A win for Tesla, "overemployed" hustlers, and Sundar Pichai's pay soared to a stunning $226 million last year

Friday! It was a looong day to punctuate a short week, but we did manage to record a new StrictlyVC Download episode for you, one featuring an entrepreneur you likely haven't heard of yet but whose company combines lab-grown human brain cells with computer chips and that just received backing from Hong Kong’s richest person, Li Ka-shing. We first heard about the company earlier this week and to learn more tracked down founder Hon Wen Chong on a trip to Singapore from his native Melbourne; we hope you enjoy it.:) 

Giant thanks to the sponsor of this week's episode: the financial technology company Mercury. As a reminder to readers, through its partner banks and their sweep networks, Mercury customers can access up to $5 million in FDIC insurance — which, for you English majors, is 20 times the per-bank limit. Check out mercury.com to learn more.

A California state court jury today handed Tesla a meaningful win, finding its Autopilot feature did not fail in what appeared to be the first trial related to a crash involving the partially automated driving software. L.A. resident Justine Hsu sued in 2020, saying her Tesla Model S swerved into a curb while on Autopilot, and an airbag was deployed "so violently it fractured Plaintiff's jaw, knocked out teeth, and caused nerve damage to her face.” She alleged defects in the design of Autopilot and the airbag and sought more than $3 million in damages. But the jury awarded today Hsu zero damages. It also found that the airbag did not fail to perform safely, and that Tesla  -- which says Autopilot's features do not make cars autonomous -- did not intentionally fail to disclose facts. Reuters has the story here.

In other Elon Musk news: Anyone looking to advertise on Twitter will now seemingly have to have a verified account. TechCrunch has more here.

!! The pay package awarded to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai soared to $226 million last year. The 12,000 people who were laid off via email by the company in January will likely find this rich, no pun intended.

As investors become more challenging to impress, it’s time to pull out all the stops by reevaluating your D&O Insurance program. In three parts, Side A, B, and C, this coverage protects against management liability lawsuits but is often an expensive line item. Founder Shield has a history of saving clients up to 42% on their D&O Insurance, we think affordable and adequate protection go hand in hand. See how your coverage stacks up with a 360 Program Review.

In Silicon Valley, some of the brightest minds believe a universal basic income (UBI) that guarantees people unrestricted cash payments will help them to survive and thrive as advanced technologies eliminate more careers as we know them, from white collar and creative jobs -- lawyers, journalists, artists, software engineers -- to labor roles. The idea has gained enough traction that dozens of guaranteed income programs have been started in U.S. cities since 2020.

Yet even Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI and one of the highest-profile proponents of UBI, doesn't believe that it's a complete solution. As he said during a sit-down earlier this year, "I think it is a little part of the solution. I think it's great. I think as [advanced artificial intelligence] participates more and more in the economy, we should distribute wealth and resources much more than we have and that will be important over time. But I don't think that's going to solve the problem. I don't think that's going to give people meaning, I don't think it means people are going to entirely stop trying to create and do new things and whatever else. So I would consider it an enabling technology, but not a plan for society."

The question begged is what a plan for society should then look like, and computer scientist Jaron Lanier, a founder in the field of virtual reality, writes in this week's New Yorker that "data dignity" could be an even bigger part of the solution.

Here's the basic premise: Right now, we mostly give our data for free in exchange for free services. Lanier argues that in the age of AI, we need to stop doing this, that the powerful models currently working their way into society need instead to "be connected with the humans" who give them so much to ingest and learn from in the first place.

The idea is for people to "get paid for what they create, even when it is filtered and recombined" into something that's unrecognizable.

More here.

Enter, a three-year-old Berlin startup that uses a combination of tech and human expertise to help its customers decarbonize their homes, has raised a $21.3 million Series A round led by Target Global, with Coatue, Foundamental, A/O Proptech, and Partech also participating. TechCrunch has more here.

Robust.ai, a four-year-old startup based in San Carlos, Ca., that makes mobile robots that can be used for last-mile delivery, inventory management, and healthcare, raised a $20 million Series A1 round led by Prime Movers Lab, with Future Ventures, Energy Impact Partners, Jazz Venture Partners, and Playground Global also contributing. The company has raised a total of $42.5 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Weaviate, a five-year-old Amsterdam startup whose database software stores data by representing it as vectors, thereby making it more easy for AI algorithms to understand, raised a $50 million round led by Index Ventures, with Battery Ventures and previous investors NEA, Cortical Ventures, Zetta Venture Partners, and ING Ventures also chipping in. The company has raised a total of $67.7 million. Tech.eu has more here.

HelloTeam, a seven-year-old Boston startup that has built an employee retention platform, raised a $10 million round led by billionaire Paychex founder Tom Golisano, who invested $7 million of this total through his investment entity (Grand Oaks Capital). Thrive Capital, Caffeinated Capital, and Correlation Ventures also invested. Forbes has more here.

MetaGravity, a two-year-old London startup that claims its metaverse infrastructure technology can support more than one million concurrent users plus associated AI and interactive objects, raised a $9.5 million round from Sino Global, Spartan Group LLC, Market One Capital, Gravity Fund, Perridon Holdings, Pancasila, Ex-Capital, Mulana, Cogitent Ventures, Agrippa Capital, K5 Global Ventures, Moonpay, and Project Godijra. Tech.eu has more here.

Nosh, a three-year-old Berlin startup that aims to create fake meat out of mushroom mycelium, raised a $3.5 million round led by Earlybird Venture Capital, with Clear Current Capital, Grey Silo Ventures, and Good Seed Ventures also contributing. Tech.eu has more here.

A Banksy got everyday investors 32% returns? Mm-hmm, sure. So, what’s the catch? We know it may sound too good to be true. But thousands of investors are already smiling all the way to the bank. All thanks to the fine-art investing platform Masterworks. These results aren’t cherry-picking either. Masterworks has built a track record of 13 exits, with the last 3 seeing +13.9%, +35.0%, and +10.4% net returns. As a trusted partner, StrictlyVC readers are invited to skip the waitlist with this exclusive link. (See important disclosures at masterworks.com/cd.)

Gilde Healthcare, a Utrecht-based healthcare investor, has gathered €600 million in capital commitments for its sixth venture fund. In fact, Gilde Healthcare has raised €1.5 billion in capital over the last three years. Silicon Canals has more here.

NewPath Partners, a 4.5-year-old, Boston-based venture firm firm, is hoping to raise upwards of $350 million for its third fund, per an SEC filing first flagged by Axios. More here.

Vice Ventures, a four-year-old venture firm focused on nontraditional ("bad") industries like sex-tech and psychedelics, says it has closed its second fund with $25 million in capital commitments. VentureBeat has more here. 

Private equity firm Silver Lake Management has agreed to acquire Germany’s Software AG for €30 a share in cash, valuing the company at about €2.2 billion ($2.4 billion). Software AG’s sales have been under pressure for almost a decade because of dwindling demand for its legacy database-management products. Bloomberg has more here.

XFactor.io, a San Rafael, Ca.-based business decision platform backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners, said in a press release that it has acquired DecisionLink, a Plano, Texas-based provider of customer value management SaaS that had raised around $25 million from investors, including Accel. Terms of the deal were not announced. More here.

Japan's Rakuten Bank saw its share price surge as much as 40% in its market debut today, reflecting robust demand for the country's biggest online lender even after it downsized its $625 million IPO. The stock ended the trading day at 1,930 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange versus an IPO price of 1,400 yen. Reuters has more here.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. had ties to Jeffrey Epstein that ran deeper than the bank has acknowledged and extended years beyond when it decided to close the convicted sex offender’s accounts, according to the WSJ. More here.

Headline, the venture firm formerly known as e.ventures, has brought aboard three new investors, including Sophia Samutin, formerly of Oak HC/FT, as a vice president focused on fintech; Jake Horwitz, formerly of Insight Partners, as a senior associate focused on application software; and Sasha Krecinic, formerly of the property operations software platform HappyCo., as an associate focused on software. More here.

SVB Financial Group, the bankrupt former owner of Silicon Valley Bank, said CEO Greg Becker and CFO Daniel Beck have resigned, more than a month after the lender collapsed into receivership. (We will admit we thought this happened a month ago.) Bloomberg has more here.

The U.S. mortality rate is much higher, at almost every age, than that of most of Europe, Japan, and Australia. That is, compared with the citizens of these nations, American infants are less likely to turn 5, American teenagers are less likely to turn 30, and American 30-somethings are less likely to survive to retirement. In fact, a new analysis by John Burn-Murdoch, a data journalist at the Financial Times, shows that the typical American is 100% more likely to die than the typical Western European at almost every age from birth until retirement. While guns, drugs, and cars don't help, Americans' health -- and access to health care -- seems to be the biggest factor, says this new story in The Atlantic.

Lyft’s newly appointed CEO, David Risher, told employees in an email today that the company is significantly reducing its workforce as part of a restructuring effort. Lyft doesn’t employ drivers who use the ride-hailing app to pick up and drop off riders. Instead, the layoffs will be directed at the company’s more than 4,000 full-time employees.

"Overemployed" hustlers exploit ChatGPT to take on even more full-time jobs.

The couple behind nearly every sports bet in the U.S.

Elon Musk's stance of allowing Russian government posts to pop up freely on people's Twitter feeds has now become company procedure. It's a radical departure from the so-called "shadow bans" — or in Twitter parlance "visibility filtering rules" — that were previously placed on those accounts, observes NPR.

36 hours in Lisbon.

The "Evil Dead" movies, ranked.

"Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is 89, is facing calls to resign from fellow Democrats. But unfortunately, Feinstein is answering those calls on her stapler." -- Colin Jost.

Barbara Walter's home of 30 years has hit the market.

Lifestraw Go Series water bottle.

One Meticulous espresso machine.

“In most cases the best deals aren’t going to come to you, you have to find them.” – Kyra Durko, Principal at Two Sigma Ventures. She spoke to Affinity about ways to optimize outbound sourcing. Download the dealmaker’s email playbook for five best practices from Two Sigma Ventures, Menlo Ventures, and Nexa Partners.