The DOJ vs. Google, Thrive Capital's big deal, and fighting words from Meta's lead AI researcher

And it's official: The Department of Justice is suing Google to break up its ads business. 

Microsoft just reported its slowest sales growth in six years as demand for its software and cloud services cools on concerns about the health of the global economy.

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It’s a tough time to be a richly priced company that didn’t go public when the getting was good. Not only are there fewer later-stage players with the resources and appetite to support such companies — SoftBank and Tiger Global have pulled back dramatically, for example — but even secondary investors have lost interest.

That’s our reading of a new report by the private securities marketplace Forge, which itself went public in 2021 by merging with a special purpose acquisition company. Per the report, though 40% to 50% of investor interest on the platform at “various points” in 2020 was directed at companies that had been operating for more than 10 years, in recent months, interest in companies that are 10 years or older has dropped to just 8%.

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CYGNVS, a startup based in Los Altos, Ca., that helps companies prepare and practice their responses to potential cyberattacks, raised a $55 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with the participation of Stone Point Ventures and EOS Venture Partners. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Global Screening Services, a two-year-old London startup that helps financial institutions manage their compliance requirements with regard to public and private sanctions lists, raised a $45 million in first-round round co-led by AlixPartners, The Cynosure Group, and MUFG. More here.

PayEm, a four-year-old Tel Aviv startup that offers procurement tools and workflows for expense approval automation, accounts payable automation, purchase order creation, expense reimbursement, and credit card management, raised a $20 million Series A round and secured a $200 million credit line. Investors included Viola Credit, Mitsubishi Financial Group, Collaborative Fund, Pitango First, NFX, LocalGlobe, and Glilot+. The company has raised a total of $247 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Twinco Capital, a seven-year-old Madrid startup that engages with large corporations (mostly in the retail and apparel sectors) and offers funding to their suppliers worldwide, advancing up to 60% of the purchase order value upfront and paying the remainder upon delivery, raised a $12 million in equity and debt round led by Quona Capital. Other participants in the round included Working Capital, Mundi Ventures, Finch Capital, and Zubi Capital (which provided the venture debt portion). The company has raised a total of $18.5 million. More here.

Vartana, a three-year-old San Francisco startup whose platform helps sales reps manages tasks such as contract tracking, payment terms, and signature capture, raised a $12 million Series A round led by Mayfield, with participation from Xerox Ventures, Flex Capital, and Audacious Ventures. Vartana also secured a $50 million line of credit from i80 Group. TechCrunch has more here.

Calimero Network, a year-old, London-based blockchain infrastructure company, says it has raised $8.5 million in seed funding to build private sharding capabilities for blockchain networks. Khosla Ventures, Lyrik Ventures and the blockchain network Near Foundation co-led the round, joined by GSR, FJ Labs, NetZero Capital, Warburg Serres and additional angel investors. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Coverdash, a seven-month-old New York startup that says it helps small businesses source coverage and offer it to their workers via an embedded technology that can be installed with a single line of code, raised a $2.5 million seed round led by Bling Capital, with AXIS Digital Ventures, Tokio Marine Future Fund, Expansion VC, and Cameron Ventures also participating. TechCrunch has more here.

Elo, a nearly three-year-old, San Francisco-based company that says its protein powder packets can be tailor made for an individual's biomarkers, goals and activity, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Octopus Ventures, with Will Ventures and Re:food.vc also contributing to the round. More here.

Journey Clinical, a three-year-old New York startup that helps psychotherapists provide ketamine-assisted therapy, raised an $8.5 million Series A round led by USV, with AlleyCorp, Fifty Years, Able Partners, Gaingels, Palo Santo, PsyMed Ventures, Coalition Partners, Mystic Ventures, Colibri, and Satori Capital also piling on. The company has raised a total of $12 million. Axios has more here.

Kewazo, a five-year-old Munich startup whose automated hoist system ascends and descends scaffolding systems, raised a $10 million Series A round led by Fifth Wall, with participation from Cybernetix Ventures, Unorthodox Ventures, and Nemetschek. The company has raised a total of $20 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Pilon, a three-year-old Singapore startup whose platform helps small- and medium-size businesses in Southeast Asia to factor their receivables, raised a $5.2 million round led by Wavemaker Partners, with Octava and Polaris Kin also taking part. FinExtra has more here.

Rumin8, a two-year-old Perth, Australia climate tech startup that is designing compounds to reduce methane emissions in agriculture, raised a $12 million seed round led by Bill Gates's Breakthrough Energy Ventures, with Harvest Road Group also pitching in. The company has raised a total of $17.7 million. More here.

Sandbar, a two-year-old New York startup that sells anti-money laundering, fraud and counter-terrorism risk detection software, raised a $4.8 million seed round. Investor Lachy Groom and Abstract Ventures were the co-leads. PYMNTS has more here.

Skillit, a seven-year-old New York startup that connects construction workers with contractors, raised a $5.1 million seed round led by Building Ventures, with MetaProp, Holt Ventures, Great North Ventures, 1Sharpe Ventures, and Takeoff Capital also contributing. More here.

Slingshot Simulations, a four-year-old startup based in Leeds, UK, whose digital twin software helps enterprises visualize and manage their data, raised a $3.7 million Series A round. Northern Gritstone, Mercia, and the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund were the investors. IFA has more here.

Traction Complete, a four-year-old Canadian startup that provides Salesforce apps designed to help organizations make sense of their data and automate sales and marketing-related processes, raised a $5 million round. Pender Ventures and Thomvest Ventures co-led the deal. BetaKit has more here.

Tranch, a two-year-old London startup that offers buy-now-pay-later services, raised a $5 million seed round led by Soma Capital, with FoundersX and previous investors Global Founders Capital and Y Combinator contributing. Tranch also secured $95 million in debt from Clear Haven Capital Management. PYMNTS has more here.

With more firms going after a smaller pool of prospects, deal sourcing is in the spotlight like never before. Make sure your firm is taking advantage of relationship insights and enriched data to see the whole picture, eliminate low-fit candidates earlier in the process, and focus on closing deals that align with your thesis. How? With Affinity’s new guide, VC Deal Sourcing in 2023.

Finch Therapeutics’ attempt to "make crapsules that help prevent the recurrence of a bacterial infection is nearing the end of the road," reports Endpoints News. It says that for the third time in nine months, the nearly six-year-old, Boston-area biotech will lay off staffers, this time 95%, which equates to 77 employees. Finch had earlier planned a Phase III trial testing a donor stool-in-a-capsule for the prevention of recurring infection from the bacteria Clostridioides difficile, or C. diff. According to Crunchbase, Finch had raised $188 million from VCs, including the growth-stage outfit Shumway Capital of Stamford, Ct., and the healthcare focused L.A.-based firm OCV, before going public in March 2021. More here.

Strava, the 14-year-old, San Francisco-based activity tracking and social community platform that says it is used by more than 100 million people globally, has acquired Fatmap, a 10-year-old European company that’s building a high-resolution 3D global map platform for the great outdoors. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. TechCrunch has more here.

Rupert Murdoch has scrapped a proposal to combine Fox and News Corp after his attempt to bring the two halves of his media empire back together was resisted by shareholders. The FT has more here.

Patreon CEO Jack Conte’s charisma and catchy videos have made him one of the highest-profile spokespeople for the creative economy, but people who have worked with him say his skills as a tech CEO are lacking, reports The Information. More here.

Bolt, the one-click checkout startup that, like many fintechs, fell far short of its goals last year, today laid off around 10% of employees or at least 50 people, according to The Information. In total, it adds, the company, which has raised at least $1 billion from investors over the years, has cut more than half of its headcount since last May, with the most recent cuts targeting employees with poor performance ratings, according to its sources.

The Washington Post laid off 20 staffers today, the latest in a series of media and technology companies to cut jobs in the face of a challenging economic climate and continuing declines in advertising revenue and readership. The Washington Post has more here.

“To be clear: I’m not criticizing OpenAI’s work nor their claims,” tweeted Yann LeCun, Meta’s lead AI researcher, earlier today. “I’m trying to correct a *perception* by the public & the media who see ChatGPT as this incredibly new, innovative, & unique technological breakthrough that is far ahead of everyone else. It’s just not.”

Almost 30% of the nearly 4,500 professionals surveyed this month by a social platform owned by Glassdoor said that they’ve already used OpenAI’s ChatGPT or another AI program in their work. Respondents include employees at Amazon, Bank of America, JPMorgan, Google, Twitter and Meta. Bloomberg has more here.

Venture firm Thrive Capital is selling a stake to a group of investors including Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger and KKR co-founder Henry Kravis, a "rare move designed to expand its investing reach and give the founders of the startups it backs access to some of the world’s most powerful business figures," observes the WSJ. A 3.35% stake in the firm, founded by Joshua Kushner in 2009, will also now be owned by Brazilian food magnate Jorge Paulo Lemann, French telecoms executive Xavier Niel, and Indian magnate Mukesh Ambani. The deal values the venture firm at $5.3 billion, says the Journal.

Twitter is being sued over allegedly unpaid rent at its headquarters building in San Francisco, adding to legal battles between the social-media company and vendors since Elon Musk acquired the business last year. The landlord, SRI Nine Market Square, alleges in a lawsuit that Twitter failed to make a roughly $3.4 million rent payment for December and a similarly sized payment for January. The WSJ has the story here.

Appliance makers like LG continue to invest in efforts to drum up revenue through internet-connected devices, but many customers aren’t logging on.

Rocket Lab, a Long Beach, Ca., company backed by Khosla Ventures and led by New Zealand entrepreneur Peter Beck, launched its first rocket to space from the Virginia coast today. More here.

In the competitive world of fine dining, a fruit beetle on every menu.

The most striking images from the James Webb telescope on the occasion of its one-year anniversary. 

The Doomsday Clock ticks ten seconds closer to nuclear annihilation. 

Winging it over Mont Blanc.

Rolls-Royce's first EV is selling like hotcakes. 

An insulated topcoat.

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