Holmes is found guilty, Apple hits a new high, and KKR just brought aboard another name in tech

Hello, welcome back.:) Hope you took a break, too, and that you enjoyed it.

Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the failed blood testing start-up Theranos, was found guilty of four of 11 charges of fraud today following a trial that stretched on for four months. The New York Times has more here.

Apple briefly reached $3 trillion in market value earlier today, making it the first U.S. company to do so.

It was as frothy as it felt: According to PitchBook data, investors last year pumped $93 billion into seed-stage and early-stage startups in the U.S. through Dec. 15 -- setting an all-time record. That amount compares with $52 billion for all of 2020 and $30 billion in 2016, observes the WSJ, which notes that valuations have surged correspondingly. The median valuation for  seed- and early-stage companies funded in 2021 was $26 million, up from $16 million in 2020 and $13 million in 2016, according to PitchBook. More here.

In other shocking stats news: according to the blockchain analytics company Chainalysis, users shelled out nearly $41 billion(!) for the digital artwork and collectibles called non-fungible tokens (NFTs) last year, with transactions of less than $10,000 accounting for more than 75% of the market. (By comparison, the global art market was worth $50.1 billion last year.) As for how concentrated that ownership is, it's pretty concentrated. Roughly 32,400 wallets -- or just 9% of the NFT owners who were holding 2.7 million NFTs between them from February through November -- hold 80% of the value. The Financial Times has the goods here.

Alt is the simplest alternative asset platform that helps you confidently invest in what you’re passionate about. It is reimagining liquidity and banking products to support the next generation of investors. Alt envisions a world where anything can be an investible asset – starting with trading cards.

Liquid Death, a water brand that began life in 2018 with a funny video to first test the concept, has grown deadly serious about its growth prospects. The L.A.-based outfit, which sells canned mountain water from the Alps that will "murder your thirst," has just landed $75 million in Series C funding led by the startup studio Science, which helped launch the company and now owns a "strong minority" position. (Says Science cofounder Mike Jones, "I wish we owned more.")

We talked earlier today with Liquid Death's cofounder and CEO, Mike Cessario, a West Coast agency creative-turned-entrepreneur, about the company's growth. Seemingly, there is a lot to boast about. According to Cessario, Liquid Death is now carried in more than 29,000 locations throughout the U.S. including Whole Foods, Target, Safeway and 7-Eleven stores, and revenue reached nearly $45 million last year, up from $3 million in 2019 when the company sold its first can.

He thinks there is a lot of room to grow from here, including through flavored waters that Liquid Death is beginning to roll out with names that suit the brand's punk-metal ethos. Its first three products? Berry It Alive, Severed Lime, and Mango Chainsaw.

More here.

iCapital Network, an eight-year-old, New York-based fintech platform for alternative investing, has raised $50 million at a $6 billion valuation led by earlier investor WestCap. Apollo Global Management and Temasek also participated in the latest funding round, iCapital said. Reuters has more here.

Jupiter, a two-year-old, Bangalore, India-based "100% digital bank" has raised $86 million in Series C funding co-led by Tiger Global, QED and Sequoia Capital India. TechCrunch has more here.

MetaMap, a four-year old, San Francisco-based startup that says its infrastructure layer powers borderless services, has raised $70 million in Series B funding. Tribe Capital led the round, joined by Craft Ventures, Alameda Research and numerous notable individual investors, including Snapdeal cofounder Kunal Bahl and Jerry Murdock,  a cofounder of Insight Partners. More here.

Metaversal, a six-month-old, Miami, Fla.-based investment firm and venture studio focused on NFTs, has raised $50 million in Series A funding at a $181 million valuation. CoinFund and Foxhaven Asset Management led the round, joined by Digital Currency Group, Dapper Labs and Rockaway Blockchain Fund, as well as more traditional names like Franklin Templeton. The Information has more here.

Armgo Pharma, an 18-year-old, Ardsley, N.Y.-based novel small molecule therapeutics company developing treatments for cardiac, musculoskeletal, and neurological disorders, has raised $35 million in funding led by Forbion, with participation from Pontifax and Kurma Partners. More here.

Avoma, a four-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based AI-based meeting assistant, has raised $12 million in Series A funding. Headline led the round, joined by Storm Ventures, GFC, Zoom, Operator Partners, Industry Ventures, K9 Ventures, Dragon Capital and Twin Ventures. More here.

Arcade, a months-old, New York-based decentralized finance platform that says it will allow users to borrow against the value of their NFTs, has raised $15 million in Series A funding from investors led by Pantera Capital. Other investors in the round include Castle Island Ventures, Golden Tree Asset Management, Quiet Capital, Franklin Templeton, and Lemniscap, among others. Coindesk has more here.

Focal Systems, a 6.5-year-old, San Francisco-based retail automation company, has raised $25.8 million in Series B funding led by Point72 Ventures, with participation from earlier backers Costanoa Ventures, Zetta Venture Partners, and Zebra Technologies, among others. More here.

Voyant Photonics, a four-year-old, New York-based startup that says its tiny, inexpensive lidar tech can be used in a variety of applications, including autonomous vehicles, drones, robotics and factory automation, has raised $15.4 million in Series A funding. UP.Partners led the round, joined by LDV Capital and Contour Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Abstra, a nearly two-year-old, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil-based startup that has developed a no-code tool for designers and programmers to build professional apps, just raised $2.3 million in funding led by SoftBank Latin America Fund. TechCrunch has more here.

AIMMO, a nearly six-year-old, Seoul, South Korea-based startup that has built a web-based, self-serve data annotation platform, has raised $12 million in Series A funding. Backers in the round include DS Asset Management, Industrial Bank of Korea, Hanwha Investment & Securities, S&S Investment, Toss Investment, Korea Asset Investment & Securities and Venture Field. TechCrunch has more here.

Purple Dot, a 2.5-year-old, London-based e-commerce waitlist platform, just raised $4 million in funding led by Unusual Ventures. Earlier backers also joined the round, including Connect Ventures, Moxxie Ventures and early-stage investor Paul Forster. More here.

Rhaeos, a 3.5-year-old, Evanston, Il.-based clinical stage medical device company developing a platform wireless and non-invasive wearable sensor that's initially targeting hydrocephalus, a life threatening condition caused by an abnormal accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid, just raised $2.2 million in seed financing. Participants included Creative Ventures, Portal Innovations, Lateral Capital, and Cedars-Sinai Accelerator, among others. More here.

Smarter Health, a five-year-old, Singaporean-based startup whose tech aims to facilitate the smoother exchange of data between different parties in the healthcare system, has raised roughly $3.8 million in Series A funding led by East Ventures, with participation from Orbit Malaysia, Citrine Capital, HMI Group and Emtek. TechCrunch has more here.

Tibles, a 3.5-year-old, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based digital collectibles company building off the Flow blockchain, recently raised $3 million in seed funding led by Cadenza Ventures, with participation from earlier backer Dapper Labs (which developed Flow). We wrote up more here.

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Jeff Morris Jr., founder and managing partner of the L.A.-based venture firm Chapter One, last month closed a $40 million early-stage fund to focus on web3 investments, and he’s in the process of raising a separate $20 million opportunity fund. We wrote up more here.

Ribbit Capital, a 10-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based venture firm that has focused from the outset on fintech investments, has garnered $1.15 billion in capital commitments for what appears to be the final close of its seventh fund, according to an SEC filing. The amount is significantly higher than the $750 million the firm was said to be raising in March of last year. It's also more than double the $420 million Ribbit collected for its sixth fund, which was announced a year ago. TechCrunch has the story here.

E-commerce company Fanatics has acquired Topps trading cards, sources close to the deal confirmed to CNBC tonight. Terms of the agreement were not available, but the outlet's sources put the deal at roughly $500 million. It will reportedly include only Topps’ name and sports and entertainment division. Last year, Topps announced plans to go public through a blank-check company at a valuation of $1.3 billion, but that deal fell apart when Topps lost a 70-year trading card deal with MLB to (yes) Fanatics.

Hipcamp, a nine-year-old, San Francisco-based company that offers campsites for booking, has acquired Cool Camping, an online travel agency in the UK, according to regulatory documents flagged by the outlet Skift. Terms of the deal aren't being disclosed. Hipcamp, which a year ago raised $57 million in Series C funding, has been seeking international expansion and in 2020 acquired Australia’s Youcamp. More here.

A day after Twitter permanently suspended Marjorie Taylor Greene's account for spreading Covid misinformation, Facebook has suspended her for 24 hours for the same reason.

Three months after appointing Snap cofounder Evan Spiegel to its board of directors, KKR has brought in Matt Cohler, the former general partner at Benchmark who earlier worked as a VP of product management at Facebook until 2008. (He wasn't there long but he was among its first employees.) Cohler's appointment will bring the number of independent directors to 12 out of a total of 16 board seats, says the private equity powerhouse.

Capital flowing to private Indian startups surged over four times to about $39 billion in 2021, up nearly three times from a previous record set in 2019, when the country's startups attracted $14.6 billion in capital from investors. (This according to data from insight platform Tracxn -- which has itself filed for an IPO.) India now has 81 unicorns, 44 of which joined the club this year, says TechCrunch.

Pushback against web3, from how practical to how decentralized it actually is, was intense while we were offline (and we'll admit to enjoying the back and forth). More here and here and here and here.

In related news, Bored Ape NFTs are being stolen, and the Twittersphere thinks it's hilarious.

Now to really blow your mind: a primer on Mutant Ape Yacht Club serums and how they fit in with the Bored Ape Yacht Club ecosystem.

How Shopify outfoxed Amazon (for the normals).

Remembering Betty White.

How disgust explains everything.

FlightAware's misery map.

The Orient Express heads back to Italy.