A warning for SPAC sponsors, a token deal for Tiger, and a leaked email tirade that will blow your hair back

Another day, another plot twist: if you happen to receive an email that appears to be coming from connie@strictlyvc (picture and all) asking you to sign up the newsletter, please do not click on the link. (We never proactively ask anyone to subscribe, aside from including that big blue button at the bottom of these missives.) Relatedly, if anyone on the Gmail team is out there and has time to chat, we'd welcome this.:)

Tyson Clark, a widely admired general partner with Alphabet's venture arm, GV, has passed away unexpectedly. More here.

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Breakout Ventures, a San Francisco-based seed-stage venture firm that funds what it calls creative biosciences startups, has closed the second fund in its five-year history with $112.5 million in capital commitments.

Both of its funds, including a $60 million debut effort that we wrote about in 2017, are backed by Dolby Family Ventures, the Thiel Foundation, GRIDS Capital, S Cubed Capital, Chris and Crystal Sacca, Tony Fadell, and Zack Bogue and Matt Ocko of DCVC.

The new fund also pulled in new institutional LPs, including Cortes Capital and Cupola Funds managed by AMG National Trust.

What its high-wattage backers are betting on are two managing partners who've long focused on startups at the intersection of biology and technology.

Lindy Fishburne, a management consultant earlier in her career, spent more than a decade as the executive director of the Thiel Foundation, which awarded no-strings-attached grants to deep science startups until it became obvious to Fishburne that, because of the opportunities, it was time to start writing venture checks instead.

Julia Moore was meanwhile an associate director at Stanford University before joining the Thiel Foundation as a portfolio director and joining forces with Fishburne afterward at Breakout Ventures. (Moore was promoted to managing partner earlier this year; the Thiel Foundation's model has since been retired as the two build out the Breakout Ventures footprint.)

Naturally, the bets the two are making were also critical to the fundraising process, and there was apparently plenty of progress to report.

More here.

* Afero, a seven-year-old, Los Altos, Ca.-based IoT management platform, has raised $50 million in Series C funding led by Crosspoint Capital Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

* Braintrust, a 3.5-year-old, San Francisco-based based decentralized web3 job recruiting network, has completed a private token sale of $100 million led by Coatue, with participation by Tiger Global Management, True Ventures, Blockchange Ventures, HashKey, and other early backers of the project. More here.

* ButterflyMX, a 7.5-year-old, New York-based creator of smart video intercoms, package rooms, keypads, elevator controls, key lockers, and other access control technology for multifamily, commercial, and student housing properties, has raised $50 million in growth equity funding led by JMI Equity, with participation from Volition Capital, Egis Capital, and RiverPark Ventures. More here.

* Cerebral, a year-old, Walnut, Ca.-based online mental health services startup, has raised $300 million at a $4.8 billion valuation. SoftBank led the round, joined by Prysm Capital, Access Industries, WestCap Group and Artis Ventures. The company, which has already raised  $462 million altogether since launching, is being valued at $4.8 billion. The WSJ has more here.

* CloudBees, an 11-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based enterprise software delivery platform, has raised $150 million in Series F funding, at a $1 billion pre-money valuation. (The company had raised just $105 million previously. It also just secured a $95 debt facility.) Goldman Sachs led the round, joined by Morgan Stanley, Bridgepoint Capital and earlier investors HSBC, Golub Capital, and Delta-v Capital. VentureBeat has more here.

* Inrupt, a nearly four-year-old, Boston-based startup whose platform invites users to store their personal data in something called PODs (Personal Online Datastores) in order to give them more control, has raised about $30 million in Series A funding led by Forte Ventures, says TechCrunch. Inrupt, very notably, was founded by Tim Berners-Lee, who created the standards for the world wide web three decades ago. More here.

* Mambu, a 10-year-old, Amsterdam-based SaaS cloud banking platform with what it markets as a unique, composable approach, has raised €235 million in Series E funding led by EQT Growth. TechCrunch has more here.

* Merama, a year-old, Mexico City- and São Paulo-based company that acquires or launches Latin American digital brands, has already hit a $1.2 billion valuation following a new $60 million follow-on investment led by Series B investors Advent International and SoftBank. The announcement comes a day after fellow LatAm e-commerce aggregator Quinio announced $20 million in initial funding to acquire some 30 companies. In total, Merama has now raised $445 million, of which $345 million is equity and $100 million is debt. TechCrunch has more here.

* Rho, a 3.5-year-old, New York-based corporate spend and cash management company, has raised $75 million in Series B funding led by Dragoneer Investment Group, with participation from DJF Growth and earlier backers Inspired Capital, M13 and Torch Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

* Robin Healthcare, a four-year-old, Berkeley, Ca.-based startup building an 'Alexa for healthcare' scribe device that takes over administrative tasks, just raised $50 million in Series B funding led by Scale Venture Partners. Other participants in the round include Khosla Ventures and earlier backers Norwest Venture Partners, Social Leverage, Meridian Street Capital and IA Ventures. FierceHealthcare has more here.  

* Robotic Research, a 19-year-old, Clarksburg, Md.-based self-driving technology company that has spent the last two decades developing on and off-road autonomous vehicles for the Department of Defense, has raised $228 million in Series A funding co-led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Enlightenment Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

* Suki, a five-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based AI-powered voice platform that health care professionals use to generate medical notes and reduce administration (much like Robin Healthcare, above), has raised $55 million in Series C funding led by March Capital. Philips Ventures, Venrock, Flare Capital, Breyer Capital, InHealth Ventures, and a slew of angel investors also joined the round. VentureBeat has more here.

* Synthesia, a four-year-old, London-based AI platform for making synthetic videos, raised $50 million in Series B funding. Kleiner Perkins led the round, joined by GV and earlier investors Firstmark Capital, LDV Capital, Seedcamp and MMC Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

* Easol, a 3,5-year-old, London-based startup that has built event and experiences software that third-party companies can use to market and sell bookings, just raised $25 million in Series A funding. Tiger Global led the round, joined by earlier investors Notion Capital, Foundation Capital, Y Combinator and FMZ Ventures. TechCrunch has more here. 

* First Resonance, a 3.5-year-old, L.A.-based startup that makes software for making hardware (and was founded by former SpaceX engineers), has raised $14 million in Series A funding. Craft Ventures led the round, joined by Blue Bear Capital, Fika Ventures, Stage VP, and Wavemaker. TechCrunch has more here.

* Palm NFT Studio, an 11-month-old, fully remote platform for "large-scale" NFT "drops" that's built atop the Ethereum blockchain, has raised $27 million in Series B funding led by M12. Other investors in the round include Griffin Gaming Partners, RRE, Third Kind Venture Capital, Sfermion, the LAO, Warner Bros., and SKTelco. Founder Dan Heyman was previously a GM with ConsenSys. More here. 

* Pontoro, a two-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based startup at work on what it describes as an institutional-grade digital asset securitization and liquidity platform centered on infrastructure debt finance, has raised $6 million in seed funding. Ulu Ventures led the round, joined by Franklin Templeton, Fin Venture Capital, and many others. More here.

* Petra, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based company that makes a tunnel-boring robot (called Swifty), has raised $30 million in Series A funding led by DCVC. Other investors in the round include ACME Capital Congruent Ventures, 8VC, Real Ventures, Elementum Ventures and Mac Venture Capital. The company has now raised $33 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

* Software, a 4.5-year-old, Bay Area-based data platform that aims to help engineering organizations improve their software delivery through its DevOps metrics platform, just raised $15 million in Series A funding from Next47 and 8VC. More here.

* Totus Medicines, a 2.5-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based drug discovery company that says it wants to treat cancers with known targets but no specific drugs, has raised $40 million in Series A funding led by DCVC Bio and Northpond Ventures, with participation from Camford Capital and earlier backer Social Impact Capital. Forbes has more here.

* Union, a 4.5-year-old, Austin, Tex-based a cloud-based point-of-sale software designed to make life easier for servers and bartenders (among other things, diners can order from their phones), has raised $22 million in Series B funding. Clerisy led the round, and was joined by Roth Capital, Aquila Capital Partners and earlier backers NEA, Wellington Management and Fiserv. Built in Austin has more here.

* Airplane, a year-old, San Francisco-based developer platform for automating internal workflows, has raised $8.5 million in Series A funding led by Benchmark, where founder Josh Ma -- formerly the CTO of the life sciences software company Benchling -- spent half of last year as an entrepreneur in residence. (Benchling, which last month filed to go public, is also backed by Benchmark.) TechCrunch has more here.

* Aquifer, a three-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based AI-powered animation platform that says it can give content creators with no technical animation skills the power to produce cinematic-quality content in minutes, has raised $2 million in seed funding led by LDV Capital. Other participants in the round include Boost VC, Geekdom Fund, Wedbush Ventures, Techstars and individual investors. More here.

* Bird Buddy, a 17-month-old, Slovenia-based maker of a smart bird feeder, has raised an $8.5 million in seed funding from General Catalyst, among others. TechCrunch has more here.

* FlyFin, a year-old, Bangalore- and San Jose, Ca.-based maker of tax-prep software for freelancers and the self-employed, has raised $8 million total in seed and pre-Series A round, it disclosed today. Accel Partners is its lead investor; it is also backed by Falcon Edge. Business Insider has more here.

* Itiliti Health, a 2.5-year-old, Eden Prairie, Mn.-based healthcare-focused whose software helps manage prior authorizations for payers, has raised $2 million in funding co-led by Bread and Butter Ventures and Altitude Ventures. Other backers in the round include M25, SpringTime VC, and Groove Capital. More here.

* Mio, a five-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based startup that helps enterprise teams collaborate across messaging services like Zoom Chat, Microsoft Teams, Slack and Cisco’s Webex, just raised $8.7 million in Series A funding co-led by Zoom and Cisco Investments. The outfit has now raised $17 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

* NextVivo, a 10-month-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based biotech company developing an immune organoid technology platform, launched today with $7.9 million in funding led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Alexandria Venture Investments, Wilson Sonsini, and individual investors. The WSJ has more here.

* Officely, a nearly two-year-old, Melbourne, Australia-based team scheduling platform that lives in Slack, has raised $2 million led by TEN13, with participation from individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.

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* Advent International, the 37-year-old private equity firm with offices in Palo Alto, Boston, New York and London, says it just closed its second dedicated tech fund with a whopping $4 billion, six months after it opened the vehicle to investors. The new fund is twice the size of its predecessor fund, which closed in 2019 and was subsequently used to invest in 20 companies. More here.

* Greycroft is raising a pair of funds, including its first-ever pool that could total $1 billion, according to WSJ sources. The New York- and Los Angeles-based venture investor, which backs consumer, enterprise-software, fintech and digital-health startups, is planning to raise about $1 billion for its fourth fund focused on later-stage deals, as well as about $500 million for its seventh main early-stage fund, according to the outlet. More here.

* L Catterton, the 32-year-old, Greenwich, Ct.-based consumer-focused private equity firm, is raising up to $6.5 billion for its 10th flagship fund and up to $1.25 billion for its fourth growth equity fund, says the WSJ, which says the formal fundraising process is expected to begin "imminently." More here.

* BuzzFeed's plunge after leaping into the public market earlier this week is accelerating. Shares of the digital media company spiraled 24% to $5.87 today, closing at a fourth consecutive record low. BuzzFeed debuted on Dec. 6 after merging with blank-check company 890 5th Avenue Partners; it has since shed nearly 40% of its value as the majority of investors opted not to participate. Bloomberg has more here.

* Grove Collaborative, a nine-year-old, San Francisco-based direct-to-consumer platform for natural home and personal care products, agreed to go public at an implied $1.5 billion valuation via Richard Branson's Virgin Group Acquisition Corp II. According to Crunchbase data, Grove has raised at least $475 million from investors over the years. The WSJ has more here.

* Lily Bernicker has joined Wireframe Ventures as a principal. She was previously a Principal at Collaborative Fund. More here.

* Felix Capital has two new partners: Julien Codorniou joins Felix from Meta, where he was running WorkPlace. Susan Lin joined the firm in 2019 after working at HgCapital and Bain & Company previously. More here.

* Months before laying off 900 employees over a Zoom call, in a note to roughly 70(!) people who represented nearly all of the company's backers, Better.com Vishal Garg disparaged a VC on the company's cap table, calling him "barnacles and sewage" on his "rocket ship." Vice has the story here.

* SEC Chairman Gary Gensler took aim today at blank-check companies known as special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, saying they provide ordinary investors with incomplete information and insufficient protection against conflicts of interest and fraud. Gensler said he wants to level the playing field between traditional initial public offerings and SPACs. [Cut to SPAC sponsors around the U.S. spitting out their coffee.] The WSJ has more here.

* Bloomberg reported today that Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz are starting the very gradual process of segueing out of the venture firm they launched 12 years ago, buying properties in Vegas (both of them) and in Malibu (Andreessen). In response to the piece, both tweeted today that they remain very busy and involved.

* Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and other megabillionaires are selling stock at historic levels as the market continues to soar -- and tax changes loom. “What you’re seeing is unprecedented” in recent years, Daniel Taylor, an accounting professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, tells the WSJ. Taylor, who studies trading by executives and directors, says 2021 marks the most sales he can recall by insiders in a decade, resembling waves of sales during the twilight of the early 2000s dot-com boom.

* A new Tesla safety concern: driving while playing video games.

* An enviable product placement gone very wrong. (Spoiler alert!)

* Half a billion in Bitcoin, lost in the dump.

* How Phil Falcone lost $2 billion over 10 years.

Kinetic sand table.

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