The Dow rebounds, Descript looks to raise de scratch, and examining the hype around generative AI

Good lord, we're tired. (Sorry we've been short on columns, by the way. There were more people than ever at the Disrupt event this week in San Francisco, and we were busy catching up with a lot of them.)

Before we go, we leave you with this week's StrictlyVC Download, featuring Antonio Rodriguez, a former entrepreneur and one of most senior partners at Matrix Partners, the early-stage venture firm that recently announced a new $800 million fund. Despite some big hits out of Matrix -- including Canva, Oculus and Zendesk -- we'd somehow never before talked with Rodriguez and really enjoyed the chat. Hope you will, too.

Giant thanks to Findem.AI for its support this week of the podcast (and newsletter). Findem.AI wants to find your next hire, and if you want to test out the service, it says it will help you "from source to hire with your first three candidates for free." (Hard to beat that deal.)

More Monday, when we're no longer feeling the effects of a karaoke evening to close out the last few days.:)

The Dow Jones Industrial Average raced to its best three-week stretch since November 2020, boosted by the prospect of a slower pace of interest rate increases and the latest batch of corporate earnings. The WSJ 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.

Cohere, a three-year-old, Toronto-based AI startup is in talks with Google about "at least" a $200 million investment, reports the WSJ, calling it "another sign of the escalating arms race among large technology companies in the sector." Cohere creates natural language processing software that developers can then use to build AI applications for businesses, including tools for chatbots and other features that can understand human speech and text. More here.

Breezeway, a five-year-old Boston startup that helps vacation rental hosts and hospitality managers maintain quality, safety and cleanliness across their properties by automating tasks such as cleaning and preparation, raised a $15 million Series B round led by Catalyst Investors, with previous investor Schooner Capital also anteing up. The company has raised a total of $36.2 million. PhocusWire has more here.

Generally Intelligent, a one-year-old research startup whose goal is to research the fundamentals of human intelligence that machines currently lack, raised a $20 million round from an array of angels including Jed McCaleb (founder of the Astera Institute), Tom Brown (lead author of GPT-3), Jonas Schneider (former robotics lead at OpenAI), and Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, with commitments to fund the entitiy with an  additioonal $100 million through what the company calls "a combination of options and technical milestones." TechCrunch has more here.

Bookkeep, a New York startup whose platform enables professional accountants and bookkeepers to generate accrual-based sales accounting entries and reconcile payment deposits automatically, raised a $6.6 million seed extension round led by Fin Capital, with participation from previous investors TTV Capital, Argonautic Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, and Haymaker Ventures. The company has raised a total of $10 million. Financial IT has more here.

ByteBrew, a San Diego startup that has built a games analytics platform to provide developers with information about such key metrics as monetization and user acquisition costs, raised a $4 million seed round led by Konvoy. VentureBeat has more here.

Lithos, a Seattle startup that uses software to deploy basalt rock to help farmers remove carbon, raised a $6.3 million seed round co-led by Union Square Ventures and Greylock, with Bain Capital Ventures, Carbon Removal Partners, Carbon Drawdown Initiative, Fall Line Capital, and Cavallo Ventures also chipping in. GeekWire has more here.

LuckyTruck, a three-year-old Austin startup that provides insurance quotes for truck fleet operators, raised a $2.4 million seed extension round led by Candid Insurance Investors with participation from Markd, Draper University Ventures, and SiriusPoint. The company has raised a total of $6.5 million. FreightWaves has more here.

Mercury, an eight-year-old Boston startup that says its platform features a "robust NFT-gated fan community with exclusive experiences, such as access to sit-down interviews with players and coaches, limited NFT drops, and a community marketplace," raised a $7.5 million seed round led by Multicoin Capital, with additional participation from North Island Ventures, Crosslink Capital, and Brevan Howard Digital. More here.

Mintify, a New York startup that is attempting a marketplace for professional NFT traders, raised a $1.6 million seed round led by Arca. Blockworks has more here.

Netmaker, a startup based in Asheville, N.C., that helps companies create and manage a virtual overlay network that works across the internet, raised a $2.3 million round. Lytical Ventures, Uncorrelated VC, and SaxeCap co-led the deal. TechCrunch has more here.

Spindl, a Miami startup that has built an attribution platform for web3 projects, raised a $7 million round. Dragonfly and Chapter One co-led the deal. TokenInsight has more here.

StoryFit, a seven-year-old Austin startup that claims it uses natural language processing and machine learning to deliver audience and content insights pre-production, raised a $5.5 million Series A round led by Refinery Ventures, with additional investors including Techstars, Elkstone Partners, Collective Capital Ventures, and Alumni Ventures. More here.

Super Advisor, a Toronto startup that aims to give financial advisors the tools they need to go their own way and build, manage, and scale their independent businesses, raised $1.45 million led by Rhino Ventures. ExploreBit has more here.

Descript, a five-year-old, San Francisco–based startup that was founded by Groupon cofounder Andrew Mason and whose software uses natural language–processing algorithms to let users edit audio or video recordings based on a Descript-generated transcription of the file (it also enables customers to tweak the transcript, which changes the audio to sound like the original speaker), is reportedly talking with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, among others, about a new round of funding. The company last raised $30 million in January 2021 led by Spark Capital, reportedly at a $260 million valuation. The Information has the story here.

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Apple's head of hardware design, Evans Hankey, is leaving the iPhone maker after just three years. She had replaced famed designer Jony Ive following his departure from the firm after two decades. No word yet on where she is headed, but the move creates a "significant hole at the top of a company famous for its slick-looking products," notes Bloomberg.

Peter Thiel and his handpicked Senate candidates — Blake Masters in Arizona and JD Vance in Ohio — have largely failed to muster support with the Republican establishment, raising questions about the Silicon Valley billionaire’s long-term relationship with the party’s gatekeepers, such as Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican. The Financial Times has the story.

The amount of capital raised by Black entrepreneurs continues to decrease. The latest Crunchbase numbers show that Black founders raised $187 million in Q3, a staggering decline from the nearly $1.1 billion they received in Q3 2021 and a sizable drop from the $594 million the cohort raised in Q2. Black founders raised just 0.12% of the $150.9 billion deployed in Q3. TechCrunch has the story here.

Banks that committed to help finance Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter plan to hold all $13 billion of debt backing the deal rather than sell it, according to the WSJ, which notes that it's "another blow to a market that serves as a crucial source of corporate funding."

A coming-out party for generative AI.

Another women's-only networking club has popped up in San Francisco. But don't liken it to The Wing, say the founders behind it.

Pay. Productivity. Commuting. Rarely have bosses and workers been so at odds over so much.

A 1923 review of "The Waste Land."

What Louis Vuitton's women's artistic director can't live without.

A cultural battle is playing out from New York to Hawaii over -- you guessed it --  pickleball.

Also:

Apple stores in the U.S. are now selling an exterior door lock that can be unlocked by a user’s Apple Watch or iPhone.

A superyacht concept with an underwater lounge. 

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