Elizabeth Holmes takes the stand, Ford and Rivian part ways, and oligarchy beats democracy (this time)

Friday! We ran out of time to do much writing today BUT we do have a great podcast, featuring entrepreneur-investors Dave and Brit Morin who talked with us about their new $100 venture firm, Offline Ventures. It's a vehicle backed in part by Apple that they are using to invest in everything from cars to boats to mental health to Web3 communities. They're also planning to spend up to 20% of the capital incubating companies.

We also talked with the cofounder and CEO of the clothing company Vollebak, Steve Tidball. Longtime readers will know we are obsessed with this outfit's audacious marketing content -- all of which Tidball writes himself. Unsurprisingly, he also tells a good story about the company, which, psst, is right now closing its Series A round.

We have related print pieces coming, but if you want a jump on things, do check out the newest StrictlyVC Download. (We aren't doing a podcast next week, which is why we've put together a double feature.)

Giant thanks to TechCrunch for sponsoring this week's episode. Note that TechCrunch Sessions Space, a two-day virtual event, is coming up on December 14th and 15th, featuring the startups, researchers, investors and technologists who are turning science fiction into reality. TC is inviting the first 20 StrictlyVC listeners to register for free at TechCrunch.com/space using promo code StrictlyVC.

Hope you have a terrific weekend, everyone. Hope, too, that if you are traveling for Thanksgiving, all goes as planned. More Monday.:)

* The U.S. just opened COVID boosters to all adults and is urging anyone age 50 and over to hustle on over and get one as cases nationally begin to add up again. Supplies should be readily available, according to federal and state health officials. The U.S. has bought a total of 600 million Pfizer-BioNTech doses, and 500 million Moderna doses. The WSJ has more here.

* Chicago hedge-fund billionaire Ken Griffin said he won that $43.2 million first-edition copy of the U.S. Constitution at a Sotheby’s auction yesterday — and now he intends to lend it to a free Arkansas art museum that doesn’t have an archive of historic documents tied to the American Revolution, says the WSJ. Griffin, who is "known for lookin askance at cryptocurrency," adds the WSJ, outbid a large group of cryptocurrency investors who had crowdfunded more than $40 million earlier in the week. Tweeted the organizers of that group, on hearing of Griffin's involvement: “how much for citadel?"

* Elizabeth Holmes took the stand today to defend herself against criminal-fraud charges tied to the failure of her blood-testing company, Theranos, telling the jury that customers liked her product because it was cheap.

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* Binance.US, the four-year-old American affiliate of top global cryptocurrency exchange Binance, may raise a couple hundred million dollars in its funding round expected to close soon. Binance CEO CZ Zhao said in an interview at Bloomberg’s New Economy Forum that the round is likely to close in the next one to two months. More here.

* Farmers Business Network, a seven-year-old, San Carlos, Ca.-based ag-tech firm aimed at making it easier to track the carbon footprint of crops from the planting stage (it also has a direct marketing business), has raised $300 million in Series G funding led by Fidelity Investments. Other investors in the round include Archer Daniels Midland, LN Mittal Family Office, Colle Capital Partners, Walleye Capital, and Tudor Investment Corp. The WSJ has more here. 

* Gemini Trust, the six-year-old, New York-based crypto exchange founded by the Winklevoss twins, is reportedly looking to raise $400 million at a $7 billion valuation. The exchange’s first-ever outside financing was led by Morgan Creek Digital, with participation from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and other investors. The bank is also partnering with Gemini to give its customers safe storage for tokens they buy and sell. Bloomberg first reported the funding round yesterday. More here.

* Gradiant, an eight-year-old, Boston-based cleantech water treatment solutions company and projects developer, rhas aised over $100 million in Series C funding co-led by Warburg Pincus and Schlumberger New Energy. The round brings the company's total funding to $200 million. More here.

* Owkin, a five-year-old, New York-based oncology-focused precision medicine company, has raised $180 million in funding from Sanofi, as part of a broader strategic partnership. FierceBiotech has more here.

* Yieldstreet, a 6.5-year-old, New York-based alternative investing platform, raised $50 million led by London-based Mayfair Equity Partners. Back in June, the company announced $100 million in funding led by Tarsadia Investments. More here. 

* Aimi, a two-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based streaming music app, has raised $20 million in Series B funding. Great Mountain Partners led the round, joined by Founders Fund. The Wrap has more here.

* Amara, a nearly five-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that has developed a product line of nutrient-rich foods for children up to age seven, has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by the plant-based foods company Eat Well Group, which sounds like it nabbed majority ownership of the startup as part of the deal. TechCrunch has more here.

* Fourthwall, a two-year-old, L.A.-based creator commerce platform, raised $17 million from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Initialized Capital and Seven Seven Six. TechCrunch has more here.

* Flytrex, a 7.5-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup working with Walmart, Chili’s, and others in North Carolina in pilots for a drone-based delivery service targeting suburban consumers, has raised $40 million in funding. BRM Group is leading the round, with participation from OurCrowd and previous investors Benhamou Global Ventures, btov, and BackBone Ventures, among others. TechCrunch has more here.

* Kettle, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that sells a reinsurance underwriting product to insurers, has raised $25 million in Series A funding led by Acrew Capital. Other investors in the round include Homebrew, True Ventures, Anthemis, Valor, DCVC and LowerCarbon Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

* TruePlan, an 18-month-old, San Francisco-base startup that helps companies plan and forecast all the budgeting and resource requirements across their workforce, just raised $17 million in Series A funding led by General Catalyst. The company's founder, Daniel Green, was formerly a head of operations at Flexport. VentureBeat has more here.

* SageSpot, a year-old, New York-based social platform for creators, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by Khosla Ventures. Forbes has more here.

* Snapshot Labs, a year-old, Thailand-based free-to-use platform that has reportedly become a popular place for over 2,000 decentralized communities to gauge member sentiment on a particular course of action, has raised $4 million in seed funding led by 1kx, an early-stage token fund. Other participants include Coinbase Ventures, The LAO, MetaCartel Ventures, Gnosis, StarkWare, BoostVC, Scalar Capital, Fire Eyes DAO, LongHash Ventures, and Coopérative Klero. Decrypt has more here.

* Walkie-Talkie, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based social audio platform developed by Picslo Corp, has raised $3.25 million in seed funding led by Heroic Ventures. The round included participation from TI Platform Ventures, LDVP, Partech, Diaspora Ventures, Breega and Kima Ventures. The Clubhouse-like app says it has 1.2 million active users. TechCrunch has more here.

* Zuma, a 17-month-old, San Francisco-based apartment leasing platform that says it uses AI to answer questions about properties as they come in and to encourage customers (even outside of booking hours), has raised $6.7 million in seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. TechCrunch has more here.

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Neo, a four-year-old, Silicon Valley venture firm that was founded by renowned investor-entrepreneur Ali Partovi to identify "awesome young engineers," include them in a community of tech veterans, and invest in companies they start or join, as Partovi told us at the time, has closed its second fund with $150 million in capital commitments. Its first fund closed with roughly half as much and was focused largely (45%) on female and underrepresented minority CEOs (which remains very much a focus, says Partovi). Forbes has more here.

Samsara, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose software and hardware are designed to help businesses run physical operations like fleet management more efficiently, has filed for an IPO, listed the size of the offering as $100 million, a placeholder amount. Samsara was aiming for its valuation in an IPO to exceed its $5.4 billion value in a $400 million funding round in 2020, Bloomberg News reported in February. Today's filing shows the company had a net loss of $102 million on revenue of $303 million for the nine months ended Oct. 30, compared with a loss and revenue of $174 million a year earlier. Its biggest outside shareholders are Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst. Bloomberg has more here.

Here’s where the record number of American workers are quitting.

Jessica Neal has joined TCV as a venture partner. She was most recently Chief Talent Officer at Netflix, where she spent more than 11 years collectively. More here.

* Ford and Rivian have abandoned a plan they had to jointly develop an EV together, with Ford CEO Jim Farley saying today Ford will go it alone as it aims to produce 600,000 vehicles per year by the end of 2023. When the company invested $500 million in Rivian in 2019, the two said they would work together to produce a Ford-branded EV featuring the startup’s “skateboard” powertrain. In early 2020, the two, citing the pandemic, canceled a Lincoln-branded EV. They said then that they still planned to go forward with an “alternative vehicle” based on Rivian’s technology. Now, that project won’t go forward either. TechCrunch has more here.

* Tesla drivers tonight were left unable to start their cars after an outage struck the carmaker's app.

* The Zelle fraud scam: how it works -- and how to fight back.

* The University of California has slammed the door shut on using any standardized test for admissions decisions, announcing  that faculty could find no alternative exam that would avoid the biased results that led leaders to scrap the SAT last year. 

* Esquire's best new restaurants in America, 2021.

* How to save your knees.

Another Croc collab. (This is feeling surreal, no?)

Holiday gifts for wine lovers.

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