SpaceX fuels up, Protocol shuts down, and more firings at Twitter for flaming the boss: "Kiss my ass, Elon"

In the past 24 hours, reports Bloomberg, an estimated dozen or so employees have been let go after openly rebuking Musk. Employees have apparently been monitoring the situation through private messages and public tweets, some of them spicier than others.

In other Elon Musk news: SpaceX, the 20-year-old rocket-launch and satellite company founded by Musk, is in talks to raise a funding round that values the outfit at more than $150 billion, a jump from the $125 billion valuation that SpaceX commanded earlier this year, according to Bloomberg's sources. In response to the story, Musk tweeted "false," without elaborating. Per Bloomberg, terms including the price haven’t been finalized and could still change. More here.

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Ben Ling, a prolific angel investor turned venture capitalist, has never put a lot of stock in the need for a new, decentralized internet. It's why the firm he founded almost exactly four years ago— naming it Bling Capital (a nickname from way back) — doesn't have the kind of bets that are right now becoming a black eye for a lot of other venture outfits.

It might also be why Ling, whose longtime friend and co-investor Kyle Lui joined Bling Capital eight months ago from the cross-border firm DCM -- seemingly had little trouble closing on $212 million across two new venture funds: a $109 million seed-stage vehicle, and a $103 million opportunity-type fund that the two will predominantly use to invest in their breakout portfolio companies.

Of course, bets on companies like Rippling, a six-year-old software platform now valued at $11.25 billion, and Airtable, the cloud-collaboration service that's also valued at around $11 billion, didn't hurt either, presumably.

We talked with the pair yesterday to learn more about their mission to back startups focused on fintech, digital health, B2B SaaS and, on rarer occasion, the consumer internet. Our chat, below, has been edited for length and clarity.

Ben, Kyle is based in San Francisco, but you moved to Miami a couple of years ago, where FTX had a notable presence. Are you seeing the effects of FTX's implosion? Has the mood shifted there?

I'm not qualified to answer that question, because I was out [of town] last week. But what's actually interesting is that during my time in Miami and meeting a lot of entrepreneurs and investors,  FTX actually never came up.

More here.

Attabotics, a six-year-old, Alberta, Canada-based 3D robotics supply chain company, has raised a $71.7 million Series C-1 round from Export Development Canada, with participation from earlier investor Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, which led the company's $50 million Series C two years ago. The new round brings Attabotics’ total funding to $165.1 million. More here.

BeZero Carbon, a two-year-old London startup that helps companies purchase and manage carbon offsets, raised a $50 million Series B round led by Quantum Energy Partners; additional investors included EDF Pulse Ventures1, Hitachi Ventures2, Intercontinental Exchange, Molten Ventures, Norrsken VC, Illuminate Financial, Qima, and Contrarian Ventures. The company has raised a total of $70 million. Sifted has more here.

Contentstack, a four-year-old Austin startup that has developed a headless content management system geared toward enterprises, raised a $80 million Series C round co-led by Georgian and Insight Partners, with Illuminate Ventures also chipping in. The company has raised a total of $169 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Jnana Therapeutics, a five-year-old Boston startup that is developing drugs targeting cancer, immune-mediated diseases, and neurology, raised a $107 million Series C round led by Bain Capital Life Sciences, with additional participation from RA Capital Management, Polaris Partners, Versant Ventures, Avalon Ventures, and Pfizer Ventures. Jnana also signed a $50 million development deal with Roche. The company has raised a total of $207 million. FierceBiotech has more here.

Weka, an eight-year-old startup based in Campbell, Ca., that has developed a way to virtualize data to make it easier to move between sources without having to copy it, raised a $135 million Series D round at a $750 million valuation. Investors in the deal included 10D, Atreides Management, Celesta Capital, Gemini Israel Ventures, HPE, Hitachi Ventures, Key1 Capital, Lumir Ventures, Micron Ventures, Mirae Asset Capital, MoreTech Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, NVIDIA, Qualcomm Ventures, and Samsung Catalyst. The company has raised a total of $293.9 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Atmos, a four-year-old San Francisco startup that allows consumers to design their dream homes in 3D, raised a $12.5 million Series A round led by previous investor Khosla Ventures and joined by Keller Williams, Duke Angel Network, Bain Capital co-chairman Stephen Pagliuca, and Figma CEO and co-founder Dylan Field as well as existing backers Bedrock, JLL Spark, Y Combinator, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The company has raised a total of $18.7 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Banked, a four-year-old London startup that is creating a global digital payments network based on API access, raised a $15 million in new Series A round led by Insight Partners, with Citi, National Australia Bank Ventures, and Rapyd also taking part. The company has raised more than $50 million to date. PYMNTS has more here.

Bishop Fox, a 17-year-old Phoenix startup that provides penetration testing and offensive security services to its clients, raised a $46 million round. Investors included WestCap, NextEquity Partners, and Rockpool Capital. SecurityWeek has more here.

Cloudbrink, a Sunnyvale, Ca.-based startup aiming to deliver enterprise-grade network performance, reliability and security to hybrid workforces, has come out of stealth with $25 million in funding from Highland Capital Partners and The Fabric co-creation studio. VentureBeat has more here.

Descript, the five-year-old San Francisco startup founded by serial entrepreneur Andrew Mason that built an AI-powered editing tool for audio and video content, raised a $50 million Series C round. OpenAI Startup Fund led the round, joined by earlier investors Andreessen Horowitz, Redpoint Ventures, and Spark Capital. The company has raised a total of $100 million. TechCrunch has more here.

EngFlow, a two-year-old New York startup that says it helps its enterprise customers more efficiently build and test their source code, raised an $18 million Series A round from Tiger Global, Firstminute Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz. The company has raised a total of $21.7 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Hemanext, an 18-year-old startup based in Lexington, Ma., that is developing blood processing, storage, and transfusion technology, raised an $18 million Series B round led by Sonenshine Fulford Group. The company has raised a total of $57.6 million. More here.

Impact, a Los Angeles startup founded by filmmakers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer that aims to be the LinkedIn of the entertainment business, raised a $15 million Series B round led by earlier backer Shasta Ventures. Other earlier backers Benchmark, Skydance, and Riviera Partners also joined the round. Variety has more here.

Impulse, a one-year-old San Francisco startup that is developing battery-powered induction stoves, raised a $20 million Series A round led by Lux Capital, with Fifth Wall, investor Lachy Groom, and Construct Capital also pitching in. The company has raised a total of $25 million. TechCrunch has more here.

MadKudu, an eight-year-old, New York- and Paris-based lead-scoring platform that says it's gaining traction as startups reduce their sales and engineering staff, just raised $18 million in Series A funding. Felicis led the round, joined by BGV, Alven, Techstars and numerous individual investors. The company, which we talked with here, has now raised $27 million altogether.

MotherDuck, a San Francisco startup founded this year focused on commercializing open source packages using DuckDB, a lightweight database platform, raised a $35 million Series A round at a $175 million valuation. Andreessen Horowitz was the deal lead; Madrona, Amplify Partners, Altimeter, and previous investor Redpoint Ventures also participated. TechCrunch has more here.

Pickle Robot Company, a four-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based company whose robots work alongside people in the very messy world of loading docks, has raised $26 million in Series A funding from Ranpak, JS Capital, Schusterman Family Investments, Soros Capital and Catapult Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Privy, a seven-year-old Jakarta startup that provides "know your customer" services to banks and insurance companies, raised a $48 million Series C round led by KKR. Singel Innov8 and previous investors MDI Ventures, GGV Capital, and Telkomsel Mitra Inovasi also joined the round. The company has raised a total of $71.6 million. Tech in Asia has more here.

RoadRunner Recycling, an eight-year-old Pittsburgh startup that helps its clients manage waste management and recycling operations, raised a $20 million Series D extension led by Fifth Wall. The company has raised a total of $174.1 million. Axios has more here.

TVision, an eight-year-old New York startup that aims to provide second-by-second analysis of how people watch TV, raised a $16 million led by iSpot; additional investors included SIG Capital, Accomplice, and Golden Ventures. The company has raised more than $58 million. Variety has more here.

WeaveGrid, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose software helps utilities better integrate electric vehicles into their grids by coordinating charging times, has raised $35 million in funding led by Salesforce Ventures with participation from other new and earlier backers, including Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Bloomberg has more here.

Yahaha, a two-year-old Shanghai and Helsinki startup that is building an immersive, user-generated, low-code gaming platform for the metaverse, raised a $40 million Series A extension co-led by Temasek and Alibaba, with 37 Interactive Entertainment also participating. The company has raised a total of $121 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Acerta Analytics, a five-year-old startup based in Kitchener, Canada, whose analytics platform helps automakers and suppliers improve quality in manufacturing processes and identify defects, raised a $7.8 million Series B round bo-led by BDC Capital's Industrial Innovation Venture Fund and Thrive Venture Fund; OMERS Ventures and StandUp Ventures also participated. TechCrunch has more here.

BasiGo, a one-year-old Nairobi startup that's making electric buses and building a charging infrastructure network in Nairobi, raised a $6.6 million round co-led by Novastar, Mobility54, the corporate venture arm of Toyota Tsusho, and Trucks.vc. The company has raised a total of $11 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Butter, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that helps food distributors run their businesses while serving as a system of record to help them comply with food safety rules, raised a $9 million Series A round led by Gradient Ventures, with Uncommon Capital and Notation Capital also contributing. TechCrunch has more here.

CalmWave, a Seattle startup founded five months ago that claims to use AI to reduce the number of false positive alarms in intensive care units, thereby improving nurse retention and patient outcomes, raised a $4 million seed round led by Bonfire Ventures, with participation from Tau Ventures, AI2 Incubator, Seachange Ventures, Hike Ventures, and the co-founders of PagerDuty. GeekWire has more here.

Impacked, a New York startup that is trying to build a marketplace for sustainable CPG packaging, raised a $2.5 million seed round round led by TenOneTen Ventures. The company has raised a total of $3.3 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Joopiter, a Los Angeles startup founded this year whose aim is to build a digital auction house, raised a $6 million seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. More here.

Payload, a four-year-old startup that has developed a a headless open source content management system, raised a $4.7 million seed round led by Gradient Ventures and including MongoDB Ventures, Y Combinator, SV Angel, Grand Ventures, and Exceptional Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Sesamy, a one-year-old Stockholm startup that wants to make it easy for consumers to consume content across different platforms, raised a $3.4 million round led by GP Bullhound; Co_Made, Tham Invest, and Brofunds also participated. The company has raised a total of $8.7 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Silkhaus, a one-year-old Dubai startup that is building a short-term rental platform for properties across emerging markets, particularly MENA, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, raised a $7.75 million round. Investors included Nuwa Capital, Nordstar, Global Founders Capital, Yuj Ventures, Whiteboard Capital, and VentureSouq. The company has raised a total of $7.8 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Yakoa, a startup founded this year that builds tools to fight NFT fraud, raised a $4.8 million led by Collab+Currency, Volt Capital, and Brevan Howard Digital, with participation from Data Community Fund, Alliance DAO, Uniswap Labs Ventures, Orange DAO, Time Zero Capital, gmjp, Sunset Ventures, and FAST by GETTYLAB. TechCrunch has more here.

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Energy Impact Partners has raised $485 million for a new fund to invest in technologies that help reduce carbon emissions, including corporate capital from companies such as Microsoft, pipeline operator Williams Cos. and electric utility Duke Energy Corp. The New York outfit set it was originally targeting $350 million for its EIP Deep Decarbonization Frontier Fund I LP. More here.

Heartland Ventures, a six-year-old, Columbus, Ohio-based venture firm, has raised $52 million for its second fund. More here.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has today launched a $225 million venture capital platform to back early-stage startups in Africa, Middle East, Central Asia and Pakistan. The IFC, a member of the World Bank, will make equity and “equity-like” investments in tech startups to “grow them into scalable ventures that can attract mainstream equity and debt financing.” TechCrunch has more here.

Startup accelerator Techstars is hitting the fundraising market, aiming to put together a $300 million fund, the WSJ reported this morning. The fundraising, it observes, shows that Techstars hopes investors are still eager to commit capital to the asset class despite an industry slowdown. More here.

Protocol, the two-year-old news site launched by former Politico owner and publisher Robert Allbritton in late 2019, will shutter later this week and lay off dozens of staffers, 60 staffers learned today. They were told at an all-hands meeting earlier today that the organization will cease publishing on its website Thursday and that its flagship newsletter, Source Code, will publish for several more weeks then also be halted. CNN provides more context here.

FTX filed for bankruptcy last week, but its founder still thinks that he can raise enough money to make users whole, according to people familiar with the matter who could not pick up their jaws off the floor (is our guess). According to the WSJ, alongside a few remaining employees, Sam Bankman-Fried spent the past weekend calling around in search of commitments from investors to plug a shortfall of up to $8 billion in the hopes of repaying FTX’s customers. More here.

Kyle Robertson, the former CEO of Cerebral, sent a letter to the company on Friday demanding access to documents that he says could reveal that the venture-backed company's board or executives mismanaged the startup or broke the law. The letter is the most detailed accounting to emerge of Robertson's side of the story, after Cerebral largely pinned the blame on him as the driving force behind its prescribing practices. Business Insider has more here. 

FTX cofounder and CTO Gary Wang was one of only a few people who had “root access” to the code base, sources of The Block tell the outlet. It takes a look at Wang here.

In the wake of FTX's abrupt implosion, digital-asset billionaires like the Winklevoss twins are trying to message to current and prospective shareholders that their steep losses in 2022 won't be similarly fatal.

Yiiiikes. Approximately $863 million of crypto investor Multicoin Capital’s Bitcoin, Ethereum, U.S. dollars, and other assets are still frozen at FTX—even after the firm withdrew about 24% of its assets being held at the exchange early last week, according to a letter the investment firm sent to limited partners last week and Fortune reviewed. Somewhat surprisingly to us, the amount is roughly 10% (and not more) of Multicoin Capital's total assets, it said in that same letter. (Its assets also trade on Binance and Coinbase.) That's not the end of the bad news, however. The Block notes the outfit also has indirect exposure to the FTX meltdown via its positions in the Solana and Serum tokens. Why does it matter? Solana's close ties with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and the trading desk he also cofounded Alameda Research, has investors and developers feeling nervous; meanwhile, the Serum protocol was created and promoted by FTX and Alameda Research. You can see how much faith investors have in that right now.

Twitter may be in big trouble when it comes to generating advertising revenue: GroupM, part of WPP, the world’s biggest ad company — and Twitter’s biggest spender — is reportedly telling its clients that buying ads on the platform is “high-risk,” according to Platformer and Digiday. More here.

Major layoffs could be around the corner at another FANG company. Activist hedge fund TCI Fund Management today called on Alphabet to aggressively cut costs and reduce losses in long-term bets such as the self-driving car unit Waymo, claiming the company would be more efficient with fewer employees. London-based TCI says it owns Alphabet shares worth more than $6 billion and that it has been a significant shareholder since 2017. The WSJ has more here.

It'a bad, but the crypto meltdown could have been so much worse.

If he really wanted to, he would.

Daniel Craig shakes off James Bond.

Last Friday in two minutes.

A Garmin smartwatch for kids.

A Louis Vuitton hotel in Paris.

The ugly Christmas sweater of your dreams, courtesy of Microsoft.

Rule of 40 for SaaS companies is a useful metric for private equity investors and strategic buyers to measure the performance of SaaS companies. Allied Advisers’ report shows that companies which exceed Rule of 40 trade at significant premium valuations compared to companies that do not even in this downturn. In this market downturn for public and private companies, the Rule of 40 is a good metric for founders, management and investors to keep in mind as they build their companies for optimal valuations.