'Vintage' iPods, questionable British brands, and Humane's precarious relationship with its biggest outside backer

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Google's search head testified today in Google's antitrust trial that the company paid $26 billion in 2021 to ensure its search engine was the default on web browsers and mobile phones.

The WSJ is reporting that Google is investing up to $2 billion in Anthropic, the self-styled ethical AI LLM.

Asked today at the FTX fraud trial whether FTX should have had a risk department, FTX co-founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried replied, “We sure should have, but no we did not.”

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Chances are that however busy you are, Keith Rabois is busier. He’s an active investor as a general partner at Founders Fund, the early-stage outfit co-founded 18 years ago by Peter Thiel. He’s also the CEO of OpenStore, the company that he co-founded in 2021 to acquire and scale commerce brands on Shopify’s platform. And he has two young children to chase around.

He’s doing it all of it mostly from Miami, to which he moved roughly three years ago and from where Rabois talked with us recently about a lot of things. Among them was politics (he likes U.S. presidential candidates Nikki Haley and Governor Ron DeSantis, but compared Vivek Ramaswamy’s “foreign policy knowledge” to that of his two-year-old). We also talked about why his venture firm cut its newest fund in half, the deal in the Founders Fund portfolio that seems to have him most excited right now, and what he thinks of Marc Andreessen’s latest manifesto. Excerpts from our chat follow, edited for length and clarity. You can hear our longer conversation here.

How big a fund are you currently investing?

That’s a good question because we had announced a large amount that we wound up cutting in half. I don’t remember the official number.

I was wondering when we might see this kind of thing happen. A million years ago, of course, Accel and some other venture firms reduced the size of their venture fund when the market turned.

After we had the commitments, and we were proceeding, we realized that there wasn’t a great way to generate venture returns with that size fund in the world we live in.

How much time are you actually spending at Founders Fund right now, given that you’re not just the co-founder but also the CEO of OpenStore?

I’m a general partner at Founders Fund. That’s my primary activity in life, finding extraordinary entrepreneurs and giving them the advice, counsel and money so they can achieve their ambitions or increase the probabilities of success. Secondarily, I co-founded a company in Miami has roughly about 130 employees where I serve as CEO. Most of the people at Founders Fund have founded companies successfully. . . Obviously, it helps you generate returns because you have proprietary deal flow [but also] your advice and counsel is probably more astute and more insightful. The process of actually running a company or building a company allows you to both commiserate with founders but hopefully also be insightful because you’re suffering through the same challenges.

VCs co-found companies and sometimes run them as CEOs but not forever, typically. Is this a permanent state or will you hand this off to someone in six months?

More here.

AgentSync, a five-year-old Denver startup that helps insurance carriers and agencies ensure that their brokers comply with applicable laws, raised a $50 million round co-led by Craft Ventures and Valor Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Eavor, a six-year-old Calgary startup that raised a $131.2 million round led by OMV, with additional participation from Canada Growth Fund, Japan Energy Fund, Monaco Asset Management, and Microsoft's Climate Innovation Fund as well as previous investors BDC, bp Ventures, Eversource Energy, Temasek, and Vickers Venture Partners. ESG Today has more here.

Abridge, a five-year-old Pittsburgh startup whose software transcribes conversations between doctors and patients in a HIPAA-compliant manner, raised a $30 million Series B round. Spark Capital was the lead investor, with previous investor Bessemer Venture Partners also participating. The company has raised a total of $62.5 million. Fierce Healthcare has more here.

Omnidian, an eight-year-old Seattle startup that manages solar power performance and services the panels for commercial and residential installations, raised a $25 million round. Investors included HSBC Asset Management as well as previous investors Activate Capital, WIND Ventures, Avista Development, Evergy Ventures, National Grid Partners, Congruent Ventures, and Blue Bear Capital. The company has raised a total of $78 million. GeekWire has more here.

Opal Camera, a three-year-old San Francisco startup that produces and sells a DSLR-quality webcam, raised a $17 million Series A round. Founders Fund was the deal lead, with previous investor Kindred Ventures as well as influencers Marques Brownlee and Casey Neistat also pitching in. TechCrunch has more here.

Traba, a two-year-old Miami startup whose marketplace connects light industrial businesses looking for temporary staffing with workers who want to pick up shifts, raised a $22 million Series A2 round led by Founders Fund, with Khosla Ventures also taking part. The company has raised a total of $43.6 million. Refresh Miami has more here.

BluBirch, a nine-year-old Bengaluru startup that helps its clients identify invalid returns and manage the automated processing of returns and warranty claims, raised a $6.4 million Series A round. Cornerstone Ventures and Capital2B Fund were the co-leads. The company has raised a total of $10.2 million. The Economic Times has more here.

Canopy Connect, a three-year-old startup based in Beaverton, Or., whose platform is used for collecting, verifying, and monitoring insurance information, raised a $6.5 million Series A round led by Nevcaut Ventures, with Elefund, Nimble Partners, LocalGlobe, 9Yards Capital, and Global FinTech Venture Partners also stepping up. Reinsurance News has more here.

CarbonFarm, a two-year-old Paris startup whose mission is to provide rice farmers and agribusinesses with access to carbon markets, raised a $2.6 million seed round co-led by Racine2, Serena, and Makesense, with TechMind, Ponderosa Ventures, AgFunder, Climate Capital, and BPI France also anteing up. Silicon Canals has more here.

Credal.ai, a one-year-old New York startup that helps clients build AI chatbots while maintaining appropriate compliance and security, raised a $4.8 million seed round led by Spark Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Viso, a five-year-old Swiss startup that provides the software stack to enable companies like PricewaterhouseCoopers, DHL, and Orange to build their own computer vision applications, raised a $9.2 million seed round led by Accel. TechCrunch has more here.

Web3 Pro, a five-year-old Palo Alto startup that helps brands build and deploy web3 applications, raised an undisclosed round at a $57.6 million valuation. P101 was the deal lead, with existing investors including Sumitomo Corporation’s venture fund, Presidio Ventures, Seventy-Six Capital, River Capital Group, Ripple, and VU Ventures also chipping in. The company has raised a total of $10 million. More here.

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Sofinnova Partners has closed a new $200 million fund to focus on seed- to later-stage digital health investments across enabling technologies, analytics, and treatment. The French firm now has $2.65 billion under management. 

According to a report in The Daily Beast, The Messenger, a digital news startup funded to the tune of $50 million by billionaire Jimmy Finkelstein and others, is out of money just five months after its launch.

FTX co-founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried testified today that he didn't have enough time for haircuts or a long-term relationship with Alameda Research colleague Caroline Ellison. Said one online commenter, "He’ll have plenty of time now." (More on Bankman-Fried's style here.)

Google co-founder Sergey Brin must be feeling lighter than air: LTA Research, the seven-year-old airship company that he is backing, just received FAA clearance to begin test flights of its "air yacht." 

AIs are learning to work in the real world through physics.

Twitter users once had a deeply personal connection to the brand. Now, it's different. 

Has Humane created the next iPhone -- or the next Google Glass?

At an all-staff meeting this week, X owner Elon Musk and the company's CEO, Linda Yaccarino, reportedly referenced ambitions to create a news wire service called XWire that would rival Cision’s PR Newswire. 😕

The Nightmare Machine.

We'd never leave the museum!

Make sure the sound is on.

An 110,000-square-foot Las Vegas estate once owned by the Sultan of Brunei (replete with squash court).

A "vintage" iPod for $349.

A Harrington jacket from a brand called (we're not making this up) Private White V.C.

One crazy catamaran.