Woot! Happy Friday, everyone — see you Monday.:)
No column today.
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Top News in the A.M.
Uber just told investors that it has lost $1.2 billion in the first half of this year. Bloomberg notes that dot.com disasters Webvan and Kozmo.com “lost just over $1 billion combined in their short lifetimes.” (Oof.)
If you haven’t already, update your iPhone.
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New Fundings
Denali Therapeutics, a year-old, South San Francisco-based company that’s developing a portfolio of therapeutics based on insights into the genetic causes and biological processes underlying neurodegenerative disease, has raised $130 million in Series B funding led by Baillie Gifford, along with several new and large institutional investors (all unnamed). More here.
Dice, a two-year-old, London-based ticketing startup that sells mobile tickets without booking fees and primarily focuses on millennials wanting to discover new bands, has raised $6 million Series A funding led by Evolution Equity Partners, with participation from Lumia Capital and earlier backers White Star Capital, Designer Fund and Kima Ventures, along with several angel investors from the music industry. TechCrunch has more here.
MobiKwik, a seven-year-old, Gurgaon, India-based mobile wallet startup service, has raised $40 million in strategic funding from Net1, a mobile payment firm that caters to the unbanked. TechCrunch has more here.
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New Funds
Afore Capital, a new, San Francisco-based early-stage firm, is targeting $40 million for a debut fund, shows an SEC filing. Founders includ former Foundation Capital partner Anamitra Banerji and former Founders Collective principal Guarav Jain. (H/T: Fortune.)
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IPOs
Apptio, a Bellevue, Wa.-based company whose software helps CIOs better manage their IT departments, filed today to go public. GeekWire has much more here.
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Exits
Enterprise software company SAP is acquiring Altiscale, a four-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based startup that offers a cloud-based version of the Hadoop open source software for storing, processing, and analyzing lots of different kinds of data. VentureBeat says the deal could fetch more than $125 million. Altiscale had raised $42 million from investors, including Accel Partners, General Catalyst Partners, and Sequoia Capital, shows CrunchBase.
Apollo Global Management, the private equity firm, is taking private the publicly traded cloud company Rackspace for $4.3 billion in cash. CNBC has more here.
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People
A former in-house attorney at Apple has sued the company for alleged age and gender discrimination. Defending Apple is Orrick partner Lynne Hermle, the employment lawyer who defeated Ellen Pao’s gender discrimination claims against Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The Recorder has more here.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been trying to get a date with actress Amber Heard for three years, says Hollywood Reporter. (We don’t care; we’re just reporting the news!)
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Essential Reads
It’s going from bad to worse for Hampton Creek, which is now reportedly facing a criminal probe into its mayo buyback scheme. Bloomberg has the story here.
In the latest example of how the restructuring of Google into Alphabet hasn’t gone smoothly, Google Fiber is on shaky ground, with orders to halve its workforce, reports The Information.
Theranos is appealing the government sanctions that have barred CEO Elizabeth Holmes from running its blood-testing lab for two years. Business Insider has more here.
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Detours
Nine non-threatening leadership strategies for women.
KFC’s top-secret recipe revealed (maybe).
Nick Kyrgios might be the most entertaining tennis player since John McEnroe. Too bad he’d rather be playing basketball.
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Retail Therapy
Given the trend lines, you probably are not, but in case you’re still trying to catch Pokemon. . .