Sequoia's big breakup, Apple's newest bobble, and the latest from Marc Andreessen

Sequoia Capital announced today it is spinning off its China- and India-based businesses into independent entities, saying in a letter to its limited partners this morning that its global footprint had become “increasingly complex” to manage. The statement was signed by Sequoia’s managing partner Roelof Botha; the firm’s China head, Neil Shen; and its India head, Shailendra Singh. 

The split, which will go into effect by the end of March 2024, will see Shen's firm be called HongShan, while Singh's India-based outfit will be called Peak XV Partners (pronounced "fifteen"). The original U.S. business, now with growing ties to Europe, will remain Sequoia Capital. 

Talking with the New York Times, Botha said today that Sequoia had evaluated whether a centralized model made sense “over the years" and that in recent months, “it just became clear to us that the cost of holding it all together and background wasn’t worth it." 

Moving forward, the firm told Forbes separately, the new firms will set up their own infrastructure, and partners will not invest in each other’s funds.

In the meantime, both the U.S. and China teams will maintain their sizable stakes in TikTok parent company Bytedance, a company that has caused considerable consternation in the U.S. Specifically, Washington policymakers have voiced repeated concerns about spying -- and not without reason. Bytedance itself said late last year it learned former TikTok employees inappropriately obtained the data of American users; now, a former ByteDance executive says a committee of China’s Communist Party members accessed the data of TikTok users in Hong Kong in 2018. (The exec was fired in 2018 and filed a wrongful termination lawsuit this week.)

Of course, even leaving Bytedance aside, the U.S. and China haven't been getting along (not that relations between the two have ever been particularly rosy). Indeed, while Botha, Shen and Singh denied in their interview with Forbes that geopolitical tensions were a specific catalyst for the move, no one believes that claim. TechCrunch takes a look at what more likely led to today's decision here.

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At the end of 2020, Miles Grimshaw became — and remains — the most recent addition to the storied venture firm Benchmark, which has stubbornly refused to change how it fundamentally operates, despite the many changes the rest of the venture world has embraced — particularly regarding team size and assets under management.

With just five general partners, few principals in its now 28-year history in Silicon Valley, and fund after fund sized under $500 million, the firm was reportedly frustrated at turns by having to compete against rivals with ever-larger checkbooks. Today, of course, a lot of those 2021-era deals and funds look like bad bets for those who backed them, while Benchmark — whose past bets include Uber, Snap, WeWork and Sorare — looks smart for having stuck to traditional early-stage investing.

It made us curious to know what Grimshaw — a Yale grad who was previously a general partner with Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital — makes of the way that Benchmark operates. We were also curious to understand Benchmark’s thinking about another potential bubble: generative AI.

Certainly, Grimshaw’s past and current firms seem to be taking very different approaches. Thrive dove right into a recent, $300 million round in OpenAI at a $29 billion valuation. Meanwhile, in early spring, Grimshaw led a $10 million seed round in LangChain, which helps developers build more complex applications on top of large language models like that built by OpenAI.

We talked with Grimshaw last week about those things and much more in a conversation that has been excerpted below and lightly edited for length and clarity.

 This is our first time meeting. What did you study at Yale, and was there a step in between college and joining Thrive Capital in New York?

Yeah, the journey to go to work with the team at Thrive was very serendipitous in 2010. I was probably in many ways a very classical liberal arts student, though technically I majored in economics.

At the time, the question was: could you have a Silicon Alley? And those who were on the East Coast sort of found each other and bonded together and said, Yeah, we can, let’s do it, let’s build. And so when I was at Yale, I met Will Gaybrick, who was actually at the Yale Law School at the time — he went on to be one of the partners of Thrive then CFO [and now a unit president] of Stripe — and he and I became friends organically around interests in products and applications software, and he happened to know Josh from his undergrad days, and I started hanging out with them in New York on the weekends and then said, ‘Let’s team up,’ so I joined the group officially in 2013, which was when I graduated.

I was the fourth or fifth person; we were a total of eight people, I think at the time, including a finance lead and EAs, so we were in the corner of what is now a very big office and you felt a bit like the outsiders proving it was possible and that was a really fun time.

Can I ask quickly: Are you Australian? Are you from New Zealand?

I’m British. [Laughs.] It’s a very muddled accent because I grew up in the UK until I was 12, then moved to Boston. I’m the eldest of seven kids. You can go to the next eldest — no accent — so I was right on the cusp of preserving a few words.

More here.

Alkeus Pharmaceuticals, a 12-year-old company based in Cambridge, Ma., that is rolling out a new drug to treat Stargardt disease, a genetic cause of blindness in children and young adults, raised a $150 million Series B round led by Bain Capital Life Sciences, with additional participation from TCGX, Wellington Management, and Sofinnova Investments. Pharmaceutical Technology has more here.

Charm Industrial, a five-year-old San Francisco startup that removes carbon by capturing it in plants and then pumping the plant biomass deep underground, raised a $100 million Series B round led by General Catalyst, with Lowercarbon, Exor, Kinnevik, Thrive Capital, and Elad Gil also taking part. More here.

GetHarley, a four-year-old, London-based platform that connects consumers with skincare clinicians and related products, has raised $52 million in a round of funding led by earlier investor Index Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Red 6, a five-year-old startup based in Orlando, Fl., that is developing augmented reality applications for the defense and entertainment industries, raised a $70 million Series B round led by RedBird Capital Partners and including Alpha Edison, Boeing's AEI Horizon X Fund, Accelerator Investments, and Downey Labs as well as previous investor Lockheed Ventures. The company has raised a total of $110.9 million. Washington Technology has more here.

Axuall, a five-year-old Cleveland, Oh., startup that enables healthcare organizations to speed up the onboarding of new employees by aggregating, evaluating, and sharing credentials in a privacy-compliant manner, raised a $20 million Series B round led by Noro-Moseley Partners, with Flare Capital Partners, Intermountain Ventures, University Hospitals Ventures, Hartford HealthCare, LocumTenens.com, Epsilon Health Investors, InHealth Ventures, AV8 Ventures, JumpStart Ventures, and M25 Ventures also piling on. The company has raised a total of $33.4 million. More here.

Curri, a five-year-old startup based in Ventura, Ca., that provides last-mile logistics for construction and industrial supplies, raised a $42 million Series B round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with additional funds provided by Initialized Capital, Brick & Mortar Ventures, and Rainfall Ventures. The company has raised a total of $48.2 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Payrails, a Berlin-based startup has developed a framework to build and operate more stable enterprise payment services, is announcing $14.4 million in fresh funding led by EQT Ventures, with participation from General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz and HV Capital also participating. The funding is being described as a “seed extension”: A16Z led the original seed round of $6.4 million. TechCrunch has more here.

RxLightning, a three-year-old startup based in New Albany, In., that streamlines the prescription process for healthcare providers, raised a $17.5 million Series A round led by LRVHealth, with participation from McKesson Ventures as well as existing investors Novartis, Onco360, Hearst Ventures, and HealthX Ventures. The company has raised a total of $20.5 million. More here.

Sourcemap, a 12-year-old New York company that helps clients monitor their supply chains for issues such as production hiccups or ESG concerns, raised a $20 million round. Energize Ventures was the deal lead, while E14 Fund also chipped in. The company has raised a total of $27 million. More here.

Nuview, an 18-month-old, Orlando, Fl.-based startup that wants to map the entire landmass of Earth on an annual basis using space-based light detection and ranging (lidar) technology, has raised $15 million so far, including a $3 million seed round and an in-progress Series A, of which $12 million has closed so far, according to TechCrunch. Actor Leonardo DiCaprio is among its latest investors; he's part of a group led by MaC Venture Capital, along with Broom Ventures, Cortado, Florida Funders, Industrious, Liquid2, and Veto Capital. More here.

Keep Aware, an Austin startup that provides protection against browser-based attacks like credential phishing, email spoofing, social engineering, and malicious extensions, raised a $2.4 million round led by LiveOak Venture Partners, with Runtime Ventures also participating. SecurityWeek has more here.

Life5, a Spanish startup that helps to accelerate the underwriting process for insurance companies, raised a $10.7 million round from existing investor Singular as well as Mundi Ventures and Sony's Global Brain. TechCrunch has more here.

Onebeat, a five-year-old Tel Aviv startup that helps retailers by synchronizing store management, online sales, and product assortment, raised a $10 million Series B led by Magenta Venture Partners, with AnD Ventures, INcapital Ventures, J-Ventures, Surround Ventures, and Bird Capital also investing. CTech has more here.

Rithmm, a one-year-old Boston startup whose sports betting platform enables users to test their own betting strategies, raised a $2 million seed round from Boston Seed Capital, Counterview Capital, Oyster Ventures, Correlation Ventures, Service Provider Capital, and Permit Ventures. Gaming America has more here.

Togai, a one-year-old startup based in Wilmington, De., that lets SaaS companies rapidly test and implement new pricing strategies, raised a $3.1 million seed round led by Together Fund, with BoldCap and Core91 also pitching in. Entrepreneur India has more here.

Candy Funhouse, a five-year-old Canadian startup that operates a mail order candy business, raised an undisclosed round from Ante Capital (NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo's fund), per Axios Pro, which has more here.

7 VC platform metrics that drive efficiency (and how to report on them), courtesy of Affinity.

Apple has acquired Mira, a Los Angeles-based AR startup that makes headsets for other companies and the US military, according to a post from the CEO’s private Instagram account yesterday seen by The Verge and a person familiar with the matter. Apple confirmed the acquisition. Jony Ive, Apple's former design chief, was at one point an adviser to the startup. More here.

The operator of two large hotels in San Francisco's financial district are backing out of the city, stating in a press release that: "Now more than ever, we believe San Francisco’s path to recovery remains clouded and elongated by major challenges – both old and new: record high office vacancy; concerns over street conditions; lower return to office than peer cities; and a weaker than expected citywide convention calendar through 2027 that will negatively impact business and leisure demand and will likely significantly reduce compression in the city for the foreseeable futures." More here.

Investor Marc Andreessen has written one of his triennial masterpieces; this one is called "Why AI Will Save the World."

Incoming Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino started her new gig yesterday, according to a tweet.

Deadly heart attacks are more common on Mondays, according to new research presented yesterday at a British Cardiovascular Society conference. More here.

The SEC widened its sweeping crackdown on crypto by accusing Coinbase of running an illegal exchange, a move that could make it harder for the industry to operate and for US citizens to trade. In a 101-page lawsuit filed today in federal court in New York, the SEC alleged that Coinbase for years evaded its rules by letting users trade numerous crypto tokens that were actually unregistered securities. Bloomberg has more here. Coinbase's (partial) response is here. Finally, columnist Matt Levine with his take here.

The top cryptocurrencies are seemingly unaffected by the separate SEC suits against Binance and Coinbase over the past two days. The two largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, Bitcoin and Ether, rose 5.4% and 4%, respectively, during a 24-hour period, CoinMarketCap data shows. The global crypto market cap rose 3.81% to $1.13 trillion during the same time period. TechCrunch has more here.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is privately attempting to reassure developers using the company's tech that it won't compete with them beyond ChatGPT. A blogpost was published about a related closed-door meeting that Altman held with developers and founders and while it was taken down, an archived version that remains accessible was surfaced more widely by Fortune and Insider.

The PGA Tour and LIV Golf were content to bludgeon one another; now they are merging. 🤯

Bees are intelligent animals that remember odors and even recognize human faces(?!).

At the French Open, the clay courts become a form of abstract expressionism.

A new book of photographs by Larry Sultan.

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