Opensea's fraud problem, Marcelo Claure's non-compete clause, and policy star Chris Lehane now works for Katie Haun

Friday! Hope you have a terrific weekend, everyone. (East Coast readers, we're thinking of you.)

We leave you with this week's StrictlyVC Download, wherein we talk with crossover investor Mitchell Green of Lead Edge Capital, who sees opportunities in the recent market turmoil. By the way, as an investor in Alibaba, Ant Financial and Bytedance, he also sees lots of opportunities in China despite some of the twists and turns over the last year. (What he's less keen to buy into is crypto, as you'll hear.) We enjoyed talking with him; we hope you'll enjoy the conversation, too.

Giant thanks to this week's podcast sponsor, Findem, which says it helps companies looking for top engineers find 'em. 💯 Search like never before and make amazing hires with Findem's AI-driven platform. Visit the company at www.findem.ai/strictlyvc.

Major U.S. stock indexes rallied today to finish one of their most tumultuous weeks in nearly two years on a high note, thanks to strong earnings from Apple and other big companies. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average ended three-week losing streaks, and the Nasdaq rose more than 3% to finish the week flat. Traders tell the WSJ they expect more volatility.

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Moglix, a nearly seven-year-old, Noida, India-based B2B marketplace and procurement platform for manufacturing goods, has raised $250 million in Series F funding at a $2.6 billion post-money valuation (up from $1 billion just eight months ago). Earlier backer Alpha Wave Global (formerly called Falcon Edge Capital) led the round, joined by another previous backer, Tiger Global, and Hong Kong-based Ward Ferry. The company has now raised $470 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Zapp, a 1.5-year-old, London-based rapid grocery delivery startup, has raised $200 million in Series B funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, 468 Capital and BroadLight Capital. Other participants in the round include previous investors Atomico, Burda and Vorwerk Ventures, as well as British Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton. CNBC has more here.

CausaLens, a four-year-old, London-based startup that has developed causal inference technology — presented as a no-code tool that helps data scientists make better, faster decision -- has raised $45 million in funding. Dorilton Ventures and Molten Ventures co-led the round, joined by GP Bullhound and earlier backers Generation Ventures and IQ Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Portnox, a 15-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based cloud-native network and endpoint security solutions company, has raised $22 million in Series A funding led by Elsewhere Partners. SecurityWeek has more here.

Sensi.ai, a three-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based virtual care management platform, has raised $14 million in Series A funding led by Entrée Capital, with participation from Flint Capital, Homeward Ventures, Almeda Ventures, Operator Partners, Jibe Ventures, and Yossi Matias, who is an Israel-based Google exec focused on AI. Calcalist has more here.

Simcha Therapeutics, a two-year-old, New Haven, Ct.-based biotech company that's developing cytokine-based cancer immunotherapies, has raised $40 million in Series B funding led by SR One Capital Management. Other new backers in the round include BVF Partners, Samsara BioCapital, Rock Springs Capital, ArrowMark Partners, and Logos Capital. Endpoints News has more here.

Stonly, a four-year-old, Levallois-Perret, France-based customer onboarding platform, raised $22 million in Series A funding led by Northzone, with participation from Accel and numerous individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Talkiatry, a nearly three-year-old, New York-based in-network psychiatric care provider, has raised $17 million in extended Series A funding from Left Lane Capital. The company had raised $20 million in Series A funding back in July originally. MobiHealth News has more here.

Vanti Analytics, a nearly three-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based self-service data science platform, just raised $16 million Series A funding. Insight Partners led the round, joined by True Ventures and MoreVC. Calcalist has more here.

Earable, a four-year-old, Boulder, Co.-based company that's developing mart earphones to track users' brain activity, eye movements and facial movements and aid their sleep cycles, has raised $6.6 million from Founders Fund and Smilegate Investment. Axios has more here.

Lemonada Media, a three-year-old, Houston, Tex.-based podcast network, just raised $8 million in Series A funding led by BDMI, a subsidiary of Bertelsmann. Madison Wells, Greycroft, Spring Point Partners, Intuition Capital, and Owl Capital Group, also joined the round, among others. More here.

NLX, a nearly four-year-old, New York-based maker of automated, personalized customer self-service software, has raised $5 million in seed funding led by Aquila Capital Partners. Other backers in the round include Flying Fish Partners, Sage Venture Partners, and JetBlue Technology Ventures. VentureBeat has more here.

Quan, a nearly two-year-old, Amsterdam-based maker of employee well-being software, has raised $1.15 million in pre-seed funding from Y Combinator, along with a Netherlands-based impact fund and several unnamed angels. TechCrunch has more here.

Snapfix, a two-year-old, Dublin, Ireland-based task management platform, has raised €1.75 million ($2 million) in funding led by Sator Grove Holdings, a U.S. investment group. More here.

Sooper, a year-old, São Paulo, Brazil-based online marketplace for construction materials, has raised $5.7 million in funding from Canary and Kaszek. Bloomberg has more here.

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Matrix Partners China, one of the most prolific early-stage venture capitalists in China, is looking to raise at least $1.5 billion, mainly from U.S. institutional investors, for its biggest-ever fund, according to The Information. It would be one of the largest pools of money dedicated to young startups based in China.

TLcom Capital, a 22-year-old, U.K.-based venture firm that's focused on Africa and whose past investments include Twiga and Andela, has raised $70 million in capital commitments toward a fund that it is aiming to close with $150 million. TechCrunch has more here.

The Dutch file-sharing company WeTransfer says it has canceled plans for an IPO on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange, citing market volatility. It adds there was still “substantial investor demand” for the IPO. CNBC has more here.

Marcelo Claure, the top SoftBank executive who is leaving the Japanese conglomerate after months of negotiations  -- and what the Financial Times describes as "years of grumbling over his pay" -- will reportedly receive a severance payment between $30 million and $40 million and will continue to have a potentially very lucrative stake in SoftBank’s Latin America fund. According to the FT, Claure has also agreed to a non-compete clause, meaning he cannot start certain projects that compete against SoftBank for “a couple of years” or poach staff during that time. More here.

Outgoing Airbnb policy chief Chris Lehane said in a tweet today that he is joining Katie Haun's crypto fund. He will be the outfit's chief strategy officer. Protocol has a bit more here.

The U.K. government approved the extradition of Mike Lynch to the U.S. to face criminal fraud charges, hours after a London judge ruled the tech tycoon was dishonest in the $11.7 billion sale of his company, Autonomy, to HP back in 2011. The extradition decision by Home Secretary Priti Patel today doesn’t mean that Lynch will be getting on a plane anytime soon, notes Bloomberg. He can appeal the order and a separate court’s decision allowing his extradition.

MacKenzie Scott’s stake in Amazon shrunk by 2.5 million shares last year, according to a filing spied by Bloomberg, as the world’s fifth-richest woman set records with the pace of her philanthropy. The shares would be worth as much as $8.5 billion based on the average of Amazon’s share price between the dates of the two disclosures.

A Porsche Taycan drove from L.A. to New York in record (charging) time. Today, the German carmaker announced it broke the Guinness World Record for shortest charging time to drive across the U.S. in its $87,030 battery-powered car: 2 hours, 26 minutes, 48 seconds.

Retailers expect customers to return more than $761 billion in merchandise sold last year, according to a new report from the National Retail Federation and Appriss Retail. That's 16.6% of total U.S. retail sales, which rose to $4.58 trillion last year. (Relatedly, here's what really happens to Amazon returns.)

It's entirely possible that we spend more than 36 days on social media each year.

Waymo, the driverless car company operating an autonomous taxi fleet in San Francisco, is suing the California Department of Motor Vehicles, reports the L.A. Times. The immediate issue: whether the company, owned by Alphabet, can hide from the public safety-related information by designating it as a trade secret. 

More than 80% of NFTs created for free on OpenSea are fraud or spam, says the company, which is now reversing course on the amount of free NFTs a user can create.

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Tesla is selling a new accessory: a microphone for in-car karaoke. 

Rivian is meanwhile making a blowdryer for its EV. Which is great. It's not as fun as a microphone.