Silicon Valley Funding News - Week of January 17, 2022. Placer Raised $100M Series C

Good morning!

I got another 🦄 last week!  Congrats to Noam and the Placer.ai team for raising $100M Series C.  I still remember meeting Noam and Koby (father and son team) at the Creamery back in 2017.  The Creamery is now gone, but Placer.ai is still here, alive and kicking butt!

Great reads for this week:

• Tencent, Alibaba, Ant Group, Didi, iQiyi, and Weibo are all suffering from hefty fines, dramatic stock price drops, delisting or delayed IPOs. These crackdowns are destroying companies, plus the innovation and entrepreneurial spirit that made China a tech powerhouse over the past decade. 10 million college graduates in China are slowly shifting away from tech jobs to work for the government. 
• Despite having Kuaishou, JD Logistics and Baidu going IPO in Hong Kong last year. I'm surprised to see that Hong Kong Stock Exchange’s ranking has slipped to #4 (behind Shanghai Stock Exchange) vs #2 in 2020.  Data from China and Hong Kong IPO Markets 2021 / 2022 Report by KPMG. 
• My awesome intern Bernard Chan started a Twitter thread on a step by step (with screenshots) guide on how to bridge from Solana -> Near protocol.  Super informative. 
• Definition of a visionary founder is changing. In crypto, remaining anonymous and buying a $500 piece of hardware to manipulate your voice may help.  When the Crypto Founder Is Real but the Name Is Fake is a fun read by Kate Clark.  A couple of Race founders don’t like to show their face to the public.  This is a real phenomenon.
• TPG is restructuring its finances as part of its IPO to offer shareholders just 20% of its future performance-based profits (carried interest), down from 50%.  TPG’s structure a “next-generation” private equity IPO - one that gives public shareholders less of a slice of performance fees, but more from steadier management fees.

This week a total of 26 startups raised $1.0922B in funding, 5 M&As:

• $504.1M goes to 8 Enterprise startups
• $15M goes to 1 FinTech startup
• $17M goes to 1 Insurance startup
• $25M goes to 1 HR startup
• $40M goes to 1 Education startup
• $3M goes to 1 Wearables startup
• $25M goes to 1 Child Care startup
• $2.5M goes to 1 Construction startup
• $7M goes to 1 Cannabis startup
• $164M goes to 3 BioTech startups
• $264M goes to 5 Healthcare startups
• $25.6M goes to 2 Other startups