Apple's iPhone production, Coinbase new plans for an NFT marketplace, and an early look at "Narcos: Mexico"

iPhone fanatics may be out of luck this holiday season. Apple is likely to slash its projected iPhone 13 production targets for 2021 by as many as 10 million units owing to prolonged chip shortages, according to Bloomberg. Apple shares slipped as much as 1.6% to $139.27 in late trading after the news broke. More here.

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Many more investment firms are tracking #cryptotwitter than might have been the case even a year ago, but True Ventures isn't necessarily among them, suggests cofounder Jon Callaghan. As with hardware, synthetic biology, and a lot of other areas where True has made early and often lucrative bets, True was pulled into the world of digital assets back in 2014 largely by founders it backed previously and who have increasingly moved into this brave new realm. There are a lot of them. Callaghan says that of the 388 founders in the "active" True Ventures portfolio, 55 are currently working on digital assets.

Investing in some of these tokens and protocols and DAOs -- decentralized autonomous organizations with no central leadership but instead a community that's organized around a specific set of rules -- isn't for the faint of heart. But that's kind of the idea. Like a lot of early investors in the space, Callaghan is counting on a willingness to leap into the great abyss to produce outsize returns in the future. He likens investing in decentralized assets to more traditional venture investing, with a major "asterisk."

As he explains it, "We're always looking at people, people, people, then market, then tech." With digital assets, there is a comparatively new facet, "which is the structure, which is totally different." While some deals may involve good-old fashioned equity, in other cases, True "might be buying rights to token sales, and tokens are also different because they might have governance rights or voting rights or vesting [schedules] or lock-ups," he says. Or, they might not.

Of course, Callaghan isn't crazy. Though the firm's limited partners are pleased that early investments that made them nervous -- including in Bitcoin and Ethereum -- now look prescient, True's team knows what it doesn't know, which is why it just brought aboard Gus Coldebella to focus on global public policy and regulation.

More here.

* Alviere, a four-year-old, New York-based embedded finance startup that aims to help any brand deliver financial products and services to its customers and employees, has raised $70 million in Series B funding from backers like Viola Ventures, CommerzVentures and North Coast Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

* Bolt Financial, a seven-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that’s trying to bring Amazon’s speedy one-click checkout to the rest of the internet, has raised $393 million in its latest round to bring total funding to $600 million. Untitled Investments, created by former Tiger Global investor Neeraj Chandra, participated in the round, which brings the company's valuation up to $6 billion up from the $850 million valuation investors had assigned it in December of last year. Bloomberg has more here.

* Bond Vet, a three-year-old, New York-based vet clinic chain, raised $170 million from Warburg Pincus. TechCrunch has more here.

* CarDekho, a 14-year-old, Jaipur, India-based search and e-commerce platform for new and used cars, has raised $250 million — $200 million in equity and $50 million in debt — in its Series E financing round. Canyon Partners, Mirae Asset, Franklin Templeton, Harbor Spring Capital also participated, along with earlier investors Sequoia Capital India and Sunley House. TechCrunch has more here.

* Hailo, a nearly five-year-old, Israel-based company that makes edge-device chips customized to work with AI workloads — typical implementations include smart cities, retail environments, industrial settings and next-generation automotive systems — has raised $136 million in Series C funding. Poalim Equity and Gil Agmon co-led the round. The company has now raised some $224 million to date and is valued at around $1 billion, says TechCrunch.

* Hubilo, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based virtual and hybrid events platform that says it delivers access to real-time data and analytics, has raised $125 million in funding led by Alkeon Capital. Lightspeed Venture Partners and Balderton Capital, which co-led the company's $23.5 million Series A earlier this year, also participated in the Series B round. TechCrunch has more here.

* Open, a four-year-old, Bangalore-based fintech startup that integrates all the tools used by small businesses and integrates it with its own business banking services platform, has raised $100 million in new funding led by Temasek. Other participants include Google, Visa, and Japan's SBI Investment, along with earlier investors Tiger Global and 3one4 Capital. The fundraising will close in the coming weeks, reports the Economic Times. 

* Plume, a six-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based SaaS company that provides smart WiFi services for personal households and small businesses by selling direct-to-consumer or through ISP partners, has raised $300 million in new rounding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. This round brings the company’s valuation to $2.6 billion, with $697 million raised to date. More here. 

* AceCann, a two-year-old, Lisbon, Portugal-based medical cannabis company focused on cultivation, processing, and extraction, has raised $15 million in seed funding led by Casa Verde Capital, with participation from the Portuguese venture capital firm Lince Capital, among others. Benzinga has more here.

* AmplifAI, a five-year-old, Plano, Tex.-based SaaS platform that plugs into a variety of company data sources to analyze employee performance and deliver personalized suggestions, has raised $12.5 million in Series A funding led by Greycroft, with participation from LiveOak Venture Partners, Dallas Venture Partners and Capital Factory. The company has also secured $6 million in venture debt from Comerica Bank. VentureBeat has more here. 

* Atomic, a two-year-old, Salt Lake City, Ut.-based fintech startup that builds infrastructure for connecting payroll accounts, has raised $22 million in Series A funding led by Core Innovation Capital. The company has now raised just less than $39 million to date. TechCrunch has more here.

* Convex, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based software platform that says it gives commercial real estate teams a 360-degree view of more than 62 million commercial properties across the nation -- including building attributes, permit history, property ownership, customer information, asset details, and tenant and contact information -- has raised $39 million in Series B financing. The round was led by Fifth Wall, Emergence Capital, and GGV, with participation from UP2398, 1984 Ventures, and Soma Capital, among others. More here. 

* FitOn, a nearly-four-year-old, L.A.-based digital fitness startup, has raised $18 million in Series B funding. Delta-v Capital led the round, joined by Accel, Telstra Ventures, Crosscut Ventures, Maverick Ventures and Second Avenue Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

* Nelo, a 2.5-year-old, Mexico City, Mexico-based company that has joined the buy-now-pay-later fray with a mobile app that enables Mexican consumers to make purchases without a credit card, has raised $20 million in funding led by Two Sigma Ventures. Earlier backers Homebrew, Susa Ventures, Crossbeam also joined the round, along with investor Anthony Pompliano. TechCrunch has more here.

* ResQ, a three-year-old, Toronto, Canada-based restaurant equipment repair startup that says it already works with 4,000 restaurant groups, has raised $39 million in Series A funding. Tiger Global and Canvas Ventures co-led the round, joined by Homebrew, Inovia Capital and Golden Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

* Crabi, a nearly five-year-old, Guadalajara, Mexico-based auto insurance startup, has raised $4 million in seed funding led by Kaszek Ventures, with participation from Tuesday Capital and Redwood Ventures. The Rio Times has more here.

* FloCareer, a three-year-old, Bangalore, India-based skills validation platform that provides an "interview as a service" to its enterprise customers, has raised $5.7 million in funding led by Data Point Capital, with participation from Uncorrelated Ventures and Orios Venture Partners. More here.

* FourFront, a two-year-old, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based startup creating fictional storylines with actors on TikTok, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding from Bam Ventures, Slow Ventures, BDMI, Alumni Ventures Group and HustleFund. TechCrunch has more here.

* FruitScout, a two-year-old, Yakima, Wa.-based startup whose app promises to help farmers anticipate (and improve) the yield of their fruit trees by, among other things, analyzing their buds, has raised $4 million in funding from Bowery Capital and TFX Capital. More here.

* Humming Homes, a nearly two-year-old, New York-based residential property management platform, has raised $5.6 million in new seed funding. Greycroft led the round,  joined by Thrive Capital, Sound Ventures and New Valley Ventures. More here.

* Sequential Skin, a three-year-old, London- and Singapore-based biotech company that says it's using genomics and the skin's microbiome to identify the best skin products suited for individuals, has raised $1.65 million in seed funding led by Metaplanet, with participation from Scrum Ventures, SOSV, Genedant, and angel investor Ben Holmes. More here.

* Violet, a nearly five-year-old, Seattle-based startup whose “universal commerce API” enables online retailers to sell products directly inside apps on various content platforms, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Klarna, with participation from Sugar Capital, Lachy Groom, and earlier backer Red Sea Ventures, which led the startup’s $3 million seed round a few months ago. More here.

* WattBuy, a 4.5-year-old, New York-based startup that promises consumers actionable intelligence about their electricity usage, has raised $10 million in extended Series A funding led by SE Ventures, a venture fund backed by Schneider Electric, along with MCJ Collective. Earlier investors also participating in this tranche -- which brings this Series A round to $13.25 million -- include Evergy Ventures, Updater, Powerhouse Ventures, Techstars Ventures, Avesta Fund and entrepreneur Yoav Lurie. More here.

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* 2150, a two-year-old, London-based venture firm, has closed its debut fund with $312 million in capital commitments, including from Credit Suisse and the BMW Foundation. The outfit is focused on startups that reduce urban carbon emissions or otherwise make cities more efficient and sustainable. TechCrunch has more here. 

* ACME Capital, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based venture firm co-led by Scott Stanford and Hany Nada, is raising $225 million for a new early-stage fund and $100 million for an opportunities fund, according to two separate SEC filings first flagged by Axios; they're here and here. 

* Angular Ventures, a three-year-old, London-based deeptech venture firm founded by former DFJ Espirit partner Gil Dibner, has raised $80 million in capital commitments for its second fund, roughly two years after closing its debut effort with $41 million. The outfit has also brought aboard early Airtable employee David Peterson as a partner. More here.

* DFJ Growth has closed its fourth fund with nearly $1 billion in capital commitments, it announced today. The vehicle has already backed nine companies, including Alchemy, Hopin, and NotCo. Along the new fund, the outfit has brought aboard Justin Kao as a new partner. Kao previously worked briefly at Khosla Ventures after cofounding a population genomics company called Helix. DFJ Growth also promised two members of its team -- Sam Shapiro and Kevin Tu -- to principal. More here.

* Paradigm, the 3.5-year-old, San Francisco-based crypto-focused investment firm co-led by Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam and former Sequoia Capital partner Matt Huang, is reportedly raising a new, $1.5 billion fund. CoinDesk has the story here.

Matthew Mizbani has joined by the crypto-focused investment firm as a Paradigm from the hedge fund Coatue Management, reports The Block. He previously worked at Morgan Stanley and Two Sigma. More here.

Facebook is hiring a "VC Partner" for a business development role. The job is in Menlo Park, Ca.

* Coinbase is readying the launch of an NFT marketplace that will compete with existing major players in the space like OpenSea, debuting a user waitlist for the desktop product that it hopes to launch by the end of the year. (This one sounds complicated for Katie Haun of Andreessen Horowitz, who sits on the boards of both OpenSea and Coinbase.) TechCrunch has more here.

* Payments company Stripe has begun assembling a crypto engineering team to chart its future in digital assets. The team – described in LinkedIn posts and job listings – will be run by Guillaume Poncin, Stripe’s former head of engineering for banking and financial products. He is looking to hire at least four staffers to help plot Stripe’s crypto strategy, observes Coindesk. More here.

* A new California law will limit the ability of nonbanks to charge overdraft fees by effectively banning the deposit of state public assistance funds into certain accounts that feature the charges. The law, signed by California Governor Gavin Newsom today, is likely to affect both payday lenders that offer debit cards and neobanks. It is aimed at broadening existing overdraft-fee limitations on prepaid cards. Supporters say the law will limit the ability of companies to exploit a loophole in a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule that took effect in 2019 and restricted overdraft fees on prepaid cards, says American Banker.

A brief survey of Timothee's "Chala-meh" style.

"Narcos: Mexico" is coming. Here's a trailer.

Ride in a Belmond British Pullman carriage designed by Wes Anderson.

A moving work of art.

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