India's IPO hopefuls hit the breaks, the SEC probes Binance, and "Sheryl & Mark" is coming to Showtime

Airbnb handily beat Wall Street estimates on earnings and revenue in its fourth quarter, it disclosed today. Metaverse company Roblox meanwhile missed expectations on both the top and bottom lines, prompting its shares to fall 11% in after-hours trading.

The SEC is examining the relationship between the U.S. arm of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, and two trading firms with ties to Binance’s founder, says the WSJ. Corporate documents from 2019 reportedly tie Changpeng Zhao, Binance’s founder and chief executive officer, to the two trading firms, and former executives say that as of late last year Zhao controlled them both. As the Journal goes on to observe, FTX, a Binance competitor, and Alameda Research, one of FTX’s market makers, also have the same founder, Sam Bankman-Fried. More here.

Showtime has already renewed its anthology series "Super Pumped," with the second season set to focus on the relationship between Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg (who seems to have entered the witness protection program?). Entertainment Weekly reports the season will be titled "Sheryl & Mark." The news comes ahead of the premiere of the show's first season, "The Battle for Uber."

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AndHealth, a year-old, Columbus, Oh.-based creator of "disease reversal programs" focused on migraines and autoimmune diseases, has raised more than $57 million in financing led by Francisco Partners, with participation from the American Medical Association’s venture capital arm, Health 2047; Kirkland & Ellis; and Twofold Ventures. More here.

Funding Societies, a nearly seven-year-old, Singapore-based digital lending platform that caters to small- and medium-size businesses in Southeast Asia, has raised  $144 million in extended Series C funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from new investors like VNG Corporation, Rapyd Ventures, EDBI, Indies Capital, K3 Ventures and Ascend Vietnam. TechCrunch has more here.

Homebound, a nearly four-year-old, Santa Rosa, Ca.-based tech-enabled home-building startup that was originally incubated by Atomic Labs, has raised $75 million in Series C funding led by earlier backer Khosla Ventures, which was joined by other earlier backers, including GV, Forerunner, Thrive Capital, Irongrey and Fifth Wall, among other participants. The company, which uses virtual reality to help clients design their homes (it also touts its relationships with carpenters, plumbers, and other skilled workers in order to get houses rebuilt faster than a normal contractor might), separately secured “hundreds of millions” in debt from Goldman Sachs. The outfit has now raised $148 million in equity funding since the outset. TechCrunch has more here.

Kallyope, a six-year-old, New York-based drug-discovery platform focused on developing therapies involving the gut-brain axis, has raised $236 million in a Series D funding round led by Mubadala Investment Company and the Column Group. Other participants in the round include Alexandria Venture Investments, Bill Gates, Casdin Capital, and Lux Capital, among many others. The company says it has now raised nearly $480 million. FierceBiotech has more here.

Next Gen Foods, a two-year-old, Singapore-based plant-based food company (its first offering is a chicken alternative), raised $100 million in Series A funding from investors including Alpha JWC, EDBI, MPL Ventures, GGV Capital, K3 Ventures, and Bits x Bites. TechCrunch has more here.

Payhawk, a four-year-old, London-based corporate card startup that competes with Brex and Ramp, has raised $100 million in extended Series B funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, according to The Information, which says Lightspeed is funding the round "almost entirely." The company had initially closed on $112 million in Series B funding in November led by Greenoaks. More here.

PlayPlay, a five-year-old, New York-based online video creation platform for in-house enterprise teams, has raised $55 million in Series B funding led by Insight Partners, with participation from Balderton Capital. More here.

Ro, a nearly five-year-old, New York-based tele-health startup best known for selling erectile dysfunction drugs, has raised $150 million exclusively from earlier investors, led by ShawSpring Partners, with participation from FirstMark Capital, General Catalyst, Seven Seven Six, BoxGroup, Altimeter Capital, Baupost Group, Initialized Capital, TQ Ventures and TCG. The company, now valued by its investors at $7 billion, has raised a little more than $1 billion from VCs, judging from Crunchbase data. TechCrunch has more here.

Swappie, a nearly six-year-old, Helsinki, Finland-based end-to-end online marketplace for refurbished smartphones, has raised €108 million ($124 million) in Series C funding led by Verdane. Other investors in the round include Lifeline Ventures, Inventure, Reaktor Ventures and TESI. Tech.eu has more here.

Veho, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based package delivery company, has raised $170 million in Series B funding just months after locking down a $125 million Series A round. Tiger Global led the new round, joined by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and earlier backers General Catalyst, Bling Capital, Construct Capital, Industry Ventures and Origin Ventures, among others. The company has now raised $300 million altogether, and is valued by its backers at $1.5 billion valuation. TechCrunch has more here.

Cann, a 2.5-year-old, L.A.-based maker of cannabis-infused beverages, has raised $27 million in Series A funding from earlier backer Imaginary Ventures, along with array of celebrity investors, including Rosario Dawson. TechCrunch has more here.

FitOn, a four-year-old, West Hollywood, Ca.-based group workout fitness app, raised $40 million in Series C funding led by Delta-v Capital, which was joined by Accel, Maverick Ventures, Second Avenue Partners, and Mantis VC. The company also agreed to acquire Peerfit, a Tampa, Fl.-based corporate wellness platform. TechCrunch has more here.

KOS, a nearly five-year-old, Santa Barbara, Ca.-based plant-based nutrition brand, raised $12 million in Series A funding led by CAVU Venture Partners cofounder Clayton Christopher and Brian Goldberg, founder and managing director of Redbud Brands, a holding company focused food brands. Springdale Ventures also joined the round. More here.

Memora Health, a 4.5-year-old, San Francisco-based healthcare technology platform focused on automating complex care workflows, has raised $40 million in funding led by Transformation Capital, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Frist Cressey Ventures, Edward Elmhurst Health, and AlleyCorp. MedCity News has more here.

Parse Biosciences, a four-year-old, Seattle, Wa.-based single-cell sequencing solutions company, has raised $41.5 million in Series B funding. Marshall Wace and Janus Henderson Investors co-led the round, joined by Soleus Capital, Logos Capital, and Bioeconomy Capital. GeekWire has more here.

PriorAuthNow, a nearly eight-year-old, Columbus, Oh.-based health tech startup focused on streamlining treatment approvals, has raised $25 million in funding from Insight Partners. Axios has more here. 

Rainbow, a three-year-old, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based crypto startup building a mobile wallet app that allows users to interact with decentralized applications on the Ethereum blockchain, says it quietly raised $18 million in Series A funding in October led by  Seven Seven Six. The outfit also earlier raised $1.5 million in seed funding. TechCrunch has more here.

Sharpist, a four-year-old, Berlin, Germany-based startup that offers personalized business coaching online, has raised $23 million in Series A funding co-led by Endeit Capital and Capnamic. Other participants in the round included Meta workplace vice president Julie Codorniou, Porsche Ventures, and Founders Future. Business Insider has more here.

SourceDay, a nearly nine-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based purchase order management platform, just raised $31.5 million in Series C funding led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from ATX Ventures, Baird Capital, Draper Associates, Ring Ventures, and Silverton Partners. More here.

Tropic, a nearly three-year-old, New York-based startup that provides data, tools and services to automate SaaS procurement for its customers (and save them money, is that idea), has raised $40 million in Series B funding led by Insight Partners. The round brings the outfit's total funding to $65 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Variantyx, a nearly eight-year-old, Framingham, Ma.-based precision medicine company centered around genomic testing for rare genetic disorders, reproductive health, and precision oncology markets, has raised $41.5 million in Series C funding led by New Era Capital Partners. Other backers in the round include Peregrine Ventures, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, 20/20 HealthCare Partners, and Pitango HealthTech. More here.

Clare, a four-year-old, New York-based direct-to-consumer paint marketplace, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Pendulum, with participation from First Round Capital, among others. The eight-person outfit has now raised $12.2 million altogether. Business of Home has more here.

Common Heir, a two-year-old, L.A.-based sustainable beauty brand that eschews plastics, has raised $2.5 million in funding from investors, including Trousdale Ventures and Mucker Capital. InStyle wrote about the outfit last month.

Hyperspace, a seven-month-old, New York-based open web marketplace for Solana NFTs (it was initially called Solanalysis), has raised $4.5 million in seed funding led by Dragonfly Capital and Pantera Capital. The Block has more here.

Linker Cloud, a five-year-old, Warsaw, Poland-based SaaS-enabled logistics marketplace for e-commerce fulfillment, has raised $4 million in seed funding. Market One Capital and ffvc Poland co-led the round, joined by investors including Kogito Ventures. Tech.eu has more here.

Maverick, a 14-month-old, New York-based outfit at work on a permissionless derivatives protocol, has raised $8 million in funding led by Pantera Capital. Other backers in the round include Altonomy, Circle Ventures, and Gemini Frontier Fund, among numerous others. HackerNoon has more here.

Netacea, a four-year-old, Manchester, U.K.-based bot detection and mitigation specialist company, raised £9 million ($12 million) in Series A funding from Mercia Asset Management and numerous individual investors, including Crowdstrike chairman Gerhard Watzinger. VentureBeat has more here.

Permit.io, a nearly two-year-old, Israel-based startup that provides a full-stack authorization framework to help other companies build permissions systems into their products, just raised $6 million in seed funding led by NFX, with participation from previous investor Rainfall Ventures and numerous angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.

SecureThings, a four-year-old, Cupertino, Ca.-based maker of in-vehicle cybersecurity software, has raised $3.5 million in pre-Series A funding led by Inflexor Ventures, with participation from 9Unicorns, RPG Ventures, and SAB Holdings. The Economic Times has more here.

Teclison, a nearly eight-year-old, Princeton, N.J.-based clinical-stage biotechnology company that's developing cancer therapeutics to induce tumor necrosis and enhance anti-tumor immunity, has raised $5.9 million in funding led by W.T.T. Investment, with participation from Nestor Capital, among others. More here.

Trace Finance, a year-old, São Paulo, Brazil-based fintech startup that aims to streamline cross-border banking for startups, has raised $4.3 million in seed funding led by HOF Capital, with participation from Circle Ventures, The Chainsmokers (via their fund Mantis VC), and others. More here.

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Early-stage fintech-focused venture firm Better Tomorrow Ventures has secured $225 million in capital commitments for its second fund — triple the amount it raised for its debut fund that closed in September of 2020. Founded by Sheel Mohnot and Jake Gibson in November of 2019, the San Francisco-based firm has allocated $150 million to invest in startups at the pre-seed and seed stages. It has also reserved $75 million for an opportunity fund for follow-on investments. TechCrunch has more here.

Scenic Advisement, an eight-year-old, San Francisco-based outfit that helps startup founders and early-stage venture investors seeking to sell their private stock on the secondary market, is expanding its presence by joining the buy side of the deal flow, says Pitchbook. It says that Scenic is raising its first fund, with a target of $250 million, to take ownership stakes in the burgeoning class of venture-backed pre-IPO tech companies. More here.

Akamai Technologies announced today it has reached an agreement to acquire infrastructure-as-a-service platform provider Linode for approximately $900 million, in a move to help enable Akamai to become “the world’s most distributed compute platform.” Founded in 2003, Linode has sought to serve as an IaaS alternative to public cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. VentureBeat has more here.

A boom in technology IPOs in India risks grinding to a halt after several of the country’s highest-profile startups tanked soon after listing. According to Bloomberg, a raft of prominent tech startups, including Oyo Hotels and logistics provider Delhivery -- both backed by SoftBank -- are pushing back their public debuts and preparing to reappraise target valuations. More here.

DJ Steve Aoki says he made more money from his NFT drop last year than in a decade of making music. 

Gwen Cheni is joining Khosla Ventures as a partner on the investment team. She was previously a partner at IndieBio/SOSV covering bio and AI.

Facebookers are now apparently Metamates. More here.

Elon Musk donated roughly $5.7 billion worth of Tesla shares to charity last year, according to a securities filing yesterday, making him by at least one measure one of last year’s top philanthropic donors. The filing doesn’t name recipients for the 5,044,000 Tesla shares that he reported donating over the course of more than a week in November, and he isn't sharing more right now.

Peter Thiel is injecting $1.5 million into a seed round for a new conservative dating app called "The Right Stuff, notes Axios. The app is slated to go live this summer in Washington, D.C. More here.

Pay at private equity firms "dwarfs" what investment banks are paying, according to calculations by the Financial Times. Says the outlet: "Flush with profits from buoyant equity markets, Blackstone, KKR and Carlyle Group earmarked $2 million in total pay and benefits per employee in 2021," a figure that is "at least twice as high as the per-employee amount set aside at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and the corporate and investment banking arm of JPMorgan Chase, which have much larger head counts . . ." Collectively, says the FT, the five largest public PE firms, including Apollo and Ares, "recorded pay and benefits of $23.2 billion for about 11,700 combined staff." More here.

Inside that Uber and Google settlement with Anthony Levandowski.

Europe’s crypto capital might not be where you expect.

The European Commission has approved plans for a €6 billion satellite internet system to compete with the likes of Amazon and SpaceX despite previous objections from its internal watchdog, says the Financial Times. Reportedly, signals from the new system would be encrypted and offered to Europe as well as Africa to give the latter an alternative to Chinese-built infrastructure. It would also provide a back-up in case of cyber attacks on broadband networks. More here.

Talent agencies look to cash in on podcasts' IP gold rush.

China's hockey team is not so Chinese.

Unnecessary insults in classic love songs, ranked.

A San Francisco Victorian that's the last of its kind (that's code for *expensive,* though it does come furnished).

Oyster vodka.

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