Arm goes public with its paperwork, Snapchat conjures new AI features with Dreams, and a crumpled Ferrari worth $$

It's the talk of Silicon Valley and beyond. Journalist Ronan Farrow dives into the U.S. government's overreliance on Elon Musk and his numerous tech companies. Writes Farrow, "Current and former officials from the Department of Defense, the Department of Transportation, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration told me that Musk’s influence had become inescapable in their work, and several of them said that they now treat him like a sort of unelected official." (And from another scene in the story: "“We need Elon now . . . Like fucking now . . .People are dying.”) Musk frenemy Sam Altman is separately quoted in the piece as saying, "Elon desperately wants the world to be saved. But only if he can be the one to save it." More here.

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Arm, the U.K.-based chipmaker owned by Japan’s SoftBank since 2016, has filed for a Nasdaq listing five months after announcing it had filed confidential, preliminary IPO paperwork with U.S. regulators.

The outfit didn’t provide a projected share price in its F-1 paperwork, but SoftBank recently bought the 24.99% stake in Arm that it didn’t own outright from its Vision Fund unit, reportedly at a valuation of more than $64 billion. That’s twice the $32 billion SoftBank paid for Arm seven years ago. (The Vision Fund has outside limited partners, including the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi; SoftBank sold that stake in Arm to the Vision Fund in 2017 for $8 billion.)

SoftBank has paid a steep price for marking up its own deals in the past. Most famously, SoftBank plowed $4.4 billion into the co-working company WeWork in the summer of 2017 when it was still privately held, at a reported valuation of $20 billion. SoftBank invested in WeWork again in early 2019 at a $47 billion valuation. At the time, SoftBank had invested roughly $10.5 billion into WeWork both directly and via its Vision Fund arm. It went on to invest even more in the company and to lose nearly its entire investment.

Arm has long developed and licensed what it describes as high-performance, low-cost, and energy-efficient central processing unit (CPU) products and related technology, on which many of the world’s leading semiconductor companies and OEMs rely to develop their products. Among customers of the roughly 6,000-person company are Apple, Alphabet, Advanced Micro Devices, Qualcomm, and Mercedes-Benz.

Analysts expect Arm’s IPO to be the biggest of 2023, though not everyone agrees that the company is worth what SoftBank thinks it's worth.

More here.

Genesis Therapeutics, a four-year-old, Bay Area-based biotech startup that among many others says it's using AI to discover medicines against molecular targets that have thwarted drugmakers, has raised $200 million in funding co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and an investor that Genesis is declining to name (intrigue!). According to the WSJ, a16z General Partner Vijay Pande -- who previously spent 16 years as a Stanford professor and chaired Stanford's Biophysics Program --  headed up the lab where Genesis was created. More here.

Enough, an eight-year-old Glasgow startup that makes protein out of mushrooms, raised a $43.6 million round co-led by World Fund and CPT Capital, with previous investors AXA IM Alts, HAL Investments, Onassis Group, Tailored Solutions, and Scottish Enterprise also taking part. The company has raised a total of $121.7 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Ghost, a two-year-old Los Angeles startup that provides a marketplace for brands and retailers to discreetly sell their excess inventory, raised a $30 million Series B round led by Cathay Innovation, with previous investors Union Square Ventures, Equal Ventures, and Eniac Ventures also contributing. The company has raised a total of $68 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Qualifyze, a four-year-old Frankfurt startup whose platform helps pharmaceutical companies ensure the compliance of supply chains, raised a $12 million from HarbourVest Partners and H14 as well as previous investors HV Capital and Rheingau Founders. The company has raised a total of $31.7 million. Tech.eu has more here.

Zanifu, a five-year-old Nairobi startup that provides inventory financing to micro-, small-, and medium-size businesses, raised an $11.2 million pre-Series A round consisting of both debt and equity. Beyond Capital Ventures and Variant Investments were the co-leads, with additional funds provided by Founders Factory Africa, AAIC Investment, Google Black Founders Fund, and Launch Africa. The company has raised a total of $12.7 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Dipp, a three-year-old, Taipei-based startup that says it uses AI to fix bottlenecks between marketing and design teams, recently raised $1.5 million in seed funding from investors including SparkLabs Taiwan and Palm Drive Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

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The owners of the San Francisco 49ers football team are raising $50 million from investors for a new venture capital fund known as Aurum Fund I, according to a Form D filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Aurum Partners, a family office tied to the York family, is seeking outside investment for the first time to expand its startup investment activities. The filing lists the Menlo Park headquarters of Aurum Partners as the central business location for the VC fund. The San Francisco Standard has more here.

The data startup Cohesity is gearing up to go public as soon as its bankers give the nod, CEO Sanjay Poonen tells Business Insider. This isn't the first time that Cohesity, which helps companies store their data backups on cloud services such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, has prepared for an initial public offering. But when it last announced it had filed confidential IPO paperwork, on December 21, 2021, its timing couldn't have been worse, notes the outlet. More here.

Photoshop maker Adobe's co-founder John Warnock passed away on Saturday at age 82, the company said in a statement early yesterday. The cause of his death was not disclosed.

TikTok competitor Triller is preparing to go public, but estimates from the market intelligence outfit Apptopia call its self-reported user numbers into question, notes TechCrunch. Per Triller's S-1 filing, the short-form video app has had 550 million lifetime sign-ups. But Apptopia estimates that Triller has been downloaded just 73.2 million times since launch in 2015 -- that's 87% lower than Triller's own reports. More here.

Theads, Meta's competitor to Elon Musk's X platform, plans to launch a web version of its microblogging app this week, reports the WSJ. Use of the app has plunged since its successful launch in early July; geared mostly for mobile phones, a desktop version has been among users' long wish list of features for the app, says the outlet. More here.

Snapchat is preparing to further expand into generative AI features via a new feature called Dreams. TechCrunch explains what users can expect here.

How a Christie’s website revealed where people kept their art.

All of the 8,291 license plates in America.

An historic English country estate, for just $2.8 million, and it comes with the only Grade I-listed cottage-style garden in all of England (and also, important to note, thousands of visitors yearly to this garden).

This wrecked and burnt Ferrari just sold for $1.9 million; here's why.

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