Chinese President Xi Jinping zeroes in on financial institutions, Netflix stands by Dave Chappelle, and the price of weather disasters

Chinese President Xi Jinping is zeroing in on the ties that China’s state banks and other financial stalwarts have developed with big private-sector players. Xi, who started his campaign late last year with a regulatory assault on the country's tech giants, is launching a sweeping round of inspections of financial institutions, says the WSJ.

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* ConsenSys, a seven-year-old, New York-based company that develops apps and tools based on Ethereum, is raising new funding at a $3 billion valuation, says the Financial Times. More here. 

* Elliptic, an eight-year-old, London-based crypto asset risk management company, has raised $60 million in Series C funding led by Evolution Equity Partners. Other participants in the round include SoftBank and earlier backers AlbionVC, Digital Currency Group, Wells Fargo, SBI Group, Octopus Ventures, SignalFire and Paladin Capital Group. Cointelegraph has more here.

* Homa Games, a three-year-old, Paris, France-based studio that produces "hypercasual" mobile games, has raised $50 million in Series A funding led by Northzone. Other participants include the founders of Singular, King and FuboTV, as well as Spotify founder Daniel Ek’s family office. VentureBeat has more here.

* Magic Leap, the 10-year-old, San Francisco-based augmented reality startup, has raised $500 million at a $2 billion valuation from existing investors, it announced today without naming those backers. The round echoes the terms of an October 2014 raise, when Magic Leap raised $542 million at a reported $2 billion valuation. "Quite a bit has happened in the meantime," notes TechCrunch. More here. 

* MoonPay, a three-year-old, Miami-based crypto payments startup that allows people to use credit cards to buy cryptocurrencies or other digital assets from marketplaces like OpenSea, is raising $400 million at a $3.4 billion valuation in its first-ever outside round funding, including to The Information. Tiger Global Management and Coatue Management are reportedly co-leading the round, joined by NEA, Thrive Capital, Paradigm and Blossom Capital are also investing in the round. More here.

* Personio, a 6.5-year-old, Munich, Germany-based maker of HR software for small and medium-size companies, has $270 million in new funding led by Greenoaks Capital Partners, with participation from Altimeter Capital, Alkeon, and earlier investors Index Ventures, Accel, Meritech, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Northzone and Global Founders Capital. The company's valuation jumps to $6.3 billion in the deal; it was assigned a $1.7 billion valuation by its investors back in January. TechCrunch has more here.

* SkyCell, an eight-year-old Swiss company whose smart containers allow pharmaceutical companies to predict, reduce, and control the risks associated with transporting temperature-sensitive drug, has added $35 million in funding to a Series C round that had closed with $62 million last year. The equity and debt funding includes investors in the Middle East, including DisruptAD, which is the venture arm of an Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund, and SHUAA, a UAE asset management and investment banking firm. TechCrunch has more here.

* Swile, a five-year-old, Paris, France-based company centered around payment cards for employee benefits like meals and ride-share services to and from the office, has raised $200 million in Series D funding. SoftBank led the round, joined by earlier investors Eurazeo, Index Ventures and Bpifrance. TechCrunch has more here.

* Wiz, a two-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.- and Israel-based cloud security platform, raised $250 million in Series C funding at a $6 billion valuation -- up from the $1.8 billion valuation it was assigned during its last round just four months ago. Greenoaks and Insight Partners co-led the financing, joined by Sequoia Capital and Salesforce Ventures. The Times of Israel has more here.

* Ambition, an eight-year-old, Chattanooga, Tn.-based gamified sales management platform, has raised $15.5 million in Series B funding led by Primus Capital. VentureBeat has more here.

* Copia Automation, a 14-month-old, New York-based company that's creating developer tools for industrial automation (it was founded by a former senior software engineer at Uber), has raised $14.2 million. Lux Capital led the round, joined by Ironspring Ventures and earlier backer Construct Capital. More here.

* Fount, a six-year-old, South Korea-based robo-advisor startup in South Korea, has raised $33.4 million in Series C funding led by Hana Financial Investment. Other participants in the round include Nice Investment and earlier backers Smilegate Investment, KT Investment, Shinhan Capital and Korea Development Bank. The company has now raised $58.5 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

* Mono, a 15-month-old, Lagos, Nigeria-based fintech that connects bank accounts to financial apps, has raised $15 million in Series A funding. Tiger Global led the round, joined by a mix of new and earlier backers, including Target Global, General Catalyst, SBI Investment, Entree Capital, Lateral Capital, GPIC, Acuity VC and Ingressive Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

* SigmaSense, a six-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based company that's trying to solve the noise immunity and tuning challenges of traditional touch sensors, says it has raised $24 million in funding. More here.

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* Costanoa Ventures, a nine-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.has closed its fourth fund with $225 million in capital commitments, shows a new SEC filing. The outfit had closed its third fund with $175 million roughly four years ago. More here.

* FoodLabs, a five-year-old, Berlin, Germany-based outfit, says it has €100 million in funding to invest in food, health and sustainability startups. TechCrunch has more here.

* Newark Venture Partners, a six-year-old, Newark, N.J.-based, early-stage venture outfit, has closed its second fund with $85 million to continue investing in seed-stage B2B software companies nationwide. Forbes has more here.

* Andreessen Horowitz's crypto unit has brought aboard Riyaz Faizullabhoy and Nassim Eddequiouaq as CTO and CISO respectively to consult with portfolio companies and help them stay a step ahead when it comes to security practices. Previously, the two co-created the crypto custody infrastructure for the Novi/Calibra project at Facebook. More here.

* Microsoft and Amazon reached an agreement that clears the way for former Amazon Web Services executive Charlie Bell to start his new job leading a newly formed cybersecurity engineering organization inside the Redmond tech company. GeekWire has more here.

* Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said today at a conference that he personally thinks bitcoin is "worthless" but conceded that, "Our clients are adults. They disagree. If they want to have access to buy or sell bitcoin – we can't custody it – but we can give them legitimate, as clean as possible access." CNBC has more here.

* Frances Haugen said today she will meet with Facebook's Oversight Board in the coming week. Tweeted Haugen about accepting the board's invitation: "Facebook has lied to the board repeatedly, and I am looking forward to sharing the truth with them." Axios has more here.

* Paul Lee has joined Tribe Capital in San Francisco as a partner. Lee was most recently an advisor to 8VC and has logged time previously at Afore Capital and Global Founders Capital. More here.

* Venture capitalist David Skok has bought the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s Palm Beach estate, which sold this week for $25.845 million, according to the WSJ. Skok, a partner at Matrix Partners, reportedly purchased the waterfront property through a trust; the seller was real-estate developer Todd Michael Glaser, who bought the compound for $18.5 million in March, then demolished the existing house and listed the vacant lot in May for $29.95 million.

This year's disastrous weather events have so far cost the US an estimated $104.8 billion in damages.

Most Americans haven't sent or received a personal letter in more than five years(!), according to a CBS News survey.

* China is not alone — India is also teetering on the edge of a power crisis.

* Amazon no longer plans to bring corporate employees back to the office en masse in early January but will instead leave the decisions to individual team leaders at the director level, CEO Andy Jassy told employees this morning. As GeekWire notes, this means there won’t be a companywide expectation regarding the number of days that corporate employees work in the office. More here.

* All Twitter users can now remove a follower without having to block them, a feature that the platform began testing last month. Engadget has more here.

A massive, Byzantine-era winery has been discovered in Israel.

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos says the company is not taking down Dave Chappelle's controversial new comedy.

The Piech GT electric couple. Available in 2024 with any luck.

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