Bret Taylor gets his promotion, Meta loses David Marcus, and the hottest real estate is in the metaverse

Well, hello there.:)

Bret Taylor is having quite a week! One day after being named chairman of Twitter, Salesforce today promoted him to the role of co-CEO alongside company founder Marc Benioff. Taylor joined Salesforce in 2016, after selling his productivity software startup to the company for $412 million. Taylor is the second co-CEO to lead Salesforce. In 2018, Benioff appointed then-COO Keith Block to the post, but early last year, Block, who joined the company in 2013,  resigned without explanation, and despite a public love fest on his way out, was immediately deleted from Salesforce's leadership page. 

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said today the central bank is prepared to quicken the pullback of its easy-money policies, opening the door to raising interest rates in the first half of next year as it grapples with inflation and a potential new virus wave that could exacerbate supply-chain disruptions. As reports the WSJ, his remarks suggest the Fed is growing less concerned about ensuring a faster labor-market recovery and more nervous about keeping prices from rising higher.

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Maple VC is based in San Francisco, but don’t let that fool you, says its founder, Andre Charoo. The young fund, which launched in 2016 with $1.2 million in capital commitments, just closed on $16.5 million in capital commitments for a second fund that promises to almost exclusively back savvy Canadian founders, no matter where they live today and no matter what they are building, as long as tech is at the core of their startup.

Says Charoo — a Toronto native who worked briefly at at the early photo-sharing app Color, spent a year helping Uber expand into Canada in 2011, then logged more than seven years as a VP with the hiring platform Hired as he got Maple VC off the ground — “I’m a generalist who specializes in backing founders with Canadian roots.”

It’s a marketing approach that manages to be both specific and broad, and it snagged the interest of an enviable group of investment firms that are among the new fund’s limited partners, including Tiger Global, Foundry Group, Recast Capital, Insight Partners and Plexo Capital. Promising early investments from Maple’s debut fund also helped meaningfully, says Charoo. We talked with him earlier today about some of those deals, what raising capital from his backers was like, and how he’s putting Maple’s new fund to work.

More here.

* 2TM Group, the eight-year-old holding company of São Paulo-based crypto exchange Mercado Bitcoin, has raised $50.3 million in additional Series B funding from 10T Holdings, Tribe Capital, Traders Club, Pipo Capital and Endeavor. The $50 million is part of a second round of funding that began with $200 million led by the SoftBank Latin America Fund that was announced in July and valued the company at $2.15 billion. Bloomberg has more here.

* Cycode, a 2.5-year-old, Tel-Aviv, Israel-based software supply chain security company, has raised $56 million in Series B funding led by Insight Partners, with participation from earlier backer YL Ventures. The company has now raised $81 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

* Fundbox, an 8.5-year-old, San Francisco-based company that offers loans and financial products to small businesses, has raised $100 million in Series D round at a valuation of $1.1 billion. Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan led Fundbox’s Series D financing. Other backers in the round include Arbor Waypoint Select Fund, a suite of BNY Mellon funds managed by Newton Investment Management North America, and earlier backers, including Allianz X, Khosla Ventures and The Private Shares Fund. The company has now raised $410 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

*LayerZero, a 10-month-old, Vancouver, British Columbia-based crypto firm that's developing technology known as a cross-chain solution that helps blockchains communicate with one another and was co-founded in February by Bryan Pellegrino, who previously co-founded crypto firm OpenToken, is raising more than $100 million in funding led by Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and crypto trading firm FTX, says The Information. More here.

* Lessen, a 2.5-year-old, Scottsdale, Az.-based marketplace that connects real estate owners to property services like renovations, maintenance, and cleaning, has raised $170 million in Series B funding led by Fifth Wall. Other investors in the round included Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst and Navitas Capital. GeekWire has more here.

* PeopleFund, a 6.5-year-old, South Korea-based peer-to-peer lending platform, has raised $63.4 million in Series C funding led by Bain Capital, with participation from Goldman Sachs. Earlier investors CLSA Lending Ark Asia and 500 Global also joined the round. The company has now raised $83.6 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

* Quinyx, a 16-year-old, Stockholm, Sweden-based hourly workforce management company, has raised $50 million in funding led by Battery Ventures. More here.

* Simpl, a six-year-old, Bangalore, India-based buy-now-pay-later startup, has raised $40 million in Series B funding co-led by Valar Ventures and IA Ventures. The company has now raised $83 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

* Via Transportation, a nine-year-old, New York-based transportation app that equips cities with software for public transit systems in order to deliver on-demand service, just raised $130 million at a $3.3 billion valuation. Janus Henderson led the round, joined by BlackRock, ION Crossover Partners, Koch Disruptive Technologies and earlier backer Exor. Bloomberg has more here.

* Zepeto, a 3.5-year-old, South Korean-based metaverse platform that has amassed a large following of young women by selling high-fashion items from Gucci, Dior and others for 3-D avatars, just raised $150 million from SoftBank Vision Fund 2. The WSJ has much more here.

* Energy Dome, a two-year-old, Lombardy, Italy-based long-duration energy storage tech company, raised $11 million in Series A funding led by 360 Capital. Other backers in the round include Barclays’ Sustainable Impact Capital, Novum Capital Partners, and Third Derivative. TechCrunch has more here.

* Gradle, a nearly 12-year-old, San Francisco-based software and automation tool company, has raised $27 million in Series C funding led by Triangle Peak Partners. Other investors in the round include True Ventures, DCVC, Bain Capital Ventures, Harmony Partners, and StepStone Group. More here.

* Mainframe Industries, a 2.5-year-old, Helsinki, Finland-based game developer, just raised $23.1 million in Series B funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. Other backers in the round include Riot Games, Maki.vc, Play Ventures, Sisu Game Ventures, Crowberry Capital, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, and other individual investors. VentureBeat has more here.

* Raycast, a nearly two-year-old, London-based developer productivity platform, has raised $15 million in Series A funding co-led by Accel and Coatue, with participation from notable individual investors, including Hopin CEO Johnny Boufarhat and former GitHub CTO Jason Warner. TechCrunch has more here.

* Solutions by Text, a 16-year-old, Dallas, Tex.-based compliance-focused text messaging platform for consumer finance companies, has raised $28 million in funding led by Edison Partners. MarTech Series has more here.

* Stratio, a four-year-old, Lisbon, Portugal-based predictive fleet maintenance platform, has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by the venture arm of Waypoint Capital, with participation from earlier investor Crane Venture Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

* ThreeFlow, a six-year-old, Seattle-based (though mostly remote) benefits placement system for brokers and carriers, has raised $45 million in Series B funding led by Accel. Other investors in the round include Emergence Capital, Equal Ventures, and First Trust Capital Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

* Algofi, a months-old, New York-based lending market on the Algorand blockchain, has raised $2.8 million in seed funding led by Union Square Ventures, Arrington Capital, and Pillar VC, with participation from Y Combinator, Formulate Ventures, and Shine VC. More here.

* Azos, a 1.5-year-old, São Paulo, Brazil-based digital life insurance startup, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Prosus Ventures, with participation from Kaszek Ventures, Maya Capital and Propel. Reuters has more here.

* Babyscripts, an eight-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based virtual maternity care platform, has tacked on $7.5 million to its Series B round from Cigna Ventures, Texas Medical Center Venture Fund and Atlantic Health. The new tranche brings the round to $19 million altogether and the company's total funding to $37 million. More here.

* CareAlign, a seven-year-old, Philadelphia-based, HIPAA compliant collaborative task management platform integrated into the electronic health record, or EHR, for clinicians and their teams, has raised $2.3 million in funding led by Hofmann Associates, Gaingels, and Harvard Angels. PHLInno has more here.

* Islands, a months-old, L.A.-based startup that helps influencers by giving them the toolkit to monetize their content and grow their audiences, has raised $3.5 million in funding led by Seven Seven Six. Founded by Nikhil Srinivasan, a former product manager at Coinbase, and Tiffany Zhong, the duo previously founded a marketing and data analytics company called Zebra IQ that's focused on insights around Generation Z. Forbes has more here.

* Jump, a year-old, Paris-based benefits provider for freelancers and gig workers, has raised $4.5 million in seed funding led by Index Ventures. Other participants in the round include Kima Ventures, BlaBlaCar CEO Nicolas Brusson, Personio CEO Hanno Renner, and Voodoo co-founder Laurent Ritter. TechCrunch has more here.

* Returnmates, a 19-month-old, Venice, Ca.-based on-demand returns company that picks up packages from customers' homes, no matter the online retailer, has raised $5 million in funding led by LightShed Ventures. More here.

* Trustpage, a 1.5-year-old, Detroit-based startup that says it enables software-as-a-service vendors to easily communicate their data security and privacy measures, has raised $5 million in seed funding. Bonfire Ventures, Ludlow Ventures, and Detroit Venture Partners led the round, joined by  Entrée Capital, Basement Fund and GTMfund. VentureBeat has more here.

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* AC Ventures, an early-stage venture firm based in Indonesia, has closed its third fund with over more than $205 million in committed capital from investors, including the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Disrupt AD, Abu Dhabi Developmental Holdings' venture platform. The firm's total assets under management have now surpassed $380 million altogether across its funds. Business Times has more here.

* Borderless Capital, a three-year-old, Miami-based outfit, says it is launching a $500 million ALGO Fund II to help develop projects built on the Algorand blockchain. Firm founder David Garcia lists Draper University's bitcoin course in his educational credentials on LinkedIn and notes that he helped Algorand secure early funding several years ago. CoinDesk has more here.

* Differential Ventures, a four-year-old, New York-based seed firm focused on B2B SaaS startups, says it has launched a second fund with a target of $60 million. More here.

* FTAC Ventures, a new, New York-based investment firm co-led by financial-services veteran Betsy Cohen, is in discussions to raise a debut fund dedicated to fintech bets, according to Bloomberg, which says the outfit is meeting with prospective investors with a target of $300 million in capital commitments and expects to hold a first close early next year. The fund would reportedly invest in early-stage startups, as well as companies poised to go public. More here.

* Offline Ventures, cofounded by Dave Morin, Brit Morin, James Higa, and Nate Bosshard, recently closed its debut fund with $100 million in capital commitments, including (in an unusual twist) from Apple. We talked with Dave and Brit Morin to learn more about what that relationship means, and where they are investing the fund.

* Partech, the 39-year-old, Paris-based venture firm, has raised $750 million for its second growth equity fund. TechCrunch has more here. 

* Sapphire Ventures said today it has raised $2 billion across two funds in its largest capital raise, lifting the venture capital firm's total assets under management to nearly $9 billion. Reuters has more here.

* Speedinvest, the 10-year-old, Vienna, Austria-based venture firm, has raised €80 million for a climate tech fund. Reportedly, the capital will be funneled into at least a handful of firm's current portfolio companies. Tech.eu has more here.

* Edgewell, the maker of Schick razors, has acquired DTC women's razor maker Billie for $310 million in cash. Billie had raised $35 million in funding from Silverton Partners, Female Founders Fund, Serena Ventures and ACME Capital, among others. Procter & Gamble had made an earlier bid for Billie that was blocked by the Federal Trade Commission on the grounds that it would reduce competition. Edgewell, which earlier tried to buy Harry's (that deal was also torpedoed), now gets the direct-to-consumer razor business it has always wanted (in recent years). Bloomberg has more here.

* Coinbase announced today that it has acquired Unbound Security, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based firm that uses a new type of cryptography to store digital assets. The companies did not disclose a price for the acquisition, but Unbound has raised $40 million since it was founded in 2017, says Decrypt. More here.

* It's official. Pushing back against Big Tech’s ability to maintain market dominance through sheer buying power, the U.K.’s competition watchdog has ordered Facebook (now Meta) to reverse its acquisition of animated GIF platform Giphy — confirming the Financial Times‘ earlier reporting. TechCrunch has more here.

Digital mortgage lender Better.com, which announced in March that it was going public via a SPAC, is getting a cash infusion from its backers sooner than expected. Blank-check company Aurora Acquisition Corp. and SoftBank have amended the terms of their financing agreement to provide Better with half of the $1.5 billion they committed immediately instead of waiting till the deal closes. TechCrunch takes a look here.

* Facebook parent company Meta is losing its top crypto executive later this year. David Marcus, who leads crypto unit Novi and previously helmed the company’s Messenger unit, announced today that he will be leaving the company later this year -- and hinting that he may soon be starting his own venture.

* Elon Musk has a $2.5 billion reason to move to Texas.

* Investors are snapping up metaverse real estate, in a virtual land boom.

* Jack Dorsey’s Twitter departure hints at tech moguls' restlessness.

* Twitter just expanded its private information policy to include media, banning users from sharing photos or videos of a private individual without their permission. The company notes that tweeting such images can violate someone's privacy and potentially lead to harm against them. There are some exceptions, however.

* Pleated pants are really back [said as a question].

* Why coffee makes you poop.

* Introducing the Icelandverse.

* A very specific house has hit the market in Connecticut.

* A $50(!) Tesla cyberwhistle (that is already out of stock).

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