Mailchimp employees are mad, Apple is "monitoring" the situation in Texas, and Adam Mosseri gets dunked on

Mailchimp employees are furious, after the company's founders promised to never sell, withheld equity, then agreed to sell the business to Intuit for $12 billion, as announced earlier this week. "I was so mad," one employee who recently left the company tells Business Insider. "I can safely say my texts blew up and so did the Slack channel of former Mailchimp people. I think for anyone who was there for a long time and worked hard to build the company to what it is today, that was a really tough pill to swallow."

Pry Financials just raised $4.2 million to make startup finances more approachable. Founders use Pry to review their finances, monitor cash runway, and build their fundraising plan. See why more than 100 YC founders and 200 companies use Pry instead of spreadsheets for their three-year forecast.

Amolyt Pharma, a seven-year-old, Lyon, France-based developer of therapeutic peptides for rare endocrine diseases, raised $80 million in Series B funding. Sectoral Asset Management and Andera Partners co-led the round, joined by ATEM Capital and roughly a dozen earlier backers. More here.

Anjarium, a four-year-old, Zurich, Switzerland-based developer of nonviral gene therapies, has raised $61 million in Series A funding. Abingworth and GIMV co-led the round, joined by Omega Funds, Pfizer Ventures and Surveyor Capital. More here. 

Avalanche, a relatively new blockchain outfit, has completed a $230 million private sale of its tokens. Polychain and Three Arrows Capital led the investment. Other participants included R/Crypto Fund, Dragonfly, CMS Holdings, Collab+Currency and Lvna Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

CodeSignal, a 6.5-year-old, Bay Area-based technical recruiting platform, has raised $50 million in Series C funding led by Index Ventures, with participation from earlier backer Menlo Ventures, Headline (formerly known as e.ventures), and A Capital. The company has now raised $87.5 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

DeepRoute.ai, a two-year-old, Shenzhen-based autonomous driving start-up that makes hardware and software systems for vehicles, has raised $300 million in funding led by Alibaba. CNBC has more here.

Francis Medical, a three-year-old, Maple Grove, Mn.-based developer of thermal water vapor ablation therapies to treat prostate cancer, has raised $55 million in Series B funding. Solas BioVentures led the round, joined by Arboretum Ventures, Coloplast A/S, H2Oey Ventures and Tonkawa. Twin Cities Business has more here.

Mynd, a six-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based company that aims to make it easier for people to buy and manage single-family rental properties, has raised $57.3 million in funding from QED Investors. The deal values the company at $807 million and brings the company’s total funding to date to $174.9 million. Invesco Real Estate, which led its previous round, a $40 million raise, also just committed $5 billion to purchase and rent 20,000 single-family homes through Mynd over the next three years. TechCrunch has more here.

Omaze, a nine-year-old, Culver City, Ca.-based online fundraising platform for charitable giving, has raised $85 million in Series C funding. Moore Strategic Ventures led the round, joined by earlier backer FirstMark Capital, Wndrco, Telstra Ventures, Causeway Media Partners, Mockingbird Ventures, BDMI, Pegasus Ventures, Bono, Kerry Washington, Tom Brady and Alexis Ohanian. Axios has more here.

Outer, a four-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based direct-to-consumer outdoor furniture brand, just raised $50 million in Series B funding. Capital Today led the round, joined by Tribe Capital, C Ventures, Upfront Ventures and earlier investors Sequoia Capital China, Mucker Capital, Mantis VC and Reimagined Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Pine Labs, a 23-year-old, Singapore-based payments platform for merchants in India and Southeast Asia, has raised $100 million from Invesco Developing Markets Fund two months after raising $600 million at a $3 billion post-money valuation from Fidelity Management & Research Company and a handful of other investors. TechCrunch has more here. 

Rewind, a nearly 6.5-year-old Ottawa, Canada-based startup that helps businesses back up and restore their software-as-a-service and cloud data, has raised $65 million (U.S. dollars) in Series B funding. Insight Partners led the round, joined by a mix of new and earlier backers, including Bessemer Venture Partners, FundFire, Inovia Capital, Ridge Ventures, ScaleUp Ventures and Union Ventures. The company had raised $15 million in Series A funding earlier this year. VentureBeat has more here.

Self Financial, a six-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based startup that helps consumers establish and build credit history through secured installment loans and small-dollar loans, has raised $50 million in Series E funding. Altos Ventures led, and was joined by earlier investors Meritech Capital and Conductive Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Tradesy, a nine-year-old, L.A.-based online marketplace for secondhand fashion goods, has raised $67 million in Series D funding led by John Doerr's family office, Foris Ventures. The company has now raised $145 million altogether. WWD has more here.

Whatnot, a nearly two-year-old, L.A.-based startup that hosts live-streamed video sales and auctions of Pokemon cards and other collectibles, has raised $150 million in Series C funding — its third round of fundraising in 2021 alone -- at a $1.5 billion valuation. (The Information had reported last week this was coming, so it might sound familiar.) Investors include CapitalG, earlier backers Andreessen Horowitz and the Y Combinator Continuity Fund, and numerous notable individual investors, including YouTube star Jake Paul and Zion Williamson of the New Orleans Pelicans. TechCrunch has more here.

54gene, a year-old, Lekki, Nigeria-based genomics research company focused on Africans and people of African descent, has raised $25 million in Series B funding. Cathay AfricInvest Innovation Fund led the round, joined by KdT Ventures, Plexo Capital, Endeavor Catalyst, Ingressive Capital and earlier backer Adjuvant Capital, which led the company's $15 million Series A last year. TechCrunch has more here.

Axelera AI, a two-year-old, Eindhoven, Netherlands-based startup that says it's developing an AI accelerator chip, has raised $12 million in seed funding led by Bitfury (which also incubated the company). VentureBeat has more here.

Rune Labs, a 3.5-year-old, San Francisco-based developer of precision medicines for neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders, has raised $22.8 million in Series A funding led by Eclipse Ventures, with participation from DigiTx and Moment Ventures. More here. 

Skello, a five-year-old, Paris-based employee scheduling SaaS startup, has raised €40 million ($47.3 million) in funding led by Partech, with participation from earlier investors XAnge and Aglaé Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Sleeper, a six-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based fantasy sports startup, has raised $40 million in Series C funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, which also led the company's Series B round. Other earlier backers General Catalyst and Birchmere Ventures also participated. Bloomberg has more here.

The Org, a four-year-old, New York-based startup that's trying to build a publicly viewable database of company organizational charts around the globe, then use it as a platform to power other services, has raised $20 million in Series B funding. Tiger Global led the round, joined by Thursday Ventures and earlier investors Sequoia Capital, Balderton Capital, and Founders Fund, which led the company's Series A round last year. TechCrunch has more here.

California Cowboy, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based line of clothing designed to inspire after-sport social interaction (think beer holsters), just raised $2 million in seed funding led by Venn Growth Partners. More here.

Fiberplane, a year-old, Amsterdam-based early-stage startup that's building collaborative notebooks to help site reliability engineers collaborate around an incident, has raised ​​€7.5 million ($8.8 million) in seed funding. Crane Venture Partners and Notion Capital co-led the round, joined by Northzone, System.One and Basecase Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Sorcero, a four-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based language intelligence platform engineered for medical, insurance, and engineering experts in STEM industries who need more control over high-volume, complex data, has raised $10 million in Series A funding. CityRock Venture Partners and Harmonix Fund co-led the round, joined by Rackhouse, Mighty Capital, Leawood VC, and previous investors Castor Ventures and Worldquant Ventures. The company has now raised $15.4 million altogether. More here.

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The San Francisco-based venture firm 500 Startups is rebranding and closing its largest fund with $140 million in fresh capital through its 500 Startups V LP, its latest flagship vehicle. The capital takes the firm -- now called 500 Global --  to $1.8 billion in assets under management. The WSJ has more here.

Byju's, the Indian online learning platform valued most recently at around $16.5 billion, is paying about $200 million in cash and stock to acquire the eight-year-old, Los Gatos, Ca.-based coding platform Tynker as it accelerates its expansion ahead of an IPO expected next year. Bloomberg notes it will be the 10th acquisition Byju’s has made this year. Tynker had raised around $15 million from Felicis Ventures, Cervin Ventures, GSV Ventures and NEA. More here.

Invesco is in talks to merge with State Street Corp.’s asset-management business, reports the WSJ. It adds that it "isn’t clear what the terms of a potential deal would look like, but it would likely be one of the industry’s biggest in recent memory, given State Street’s asset-management unit manages nearly $4 trillion in assets."

Gogoro is going public. The company, founded 10 years ago in Taiwan and known for its electric scooters and swappable battery infrastructure, said today it will list on Nasdaq through a merger with Poema Global, a SPAC affiliated with Princeville Capital. The deal sets Gogoro’s enterprise valuation at $2.35 billion and is targeted to close in the first quarter of 2022. The combined company will be known as Gogoro and trade under the symbol GGR. TechCrunch has more here.

Lilium’s sale to a blank-check company this week generated a 29-fold return on early investor Atomico’s initial investment, an extraordinary outcome for its bet on the German air-taxi startup that hasn’t had a commercial launch yet. We talked with Atomic CEO Niklas Zennstrom shortly after his firm wrote that check and he naturally sounded confident in its prospects; now, he's being more candid about his thought process at the time. "We don't really invest in airplanes," he tells Bloomberg was his early reaction. (Atomico went on to build a 13% position in the business.) More here.

Rivian, the Amazon-backed electric vehicle maker that registered last month for a stock market debut, is aiming to raise between $5 billion and $8 billion with the listing, making it one largest U.S. IPOs of recent years, according to Reuters. 

Instagram head honcho Adam Mosseri was widely criticized today after comparing the value of social networks to society to that of cars. “We know that more people die than would otherwise because of car accidents, but by and large, cars create way more value in the world than they destroy,” Mosseri said yesterday on the Recode Media podcast. “And I think social media is similar."

Rodrigo Baer and Marco Camhaji have been brought into SoftBank Group International as managing partners focused on Latin America investments. SoftBank announced earlier this week that it has launched a new, $3 billion fund to invest more aggressively in the region. More here.

Amazon is doing it. So is Walmart. Why retail loves ‘buy now, pay later.’

The challenges and progress in the field of synthetic biology.

In a message posted on an internal employee message board today, Apple said that it was monitoring the legal challenges to what it refers to as the “uniquely restrictive abortion law” that was recently passed in Texas.

TikTok is now hiding a challenge that has students stealing everything not bolted down.

China's biggest star was just erased from the internet, but why?

This year’s longlist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction.

Signs by Michael Pederson.

A Palm Beach island that's going for $120 million -- $35 million more than it sold for in July. 😵

We've no affiliation with California Cowboy -- see in "Smaller Fundings" -- but we do own and love one of their robes. (It's is how we knew about the 🍺 holster.)

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