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The madness continues to unfold. The latest from Bloomberg's Matt Levine: "If a troubled company has a few days to beg potential investors for a bailout before it files for bankruptcy, and it sends those investors its balance sheet so they can consider investing, and they all pass, and then the company files for bankruptcy, of course the balance sheet was bad. . .the balance sheet that Sam Bankman-Fried’s failed crypto exchange FTX.com sent to potential investors last week before filing for bankruptcy on Friday is very bad. It’s an Excel file full of the howling of ghosts and the shrieking of tortured souls. If you look too long at that spreadsheet, you will go insane."
Meanwhile, more investors are disclosing how much they've lost on FTX's implosion. Crypto hedge funds Pantera Capital and Galois have lost $130 million and $40 million, respectively. Paradigm believes its entire $278 million investment in FTX will most likely be lost. SoftBank meanwhile says it wrote down its nearly $100 million investment in the company.
Solana, a poster coin of the crypto future, is also in trouble, observes Reuters. The cryptocurrency, which had been lauded by FTX's founder Sam Bankman-Fried, has been hit harder than any other major coin by the collapse of the exchange. More here.
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Lentra, a four-year-old Indian startup that works with commercial banks to power their digital loan services, raised a $60 million Series B round at a $400-million-plus valuation, it says. The deal leads were previous investors Bessemer Venture Partners and SIG, with Citi Ventures also chipping in. TechCrunch has more here.
Life Biosciences, a Boston startup funding a portfolio of startups that are developing anti-aging therapies, has raised a $50 million Series B from angel investors. FierceBiotech has more here.
Maven Clinic, an eight-year-old New York startup whose virtual clinic encompasses women's and family health issues, raised a $90 million Series E round led by General Catalyst, with La Famiglia, Intermountain Ventures, and previous investors Sequoia Capital, Oak HC/FT, Icon Ventures, Dragoneer Investment Group, and Lux Capital also participating. The company has raised a total of $300 million. More here.
MBX Biosciences, a three-year-old startup based in Carmel, In., that is developing therapeutics to treat rare endocrine disorders, raised a $115 million Series B round led by Wellington Management, with RA Capital Management, Norwest Ventures Partners, and previous investors NEA, OrbiMed, and Frazier Life Sciences also joining in. Inside Indiana Business has more here.
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| Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings |
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GoFreight, a startup that provides software for small freight forwarders that helps customers manage their shipments and quickly receive price quotes, raised a $23 million Series A round co-led by Flex Capital and Headline, with additional capital supplied by LFX Venture Partners, Palm Drive Capital, and previous investors Mucker Capital, Cornerstone Ventures, and Red Building Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
Owl Labs, an eight-year-old startup developing a lineup of AI-powered meeting hardware, says it has raised $25 million in a Series C round led by HP Tech Ventures (HP’s venture capital arm) with participation from Sourcenext, Matrix Partners, Spark Capital and Playground Global. TechCrunch has more here.
PayZen, a three-year-old San Francisco startup that offers a healthcare payment card to consumers that it claims speeds up payments to providers, raised a $20 million round led by 7wire Ventures and a $200 million credit facility from Viola Credit. The San Francisco Business Times has more here.
Quix, a two-year-old London startup that has built a platform for developing event-driven applications with Python for use in areas such as physics-based data modeling or anomaly detection in machine learning, raised $12.9 million Series A round. MCM Ventures led the round; additional investors included Project A Ventures and Passion Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
Red Points, an 11-year-old Barcelona startup that claims to be the world’s most widely used platform to counter online brand abuse, raised a $20.7 million round led by IRIS, with previous investors Summit Partners and Eight Roads also contributing. The company has raised a total of $107 million. TFN has more here.
Vow, a three-year-old Sydney startup that bills itself as “Australia’s first cell-based meat company,” raised a $49.2 million Series A round co-led by Blackbird and Prosperity 7; Toyota Ventures, Square Peg, Grok, Cavalio, Peakbridge, Tenacious Ventures, HostPlus Super LP, NGS Super, and Pavilion Capital also took part. The company has raised a total of $56 million. TechCrunch has more here.
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222, a one-year-old Los Angeles startup that whose social events app aims to facilitate meaningful and authentic relationships, raised $1.45+ million in a pre-seed round led by General Catalyst with participation from Y Combinator, 1517 Fund, Z Fellows, Crescent Fund, and Wonder VC Scout Fund. TechCrunch has more here.
Loopgolf, a San Francisco startup whose app streamlines the payment of golf wagers, raised $1.3 million of a $2 million pre-seed round from Fox Ventures, SWS Ventures, and assorted angels. Forbes has more here.
Luminopia, a seven-year-old Cambridge, Ma. startup that provides digital therapeutics treatments for patients with neuro-visual disorders, including lazy eye, raised a $5.7 million round led by ShangBay Capital, with additional participation from Vertical Group, SSI Strategy, and Sony Ventures. The company has raised a total of $17.2 million. More here.
Pet’s Table, a two-year-old Mexico City startup that is developing pet food products made with what it says are human-grade ingredients, raised a $2 million seed round led by Left Lane Capital and including Goodwater Capital. More here.
Silkhaus, a year-old, Dubai-based platform for short-term rentals, has raised $7.75 million in seed funding. Backers in the round included Nuwa Capital, Nordstar, Global Founders Capital, Yuj Ventures, Whiteboard Capital and VentureSouq, along with a few international family offices and proptech founders. TechCrunch has more here.
Thallo, a London startup that is using blockchain technology to build a carbon exchange marketplace, raised a $2.5 million seed round co-led by Arcan and Friendly Trading Group 2, with Allegory, Cerulean Ventures, and Flori Ventures also participating. More here.
Zenlytic, a two-year-old New York startup that is developing a natural-language interface for non-technical users that ties together results from disparate customer acquisition, conversion, and retention tools, raised a $5.4 million seed round led by Bain Capital Ventures, with Primary Venture Partners, Correlation Ventures, Company Ventures, Habitat Partners (Red Antler), and the Sequoia Scout Fund also chipping in. TechCrunch has more here.
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Bird, the formerly high-flying mobility startup, may be on cusp of shutting down. After revealing it had overstated revenue for more than two years by recognizing unpaid customer rides, Bird in a regulatory filing said it might “need to scale back or discontinue certain or all of its operations in order to reduce costs or seek bankruptcy protection.” As TechCrunch notes, five-year-old Bird closed out the third quarter with $38.5 million in free cash flow; without additional funding, it will be unable to meet its obligations over the next year. Bird had raised nearly $1 billion from investors before going public through a SPAC one year ago.
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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos plans to give away the majority of his $124 billion net worth during his lifetime, telling CNN in an exclusive interview he will devote the bulk of his wealth to fighting climate change and supporting people who can unify humanity in the face of deep social and political divisions. (He is also reportedly interested in acquiring the the NFL’s Washington Commanders, possibly with music mogul Jay-Z as an investor.)
Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek said today his firm had a “tremendously strong balance sheet” and wasn’t engaged in the kinds of practices that caused FTX’s collapse. "We do not trade customers' assets," he insisted.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said in an "ask me anything" session today on Twitter that his cryptocurrency exchange has seen only a slight uptick in withdrawals and is operating normally despite a fall in digital asset prices after the collapse of FTX. “We have not seen like 80% withdrawn from our cold wallets, or 50% of funds flowing from our platform, whereas it maybe happened with some other platforms,” Zhao said. “For us, it’s still business as usual."
Zhao also said today at a meeting of business leaders in Bali that no one can be protected from a “bad player” and called for more regulation of the sector. “We do need to increase the clarity of regulations and the sophistication of regulations in the crypto space,”
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Amazon plans to lay off approximately 10,000 people in corporate and technology jobs starting as soon as this week in what would be the largest job cuts in the company’s history, the New York Times reported earlier today. The cuts will focus on Amazon’s devices organization, including the voice assistant Alexa, as well as at its retail division and in human resources. Though a lot of people, the cuts would reportedly impact 3% of the company's corporate workforce.
Sea, Southeast Asia’s largest internet company by revenue and market value, has laid off more than 7,000 employees, or around 10% of its workforce, over the past six months, according to The Information. More here.
Over the weekend, Twitter laid off roughly 4,400 of its 5,500 contract employees who were focused on content moderation and software infrastructure, reported the Platformer. Twitter owner Elon Musk also seemingly fired a developer for a tweet, via a tweet, earlier today.
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Google has agreed to a $391.5 million settlement with 40 state attorneys general over its location tracking practices. The settlement outlines that Google misled its users into thinking they had turned off location tracking even as the company continued to collect their location information. The investigation, which marks the largest attorney general-led consumer privacy settlement ever, was co-led by Oregon and Washington. More here.
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