Burnout on TikTok, layoffs at Virgin Hyperloop, and Gousto gets a boost-o

The top senator overseeing U.S. intelligence agencies tells Axios he's deeply concerned cyberattacks launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin could morph into a broader war that draws in NATO nations — including the United States. President Biden has ruled out American boots on the ground in Ukraine. But Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.), said in an interview today that Putin's actions during the next few days risk triggering NATO's Article 5 collective defense principle. More here.

irrvrntVC is an early-stage fund investing $300k - $500k into DTC, adtech, and nextgen commerce. We aim to be super ransparent with founders, LPs, and prospective founders and investors. Here’s the deck I used to raise $10MM+ for my initial fund. Here’s my investment history and performance (8x portfolio as an angel); shared upon request. More info on what we are looking for here. And ofc - pitch us here!

Almost exactly two years ago, we talked with Brendan Wallace, the cofounder of the property- and real-estate-tech-focused venture firm Fifth Wall, about a trip from which he’d just returned. His visit had been to Singapore, where he described scenes of masks and social distancing and explained that, out of an abundance of caution, he was planning to stay inside his home in Venice, Ca., for 14 days before returning to the office.

Of course, Wallace didn’t know then that he wouldn’t be returning to his office for a very long time. Nevertheless, the firm, founded in 2016, has more than survived through a pandemic that shut down much of the world. It seems to be thriving, including closing last week on a $159 million Europe-focused venture fund that brings its total assets under management to $3 billion. It helps to have more than 90 strategic limited partners that are desperate for a look around the corner, including Cushman & Wakefield, Koch Real Estate Investments, British Land, and CBRE.

To learn how Wallace fared through it, and what technologies Fifth Wall’s LPs are most interested in adopting right now (and whether they want land in the metaverse), we caught up with Wallace late last week in a wide-ranging chat. Excerpts from that conversation follow, edited for length. You can hear our longer conversation here.

The last time we talked, you were holed up at your home in L.A. You were the first person I knew to do that.

The way that we were talking about COVID back then sounds so absurd. I was offering the insight I’d gleaned from being in Singapore, and you were like, ‘Oh, that’s so interesting.’ And it just was this forbearer of what was about to come.

Of course, people are still loath to return to the office. Is it a concern for your investors – that employers are struggling to get people to come to work?

Some major employers have talked about downsizing their physical real estate footprint . . .. What I haven’t seen clearly is a consistent, uniform direction from employers on whether there’s a date on which they expect people to be back in the office. I also think the expectation has changed of what being in an office means, and I think it is probably forever changed.

On that front, what technology has become a nice have versus a must-have if you think the changes we’ve seen are permanent?

More here.

Good Culture, a seven-year-old, Irvine, Ca.-based maker of alternative dairy products (and specifically cottage cheese), has raised $64 million in Series C funding led by Manna Tree, with SEMCAP Food & Nutrition and actor Kristen Bell also participating. Dot.LA has more here.

Gousto, a 10-year-old, London-based meal-kit company, has secured $230 million in funding from investors led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, the second stake taken this year by the equity arm of the Japanese tech giant. The Vision Fund invested $100 million in the online food subscription service last month in a round that valued Gousto at $1.7 billion. Bloomberg has more here.

Redpanda, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based startup trying to "modernize" streaming data, has raised $50 million in Series B funding led by GV, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Haystack. TechCrunch has more here.

Revel, a four-year-old, New York-based company that rents out bright blue electric mopeds, has raised $126 million in Series B funding led by Blackrock. Toyota Ventures, Goodyear Ventures, Shell Ventures, Broadscale Group, Obsidian Ventures, the St Baker Energy Innovation Fund, and Knighthead Capital Management also participated in the round. Axios has more here.

Omada Health, an 11-year-old, San Francisco-based virtual care provider for chronic conditions, has raised $192 million in new funding led by Fidelity and the Israel-based venture firm aMoon, with participation from earlier backers Perceptive Advisors, Wellington Management and Civilization Ventures. Bloomberg has more here.

Secureframe, a two-year-old San Francisco-based security startup that automates enterprises' compliance with standards like HIPAA and SOC 2 , has raised $56 million in Series B funding led by Accomplice. Other participants in the round include Kleiner Perkins, Optum Ventures, Kaiser Permanente, Gradient Ventures, Soma Capital, Gaingels, Impatient Ventures, Flexport and angels. TechCrunch has more here.

Timescale, a seven-year-old, New York-based open-source time-series database optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, has raised $110 million in Series C funding led by Tiger Global, with participation from Benchmark, NEA, Redpoint, Icon Ventures and Two Sigma Ventures. The company says it has now raised $180 million altogether and that it is valued at more than $1 billion. More here.

Academia.edu, a 13-year-old, San Francisco-based platform for academics to share research papers, has raised $23 million in Series D funding led by Tencent, with participation from True Ventures and Greyrock Investments. More here.

Aporia, a 2.5-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup helps businesses monitor and explain their AI-based services, has raised $25 million in Series A funding led by Tiger Global, with participation from Samsung Next, TLV Partners and Vertex Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Backbone, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that turns iPhones into gaming controllers, has raised $40 million in Series A funding led by Index Ventures. Other participants in the round included Sound Ventures, Adjacent and celebrity investors, including The Weeknd, Kevin Hart, Post Malone, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Amy Schumer and earlier backer investor Christopher Comstock (known as Marshmello), among others. TechCrunch has more here.

CoProcure, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based marketplace pioneering B2B commerce for the government sector, has raised $22 million in funding from Forerunner Ventures, with participation from Leadout Capital, Neo, Thumbtack founder Marco Zappacosta, Stitch Fix founder Katrina Lake and Convoy founder Dan Lewis. Axios has more here.

Foxbit, a nearly eight-year-old, Sao Paulo, Brazil-based exchange that supports a wide wide range of assets, including cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, has raised $21 million in Series A funding led by the Chinese blockchain company OK Group. Bloomberg has more here.

Funnel Leasing, an 11-year-old, Tampa, Fl.-based residential property leasing company, has raised $36.5 million in Series B funding led by RET Ventures, with participation from Camden Property Trust, Morgan Properties, Wilshire Lane Capital, Trinity Ventures and Camber Creek. Commercial Observer has more here.

GLO Pharma, a 3.5-year-old, New York-based biotech startup focused on beauty and aesthetics, has rolled out a product called Ourself, which it describes as a "subtropical skincare system." It also announced today that it has raised $30 million to date, including from Lightspeed Venture Partners, First Round Capital, and the company's founder and chairman, Scott Glenn. More here.

Grata, a six-year-old, New York-based private company data provider, has raised $25 million in Series A funding led by Craft Ventures, with participation from Teamworthy Ventures, Altai Ventures, Eigen Ventures, Bling, Accomplice, Touchdown Ventures and angel investors. More here.

Living Carbon, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based startup seeking to create fast-growing trees that can rapidly soak up atmospheric carbon dioxide, has raised $15 million in funding from VC Aydin Senkut, Lowercarbon Capital, Goat Capital, Prelude Ventures, Floodgate, MCJ Collective, Homebrew Ventures, and EQT Foundation, among others. More here.

Nirvana Insurance, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based platform that's aiming to modernize commercial fleet insurance using vast amounts of data from sensors on trucks, say it recently raised $22 million in Series A funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Other participants in the round, which brings the company's total funding to more than $25 million, included General Catalyst, Elad Gil, Instacart CEO Fidji Simo, Vouch CEO Sam Hodges, and Newfront CEO Spike Lipkin, among others. More here.

Vymo, an eight-year-old, New York-based sales engagement platform, has raised $22 million in Series C funding from Bertelsmann Investments, with participation from earlier backers Emergence Capital and Sequoia Capital. To date, Vymo has raised $45 million. The Economic Times has more here.

Zebec, a year-old, San Francisco-based continuous settlement protocol built atop the Solana blockchain, has raised $15 million in a round led by Solana Ventures and Distributed Global. Other participants in the deal included Lightspeed Venture Partners, Circle and Coinbase. The Block has more here.

Fast Break Labs, a year-old, Bay Area-based startup that is building a blockchain-based fantasy basketball game and was founded by two former Facebook employees (one a product manager, the other an engineer), just raised $6 million in seed funding co-led by Patron and Pantera Capital. Other investors include Collab+Currency, Solana Ventures and South Park Commons. Coindesk has more here.

Chronicled, an eight-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that leverages blockchain technology to enable automatic settlement for inter-company transactions in the life sciences and healthcare industry, has raised $8.3 million in funding from True Global Ventures. More here.

Join Affinity’s webinar, Using Relationship Intelligence Catch More Unicorns, tomorrow, February 24th at 10am PT/1pm ET as the team speaks with industry leaders Ian Taylor from Pear VC and Harry Stebbings from The Twenty Minute VC podcast, about the evolving venture capital market landscape, from funding trends impacting dealmakers to the role of relationship intelligence in finding the investments that could turn into unicorns. Register here.

NewView Capital, a Burlingame, Ca.-based investment firm that spun out of NEA in 2018 with $1.35 billion from investors, largely to acquire the stakes of 31 companies that had been funded by NEA, has wrapped up capital commitments totaling $544 million across two new funds: NewView Capital Fund II and Special Opportunities Fund I. The vehicles -- led by former NEA executive Ravi Viswanathan -- bring the firm's total assets under management to more than $2.2 billion. More here.

Cloudflare said it has agreed to buy email protection provider Area 1 Security for $162 million, the security vendor’s largest acquisition to date as it looks to tackle a significant area of potential cyber vulnerabilities for businesses. Bloomberg has more here.

Pipe, the three-year-old fintech that pays SaaS companies for their revenue upfront, has acquired Purely Capital, a U.K.-based media and entertainment financing company. TechCrunch has more here.

No person on the planet has a fortune of more than $200 billion -- at least for now, notes wealth-watching Bloomberg.  Elon Musk, the only billionaire who still exceeded that threshold heading into this week, saw his wealth tumble by $13.3 billion today to $198.6 billion. As the outlet notes, Tesla shares fell for the fourth-straight day to the lowest level since September amid a broad decline in stock markets around the globe.

Virgin Hyperloop has laid off roughly half of its staff as it pivots its high-speed vacuum train tech away from passenger transportation and toward shipping freight due to regulatory and supply chain issues. The nearly eight-year-old, L.A.-based company, which has also seen plenty of twists and turns at the top of the org chart since its founding, confirmed to the Financial Times this week that it had laid off 111 people.

Randi Zuckerberg has put together a crypto-themed Adele tribute that some see as cringey (we think it's funny but full disclosure, we watched for 10 seconds).

A Meta prototype lets you build virtual worlds by describing them.

Musicians are feeling burned out by TikTok.

Truth Social’s launch raises doubts about its long-term viability. “The basic thing they needed to actually get right to get someone in the door, they couldn’t get right,” says one researcher.

Maybe our lives do flash before our eyes?

The bittersweet history of chocolate.

Why we dream about past loves.

"I like the way things look." The world according to Larry Gagosian.

A secluded clapboard mansion in Manchester-by-the-Sea (with a notorious former inhabitant).

No big deal, just two people with animatronic tails, living their lives.

Want to hear from the man behind the third-biggest breakthrough in distributed systems? Avalanche blockchain has a market cap of $23 billion, with $245 million in tokens circulating tokens, and Linqto’s CSO, Karim Nurani, will be sitting down with Emin Gün Sirer, the CEO of Avalabs, the company behind Avalanche, to talk about the state of the crypto markets, the future of decentralization, and why Avalanche is the best blockchain out there. Happening online tomorrow at 9 a.m. PST. Register here.