A missing Chinese rainmaker, shrinking crypto VC firms, and even hackers look to slim their operating budgets

An uppercut to NFTs? Dapper Labs’s NBA-branded “Top Shot” non-fungible tokens might be securities, a federal judge ruled today. The ruling on a motion to dismiss comes a year and a half after a class-action lawsuit was filed against Dapper Labs and its CEO, Roham Gharegozlu, in New York. The lawsuit alleges Gharegozlu and Dapper Labs violated federal securities laws by offering a non-fungible token (NFT) collection – the NBA Top Shot Moments – without first registering with the SEC. “The Court finds that Plaintiffs’ allegations render each consideration under Howey facially plausible and survive Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss the alleged violation of Sections 5 and 12 of the Securities Act,” ruled District Judge Victor Marrero, of the Southern District of New York. CoinDesk has the story here.

And a first in the world of generative AI: images in a graphic novel that were created using the system Midjourney should not have been granted copyright protection, the U.S. Copyright Office said in a letter seen by Reuters. "Zarya of the Dawn" author Kristina Kashtanova is entitled to a copyright for the parts of the book she wrote and arranged, but not for images she made using Midjourney, the office reportedly said in the letter. "The decision is one of the first by a U.S. court or agency on the scope of copyright protection for works created with AI, and comes amid the meteoric rise of generative AI software like Midjourney, Dall-E and ChatGPT," notes the outlet. More here.

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Last month, Volition Capital, a 13-year-old, 30-person Boston-based growth equity firm, announced it has closed its fifth fund with $675 million in capital commitments, bringing its total assets under management to $1.7 billion.

While most VCs will tell you they had no problem raising their newest fund, Volition cofounder Larry Cheng — an alum of Bessemer Venture Partners, Battery Partners and Fidelity Ventures — says that wasn’t his experience when trying to raise the firm’s latest vehicle. In the fourth quarter of last year, he says of Volition’s limited partners, “I don’t think anyone really knew — even the folks that we were interacting with — whether they could come in for the amount they originally wanted, or whether they were going to come in at all.”

That they did show up with their checkbooks isn’t shocking. Among Volition’s other exits, the firm famously invested early in the pet marketplace Chewy, which later sold to PetSmart for a whopping $3.35 billion in 2017 before being sold to other buyers in 2020. In fact, Cheng — who remains focused on internet and consumer deals while others of his partners are more focused on enterprise software — has remained so close with Chewy founder and meme-stock king Ryan Cohen that he’s on the board of GameStop, which Cohen chairs.

A few days ago, we talked with Cheng a bit about that friendship. We also talked about some of Cheng’s more current, contrarian bets like ad tech. Our chat has been edited for length and clarity.

More here.

Chaos Labs, a 1.5-year-old New York- and Tel Aviv-based blockchain risk analytics firm, has raised $20 million in seed funding co-led by PayPal Ventures and Galaxy Digital. Coinbase, Uniswap, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, and others also joined the round. Cointelegraph has more here.

Entitle, a 19-month-old New York- and Tel Aviv-based cloud permissions management platform, has raised $15 million in seed funding led by Glilot Capital Partners. Calcalist has more here.

Fortem Technologies, a nearly seven-year-old, Pleasant Grove, Ut.-based airspace awareness, security, and defense company, raised $17.8 million in funding. Lockheed Martin Ventures, Hanwha Aerospace, and AIM13|CVP co-led the round, joined by DCVC and Signia Venture Partners. More here.

Future Fields, a 3.5-year-old, Edmonton, Alberta-based synthetic biology startup that's using fruit flies for recombinant protein production, has raised $11.2 million in seed extension funding that enables the company to build a production facility to launch its first products outside of cultivated meat: research, cell therapies and biopharmaceuticals, as well as scale its team. Backers in the round include Bee Partners, Toyota Ventures, Builders VC, AgFunder, Amplify Capital, BoxOne Ventures, Green Circle Foodtech, Siddhi Capital and Climate Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

GovForce, a months-old, Washington, D.C.-based power performance and compliance company for government contractors, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding co-led by QED Investors and Humba Ventures, with participation from Cambrian and NextGen Venture Partners. Axios has more here.

HireLogic, a two-year-old, Reston, Va.-based startup that says its HR software can extract valuable insights from HR interviews, raised $6 million in Series A funding led by former Warburg Pincus partner and co-CEO Joseph P. Landy. SiliconAngle has more here.

Kita, a Worcester, U.K.-based insurance provider for the carbon markets, raised £4 million in seed funding. Octopus Ventures led the round, joined by Insurtech Gateway, Carbon13, Climate VC, Chaucer Group, and Hartree Partners. UKTN has more here.

Polyhedra Network, a Berkeley, Calif.-based crypto infrastructure startup, raised $10 million in funding co-led by Binance Labs and Polychain Capital, with participation from Animoca Brands and dao5. CoinDesk has more here.

Affinity, the relationship intelligence platform for dealmakers, recently 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.

Health care automation startup Olive AI plans to sell one of the two remaining business lines advertised on its website, per current and former employees and an internal company memo seen by Axios. Olive has been shrinking since facing questions about its software's efficacy, multiple executive departures, a previous asset sale, and two major layoffs, notes the outlet. The Columbus, Oh.-based business was earlier considered a major Midwestern success story, attracting a stunning $856.3 million from firms like Drive Capital and later Tiger Global and Vista Equity Partners.

Shared micromobility giant Lime said it has achieved full-year profitability on both an adjusted and unadjusted EBITDA basis, which would make it an outlier in an industry that has struggled to break even, much less turn a profit, reports TechCrunch (though TC sounds disbelieving of Lime's claims). Lime, CEO Wayne Ting tells the outlet, wants the numbers out there so "whenever the IPO market comes back," the company can "take advantage to it."

Tech rainmaker Bao Fan, founder and chairman of China Renaissance, has vanished, and his disappearance has undercut Beijing’s new priority to restore business confidence after cracking down on the private sector. The New York Times has the story here.

Drive Capital cofounder and former Sequoia Capital GP Mark Kvamme is reportedly launching -- tomorrow -- a new, $500 million fund under a new brand, called the OHIO fund. We shared the news with you back in November that Kvamme was about to launch something new after parting ways with his Drive cofounder Chris Olsen. At the time, Drive said it was surprised by the news that Kvamme was back in the market, saying it has a "formal separation agreement with Mark that prevents him from starting a competitive firm or fund to Drive," and telling its LPs that, "According to Mark, he has not yet determined what he is going to do next. Raising a new type of fund is something he is considering, along with other options in public service and personal endeavors." (Drama!) Fortune has more on the new fund here.

Elon Musk is warming up to Northern California again, saying today that Tesla will establish its global engineering headquarters in Palo Alto.

Paradigm, the crypto-focused venture firm founded by Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam and former Sequoia partner Matt Huang, is shrinking quickly, observes The Information. It says at least eight employees, including two investment partners and four engineers, have left the firm since the start of October, based on the company’s website, and that the exits make up a significant portion of Paradigm’s engineering and investing staff. Earlier this month, it notes separately, Paradigm promoted two of its partners—venture partner Charlie Noyes and research partner Dan Robinson—to general partners, the first time the venture firm has named GPs. Ehrsam and Huang, the firm’s co-founders, both have the title of managing partner. More here.

Pantera Capital, another well-known crypto-focused firm, has also seen departures, notes The Information. Its high-profile exits included CTO Terence Schofield, COO Samir Shah and Co-Chief Investment Officer Joey Krug, who left earlier this month, as reported by Bloomberg.

After bottoming out at 12% of Americans in 1980, multigenerational living has made a comeback in recent years, aided by a financial crisis, a pandemic, and the challenges of a housing market. The WSJ has more here.

Artifact, the personalized news reader built by Instagram’s co-founders, is now open to the public, no sign-up required.

Bing's AI chatbot will still talk about a lot of things, but how it is feeling is now off limits.

AI DJ? 

Sometimes hackers conduct layoffs, too. 

He was supposed to be the next Tiger Woods. Instead he became the sports world’s J.D. Salinger.

Elsa Majimbo’s unfiltered comedy.

The 17 best restaurants in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Rockstar drink founder Russ Weiner is looking to part ways with a ski home in Park City, Utah, that he bought last year for $39.6 million. His asking price? $50 million. "It's never been slept in," Weiner tells the WSJ.

From seed stage and beyond, Hunt Club connects your portfolio companies with leaders who shape the future of an organization. We work with leading venture capital firms like Insight Partners and have placed multiple leadership roles for companies across their portfolio such as Databricks. Whether it is a VP of Engineering or Chief Revenue Officer, we can guide your portcos through any unique talent needs.