Haunting TikToks, OpenSea's enemy, and MSFT is capping Bing queries to keep it from acting cuckoo

Happy weekend, all. We'll be publishing a condensed version of the newsletter Monday, but we hope if you're here in the U.S., you are taking Presidents' Day off to chillax. (Here's a reminder of why you will hopefully be kicking up your feet.)

Before we head out, we have a freshly minted StrictlyVC Download for you with Volition Capital cofounder Larry Cheng, whose now 13-year-old, Boston-based firm is best known for being the first outfit to back the pet marketplace Chewy. (Chewy later sold to PetSmart for a whopping $3.35 billion in 2017, before being sold to other buyers in 2020.) Cheng has remained friends with Chewy founder and meme-stock king Ryan Cohen, even sitting on the board of GameStop, which Cohen chairs. Cheng has also remained focused on internet and consumer deals while others of his partners are more focused on enterprise software, and we talked earlier today about some of those investments, why he thinks contrarian bets like ad tech make sense right now, and how Volition got through LP Armageddon last fall to close a $675 million fund in January. 

Hope you enjoy that chat, brought to you today by Tegus. In the company's words: Let Tegus turn you into an expert faster by conducting at-cost expert calls and accessing a library of 50K+ expert transcripts that serve up deep research so you can source and vet new companies, map market share and harness competitive intelligence in record time. Check it out Tegus.com/svc, and see you in a few days. ☀️

Microsoft says it’s implementing some conversation limits to its Bing AI just days after the chatbot went off the rails multiple times for users. Bing chats will now be capped at 50 questions per day and five per session.

A human player has comprehensively defeated a top-ranked AI system at the board game Go, in a surprise reversal of the 2016 computer victory that was seen as a milestone in the rise of artificial intelligence.

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Aera Therapeutics, a two-year-old Boston startup that uses proprietary protein nanoparticles based on endogenous human proteins to expand the reach of genetic medicines to different tissues and applications, raised Series A and B rounds totaling $193 million. Investors included ARCH Venture Partners, GV, and Lux Capital. FierceBiotech has more here.

R-Zero, a San Francisco startup that uses connected sensors and UV-C technology to neutralize airborne and surface micro-organisms, raised a $105 million Series C round. BMO Financial Group, Qualcomm Ventures, Upfront Ventures as well as previous investors DBL Partners, World Innovation Lab, Mayo Clinic, Bedrock Capital, SOSV, and John Doerr were the investors. The company has raised a total of $170 million. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Dronamics, a nine-year-old London startup that plans to launch a “cargo drone airline,” raised a $40 million round. Investors included Founders Factory, Speedinvest, Eleven Capital, Strategic Development Fund, and the Tawazun Strategic Development Fund. TechCrunch has more here.

GrainChain, a 10-year-old company based in McAllen, Tex., that is building an agricultural blockchain for supply chain tracking, raised a $29 million round from Overstock.com, Pelion Venture Partners, and Brigham Young University. The company has raised a total of $39.7 million. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Puzzle, a four-year-old San Francisco startup that has developed an accounting package that helps companies take advantage of APIs from financial tools like Stripe, raised a $15 million round. Investors included General Catalyst, FOG Ventures, XYZ, Felicis, Sterling Road, and Kapor Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Zerocater, a 12-year-old San Francisco company that provides office catering to employees via an app, raised a $15 million Series C round led by Cleveland Avenue and including Remus Capital. The company has raised a total of $32.6 million. TechCrunch has more here.

AdalFi, a two-year-old Pakistani startup that provides real-time loans to consumers, raised a $7.5 million round. COTU Ventures, Chimera Ventures, Fatima Gobi Ventures, and Zayn Capital were the co-leads. Reuters has more here.

BlueTrace, a five-year-old startup based in Castine, Me., that helps shellfish operators tag and trace shellfish in order to maintain legal compliance, raised a $3.2 million seed round. Investors included York IE, Maine Venture Fund, and Coastal Enterprise Ventures. SeafoodSource has more here.

Planetarians, a six-year-old San Francisco startup that is making plant-based protein products, raised a $6 million "Seed II" round led by Mindrock, with additional contributions from SOSV, Traction Fund, TechStars, and AB InBev. The company has raised a total of $7 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Rhaeos, a 4.5-year-old, Evanston, Il.-based clinical stage medical device company developing a platform wireless and non-invasive wearable sensor that's initially targeting hydrocephalus, a life threatening condition caused by an abnormal accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid, has raised $10.5 million in Series A funding. The Steele Foundation for Hope led the round, joined by earlier backers Creative Ventures and Lateral Capital. The company has now raised $18 million altogether. More here.

Sikoia, a two-year-old London startup that aims to help businesses make better decisions by uniting data and analytics that are already available to them, raised a $6 million seed round led by MassMutual Ventures, with Coalition Capital, Earlybird, and Seedcamp also participating. The company has raised a total of $8.4 million. Tech.eu has more here.

Stelo Labs, a one-year-old San Francisco startup whose open source extension helps users protect their crypto wallets from scams and phishing attacks, raised a $6 million round led by Andreessen Horowitz. TechCrunch has more here.

Third Wave Automation, a five-year-old startup based in Union City, Ca., that builds high-reach, autonomous forklifts, raised an undisclosed sum from Qualcomm Ventures and Zebra Technologies. The company has raised a total of $70 million. The Robot Report has more here.

Unagi, a French startup that is building an NFT fantasy sports platform for soccer and basketball, raised a $5 million seed round led by Sisu Game Ventures; additional investors included Sfermion, UOB Ventures, Signum Capital, 2B Ventures, and Machame. TechCrunch has more here.

Vexi, a seven-year-old Mexican neobank that is offering a credit card to Mexican consumers via American Express, raised an $8 million Series A round led by Magma Partners, with Redwood Ventures, Rebalance Capital, Alpha4Ventures, Noa Capital, and Pomona Impact. The company has raised a total of $58.6 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Shifting market conditions are transforming the investment landscape. Affinity spoke to hundreds of top dealmakers to find out about their response strategies. Download the Investment Predictions report to discover this year’s top dealmaking trends—and why there’s reason to be optimistic about deal volume.

Amazon just told corporate employees to get back to the office three days a week.

Former Theranos COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani battled today with U.S. prosecutors over their proposal that he be ordered to pay almost $900 million to compensate victims of his fraud, telling a judge he owes nothing to investors in the failed blood-testing startup because Theranos was flush with hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and intellectual property when he was fired in 2016.

Executives at Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Co. and Qatar Investment Authority have expressed their interest in NBA ownership and are actively hunting for a possible match, reports Bloomberg. More here.

Vince McMahon is looking for as much as $9 billion in a potential sale of World Wrestling Entertainment, the company he returned to run this year, according to Bloomberg.

Why entry-level luxury goods are feeling the pinch.

NFT marketplace OpenSea said today that it is temporarily eliminating its marketplace fee; two days ago, a no-fee marketplace, Blur, surpassed OpenSea in volume for the first time since it went live in October, says CoinDesk.

TikToks are coming back to haunt their teenage creators. “I was just talking about how I feel. It’s supposed to be a good thing to do that,” 19-year-old Aly Drake, who has 4,000 TikTok followers, tells the Washington Post. “It was pretty shocking to see the consequences of the way you post.”

Meta Platforms gave thousands of employees subpar ratings in a recently concluded round of performance reviews, a signal that more job cuts may be on the way, reports the WSJ.

Online fashion group Shein -- which is backed by Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global Management and General Atlantic, among others -- projects its revenue will more than double to nearly $60 billion by 2025 up from $22.7 billion last year, as the Chinese company seeks to convince investors that it is on course for a blockbuster IPO this year. The projected amount, notes a skeptical FT report, would exceed the existing combined annual sales of retail giants H&M and Zara.

How Hindenburg (may have) shorted Adani.

A Winnie-the-Pooh horror film is a scary sight for copyright holders.

The host with the most (tinned fish).

A 16-hour flight to nowhere.

The rise of Khaite.

Email Diamant.

The Flicker Estate. It comes with its own command center, which you will need to control the home's many (many) fire pits.

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