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Oof. First Republic Bank shares lost about half their value today, a day after reporting first-quarter results that showed a deposit hemorrhage in March that was worse than expected. The stock shed 49% to close at $8.10, a new low. Trading in First Republic shares was halted several times today after the stock tumbled. The WSJ has more here.
Google’s parent company Alphabet returned to sales growth, it revealed in an earnings call today. Alphabet meanwhile said today that its board of directors authorized $70 billion in share repurchases. As CNBC notes, share repurchases are controversial. While shareholders love them because they tend to drive up the price of a company's shares, critics see them as a tactic to manipulate share prices and a poor use of a company's profits (U.S. President Joe Biden is in the latter camp).
CNBC has more here.
Microsoft, which also reported its latest earnings today, also beat financial expectations, despite worries about the economy. The New York Times has more here.
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Replit, a seven-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that helps computer programmers write code and whose partnership with Google -- which is combining its AI with Replit's software to improve its own ability to suggest blocks of code, complete programs and answer developer questions -- was announced late last month, has raised $97.4 million in Series B funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the round, joined by Cathie Woods's ARK Ventures and SV
Angel, among others. According to Reuters, the deal values the cloud developer platform at more than $1 billion. More here.
Ursa Major, an eight-year-old, Colorado outfit building a 5,000-pound liquid oxygen and kerosene rocket engine called Hadley and what is says is a much larger and far more powerful engine with a 50,000-pound thrust, has quietly closed $100 million in Series D funding, according to documents viewed by TechCrunch. Investors in the round, which closed last October, included BlackRock and Space Capital. The outfit has now raised $234 million altogether. More here.
Virta, a 10-year-old, Helsinki, Finland-based EV charging services platform, has raised €85 million in funding led by Jolt Capital. Other backers in the round included Business Finland, Future Energy Ventures, Helen Ventures, Vertex Growth Fund, Finnish Industry Investment, Lahti Energy, Vantaa Energy and Kotka Energy. More here.
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| Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings |
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Abatable, a two-year-old, London-based carbon abatement startup, has raised $13.5 million from Azora Capital. More here.
Arado, a two-year-old São Paulo-based platform connecting fruit and vegetable producers to restaurants and retailers, has raised $12 million in funding led by Acre Venture Partners, with participation from Syngenta Group Ventures, Globo Ventures, Valor Capital, MAYA Capital, and SP Ventures. AgFunder News has more here.
Bobsled, a nearly two-year-old startup that is building a cross-cloud data sharing platform, has raised a $17 million Series A round co-led by Greycroft and Madrona Venture Group. This funding follows a $7 million seed round led by .406 Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
Function Oncology, a San Diego-based CRISPR-powered functional genomics platform company that launched two weeks ago, says it has secured $28 million in Series A funding co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Section 32, with participation from Casdin Capital and Alexandria Venture Investments. The San Diego Business Journal has more here.
Hydrosat, a nearly six-year-old Washington, D.C.-based developer of Earth observation satellites, says it has raised $15 million in Series A funding and an additional $5 million in government grants. Statkraft Ventures led the equity round, joined by new and earlier backers of the startup, including Blue Bear Capital, Hartree Partners, OTB Ventures, Freeflow Ventures, Cultivation Capital, Techstars, Santa Barbara Venture Partners, Expon Capital and Hemisphere Ventures. Space News has more here.
Katmai, a three-year-old, New York-based immersive communications platform (think 3D virtual offices, digital twins, etc.), has raised $22 million in Series A funding led by Starr Insurance Companies. VentureBeat has more here.
Radiant Industries, a four-year-old, Los Angeles-based startup that says its megawatt nuclear power generators are cleaner and safer compared to the diesel alternatives that dominate the market for remote and backup power generation, has raised $40 million in Series B funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the round, which brings the outfit's total funding to $55 million. Forbes has more here.
Thetanuts Finance, a Williamsburg, Va.-based DeFi trading startup that says it offers crypto structured products that cater to option traders, decentralized autonomous organizations, market makers and other liquidity providers, has raised $17 million in funding co-led by Polychain Capital, Hyperchain Capital and Magnus Capital. The outfit had raised $18 million in March of last year in a round that was led by the since-collapsed crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital. CoinDesk has more here.
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CarbonChain, a 3.5-year-old London-based carbon accounting platform, has raised $10 million in Series A funding co-led by USV and Voyager Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
Hakimo, a Menlo Park-based startup whose platform uses computer vision and machine learning to automate the monitoring of physical security sensors such as cameras and badge readers, has raised $6 million in new funding led by Rocketship.vc, with participation from earlier investors Neotribe Ventures, defy.vc and Firebolt Ventures, as well as new investors Carrier Global Corporation, through its venture capital group, Carrier Ventures. More
here.
InfiniDome, a seven-year-old, Israel-based outfit whose software is designed to defend UAVs and ground vehicles from jamming attacks, has raised $9 million in Series A funding led by South Korean conglomerate Hanwha Aerospace, with participation from Honeywell Ventures and Next Gear Ventures. AIThority has more here.
Summer, a nearly six-year-old, New York-based student debt repayment tool, has raised $6 million in extended Series A funding funding from General Catalyst, QED, Flourish Ventures, Partnership Fund for NYC, Story Ventures, Gaingels, Calm VC and Avidbank. TechCrunch has more here.
Tepbac, an 11-year-old, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam-based company that makes an IoT-enabled hardware and data system for shrimp farmers, and also runs an aquaculture media platform, has raised $2.25 million from Aqua-Spark, AgFunder and Son-Tech Investment. AgFunder News has more here.
TinyTap, a 13-year-old outfit (now a subsidiary of Animoca Brands) that makes user-generated educational games, has raised $8.5 million from investors including Sequoia Capital China, Liberty City Ventures, Kingsway Capital, Shima Capital, Polygon, GameFi Ventures, and others. More here.
YELO Funding, a 16-month-old, New York-based college financing platform, says it has raised $1.2 million in pre-seed funding from angel investors. More here.
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Emails. Meetings. Networks. Deal flow. When it comes to dealmaking activities, how does your firm stack up against the competition? Find out in Affinity's latest webinar with Samantha Santaniello, Head of Business Development & Partnerships at MassMutual Ventures.
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Former Salesforce co-CEO Keith Block is launching a venture capital firm, targeting $400 million for its first fund. The new outfit, known as Smith Point Capital, will invest in enterprise software, particularly at the growth stage. Smith Point expects about 75% of the new fund to be deployed in companies with $50 million to $250 million in annual recurring revenue. In an interview with Bloomberg News, Block said the firm has held a first close on the fund. More here.
A Seattle-based venture capital firm, Capria, tells GeekWire it has raised a $100 million fund to invest in 20 to 25 tech startups in the “Global South” areas of India, Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. Investors in the new fund include Gates Ventures, the private investment office of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, as well as OIP Investment Trust, various foundations, individuals, and family offices. Cofounder Will Poole spent 12 years at Microsoft; Capria previously raised a $57 million fund in 2020. More here.
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It's lights out for the Chevy Bolt, GM's first mass-market EV, as the company moves to newer battery technology.
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Investor Chamath Palihapitiya, who once thought that Bitcoin had "effectively replaced gold", now thinks that “crypto is dead in America” due to U.S. regulatory pressure on the sector. Fortune has more here.
After a little over a year of being a principal at the Bay Area-based venture firm Base10, Luci Fonseca has been promoted to partner. More here.
Nate Silver, the founder and editor of the data-driven news site FiveThirtyEight, said today that he expects to leave ABC News as layoffs rattle its parent organization, the Walt Disney Company.
A group of Tesla shareholders are standing against the nomination of J.B. Straubel, a former executive, to the electric-vehicle maker’s board over concerns he is a company insider coming in to replace an independent director. The WSJ has more here.
Touchdown Ventures, which helps companies set up their corporate venture arms, just announced a whole bunch of promotions; more here.
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OpenAI is planning to launch a ChatGPT subscription product focused on businesses; it says it will not use its end-user customers' data "to train [its] models by default." More here.
Also in OpenAI news, any conversations that take place while chat history is disabled will not be used to train OpenAI’s models or appear in the “history” sidebar, the company wrote in a blog post today. OpenAI said it will keep the new conversations for 30 days, but it will only review them if it is necessary to monitor for abuse.
How BeReal missed its moment.
How to secure your digital life before you kick the bucket.
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A traveler's guide to tipping in the age of Apple Pay.
Harry and Meghan find themselves on the "kiss cam" at the Laker's game.
John Mulaney has a new Netflix special, "Baby J." 🎉
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An oil heiress’s 16-room home overlooking Central Park, priced at $70 million.
Tile, for cats.
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