Sam Bankman-Fried's never-published 15,000-word Twitter thread is a doozy

Game platform Unity closed its offices today after receiving what it called a credible death threat in an apparent response to its plan to charge developers a fee every time a consumer installs a game built in Unity. 

Republican lawmakers are pressing the Biden administration to completely cut off Huawei Technologies and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. from their American suppliers after Huawei launched a new phone using highly advanced technology the U.S. has been trying to keep out of China’s hands.

Experts think the culprit behind cyberattacks on MGM Resorts and Caesar's Entertainment might be Scattered Spider, a group of U.S. and U.K. hackers that uses social engineering to worm its way into a company's network.

Focus on adding value beyond fund performance and returns. Even though VC fundraising activity has fallen dramatically and the market is seeking its elusive “new normal,” venture capitalists are still going about their business. We at Juniper Square recently spoke with Jake Fingert, managing partner at Camber Creek, and Abubakr “Mali” Malida, investor relations and operations manager at Alpha Partners, to discuss how firms can succeed at fundraising in this uncertain environment, along with what LPs are looking for and how best to serve them. Read the takeaways here.

Denodo, a 24-year-old Palo Alto company that specializes in data virtualization, raised a $336 million Series B round. TPG was the deal lead. TechTarget has more here.

Databricks, a 10-year-old San Francisco company that provides an analytics platform designed to help organizations process, analyze, and visualize large volumes of data, raised a $500 million Series I round at a $43 billion valuation, a $5 billion valuation increase over its last round back in 2021. Investors included T. Rowe Price, Morgan Stanley, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, Capital One Ventures, Nvidia, Andreessen Horowitz, and Tiger Global. TechCrunch has more here. 

Generate Biomedicines, a five-year-old startup based in Cambridge, MA, that uses machine learning to design and create new proteins that can be used to treat diseases, raised a $273 million Series C round. Investors included Amgen and Nvidia as well as previous investors Flagship Pioneering, ADIA, Fidelity, Alaska Permanent Fund, Arch Venture Partners, Altitude Life Science Ventures, Morningside Ventures, and T. Rowe Price. The company has raised a total of $693 million. FierceBiotech has more here.

Helsing, a “defense AI” startup backed by Spotify founder Daniel Ek that previously raised €102.5 million, has raised €209 million ($223 million) in Series B funding led by General Catalyst. Swedish heavy industry and defense group Saab is joining as a strategic investor, deepening what was previously an existing partnership, says TechCrunch. More here.

Pixis, a three-year-old Chicago startup that helps brands deliver AI-powered marketing campaigns, raised a $85 million Series C1 round led by Touring Capital, with additional participation from Grupo Carso, General Atlantic, Celesta Capital, and Chiratae Ventures. The company has raised a total of $209 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Shield AI, an eight-year-old San Diego startup that develops AI-powered software for military drones, is reportedly in the market to raise $150 million at a $2.5 billion valuation, according to Bloomberg. The company has raised a total of $570 million. More here.

Verkor, a three-year-old French startup that makes batteries for EVs, raised a $904 million Series C round along with $638 million in debt. Investors included Macquarie, Meridiam, and Renault. The company has raised over $3 billion. TechCrunch has more here. 

Duckbill, a Boston startup that offers a personal assistant service buttressed by AI, raised a $25 million Series A round led by Forerunner, with additional funds provided by General Catalyst, Inspired Capital, Greycroft, G9 Ventures, and Offline Ventures. FastCompany has more here.

Parade, an eight-year-old San Francisco startup whose platform manages over $11 billion in annual freight volume, raised a $17 million pre-Series B round led by I Squared Capital, with previous investors Menlo, Greenhawk Capital, Jones Capital, The House Fund, and Operator Stack also chiming in. The company has raised a total of $36 million. FreightWaves has more here.

Sempre Health, an eight-year-old San Francisco startup that works with health plans and life sciences companies to reduce what patients pay for their medications, raised a $20 million round. Syndicate members included Cencora Ventures and Echo Health Ventures as well as previous investors Blue Venture Fund, UPMC Enterprises, and Industry Ventures. The company has raised a total of $45.5 million. More here.

Sonex Health, a nine-year-old startup based in Eagan, Mn., that has developed an FDA-approved device that treats carpal tunnel syndrome with ultrasound technology, raised a $40 million Series B round. KCK MedTech, a previous investor, took the entire deal. The company has raised a total of $90.1 million. Twin Cities Business has more here.

Swan, a four-year-old Paris startup that enables SaaS companies, marketplaces, and fintech startups to offer white-labeled banking features, raised a $40 million Series B round. Lakestar was the deal lead, while existing investors Accel, Creandum, Bpifrance, and eFounders also participated. The company has raised a total of $64.4 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Beckley Waves, a London startup that plans to incubate startups focused on psychedelics, raised a $3.3 million seed round from the Joe and Sandy Samberg Foundation, Satori Neuro, Evolve Ventures and Foundation, Bridge Builders Collaborative, and 1440 Foundation. More here.

Carenostics, a two-year-old Philadelphia startup that is using AI to identify undiagnosed chronic diseases, raised a $5 million seed round led by M13, with Greatpoint Ventures and Gaingels also joining in. More here.

Delos Insurance Solutions, a six-year-old San Francisco startup that offers insurance plans to homeowners in wildfire-prone areas, raised a $7.3 million seed extension round led by IA Capital Group, with Blue Bear Capital, Gallatin Point Capital, Generation Space, Avanta Ventures, Red Dog Capital, and DNX Ventures also investing. Reinsurance News has more here.

Favs, a five-month-old, L.A.-based startup that says its emerging from stealth in January,  wants to bring social networking back to its roots by building an app that helps people maintain strong and meaningful connections with one another. It's not sharing how, exactly, just yet, but investors have provided it with nearly $1 million, it tells TechCrunch, including Sunset Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Scout Fund, and angel investors such as Techstars founder and CEO David Cohen. (Favs founder Saba Karim previously worked for Techstars for 5.5 years.) More here.

Hearth, a three-year-old New York startup that makes 27-inch digital whiteboards to help families keep track of various tasks, raised a $4.7 million bridge round from Female Founders Fund, Stellation Capital, Sweater Ventures, Behind Genius Ventures, Dream Ventures, and Ingeborg Investments. The company has raised a total of $7.7 million. TechCrunch has more here.

LastMile AI, a platform designed to help software engineers develop and integrate generative AI models into their apps, has raised $10 million in a seed funding round led by Gradient, Google’s AI-focused venture fund. AME Cloud Ventures, Vercel’s Guillermo Rauch, 10x Founders and Exceptional Capital also participated in the round. TechCrunch has more here.

Movement Labs, a New York startup that is developing a smart contract development language with embedded safeguards, raised a $3.4 million pre-seed round co-led by Varys Capital, dao5, Blizzard The Avalanche Fund, and Borderless Capital and including Colony, Interop Ventures, Elixir Capital, and BENQI. The Block has more here.

N5, a four-year-old Buenos Aires startup that helps financial customers such as Mastercard connect different data silos, raised a $9.5 million round. Participants in the deal included Illuminate Financial, Exor Ventures, Madrone Capital Partners, LTS Investments, and ArpexCapital. More here.

Ometria, a 10-year-old London company that has built a CRM platform for retailers, raised a $9.9 million round. CIBC Innovation Banking was the deal lead. The company has raised a total of $81.8 million. The SaaS News has more here.

Roam, a New York real-estate company that just raised $1.25 million in seed funding, is betting that it can popularize an obscure workaround called "assumable loans” that allow sellers to transfer their own lower-interest mortgage loans to the buyer alongside the house. But Roam faces numerous challenges, as outlined by the WSJ. Founders Fund and Opendoor cofounder Eric Wu co-led the round. Tim Mayopoulos, the former Fannie Mae CEO who briefly ran Silicon Valley Bank after it failed, is an adviser. More here.

VCs: are you helping any portfolio companies raise their next round? Fundingstack.com offers a set of proprietary deal tools, including a huge database of investors + a CRM, pitch deck hosting, investor updates and more. Create multiple private investor pipelines - one for each portfolio company - and enjoy 360-degree visibility into your startups' funding progress. Book a demo here or start a 10-day free trial and use code “StrictlyVC30” to get 30% off for 6 months. (Hurry: offer ends September 30.)

Cervin Ventures, a Palo Alto, Ca.-based early-stage venture capital firm, says it has closed on $162 million in new capital commitments -- its largest "raise" to date. The firm says it will use the capital to invest in seed and Series A startups specializing in enterprise software, data and AI, cybersecurity, DevOps, cloud, and networking. More here.

Three former investors from Microsoft's corporate venture arm, M12, have banded together to form a new venture firm, Touring Capital, to invest in what they describe as software-as-a-service companies powered by AI, focusing on Series B and C stages. They’re currently in the process of raising their first fund, says Fortune. More here.

Independent music distribution service DistroKid today announced that it recently acquired Bandzoogle, the website builder designed for musicians. The financial details of the transaction weren’t publicly disclosed. DistroKid was founded by serial entrepreneur Philip "Pud" Kaplan, who may forever be best known for founding FuckedCompany.com during the original internet boom and bust. TechCrunch has more here.

In its Nasdaq debut, Arm soared 24.7%, valuing the company at $65.2 billion. It's P/E is now higher than Nvidia's.

Sam Bankman-Fried's never-published 15,000-word Twitter thread has found its way to The New York Times, and it's a doozy.

Kiwi Camara, the legal tech startup CEO who brought home $110 million last year (more than Apple CEO Tim Cook), is out.

Elon Musk plans to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an apparent attempt to stave off charges of antisemitism. 

Cathryn Paine has been promoted to partner at Anzu Partners, a Washington, D.C.-based venture capital firm. Paine joined the firm in 2017 as a principle, leading its talent and people operations. More here.

Salesforce says it's hiring 3,300 people across departments, marking a new investment after it eliminated 10% of its workforce in a restructuring earlier this year.

Bloomberg delves into the role that Sam Bankman-Fried's parents played in providing air cover for FTX.

Scientists have developed a self-supervised AI model that can predict the risk of ocular diseases, heart failure, Parkinson's disease, and more based on retinal images.

Paramount+ just released a new trailer for its Frasier reboot. Sadly, David Hyde Pierce decided not to reprise his role as Dr. Niles Crane.

Rome has more super-luxury hotels than ever. One offers a one-bedroom suite for $41,000 a night which puzzles Romans, who only see the city's overflowing garbage and degrado.

"Of Mr. Vance, the freshman Republican senator from Ohio, Mr. Romney said bluntly, 'I don’t know that I can disrespect someone more.'” Six takeaways from Mitt Romney's tea-spilling biography.

The perfect lamp.

The best pizzerias in the world. (They make a lot of dough.) 

The key to finding and closing the highest quality deals—especially in a tighter market—lies in your network. But is your network the dealmaking machine it could be? Find out in Affinity’s new guide, which examines the art and science of VC relationships and how they impact 5 critical workflows. Get actionable best practices now.