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Top News
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tonight explained why the company fact-checked Donald Trump's claims yesterday, including that mail-in voting methods are "fraudulent." Dorsey said the effort means to counter the possibility that Trump might “confuse voters about what they need to do to receive a ballot and participate in the election process.” The move does "not make us an 'arbiter of truth,'" tweeted Dorsey. "Our intention is to connect the dots of conflicting statements and show the information in dispute so people can judge for themselves. More transparency from us is critical so folks can clearly see the why behind our actions."
Dorsey was reacting in part to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who today made the effort to called out Twitter for attaching a "fact check" to tweets from Donald Trump, telling Fox News that digital platforms should not act as the "arbiter of truth." Facebook has a "different policy than, I think, Twitter on this," Zuckerberg said in an interview scheduled to air in full tomorrow.
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A San Francisco Startup Lands in the City's Crosshairs
Emmanuel Bamfo is used to fighting uphill battles. Still, his latest fight, with the city of San Francisco, may well destroy his business if he doesn’t win it and quickly.
Bamfo is the co-founder and CEO of Globe, a year-old, six-person startup that connects customers with rooms in people’s mostly urban homes. Think Airbnb, except that Globe isn’t for users looking for days- or months-long stays, but instead for a day break.
Globe evolved from an earlier company called Recharge that tried convincing hotels to let its customers rent their rooms by the hour and even minute, and had raised $10 million in seed funding. When hotels pushed back on the idea of cleaning their rooms so frequently, the nascent outfit entered into the popular accelerator program Y Combinator last summer and came out as a company that connects customers to home owners instead.
Growth at Globe had been slow but steady since, with more than 10,000 hosts around the world signing up to rent out rooms in their homes. Then came COVID-19.
Some hosts kept providing space to guests. One tech worker, Abe Disu, recently told The New York Times that he rented out his San Francisco apartment through Globe about 70 times between August and April, earning about $50 per hour after cleaning costs.
Many others expressed concerns about germs. “I thought we were dead,” says Bamfo.
Instead of giving up, Bamfo began to position Globe as a platform for people needing an escape from their home quarantines.
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Massive Fundings
AbCellera, an eight-year-old, Vancouver-based biotech outfit that researches and develops human antibodies to address pandemics and common diseases, has raised $105 million in Series B funding. OrbiMed led the round, joined by earlier backer DCVC, Founders Fund, the University of Minnesota, Presight Capital, and Viking Global Investors. Pharma giant Eli Lilly, which is working with AbCellera on COVID-19 products, also joined the round. (DCVC's Matt Ocko had talked about this company, and its tie-up with Eli Lily, in a StrictlyVC Download episode in mid-April.) TechCrunch has more here.
Aircall, six-year-old, Paris-based developer of a cloud-based contact center platform, has raised $65 million in Series C funding. DTCP led the round, joined by Adams Street Partners and earlier backers eFounders, Draper Esprit, Balderton and NextWorld Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
Bianlifeng, a four-year-old, Beijing, China-based cashierless checkout company, has raised $100 million in funding, according to DealStreetAsia. More here.
DefinedCrowd, a five-year-old, Seattle-based startup that uses a combination of machine learning with a crowdsourced community of 290,000 human contributors to train AI systems in 50 languages across 195 countries, has raised $50.5 million in Series B funding. Semapa Next and Hermes GPE co-led the round. Earlier backers also joined the round, including Evolution Equity Partners, Kibo Ventures, Portugal Ventures, Bynd VC, EDP Ventures, IronFire Ventures, Amazon Alexa Fund, Sony Innovation Fund, and Mastercard. VentureBeat has more here.
SmartRent, a four-year-old, Scottsdale, Az.-based provider of a smart home automation for property owners, has raised $60 million in Series C funding led by Spark Capital. Other participants in the round included Fifth Wall, Energy Impact Partners, the Amazon Alexa Fund, Bain Capital Ventures, and RET Ventures. VentureBeat has more here.
SpaceX, the now 18-year-old, Hawthorne, Ca.-based spaceflight company, has raised roughly $350 million in new funding, per an SEC filing. USA Today has more here.
Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings
D-ID, a three-year-old, Israel-based company whose technology produces photos and videos that are unrecognizable to facial recognition algorithms while remaining visible to the human eye, has raised $13.5 million in funding led by AXA Ventures, with participation from Pitango VC, YC, AI Alliance, Maverick Ventures, Omron, Hyundai, and Mindset. Calcalist has more here.
Fernish, a three-year-old, L.A.-based furniture rental firm, has raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Techstars Investments,Tapas Capital, RET Ventures, and individuals, including HotelTonight co-founder Jared Simon, and Zillow co-founder Spencer Rascoff. GeekWire has more here.
Higi, an eight-year-old, Chicago-based startup that operates health kiosks in grocery stores, has raised $30 million in Series B funding. Babylon Health led the round, joined by earlier backers 7Wire Ventures, Flare Capital Partners, Jumpstart Capital, Rush University Medical Center for Health and William Wrigley Jr. TechCrunch has more here.
Kentik, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based network intelligence platform, has raised $23.5 million led by Vistara Capital Partners, with participation from August Capital, Third Point Ventures, DCVC, and Tahoma Ventures. More here.
Luminary, a two-year-old, New York-based subscription-based podcasting platform that had quickly assembled $100 million from NEA, then switched CEOs six months after launching (at which point it announced another $30 million in funding), has tacked on roughly $5.5 million more in extended funding, shows a new SEC filing. More here.
Monte Rosa Therapeutics, a two-year-old, Boston-based developer of small molecule drugs to degrade disease-related proteins, has raised $32.5 million in Series A funding from Versant Ventures and NEA. BioWorld has more here.
Otrium, a five-year-old, Amsterdam-based startup that helps clothing brands sell items when they reach end-of-season status, has raised $26 million in Series B funding from Eight Roads Ventures, with participation from Index Ventures and Hans Veldhuizen. TechCrunch has more here.
Siren, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based company that’s building smart, washable fabric wearables, including to help diabetes sufferers monitor their foot health, has raised $11.8 million in Series B funding. Anathem Ventures led the round, joined by Khosla Ventures, DCM and Founders Fund. TechCrunch has more here.
Treasury Intelligence Solutions, a 10-year-old, Walldorf, Germany-based cloud platform for managing corporate payments and cashflows, has raised $20 million in funding led by Aquiline Technology Growth, with participation from earlier backer 83North. Crowdfund Insider has more here.
Smaller Fundings
Baton, a year-old, New York-based developer of post-sales implementation software, raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Activant Capital, with participation from Global Founders Capital and Carsten Thoma. TechCrunch has more here.
Cariloop, an eight-year-old, Dallas, Tex.-based caregiver support platform, has raised $6 million in Series A funding from KCRise Fund, Revolution Rise of the Rest, and Patterson Thoma Family Office. The Dallas Morning News has more here.
Census, a two-year-old, San. Francisco-based startup that says it builds a layer on top of the data warehouse that makes it easy for the data team to distribute product data where it’s needed., raised $4.3 million in seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from SV Angel. TechCrunch has more here.
thatDot, a year-old, Portland, Ore.-based company aiming to tackle problems related to big data streaming volume, analysis and workflow, has raised $2.1 million in seed funding. Oregon Venture Fund led the round, joined by Hale Capital Partners and Galois. More here.
Rise Gardens, a 15-year-old, Chicago-based indoor hydroponic gardening system, has raised $2.6 million in seed funding led by True Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
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Exits
Apple has bought machine-learning startup Inductiv, reports Bloomberg. The engineering team from the Waterloo, Ontario-based outfit apparently joined Apple in recent weeks to work on Siri. Inductiv, founded by former machine-learning professors from Stanford, the University of Waterloo, and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, developed technology that uses artificial intelligence to automate the task of identifying and correcting errors in data. More here.
Cryptocurrency exchange company Coinbase has announced plans to acquire Tagomi, an advanced cryptocurrency brokerage platform specifically targeted at professionals and institutional investors. Terms of the deal are undisclosed and the acquisition is still pending regulatory approval. While Coinbase is a well-known name for retail investors who are just getting started in the cryptocurrency space and want to buy some bitcoins, the company has been ramping up its offering for professional investors, notes TechCrunch. More here.
Ola, the Indian ride-hail giant, has agreed to buy Amsterdam-based e-scooter company Etergo, which had raised around $20 million from undisclosed investors. The company's aren't sharing financial details of the share, but according to industry estimates cited by The Hindu, Etergo was valued at roughly $80 million last year. More here.
And in Bloomberg: "SoftBank Group Corp. is exploring a sale of a minority stake in OSIsoft LLC that could be worth more than $1.5 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. SoftBank is working with a financial adviser to sell the stake in the industrial software company, which is held by its Vision Fund, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the matter isn’t public. The move is part of SoftBank’s new focus on raising cash, they said." More here.
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People
Minneapolis venture capitalist Tom Austin saw his office lease terminated after a video went viral, showing him asking a group of black entrepreneurs if they were tenants of the building and thus allowed to use its gym alongside him.
Cat Lee has stepped down as a partner with the venture firm Maveron, reports Axios. She joined the firm last after spending six years with Pinterest which she joined in early 2019 after six years with Pinterest, where she rose to its "head of culture." She had previously spent more than four years with Facebook.
Why will the Tesla Cybertruck be bullet-proof? "Because it's bad-ass and super cool," Elon Musk tells Jay Leno during a test-drive.
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Data
It’s as if an entire city vanished in the four months since the first American case of coronavirus was confirmed.
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Essential Reads
The launch of a SpaceX rocket ship with two NASA astronauts on a history-making flight into orbit was called off with less than 17 minutes to go in the countdown today because of thunderclouds and the risk of lightning. Liftoff has been rescheduled for Saturday afternoon.
Amazon has a rare opportunity to snatch up cheap planes and take on FedEx, according to a new Bank of America analyst note.
For the first time in its history, Facebook's Instagram will start sharing revenue with creators through ads in its long-form video offering, IGTV, and badges that viewers can purchase on Instagram Live.
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Detours
To help keep police safe from the coronavirus, Ford is introducing a new way to disinfect police cruisers: they're roasting them.
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