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Apple WWDC 2023: A look at everything that was announced today, including the Apple Vision Pro headset, the iOS 17, the newest MacBook Air, and more. 

Apple's sleek headset was, of course, the showstopper. Expected to hit shelves early next year, it's exceedingly expensive at $3,499, meaning it's essentially for die-hard, and well-heeled, early adopters for now. (It's really more about proving to developers that Apple is moving forward on this front.) While the product's expense leaves open the question of whether it will become a major revenue driver for Apple, some find it so compelling that they think its ubiquity is inevitable, especially as the price drops and Apple develops an ecosystem of apps. 

Certainly, its predecessors haven't fared as well. We all remember what happened with Google Glass. (We're going to refrain from posting that infamous picture of investors Marc Andreessen, John Doerr and Bill Maris because that would be a cheap shot.)  Meanwhile, as the WSJ notes, "Meta Platforms, which has mostly dominated the market to date with its Quest virtual-reality headsets, has struggled to keep existing users engaged, with more than half of the $400 entry-level Quest headsets not in use six months after they were purchased." Meta is barreling forward anyway with a Meta Quest 3 headset that will be available this fall for $499.)

In other major news: The SEC today sued Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, alleging the overseas company operated an illegal trading platform in the U.S. and misused customers’ funds. The SEC lawsuit also named Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, Binance’s founder, saying Binance and Zhao misused customers’ funds and diverted them to a trading entity that he controlled and that they engaged in trading that made Binance’s volume appear larger than it actually was. Binance also concealed that it commingled billions of dollars in customer assets and sent them to a third-party that was owned by Zhao, says the SEC. The WSJ has more here. Meanwhile, sources tell TechCrunch that this lawsuit was a "matter of when, not if."

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Greycroft, the now 17-year-old, New York and Los Angeles-based venture firm, has grown up in more ways than one. What began with three founders has evolved into a 60-person team. What began as a $30 million fund has grown into an enterprise that is today managing more than $3 billion in assets, including two funds totaling roughly $1 billion that were announced in late April.

Like every firm, Greycroft, which targets investments from $250,000 up to $50 million, has had its ups and down with its portfolio companies. Mobile games maker Scopely said in April that it's selling to Savvy Games Group, owned wholly by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, for $4.9 billion. (Greycroft invested roughly $100 million into the company and owned more than 5% of the business.) Greycroft also backed the dating app Bumble -- which staged a successful IPO in 2021 -- and invested in Shipt, which sold to Target for $550 million in cash in 2017. Other bets have proved more problematic, including The RealReal, which staged a traditional IPO in 2019 and has since seen its market cap crater; and Bird, the scooter company that went public via a special purpose vehicle in late 2021 and is now on the verge of getting delisted from the NYSE.

To learn more about the ride, we had a wide-ranging chat late week with firm co-founder Ian Sigalow, who, for what it's worth, doesn't have a stance on Saudi Arabia-backed U.S. venture funds (though Greycroft is not among them), says Greycroft is in rarified company when it comes to its ability to write big checks, and observes that anyone can play venture capitalist right now, given some of the prices in the public market -- not that Greycroft is shopping there, he added.

You can hear that conversation here; in the meantime, highlights from that chat follow, edited lightly for length.

TC: You've raised basically two thirds of your assets under management in the last few years. In retrospect, do you think that you invested [some of that capital] too quickly?

IS: If I could take a 'do over' of 2020 and 2021, we would probably look back and say [that] half of the capital deployed during that period, we would have been better off waiting. 

More here.

Amogy, a three-year-old Brooklyn startup that is attempting to power vehicles by creating electricity out of ammonia, raised an $11 million Series B extension, increasing the total size of its Series B to $150 million. Investors included Marunouchi Climate Tech Growth Fund, Mitsubishi Corporation, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America, and Synergy Marine. The company has raised a total of $219.1 million. More here.

Debut, a four-year-old San Diego startup that develops active ingredients for beauty products, raised a $34 million Series B round led by BOLD (L'Oréal's venture arm), with Fine Structure Ventures, Material Impact, GS Futures, Cavallo Ventures, Cultivian Sandbox Ventures, and ACVC Partners also participating. The company has raised a total of $60.2 million. Happi has more here.

Helium Health, a seven-year-old Lagos startup that provides telemedicine and business tools to healthcare providers in Nigeria, raised a $30 million Series B round led by AXA IM Alts, with Anne Wojcicki, Capria Ventures, Angaza Capital, and Flatworld Partners as well as previous investors Global Ventures, Tencent, Ohara Pharma, LCY Group, WTI, and AAIC also piling on. The company has raised a total of $42.2 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Humanz, a six-year-old Tel Aviv startup whose platform is designed to measure the impact of influencers and content creators in the sales process, raised a $5 million round from investors such as Yuval Tal, (founder of Payoneer). The company has raised a total of $17 million. CTech has more here.

Outmin, a three-year-old Dublin startup that provides outsourced accounting and bookkeeping services buttressed by real-time financial data, raised a $1.6 million seed round led by Middlegame Ventures, with Fuel Ventures and KellySan Enterprises also chipping in. The company has raised a total of $4.5 million. The Irish Times has more here.

Red Flag Alert, a 20-year-old company based in Manchester, UK, that generates a health score for businesses based on factors such as compliance and risk management, raised a $5.6 million round from Foresight and Uncapped. More here.

Find out how your firm ranks when it comes to communication volume, network growth, and deal flow. Affinity's infographic looks at key dealmaking data across the VC industry.

IQ Capital, a 16-year-old, London and Cambridge-based venture firm, says it has closed its fourth fund with $200 million, bringing its assets under management to more than $1 billion. The firm says it invests in deep tech at Seed and Series A across all deep tech sectors - including generative AI, advanced engineering and novel materials, space-tech, quantum hardware and algorithms, cyber and data security and synthetic biology. TechCrunch has more here.

Paul Allen's sister, Jody, is in no hurry to sell the Portland Trail Blazers or the Seattle Seahawks. Her brother, who cofounded Microsoft and who passed away in 2018, planned to donate the vast majority of his assets to charity -- and the teams are two of his most prized assets -- but she says that resolving his estate could take up to 20 years. While lawyers say that's highly unusual, it's nevertheless bad news for Nike founder Phil Knight, who has been trying for a year to buy the Blazers with real estate investor Alan Smolinisky. The WSJ has more here.

Mustapha El Akkari, the Tesla executive in charge of the company’s cybertruck supply chain, has quit the company to join electric truck rival Rivian, according to The Information.

Jack Dorsey yesterday endorsed Robert Kennedy Jr. for the Democratic presidential nomination.

GV, the venture team that counts Alphabet as its sole investor, today announced four new general partners in Cambridge, New York, and San Francisco: Brendan Bulik-Sullivan, Crystal Huang, Frederique Dame, and Issi Rozen. More here.

Former CNN honcho Jeff Zucker is now a media investor with $1 billion to spend. Per the New York Times, he leads RedBird IMI, which is backed by the private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners and International Media Investments, a fund with ties to Abu Dhabi’s government. Reportedly, he is now one of at least three prospective suitors for a majority stake in Air Mail, the media company founded by the former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter; has had discussions to invest in the online publishers Puck and Semafor; and has held talks in recent months with Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post. More here.

The venture-backed real estate startup Flyhomes is laying off employees for the third time in a year, citing an effort to focus on profitability amid the broader housing market downturn. The Seattle company confirmed the cuts to GeekWire today. The number of employees affected or an updated headcount wasn't shared publicly. Flyhomes, which helps home-buyers secure purchases with all-cash offers, laid off 20% of its employees in July and reduced headcount again in November.

Twitter generated in $88 million in ad revenue over a five-week stretch beginning April 1, a decline of 59% over the same period last year, according to an internal presentation viewed by The Times. H/T Dealbook. More here.

Grail, which says its blood test can detect dozens of types of cancer, say roughly 400 of its customers were mistakenly told last month that they might have the disease. It has blamed a vendor it works with, saying hundreds of letters were sent with incorrect test results because of a “software configuration issue” that has since been resolved. The problem was not caused by inaccurate test results, Grail insists. More than half of the people who received the letter in error had not yet had their blood drawn for the test. The New York Times has more here.

Fourteen months ago, Amazon launched a $1 billion venture fund to invest in logistics startups. Just over a year later, the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund has made only a few new investments and deployed just $110 million, according to the WSJ, whose sources cite disagreements over which team — corporate development or the venture team assembled to help manage the fund — have final say about whether to write a check to a startup.

Good luck, parents. Apple just made it possible for everyone in the car to add songs to the queue. 

"Glamour is a good thing." Graydon Carter on how to throw a good party.

One year later, it's a very different picture in the Hamptons.

The lifelong gift of sibling friendship.

Aberlour for Father's Day.

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Okay, fine! Here it is. See you tomorrow.