have had "breakthroughs." Bloomberg has more here.
As of Friday, Gas was the most popular free iPhone app and the No. 1 social-networking download in the App Store, despite being limited to a handful of states. As the WSJ explains it, the questions Gas asks are positive, urging teens to compliment each other (to gas each other up). Those selected in the polls receive “flames,” notifications that they were chosen. The voting is anonymous by default—people only find out the gender and grade of those who voted for them. More here.
San Francisco-based Lyft is the biggest financier of efforts to pass a November ballot measure that seeks to make the wealthiest Californians pay some of the costs of transitioning to greener forms of transportation and fund wildfire prevention. Lyft and other supporters are proposing an additional 1.75% tax on income earned over $2 million for the next 20 years, arguing that more money is needed to engineer the state’s shift to cleaner energy. But Governor Gavin Newsom is against the measure, known as Proposition 30. calling it “a cynical scheme devised by a single corporation to funnel state income tax revenue to their company.” The WSJ has more here.
NFT bargain-hunting is in as the crypto bust craters prices.
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