Apple grapples with a new kind of shortage, Sequoia makes another crypto bet, and Square rebrands

Hello! Hope you had a fine Tuesday.

Please note that if today you received an email purportedly from us about a voicemail or that otherwise sought any information, it was not us (which you've probably discerned but in case not). Fun times. 🎉🎉

Apple, suffering from a global supply crunch, is now confronting a different problem, says Bloomberg: slowing demand. The company has reportedly told its component suppliers that demand for the iPhone 13 lineup has weakened, suggesting that consumers have decided against trying to get the hard-to-find item.

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* 1inch, a 1.5-year-old, British Virgin Islands-based decentralized crypto exchange, has  raised $175 million in Series B funding led by Amber Group. About 50 other investors also piled into the round, including Jane Street, VanEck, Fenbushi Capital, Alameda Research, Celsius, Nexo, Tribe Capital, and Gemini Frontier Fund. The deal reportedly values the company at $2.25 billion. Decrypt has more here. 

* CertiK, a three-year-old, New York-based blockchain and smart contract auditing firm, has raised $80 million in a Series B2 funding led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from earlier backers Tiger Global, Coatue Management, and GL Ventures (which is Hillhouse Capital's VC arm). The tranche comes three months after CertiK raised $24 million in a Series B+ round in August and four months after the firm initially raised $37 million in a Series B round. The Block has more here.

* Commonwealth Fusion Systems, an eight-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based startup that says it is collaborating with MIT to leverage decades of research to generate carbon-free energy like the sun, has raised more than $1.8 billion in the largest private investment for nuclear fusion yet. Investors in the round include Bill Gates and George Soros via his Soros Fund Management. Among the outfit's competitors is Helion Energy, which raised $500 million in Series E funding last month led by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The WSJ has more here.

* Curie Therapeutics, a newly launched, Cambridge, Ma.-based biotechnology company incubated by Atlas Ventures, Access Biotechnology and RA Capital Management, has raised $75 million in Series A funding. MedCity News has more here.

* CyCognito, a 3.5-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based external attack surface management platform, has raised $100 million in Series C funding led by The Westly Group. Other investors in the round include Thomvest Ventures, The Heritage Group and earlier backers Accel, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sorenson Ventures and UpWest. The company has now raised $153 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

* Harrison.ai, a Sydney, Australia-based company that creates tech in partnership with healthcare companies (among these is software used to establish the likelihood of an embryo leading to a viable pregnancy), has raised $129 million AUD (about $92.3 million USD) in Series B funding. Earlier backer Horizons Ventures led the round, joined by Sonic Healthcare, I-MED Radiology Network and two other earlier backers: Blackbird Ventures and Skip Capital. The company has now raised $158 million AUD altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

* Jobandtalent, a nearly 12-year-old, Madrid, Spain-based temp staffing marketplace, has raised $500 million in Series E funding led by Kinnevik, with participation from SoftBank, Atomico, DN, Infravia, Kibo and Quadrille. The company also secured $75 million in debt funding from BlackRock. Bloomberg has more here.

* Kakao Mobility, the 4.5-year-old, South Korea-based mobility as a service startup behind Kakao T, a ride-hailing app, says it has raised an additional $55 million (65 billion won) from strategic investor GS Retail. The funding brings its total raised to about $941.4 million (1.11 trillion won) and values the outfit at more than $4.2 billion, a spokesperson at Kakao Mobility tells TechCrunch. More here.

* Klue, a six-year-old, Vancouver-based competitive enablement platform that aims to help enterprise sales teams, just raised $62 million in Series B funding led by Tiger Global, with participation from Salesforce Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

* Singulart, a four-year-old, Paris-based online art gallery, has raised €60 million in Series B funding led by Vitruvian Partners, with participation from earlier backers Ventech, BPI France and Turenne Group. More here.

* Anchor, a months-old, U.S. and Tel Aviv, Israel-based autonomous billing platform, has raised $15 million in seed funding co-led by Rapyd Ventures, Entrée Capital, and Tal Ventures. More here.

* Ember, nearly 10-year-old, L.A.-based company known for its temperature-controlled mugs, has raised $23.5 million in Series E funding led by Foxconn, with participation from EBDI. TechCrunch has more here. 

* Pools, a seven-month-old, New York-based startup that develops personalized cryptocurrency tokens for creators, announced a $16 million seed funding round led by Global Founders Capital, with participation from L2 Ventures, Shift, Maveron and Kima Ventures, among others. The Information has more here.

* Sounding Board, a five-year-old, Aliso Viejo, Ca.-based outfit that launched as marketplace that connects leaders to coaches and has since evolved into a software platform that invites users to connect with coaches but also track their goals, just raised $30 million in Series B funding. Jazz Venture Partners led the round, joined by Gaingels, along with angel investors, including renowned Silicon Valley operator Sukhinder Singh Cassidy. TechCrunch has more here.

* Structure, a months-old, British Virgin Islands-based mobile-first decentralized trading platform that aims to enable its clients to invest in tokenized stocks, options, cryptocurrencies and tokenized ETFs, has raised $20 million in funding, includingseed funding led by Polychain Capital and proceeds from a sale of its token $STXR. More here.

* Tagger, a six-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based marketing startup that connects brands and agencies with creators, has raised $15 million Series B funding led by earlier backer Five Elms Capital, which also led the company's Series A round back in April. More here.

* BeerOrCoffee, a six-year-old, Brazil-based flexible office marketplace, has raised $10 million in funding led by Kaszek, with participation from Valor Capital Group. TechCrunch has more here.

* Butter, a 20-month-old, San Francisco-based startup focused on helping subscription providers increase payment authorizations, eliminate passive churn, and grow recurring revenue, has raised $7 million in funding, mostly from Atomic, the startup studio where it was incubated. TechCrunch has more here. 

* Forum Mobility, a months-old, San Francisco-based zero-emission fleet and infrastructure startup, has raised $7.5 million in seed funding co-led by Obvious Ventures and Homecoming Capital. More here.

* Metaview, a three-year-old, London-based company that sells its intelligence software to other outfits to improve their hiring decisions, has raised $6 million in seed funding. Vertex Ventures US led the round, joined by Fly Ventures, Seedcamp, Village Global, PrimeSet, Moving Capital and Palumni. More here.

* OfferZen, a 6.5-year-old, Cape Town, South Africa-based tech talent marketplace, has raised $5 million in Series A funding from Base Capital. TechCrunch has more here.  

* Voyager Portal, a three-year-old, Houston, Tex.-based marine supply chain logistics startup, has raised $8.4 million in Series A funding. Phaze Ventures led the round, joined by ScOp Venture Capital, Waybury Capital and Flexport. More here.

* Wispr AI, a five-month-old, San Francisco-based neurotechnology company aimed at developing the next generation of human-computer interfaces, has raised $4.6 million in seed funding co-led by NEA and 8VC. More here.

* Factorial Energy, a two-year-old, Woburn, Ma.-based developer of solid-state batteries for electric vehicles, raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Mercedes-Benz and Stellantis. TechCrunch has more here.

* ReliaQuest, a 24-year-old, Tampa, Fla.-based company whose extended detection and response (XDR) platform unifies data from across a customer’s security tools, has raised Series E funding that brings its valuation to north of $1 billion, it says (though it isn't divulging the exact amount of funding). KKR led the round, joined by Ten Eleven Ventures and FTV Capital. VentureBeat has more here.

Join hundreds of military veteran entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who are building the future at the Military Veteran Startup Conference hosted by Context Ventures on Feb 4th, 2022 (Friday) in San Francisco. Conference panels will cover the following topics: 1) Women Veteran Entrepreneurs; 2) Veteran Entrepreneurs who survived Shark Tank; 3) Veterans in Venture Capital; 4) Veteran Entrepreneurs building consumer brands; 5) Dual use startups. The event is free for military veteran (spouses &) entrepreneurs. Enlist here.

* Apollo Health Ventures, a five-year-old, Berlin-based "lifespan"-focused venture fund, has closed an $180 million fund to funnel into companies targeting everything from cardiovascular conditions to neurodegenerative diseases. Apollo plans to use the $180 million fund to invest in 10 to 15 companies. The companies will be a mix of startups that Apollo helps create, leveraging its ties to leading aging institutes in Europe and the U.S., and existing biotechs. FierceBiotech has more here.

* Three former GV product design-focused partners have launched early-stage venture fund called Character that plans to use an investment strategy based on the "design sprint" process. Character has raised $30 million from LPs to back 15 to 25 startups over the next three years. Product designers turned investors John Zeratsky, Jake Knapp and Eli Blee-Goldman will co-lead the fund and plan to write checks between $500,000 and $1 million to startup founders, mostly at the seed stage, with 50% of the fund reserved for follow-on investments at later stages. Although the firm is based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, it will invest in companies anywhere in the U.S., reports Business Insider.

* Costanoa Ventures, the nine-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based early-stage venture firm, said today it has raised $340 million in capital commitments across two new funds: Costanoa Fund IV, a $225 million early-stage fund, and Opportunity Fund II, a $115 million fund that's investing in later rounds of portfolio companies. TechCrunch has more here.

* UK equity crowdfunding business Seedrs – whose merger with rival Crowdcube was earlier blocked by competition regulators – has been acquired by the investing platform Republic in a $100 million deal. The move comes after Seedrs criticized the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority earlier this year as stifling the UK’s potential to boost startups. As TechCrunch notes, Seedrs was among the first regulated equity crowdfunding businesses in the world; Seedrs says it was the first to introduce a secondary marketplace, too. Republic, meanwhile, allows people to invest in private market equity, debt or crypto offerings and has almost $1 billion under management through its private asset management practice. You might recall that we talked with Republic CEO Kendrick Nguyen in October when his company raised $150 million in Series B funding. He told us then that Republic was thinking about building a secondary exchange for digital securities.

* Niantic has acquired another company to help build out its augmented reality platforms. The company has announced that it’s acquiring the team behind Lowkey, an app you can use to easily capture and share gameplay moments. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. More here.

According to Bloomberg, China is planning to ban companies from going public on foreign stock markets through variable interest entities, closing a loophole long used by the country’s tech industry to raise capital from overseas investors. The ban, intended in part to address concerns over data security, is among changes included in a new draft of China’s overseas listing rules that may be finalized as soon as this month, according to Bloomberg's sources, though companies using the so-called VIE structure would still be allowed to pursue IPOs in Hong Kong, subject to regulatory approval. More here.

* Former Carlyle operating exec Susan Arnold is taking over as Disney’s Chairman of the Board, the company announced Wednesday. She’ll succeed Bob Iger, who stepped down as Disney CEO early last year. Iger, who served as Chairman of the Board since 2012, had been set to step away as board chair by the end of this year. Arnold has been on Disney’s board for 14 years, notes CNBC. 

* Handwritten notes by Elizabeth Holmes.

* Bret Taylor is co-CEO of Salesforce in name only, says The Information, which was sent a Slack message pushed out to employees by company founder Marc Benioff. "Our Executive Leadership Team reports to Bret. Bret continues to report to me,” Benioff said in the Slack message. As the outlet notes, Keith Block, who was co-CEO from 2018 until early last year, reported to Salesforce’s board, the company said when he was named to the position.

Square is now Block.

Alibaba Group’s U.S.-listed shares have never been this cheap and yet investors keep bailing, notes Bloomberg. On a reported earnings basis, Alibaba’s American depositary receipts trade at a multiple of 18.7. That’s the lowest since its 2014 debut and the widest discount to the Nasdaq 100 Index’s average multiple on record. Altogether, the company has lost a breathtaking $526 billion in value over the last 13 months, since Chinese regulators began putting the screws to the company.

* From a look by the New York Times on the surge in VC-backed crypto deals: “'It’s a mixed bag,' said Charles Hoskinson, founder of the Cardano blockchain network, which has not raised venture capital funding. Venture capital firms offer start-ups many crucial services, but some question whether their heavy involvement in crypto undermines the language of democratization so central to the industry’s ethos. 'They’re always going to get their pound of flesh before everybody else,' Hoskinson said."

* Kyle Rittenhouse is free to log back on to his Facebook and Instagram accounts, officials for Meta said today. "While we will still remove content that celebrates the death of the individuals killed in Kenosha, we will no longer remove content containing praise or support of Rittenhouse," said a Meta spokesman in a statement.

* The Guccis are none too pleased with "The House of Gucci."

* Debt collectors are allowed to DM you on social media now.

*  Laser beams as windshield wipers. Huh.

"We wanted to make sure this is not a gimmick," says developer of Bentley-themed Miami condo that invites residents to ride their cars up an elevator to their homes.

Rent the "Home Alone" house (for one night only).

Instant ramen pet bed.

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