Friday! [Tom Cruise-style-sock slide.] Hope you have a terrific weekend, everyone.:)

Top News in the A.M.

Whoa. According to the WSJ, CVS is in talks to buy Aetna for more than $66 billion as the drugstore giant scrambles to fortify itself against looming competition from Amazon. (You may have heard: Amazon has quietly received pharmacy-wholesaler licenses in a dozen states.) More here.

Also somewhat shocking: Amazon is now the second-largest U.S. employer after Walmart.

Sponsored By . . .

You can have it both ways. Work with a PR partner that delivers high-level results without the B.S. or fluff. At FLIGHT, we build long-term relationships with our clients and focus on smart visibility that grows their business. Visit us at www.flightpr.com or say hello@flightpr.com. Woman-owned and operated, with offices in Silicon Beach and Austin.

Peter Thiel Thinks Focus on Self-Driving Misses an Important Shift: Telecommuting

Billionaire investor Peter Thiel doesn’t like investing in trends, he’s fond of saying. It’s a mantra he repeated this week at the Future Investment Initiative, an investment forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he took the stage with journalist Maria Bartiromo.

Asked about where he’s investing, he noted that he’s looking outside of Silicon Valley largely, but he suggested he doesn’t put much stock in “buzzwords” like SaaS software or virtual computing or augmented reality or artificial intelligence. “Even though these trends may or may not happen, as investments, they’re dangerous,” he said. In fact, “when you hear buzzwords, you should run away as fast as you can,” he added. Otherwise, there are “many companies of that kind, and many competitors.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Thiel feels the same way about self-driving technologies —  even while his venture firm, Founders Fund, is an investor in the ride-sharing company Lyft, whose future would seem to depend on its ability to become a self-driving company at some point.

Thiel did say, however, that he will make one exception to his own rule; he said that he’s willing to “look at trends that aren’t on anybody’s radar.”

In fact, one trend that he said he thinks merits far more attention that it receives today, perhaps because it doesn’t challenge the mind in the same way as self-driving cars or flying planes might, is good-old telecommuting and how the inevitable rise of it will change the landscape.

Indeed, asked about the future of transportation, Thiel seemed to suggest there might not be much need for it, at least, not by individuals needing to get to the jobs.

More here.

New Fundings

&pizza, a five-year-old, Washington D.C.-based pizza chain, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from RSE Ventures. More here.

Carousell, a five-year-old, Singapore-based mobile listing service for secondhand goods and services, has raised between $70 million and $80 million in Series C funding, including from Rakuten, Sequoia Capital, Golden Gate Ventures and500 Startups. TechCrunch has more here.

City Cloud International, a Hangzhou, China-based cloud computing startup, has raised $30 million in Series B funding co-led by Cisco Investments and Country Garden Holdings. DealStreetAsia has more here.

SoundAI, a 1.5-year-old, Beijing, China-based developer of acoustic technologies, has raised $15 million in equity and debt funding, including from Baidu, Aplus Capital, Frees Fund, Linekong Interactive Group and the Bank of Beijing. China Money Network has more here.

Templum, a months-old, New York-based blockchain startup, has raised $2.7 million in seed funding, including from Raptor Group, Galaxy Investment Partners, Blockchain Capital and firstminute.capital. More here.

New Funds

The Hong Kong-based investment firm China Everbright, and the international venture firm Walden International Group, are jointly launching a $500 million fund that will target investments in enterprises along the semiconductor and electronic information supply chain, including microchips and artificial intelligence. China Money Network has more here.

IPOs