LinkedIn backs out of China, Coinbase preps its pitch for new oversight, and Tesla dives into insurance sales

* Microsoft’s LinkedIn said today that it's shutting down the version of its professional-networking site that operates in China, marking the "end of the last major American social-media network operating openly in the country," notes the WSJ. LinkedIn said it made the decision after “facing a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China.”

* Coinbase wants Congress to block the SEC from overseeing the nascent industry and instead create a special regulator for digital assets, according to a policy blueprint reviewed by the WSJ. The cryptocurrency exchange, which has feuded with U.S. regulators in recent months, plans to publicly release a document with proposals for crypto regulation. More here.

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If China once seemed to be committed to the free market economy, over the course of 2021, it has shattered that illusion entirely by abruptly disempowering its own tech companies and turning up the dials on media censorship at the direction of a president who, three years ago, oversaw the erasure of presidential limits from the country’s constitution. (These were a short-lived experiment, in any case, given that China has been “dominated for thousands of years by absolute monarchs,” as NPR noted at the time, with term limits first introduced in the 1980s.)

The U.S., and Silicon Valley in particular, needs to be paying much closer attention to this consolidation of power, suggests Jacob Helberg, who is co-chair of the Brookings Institution China Strategy Initiative, a former senior adviser to Stanford’s Cyber Policy Institute and a former news policy lead at Google. (He was also an adviser to U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg during his presidential campaign.) In a gripping new book titled “The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power,” Helberg lays out how China’s “techno-totalitarian” regime may be first impacting the Chinese people (its “first victims,” he says), but why its efforts to increasingly control the software and the hardware of the internet are a real and present and fast-escalating danger to the U.S. and democracies everywhere.

Indeed, he says, one need look no further than India — which seemed to receive a warning by the Chinese government last year when the power went out in a city of 20 million people — of what could be coming to the U.S. absent drastic and unified action on the part of private industry and the federal government. He talked to us yesterday in a chat that has been edited for length.

You started your job at Google, focusing on its global news policies, just ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Given that so much attention was paid at the time to Russia and its misinformation campaigns, I’m surprised you didn’t write a book about U.S.-Russia relations.

More here.

* Dutchie, a four-year-old, Bend, Ore.-based cannabis e-commerce platform, has raised $350 million at a $3.75 billion valuation. D1 Capital led the round, joined by earlier backers Tiger Global, Dragoneer, DFJ Growth, Thrive Capital and Casa Verde Capital. The company has now raised more than $600 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here. 

* Juni, a 1.5-year-old, Gothenburg, Sweden-based neobank for e-commerce companies, has raised $52 million extended Series A funding several months after initially closing the round with $21.5 million in Series A funding. EQT Ventures led the round, joined by earlier backers DST Global, Felix Capital, and Cherry Ventures. Pymnts has more here. 

* Impartner, a 24-year-old, South Jordan, Ut.-based partner relationship management platform that was acquired in 2015 by Kennet Partners, raised $50 million in new funding. Brighton Park Capital led, and was joined by earlier backers Savant Growth, Emergence Capital Partners and Golub Capital. More here.

* Outschool, a nearly seven-year-old, San Francisco-based marketplace for kid-friendly enrichment classes, has raised $110 million in Series D funding in a round that brings its valuation to $3 billion just four months after hitting unicorn status. Earlier backer Tiger Global led the round, joined by Bond, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Union Square Ventures, Reach Capital, Coatue, FundersClub, and SV Angel. TechCrunch has more here. 

* Reliable Robotics, a four-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based maker of remotely piloted cargo planes, has raised $100 million in Series C funding led by Coatue Management. Altogether, the company has now raised $130 million, including from Lightspeed Venture Parters, Eclipse Ventures, Teamworthy Ventures and Pathbreaker Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

* The SpringHill Company, an L.A.-based content production group co-founded just last year by LeBron James and sports marketing exec Maverick Carter, announced today that it has sold a "significant minority stake" to an investor group at a $725 million valuation. Investors in the new round include Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird Capital, which led the round, Nike, Boston Red Sox owner Fenway Sports Group and video game studio Epic Games. James and Carter will remain majority owners of the company. The Hollywood Reporter has more here.

* Tala, a 10-year-old, L.A.-based emerging markets digital lender that offers loans between $10 to $500 to consumers and small business owners, has raised $145 million in Series E funding. Upstart, the now publicly traded U.S. focused lending platform founded by former Google exec Dave Girouard, led the round, joined by Stellar Development Foundation and earlier investors IVP, Revolution Growth, and Lowercase Capital. The company has now raised $350 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

* Vuori, a six-year-old, Encinitas, Ca.-based activewear brand, has raised $400 million in funding at a $4 billion valuation from SoftBank Vision Fund 2. SoftBank is the second institutional investor to back Vuori, following Norwest Venture Partners, which invested in the company in 2019. WWD has more here.

* Zeus Living, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based company that partners with homeowners to manage their properties and rent them out for 30-day-or-longer stays, has just raised $55 million in new funding. SIG led the round, joined by Initialized Capital, CEAS Investments, TI Platform, NFX, Opendoor’s Eric Wu and Miras. The company has now raised $125 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

* Karma, a seven-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based AI shopping assistant and shopping network, has raised $25 million in Series A funding led by Target Global, with participation from MoreTech Ventures and earlier investors like NFX and Altair Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

* MagicCube, a seven-year-old, Santa Clara, Ca.-based mobile security startup that's aiming to replace the security chips that have historically been the standard for safely storing sensitive data and authenticating whoever needs access to it, has raised $15 million in funding led by Mosaik Partners. Bold Capital, Epic Ventures, card-reader/POS hardware maker ID Tech and unnamed individual investors. The outfit has now raised $30 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

* Mayd, a 10-month-old, Berlin, Germany-based telepharmacy platform that says it can quickly deliver medications and other goods to users' doorsteps, has raised €13 million ($15 million) in seed funding from 468 Capital, Earlybird and Target Global. TechCrunch has more here.

* Space Perspective, a two-year-old, Orlando, Fla.-based startup that plans to offer rides to the stratosphere using a capsule attached to a large balloon, has raised $40 million in Series A funding. Prime Movers Lab led the round, joined by LightShed Ventures, the Explorer 1 Fund and Yamauchi no.10 Family Office, with added participation from numerous others. TechCrunch has more here.

* Agreena, a three-year-old, Copenhagen-based that mints, verifies and sells carbon credits generated by farmers who transition to more regenerative forms of farming, has raised $4.7 million in seed funding led by Giant Ventures, along with the Danish government’s Danish Green Future Fund. TechCrunch has more here.

* Copy.ai, a year-old, Memphis, Tn.-based startup whose GPT-3 AI-powered platform makes copywriting tools for business customers, has raised $11 million in Series A funding led by Wing Venture Capital, with participation from earlier investors Craft Ventures and Sequoia Capital and new investors Tiger Global and Elad Gil. This follows a $2.9 million seed round announced in March and brings the company’s total funding to $13.9 million. TechCrunch has more here.

* EngFlow, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based company looking to speed up the compiling of large code projects (the CEO was most recently an engineering manager at Google), has raised $3.7 million in seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from firstminute Capital, Alchemist Accelerator and various angels. TechCrunch has more here.

* Spice AI, a six-month-old, Seattle-based startup that aims to make it significantly easier for developers to leverage AI in their applications (and whose CEO spent a decade with Microsoft), has raised $1 million in seed funding from Madrona Venture Group, Picus Capital, TA Ventures and angels like GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich. TechCrunch has more here.

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* At One Ventures, a two-year-old, Bay Area-based venture firm, has closed its debut fund with $150 million in capital commitments, money it says will fund startups that are innovating in the technical hardware space and specializing in environmentally positive technology. TechCrunch has more here.

* Evolution Equity Partners, a 13-year-old, New York-based venture firm, has closed a new, $400 million fund that it say it will use to invest in cybersecurity and enterprise software companies. The firm, which also has outposts in Palo Alto, London and Zurich, says it has made 12 investments from the new fund so far, that it expects to fund up to 25 companies with the capital, and that check sizes should range from $10 million to $50 million. TechCrunch has more here.

* Inovia Capital, a 20-year-old, Montreal-based venture firm, raised $334 million for a continuity fund. According to BetaKit, new limited partner, BlackRock’s Secondaries and Liquidity Solutions group, co-led the fund with earlier investor HarbourVest Partners. Long-time investor Northleaf Capital Partners also participated in the fund, as did Hollyport Capital and Kensington Capital Partners.

* Thomson Reuters is launching a $100 million corporate VC fund focused on legal, tax, accounting and news media startups. Reuters has more here.

* Riot Games has acquired the three-year-old, New York-based interactive media technology start-up Kanga, whose team will join Riot’s Global Digital Esports group, where it will focus on developing digital fandom features and experiences for fans of Riot’s esports. Terms of the deal aren't being disclosed. Kanga raised outside funding from BAM Ventures, Courtside Ventures, Tusk Ventures, Point72 Ventures, Oceans Ventures, Cassius Family, Dune Ventures and SV Angel (though how much isn't known). More here.

* Slinger, a four-year-old sports brand that makes a tennis ball launcher that looks like a rolling travel bag, says it has agreed to acquire Israel’s PlaySight in a share swap transaction valued at $82 million. The Israeli company had raised $36 million and its investors include SoftBank Ventures Asia, NAVER, OurCrowd, Bill Ackman, as well tennis players Novak Djokovic, Billie Jean King, and Pete Sampras. Calcalist has more here. 

* SumUp, a European-based competitor to Square and others that provide mobile-powered card readers and sales technology to merchants and small businesses, has made an acquisition in the U.S. to dig deeper into that market and expand the services that it provides to customers, buying Fivestars, which provides loyalty, marketing, payments and other services to small merchants. London-based SumUp said it will be paying $317 million in a combination of cash and stock for the San Francisco startup, which, according to the companies, is used by some 70 million consumers and 12,000 businesses in the U.S. TechCrunch has more here.

* The founders of Forge Global, an online marketplace for buying and selling shares of private firms, are launching a new money manager that invests in startups before they go public. The D/XYZ, has raised $100 million for its first investment portfolio, Destiny Tech100, and aims to list it publicly as a closed-end exchange-traded fund, says cofounder, Sohail Prasad. The WSJ has more here. The round follows an early seed round that we told you about in June.

* Pinterest has announced co-founder Evan Sharp is exiting his full-time role with the company, where he’s served as chief design & creative officer, in order to join Jony Ive at his new creative collective, LoveFrom. TechCrunch has more here.

* Tesla just jumped into the insurance game, offering a product that uses real-time driving behavior.

* Twitter is being sued for allowing Saudi spies inside the company.

* Virgin Galactic's shares plummeted after the company said in a press release today that it will again delay commercial spaceflights, this time until the fourth quarter of next year.

* The second-largest U.S. mortgage lender is ditching plans to accept payments in bitcoin after piloting crypto payments in August in an industry first. “Due to the current combination of incremental costs and regulatory uncertainty in the crypto space we’ve concluded we aren’t going to extend beyond a pilot at this time,” said a spokesperson for United Wholesale Mortgage.

* Adele is back with "Easy on Me."

* McPlant patties are coming to McDonalds.

* How to make a Michigander.

* No more martinis, barbaric doctors tell Queen.

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