On the social platform BlueSky, Jack Dorsey criticizes Elon Musk's leadership of Twitter

God, we love Fridays.

Hope you have a terrific weekend, all. We're headed down to the Milken Institute Conference in L.A. to interview OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap. Hopefully we'll have more from that chat for you early next week. In the meantime, you might check out this detail-studded story from Insider about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, with insights from dozens of sources. Even in a world awash with OpenAI news (see below), it's great read, especially if you're still trying to figure out who is running this rocket ship.

Shares of First Republic were temporarily halted for volatility today before they closed down 43% at around $3.50 a share . . .and they continued to dive in after-hours trading. Since January, First Republic's stock is down roughly 97%, notes the WSJ. In a scathing 114-page report, the Fed said today its own supervisors were slow to grasp the extent of the problems at First Republic's most direct rival, Silicon Valley Bank, which imploded last month. Meanwhile, the FDIC, as of this writing, has not stepped in to backstop First Republic as it did with SVB; a move could come this weekend, however, sources tell the Journal.

OpenAI has sold $300 million worth of new shares at a valuation of between $27 billion and $29 billion, TechCrunch reported earlier today. Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive and K2 Global picked up new shares, according to documents seen by the outlet. It says it was told separately that Founders Fund is also part of the same syndicate. More here.

Tonight, Jack Dorsey criticized Elon Musk's leadership of Twitter for the first time in public on BlueSky -- a social platform funded by Dorsey that's still in development, aims to be a decentralized system, and became available for iOS devices in February and for Android devices this month. He also insisted that Twitter's choices were exceedingly limited when Musk began kicking the tires. Responding to one person who called Dorsey a sellout for making out on the sale to Musk (he actually rolled over his shares into the new  company after Musk purchased it), Dorsey wrote*: "I didn't 'sell you out'. All public companies are for sale to higher bidder. Always."

* Technically, Dorsey "skeeted." Look it up, squares.

Q1 was quite the start to the year for the venture capital community with the unexpected banking crisis adding to the woes of 2022 that ended the decade-long bull market. Juniper Square’s latest market update looks back on Q1 2023 and explains why—even though VC hit a new low in March with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank—the worst-case scenarios have been avoided. Read The State of Venture Capital for Q2 2023.

Orbital Therapeutics, a year-old, South San Francisco-based startup, has raised $270 million in Series A financing as interest increases in startups using new RNA technologies to develop drugs and vaccines. ARCH Venture Partners led the round. The WSJ has more here.

Evommune, a four-year-old Palo Alto startup that is developing novel small molecule inhibitors of IRAK4 for the treatment of inflammatory diseases, raised a $50 million Series B round co-led by ArixBioscience, EQT Life Sciences, and SymBiosis, with additional participation from Amplitude Ventures, Pivotal bioVenture Partners, and Andera Partners. The company has raised a total of $145.5 million. More here.

Practice Better, a seven-year-old Toronto startup whose software allows wellness providers to manage a range of services, from scheduling to telehealth to payments, raised a $27 million in round. Five Elms Capital was the sole investor. The company has raised a total of $27.4 million. BetaKit has more here.

Zodia Custody, a nine-year-old London startup that is a regulated crypto custodian providing institutional investors with secure storage, asset management, trading and settlement, compliance reporting, and advisory services, raised a $36 million Series A round. SBI Holdings and SC Holdings were the lead investors. CoinJournal has more here.

Onin, a three-year-old London startup whose app helps users plan events via a keyboard extension, raised $3.4 million seed round. Octopus Ventures was the deal lead. Tech.eu has more here.

Reviewpad, an eight-year-old startup based in Porto, Portugal, that provides a platform for teams to store, share, and collaborate on documents, raised a $1.1 million pre-seed round. Shilling VC led the transaction. The company has raised a total of $1.7 million. More here.

Tembo, a London startup whose platform enables consumers to shop for mortgages, raised a $6.3 million round. Love Ventures and the McPike Family Office were the co-leads, while previous investors Aviva Ventures and Ascension Ventures also participated. FinTech Global has more here.

Wayhome, a four-year-old London startup that provides first-time homeowners with a part buy, part rent option, raised a $10 million Series A round from Fintech, Volution, Love Ventures, and Cur8 Capital as well as previous investors Allianz X and Augmentum. The company has raised a total of $26.5 million. Tech.eu has more here.

Affinity is lifting the lid on what top VC’s do differently—and how other firms can replicate their success. Watch this conversation with Samantha Santaniello, Head of Business Development & Partnerships at MassMutual Ventures, for tips on using your network to drive quality deal flow.

Jessica Verrilli, a partner at Alphabet's venture arm who was previously a VP of corporate development at Twitter, has left Alphabet's fold to launch a firm with former Slack chief product officer April Underwood, per the WSJ. The pair has worked together previously, including as cofounders of the investing collective #Angels. Called Adverb Ventures, their new firm is targeting $75 million in capital commitments for its debut fund, says the outlet. More here. 

The Chainsmokers, the world-famous DJs, are quietly raising their third venture capital fund in as many years, reports the New York Post. The debut fund of their firm, Mantis, closed with $41 million and their second closed with $81 million; now they are aiming to top that with a third fund focused on AI and "web 4," says the outlet.

Sturgeon Capital, a seven-year-old London-based early-stage venture firm focused on startups in Bangladesh, Central Asia, Egypt, and Pakistan, has launched a $35 million fund focused on Central Asia startups. TechCrunch has more here.

Publicly traded Quest Diagnostics has agreed to buy Haystack Oncology, a two-year-old, Baltimore, Md.-based developer of liquid biopsy diagnostics, for $300 million in upfront cash, plus an additional $150 million should Haystack’s tests achieve certain performance milestones. Haystack last year raised $56 million in Series A funding from Catalio, Bruker, Exact Sciences and Alexandria Venture Investments. FierceBiotech has more here. 

Oddity, the nearly five-year-old owner of the cosmetics and beauty products company Il Makiage, has acquired a two-year-old biotech start-up, Revela, for a reported $76 million. Revela specializes in discovering new molecules for the beauty and wellness industries. Oddity says it will relatedly create a dedicated research facility in Boston called Oddity Labs through an additional $25 million investment. According to Crunchbase, Revela raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding last year. Molecule discovery is a common tool used in the pharmaceutical industry to create new drugs, but it isn’t widely used in the beauty and wellness industry, observes CNBC. More here.

In addition to Jessica Verrilli, who has left GV to start her own fund (see "New Funds"), COO Daphne Chang and partner John Lyman have also left the organization, reports Axios.

Deborah Crawford, who has served as Meta’s vice president of investor relations for more than eight years, is being appointed as the head of investor relations at Fanatics, the e-commerce and sports business platform that has long been rumored as a potential IPO candidate. CNBC has more here.

Abraham Shafi has stepped down as CEO of messaging app IRL following allegations that the company used bots to inflate the users it reported publicly and to investors. The Information earlier reported that a former employee alleged he was fired after expressing concern that a high percentage of IRL’s 20 million claimed users were bots. The outlet has latest here.

Y Combinator Managing Director Michael Seibel would like founders to stop listening to what he views as lousy advice on Twitter regarding the Bay Area. His argument? That 183 of Y Combinator's roughly 300 most valuable private companies are based in California, most of them in San Francisco. (Here's that list, from Stripe on down.)

M12, the corporate venture capital arm of Microsoft focused on early-stage investments spanning, cloud and data infrastructure, devops cybersecurity, metaverse/web3, and vertical SaaS, is looking to bring aboard a partner. This individual will develop and support its investment strategy in one or more areas of vertical SaaS, with a focus on retail and fintech, cyber-security and/or cloud and data infrastructure. The role, based in San Francisco, may involve managing one analyst or associate.

OpenAI's ChatGPT scored better than real doctors at responding to patient queries posted online, according to a study published Friday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, in which a panel of doctors did blind evaluations of posts. More here.

Apple has dropped its lawsuit against a former chip executive the company sued for allegedly poaching its employees for a startup. It isn't say why. Bloomberg has more here.

Elsewhere, a former Apple employee who swindled the company out of more than $17 million with a scheme that double-billed for parts was sentenced to three years in federal prison and ordered to pay nearly $33 million, prosecutors said. CNBC has more here.

The internet comes through again. "Marry the guy who looks at you like Bill Maher looks at Elon Musk," says commenter after Musk appeared tonight on Maher's show "Real Time with Bill Maher."

I cloned myself with AI; it fooled my bank and my family.

Laid off, Wes Anderson style.

A Hamptons mansion featured in "Succession" is now on the market. As you might expect, it's $$$$.