First Republic on the precipice, Foot Locker shrinks its footprint, and what to know about Tesla's Model Y

A report released today from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that the world is likely to miss its most ambitious climate target — limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures — within a decade. Beyond that threshold, scientists have found, climate disasters will become so extreme that people will not be able to adapt. The Washington Post has more here.

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Switch Therapeutics, a three-year-old South San Francisco startup that aims to use nucleic acid nanotechnology and RNA interference to treat diseases affecting the central nervous system, raised a $52 million Series A round co-led by Insight Partners and UCB Ventures, with Upfront Ventures, BOLD Capital Partners, Eli Lilly and Company, Ono Venture Investment, Digitalis Ventures, Dolby Family Ventures, Free Flow Ventures, and PhiFund Ventures also piling on. More here.

Aembit, a 1.5-year-old Maryland-based security startup that focuses on helping DevOps and security teams manage how federated workloads talk to one other, has raised $16.6 million in seed funding round from Ballistic Ventures and Ten Eleven Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Candela, a nine-year-old Swedish startup that designs and manufactures electric-powered hydrofoils, raised a $20 million round. The deal was co-led by EQT Ventures, Joel Eklund, and Svante Nilo Bengtsson, with Ocean Zero also chipping in. The company has raised a total of $47.2 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Invenda, a Switzerland-based company that has built an operating system for smart vending machines, has raised $19 million in Series B funding led by Point Break Capital Management, with participation from earlier backer Mutschler Ventures. Axios has more here.

Numbers Station, a 16-month-old Menlo Park, Ca.-based "intelligent data stack automation platform," has raised $12.5 million in Series A funding round led by Madrona, with participation from Norwest Venture Partners, Factory, and angel investors, including Cloudera co-founder Jeff Hammerbacher. The funding follows a recent $5 million seed round, bringing the company's total funding to $17.5 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Reebelo, a four-year-old startup based in San Mateo, Ca., that has built a marketplace for refurbished consumer electronics, raised a $29 million Series A extension round led by Cathay Innovation, with additional participation from Moore Strategic Ventures, Gandel Invest, and Antler. TechCrunch has more here.

The Climate Choice, a three-year-old Berlin startup that helps companies track CO2 emissions in their supply chains, raised a $2 million pre-seed round led by Gutter Capital and Possibilian Ventures, with participation from previous investor West Tech Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Credable, a six-year-old Tanzanian startup that develops embedded finance software for mobile operators, e-commerce platforms, and logistics companies, raised a $2.5 million seed round. The Continent Venture Partners was the deal lead. TechCrunch has more here.

Maqsad, a two-year-old Pakistani startup that has developed an online education platform for grades 9 through 12, raised a $2.8 million seed round co-led by Speedinvest and previous investor Indus Valley Capital, with Stellar Capital and Alter Global also participating. The company has raised a total of $4.9 million. TechNode Global has more here.

Patch, an eight-year-old London startup that is building co-working spaces, raised a $3.7 round. Investors included JamJar Investments, Blue Wire Capital, Vectr7 Investment Partners, Active Partners, and Triple Point Ventures. Tech.eu has more here.

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Maybe you heard? Yesterday, UBS acquired Credit Suisse for almost nothing.

Foot Locker says it will close more than 400 stores in shopping malls, part of a new business plan meant to "reset" the company. Business Insider has more here.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sits down with ABC News, saying that it's "really tempting to anthropomorphize ChatGPT" when "really, you're talking to this transformer somewhere in the cloud." 

Gabe Kleinman has joined Emerson Collective as an operating partner on the venture capital team from Obvious Ventures, where he spent 6.5 years as a "swiss army knife." More here.

Rupert Murdoch, 92, is engaged to be married for the fifth time, his New York Post tabloid reported today, just eight months after he divorced former model Jerry Hall.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last year directed the government-backed Saudi National Bank to make a $1.5 billion investment in Credit Suisse. And he's not alone in his bad gamble, says the WSJ: billions of dollars in investments made by Qatar’s sovereign fund and the Saudi-based Olayan family make the Persian Gulf one of the biggest losers from a slide in financial stocks since the collapse of two U.S. banks last week, it reports.

Starbucks founder Howard Schultz is stepping down as the company’s CEO—a position he has held three times—earlier than expected, it was announced today. Fortune has more here.

Amazon said today it will cut 9,000 more corporate jobs across units that include its profitable cloud-computing and advertising businesses. The company previously said it was slashing 18,000 jobs. The WSJ has more here.

Per the WSJ: "One of the hottest apps in the U.S. right now is TikTok’s lesser-known sibling that is also owned by Chinese parent ByteDance. App trackers show that CapCut, a video-editing tool that helps people quickly create online videos and memes, has been downloaded more in recent weeks than TikTok, the short-video sharing app that has faced rigorous scrutiny in the U.S. over ByteDance’s access to user data."

OpenAI researchers estimate that large language models like the one on which ChatGPT is built could impact at least 50% of the tasks necessary for around 19% of the jobs in the US. Meanwhile, 80% of the U.S. workforce could see at least 10% of their work tasks affected in some way by LLMs. “We discover that roles heavily reliant on science and critical thinking skills show a negative correlation with exposure, while programming and writing skills are positively associated with LLM exposure,” the study says. PCMag has more here.

"We're buying electric cars for sustainability reasons," Matthew Avery, research director at automotive risk intelligence company Thatcham Research, tells Reuters. "But an EV isn't very sustainable if you've got to throw the battery away after a minor collision." (The Model Y's new structural battery pack has been described by experts as having "zero repairability.")

San Francisco-based First Republic slid closer to the precipice today, its shares falling 47% during market hours to close 90% lower than they traded on March 8, the day before Silicon Valley Bank's depositors executed the first digital bank run in history.

The genie escapes: Stanford copies the ChatGPT AI for less than $600.

How Elon Musk knocked Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving’ off course.

Sounds like this is going well.

First CityWide Change Bank, ad 1  and ad 2.

The marvelous boys of Palo Alto.

Neal Stephenson on what he got right and wrong in Snow Crash.

COOP for your chickens.

Floor-skimming coats.

Gopher driver headcover.