Hi, everyone, happy Friday. Hope you’re in for a fun weekend. See you Monday.:)

Bitcoin looks poised to zoom past $8,000.

See that shiny thing over there? It’s the newly reimagined Tesla roadster.

The only way to change the world is to face ideas that make us uncomfortable. The collision of technology, business, politics, and culture has contributed to the most divisive time in U.S. history. Rational discourse is in short supply. It’s time to come together, bringing into one room the cross-disciplinary and cross-the-aisle POVs required to drive change. Shift Forum is that room – don’t miss your opportunity to be there. StrictlyVC readers use CODE: STRVC for a 20 percent discount.

Achievelt, a seven-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based company that makes strategic planning and tracking software and services, has raised $1.7 million in funding fromBIP Capital. More here.

Airside Mobile, an eight-year-old, Arlington, Va.-based creator of a mobile passport app, has raised $6 million in Series A funding co-led by Blazar Venturesand Grotech Ventures, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures and 8VC.More here.

Axios, the months-old, New York-based media startup created by Politico cofounderJim VandeHei, has raised $20 million in fresh funding co-led by earlier backersGreycroft Partners and Lerer Hippeau Ventures. Other participants in the round include WndrCo and previous backers NBCUniversal, Emerson Collective and Wal-Mart Chairman Greg Penner. The WSJ has more here.

Bird.i, a three-year-old, Glasgow, Scotland-based startup that disseminates satellite, airborne and drone imagery in real time, has raised $2.6 million in funding led by Accelerated Digital Ventures. Other investors in the round include Concrete VC, Frontline Ventures, Satellite Application Catapult Services and Scottish Investment Bank. More here.

Edmit, a months-old, Boston-based college price comparison and bidding platform, has raised $855,000 in pre-seed funding from Bessemer Venture Partners,Rethink Education and Neu VC. BostInno has more here.

Gainfully, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based SaaS startup that connects insurance and financial services companies, raised $2.5 million in funding led byMassMutual Ventures. More here.

GoSpotCheck, a six-year-old, Denver, Co.-based startup whose mobile apps automate the structuring and reporting of field data from retail customers, has raised $21.5 million in Series B1 funding co-led by Insight Venture Partners andPoint Nine Capital. More here.

Logz.io, a three-year-old, Boston-based open-source log analysis platform, has raised $23 million in new funding led by OpenView Venture Partners, with participation from Vintage Investment Partners and earlier backers Giza and83North. The company has now raised $47 million altogether. Reuters has more here.

Meural, a three-year-old, New York-based digital art technology company, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Corigin Ventures, with participation from Netgear, Resolute Venture Partners and assorted angels. TechCrunch hasmore here.

Modulated Imaging, a nine-year-old, Irvine, Ca.-based company that has developed light-based imaging technology for preventing, diagnosing, and curing medical conditions, just raised $2.86 million in Series A funding led by Grey Sky Venture Partners. Other investors in the round include Mitsubishi UFJ Capital and Fresenius Medical Care Ventures. More here.

Physera, a 1.5-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based musculoskeletal care company, has raised $2.8 million in funding, including from Innovation Endeavors, Lux Capital,Expa, Slow Ventures, and iD Ventures. More here.

Tortuga Logic, a 3.5-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based company selling design tools and tech to facilitate the design of secure hardware, has  raised $2 million in seed funding from Eclipse Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Trocafone, a 3.5-year-old, São Paulo, Brazil-based online marketplace for used electronics, has raised $15 million in funding, including from Callfort, MIT Castor Ventures Fund, FJ Labs, Rocketship, and Mercado Libre Fund. TechCrunch hasmore here.

TRUE Jerky, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based maker of “natural” beef jerky and marinades, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from 1K1V. More here.

Ubtech Robotics, a five-year-old, Shenzhen, China-based maker of small humanoid robots for entertainment and educational purposes, has raised $400 million in Series C funding led by Tencent. China Money Network has more here.

Online personal shopping company Stitch Fix priced its IPO below expectations in a downsized offering yesterday, raising $120 million. It began trading this morning. CNBC has more here.

scPharmaceuticals, a Burlington, Ma.-based developer of products for subcutaneous delivery, has raised $90 million in its IPO. The company will trade on the Nasdaq; its biggest outside shareholders include 5AM Ventures, OrbiMed andLundbeckfond.

Airbnb has acquired adtech startup AdBasis, a three-year-old, Chicago-based startup that had built a platform and dashboard for ad testing and optimization. Terms aren’t being disclosed. AdBasis doesn’t appear to have raised (or, at least, announced) venture funding. TechCrunch has more here.

Mashable, the digital media company, has agreed to sell to publisher Ziff Davis for roughly $50 million, says the WSJ. The price is a fraction of the company’s valuation less than two years ago. More here.

Williams-Sonoma will acquire Outward, a five-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based augmented reality/furniture visualization startup, in an all-cash deal for $112 million. Outward had raised approximately $11.5 million in venture funding, including from Merus Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Apple’s first-ever vice president of diversity and inclusion, Denise Young Smith, is leaving Apple at the end of this year, reports TechCrunch. Young Smith, who has only been in the position since May of this year, previously served as Apple’s head of worldwide human resources for three years.

Michael Carney, a former journalist turned associate at Upfront Ventures, has been promoted to principal.

Inside Google‘s struggle to filter lies from breaking news.

The cryptocurrency wallet and exchange startup Coinbase is launching a new storage service aimed specifically at institutional investors.

Check out Tesla‘s big, new, all-electric truck.

Inside that history-breaking, $450 million Leonardo da Vinci auction.

Why the future of shopping has no price tags.

Steph Curry will soon teach an online course in basketball. Sounds well worth the $90 to our sons (who, we should mention, do not have any money).

Hello! Happy Thursday, everyone.:)

Twitter now says it will remove verification badges from accounts that violate its rules.

FCC chief Ajit Pai is set to unveil plans next week for a final vote to reverse a landmark 2015 net neutrality order barring the blocking or slowing of web content.

The only way to change the world is to face ideas that make us uncomfortable. The collision of technology, business, politics, and culture has contributed to the most divisive time in U.S. history. Rational discourse is in short supply. It’s time to come together, bringing into one room the cross-disciplinary and cross-the-aisle POVs required to drive change. Shift Forum is that room – don’t miss your opportunity to be there. StrictlyVC readers use CODE: STRVC for a 20 percent discount.

They’re back.

After staying heads down for the past year, Trae Vassallo and Neil Sequeira, two longtime venture capitalists whose individual brands are well-known to Bay Area startup founders, are finally taking the wraps off their new venture firm, Defy Partners. As part of the big reveal, they say they’ve closed their debut fund with $151 million in capital commitments, including from endowments,​ ​family​ ​offices,​ ​foundations​ ​and​ ​non-profits. They’re also sharing the firm’s overarching thesis: that the best place to invest right now is in Series A deals.

It isn’t a surprising conclusion, considering what’s happening at the other ends of the investing spectrum. Seed investing remains crowded. Meanwhile, although the IPO market looks healthier than it has in a long time, later-stage investors have to contend with another threat to their business: Softbank’s nearly $100 billion Vision Fund, which is routinely outspending rivals for prized stakes in promising companies.

In fact, Vassallo and Sequeria were thinking much the same thing about the Series A opportunity — but independent of one another — when a quintessential Silicon Valley encounter took place.

Vassallo’s husband, Steve, who is a venture capitalist with Foundation Capital, was at a Warrior’s game with Sequeria. As the basketball game progressed, Sequeria, long an investor with General Catalyst Partners who’d left the firm in late 2015, shared his plans to start his own, much smaller outfit. He had in mind a firm whose funds would never grow so large that he’d have to say no to fairly nascent startups, and never so big that producing meaningful returns to his investors became nearly impossible. He had in mind a kind of Benchmark, which — with one exception during the dot.com bubble — has kept its fund sizes in the range of $425 million.

As it happens, Trae Vassallo, who’d left her investing role with Kleiner Perkins in 2014, was already forming a fund around the same idea. Her husband told Sequeria. Sequeria and Vassallo met soon after for coffee, and the rest is history.

History in the making, anyway. Defy has made just three investments to date, including one deal that Vassallo and Sequeria originally funded with their own money but moved into the fund. While each remains in so-called stealth mode, one is in the logistics space and was bootstrapped until Defy led its Series A, says Sequeria. Another is a “connected consumer” play founded by an entrepreneur who Vassallo says she has known for 20 years.

Asked about their focus, both suggest it will be broad.

More here.

Arterys, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based medical imaging company, has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Temasek, with participation from Northwell Health Ventures, New York-Presbyterian, Varian Medical Systems, GE Ventures, Fosun, DNA Capital, Emergent Medical Partners and ORI Capital.More here.

Atomist, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company that provides developers with a development automation platform to create, ship, and ostensibly improve their software faster, has raised $22 million in Series A funding, including fromAccel Partners and Matrix Partners. More here.

CY Vision, a 1.5-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based vision systems and applications company focused on developing a new platform for AR and VR, has raised $7 million in Series A funding led by Vestel Ventures, with participation from Intel Capital, among others. More here.

Diamond Orthopedic, a Charlotte, N.C.-based medical device company that makes a faceted threadform technology for orthopedic applications, has raised $3.5 million in seed funding led by MagnaSci Fund. More here.

Inboard Technology, a three-year-old, Santa Cruz, Ca.-based whose electric skateboard comes with a swappable battery, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Upfront Ventures. More here.

Less, a new, Paris-based ride-sharing startup started by the founder of ad tech company Criteo, has raised $19 million in funding from Index Ventures andDaphni. TechCrunch has more here.

Maoyan, a China-based online ticketing platform that was recently created out of the merger of two competing ticket platforms, has raised $150 million in funding from earlier backer Tencent Holdings in a deal that values the company at $3 billion. Reuters has more here.

Oros Apparel, a two-year-old, Cincinnati, Oh.-based company that uses NASA insulation technology, aerogel, in its outerwear, has raised $2 million in seed funding from undisclosed investors. More here.

PayStand, a four-year-old, Scotts Valley, Ca.-based payments-as-a-service platform, has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by BlueRun Ventures, with participation from Cervin Ventures, Serra Ventures, TiE and Capital for Founders. More here.

RDD Pharma, a nine-year-old, New York- and Tel Aviv, Israel-based developer of treatments for lower gastro-intestinal disorders, has raised $9.5 million in Series B funding, including from Pharmascience, an unnamed international life science fund, as well as earlier investors OrbiMed and Capital Point. More here.

X4 Pharmaceuticals, a three-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based clinical stage biotechnology company that’s developing drugs to improve immune cell trafficking to treat cancer and rare diseases, has raised $27 million in Series B financing led byCormorant Asset Management. More here.

Aster, a Paris-based, early-stage venture firm, has closed on €240 million ($283 million) in capital commitments to invest in next-generation energy and mobility companies. The partners will be focused on companies both in Europe and the U.S. Tech.eu has more here.

Engineering Capital, founded in 2015 by longtime VC Ashmeet Sidana, has raised $47.5 million for its second seed fund, shows an SEC filing. Sidana had closed his debut fund with $32 million.

Rachel Lam, who retired from her role as head of investments at Time Warner’s venture-capital arm, where she worked from 2003 to 2016, has teamed up withRichard Parsons, former Time Warner CEO, to launch a new venture-capital firm called Imagination Capital. The two will be investing their own money to start —  reportedly $500,000 or less in seed rounds. Wired has more here.

Kairos, an organization for young entrepreneurs founded in 2008 as Kairos Society, has closed its debut fund with $25 million. TechCrunch has more on its mission here.

Stitch Fix is about to go public, and some question whether it will reach its target valuation in the IPO.

Accomable, a two-year-old site that connects disabled travelers with suitable accommodations around the world, has been acquired by Airbnb. As part of deal, Accomable will be wound down. TechCrunch has more here.

Bluegogo, a China-based bike-sharing company, is closing down after raising roughly $90 million from investors, including Black Hole Capital, Sinovation Ventures, and Elex Technology. TechCrunch has more here.

Native Deodorant, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based natural deodorant brand, that had raised just $500,000 from Azure Capital Partners, just sold to Procter & Gamble for $100 million in cash, says TechCrunch.

TechShop, a Menlo Park, Ca.-based membership-based do-it-yourself workshop and fabrication studio, is shutting down all U.S. locations and declaring bankruptcy after raising $4.7 million in venture funding. TechCrunch has more here.

Time Inc. is reportedly in talks to sell itself to the Meredith Corporation, in a deal backed by the billionaire Koch brothers, who are known for supporting conservative causes. According to the New York Times, the Kochs have tentatively agreed to back Meredith’s offer with more than $500 million, and both sides hope to announce a deal by Thanksgiving.

Dyson is suing former CEO Max Conze for allegedly revealing confidential information, including on the company’s plan to expand into the electric car market.

Aaron Jacobson has been promoted to partner at New Enterprise Associates. Jacobson joined the firm as a principal in 2011. He’d formerly spent two years as an analyst with the investment bank and advisory firm Qatalyst Partners.

Oracle‘s shareholders just rejected the software maker’s executive compensation plan for a sixth straight year after it awarded the top three bosses pay packages worth more than $100 million each in fiscal 2018.

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel is expecting his first child with wife Miranda Kerr.

Amazon’s cashierless store is almost ready for prime time.

The more tech in your job, the more money you make.

Sixteen spiked hot chocolate recipes.

Noise-masking sleepbuds, by Bose. (Buying.)

Hi, happy Wednesday, all! We’re still a little busy in Washington this week; more tomorrow.:)

SoftBank plans to invest as much as $25 billion in Saudi Arabia over the next three to four years as it deepens investment ties with the kingdom, says Bloomberg. More here.

That was fast. The Senate Finance Committee just dropped from its tax reform legislation language that would have seriously screwed up the way that startups compensate their employees. (The National Venture Capital Association is breathing a sigh of relief in light of this development.)

The only way to change the world is to face ideas that make us uncomfortable. The collision of technology, business, politics, and culture has contributed to the most divisive time in U.S. history. Rational discourse is in short supply. It’s time to come together, bringing into one room the cross-disciplinary and cross-the-aisle POVs required to drive change. Shift Forum is that room – don’t miss your opportunity to be there. StrictlyVC readers use CODE: STRVC for a 20 percent discount.

The BOW Group, a four-year-old, Geneva, Switzerland-based maker of IoT products, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series B funding led by PM Equity Partner and NextStage, an investment company listed on the Euronext Paris. More here.

Choozle, a five-year-old, Denver, Co.-based self-service programmatic ad platform, has raised $6 million in Series B funding from unnamed investors. More here.

Collective Medical Technologies, a 12-year-old, Salt Lake City-based care coordination business, has raised $47.5 million in Series A funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers. Other participants in the round include Bessemer Venture Partners, Maverick Ventures, Kaiser Permanente Ventures,Providence Ventures, Peterson Ventures, and Epic Ventures. MedCity News has more here.

EBR Systems, a 14-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based wireless cardiac pacing system provider for heart failure, has raised $50 million in funding. M.H. Carnegie & Co. and Brandon Capital Partners led the round, and was joined by investors including Split Rock Partners, Ascension Ventures and Emergent Medical Partners. More here.

Health IQ, a three-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based life insurance startup for the health conscious, has raised $34.6 million in Series C funding led byAndreessen Horowitz, with participation from CRV, First Round Capital,Foundation Capital and others. TechCrunch has more here.

United Masters, a year-old, New York-based record label that’s just emerging from stealth today and is headed up by former Interscope Records president Steve Stoute, secretly raised $70 million last year. The round was led by Alphabet, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz and 20th Century Fox. TechCrunch has much more here.

Arrowroot Capital Management, a three-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based growth equity firm focused primarily on software-as-a-service companies, has closed its third fund with $177 million. More here.

Geoff Lewis, one of the general partners at the elite Founders Fund, has officially kicked off his own venture capital firm, reports Recode. Lewis is partnering with Eric Stromberg, the founder of Oyster, a Founders Fund-backed startup that sold to Google in 2015. Their fund, Bedrock Capital, has apparently raised $118 million in capital commitments and promises “capital for one-of-a-kind companies,” according to its website. More here.

SendGrid, the Denver-based marketing email company (that delivers StrictlyVC to you every weekday), raised $131 million after pricing its IPO at $16, above the expected range of $13.50 to $15.50. The company also upsized its IPO, selling 8.2 million shares, instead of 7.7 million. The company begins trading today on the NYSE. TechCrunch has much more here.

Cloudflare, a well-funded San Francisco-based web performance and security platform, has acquired Neumob, a Sunnyvale, Ca-based startup focused on speeding up mobile apps and increasing conversions. According to Crunchbase, Neumob had raised roughly $11 million in funding, including from Accel Partners,Lightbank, and Shasta Ventures, among others. TechCrunch has more here.

Go-Jek, a seven-year-old, Jakarta, Indonesian-based ride-hailing company, has acquired a majority stake in local payment services provider Kartuku for around $50 million. Kartuku was founded 16 years ago. Go-Jek backers include DST,JD.com and Lombard Investments. DealStreetAsia has more here.

Disgraced VC Justin Caldbeck is attempting a comeback, setting out to educate young men about the dangers of “bro culture” in the workplace. Bloomberg has more on this true and surprisingly-not-from-The-Onion story here.

Steve Jurvetson of DFJ defended himself on Facebook yesterday, drawing a line between an ongoing sexual harassment investigation and his sudden departure from DFJ, where Jurvetson has worked for the last 22 years. Wrote Jurvetson, “I left DFJ because of interpersonal dynamics with my partners,” he wrote. “It’s incredibly sad to see how things broke down, and the acrimony that arose between us.” Jurvetson added that his departure from DFJ isn’t related to any conduct issues. Of “allegations about sexual predation and workplace harassment,” wrote Jurvetson, “Let me be perfectly clear: no such allegations are true.” Recode has more here.

DJ Patil, the chief data scientist under President Barack Obama, has joined the venture firm Venrock as an adviser. TechCrunch has more here.

Forbes has published a “30 under 30” list focused narrowly on the world of venture capital. You can read about the up-and-comers it spotlights here.

Google spent $5.5 billion to acquire traffic in the third quarter of 2017, or roughly 23 percent of its ad revenue. Bloomberg has more here.

Lyft is using its own rulebook to developing self-driving cars, suggests The Information. For example, it’s using open-source software developed by Baidu and hiring engineers who haven’t worked in the field before. More here.

Tesla is acknowledging alleged racist behavior at the company, while defending Elon Musk.

A flawless 163-carat clear diamond just fetched $34 million at Christie’s in Geneva; it was the largest of its kind ever auctioned.

A $10,000 record player for serious audiophiles.

We’re still in Washington, juggling a few things, so we have a slightly streamlined version this a.m.; more tomorrow.:)

Apple is working on a rear-facing 3-D sensor system for the iPhone in 2019, another step toward turning the handset into a leading augmented-reality device,reports Bloomberg.

Steve Jurvetson, who famously cofounded DFJ 32 years ago, is leaving the venture firm in the wake of a sexual harassment investigation. DFJ sent a statement to Recode that states: “As of today and by mutual agreement, Steve Jurvetson will be leaving DFJ. DFJ’s culture has been, and will continue to be, built on the values of respect and integrity in all of our interactions. We are focused on the success of our portfolio companies, as well as the long-term vision for the firm and will continue to operate with the highest professional standards.” Jurvetson gave the outlet his own statement, which says, “I am leaving DFJ to focus on personal matters, including taking legal action against those who have defamed me.”

We’d interviewed Jurvetson at Disrupt in September where we did not discuss sexual harassment in Silicon Valley. Just weeks later, in a Facebook post, a founder named Keri Kukral warned of “rampant” “predatory behavior” at DFJ. A source told us afterward Kukral had had a personal, and not professional, relationship with Jurvetson. It’s unclear based on this new “mutual agreement” whether Jurvetson’s surprise departure can be traced to that relationship. Jurvetson has also been suspended from his director roles at both Tesla and SpaceX, reports Recode.

The only way to change the world is to face ideas that make us uncomfortable. The collision of technology, business, politics, and culture has contributed to the most divisive time in U.S. history. Rational discourse is in short supply. It’s time to come together, bringing into one room the cross-disciplinary and cross-the-aisle POVs required to drive change. Shift Forum is that room – don’t miss your opportunity to be there. StrictlyVC readers use CODE: STRVC for a 20 percent discount.

Alodokter, a 3.5-year-old, Jakarta, Indonesia-based health and medical website, has raised $9 million in Series B funding led by SoftBank Ventures Korea, with participation from Golden Gate Ventures and Feng. Global Healthcare has more here.

Beijing Jinying, a three-year-old, China-based operator of a book and movie review app, has raised $40 million in Series B funding co-led by smartphone producer Xiaomi and Yunfeng Capital. Asian Venture Capital Journal has more here (sub required).

Bossa Nova Robotics, a nearly 13-year-old, Pittsburgh, Pa.-based company whose robots drive autonomously through store aisles figuring out what has sold, is raising $17.5 million in Series B funding led by Paxion, with participation from Intel Capital, Cota Capital and others. TechCrunch has more here.

ImmusanT, a seven-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based clinical-stage company developing a therapeutic vaccine designed to induce immune tolerance in celiac disease, has raised $40 million in Series C funding, including from ARCH Venture Partners and Vatera Healthcare Partners. More here.

Lessonly, a five-year-old, Indianapolis, Ia.-based tech firm that sells employee training software, has raised $8 million in funding led by OpenView Venture Partners, with participation from Rethink Education, High Alpha Capital andAllos Ventures. The Indianapolis Business Journal has more here.

Lofelt, a three-year-old, Berlin-based startup that’s developing a haptic technology for use in a range of products, including gaming, AR, VR, automobile, and consumer electronics, has raised $5.4 million in Series A funding. Wolfman.One led the round, with participation from Q Venture Partners, Coparion, and earlier backer Horizons Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Roomi, a two-year-old, New York-based mobile platform that helps people find co-living solutions, has raised $11 million in fresh funding led by London-based Atami Capital, with participation from DCM, Great Oaks Venture Capital, Scott andCyan Banister, and others. The company has now raised $17 million to date. TechCrunch has more here.

Syapse, a nine-year-old, San Francisco-based precision medicine company, has raised $30 million in Series D financing from earlier backers, including investorsAscension Ventures, GE Ventures, Intermountain Healthcare Innovation Fund, Safeguard Scientifics, and Social Capital, as well as new investorsAmgen Ventures, Medidata Solutions, Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, and Roche Venture Fund. More here.

Torque, a two-year-old Cambridge, Ma.-based immuno-oncology company developing cell therapies to evoke and direct immune responses in the tumor microenvironment, has raised $25 million in Series A funding from Flagship Pioneering. More here.

TrueAccord, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based data-driven debt collection service, has raised $22 million in fresh funding led by Arbor Ventures, with participation from Abhor, Nyca Investment Partnership, Assurant Growth Investing, Caffeinated Capital Fund, Felicis Ventures, TenOneTen andCrystal Towers. TechCrunch has more here.

WireWheel.io, a 1.5-year-old, Arlington, Va.-based developer of a data privacy and protection platform, has raised $3.1 million in seed financing led by PSP Growthand New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Steve Case, Sean Glassand others. More here.

Woo, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based marketplace for matching employers and passive job seekers, has raised $7 million in Series A funding led by Lord David Alliance, with participation from earlier backers. The company has now raised $11.4 million altogether. More here.

Spanish assets management firm Arcano Capital has launched its first venture capital vehicle with a $200 million target. The fund will reportedly focus mainly on the U.S., but will also deploy part of its capital in the European market. Arcano is launching the effort in partnership with a U.S.-based venture capital firm calledUrizen Ventures. Unquote has the story here.

One Way Ventures, a Boston-based venture firm focused on immigrant tech founders, is raising up to $50 million for its debut fund, per an SEC filing first flagged by Axios. More here.

Amazon is selling part of its cloud business in China.

WikiLeaks sent multiple messages to Donald Trump Jr. before and after the 2016 election — at one point asking if founder Julian Assange could be Australian ambassador to the U.S.

Jerusalem Venture Partners, the Israeli venture capital firm, has promoted Yoav Tzruya and Fiona Darmon to general partners. More here.

When in February, Zirx announced plans to shut down its on-demand valet parking startup, it wasn’t clear what the company meant when it said it would focus on the enterprise. Today, Zirx co-founder Sean Behr is pulling the curtains off of Stratim, a platform for corporate clients to manage their car fleets. TechCrunch has more here.

IBM is looking to hire an M&A specialist. The job is in North Castle, N.Y.

A new study by Congress’s official tax scorekeeper suggests that in 2019, households earning $1 million a year or more would get an average tax cut of about $58,000, while those earning between $50,000 and $75,000 would see an average tax cut of about $688. Bloomberg has more here.

Silicon Valley is outraged over a proposed change to how stock options are taxed, arguing that it would decimate start-ups and hurt employees. More here and here.

Journalists working for Facebook say the social media site’s fact-checking tools have largely failed and that the company has exploited their labor for a PR campaign.

Tesla has been hit with a class-action lawsuit claiming its California production plant is a “hotbed for racist behavior.”

Your Google Home speaker is now also an intercom.

You’re doing your lunges the wrong way.

What to do if you find an embarrassing video of yourself on Instagram.

It isn’t just siblings. Your kid might be able to unlock your iPhone X, too.

Space tent.

Hi, happy Monday, everyone.

Early send today. We’re in Washington, D.C., for a memorial service to celebrate one of StrictlyVC’s very first readers, and one of its most beloved. We hope she knew how much we idolized her, and how much she will be missed.

Softbank’s Uber deal took a major step forward this weekend.

Bitcoin buyers are returning to the market this morning following a 29 percent plunge from the cryptocurrency’s record high. Speculators had seemingly freaked out over a tech upgrade getting cancelled.

The only way to change the world is to face ideas that make us uncomfortable. The collision of technology, business, politics, and culture has contributed to the most divisive time in U.S. history. Rational discourse is in short supply. It’s time to come together, bringing into one room the cross-disciplinary and cross-the-aisle POVs required to drive change. Shift Forum is that room – don’t miss your opportunity to be there. StrictlyVC readers use CODE: STRVC for a 20 percent discount.

Ecological Service Partners, a 1.5-year-old. Dallas- and Washington, D.C.-based company that’s engaging in the large-scale restoration of wetlands by purchasing land or interests that can generate significant restoration yields, has raised $250 million in equity funding from undisclosed investors. More here.

Enveil, a 1.5-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based data security company, has raised $4 million from Thomson Reuters, the insurance firm USAA, and Bloomberg Beta. The Washington Post has more here.

Graphcore, a 1.5-year-old, U.K.-based chipmaker, has raised $50 million fromSequoia Capital as it angles to become Britain’s biggest maker of artificial intelligence hardware. Sequoia has made only made a handful of investments in Europe but sees Graphcore competing with industry giants Nvidia and Intel, reports the Financial Times. More here.

Loft Orbital, a months-old, San Francisco-based startup that aims to lease space on satellites for any organization wanting to collect information about the Earth, has raised $3.2 million in seed funding. Uncork Capital led the round; other participants include MDI Ventures, V1 VC, Mercuria Investment Japan and The Remote Sending Tech Center of Japan. More here.

Malong Technologies, a three-year-old, Shenzhen, China-based artificial intelligence company that focuses on product recognition, has raised $33 million in Series B funding led by SoftBank China Capital. China Daily has more here.

Pretty Green, an eight-year-old, U.K-based menswear brand originally conceived by former Oasis singer Liam Gallagher, has raised £10 million ($13 million) in funding from the private equity firm Rockpool Investments. More here.

TrackStreet, a six-year-old, Santa Barbara, Ca.-based automated brand protection platform, has raised $2 million in seed funding led by Okapi Capital. More here.

Trouva, a two-year-old, London-based curated online marketplace for boutique homeware and lifestyle items, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by BGF Ventures, with participation from Index Ventures and Octopus Investments. VentureBeat has more here.

Entera Bio, a seven-year-old, Jerusalem-based clinical-stage biomedical company developing drugs for osteoporosis, bone disorders, and the orphan disease hypoparathyroidis, has filed for a $50 million IPO. The company, whose shares will trade on Nasdaq, had tried going public in 2015 but decided to pull back after biotech deals ground to a halt in the fall of that year. More here.

Boku, a carrier billing mobile payments company that partners with Facebook, Sony, Spotify, and Apple, among others, expects to raise £45 million ($60 million) on a post-money valuation of £125 million ($164 million) when it goes public on November 20. That might sound like a modest amount, but it’s intentional, explains TechCrunch. More here.

Razer, the gaming hardware maker backed by Intel and Hong Kong’s wealthiest man Li Ka-shing, rose as much as 41 per cent in debut trading in Hong Kong on Monday, after receiving an oversubscription of 290 times for its public offering. South China Morning Post has more here.

Hasbro has made a takeover offer for rival Mattel, according to the WSJ. The combination would unite the two biggest U.S. toy makers, valued at $11 billion and $5 billion, respectively.

Nathan Benaich has joined Point Nine Capital, the Berlin-based early-stage venture capital firm, as a venture partner. He comes from Playfair Capital, where he led investments in numerous deals that leverage data and intelligent systems.

Bill Gates is adding Alzheimer’s to the roster of causes he has put his money behind. The billionaire is investing $50 million of his personal money in the London-based Dementia Discovery Fund, a private-public collaboration that invests in innovative dementia research. He plans to invest at least another $50 million into other startups that are working on “less mainstream” approaches, but these have not yet been identified. Fortune has more here.

Stan Laurent, who spent 10 years in charge of the photo-printing consumer company PhotoBox, has joined Highland Europe as a partner. Laurent had spent the previous year as a entrepreneur-in-residence with the firm. TechCrunch has more here.

Tim Berners-Lee confronts his creation in the era of fake news.

Alibaba’s billionaire founder Jack Ma shows off his martial arts skills in a new Jet Li movie. You can catch the trailer here.

MakeSpace, a four-year-old service that picks up, stores, and delivers items to storage units for its customers for a monthly fee, has replaced its CEO with its COO, reports Wired. More here.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sees two reasons for deep political division: opioids and technology. The Financial Times has more here (sub required).

Flex (formerly Flextronics) is looking to hire a corporate strategy director.

A flood of Chinese companies is driving the biggest world-wide surge of initial public offerings in a decade. More than 1,450 companies globally have gone public so far in 2017, putting this year on track to become the busiest for new listings since 2007, according to Dealogic data, and roughly two-thirds of them were in the Asia-Pacific region. The WSJ has more here.

Buoyed by China’s plans to build a ubiquitous CCTV surveillance network, Chinese and some foreign investors are pouring money into start-up technology firms that specialize in facial recognition software. Reuters has more here.

Fashion’s interest in alternative fabrics keeps growing, reports the New York Times.

Why Wish, the shopping app taking over the world, spent more than $30 million to sponsor the L.A. Lakers jersey.

How to host a dinner party.

Academic job market or terminal illness?

Red Hot Chili Peppers, played with red hot chili peppers.

What is the only Da Vinci painting on the open market worth? We’ll find out Wednesday, when it goes under the hammer at Christie’s.

Hi, happy Friday, everyone! [Tap dancing.]

We’re working on something that’s not quite finished and it’s getting late, so no column but we’ll have more for you Monday. Hope you have a terrific weekend.:)

Investors Goldman Sachs and Alphabet are suing Chicago-based Outcome Health and its founders, claiming fraud and breach of contract some eight months after investing nearly $500 million in the company.  The WSJ has the story here.

Musical.ly, the three-year-old maker of a social-media app popular among tweens, has agreed to be acquired by Chinese news and information site Beijing Bytedance Technology Co. for as much as $1 billion, says the WSJ. Musical.ly had raised roughly $150 million from a long list of investors, including Greylock Partners,DCM Ventures, Aiming Venture Partners, Legend Capital and Goodwater Capital.

Another Craigslist killer manages not to kill Craigslist. VarageScale, a Canada-based buy-and-sell website and mobile app that raised $60 million from investors, including Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and iNovia Capital, has been acquired by VerticalScope, an 18-year-old, Toronto-based Internet media company. Terms were not disclosed. TechVibes has more here.

AngelLoop is a secure platform to centralize your portfolio and post-funding communications. If tracking company performance has become a time-consuming chore that leaves you feeling out of the loop with your founders, chances are you’re using outdated spreadsheets and emails. That’s why we’re offering StrictlyVC readers a complimentary setup service. It’s never been easier to see how purpose-built investor tools can improve your founder relationships and your bottom line. Complimentary setup is limited, so sign up today and get in the loop.

Bolt Threads, an eight-year-old, Emeryville, Ca.-based materials company that’s spinning microbes into spider silk, is in the process of raising a $106 million round, shows an SEC filing flagged by TechCrunch. Bolt’s earlier backers include Founders Fund and Formation 8.  More here.

Broker Genius, a four-year-old, New York-based dynamic pricing technology for the secondary ticket market, has raised $15 million in Series A funding fromVolition Capital. More here.

Embodied Intelligence, a nearly two-year-old, Emeryville, Ca.-based company that wants to teach robots via virtual reality, has raised $7 million in seed funding.Amplify Partners led the round with participation from Lux Capital, SV Angel,FreeS, 11.2 Capital and A.Capital. Wired profiled the company a few days ago.

Flightdocs, a 13-year-old, Bonita Springs, Fla.-based company that sells maintenance tracking software and services to the aviation industry, has raised $10 million in funding led by Argentum. More here.

Fortuna Fix, a two-year-old, London-based regenerative medicine startup focused on Parkinson’s disease and spinal cord injuries, has raised $25 million in Series B funding, including from Amgen Ventures, Salamander Invest and Rajah Blue Holdings. FierceBiotech has more here.

Milk Bar, a New York-based bakery with 10 locations in the city (as well as in Washington and in Toronto), has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding from RSE Ventures. More here.

Nio, a three-year-old, Shanghai, China-based electric vehicle maker whose U.S. division is led by CEO Padmasree Warrior, has raised more than $1 billion in new funding at a roughly $5 billion valuation led by earlier backer Tencent Holdings. Reuters has the story here.

Oyster Point Pharmaceuticals, a San Francisco-based clinical-stage company developing treatments for dry eye and ocular surface disease, has raised $22 million in Series A funding led by New Enterprise Associates and Versant Ventures.More here.

Peloton Innovations, a three-year-old, Toronto, Canada-based security startup studio, has raised $2.4 million in seed funding from Globalive Capital and individual investors. More here.

ScaleFactor, a four-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based business finance and accounting platform, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding from Next Coast Ventures,Techstars Ventures, Firebrand Ventures, Matchstick Ventures, Edison Factory and Flyover Capital. More here.

Scoop Technologies, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based startup whose app matches users with neighbors and workers for carpooling purposes, has raised $20 million in Series B funding led by G2VP. The company has raised $36 million altogether, including from Index Ventures. Forbes has more here.

ScoreStream, a five-year-old, Del Mar, Ca.-based crowdsourcing platform for capturing and syndicating local sports content, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Intel Capital, Avalon Ventures, Sinclair Broadcasting, R/GA andVerizon Ventures. More here.

Silk Technologies, a four-year-old, Plymouth, Mn.-based biotech company that uses silk protein to develop drugs that treat eye disease, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding from Skyview Ventures. More here.

Welkin Health, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based digital patient relationship platform, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Thrive Capital. The company has now raised $12 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

1984 Ventures, a new San Francisco-based venture outfit, is aiming to raise $75 million for its debut fund, shows an SEC filing. Founder Ramy Adeeb previously sold his company Snip.it for $10 million to Yahoo, where he stayed on for a couple of years as a senior director

Partners HealthCare System has raised has raised $171 million for a second fund targeting seed stage investments in life science startups, according to a news release.  The Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital each committed $50 million for the fund. MedCity News has more on the nine-year-old outfit here.

Streamlined Ventures, a nearly five-year-old, seed-stage investment firm that focuses on business applications, is looking to raise a $30 million opportunity fund, shows an SEC filing. Founder Ullas Naik had previously cofounded Cota Capital.More here.

PC gaming company Razer is set to raise upwards of $500 million when it lists on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Monday. TechCrunch has more here.

Accruent, a 22-year-old, Austin, Tex..-based maker of facilities management software, has acquired BlueCielo, a 34-year-old, Amsterdam-based global advanced asset lifecycle information management provider. Financial terms weren’t disclosed. Austin Business Journal has more here (sub required).

Apple has acquired InVisage Technologies, a startup whose software improves imaging capabilities on space-constrained devices like smartphones. Apple isn’t disclosing terms of the deal, but InVisage had raised at least $98 million from investors, shows Crunchbase, including Intel Capital, Interwest Partners, GGV Capital, and Nokia Growth Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

Electronic Arts is acquiring seven-year-old Respawn Entertainment for $315 million in cash and stock, plus a possible bonus of $140 million. Respawn publishes a popular franchise called  “Titanfall” and was founded by Vince Zampella andJason West, two of the creators of the “Call of Duty” franchise. VentureBeat hasmore here.

Green House Data, a 10-year-old, Cheyenne, Wy.-based cloud hosting and colocation services company, has acquired Ajubeo, a six-year-old, Boulder, Co.-based provider of infrastructure as a service. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. DataCenter Knowledge has more here.

Panera Bread will buy Au Bon Pain for an undisclosed amount. Dealbook hasmore here.

Pronoun, a New York-based self-publishing service for authors, is shutting down after raising $3.5 million in venture funding from Avalon Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Skyscanner, the Scotland-based travel comparison company that was acquired for £1.4 billion last November by Chinese company Ctrip.com, is acquiring Twizoo, a London-based developer of a restaurant recommendation app. Financial terms aren’t being disclosed. Twizoo had raised around $2 million in funding, including from EC1 Capital, Downing Ventures and Jensons EIS Fund. More here.

Jeremy Conrad, co-founder of hardware-focused venture Lemnos, is stepping down as general partner to launch a robotics company with a former Apple iPad engineer. He will remain a venture partner with the San Francisco-based firm, which also plans to invest in Conrad’s startup. Axios has more here.

Despite the fact that he oversaw the period when Mt. Gox went from the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange to a bankrupt and damaged company, CEO Mark Karpelèscould stand to profit hundreds of millions of dollars. Ars Technica has more here.

Dara Khosrowshahi yesterday gave his first public interview since being named CEO of Uber, saying of the pending investment from SoftBank that it “hasn’t happened yet but it will.” Axios has more here.

Jonathan Larkin, the chief investment officer of crowd-sourced quantitative investment algorithm platform Quantopian, has reportedly left the firm following disappointing returns in its inaugural hedge fund.The company’s “1337” vehicle was launched last summer with approximately $50 million devoted to the best quantitative ideas of its members. Quantopian is backed by hedge fund billionaireSteven Cohen and Andreessen Horowitz, among others. More here.

Sean Parker, the founding president of Facebook, said at a Dealbook conference New York yesterday that he has become a “conscientious objector” when it comes to social media. He says he didn’t appreciate the “unintended consequences of a network when it grows to a billion or 2 billion people and … it literally changes your relationship with society, with each other … It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.”More here.

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel lost half a billion dollars this week.

IAC Applications, a division of IAC, is looking for a senior corporate development manager. The role is in New York.

Another blow for Uber’s UK business: The company has lost its appeal against an employment tribunal ruling that last year determined the Uber drivers who brought the case should be classified as employees, not contractors. TechCrunch has more here.

Louis CK’s career is toast. (For starters, Netflix just cut ties with him.)

A super-long, nerdy NBA podcast that’s making money.

How tennis balls are made.

The “Home Alone Two” package, available at The Plaza hotel starting next Friday.

Hey, everyone, happy Thursday morning! It’s planes, trains, and automobiles for us today after a very fun, if short, week in Lisbon. Please forgive any and all typos. We’re zonked and in between flights.:) More tomorrow.

Saudi billionaires and millionaires are seeking to move assets from the kingdom and the wider Gulf Cooperation Council region as a crackdown on alleged corruption intensifies, according to Bloomberg; it says that in addition to arresting princes and ministers, lenders are being asked to freeze the accounts of dozens of other individuals.

Some senators are pushing to ditch Social Security numbers in light of the Equifax hack.

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Yesterday, at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon, Brad Parscale, the digital director of Donald Trump’s presidential election campaign, revealed much more about Trump’s election campaign and the role that Facebook played in it.

In conversation with renowned investigative journalist Michael Isikoff, Parscale also suggested that if anyone was seeking support from the Russian government during the campaign — or ignoring nefarious signs about Russian actors — it was the social media platforms, all of which were chasing the money.

Isikoff started the interview by remarking on the Democratic wins in Virginia on Tuesday, but he quickly pivoted, asking Parscale what he understood about social media during the campaign season that the “Clinton campaign did not.”

Parscale said that two things worked to his benefit: the recognition that “eyeballs were moving to social media and mobile phones and devices in huge numbers” and that he “had a great piece of product that would resonate with Americans.” Trump, in other words.

“It was the right mix,” Parscale added. “Whenever anybody is in marketing or advertising, it’s a lot easier to sell an iPod than [its short-lived competitor] Zune.

Parscale also shared more detail about the campaign’s need to raise money, saying that when “Donald Trump became the candidate, we didn’t have any money other than Mr. Trump’s money and I don’t think he wanted to write all that check himself.” Parscale said he subsequently saw the need to “create a grass-roots campaign and find millions of people to be our grassroots supporters.” He said that Facebook “allowed us to do that in alarming numbers, very fast.” In fact, he credited the Trump  campaign’s Facebook initiative with producing $280 million dollars, $100 million of which was then poured into targeted ads, on Facebook, with the help of Facebook employees.

The employees “weren’t crafting ads,” insisted Parscale. “They were there to help us support their platform.

“Look,” he said. “You go spend $300 million [on advertising], [and] $100 million dollars on social media, [and] a lot of people show up at your office, wanting to help you spend that money on their platforms. Facebook would rather have me spend that $100 million on their platform. Twitter would rather me spend it there. Snapchat. Google They were all wanting to have that money.”

More here.

Crux Informatics, a months-old, New York-based startup that says it wants to help Wall Street clean its data, has raised $10 million in funding led by Goldman Sachs, with participation from undisclosed other institutional investors. TechCrunch hasmore here.

EclecticIQ, a three-year-old, Amsterdam-based cybersecurity firm, has raised €14 million ($16.2 million) in Series B funding from Keen Ventures Partners and earlier backers. It has now raised more than €20 million ($23 million) altogether. Tech.eu has more here.

Enview, a three-year-old, Bay Area-based company that’s mapping the world in 3D with geospatial big data analytics, has raised $6 million from investors led byCrosslink Capital, with additional participation from Lemnos, Promus Venturesand Skype co-founder Toivo Annus. TechCrunch has more here.

EOC Pharma Group, a nearly two-year-old, Shanghai City, China-based oncology-focused development and commercialization company, has raised $32 million in Series B funding led by Taikang Investment, with participation from Sequoia China and H&Q Asia Pacific. More here.

Modern Adventure, a months-old, Portland, Ore.-based experiential travel company, has raised $1 million in seed funding led by Seal Rock Partners, with participation from unnamed angel investors. More here.

Natural Cycles, a four-year-old, Stockholm, Sweden-based startup pushing to establish what it bills as a “digital contraceptive,” has closed on $30 million in Series B funding led by EQT Ventures, with participation from earlier investors Sunstone,E-ventures and Bonnier. TechCrunch has more here.

Qubole, a six-year-old, Santa Clara, Ca.-based big data-as-a-service company, has raised $25 million in funding co-led by Singtel Innov8 and Harmony Partners, with participation from earlier backers CRV, Lightspeed Venture Partners,Norwest Venture Partners and Institutional Venture Partners. More here.

Rollick Outdoor, a months-old, Austin, Tex.-based marketing platform for retailers and manufacturers that helps them tailor individualized online and in-store experiences, has raised $5.6 million in seed funding. The round was led bySilverton Partners, with participation from Autotech Ventures, Troy Capital Partners, Capital Factory and Bazaarevoice cofounder Brett Hurt. More here.

Treasury Intelligence Solutions, a seven-year-old, Walldorf, Germany-based company behind a SaaS-based cloud platform for managing and analyzing corporate payments, has raised $12 million in funding from 83North, with participation fromTarget Partners and Zobito. Tech.eu has more here.

Tricida, a four-year-old, South San Francisco, Ca.-based Phase 3 stage biopharmaceutical company that’s developing non-absorbed oral drug therapies, has raised $57.5 million in Series D funding. Investors include Wellington Management Company, Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners and Cormorant Asset Management, along with earlier backers OrbiMed, Longitude Capital,Sibling Capital Ventures, Limulus Venture Partners and Vivo Capital. The company has now raised $153.3 million altogether. More here.

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Roku, the digital streaming business, issued its first earnings report as a public company, and it greatly surpassed analyst expectations, sending the company’s shares up 26 percent in initial after-hours trading. TechCrunch has more here.

The Chinese search engine company Sogou has priced its American depository shares at $13, coming in at the top of the expected range and putting the size of its IPO today at $585 million. The Financial Times has more here.

What all these hot IPOs say about Hong Kongs’s next crash.

Continental, a Hanover, Germany-based company that develops tech and services for sustainable and connected mobility, is acquiring Argus Cyber Security, a four-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based company whose technology guards cars against hacking. The amount of the deal was not disclosed. Argus had raised at least $25 million from investors, shows Crunchbase. Its backers include Vertex Ventures andMagna International. Reuters has more here.

Airnbnb cofounder Nathan Blecharczyk is predicting that China will be the company’s largest source of business by 2020.

Shernaz Daver, the chief marketing officer for Udacity, has stepped down. Daver is also an advisor to Google Ventures. No word yet on her next steps.

A letter from DST Global’s management team to its limited partners seems seems designed to assuage investors that DST will protect their identities despite coming under recent scrutiny itself.

Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer apologized yesterday for two massive data breaches at the internet company, blaming Russian agents for at least one of them.

Silicon Valley VC Shervin Pishevar was arrested but never charged over an alleged rape in London. Forbes has the story here.

The U.S. Department of Justice is saying ‘not so fast’ to Time Warner’s sale toAT&T. A central component of the dispute is CNN — the network that Donald Trump has frequently attacked as a purveyor of “fake news.” More here.

According to the New York Times, China spends hundreds of thousands of dollars each quarter, spreading propaganda on Facebook.

Uber has asked its drivers if they want to provide other on-demand services.

In unrelated news (we think), Uber‘s  ‘flying cars’ could arrive in L.A. by 2020, reports The Verge.

Scientists saved a kid by growing a whole new skin for him(!).

How to get over the need to be liked by everyone you meet.

A Bloomberg reporter recounts dining with Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, just days before his arrest last weekend.

Jon Hamm’s New York apartment, now available to rent for $15,000 a month.

Hi, and happy Wednesday, everyone. We’re on a plane tomorrow so SVC might be coming to you from the Newark airport again. (We’re praying for WiFi but not counting on it.)

We’ll have more for you from Web Summit in Lisbon in the meantime, including over at TechCrunch.:)

Twitter‘s character limit has now officially doubled for all of its Roman-alphabet users. (@realDonaldTrump does not appear to have gotten the memo yet, so zip it.)

An estimated $280 million worth of the cryptocurrency ethereum is currently locked up today thanks to one person’s mistake.

StrictlyVC is sponsored this week by AngelLoop. If tracking company performance has become a time-consuming chore that leaves you feeling out of the loop with your founders, chances are you’re using outdated tools. Leave spreadsheets behind and try our secure platform to centralize your portfolio and post-funding communications. It’s free for investors, and we’re offering StrictlyVC readers acomplimentary setup service. Complimentary setup is limited, so sign up today and get in the loop.

Yesterday, at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon, we caught up with Jim Breyer, renowned in Silicon Valley thanks to a decades-long track record of smart bets, most notably in Facebook. Breyer was the managing partner at Accel Partners, which invested $12.7 million in Facebook in 2005 when the company was priced around $100 million; that bet proved to be among the most lucrative in the history of the venture business, returning many billions of dollars to Accel’s investors after the company went public in 2012.

In 2013, Breyer segued out of the firm, opening up his own family office, called Breyer Capital, where he has continued to make bold bets. Breyer has also partnered over the years with the Chinese firm IDG Capital Partners, which formerly collaborated with Accel Partners and where Breyer Capital has since become an anchor investor in a series of funds that now manage more than $4 billion.

Breyer will be taking the stage today in Portugal, but he also sat down with us behind the scenes yesterday to talk about Facebook, Softbank, and ICOs, among other factors playing an outsize role in the startup ecosystem. You can find much of that conversation below, edited for length.

You’ve just come to Lisbon from China. How much time do you spend there?

I’m there four times a year. I probably have 100 partners who are part of IDG China, where Breyer Capital is a sponsor and I’m a general partner on the investment committee and we cover 10 cities in China.

Meanwhile, you’re also overseeing Breyer Capital, your family office. How active is that, and is its focus exclusively on U.S. companies?

We make six to 10 new investments a year, investing in artificial intelligence and deep learning mostly, and how it applies to finance, healthcare, publishing, and other large verticals, and yes, [the investments are stateside].

Before sitting down today, I’d seen a recent CNBC interview you’d given, where you said you expect to see a number of big companies focused around artificial intelligence that are even bigger, much bigger, than Facebook and its ilk today. I think of Google and Facebook and Amazon and Apple as having an insurmountable lead, given the monopoly they have on these huge data sets. Why are you so sure that’s not the case?

Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, [Alibaba founder] Jack Ma, [Tencent founder] Pony Ma, [Baidu founder] Robin Li — these are phenomenal founder-driven companies and I expect the Apples, Facebooks, Amazons, Alphabets, and Baidus will only get stronger in many ways. But the [opportunity] to apply deep learning and true artificial intelligence to large verticals [is immense]. For example, doctor recommendations around cancer research — both in the U.S. and China, where we can pull together data from hospitals, analyze that data in ways that have never been possible before, and provide better potential advice to doctors and nurses — those are just great opportunities for startups.

I’m still confused as to how nascent AI teams get very far. It seems that most are either getting pulled into these bigger companies before their companies can really prove themselves, or else they’re having to focus on very small verticals — like assessing the health of cabbages — and building a data set around them. Can AI teams still build big defensible businesses?

I’m no longer on the board of Facebook, but I have these conversations with Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg all the time, and it’s interesting. Facebook continues to grow dramatically but they’re also optimistic about startups and building new companies than ever before. Yes, there are strong founder-driven companies, but I don’t think it’s about fringe opportunities.

You think we’ll see giant AI companies. Do you think you’ve met the next Mark Zuckerberg yet?

I don’t think I’ll ever find a Mark Zuckerberg. And the combination of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, who I helped Mark hire in 2008 – I don’t think I’ll ever find a team like that again. Sheryl’s opportunities to make Mark better, Mark’s opportunities to make Sheryl better – that combination is the best single leadership combination in the world. In fact, they’re two of the key references on so many of the new deals that I do.

You’re getting their advice on potential investments?

Absolutely — and reference checks on people who might be from Google or Apple or Amazon. Not a day goes by when I’m not in contact with Facebook executives about a potential new deal or recruiting. They’ve been a wonderful source of both references on new deals in AI, specifically, or in talent management and referrals of executives who I meet who are potentially future founders or future executives of these AI companies.

More here.

Compass, a five-year-old, New York-based tech-enabled real estate company, has raised $100 million in fresh funding led by Fidelity Investments, with participation from earlier backers IVP and Wellington Management. TechCrunch has more here.

Fisdom, a two-year-old, Bangalore, India-based personal finance management startup, has raised $4 million in Series B funding led by Accion Frontier Inclusion Fund, with participation from existing investor Saama Capital. More here.

Hostmaker, a three-year-old, London-based Airbnb management service, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Sansiri, one of Thailand’s largest premium real estate developers, and Gaw Capital, a Hong Kong-based global hospitality real estate investor. Earlier backers DN Capital, Ventech, and DSGCPalso joined the round. TechCrunch has more here.

Leanplum, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based mobile market platform that tries to help brands improve engagement, has raised $47 million in Series D funding led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from earlier investors Canaan Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Shasta Ventures. More here.

MetricStream, an 18-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based maker of governance, risk and compliance software, has raised $65 million in growth equity funding led byClearlake Capital Group, with participation from EDBI and return backersGoldman Sachs and Sageview Capital. More here.

Monzo, a two-year-old, London-based digital, mobile-only bank, has raised £71 million ($92.9 million) in fresh funding led by Goodwater Capital at a £280 million ($366 million) post-money valuation. Other new investors joining the round are payments company Stripe and Michael Moritz, who is investing personally through his charitable investment vehicles. Previous backers Passion Capital, Thrive Capital and Orange Digital Ventures also joined the round. TechCrunch has more here.

MyMusicTaste, a nearly four-year-old, Seoul-headquartered service that lets fans campaign to bring their favorite artists to their city, has raised $11 million in Series C. funding led by KTB Network, with participation from Stonebridge, Yellow Dog, and previous investors Softbank Ventures Korea, Samsung Ventures,Formation 8, Bokwang Investment and Golden Gate Ventures. The company has now raised $22.3 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Opendorse, a five-year-old, Lincoln, Neb.-based marketing platform that helps sports brands share their marketing content on social channels, has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding led by Serra Ventures, with participation from Flyover Capital and numerous pro athletes. The Lincoln Journal Star has more here.

Panorama Education, a five-year-old, Boston, Ma.-based edtech company that tries to help parents and educators understand the social-emotional needs of children, has raised $16 million in Series B funding led by Emerson Collective, with participation from Spark Capital, Owl Ventures, SoftTech VC, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. EdSurge has more here.

ShopBack, a three-year-old, Singapore-based cash-back-focused e-commerce startup, has raised $25 million in funding led by Credit Saison, with participation from Blue Sky, AppWorks, Intouch, Aetius Capital, 33 Capital and return backers SoftBank Ventures Korea, Singtel Innov8, Qualgro and East Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Smartkarma, a three-year-old, Singapore-based online marketplace for investment research on Asian companies, has raised $13.5 million in Series B funding led bySequoia India, with participation from earlier backers Wavemaker Partners,Jungle Ventures and Spring Seeds. Bloomberg has more here.

Sourceress, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based AI-driven HR recruiter, has raised $3.5 million in new funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, OpenAI researchers, Y Combinator, Dropbox founders Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi, as well as other individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Vidrovr, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based startup that develops multimodal computer vision and machine learning systems to index, tag, and understand video, has raised  $1.25 million in seed funding led by Samsung NEXT, with participation from Verizon Ventures, R/GA Ventures, Social Starts and individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.

WeLab, a four-year-old, Hong Kong-based mobile lending company, has raised $220 million in new Series B funding, including from Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund, International Finance Corp. and Credit Suisse. Bloomberg has more here.

Yotpo, a six-year-old, New York-based platform that lets companies gather content from their customers in the form of reviews, Q&As, photos and videos to use mostly in marketing, has raised $51 million in Series D funding. The round was led byAccess Industries, with participation from Vertex Ventures and earlier backersBessemer Venture Partners, Marker, Vintage Partners, Blumberg Capital,Rhodium, and 2B Angels. The company has now raised $101 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Blue Bear Ventures, a year-old outfit that expects to make early-stage investments in startups coming out of the University of California system, is looking to raise up to $20 million for its debut fund, shows an SEC filing. More here.

According to Axios’s Dan Primack, Sequoia Capital is raising up to $180 million for a new fund that will focus exclusively on seed-stage opportunities. Sequoia already manages a pair of “scout” funds, the report notes: the new vehicle will be viewed as the third in that series.

Tencent’s China Literature, an Amazon-like e-book business, has enjoyed an impressive debut as public company, with its share price doubling on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange today. The listing follows Southeast Asia-based Sea (formerly Garena), also backed by Tencent, which raised $880 million in a NYSE IPO last month, and is just ahead of gaming firm Razer, which plans to raise $550 million on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange this month. TechCrunch has the story here.

We missed this one, but Tesla said on Monday that it has acquired a Minnesota-based factory automation company called Perbix Machine Company for undisclosed terms. Business Insider has more on the company here.

Zynga, the publicly traded gaming company, is acquiring the mobile card game studio of six-year-old, Turkey-based Peak Games for $100 million in cash. Peak Games had raised $18 million shows Crunchbase. Its backers include Earlybird Venture Capital, Endeavor Global and Hummingbird Ventures. VentureBeat has more here.

Founder turned investor Hayley Barna is now a general partner with the early-stage venture firm First Round Capital. The appointment comes roughly one-and-a-half years after Barna — who cofounded the seven-year-old Birchbox, a start-up that mails monthly packages of beauty samples to subscribers —  joined First Round as a venture partner. TechCrunch has more here.

Two luxury-car-loving founders behind a crypto currency startup called Centra have left the company. (Very notably, two weeks ago, it raised $32 million through an ICO.) Business Insider has more here.

Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has been subpoenaed to testify to the Senate Commerce Committee about the massive cyber hack that compromised 3 billion accounts. The U.S. has charged four alleged Russian spies with the breach; it’s now being investigated by the government for insight into Russia’s cyber espionage activities. Fortune has more here.

Snap’s vice president of engineering Tim Sehn is stepping down from the company four years after joining it to head up its engineering team. His departure is expected to be announced today when the company files details of its quarterly results with securities regulators, says The Information. More here.

SoftTech VC has rebranded as Uncork Capital. The team wants to help startups “uncork” their potential, says firm founder Jeff Clavier. More here.

Adoption of voice-powered smart speakers is taking off. According to a new report from Juniper Research out this morning, smart devices like the Amazon Echo, Google Home and Sonos One will be installed in 55 percent of U.S. households by the year 2022. TechCrunch has more here.

Uber hasn’t recovered its business in San Francisco and New York since #deleteUber, according to new report by credit card analytics company Second Measure.

Apple soft-launched direct, person-to-person payments in an iMessage yesterday with the Apple Pay Cash beta. The feature, announced earlier this year, allows users to send and receive cash inside the Messages app on iPhones.

Snap was destroyed by Wall Street yesterday, after announcing Q3 earnings well short of expectations. To get things going in the right direction, Snapchat is redesigning the app to be easier for older people to use, and it will begin sorting its Stories feed algorithmically, instead of running Stories in reverse-chronological order as now. More here.

China’s Tencent has meanwhile taken a 10 percent stake in Snap, it was revealed yesterday, a much-needed vote of confidence. (Tencent had also invested in the company before it went public.)

Wired takes a look inside one of venture capital’s messiest breakups, the implosion of Xfund.

Want to stay safe while traveling? Wear a Rolex (apparently).

Why canceling plans is so strangely satisfying.

How Facebook figures out everyone you’ve ever met.

Arcade coffee table. Our kids would not hate this.

Hola from Portugal! Busy day. We had an, erm, spirited on-stage discussion about ICOs at Web Summit with VCs Tim Draper, Rebecca Lynn, and Ethereum cofounder Joseph Lubin. You can check it out here if you like.

We also enjoyed a lengthy back-stage chat with famed VC and early Facebook investor Jim Breyer, who served on the company’s board until 2013. We’re running out the door but we’ll have more from that discussion for you soon, too.

Waymo’s fully self-driving vehicles are here and ready to take your kids to school, the company announced today at Web Summit.

StrictlyVC is sponsored this week by AngelLoop, a secure platform to centralize your portfolio and post-funding communications. Are you stuck managing your portfolio with clunky CRMs and spreadsheets? Leave outdated tools behind and try AngelLoop. It’s free for investors, and we’re offering StrictlyVC readers a complimentary setup service. It’s never been easier to see how streamlined tools can improve your founder relationships and your bottom line. Complimentary setup is limited, so sign up today and get in the loop.

AnchorDX, a two-year-old, Guangzhou city-headquartered precision medicine start-up, has raised $28 million in Series B funding led by the Chinese healthcare-focused investment firm 6 Dimensions Capital and Sijia Jianxin Fund. China Money Network has more here.

Bravely, a months-old, New York-based resource for confidential coaching for employees facing stress and issues at work, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding, including from Primary Venture Partners, Brooklyn Bridge Ventures,Correlation Ventures and Trail Mix Partners. New York Business Journal hasmore here (sub required).

CargoX, a two-year-old, São Paulo, Brazil-based company selling trucking services to corporations, has raised $20 million in Series C funding led by earlier investorGoldman Sachs, which had also led its $10 million Series B round last year. Other investors in the round include George Soros, Qualcomm Ventures, Agility Logistics, Valor Capital Group and Oscar Salazar. More here.

Excelero, a three-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel.-based software-defined block storage company, has raised $25 million in venture funding led by Battery Ventures, with participation from Qualcomm Ventures, the Australian venture capital fundSquare Peg Capital, and numerous individual investors. The company says it has now raised $30 million altogether. Globes has more here.

Heyday, a 3.5-year-old, New York-based outfit that’s opening up pop-in facial shops, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by Lerer Hippeau Ventures. Fast Company has more here.

I.am+, a five-year-old, L.A.-based startup that competes in the corporate computing market with a voice assistant for customer service (and notably was founded by pop star and entrepreneur will.i.am), has raised $117 million in venture funding, reports Reuters. The company’s most recent, $89 million, round closed in March but hadn’t been previously reported. Salesforce Ventures is among its investors. More here.

Jitterbit, a 16-year-old, Alameda, Ca.-based API integration platform, has raised $25 million in Series C funding led by KKR. More here.

Mojiworks, a 1.5-year-old, U.K.-based games creator for chat and messaging platforms, has raised $2.8 million in Series A funding led by Balderton Capital, with participation from Lifeline Ventures and Sunstone Capital. TechCrunch hasmore here.

NousCom, a two-year-old, Basel, Switzerland-based oncology company, has raised $55 million in Series B funding led by Abingworth, with participation from 5AM Ventures, LSP and Versant Ventures. FierceBiotech has more here.

NuID, a months-old, Seattle-based blockchain security and digital identity startup, has raised $1.64 million in seed funding, including from Jemison Investment Company and 8VC. FierceBiotech has more here.

Phoenix Travel Worldwide, a 20-year-old, Beijing, China-based travel agency that covers tourism destinations in more than 100 countries in Europe, North America and elsewhere, has raised roughly $105 million in Series C funding. The round was led by China’s CITIC Capital, Haier Capital, Lenovo Holdings andLegend Capital. China Money Network has more here.

Powerful, a four-year-old, Miami, Fl.-based food and beverage company that markets all-natural, high-protein products, has raised $4 million in Series B funding led by River Hollow Partners, a lower mid-market private equity firm focused on consumer and retail brands in the natural products space. More here.

ThirdChannel, a five-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based retail intelligence platform, has raised $7 million in Series A funding led by Fung Capital. More here.

Goldman Sachs is teaming up with China Investment Corp and forming a fund of up to $5 billion to invest in U.S. manufacturers. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Proofpoint, the publicly traded enterprise security company, is acquiringCloudmark, a 16-year-old, San Francisco-based firm that provides security protection for messaging services for $110 million. Cloudmark had raised roughly $39 million in venture funding, according to Crunchbase. TechCrunch has more here.

Uber has some “new cultural norms,” its new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, announced to the world today.

Silicon Valley investor Shervin Pishevar has filed a defamation lawsuit against a Republican-driven political opposition firm, alleging that it conducted a smear campaign that tied him to the Russian government, as well as an incident with a prostitute in Europe. A partner at the firm calls the claims “delusional.” Recode hasmore here.

Rex Tibbens is stepping down as COO of Lyft by year-end, reports Axios. This one is interesting. Tibbens joined just a bit over two years ago after four years at Amazon and more than a decade at Dell. According to Axios, he hasn’t yet decided on his future plans. Longtime readers might remember that late last year, there wastalk about Tibbens being “looked at” by the Trump administration for the role of U.S. Transportation Secretary, talk that Tibbens quickly squelched.

S&P Global is looking for a corporate development manager. The job is in New York.

Perhaps you’ve noticed: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is challenging anunusually large number of H-1B applications.

The most riveting host in late night (and the most overlooked).

The Cary42 portable game console. (There were only 50 made and this story came out seven days ago, so if you want it, get going.)

Hi, happy Monday, all! Hope you had a wonderful weekend. We’re just back at our hotel in Lisbon for a pit stop after a couple of on-stage interviews that we hope to write up for you shortly. More soon.:)

More on that potential biggest-takeover-ever-of-a-chipmaker ever: Broadcom has reportedly offered about $105 billion for Qualcomm. Bloomberg has more here.

Softbank is losing its patience with Uber, it signaled today on a quarterly earnings briefing today, when it floated the idea that it just might invest in Lyft after all.

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In a move sure to shock the business world, Saudi Arabia announced the arrest of at least eleven princes on Saturday night, including renowned billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, as part of a sweeping corruption investigation.

Prince Alwaleed controls the investment firm Kingdom Holding and is one of the world’s richest men, owning or having owned meaningful positions in satellite TV networks, as well as in News Corp. (a stake it has since mostly sold), Citigroup (shares of which it has owned since 1991), and a growing number of tech companies.

The prince and Kingdom Holding, of which he owns 95 percent, first invested $300 million in Twitter in 2011, two years before the company went public. In 2015, he invested another $50 million to increase his ownership in Twitter and, as of last year, remained one of the company’s largest shareholders.

In 2013, Kingdom also acquired 2.5 percent of China-based retailer JD.Com, which went public on the Nasdaq the following year and whose shares have roughly doubled since.

Prince Alwaleed and Kingdom further acquired a stake in the car-hailing company Lyft early last year, buying some of the shares of its earlier investors Andreessen Horowitz and Founders Fund.

The prince and other members of his investment company announced in March 2015 that they’d sat down with Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and the company’s chief strategy officer, Imran Khan, about a possible investment in Snap, though several months later, a source close to the prince said Kingdom had no plans to invest.

Price Alwaleed first began investing in tech in the late ’90s and has owned shares of both Apple and Ebay for more than 15 years.

According to the New York Times, the arrests appear to be a move to consolidate the power of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a son and the top adviser of King Salman, who had announced the creation of a new anti-corruption committee — headed by the crown prince —  just hours before the arrests were ordered.

According to the Times, the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh was subsequently evacuated, possibly to house the arrested royals, and the airport for private planes shuttered, presumably to stop anyone from fleeing the country.

More here.

Annoroad, a five-year-old, Beijing, China-based next-generation sequencing company, has raised $105 million in Series C funding led by Ping An Ventures and the Shenzhen GTJA Investment Group, with additional money coming fromSoftBank China Venture Capital. More here.

Aquam, a San Diego, Ca.-based company that helps water and energy companies better understand and assess their pipes and other assets, has raised $26 million in funding from NewWorld Capital Group, with participation from a Credit Suisse advised fund. More here.

Auto1 Group, a five-year-old, Berlin, Germany-based online used car marketplace that raised $404 million in debt and equity financing earlier this year, is reportedly in talks with Softbank‘s Vision Fund team about an investment. It would SoftBank’s first major deal in Germany, says DealStreetAsia. More here.

CloudSense, an eight-year-old, London-based startup that aims to bring together customers and companies on one commerce platform that’s built on Salesforce, has raised $77 million in growth funding from Vector Capital. More here.

Kaodim, a three-year-old, Malaysia-based service for booking a range of services that include cleaning, moving, gas delivery, appliance care, and even photography, has raised $7 million  led by Square Peg Capital, with participation from 500 Startups, Venturra Capital, East Ventures and KK Fund. The company has now raised $11.5 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

LogDNA, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based cloud-based log management system that aggregates application logs in a single platform, has raised $7 million in Series A financing led by earlier investor Initialized Capital, which partly provided the company with $1.3 million in seed funding last year. NewsCenter.io has more here.

MetricStream, an 19-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based maker of governance, risk and compliance applications and software, has raised $65 million in funding led byClearlake Capital Group, with participation from EDBI and earlier backersGoldman Sachs, Sageview Capital, and others. More here.

Pienso, a 1.5-year-old Brooklyn, N.Y.-based startup aiming to democratize machine learning and make it accessible to people with no prior background in either advanced statistics or machine learning, has raised $2.1 million in seed funding.Eniac Ventures led the round, with participation from SoftTech VC, Indicator Ventures and E14 Fund. More here.

QLess, a 10-year-old, Pasadena, Ca.-based maker of mobile customer queue software that aims to do away with on-hold wait times, has raised $5.5 million in funding from Palisades Growth Capital and Act One Ventures, with participation from earlier investors. More here.

The 10-year-old,  European venture capital firm Sunstone Technology Ventures, has closed two new funds totalling €160 million ($185.3 million) in committed capital. More here.

Another U.K.-based car-buying startup looks to be shutting down. According to TechCrunch, London-based Hellocar is closing its doors, not so long after Rocket Internet pulled the plug on a competitor called Carspring. Hellocar, founded last year, looks to have raised just $1 million in seed funding. More here.

Eleven IPOs are scheduled to raise $2 billion in the coming week. Renaissance Capital has the rundown here.

William Dudley, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since 2009, will retire from his position in mid-2018, the bank announced today. Whoever fills the role is expected to be a “key bulwark against Wall Street misbehavior as the Trump administration moves to loosen regulatory oversight of banks,” notes the New York Times.

Yuri Milner, the Russian billionaire investor who is widely respected in Silicon Valley for his big, bold bets on Facebook, is now being connected with the Kremlin, which reportedly invested in the powerful social media platform  (and Twitter, too) through shell companies that funded Milner’s efforts. More here.

Unity Technologies, whose software reportedly powers half of all new mobile games, is looking to hire a corporate development analyst. The job is in San Francisco.

According to a new survey, roughly 60 percent of people who have Amazon Prime definitely would not buy Amazon Key, a new service with hardware that allows couriers into customers’ homes. Recode has more here.

Apple has revealed that “face with tears of joy” is the most popular emoji among English speakers in the United States, followed closely by a red heart, loudly crying face, heart eyes face, face throwing a kiss, face with rolling eyes, skull, smiling face with smiling eyes, weary face, and thinking face. (Hey, someone out there cares about these things.) More here.

Softbank’s Masayoshi Son just can’t quit Sprint. The WSJ has inside story of how theSprint and T-mobile deal collapsed, again.

Despite months of talk about combatting the fraud facing Facebook and other tech companies, their sites remain infected by obvious counterfeits. The New York Times has more here.

Startup workers are expected to get some tax relief on their paper wealth if a House Republican tax bill goes through as planned. Bloomberg has more here.

Oh. No. WeWork is launching a grade school for “conscious entrepreneurship.”

Kids, would you please start fighting?

Inside the RVs of Silicon Valley.

How renting parking spaces can make you rich.

Forty-one cocktails you’ll want this fall.

These vaunted pastries are also delicious.