Coinbase misses analysts' estimates, Moderna versus the NIH, and Adam Neumann kicks off his comeback

Tuesday! We're still recovering from yesterday's internet outage, but we'll be fine because it's not like we're 'addicted' to tech, that would be ridiculous. (We know some of you were in the same boat this morning.) It did feel a little like nature's way of reminding us that we essentially have a single point of failure here in the U.S., didn't it? 🦋 🌺 🍁

* Apple will be forced to allow app developers to link out to alternative payment websites, potentially enabling software companies to reduce the 15% to 30% fee that Apple charges for digital transactions through its App Store. Today, a federal judge in Oakland rejected Apple’s appeal for a stay that would delay the court-ordered change, meaning that it will go into effect in December. CNBC has more here.

* Coinbase reported third-quarter earnings after the bell today and missed analysts’ estimates on revenue. The stock sank more than 13% in extended trading. CNBC has more here.

* Moderna and the National Institutes of Health are in a bitter dispute over who deserves credit for inventing the central component of the company’s powerful coronavirus vaccine, a conflict that has broad implications for the vaccine’s long-term distribution and billions of dollars in future profits. The New York Times has the story here.

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Shin Kim spent nearly two years helping renowned entrepreneur and investor Elad Gil vet deals and dream up new ideas as his chief of staff. In the process, an idea bubbled up that seemed too compelling to let go. Now called Eraser, that year-old startup, which is centered around a collaborative digital canvas for whiteboarding and note-taking, has raised $4 million in seed funding led by Caffeinated Capital. It has also attracted what Kim says is more than 1 million users since its March launch, from “five-person startups to the largest global tech companies.”

We talked with Kim last week to learn more about his transition from right-hand man to startup founder, as well as to understand why, in a world that is suddenly rife with tools that help remote teams collaborate more efficiently, he’s confident there is room for Eraser to grow.

You have two computer science degrees, from the University of Chicago and from Berkeley. How did you end up working with Elad Gil?

[After school], I went into finance and investing in San Francisco [as an associate with JPMorgan, then Oak Hill Capital], and I met Elad through my brother. He was an investor in my brother’s startup, Bitwise Asset Management, which is a crypto asset manager [where Kim’s brother is CTO]. He was looking for a chief of staff as he just had so many things going on, and it was just him at that point with his EA. So I joined to help him with companies, doing due diligence, getting deep into the stories of companies and their financials and their data.

We were also working on incubating some ideas together, and that was the main draw for me — that in addition to investing, he wanted to find ideas that should exist in the world but don’t and to build something from the ground up, and Eraser was a collaboration in that regard. It was the pandemic. We had worked through a few ideas, and this was the final one that we hit on.

What was the special insight here?

Collaboration in general was really tough during the pandemic, right? Everything was broken, everything was suddenly Zoom-based, and as I talked to a bunch of companies both large and small in Silicon Valley, it seemed like ideation, or getting a project started off the ground, seemed really tough as opposed to executing on existing projects. Especially on a remote basis, this process of brainstorming together and building on top of each other’s ideas is really tough.

More here.

* Alltrna, a three-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based startup that's researching how to make medicines from transfer RNA, has raised $50 million from founding investor Flagship Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

* Arbor Biotechnologies, a 5.5-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based developer of generic medicines for liver and CNS diseases, has raised $215 million in Series B funding co-led by Temasek, Ally Bridge Group and TCG Crossover. They were joined by more than a dozen other investors. FierceBiotech has more here.

* Block Renovation, a four-year-old, New York-based startup whose homeowner and contractor tool aims to digitize and simplify the home renovation experience, just raised $50 million in Series C funding. SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led the round, joined by Giant Ventures, NEA, Morningside Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, Obvious Ventures, Rainfall Ventures, Firstminute Capital, BoxGroup and SV Angel. TechCrunch has more here.

* Collibra, a 13-year-old, Brussels-based company that makes business data governance software, has raised $250 million in Series G funding a year after closing $112.5 million in Series F funding. Sequoia Capital Global Equities and Sofina co-led the new round, joined by Tiger Global and earlier backers Battery Ventures, CapitalG, Dawn Capital, Durable Capital Partners, Iconiq Capital and Index Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

* Jackpocket, an-year-old, New York-based state lottery app, has raised $120 million in Series D funding led by Left Lane Capital. Other backers in the round include Santa Barbara Venture Partners, actors Kevin Hart and Whitney Cummings, investor Mark Cuban, MLB player Manny Machado and earlier backers, including Greenspring Associates. TechCrunch has more here. 

SafeBreach, a seven-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based breach and attack simulation startup, has raised $53.5 million in Series D funding led by Sonae IM and Israel Growth Partners, with participation from ServiceNow, Sands Capital and Leumi Partners. SiliconAngle has more here.

* Socure, a nine-year-old, New York-based company that uses AI and machine learning to verify identities, has raised $450 million in Series E funding at a $4.5 billion valuation (just eight months after raising $100 million in Series D funding at a $1.3 billion valuation). T. Rowe Price and Accel co-led the round, joined by Bain Capital Ventures, Tiger Global, Commerce Ventures, Scale Venture Partners and Sorenson Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

* VergeSense, a 4.5-year-old, San Francisco-based workplace analytics platform used to identify how employees are using office space, has raised $60 million in Series C funding led by Scale Venture Partners. VentureBeat has more here.

* Beacon Biosignals, a 2.5-year-old, Boston-based precision medicine startup focused on neurology, just raised $27 million in Series A funding led by General Catalyst, with participation from Casdin Capital. More here.

* DeepCure, a three-year-old, Boston-based AI drug discovery platform, raised $40 million in Series A funding led by Morningside Ventures. Earlier backers TLV Partners, Sapir Venture Partners and Benon Group also joined the round, which brings the company's total funding to $47 million. More here.  

* FunNow, a six-year-old, Taiwan-based "instant" booking app for everything from manicures to restaurant reservations, has raised $15 million in Series B funding. Perfect Hexagon Commodity & Investment Bank and Ascendo Ventures co-led the round, joined by earlier investors CDIB Capital, Darwin Ventures, Accuvest, Sanput Travel Group and CSV Venture Fund. TechCrunch has more here.

* OcuTerra, a 10-year-old, Boston-based biotech that's developing a novel eye drop designed to treat diabetic eye disease, has raised $35 million in Series B funding from undisclosed backers. FierceBiotech has more here.

* RabbitMart, a months-old, Egypt-based startup that's promising to quickly deliver groceries and other items from neighborhood fulfillment centers to customers' homes, has raised $11 million in pre-seed funding from Global Founders Capital, Raed Ventures, Foundation Venture, MSA Capital and Goodwater Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

* Seasoned, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based hiring platform and network for restaurant workers, has raised $18.7 million in Series A funding. Horizons Ventures led the round, joined by TPG Growth. TechCrunch has more here.

* Solidus Labs, a four-year-old, New York-based company that says its surveillance and risk-monitoring software can detect manipulation across cryptocurrency trading platforms, has raised $15 million in additional funding just six months after closing its Series A round with $20 million in funding. Liberty City Ventures led the newest tranche, joined by Exor Seeds and the crypto trading firm GSR. We have more here.

* Threekit, a 16-year-old, Chicago-based 3D visual commerce software-as-a-service platform, has raised $35 million in Series B funding led by Leaders Fund. Other investors in the round include ServiceNow, Capgemini and earlier investors Salesforce and Shasta Ventures. Crain's Chicago Business has more here. 

* Traive, a four-year-old, Sao Paulo, Brazil-based agricultural lending platform, has raised $17 million in Series A funding co-led by earlier investor SP Ventures and Astella. Other backers in the round include Tiger Global, Bread & Butter Ventures, Minerva VC, Syngenta Group Ventures, Serasa Experian VC and CSN Inova Ventures. AgFunder News has more here.

* You.com, a year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based search engine startup led by ex-Salesforce chief scientist Richard Socher, just raised $20 million in seed funding. Marc Benioff's Time Ventures led the round, joined by Breyer Capital, Sound Ventures and Day One Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

* GetCovered.io, a three-year-old, New York-based insurance software company that aims to make it simple to buy and track property and casualty insurance online, has raised $7 million in Series A funding led by RET Ventures, with participation from Updater, Pelican Ventures, and Crocker Mountain. More here.

* Supergrain, an 11-month-old, San Francisco-based data integration startup, has raised $6.8 million in seed funding led by Benchmark. VentureBeat has more here.

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* Circle, the digital currency company that jointly administers the USDC stablecoin with Coinbase, has launched the Circle Ventures fund to support early stage blockchain projects and companies. The fund doesn’t have a predetermined monetary amount, Circle tells CoinDesk, and has already deployed initial capital. More here.

* Origin Ventures, the 22-year-old, early-stage, Chicago-based venture firm, just closed its fifth fund with $130 million in capital commitments, which makes the vehicle the firm’s biggest. It wasn’t necessarily aiming to break any records, suggests managing partner Jason Heltzer, who says the firm was initially looking to raise $100 million. Still, institutional demand for a bigger piece of the private-company action is driving a lot of firms to raise ever bigger funds, and Origin wasn’t immune to the interest, which grew after some recent exits, including the sale of the restaurant reservation platform Tock earlier this year for $400 million. We emailed last night with Heltzer to learn a bit more.

* DoorDash announced today that it’s acquiring Wolt -- a Finland-based food, groceries, and retail delivery platform that’s says it has around 4,000 employees in 23 countries -- in an all-stock transaction valued at a whopping $8.1 billion. (The deal serves as a reminder of DoorDash's own market cap right now.) The move is an effort to accelerate DoorDash's international growth, and shareholders approve; they sent its shares up more than 24% in after-hours trading following an initial dip. CNBC has more here.

* On the heels of a $150 million Series B fundraise, New York-based investing platform Republic has acquired Arora Project, an equity crowdfunding media agency that helps startups create and launch campaigns. Krishan Arora, Arora's CEO and founder, declined to disclosed terms of the tie-up but tells TechCrunch it was a “large, multimillion dollar deal.” More here.

* Unity today announced its intent to acquire Weta Digital, the legendary visual effects company co-founded by Peter Jackson, for a massive $1.625 billion. TechCrunch has more here.

Rivian, a maker of electric trucks and vans, is going public at a stock price that values the company at nearly $70 billion, it revealed in a filing today that says it is selling its shares in the offering at $78. At that price, the market cap of Rivian, whose shares begin trading tomorrow, would approach that of Ford Motor Co., which is valued at $80 billion and sold more than four million vehicles last year. More here and here.

* Reddit cofounder-turned-investor Alexis Ohanian has partnered with the Solana Foundation to invest $100 million to build social-media projects on the Solana blockchain. The amount is double the $50 million investment that was initially planned. Ohanian's comment comes a day after FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried said social media on the blockchain could be "absolutely huge." More here.

* Tim Cook today said that Apple doesn't intend to join a growing number of big businesses incorporating crypto in their operations. “It’s not something we have immediate plans to do,” he said at the Dealbook Online Summit. He also said Apple doesn't plan to buy any Bitcoin with its roughly $200 billion in cash, unlike Tesla and Square. “I don’t think people buy Apple stock to get exposure to crypto,” he said.

* Elon Musk lost $50 billion across two days after Tesla shares plunged 16%, but he's still worth over $100 billion more than Jeff Bezos, notes Business Insider.

* Since being forced out of WeWork two years ago, Adam Neumann has mostly stayed out of the public eye. But at the DealBook Online Summit earlier today, he admitted to regrets — and pushed back against certain criticisms. "I do think at some point [the company's valuation] went to my head," he said.

General Electric will split into three companies following years of seeing its stock underperform, the company announced today. The company will be divided into separate units focused on aviation, health care and energy. GE plans to spin off the health-care unit by early 2023 and the energy unit by early 2024. CNBC has more here. 

Twitter will now let you pay to undo tweets and read ad-free news in the U.S.

"No Time to Die" just hit streaming services. 🎉

The ultimate ski run.

Attention other passengers on this flight: my baby hates you, too.

* The Space Balloon Experience package by World View. 

* The world’s first  yacht liner  -- it will host 39(!) luxury condos that start at 1,600-square-feet and cost $11 million -- is finally ready for its close-up.

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