Rivian reels, Peloton plunges, and New York's Eric Adams goes for the (digital) gold

Tesla and Hertz are reportedly negotiating over how quickly Hertz will receive deliveries from a bulk order of 100,000 Tesla electric cars for its rental fleet, says the WSJ. According to its sources, Hertz's October 25 press release, stating that it had placed “an initial order of 100,000 Teslas by the end of 2022," surprised some Tesla officials who'd been expecting to deliver 10,000 vehicles a year to Hertz. (Someone is getting fired and/or investigated.) More here.

Peloton today cut its annual revenue forecast by as much as $1 billion, sending its shares -- already down 43% this year -- down another 30%. Peloton said it underestimated the impact of the world reopening. We're wondering if Tonal, reportedly readying an IPO, gets tarred with the same brush. More here.

Square, the digital-payments company run by Jack Dorsey, reported disappointing third-quarter sales, held back by a drop in Bitcoin-related revenue from its Cash App compared with the previous period. Bloomberg has more here.

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Goodly, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based startup, has been steadily building its business with a five-person team and not much funding — $1.5 million secured in 2019 and, more recently, an undisclosed amount of funding from Beth Axelrod, a longtime HR exec and the global head of employee experience at Airbnb.

The startup, which aims to make it dead simple for companies to offer tax-free student loan repayment as an employee benefit, is profitable. It has exclusive relationships with numerous brokers, including insurer NFP and the much larger Willis Towers Watson. Still, its product wasn’t exactly top of mind during the pandemic, when enterprises became consumed with remote work and trying to ensure their employees’ mental well-being.

Sailing into 2022, that could be changing for two reasons. One ties to a provision within the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 that allows employers to contribute up to an annual maximum of $5,250 per employee to repay student debt. Those contributions from the company are tax deductible for employers but also are excluded from taxable income for employees, which will seemingly give companies a much larger financial incentive to provide them.

Second, after more than 20 months of temporary student loan forbearance for millions of student loan borrowers, student loan relief is ending on January 31, which means that beginning in February, federal loan payments will resume with their normal (and normally onerous) interest rates. That means an issue that has been shelved for some time will suddenly jump to the forefront, and in a competitive job market, companies would probably be wise to take note.

More here.

* AscendEX, a three-year-old, Singapore-based crypto trading platform formerly known as BitMax, has raised $50 million in Series B funding co-led by Polychain Capital and Hack VC. Other participants in the round include Jump Capital, Alameda Research, Uncorrelated Ventures, Eterna Capital, Acheron Trading, Nothing Research, and Palm Drive Capital. Decrypt has more here.

* Cloudbeds, a nearly nine-year-old, San Diego, Ca.-based maker of hospitality management software, has raised $150 million in new funding led by SoftBank, with participation from Echo Street, Walleye Capital and earlier backers Viking Global Investors, PeakSpan Capital and Counterpart Ventures. The San Diego Union-Tribune has more here.

* Fountain, a year-old, San Francisco-based "high-volume" automated gig and hourly hiring platform, has raised $85 million in Series C funding. SoftBank led, and was joined by B Capital Group, Mirae Investment and earlier investors DCM, Origin Ventures, Commerce Ventures, Semper Virens and Uncork Capital. The latest funding round gives Fountain total funding to date of $119 million. TechCrunch has more here.

* Momenta, a five-year-old, Chinese self-driving startup, raised $200 million from backers like SAIC Motor Corp. and billionaire Jack Ma’s Yunfeng Capital. The new money takes the total raised by the company -- founded by AI engineers from Microsoft Research Asia -- to about $1.2 billion, says Bloomberg. More here.

* Mythical Games, a three-year-old, L.A.-based NFT games startup that's focused around “playable NFTs,” using NFT technology to uniquely identify game characters so players can truly own them, has raised $150 million at a $1.25 billion valuation just a few months after raising $75 million in Series B funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the new round, joined by D1 Capital, FTX, Binance, Raine Group, 32 Equity, Mantis VC, OneTeam Partners and The Kraft Group. VentureBeat has more here.

* Papa, a 4.5-year-old, Miami-based platform that offers care and companionship to seniors, has raised $150 million in Series D funding. SoftBank led the round, joined by TCG, Tiger Global, Canaan Partners, Initialized Capital and Seven Seven Six. The company had raised $60 million in Series C just eight months ago led by Tiger. MobiHealth News has more here.

* Parthenon Therapeutics, a two-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based biotech that's developing anti-cancer therapies to forge an attack on the protective barrier that shields tumors from the immune system, has raised $65 million in Series A funding. Northpond Ventures, Pfizer Ventures and Taiho Ventures co-led the round, joined by Section 32, Breakout Ventures, Tekla Capital Management, Creacion Ventures, KdT Ventures, Park West Asset Management and Alexandria Venture Investments. FierceBiotech has more here.

* Plate IQ, a seven-year-old, San Francisco-based maker of accounts payable automation software for restaurants, has raised $160 million in Series B funding led by FTV Capital. More here.

* PubNub, an 11-year-old, San Francisco-based provider of APIs for app messaging and data updates, has raised $65 million in Series E funding. Raine Group led the round,  joined by Sapphire Ventures, Scale Ventures, HPE and Bosch. TechCrunch has more here.

* Sama, a 13-year-old, San Francisco-based AI training data platform, just raised $70 million in Series B funding. Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec led the round, joined by First Ascent Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Vistara Growth, and all of the company's earlier backers. TechCrunch has more here.

* Treasure Data, a 10-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based enterprise customer data platform, has raised $234 million in funding SoftBank led, and was joined by Carbide Ventures, an investment firm founded by Treasure Data’s founders and longtime executives. VentureBeat has more here.

* Babylist, a 10-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based online registry for baby stuff that also features parenting content, has raised $40 million in Series C funding led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from Halogen Ventures, 500 Global, Next Play Capital, and Marcy Venture Partners. Forbes has more here.

* GRObio, a five-year-old, Boston-based developer of protein therapeutics for diabetes, growth disorders and autoimmunity that was co-founded by George Church of Harvard Medical School, has raised $25 million in Series A funding. Bayer and Redmile Group co-led, and were joined by Innovation Endeavors and Digitalis Ventures. MedCity News has more here. 

* Neuro-ID, a seven-year-old, Whitefish, Mt.-based analytics platform capturing real-time customer behavior so digital organizations can understand the intent of customers, has raised $35 million in Series B funding. Canapi Ventures led the round, joined by earlier inverstors Fin VC and TTV Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

* Propelo, a two-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based engineering optimization platform, has raise $12 million in Series A funding led by Decibel Partners. Fika Ventures, Eniac Ventures and Fathom Capital also participated in the round. TechCrunch has more here.

* Bite Ninja, a nearly two-year-old, Memphis, Tn.-based tech startup that enables a restaurant's so-called "ninjas" to work from a location of their choice and appear on-screen at menu boards in drive-throughs or counters to smooth the order and delivery process, has raised $4 million in funding led by Owl Ventures. This one sounds kind of wild; for what it's worth, it was cofounded by Will Clem, who earlier cofounded the cultured meat company Memphis Meats. More here.

* Blotout, a two-year-old, Fremont, Ca.-based privacy-focused customer data platform, raised $3 million in seed funding. First Rays Venture Partners led the round, joined by Y Combinator, Pascal Capital, Launchpad and Sung Ho Choi. TechCrunch has more here.

* Osmoses, a six-month-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based developer of membrane technology for gas separations, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by The Engine, with participation from Fine Structure Ventures, Orbia Ventures and Little Green Bamboo. More here.

* WhyLabs, a two-year-old, Seattle-based machine learning startup that helps data teams monitor the health of their AI models and the data pipeline, has raised $10 million in Series A funding co-led by Defy Partners and Andrew Ng’s AI Fund. Earlier investors Madrona Venture Group and Bezos Expeditions also joined the round. TechCrunch has more here.

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* UpWest, a 10-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based venture firm that specializes in funding and supporting Israeli founders who are looking to enter the U.S. market early in their startup’s life, has closed its fourth fund with $70 million in capital commitments. TechCrunch has more here.

* Tectonic Ventures, a five-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based early-stage, enterprise-focused venture firm, has garnered $87 million in capital commitments for its second fund, shows an SEC filing. More here.

* SciFounders, a Bay Area-based accelerator program and fund launched back in January with $6 million in backing, has a new proposition for the scientist founders who it looks to help run their own companies. It plans to give some of the teams it funds the voting rights that would normally come with its investment. We have more here.

HashiCorp, a San Francisco-based maker of multi-cloud infrastructure automation software, has filed to go public, listing the size of its offering in a regulatory filing as $100 million, a placeholder amount that will likely change. According to Bloomberg's sources, the company is aiming for a valuation of up to $20 billion in its listing and could look to raise more than $1 billion. According to HashiCorp's S-1, its biggest outside shareholders are Entities affiliated with Mayfield, GGV Capital, Redpoint, and True Ventures.

More SaaS companies are shifting to usage-based pricing. So suggest the results of an annual survey conducted by the Boston-based venture firm OpenView. Of the nearly 600 SaaS companies that responded, 45% said they're using a flexible pricing model, up from 34% just last year. TechCrunch has more here.

* Since winning office, New York City mayor-elect Eric Adams has been throwing down with Miami Mayor Francis Suarez in a battle over who can most effectively transform their respective city into the nation's crypto capital. Now both are talking about taking their pay in bitcoin.

* Sequoia Capital partners Roelof Botha and Neil Shen are in line to run Sequoia, whose global head is currently Doug Leone. The transition will occur between 2022 and 2023, after the firm turns 50, sources tell Business Insider. (We heard this was in the works as long as a year ago, so don't doubt preparations are being made.) More here.

* Not to depress you, but: Bill Gates, who predicted that an infectious virus was likely to kill millions of people across the globe years ahead of Covid-19, said this week that he believes bioterrorism is imminent and that government agencies around the globe would be wise to play "germ games," wherein they think-through scenarios of another pandemic catastrophe.

* Shares of Penn National Gaming fell more than 20% today, following an investigative piece in Business Insider in which several women alleged that they had “violent and humiliating” sexual encounters with Dave Portnoy, president of Barstool Sports. Penn National, which operates casinos, racetracks and online sports betting, owns a significant equity stake in Barstool. 

* "Lisa Peterson, who handles investments for Michigan’s wealthy DeVos family, said she did not visit any of Theranos’s testing centers in Walgreens stores, call any Walgreens executives or hire any outside experts in science, regulations or legal matters to verify the start-up’s claims. In 2014, the DeVos family invested $100 million into the company." 

* Rivian, the electric automaker that recently filed for an IPO, has been sued by a former sales and marketing vice president for alleged gender discrimination. The lawsuit alleges that Laura Schwab, a former sales and marketing executive who had a long employment history with Jaguar Land Rover and Aston Martin before joining Rivian in November 2020, was fired after reporting gender discrimination to the company’s human resources department. She also raised concerns internally about the manufacturing process and Rivian’s ability to assure vehicle quality and safety to customers, the complaint alleges. Schwab laid out her allegations in a Medium post.

* Can Jake Paul fight his way out of trouble?

* Spicy space tacos.

* Windows were never on the table.

* A cheeky timepiece.

* Tiaras worn by Empress Joséphine Bonaparte are also hitting the auction block.

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