Calamity in Ukraine, Coinbase's big quarter, and an insider-trading probe into the Musk bros

Following Russia's 2014 invasion of Crimea, the financial hit to Russia’s economy was swift and immense, with sanctions imposed by Western nations costing Russia an estimated $50 billion a year. Since then, the global market for cryptocurrencies and other digital assets has ballooned, and that's bad news for enforcers of sanctions. “Russia has had a lot of time to think about this specific consequence,” Michael Parker, a former federal prosecutor who now heads the anti-money-laundering and sanctions practice at the Washington law firm Ferrari & Associates, tells the New York Times. “It would be naïve to think that they haven’t gamed out exactly this scenario.”

Heartbreaking photos show the calamity that's unfolding. 

Meanwhile, disruptions in global trade are poised to go from bad to worse.

Traders don't know what to think. Stock futures fell in overnight trading following a sharp reversal on Wall Street as investors continue to assess the risks stemming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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The New York-based, 27-year-old, global software investment firm Insight Partners has closed its twelfth flagship fund with a stunning-even-by-today’s-standards $20 billion in capital commitments.

The fund marks the firm’s largest fundraise to date and very notably, its 350 employees, including 36 managing directors, represent the largest investment bloc in the fund. It also brings Insight’s total assets under management to a somewhat jaw-dropping $90 billion.

It’s a far cry from the $700 million that the firm raised back in 2000 for its fifth fund, a time when Insight was known as an East Coast investor that was sweet on ad tech companies. Indeed, Insight, which opened an office in London in 2016, in Israel in 2019, and has begun investing in Asia as well as Latin America, is now among the most powerful investment firms in the industry largely thanks to its global focus on recurring revenue businesses across a variety of industries and stages.

We talked yesterday with one of the firm’s head honchos, Deven Parekh, who joined Insight in 2000 and has since invested in more than 130 investments on Insight’s behalf in enterprise software, data, and consumer internet businesses, including in North America, Europe, India, Israel, China, Africa, Latin America, and Australia.

Because Insight’s senior leadership doesn’t often talk about the firm’s inner workings, we asked him to give us a peek. What follows is a conversation about — among other things — the firm’s investing criteria, its aggressive pacing, and why it is increasingly writing Series A and B checks instead of making later-stage investments. The following has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

More here.

BlueVoyant, a nearly five-year-old, New York-based cybersecurity company cofounded by Jim Rosenthal and Tom Glocer, respectively the previous COO of Morgan Stanley and CEO of Thomson Reuters, has raised $250 million in Series D funding led by Liberty Strategic Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Fabric, a five-year-old, Seattle-based company providing composable API-driven technology for digital commerce, has raised $140 million in Series C funding at a post-money valuation of $1.5 billion. SoftBank led the round, joined by Forerunner Ventures, Glynn Capital and earlier investors Redpoint Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners and Stripes. The company has now raised $293 million in funding altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Niyo, a seven-year-old, Bangalore, India-based fintech platform that's looking to add lending and insurance to its offerings, has raised $100 million in Series C funding co-led by Accel and Lightrock India, with participation from Prime Venture Partners, JS Capital and Beams Fintech Fund. The company has now raised $150 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Project Canary, a 3.5-year-old, Denver, Co.-based SaaS-based data analytics company focused on environmental performance for emission-intensive companies, has raised $111 million in Series B funding. Insight Partners led the round, joined by Brookfield Growth, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Carica Sustainable Investments, among others. More here.

Red Sift, a seven-year-old, London-based email security company, has raised $54 million in Series B investment led by Highland Europe. VentureBeat has more here.

RightHand Robotics, a seven-year-old, Somerville, Ma.-based maker of warehouse picking robots,has  raised $66m in Series C funding led by Safar Partners, Thomas H. Lee Partners, and SoftBank Vision Fund 2. TechCrunch has more here.

Scalapay, a three-year-old, Milan, Italy-based buy-now-pay-later tech provider, has raised $213 million in new equity funding roughly six months after closing on $155 million in funding. The outfit also secured $284 million in debt. The newest equity tranche was led by Tencent and Willoughby Capital, with participation from earlier investor Tiger Global, Gangway, Moore Capital, Deimos, and Fasanara Capital. Tech.eu has more here.

Somatus, a nearly six-year-old, McLean, Va.-based kidney care company, has raised $325 million in Series E funding led by Wellington Management, with participation from RA Capital Management, GIC and Fidelity Management & Research Company, among others. Techical.ly has more here.

Aligned, a two-year-old, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based web3 infrastructure company founded by ConsenSys's former chief strategy officer, Sam Cassatt, has emerged from stealth with $34 million in funding. Backers in the round include GSR Ventures, Altium Capital Management, Calvary Fund, and numerous individual investors. Coindesk has more here.

AnyRoad, an eight-year-old, San Francisco-based software company that helps brands measure customer experiences, has raised $47 million in Series B funding led by BlackRock. Other participants in the round include Andreessen Horowitz, Runa Capital, Kaiser Permanente, Rally Ventures, Precursor Ventures, Day One Ventures, Commonfund and Corner Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Depict.ai, a two-year-old, Stockholm, Sweden-based startup that thinks its product recommendation tool can help any retailer sell like Amazon, has raised $17 million in Series A funding led by Tiger Global. Other backers in the round include Initialized Capital, EQT Ventures, Y Combinator, and a longish-list of high-profile angels. TechCrunch has more here.

Emi, a 4.5-year-old, San Francisco-based recruiting platform for frontline workers, raised $11 million in Series A funding co-led by Merus Capital and Khosla Ventures, with participation from Flexport Ventures and others. TechCrunch has more here.

NayaPay, a three-year-old, Karachi, Pakistan-based fintech platform that's about to rolls out multi-service messaging and a payment app, has raised $13 million in seed funding co-led by Zayn Capital, MSA Novo, and Graph Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Promise, a five-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based startup that works with utilities and government agencies to provide flexibility in payments for people who can’t cover their whole water or electricity bill at once, has raised $25 million in Series B funding. The General Partnership led the round, joined by Kapor Capital, XYZ Ventures, Bronze Investments, First Round Capital, Y Combinator, Howard Schultz and others. TechCrunch has more here.

RouteThis, an eight-year-old, Kitchener, Ontario-based startup that touts itself as a leading provider of in-home WiFi connectivity support software for internet service providers and smart home brands, has raised $25 million in Series A funding led by Inovia Capital, with participation from Intel Capital, Round13, Garage Capital and Ken Miller Capital. BetaKit has more here.

Okteto, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that makes it easier for developers to quickly spin up Kubernetes-based development environments in order to speed up their development process, has raised $15 million in Series A funding. Two Sigma Ventures led the round, joined by earlier backers Haystack, Root Ventures and Uncorrelated Ventures, along with individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Scope Security, a three-year-old, New York-based security platform purpose-built for health systems, has raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Thrive Capital, where the company was incubated. A group of other investors, including SV Angel, Martin Ventures, Sound Ventures, Crossbeam and Free Solo joined the round. More here.

Siteline, a nearly three-year-old, San Francisco-based startup whose software helps trade contractors to manage billing, lien waivers, and more in one place (founder Gloria Lin helped prototype ApplePay and was Stripe's first product manager), has raised $18.4 million in funding across two rounds, it says. It recently raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Menlo Ventures, following a $3.4 million seed round co-led by Brick & Mortar Ventures and First Round Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Standard Metrics, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that is selling its automated portfolio monitoring software to VC firms, hedge funds, and family offices (its CEO is former Spark Capital investor John Melas-Kyriazi), has raised $23.7 million in Series A financing. 8VC led the round, joined by a mix of new and earlier backers, including Alpha Edison, January Capital, First Trust Capital Partners, Fin VC, Spark Capital, Slack Fund, Socii Capital, Not Boring Capital, and Gaingels. More here.

Sweater, a three-year-old, Boulder, Co.-based fintech company building a venture fund that's open to everyday (i.e. non-accredited) investors, has raised $12 million in seed funding co-led by Motivate VC and Akuna Capital. Axios has more here.

WorkWhile, a nearly three-year-old, Bay Area-based tech platform that aims to connect the right workers to the right shifts, has raised $13 million in Series A funding led by Reach Capital. Other participants in the round included Chamaeleon, Position Ventures, and Gaingels, along with earlier backers Khosla Ventures and F7 Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

HUBUC, a year-old, Barcelona, Spain-based startup that offers customers the ability to implement embedded finance services like bank accounts, payments, virtual and physical cards into their offerings, has raised $10 million in funding led by WndrCo and Runa Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Kahilla, a three-year-old, Ketchum, Id.- based digital learning and development platform that combines content, community, and coaching for women in corporate America, has raised $2 million in funding co-led by Bread and Butter Ventures and Matchstick Ventures. More here.

KnownOrigin, a three-year-old, Manchester, England-based NFT platform (a much smaller OpenSea?), has raised a £3.5 million in Series A funding co-led by crypto venture capital firms GBV and Sanctor Capital. Tech.eu has more here.

Signadot, a two-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based testing platform for building multi-service, cloud-native applications, has raised $4 million in seed funding led by Redpoint Ventures, with additional participation from Y Combinator and angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Teller, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based decentralized protocol, raised $6.85 million in new funding from Blockchain Capital, Franklin Templeton, Toyota Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Upstart, Signum Capital and angels. More here.

Affinity, the relationship intelligence platform for dealmakers, has analyzed the investment trends that point toward future unicorn status. Affinity used its proprietary data to study more than 925 unicorns from the last five years. Learn how top venture capital firms use relationship intelligence to spot more unicorns. Read the report.

Camber Creek, a 12-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based player in proptech-focused venture capital, has raised $325 million for its fourth and largest fund to date, reports The Real Deal. The raise -- which comes as investors show record interest in proptech startups -- has Camber Creek now managing more than $500 million in assets across its funds. More here.

Lavrock, a nearly six-year-old, McLean, Va.-based early-stage venture firm that's focused on enterprise, deep tech, and national security, among other things, has raised $83 million in capital commitments for its second fund. More here.

Prime Venture Partners, an 11-year-old, Bangalore India-based early-stage venture firm, has raised $120 million in capital commitments toward the close of its fourth fund, it said in a release. The Economic Times has more here.

Former First Round Capital investor Phin Barnes has joined The General Partnership -- a venture firm that was formerly called Sweat Equity Ventures -- as a cofounder. He writes about the move here.

The SEC is investigating whether recent Tesla stock sales by Elon Musk and his brother, Kimbal Musk, violated insider-trading rules, according to the WSJ. The investigation reportedly began last year after Kimbal Musk sold shares of Tesla valued at $108 million, one day before his brother polled Twitter users, asking whether he should unload 10% of his stake in the carmaker and pledging to abide by the vote’s results, Shares in the company fell sharply afterward.

A week after healthcare unicorn Ro landed capital from existing investors at a higher valuation, two top executives have parted ways with the company, per an internal email obtained by TechCrunch from multiple employees. In the e-mail, CEO and co-founder Zachariah Reitano said that COO George Koveos and GM of Ro Pharmacy Steve Buck are “moving on from Ro” in the coming weeks. TechCrunch says it's unclear whether the executives chose to leave, or were pushed, but adds that according to some former employees, Koveos specifically drove them to leave the outfit. More here.

It’s no wonder why mobile publishers are battling to keep more of their subscription revenue out of the hands of platforms like Apple and Google, notes TechCrunch. A new report indicates the top 100 non-game, subscription-based apps saw their consumer spend increase 41% in 2021 to $18.3 billion, up from $13 billion in 2020. More here.

Coinbase’s fourth-quarter income more than quadrupled as the largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange benefited from a manic quarter that saw bitcoin set a record before dropping sharply. For the fourth quarter, Coinbase had net income of $840 million, or $3.32 per diluted share, on net revenue of $2.5 billion, the company said today compared with earnings of $177 million on net revenue of $497 million a year earlier.

The freelance community is in the throes of an NFT bubble, pivoting away from other gig work toward making NFT art all day long—or finding people to do it for them.

In Denver, an Ethereum conference overflows with Burning Man vibes and anti-VC sentiment.

Why success can feel so bitter.

The best movies of 2022 (so far).

The house that brought together Elon Musk and Gene Wilder's nephew.

How do you say "Kardashian" in Italian?

A private compound on Turks and Caicos’s Parrot Cay island that was once owned by Bruce Willis is coming on the market for $37.5 million. It would set a record it if gets its asking price, notes the WSJ. (It's . . . very nice.)

The Bugatti of jet skis. 

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