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Meta Platforms is planning a fresh round of layoffs and will cut thousands of employees as soon as this week, according to Bloomberg. Meta had previously reduced its headcount by 13% back in November.
Twitter endured an an hour-long outage earlier today that impacted an unknown percentage of users. What happened? According to Platformer, only one site reliability engineer was assigned to a particular project within the company because of the massive staff cuts that owner Elon Musk has ordered, and this person made a “bad configuration change” that basically broke the Twitter API, as a current employee told the outlet. More here.
In related news, you, dear readers, aren't super optimistic that things will get better anytime soon; here are the results from Friday's poll asking you what Twitter's market cap will be in January 2025 . . .
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Abound, a British startup that is building a direct-to-consumer lending platform, raised $601 million in debt and equity (without breaking out how much of each it has secured). K3 Ventures, GSR Ventures, and Hambro Perks led the equity piece, while Citi and clients of Waterfall Asset Management provided the debt. TechCrunch has more here.
Bicara Therapeutics, a three-year-old startup based in Cambridge, Ma., that is developing dual-action biologics to attack tumors, raised a $108 million Series B round-led by Red Tree Venture Capital and RA Capital Management, with participation from Omega Funds, Bioqube Ventures, Acorn Bioventures, and Janus Henderson Investors as well as previous investors F-Prime Capital, Eight Roads Ventures, Invus, Piper Heartland Healthcare Capital, and Premji Invest. More here.
Palmetto, a 14-year-old Charleston, S.C., startup whose platform handles the sale, design, engineering, permitting, and fulfillment of residential solar equipment, raised a $150 million round. TPG Rise Climate led the transaction. Solar Builder Mag has more here.
Stability AI, a key player in the fast-growing world of generative AI, is reportedly talking with investors about raising more money at a $4 billion valuation, less than six months after investors including Coatue and Lightspeed Venture Partners invested $101 million in the two-year-old London-based company at a $1 billion valuation. Bloomberg has the story here.
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| Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings |
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Ghost Autonomy, a six-year-old startup based in Mountain View, Ca., that is developing autonomous driving technology, raised a $45.4 million round from previous investors Khosla Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures, Coatue, and Founders Fund. The company has raised a total of $202.4 million. More here.
N2F, an eight-year-old French startup whose software processes employee reimbursements for expense reports, receipts, and mileage, raised a $25.6 million round. PSG Equity was the deal lead. Tech.eu has more here.
RangeForce, a 14-year-old company based in Norfolk, Va., that can simulate cyberattacks and other threats in a sandbox environment, raised a $20 million Series B round. Energy Impact Partners and Paladin Capital Group co-led the deal, while KPN Ventures, Lapa Capital Partners, Lanx Capital, and Cisco Investments also contributed. The company has raised a total of $38.5 million. SiliconANGLE has more here.
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Caracol, an eight-year-old Italian startup that has built a large-format 3D printer for industrial applications and is rolling out operations in North America and the Middle East, raised a $10.7 million Series A round. Investors included CDP Venture Capital, Neva SGR, and Intesa Sanpaolo Group as well as previous investors Primo Space Fund and EUREKA! Venture SGR. The company has raised a total of $14.8 million. CompositesWorld has more here.
FilmHedge, a three-year-old Atlanta startup that offers short-term loans for film, television, and other media productions, raised a $5 million Series A round. Collab Capital, WOCStar, TriplePoint Capital, and the Savannah College of Art & Design were the deal leads. The company also opened up a $100 million credit line. Axios has more here.
Growfin, a two-year-old, Singapore- and San Francisco–based maker of accounts receivable automation software, has raised $7.5 million in Series A funding. Singapore’s SWC Global led the funding round, joined by previous backers 3one4 Capital and angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.
Highway Benefits, a two-year-old Manhattan Beach, Ca., startup whose platform provides a way for employers to make tax-free contributions to their employees’ student loans, raised a $3.1 million seed round. XYZ Venture Capital was the deal lead. The company has raised a total of $6.2 million. More here.
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Speaking during a new webinar from Affinity, Amy Francetic, Managing General Partner at Buoyant Ventures, discussed how her firm approaches founder and LP engagement over the long-term. Watch the discussion to hear all her insights.
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Altimeter Capital Management partner Chris Conforti plans to leave the investment firm and join a new firm as a co-founder with former Whale Rock Capital Management partner Kristov Paulus, Bloomberg reported on Friday. Kultura Capital Management is being structured as a hybrid fund that will focus on late-stage tech startups as well as public companies, according to the outlet's source. More here.
Less than one year after Upload Ventures spun out of SoftBank’s investment arm, the Latin American-focused investment arm is seeking to raise a $250 million fund, filings show. TechCrunch has more here.
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Altria Group agreed to buy vaping startup Njoy Holdings for at least $2.75 billion in cash while bringing its ignominious journey with closely held Juul Labs to an end, signaling a new direction as the tobacco company keeps trying to accelerate a shift toward cigarette alternatives. Bloomberg has the story.
Silver Lake and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Canada’s largest pension fund, have reportedly offered $12.4 billion to buy experience management software company Qualtrics, in what would be one of the largest buyouts of the year. The potential transaction comes as SAP, Qualtrics’ majority owner, tries to divest a 71% stake as part of restructuring of the German software group, says the FT. More here.
WW International, known as WeightWatchers, is buying a two-year-old digital health company Sequence, marking the diet company’s move into the hot market for diabetes and obesity drugs including Ozempic and Wegovy. Sequence is a subscription service that offers telehealth visits with doctors who can prescribe the drugs. WW is paying $106 million for startup in a deal expected to close in the second quarter. The WSJ has the story here.
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Meta Platforms lost a bid today to end a lawsuit in Boston federal court claiming it stole confidential information from the venture-backed AI startup Neural Magic. Somerville, Ma.-based Neural Magic -- founded by two former MIT researchers -- sued Meta in 2020 for allegedly stealing algorithms that enable simpler computers to run complex mathematical calculations more efficiently and allow research scientists to use larger data sets. The lawsuit says Meta hired away Neural Magic computer scientist Aleksandar Zlateski, who gave Meta the algorithms that make up the "heart" of Neural Magic's technology. Reuters has more here.
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Sam Bankman-Fried is under house arrest at Stanford; students are obsessed.
Google today warned employees that fewer of them will receive promotions to more senior levels this year than in the past.
Gordon Ritter, founder of San Francisco-based venture fund Emergence Capital, believes that recent developments in the field of AI represents a significant technological advance. He just cannot see a way to make money out of them.
Bryan Salesky and Pete Rander, the founders of Argo AI, the autonomous vehicle company that was shut down last year, are launching a new self-driving business that could specialize in trucking and ride-hailing, reports Bloomberg. According to the outlet, the venture has already hired 40 to 50 people.
KJ Sidberry has joined Alphabet's venture unit GV as a principal in its New York office. Sidberry previously spent six years as a principal with Forerunner Ventures in San Francisco. More here.
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Embark Trucks, the autonomous trucking company that went public in 2021 via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, is cutting 70% of its workforce and shutting down two offices. More, the pain may not be over as CEO Alex Rodrigues noted in an email to employees that the remaining 30% of workers will focus on winding down operations. Rodrigues became the youngest CEO of a publicly traded company in 2021 at age 26. More here.
Atlassian, which has headquarters in Sydney and San Francisco and is known for its software collaboration programs Trello and Jira, disclosed plans to cut about 5% of its workforce, or 500 full-time employees, becoming the latest tech company to eliminate jobs. Bloomberg has more here.
SiriusXM, the satellite radio company and Pandora owner, disclosed today it’s laying off 475 employees, representing 8% of its workforce. In an email sent to employees, CEO Jennifer Witz said the cuts would impact “nearly every department” across the company. TechCrunch has more here.
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E-bike fires are soaring, many of them started when people charge them overnight, allowing them to overheat.
Bored Ape Yacht Club parent company Yuga Labs generated $16.5 million from its newest auction of 288 NFTs, with the top bid hitting $160,000. Critics don't like the way the auction was handled; more here.
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Why the recession is always six months away.
Coinbase tells user who is missing $96,000 after a security breach that the missing funds are his problem.
Desperate for teenagers to use Facebook, Meta has found a sneaky way to publish their Instagram posts to the platform.
Scammers are using AI to sound more like family members in distress.
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