Hope you have a restful couple of days, everyone. See you back here Monday.:)

Good news, hungry tech investors. Dropbox‘s shares closed at $28.42 today, up more than 35 percent in their first day of trading as investors proved eager to buy into the biggest tech IPO since Snap. The company has come a long way, as you can see from this demo video in 2008 (it’s pretty charming, actually).

Meanwhile, the rest of the market tumbled again today, sending the S&P 500 Index to its biggest weekly loss in more than two years. Investors are scared of a trade war and fearful that higher borrowing rates could throttle global growth.

EquityZen. We operate a secondary market for company-approved transactions in pre-IPO stock. Founded in 2013, EquityZen has already closed more than 3,700 investments in 95+ companies. For as little as $10,000 on your first investment, you can gain access to proven private companies like Coinbase, Postmates, and more! Join for free and begin investing in the private markets: equityzen.com.

Earlier this week, at the expansive Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Ca., Y Combinator introduced an exhaustive (and exhausting) 141 startups to investors who gathered to hear quick pitches about how each of the teams plan to disrupt their predecessors.

Roughly 3,000 miles away, in New York, another accelerator, AngelPad was busy blowing up its own demo day. Though in recent years, the eight-year-old outfit has similarly packed rooms with invite-only crowds of investors to hear startup pitches in rapid-fire succession, AngelPad — which has hosted demo days in both New York and San Francisco — thinks investors have had enough of the construct, says cofounder Thomas Korte.

“Demo days are great ways for accelerators to expose a large number of companies to a lot of investors, but we don’t think it is the most productive way,” he says, so AngelPad is introducing the idea of investor “preview” days instead. The idea: to pair founders with only the most relevant investors for same-day, one-on-one meetings.

It makes sense, particularly for an outfit like AngelPad that has always kept its focus on far smaller “batches” of founding teams. AngelPad’s newest class of 10 startups had more than 200 meetings in one day, but investors were able to get the founders’ undivided attention — and vice versa.

The feedback from both sides was “overwhelming positive,” too, says Korte. “Founders had their first 20-plus investor meetings, and the investors spent two productive hours with founders rather than sit through a quick show-and-tell presentation.”

If you’re interested in learning more about the recent graduates — they join 130 companies that AngelPad has now worked with altogether, including the delivery service Postmates — check out the slideshow. Some of our favorites include Meemo and Quoteapro, but you should decide for yourself which you think are the most promising.

More here.

Ansarada, a 12-year-old, Sydney, Australia-based virtual data room provider, has raised $18 million in Series A funding led by Ellerston Capital, with participation from Tempus Partners, Belay Capital and Australian Ethical Investments. More here.

Dracen Pharmaceuticals, a new, Baltimore-based immuno-metabolism startup that was spun out of Johns Hopkins University, has raised $40 million in Series A funding led by Deerfield Management. Technical.ly has more here.

Insly, a 17-year-old, London-based cloud-based insurance platform, has raised €2.2 million ($2.7 million), including from Concentric and Black Pearls VC. More here.

Knowledge Officer, a year-old, London-based startup that has built a personalized online teaching app, just raised £600,000 ($848,000) in seed funding led by Kuwaiti investor Abdullah AlShaheen and former Fox Interactive Media VP Ian Hurlock. UKTN has more here.

ServiceTitan, a five-year-old, Glendale, Ca.-based company that makes workflow and field service management software for home-service businesses, has raised $62 million in Series C funding from Battery Ventures, as well as earlier backers Bessemer Venture Partners and ICONIQ Capital. More here.

Shift, a San Francisco-based startup that’s aiming to facilitate military-to-civilian career transitions, has raised $4 million in seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Tim Ferriss, Structure Capital, Expa, Gelt Venture Capital and BoxGroup. More here.

Tourlane, a two-year-old, Berlin-based online travel company that creates adventures for its customers, has raised $8.5 million in Series A funding led bySpark Capital, with participation from Holtzbrinck Ventures and DN Capital.More here. (Also, sign us up!)

Let’s keep this short: If you’re a startup or nonprofit that offers a solution that could improve financial health — even if early stage —  you should apply to the Financial Solutions Lab before April 11. More: Lab Impact Report, Launch Blog, Challenge Details, Application.

Pivotal, the business software and cloud company that spun out of DellEMC and VMware, filed for an IPO today to raise $100 million. (It’s good to be a cloud company right now.) Fortune has more here.

Also: Alibaba Group is reportedly planning a mainland listing via depositary receipts that could come as early as the middle of this year. As Reuters notes, China has been looking for ways to lure home its offshore-listed tech giants to give Chinese investors more access to them. More here.

Sudip Chakrabarti has joined Madrona Venture Group as a partner. Chakrabarti was previously a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, and before that at Andreessen Horowitz. GeekWire has more here.

Josh Hannah has quietly stepped down as a general partner with Matrix Partners, which he joined in 2009, says Axios. Neither Matrix nor Hannah (on LinkedIn) have updated online media about the move. He will reportedly maintain his Matrix board seats, but won’t be making any new investments.

Real estate investor and Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik has expanded his relationship with Dreamit Ventures through a new $12 million investment into the early stage fund and accelerator, announced earlier this week. The deal will also see Vinik joining Dreamit as a Partner and a member of the Board of Directors. TechCrunch has more here.

America’s 100 richest places.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he’d “love to see” regulation on ad transparency. But that’s not the company’s message to lawmakers, as Quartz has discovered.

Meanwhile, you probably know this already, but it’s . . . time to buy Facebook. The reason: despite outrage over its failed privacy policies and despite its falling share price and despite the numerous shareholder lawsuits it’s now facing, pretty much no one deleted it this week, save for one of WhatsApp’s founders and Elon Musk. (He was dared to on Twitter, so.)

The best thing we’ve read to date on the Uber accident. The Times also takes a look at Uber’s struggles, explaining why its autonomous cars were never ready for prime time in the first place.

A fascinating look inside Spike Jonze’s equally fascinating Apple ad.

This Omaha man “liked” a tweet. Then he lost his dream job.

At last, Matt Damon breaks his silence on Ben Affleck’s alarming back tattoo.

A floor mat for your favorite beep-boop-boop nerd.

Stocks nosedived today, with investors fretting over an escalating trade war with China.

Dropbox just raised $750 million ahead of its opening day of trading tomorrow, with investors acquiring shares at $21 a pop. The long-awaited IPO will be watched closely to gauge the health of the tech economy.

YouTube has banned firearms demo videos, entering the gun control debate. In the face of intense criticism for hosting videos about guns, bombs, and other deadly weapons, YouTube says it will also prohibit videos with instructions on how to assemble firearms. More here (sub required).

Reddit, the popular link-sharing site, has also waded into the debate, removing several popular firearms-related communities yesterday after an update to the company’s policies. Bloomberg has more here.

EquityZen. We operate a secondary market for company-approved transactions in pre-IPO stock. Founded in 2013, EquityZen has already closed more than 3,700 investments in 95+ companies. For as little as $10,000 on your first investment, you can gain access to proven private companies like Coinbase, Postmates, and more! Join for free and begin investing in the private markets: equityzen.com.

AdStage, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based reporting and automation platform for paid marketers, has raised $3 million in funding from Forté Ventures, HubSpot . and Verizon Ventures. More here.

Amper Music, a 3.5-year-old, New York-based AI-driven music creation platform that says it can quickly produce unique music, has raised $4 million in seed funding led by Horizons Ventures. Other backers in the round include Two Sigma Ventures, Advancit Capital, Foundry Group and Kiwi Venture Partners. More here.

ArcherDX, a three-year-old, Boulder, Co.-based company that creates custom next-generation sequencing assays meant to identify mutations and gene fusions from clinical sample types, has raised $35 million in Series A  funding co-led by Boulder Ventures and PBM Capital Group. More here.

Bestmile, a 3.5-year-old, San Francisco- and Lausanne, Switzerland-based autonomous vehicle fleet management platform company, has raised $11 million in Series A funding led by Road Ventures. Other participants in the deal include Partech Ventures, Groupe ADP, Airbus Ventures, Serena Capital and the Mobility Fund. More here.

Blade, a three-year-old, New York-based short-distance aviation company often called an “Uber for helicopters,” has raised $38 million in Series B funding co-led byColony NorthStar and Lerer Hippeau Ventures, with participation from Airbus Helicopters and LionTree Ventures. Business Insider has more here.

BioIQ, a nearly 13-year-old,  Santa Barbara, Ca.-based company whose software configures and manages all aspects of a health testing program, has raised $26.5 million in funding led by HealthQuest Capital, with participation from Arboretum Ventures and select (unnamed) insiders. More here.

Burrow, a nearly two-year-old, New York-based maker of modular sofas, has raised $14 million in Series A funding led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Correlation Ventures and earlier investors Red & Blue Ventures and YC Continuity. TechCrunch has more here.

Everledger, a three-year-old, London-based startup that tracks the provenance of high-value assets on a global digital ledger, has raised $10.4 million in in Series A funding round led by Fidelity Investments, with participation from Vickers Ventures Partners, Graphene Venture Capital, and earlier investors FPV,Fenbushi, Bloomberg Beta and Rakuten. More here.

eToro, an 11-year-old, London-based social trading and investment platform, has raised a whopping $100 million in Series E funding led by China Minsheng Financial, with participation from SBI Group, Korea Investment Partners and World Wide Invest. China Money Network has more here.

Matillion, a 7.5-year-old, U.K.-based the maker of cloud data integration tools, has raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Sapphire Ventures, with participation from Scale Venture Partners and earlier backer YFM Equity Partners. More here.

Rheos Medicines, a year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based immuno-metabolism startup, has launched with $60 million in funding from Third Rock Ventures. FierceBiotech has much more here.

Sift Science, a 6.5-year-old, San Francisco-based maker of fraud prevention and risk management software, has raised $53 million in Series D funding led byStripes Group, with participation from Union Square Ventures, Insight Venture Partners and Spark Capital. More here.

Skyline AI, a year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel- based startup that uses machine learning to help real estate investors identify promising properties, has raised $3 million in seed funding from Sequoia Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

SteadyMD, a two-year-old, St. Louis, Ms.-based company that offers continuous, dedicated primary care online, has secured $2.5 million in funding led by Pelion Venture Partners, with participation from CrossCut Ventures, M25 Group,Service Provider Capital and Hyde Park Venture Partners. More here.

Vangst, a three-year-old, Denver, Co.-based employment platform for the cannabis industry, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding led by Lerer Hippeau Ventures, with participation from Casa Verde Capital. More here.

Just read this. Then share it. And then tell every awesome fintech startup and nonprofit you know — and even some you don’t — that they should apply to the Financial Solutions Lab. (Applications are due April 11.)

ATX Seed Ventures, a nearly four-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based seed-stage venture outfit, is looking to raise up to $75 million for a second fund, according to an SEC filing that shows it has secured at least $17.8 million from investors thus far. More here.

Blockchain Capital, a nearly five-year-old, venture capital firm focused exclusively on blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, says it has closed its fourth fund with $150 million in capital commitments — its biggest fund so far. The company has backed 72 companies to date, including Coinbase, Ripple, Circle, Ethereum, 0x and Kraken. It also just promoted its head of research, Spencer Bogart, to partner. Bogart had joined the firm from Needham & Company, where he was a VP. Coindesk has more here.

Pioneer Fund, a year-old, Toronto, Canada-based seed-stage fund that was created by Y Combinator alumni to back other YC alumni, has held an initial close on its debut fund. It’s not saying publicly how much it has raised, but it’s targeting $20 million in commitments altogether. Axios has more here.

Qiming Venture Partners, a 12-year-old, Shanghai, China-based venture capital firm, has set out to raise a $900 million sixth venture fund, according to an SEC filing. The outfit closed its previous fund with $648 million roughly two years ago.

Spero Ventures, an early-stage, Redwood City, Ca.-based venture firm that was just spun out of Omidyar Network, has launched with $100 million for its debut fund. Forbes has more here.

Tenable Network Security, a 15-year-old, Columbia, Md.-based cysecurity software maker, has hired investment bank Morgan Stanley to lead an IPO as early as this fall, says Reuters. Last week, another venture-backed cybersecurity company, Zscaler, hit the public market and it’s reception so far has been promising.

Balderton Capital, the London-based venture firm, has brought aboard three new hires: Isabel Bescos, Cayetana Hurtado and Diane Albouy. Bescos was previously the head of corporate strategy at BlaBlaCar. Hurtado and Albouy previously worked at Goldman Sachs.

Speaking of Goldman Sachs, at an event earlier today, CEO Lloyd Blankfein gave a rare compliment to Donald Trump today for his skill at disintermediating the press using Twitter. Blankfein said he would himself be better at Twitter if he weren’t still leading the bank. “The ones I don’t send are really terrific,” he joked.

Catherine Hoke, the founder of the nonprofit called Defy Ventures, which works to turn prisoners into entrepreneurs, resigned yesterday after it was reported that she’s been facing allegations of sexual harassment and fraud. Hoke denied any impropriety on her way out the door.

Magazine publisher Meredith announced it will lay off 1,200 employees from Time Inc., and formally announced its efforts to sell Time, Fortune, Money, and Sports Illustrated. Axios has more here.

Semil Shah, a seed-stage investor who runs his own seed-stage venture firm, Haystack, and was previously a venture partner with the cross-border firm GGV Capital, has joined Lightspeed Venture Partners as a venture partner. More here.

Billionaire Peter Thiel is reportedly among the chief investors in a new football league called the Alliance of American Football that will play its games during the NFL’s offseason. Fox Business has more here.

After days of silence about the Cambridge Analytica controversy, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally broke his silence last night, speaking with numerous outlets, including Wired. Among things worth noting, he said Facebook has already suspended its planned audit of thousands of apps in response to the “breach of trust” created by Cambridge Analytica, which he’d announced on his Facebook page earlier in the day. The reason: Facebook, he said, wants to temporarily “cede to the UK regulator, the ICO [Information Commissioner’s Office], so that they can do a government investigation—I think it might be a criminal investigation, but it’s a government investigation at a minimum.” Zuckerberg also said that he would be “happy” to testify before Congress about Facebook’s legal compliance issues were he the most informed person on the topic at FB, which he says he is not. More here (sub required).

That didn’t take long enough. The power players behind Cambridge Analytica have set up a new company — and the daughters of conservative billionaire Robert Mercer have just joined as directors. Alexander Nix, the suspended CEO of Cambridge Analytica, is a director, too. The Daily Mail has more here.

South African media company Naspers is cashing in on one of the greatest venture-capital investments ever, selling $10.6 billion of shares in Tencent  — equal to 2 percent of the company’s shares. Naspers had bought its stake in the company in 2001 for just $32 million. Fortune has more here.

Never a dull moment.

Deserted American highways.

Wes Anderson films ranked from worst to best.

What $2,100 rents you in San Francisco right now.

“I started Facebook, and at the end of the day I’m responsible for what happens on our platform.” So wrote Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook a bit ago in response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal that broke on Friday. Though Zuckerberg didn’t say what’s taken Facebook so long to better protect its users’ privacy, he laid out a slate of changes Facebook will make to prevent past and future abuses of user data by app developers. More here.

Google is working on blockchain-related technology to support its cloud business and head off competition from emerging startups that use the heavily-hyped technology.

Uber just rescinded a job offer it made to Amazon’s top voice-shopping VP, Assaf Ronen, to become its top product exec, after it discovered a discrepancy related to Ronen’s tenure at the e-commerce giant.

EquityZen. We operate a secondary market for company-approved transactions in pre-IPO stock. Founded in 2013, EquityZen has already closed more than 3,700 investments in 95+ companies. For as little as $10K on your first investment, you can gain access to proven private companies like Coinbase, Postmates, and more! Join for free and begin investing in the private markets: equityzen.com

Last August, we told you about Laura Deming, a New Zealand native who was home schooled before moving halfway around the world as a 12-year-old to work alongside Cynthia Kenyon, a renowned molecular biologist who specializes in the genetics of aging.

She didn’t stay long. At age 14, Deming began her college career at MIT. When she turned 16, she dropped out to join Peter Thiel’s  two-year-old Thiel Fellowship program, which gives $100,000 to young people “who want to build new things.” By last August, when we profiled Deming, she had closed on $22 million in commitments for her second venture fund, which supports aging-related startups. She was 23.

Because Deming has always had an intriguing relationship with time, we weren’t all that surprised when she reached out to us late last week to let us know her San Francisco-based venture firm, The Longevity Fund, has now established a new accelerator program — one with backing from famed investor Marc Andreessen, the early-stage venture firm Felicis Ventures and other, unnamed investors.

Deming isn’t disclosing how much money will be invested through the accelerator, called Age 1, but she does say the pool of capital is distinct from the money she’s investing with Longevity Fund. She also says that Andreessen, Felicis and her other backers will serve as mentors to the companies that pass through the program.

Other notable details about Age 1: Deming says that she and her advisors — including serial entrepreneur Elad Gil, who most recently co-founded the genomics testing company Color Genomics — will be “quite flexible” when it comes to the stage of applicants. She says the bigger idea is to help them get to a significant “value inflection point” within four months, which is how long the program runs.

Instead of accepting startups serially, Age 1 will work with small batches of startups — between three and five at a time — and it’s accepting them right now on a rolling basis, with plans to present them to an invite-only group of investors on October 5 in the Bay Area. (Startups can apply here.)

More here.

17Zuoye, a seven-year-old, Beijing, China-based online education platform, has raised $250 million in new Series E funding led by Temasek, with participation fromCITIC and earlier investor Shunwei Capital. More here.

AllyO, a two-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based AI-driven recruiting startup, has raised $14 million in funding led by Bain Capital Ventures, with participation fromCervin Ventures, Gradient Ventures and Randstad Innovation Fund.

Averon, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based developer of an automated mobile security platform, has raised $5 million in Series A1 funding co-led by Avalon Ventures and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. More here.

CareWorx, a 12-year-old, Ontario, Canada-based company that sells hardware, cloud products and related services to senior care facilities, has raised $17 million in funding, including from Kayne Partners. More here.

Chargebee, a seven-year-old, Walnut, Ca.-based maker of SaaS subscription management and recurring billing software, has raised $18 million in Series C funding led by Insight Venture Partners, with participation from Accel Partnersand Tiger Global Management. More here.

Clari, a six-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based maker of sales software, has raised $35 million in new funding led by Tenaya Capital, with participation from Thomvest Ventures, Blue Cloud Ventures and earlier backers Sequoia Capital, Bain Capital Ventures and Northgate Capital. More here.

CoEdition, a six-month-old, New York-based online clothing marketplace for women who are size 10 and above, has raised $4 million in seed funding led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from General Catalyst, Primary Venture Partners, and BBG Ventures. More here.

CommonBond, a six-year-old, New York-based online student lender, has raised $50 million in Series D funding led by Fifth Third Capital Holdings, with participation from First Republic Bank, Columbia Seligman Investments, Neuberger Berman, August Capital, Nyca Partners, former Citigroup CEOVikram Pandit, and former Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer. More here.

CryptoKitties, a year-old, Vancouver-based virtual collectible kitten game that turned into a viral sensation, has raised $12 million in funding co-led byAndreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures. TechCrunch explains the likely attraction here.

DJI, a 12-year-old, Shenzhen, China-based consumer drone-maker, is raising between $500 million and $1 billion at a $15 billion valuation, says The Information. DJI’s most recent round, closed in 2015, valued the company at $10 billion. More here.

Eden Health, a three-year-old, New York-based personal health platform, raised $4 million in seed funding led by Greycroft Partners, with participation from PJC,Max Ventures and 645 Ventures. More here.

Fauna, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based NoSQL database for mission-critical data, has raised $25 million in Series A funding from Capital One Growth Ventures, GV, Point72 Ventures, Afore Capital and Costanoa Ventures. More here.

HomeCaptain, a New York-based real estate platform that aims to help mortgage lenders increase their funding rates on pre-qualified/pre-approved home buying customers, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding led by Spring Mountain Capital. More here.

Pairwise Plants, a gene-editing, San Diego-based agricultural company cofounded by a professor of chemistry and biology at Harvard, has raised $25 million in Series A funding co-led by Deerfield Management and Monsanto Growth Ventures.More here.

Virsec, a five-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based cybersecurity company focused on advanced memory-based attacks, has raised $24 million in Series B funding led by BlueIO, with participation from Artiman Ventures, Amity Ventures, Raj Singh, and Boston Seed Capital. More here.

Let’s keep this short: If you’re a startup or nonprofit that offers a solution that could improve financial health — even if early stage —  you should apply to the Financial Solutions Lab before April 11. More: Lab Impact Report, Launch Blog, Challenge Details, Application.

Anterra Capital, a Boston and Amsterdam-based venture capital firm that funds startups focused on the global food system, says it has raised $200 million in capital commitments. The outfit is backed by Rabobank and Eight Roads (a Fidelity backed outfit that itself closed a new fund yesterday). More here.

Elephant, a three-year-old, Boston-based, early-stage venture firm led by Warby Parker cofounder Andy Hunt and Jeremiah Daly, formerly an investor with both Accel Partners and Highland Capital Partners, has raised $250 million for its second fund, reports Axios. Elephant’s debut fund closed with $156 million in 2015. More here.

Silicon Valley venture capital firm Khosla Ventures is raising up to $1 billion for its sixth fund, and a separate $400 million for a seed fund, show SEC filings flagged earlier by Axios. Giant seed funds are apparently a thing now, though this one is really a doozy. You might remember that Sequoia closed a $180 million seed fund in January.

Dropbox, the 11-year-old, San Francisco-based cloud storage and collaboration platform, today raised the proposed deal size for its upcoming IPO. It now plans to raise $684 million by offering 36 million shares at between $18 to $20, up from an original range of $16 to $18. At the high end of that revised range, Dropbox will command a fully diluted market value of $9 billion, an 18 percent increase from its original midpoint. Renaissance Capital has slightly more here.

Google is acquiring Lytro, a 12-year-old imaging startup that began as a ground-breaking camera company for consumers before pivoting to use its depth-data, light-field technology in VR. The price tag, say TechCrunch sources: $40 million, far less than the $215 million that investors had poured into the company. More here.

HelloFresh, the Berlin-based meal-kit delivery company that went public in Europe last fall, has agreed to acquire Green Chef, a 3.5-year-old, Boulder, Co.-based meal kit company that had raised $70 million from investors, including TA Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Global Venture Capital, Greenspring Associates and TriplePoint Venture Growth. The Denver Post has more here.

Pandora says it’s acquiring digital audio ad technology firm AdsWizz for $145 million, with at least half that paid in cash. AdsWizz’s software handles a range of things, from dynamic ad insertion to ad campaign monitoring and will be used to upgrade Pandora’s own ad tech capabilities. TechCrunch has more here.

Brian Acton, the co-founder of messaging service WhatsApp — which Facebook bought in 2014 for $19 billion — joining the chorus of the #deletefacebook movement yesterday in a tweet that left jaws hanging. “It is time,” he wrote. More here. (Incidentally, if you want to delete Facebook, here’s how.)

Twitter’s chief information security officer, Michael Coates, is leaving the company to start his own company, says The Verge.

Ousted Uber cofounder and CEO Travis Kalanick is back — not just with a new investment vehicle, but as a CEO, too. His new company is focused on redeveloping distressed real estate. More here.

Tesla shareholders just approved what may be the largest compensation deal in history CEO Elon Musk. If successful, the award could end up being worth more than $50 billion — enough to keep Musk from moving to Mars any time soon, speculates Bloomberg.

Zagster, a bike-share startup that raised a $15 million round last month, has laid off some employees, TechCrunch has learned. CEO Tim Ericson attributes the downsizing to Zagster’s recent shift from docked to dockless bikes. More here.

Correlation Ventures in San Francisco is hiring a venture associate. This is a pre-MBA role, it says.

YouTube just became the top-grossing iPhone app in the U.S. for the first time today, after flirting with the top spot a number of times over the years, but never reaching higher than No. 3. More here.

For one brief shining moment, Yahoo was the king of all it surveyed. Then everything went to hell.

The story of a little gay bunny who belongs to Vice President Mike Pence is the best-selling book on Amazon right now.

It’s now easier for your boss to read your Slack DMs.

America’s 60 best day hikes.

Here’s your jeans should fit in 2018 if you are a dude. (We aren’t judging. We’re just relaying what we’ve heard/read.)

Amazon just passed Alphabet in market value.

Facebook has meanwhile lost $60 billion in market value over the last two days.

EquityZen. We operate a secondary market for company-approved transactions in pre-IPO stock. Founded in 2013, EquityZen has already closed more than 2,500 investments in 75+ companies. For as little as $10K on your first investment, you can gain access to proven private companies like DocuSign, 23andMe, and more! Join for free and begin investing in the private markets: equityzen.com

It’s not every day that Oracle’s billionaire founder, chairman and CTO Larry Ellison launches a new business, but such is the case today. That new company? Sensei, a new L.A.-based wellness brand that will focus first on developing hydroponic farms and later . . . well, details are scant, but they’re coming soon, we’re told.

Ellison, who we presume is funding the effort, co-founded the company with his longtime friend, David Agus, a prolific author and professor of medicine at USC where he is, notably, the founding director of the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine.

According to Sensei’s president, Dan Gruneberg, Ellison and Agus came up with the idea of starting a wellness company when a close mutual friend of the two was dying and they were spending more time together. In fact, as they watched their friend’s health deteriorate, they decided there was more they could, and should, do about it.

Step one, apparently, involves building a hydroponic farm of undisclosed size on the Hawaiian island of Lanai, which Ellison acquired for $300 million back in 2012.  There, says Gruneberg, the Sensei team will be focusing not on yield per acre but nutrition per acre, a selling point for the fruits and vegetables it plans to hawk to restaurants and retailers under the brand Sensei Farms.

Hydroponic farms — in which plants are grown in water rather than soil —  aren’t necessarily known for cultivating fruits and vegetables that are any less nutritious than their conventional counterparts. But by increasing the concentration of nutrients, growers can increase the nutritional content of their vegetables. That seems to be the strategy here.

Another aspect of the business that Sensei will undoubtedly be marketing is sustainability.

More here.

CaliberMind, a two-year-old, Boulder, Co.-based maker of B2B marketing software, has raised $3.2 million in seed funding co-led by Newark Venture Partners and Buran VC. More here.

Cheddar, a two-year-old, New York-based live video news network, has raised $22 million in Series D financing led by Raine Ventures, with participation from Liberty Global, Goldman Sachs, Antenna Group, 7 Global Capital, Dentsu Venturesand the family office of Kelly Loeffler and Jeff Sprecher. Earlier investors also participated, including AT&T, Amazon, Altice USA, the NYSE, Lorne Michaels’Broadway Video, Comcast Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Ribbit Capital. Variety has more here.

Desktop Metal, a three-year-old, Burlington, Ma.-based company at work on 3D tech that can print products in stainless steel and other metals, has raised yet more funding: $65 million led by the Ford Motor Company. (The company closed a Series D round last summer.) The WSJ has more here.

Digital Reasoning, an 18-year-old, Nashville, Tn.-based cognitive computing platform that tries to surface what’s valuable and what’s not in the data of its enterprise clients, has raised raised $30 million in new funding led by the European bank BNP Paribas. Other participants in the round include Barclays, Square Capital and previous investors Goldman Sachs, Nasdaq, Lemhi Ventures, HCA, and the Partnership Fund for New York City. More here.

Green Tank Technologies, a two-year-old, Toronto, Canada-based maker of “high-performance” vaporization hardware, has raised $3.35 million in seed funding led by Green Acre Capital and Snoop Dogg’s Casa Verde Capital, along withAlan and Lorne Gertner, founders of Canadian lifestyle brand Tokyo Smoke (now HIKU Brands). More here.

KeepTruckin, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based electronic logs and fleet management platform for the trucking industry, has raised $50 million in Series C financing led by IVP. Other participants in the round — which brings the company’s total funding to $78 million — include Scale Venture Partners, Index Ventures, and Google Ventures. More here.

Made.com, an eight-year-old, London-based online furniture shopping site, has raised $56 million in new funding. An undisclosed investor led the round, with participation from earlier backers Partech Ventures, Level Equity and Eight Roads Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Mark43, a six-year-old, New York-based company that makes cloud-based software for law enforcement agencies around the country, has raised $38 million in Series C funding led by General Catalyst and Breyer Capital. Earlier backers also joined the round, including Spark Capital, Sound Ventures, Bezos Expeditions,Goldman Sachs, General David Petraeus, Amplo, Innovation Endeavors, and Govtech Fund. The company has now raised $77.8 million altogether. More here.

Mythic, a six-year-old,  Austin, Tex.-based AI chip company, has raised $40 million in Series B funding led by SoftBank Ventures, with participation from DFJ, Lux Capital, Data Collective, AME Cloud Ventures, Lockheed Martin Ventures and Andy Bechtolsheim. The Austin American-Statesman has more here.

N26, a three-year-old, Berlin, Germany-based startup that’s building a retail bank from scratch, has raised $160 million in Series C Funding round co-led by Allianz X, the digital investment unit of Allianz Group, and Tencent Holdings. The funding represents the largest non-IPO equity financing round in Germany, says the company, which has now raised $215 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Neurotrack, a six-year-old, Richmond, Va.-based maker of non-invasive cognitive health assessment tools, has raised $13.7 million in Series B funding led by Sozo Ventures, with participation from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, Social Capital, AME Cloud Partners and Rethink Impact. More here.

Oxford Nanopore Technologies, a 13-year-old, U.K.-based developer of nanopore-based electronic systems for analysis of single molecules, has raised $140 million from investors, including GIC, China Construction Bank International, and Hostplus. The company is a spin-out of the University of Oxford and has been credited with potentially revolutionizing the way we’re able to sequence entire genomes. More here.

Riveter, a two-year-old, Seattle, Wa.-based co-working office space that’s “female forward” but not limited to women, has raised $4.75 million in seed funding. Madrona Venture Group led the round, and was joined by investors including X Factor Ventures, Brilliant Ventures, The Helm, PLG Ventures, Portland Seed Fund, Founders’ Co-Op, and Start It Labs. More here.

Skycision, a three-year-old, Watsonville, Ca.-based data platform that takes aerial imagery from drones and determines what part of a farmer’s fields need extra attention, has raised $1.1 million in seed funding. Innova Memphis led the round, with participation from Scurich Berry Farms and AgLaunch. Forbes has more here.

Unity Biotechnology, a nine-year-old, Brisbane, Ca.-based developer of treatments that focus on diseases of aging, has raised $55 million in Series C funding. Investors include EcoR1 Capital Fund, 6 Dimensions Capital, Altitude Life Science Ventures, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Baillie Gifford, Partner Fund Management, Pivotal Alpha Limited, Invus Opportunities, ARCH Venture Partners, Venrock, Founders Fund and the Longevity Fund. More here.

UpKeep Maintenance Management, a four-year-old, Encino, Ca.-based group collaboration and maintenance application for facility management teams, raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Emergence Capital. The company also counts Bain Capital, Battery Ventures and Y Combinator as investors. Forbes has more here.

Financial Solutions Lab startups are doing extraordinary things in fintech for the benefit of Americans’ financial health. Digit has helped people save $1 billion-plus, despite that the average user income is $40,000. Even has partnered with Walmart to provide financial tools to millions of associates nationwide. Dave has helped people avoid more than $15 million in overdraft fees. Nonprofit EARN has helped thousands establish a savings habit. Want to count your visionary startup among them and receive $250,000, plus access to unparalleled resources that can help you scale? Apply for the next FinLab class.

Eight Roads, an arm of Fidelity Growth Partners, has raised $375 million to fund late-stage startups in Europe. The fund is Eight Roads’s biggest yet. TechCrunch has more here.

S Capital, an Israeli VC firm led by former Sequoia Capital partner Haim Sadger, has raised $94 million from 31 investors for its debut fund, shows an SEC filing. We can’t find a site, but the filing and Sadger’s LinkedIn suggest the firm was formed recently.

Fuel-cell company Bloom Energy, founded 17 years ago, has “jump-started its idled plan” to go public, according to the WSJ, which says Bloom may attempt a listing as soon as May. The company was last known to be valued at $2.9 billion in 2011. It has also raised $2 billion in debt and equity. More here.

DocuSign, the 15-year-old, San Francisco-based company that’s largely credited with pioneering the e-signature, is finally gearing up to go public, sources tell TechCrunch. Indeed, the company has already filed confidentially, says TC. More here.

Looking beyond its offerings in customer relationship management software,Salesforce is acquiring the publicly traded software maker MuleSoft for $6.5 billion in stock and cash. The deal marks Salesforce’s biggest acquisition to date. Axios has a bit more here.

DataSift, a London-based company that pulls data from conversations across social, news and blog platforms, anonymizes it, and then parses it for insights for third party organizations, is being acquired by Meltwater, a company that sells business intelligence services like media monitoring and AI analytics about internal business communications. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed, but DataSift had raised roughly $72 million from investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Sunny Balwani was the president of Theranos and the boyfriend of founder Elizabeth Holmes. He’s also a virtual ghost, reports STAT in a fascinating new piece.

Michael Ferro, a renowned Chicago entrepreneur and non-executive chair of Tronc, the third largest newspaper publisher in the U.S., stepped down abruptly yesterday. A spokesman for the company says Ferro wanted to leave at the top of his game. though we’re thinking this detailed expose published yesterday by Fortune about Ferro’s highly inappropriate behavior with female founders was maybe also a factor.

Andrew Nix, the CEO of the London-based voter profiling company Cambridge Analytica — which harvested private information from more than 50 million Facebook users without their permission to analyze their behavior — has been suspended from his job. In an announcement posted to the company’s cite, the board said the suspension was effective immediately.

Mark Selcow has been named general partner at Costanoa Ventures, where he has spent most of the last three years. Previously, Selcow was a partner with Merced Partners.

Latham & Watkins chairman William Voge abruptly stepped down today over what the law firm said was inappropriate “communication of a sexual nature” with a woman who had no connection to the firm or any client. Voge is retiring from the firm, it said in a statement.

Muzzammil Zaveri has joined Gradient Ventures, Google’s new AI-focused venture capital program, reports Axios. “MZ” as he is known, was previously an investor in the digital practice of Kleiner Perkins. For what it’s worth, we interviewed Anna Patterson, the head of Gradient, last month at a Startup Grind event. We never had a chance to write about it, but you can check it out here if you’re looking to learn more.

GMG Ventures, the Guardian’s new venture fund, is looking to bring aboard an investment analyst. The job is in London.

Facebook employees gathered today to discuss the widening scandal over the 2016 election. But company chiefs Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg were nowhere to be found. Maybe they were focused instead on a new Federal Trade Commission investigation into whether Facebook violated an agreement with the agency over data.

Seeing an opening, Google has separately made a $300 million commitment to supporting news organizations.

Bumble has replied to Match Group‘s lawsuit in a full letter that it ran online and in media outlets today and is pretty clever as press offensives go. “We swipe left on you. We swipe left on your multiple attempts to buy us, copy us, and, now, to intimidate us,” it starts. More here.

Police say a video from the Uber self-driving car that struck and killed a woman on Sunday shows her moving in front of it suddenly. “It’s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode,” Tempe, Arizona police chief Sylvia Moir tells the San Francisco Chronicle.

Thirteen reasons to believe in UFOs.

The true story of Gianni Versace’s murder.

How to close a deal using business terms overheard in airports.

Sock-like sneakers and where to buy them.

A 49-year-old woman who was crossing a street was killed yesterday by an Uber self-driving SUV in Arizona. It’s the first fatality from a self-driving vehicle, notes Reuters. The National Transportation Safety Board is opening an investigation into the accident, says TechCrunch. Uber has halted its self-driving tests for now, notes the Verge. But you can guess the incident is raising a lot of questions for Uber and other automakers that are focused on self-driving tech — from how this happened exactly, to whether the human in the self-driving car or Uber will be held accountable (or both). For what it’s worth, here’s how Uber’s self-driving cars are supposed to protect pedestrians.

Apple is making its own device displays for the first time, using a secret manufacturing facility near its Cupertino, Ca., headquarters to produce small numbers of the screens for testing purposes, reports Bloomberg.

Hoping to tamp down furor over reports that its user data was improperly acquired by the political consulting and marketing firm Cambridge Analytica, Facebook has hired the digital forensics firm Stroz Friedberg to perform an audit on Cambridge, reports TechCrunch. (Facebook’s share price fell 7 percent today.)

EquityZen. We operate a secondary market for company-approved transactions in pre-IPO stock. Founded in 2013, EquityZen has already closed more than 2,500 investments in 75+ companies. For as little as $10,000 on your first investment, you can gain access to proven private companies like DocuSign, 23andMe, and more! Join for free and begin investing in the private markets: equityzen.com.

According to a new report from Raleigh, N.C. television affiliate WRAL, Google might have quietly helped local detectives in their pursuit of two gunmen who committed separate crimes roughly one-a-half years apart. How? According to the story, Raleigh police presented the company with warrants not for information about specific suspects but rather data from all the mobile devices that were within a certain distance of the respective crime scenes at the time the crimes were committed.

In one of its homicide cases, Raleigh police reportedly asked Google to provide unique data for anyone within a 17-acre area that includes both homes and businesses. In the other, it asked for user data across “dozens” of apartment units at a particular complex.

As the outlet notes, most modern phones, tablets and laptops have built-in location tracking that pings some combination of GPS, Wi-Fi and mobile networks to determine each device’s position. Users can switch off location tracking, but if they’re using a cellular network or relying on WiFi to connect, their devices are still transmitting their coordinates to third parties.

Google hasn’t responded to a request for more information that we’d sent off yesterday afternoon. But in response to WRAL’s investigation, a company spokesman declined to comment on specific cases or discuss whether Google has fought requests from the Raleigh investigators, saying only that: “We have a long-established process that determines how law enforcement may request data about our users. We carefully review each request and always push back when they are overly broad.”

Either way, the area-based search warrants that Raleigh detectives have sought seem to be a newer trend — one that will undoubtedly concern Fourth Amendment advocates anew.

More here.

Farmstead, a two-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based AI-powered digital micro-grocer, raised $2 million in funding co-led by Resolute Ventures and Social Capital, with participation from SV Angel and Y Combinator. The outfit had separately raised $2.8 million in seed funding back in October. More here.

Kahoot, a six-year-old, Oslo, Norway-based education quiz app, has raised $17 million in funding at a $100 million valuation, including from Datum Invest AS,Northzone, Creandum, and Microsoft Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Phlur, a two-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based direct-to-consumer fragrance company founded by a former president of global e-commerce for Ralph Lauren, is targeting up to $8 million in venture funding, according to an SEC filing that shows it has raised at least $2.4 million toward that end. Among its backers is Austin firm Next Coast Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Promise, a five-month-old, Bay Area-based startup whose technology helps ensure that people who are arrested comply with court orders (versus wind up in jail unnecessarily), has raised $3 million in funding led by First Round Capital, with participation from Jay Z’s Roc Nation, 8VC and Kapor Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Spindrift, an eight-year-old, Newton, Ma.-based sparkling water company that uses real squeezed fruit, raised $20 million in funding. VMG Partners led the round, with participation from Prolog Ventures, KarpReilly and RiverPark Ventures. More here.

twoXAR, a 3.5-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based artificial intelligence-driven biopharmaceutical company, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by SoftBank Ventures, a SoftBank Group early-stage venture capital arm. Other participants in the round include Andreessen Horowitz and OS Fund. Xconomy has more here.

Yestock Car Rental Co., a 13-year-old, Shenzhen, China-based car rental company, has raised an undisclosed amount of strategic funding from Didi Chuxing. China Money Network has more here.

ZineOne, a 4.5-year-old, Milpitas, Ca.-based customer engagement startup that helps brands interact with their customers across a variety of channels, has raised $2.5 million in Series A funding led by Omidyar Network. More here.

Three years. Three groups of companies selected from more than 1,000 applicants. Today, 26 visionary startups and nonprofits visionary startups and nonprofits have been through the Financial Solutions Lab, and they’ve had an impact on Americans’ financial health. They serve more than 2.5 million Americans, have helped improve thousands of credit scores, and have helped consumers save more than $1 billion. Be part of this impact story. Apply now for the Financial Solutions Lab.

VentureFriends, a two-year-old, Athens, Greece-based venture firm, has closed on €45 million in capital commitments ($55.5 million) for its second fund, says TechCrunch. More here.

Alzheon, a five-year-old, Framingham, Ma.-based biopharmaceutical firm that’s developing an Alzheimer’s drug, has filed to go public. Its biggest outside shareholders include Ally Bridge Group and Aptus Holdings. FierceBiotech has more here.

Homology Medicines, a three-year-old, Bedford, Ma.-based firm that aims to treat rare genetics diseases, has revealed plans to raising up to $100 million in an IPO. The company’s biggest outside shareholders include 5AM Ventures, ARCH Venture, Deerfield, and Novartis. Nasdaq has more here.

Zuora, an 11-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based cloud subscription management platform, has filed to raise up to $100 million in a long-awaited IPO. The company’s biggest outside shareholders include Benchmark, Redpoint Ventures, Shasta Ventures, Tenaya Capital and Wellington Management Company. TechCrunch has more here.

And in Chinese-companies-rushing-to-go-public-in-the-U.S. news: Bilibili, a nine-year-old, Shanghai, China-based anime video sharing platform, plans to raise as much as $525 million through an offering of 42 million American depositary shares that are priced between $10.50 to $12.50 apiece. The company’s biggest outside shareholders are Loyal Valley Capital, IDG-Accel China, Legend Capital and Tencent Holdings. Bloomberg has more here.

Related item two: iQiyi, a eight-year-old Beijing-based video streaming service, has filed to raise up to $2.4 billion by offering 125 million American depositary shares at $17 to $19 apiece. the company is predominately owned by Baidu — it controls a 70 percent stake in the company. Xiaomi also owns 8.4 percent of the company. Bloomberg has more here.

Related item three: OneSmart, a 10-year-old, Shanghai, China-based K-12 after-school education provider, said it plans to raise up to $212 million in a stateside IPO by selling 16.3 million American depositary shares at between $11 to $13 apiece. Its biggest outside shareholders include Carlyle Asia Partners and Goldman Sachs. More here.

Correction: Friday, we meant to give you information about Zscaler, a company whose shares began trading that morning. The blurb was mostly right but the market cap we gave you was way off. (Google had taken us to Zillow, which has a similar ticker.) Apologies for the mix-up.

Catherine Hoke, the founder of the nonprofit called Defy Ventures, which works to turn prisoners into entrepreneurs, is battling allegations of sexual harassment and fraud.

The controversial Saudi prince MBS is headed to the White House, then it’s on to Silicon Valley. He’s pushing a development blueprint, but he has some unsavory tactics that will need to be overlooked by his American friends first.

Facebook’s prized security chief, Alex Stamos, is leaving following internal disagreements over how Facebook should handle its role in spreading disinformation.

Andrew Yang, a tech entrepreneur, the founder of Venture for America, is vying for the Democratic party nomination to run for U.S. President.

Match Group, the online dating company, reportedly wants to buy Bumble, the popular dating app that lets women make the first move. But Match may be trying to push the deal along in an unconventional way, reports Recode: A new patent infringement lawsuit filed late Friday in U.S. District court in Waco, Texas. More here.

Microsoft is looking to hire a new corporate strategy and development analyst. The job is in Redmond, Wa.

Google’s and Facebook’s share of the U.S. ad market could decline for the first time, thanks to Amazon and Snapchat.

YouTube is reportedly introducing your kids to conspiracy theories, too.

Cadre, the real estate investing startup that was co-founded by CEO Ryan Williams and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, was the primary beneficiary of a property-flipping investment that may have been less profitable if Kushner Cos. had fully complied with New York City disclosure rules about rent-regulated tenants, which it did not, reports Bloomberg. The Associated Press, which broke the story, has more here.

IEX Group, the Silicon Valley stock market that wants to nudge investors to think long-term, took a step toward bringing its vision to Wall Street, filing for U.S. regulatory approval today to test a set of listing standards that would favor buy-and-hold investors. Bloomberg has the story here. We wrote last year about the case for tenured voting (i.e., the longer an investor hangs on to his or her shares, the more voting control he or she would amass).

The SEC just announced its highest-ever Dodd-Frank whistleblower award, with two whistleblowers sharing a nearly $50 million award and a third whistleblower receiving more than $33 million. The previous high was a $30 million award in 2014. We interviewed the attorney who led the program from its outset in 2011 until 2016, and he shed a lot of light on how to report wrongdoings to the SEC. It’s worth reading if you’re thinking about reaching out the agency at any point.

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

An emotional guide to being ghosted.

Custom-molded hiking boots, at a reasonable price to boot.

No column today. Hope you have a terrific weekend.:)

The IRS is moving to crack down on cryptocurrency scofflaws, collecting data on about 13,000 Coinbase account holders who bought, sold, sent or received digital currency worth $20,000 or more between 2013 and 2015. The WSJ has the story here.

Your parents (and you) are getting older. They’d like to think their money will last the rest of their lives. But who’s really looking out for them? EverSafe enables you to keep an eye on loved ones’ financial lives without taking away their financial independence– so they’re aging with dignity, but not without caution. EverSafe is part of the Financial Solutions Lab, now seeking its next class of startups working to improve Americans’ financial health. Apply now!

180 Health Partners, a two-year-old, Nashville, Tn.-based company that works with pregnant mothers who are battling opioid addiction, has raised $8 million in Series B funding led by Spring Mountain Capital, with participation from Frist Cressey Ventures, Resolute Venture Partners and Altitude Ventures. The Nashville Post has more here.

Andie, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based e-commerce brand for women’s one-piece swimwear, has raised $2 million in seed funding co-led by Two River Capital and Sonostar Ventures, with participation from individual investors, including actress Demi Moore. More here.

Detectify, a 4.5-year-old, Stockholm, Sweden-based company that focuses on website vulnerabilities, has raised €5 million (about $6.1 million) in funding led byInsight Venture Partners, with participation from earlier backers Paua Ventures and Inventure. More here.

Drover, a three-year-old, London-based marketplace that gives users access to cars of their choice for a monthly subscription price (its partners include Avis and Budget, among others), just raised £5.5 million ($7 million) in funding. Cherry Ventures, Partech Ventures and BP Ventures led the round, with participation from earlier backers Version One and Forward Partners. More here.

Fortem Technologies, a two-year-old, Salt Lake City, Ut.-based company that sells a miniaturized detect-and-avoid radar system for drones, has raised $15 million in Series A funding. Data Collective led the round, and was joined by investors including Boeing, Mubadala Investment Company, Manifest Growth,New Ground Ventures and Signia Venture Partners. GeekWire has more here.

Hazel Technologies, a three-year-old, Chicago-based startup that designs and manufactures packaging to reduce the spoilage of fruits and vegetables, has raised $3.26 million in Series A funding led by S2G Ventures. More here.

Medinas Health, an eight-month-old, San Francisco-based marketplace that aims to help healthcare organizations buy and sell their surplus and short-date medical supplies and equipment, has raised $1 million in funding, including from Sound Ventures, Rough Draft Ventures, Precursor Ventures, Trammell Ventures and Angels.

PieSync, a six-year-old, Ghent, Belgium-based data synchronization platform for organizations’ apps, has raised $3.5 million in funding. Fortino Capital led the round, with participation from Ark Angels Activator Fund, PMV and Dirk Vermunicht. More here.

SeamlessDocs, a seven-year-old, New York-based e-signature engine built for all levels of government, has raised $7.5 million in funding. SJF Ventures led the round. Other participants include Motorola Solutions, Entrepreneur Roundtable Accelerator, NY State Innovation Ventures and CapRock. More here.

Serious Factory, a six-year-old, Suresnes, France-based company whose authoring tool aims to help design virtual reality simulations, has raised €3 million ($3.7 million) in its second round of funding, which comes from Odyssée Venture and earlier backers, including the Paris Region Venture Fund. More here.

Strix Leviathan, a new Seattle, Wa.-based company that’s building a crypto-trading platform for enterprises and institutions, has raised $1.6 million in seed funding led by Liquid 2 Ventures, with participation from Founders’ Co-op,Future\Perfect Ventures and 9Mile Labs. GeekWire has more here.

Virtuos, a 13-year-old, Shanghai, China-based game developer with more than 1,200 employees, has raised $15 million in new funding led by 3D Capital Partners. DealStreetAsia has more here.

Age 1, a newly established accelerator established by The Longevity Fund and backed by Marc Andreessen, Felicis Ventures, and others, is launching today. The program will connect startups committed to addressing late-onset medical conditions related to Alzheimer’s, heart disease, diabetes and more, to key investors, prominent scientists, and tech entrepreneurs at the forefront of life extension. The four-month-long accelerator program will invest $500,000 in each startup. You can apply to the accelerator here. And if you’re interested in learning more about The Longevity Fund, we’d interviewed its brainiac founder Laura Demming back in August.

Village Global, a seed and pre-seed early stage venture capital fund looking to connect entrepreneurs to both cash and all-star mentors, says it has officially closed on $100 million in capital commitments, including from Fidelity’s Abigail Johnson, Activision’s Bobby Kotick, 23andme’s Anne Wojcicki, and Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert. The outfit — cofounded by early Product Hunt employee Erik Torenberg — says that founders can tap such mentors as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg,  Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, and many others. More here and here and here.

The first post-billion, big tech IPO of the year just opened with a bang. Zscaler, a security startup that confidentially filed for an IPO last year, started trading this morning at $27.50 per share — a leap of 71.9  percent over its opening price of $16. As of this writing, in fact, it’s trading at around $58, giving it a market cap (for now) of $7.4 billion. TechCrunch notes that it’s a bullish moment for security startups and potentially public listings for tech companies in general.

Cosmetics giant L’Oreal said today that it’s acquiring ModiFace, a 12-year-old, Toronto, Canada-based beauty technology company, as L’Oreal looks to roll out more digital services like virtual make-up tests. ModiFace got its start in 1999 at Stanford, where founder Parham Aarabi was conducting research on automatic face analysis. We can’t figure out how much ModiFace might have raised from investors over the years, beyond $500,000 in seed funding from the publicly traded pharmaceutical giant Allergan. (It looks like not much if any.) Either way, terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. Reuters has more here.

Here we go again. Media company Meredith has hired advisers to explore a sale of its Time, Fortune, Money, and Sports Illustrated magazines, just two months after shelling out $1.84 billion acquisition to acquire Time Inc. According to Reuters, Meredith sees the titles as not playing to its core strength in women’s magazines. More here.

Alex Bell, a computer scientist living in Harlem, is doing what he can to make life better in the bike lane.

Adrian Lamo, a well-known hacker, has passed away at age 37. He was best known for high-profile hacks of companies like Microsoft, and later for turning in Chelsea Manning to the FBI after receiving leaked documents from her.

Vanity Fair profiles Janet Pierson, the brains behind the South by Southwest Festival. (“We’re not like other places,” she says.)

Lyft is looking to hire a corporate development manager. The job is in San Francisco.

Lyft is testing a Netflix-style monthly subscription plan, says the Verge.

Traders who look for future price direction in chart patterns are finding more indicators suggesting Bitcoin may have further to fall, reports Bloomberg. From its report “Bitcoin’s 50-day moving average has dropped to the closest proximity to its 200-day moving average in nine months. Crossing below that level — something it hasn’t done since 2015 — signals fresh weakness to come for technical traders who would dub such a move a ‘death cross.’” More here.

In its race to catch Amazon, Walmart issued misleading e-commerce results and fired a former corporate development executive who complained the company was breaking the law, shows a  a whistle-blower lawsuit, reports Bloomberg. Walmart is dismissing the claims as unfounded, calling the exec a “disgruntled former associate,” who was let go as part of a broader workforce restructuring. More here.

China said it will begin applying its so-called social credit system to flights and trains and stop people who have committed misdeeds from taking such transport for up to a year.

A guide to which Trump staffer is getting fired next.

Should some species be allowed to die?

My life in eavesdropping.

Sushi art. (You can make it, too, with a little help.)

According to a new report in the WSJ, Robinhood, the zero-fee stock-trading app, is set to be valued at an astronomic $5.6 billion in a new, $350 million funding round led by DST Global, which also led Robinhood’s last funding a year ago. (As regular readers know, we talked with Robinhood’s cofounder and co-CEO Vlad Tenev at our StrictlyVC event in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago and he shared the company’s ambitions to be much more than a trading app.)

Morgan Conbere loves public transit and values elegant UX. Conbere and his co-founders — alums of Google, Apple, and other giants — depend on public transit day-to-day. It bugged them that there was no modern, simple interface to pay for and ride the bus. So Token Transit was born, and it has been operating at high speed ever since. Of course it’s a FinLab company, today’s sponsor. Know of a fintech or nonprofit that could benefit from some added speed and access? Apply now for FinLab’s next class.

Lightning Labs, a young, Bay Area-based startup, is trying to make it easier for users to send bitcoin and litecoin to each other without the costly and time consuming process of settling their transactions on the blockchain.

It has investors excited about its work, too. The company is announcing today that it has raised $2.5 million in seed funding to date from a kind of list of big names in payments and beyond, including Square and Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey,  Square exec Jacqueline Reses, serial-founder-turned investor David Sacks, Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, Eventbrite cofounder Kevin Hartz, BitGo CTO Ben Davenport, and Robinhood cofounder Vlad Tenev, along with The Hive, Digital Currency Group, and others.

In an enthusiastic tweet earlier today, Sacks characterized the company as “one of the most important projects in crypto overall.”

Why is it notable, exactly? For starters, Lightning Labs works off Lightning Network, a protocol that’s sometimes called the second layer of bitcoin. (Think of it a little like HTTP.) Champions of this newer layer, including Lightning Labs, see it as a way to exponentially boost the number and speed of transactions of the bitcoin blockchain without increasing the size of blocks — batches of transactions that are confirmed and subsequently shared on bitcoin’s public ledger.

It’s all a little confusing to people still trying to get a handle on how the blockchain works, but the Lightning protocol essentially aims to let two or more people — and eventually machines — create instant, high-volume transactions that still use the underlying blockchain for security.

Here’s how it works.

More here.

Airtable, a nearly six-year-old, Bay Area-based startup that’s trying to turn normal spreadsheets into robust database tools, has raised $52 million in funding co-led byCRV and Caffeinated Capital, with participation from Freestyle Ventures and Slow Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Blue Vision Labs, a seven-year-old, London-based augmented reality startup that says it’ll be the first to bring collaboration to the AR experience (imagine multiple users seeing the same virtual objects), has raised $17 million in seed and Series A funding, it says. GV led its $14.5 million Series A round; it was joined by the company’s seed investors, including Accel Partners, Horizons Ventures, and SV Angel. TechCrunch has more here.

Foxtrot, a nearly five-year-old, Chicago-based corner store franchise that features beer, wine, food and everyday essentials, all of which can also be ordered on-demand, has raised $6 million in Series A funding. Fifth Wall Ventures led the deal. Built in Chicago has more here.

SambaNova Systems , a five-month-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based startup that was founded by Stanford professors and a former chip company exec and is building new hardware to supercharge AI-centric operation, has raised a massive $56 million in Series A funding. GV and Walden International co-led the round, with participation from Redline Capital and Atlantic Bridge Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

The Skimm, a six-year-old, New York-based media company whose newsletters target millennial women, has raised $12 million in fresh funding led by GV, with participation from Spanx founder Sara Blakely, as well as earlier backers that include RRE Ventures and Homebrew. The company has now raised $28 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Another day, another new European firm is announcing the close of its debut fund.  This time is Five Seasons Ventures, a Paris-based outfit that’s backed by the European Investment Fund, Nestlé, Fondo Italiano d’Investimento, and Bpifrance, and which plans to invest its roughly $74 million in fresh capital commitments in European food and agtech startups. TechCrunch has more here.

Concerned that allegations of his harassing women would reach the media, Rami Beracha — the head of Pitango Venture Capital, Israel’s biggest venture capital fund — reportedly hired private investigators to thwart news stories about him and asked them covertly enter closed online forums of high-tech women to see if he name was being mentioned. #OhNo. Haaretz has more here.

Someone at Snap was fired today (pretty sure).

Billionaire Peter Thiel suggested during an appearance today at the Economic Club of New York that bitcoin will only grow in importance — as ethereum and other new currencies lose momentum. (As Bloomberg notes, Thiel’s venture firm, Founders Fund, has been buying bitcoin since 2012.)

Where did venture capitalists go to college? Click to find out here!

Bose, the audio giant, is looking to hire a corporate development associate to help source and evaluate M&A opportunities. The job is in Framingham, Ma.

Ride-hail apps officially became more popular than New York City’s iconic yellow cabs as of the beginning of 2017. Recode has more here.

How Amazon‘s bottomless appetite became corporate America’s nightmare.

Bitcoin mania has passed — for now, notes Bloomberg. Its price has stalled between $8,000 and $11,300 for the last month. More telling, perhaps, online searches for “bitcoin” fell 82 percent from December, according to Google Trends.

Beleaguered Blue Apron is about to begin selling its meal kits in stores, says TechCrunch. Though it’s not saying which stores.

A fond farewell to our favorite third wheel.

Toddler feelings helpline.

The man who has helped Elon Musk, Tom Brady, and Ari Emanuel get dressed.

A retro classic keyboard after our own hearts.

In June, Google will begin ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising, including about initial coin offerings, wallets, and trading advice. “We don’t have a crystal ball to know where the future is going to go with cryptocurrencies, but we’ve seen enough consumer harm or potential for consumer harm that it’s an area that we want to approach with extreme caution,” Google’s director of sustainable adds, Scott Spencer, tells CNBC.

WiseBanyan is on a mission to help more Americans achieve their dreams, whether those dreams include an emergency fund, a bike, a car, a baby, a Househunters International-style escape from the rat race, or retirement. And it’s free. It’s also an alum of the Financial Solutions Lab, which is looking for its next class of fintech innovators who can help Americans achieve financial health. Want to get $250K and a seat in this CFSI and JPMorgan-backed rocketship that helps startups and nonprofits scale? Apply now!

Years after it was reported that the SEC was looking into improprieties at the once high-flying  blood-testing company Theranos, its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, and the company’s former president, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani,” have been formally charged with massive fraud by the agency.

The charge, more precisely: that the two raised more than $700 million from investors through an “elaborate, years-long fraud in which they exaggerated or made false statements about the company’s technology, business, and financial performance.”

Theranos  and Holmes have agreed to resolve the charges against them, says the SEC, though neither admitted nor denied the allegations in the SEC’s complaint.

For her part, Holmes has agreed to: pay a $500,000 penalty; be barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for 10 years; return the remaining 18.9 million shares that she obtained during the fraud; and relinquish her voting control of Theranos by converting her super-majority Theranos Class B Common shares to Class A Common shares.  This way, if Theranos is acquired or otherwise liquidated, Holmes won’t profit until more than $750 million is first returned to Theranos’s shareholders.

As for Balwani, the SEC says it will litigate its claims against him in federal district court.

Theranos first came under scrutiny in October 2015, when the two-time Pulitzer-prize winning WSJ journalist John Carreyrou published an explosive investigative piece, suggesting that the company — then valued by investors at a stunning $9 billion — had greatly exaggerated its abilities to quickly process an expansive range of laboratory tests from a few drops of blood.

In reality, former employees told Carreyrou, the lab instrument Theranos had developed handled just a small fraction of the tests sold to consumers, with the rest being done with traditional machines from companies like Siemens. (Famed attorney David Boies, who represented Theranos at the time, acknowledged to the WSJ that Theranos wasn’t using its device for all the tests it offered, calling the transition a “journey.”)

More here.

BioLumic, a 5.5-year-old, Palmerston North, New Zealand-based company that has developed an ultraviolet crop yield enhancement system, just raised $5 million in Series A funding co-led by Finistere Ventures and the Radicle Growth acceleration fund, with Rabobank’s recently launched Food & Agri Innovation Fund and earlier investors also joining the round. VentureBeat has more here.

Escalier Biosciences, a two-year-old, Netherlands-based biopharmaceutical company that’s developing topical and oral drug candidates for psoriasis, has raised $19 million in Series B funding led by Forbion, with participation from earlier backers New Science Ventures and BioGeneration Ventures. More here.

EVelozcity, a new, L.A.-based startup that was founded by three BMW veterans who also worked for Faraday Future and are planning a line of three sub-$50,000 electric vehicles, says it has raised a stunning $1 billion from a “group of financially oriented investors” from China, Europe and the U.S. Forbes has much more here.

Figo Pet Insurance, a five-year-old, Chicago-based insurtech startup catering to pet owners, has raised $4 million in new funding led by HCS Capital Partners of Miami. More here.

Gavelytics, a two-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based judicial analytics company, has raised $3.2 million in funding, including from serial founder Brian Lee. Law.com has more here.

Luminate Security, a year-old, Palo Alto, Ca., and Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup that provides access to corporate applications in hybrid clouds, has raised $14 million in combined seed and Series A funding. Investors include U.S. Venture Partners, Aleph, and the ScaleUp program of Microsoft for startups. More here.

MyPadi, a two-year-old, Abuja, Nigeria-based online platform that helps university students find housing, including at hostels and via shared rooms, has raised pre-seed funding of an undisclosed amount, including from EchoVC. More here.

OpenBazaar, a two-year-old, Washington, D.C.-area company that’s creating a decentralized marketplace — meaning it connects people directly to each other via a peer-to-peer network rather than through a centralized site as with Amazon or eBay — has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by OMERS Ventures. Other participants in the round include Bitmain, Digital Currency Group, BlueYard Capital, Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. Yahoo Finance has more here.

Outdoor Voices, a four-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based maker of athletic apparel, has raised $34 million in Series C funding led by GV. The company, whose other backers include General Catalyst and Forerunner Ventures, has now raised $57 million altogether. CNBC has more here.

Pilot, a year-old, San Francisco-based maker of advanced bookkeeping tech, has raised $15 million in funding led by Index Ventures, along with a long list of high-profile founders, including Patrick and John Collison of Stripe, and Drew Houston of Dropbox. TechCrunch has more here.

Pray.com, a two-year-old, L.A.-based interfaith social networking app for members of religious communities, has raised a $14 million in Series A funding led by TPG Growth. Previous investors Science Inc. and Greylock Partners also joined the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $16 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Skilljar, a 5.5-year-old, Seattle, Wa.-based online training platform, has raised $16.4 million in Series A funding from Mayfield and Shasta Ventures, along with earlier backer Trilogy Equity Partners. Forbes has more here.

Skyroam, a 10-year-old, San Francisco-based WiFi provider, has raised $20 million in Series C funding led by JAFCO Asia, with participation from Vickers Venture,GSR Ventures, China Broadband Capital, and Delta Electronics Capital. More here.

Solebit, a four-year-old, Herzliya, Israel-based cybersecurity company, has raised $11 million in Series A funding led by ClearSky Security, with participation fromMassMutual Ventures and Glilot Capital Partners. More here.

Tech Will Save Us, a 4.5-year-old, London-based startup that makes a range of hackable toys for kids, has raised $4.2 million in Series A funding led by Initial Capital, with participation from Backed VC, SaatchInvest, All Bright, Unltd-inc,Leaf VC, and numerous individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Zum, a 3.5-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based childcare and transportation platform (a newer Uber for kids), has raised $19 million in Series B funding led bySpark Capital, with participation from earlier backer Sequoia Capital. Forbes has more here.

A new early-stage venture fund targeting tech startups in the Nordics is officially launching today. Founded by serial entrepreneur and Slush Chairman Ilkka Kivimäki​, and former F-Secure and startup executive Pirkka Palomäki​, Helsinki-based Maki.vc will invest in nascent and burgeoning companies in the region, both at seed and Series A stage. TechCrunch has more here.

A Boston-based staffing software firm called Bullhorn has acquired two San Francisco-based companies — Talent Rover and Job Science — to help it serve potential customers who run their businesses on Salesforce’s CRM platform. Five-year-old Talent Rover had raised $12.5 million from investors; 19-year-old JobScience appears to have been bootstrapped. Terms of the transactions aren’t being shared. Bullhorn is owned by Insight Venture Partners, which bought the company from the private equity firm Vista Equity Partners last October. The Boston Business Journal has more here (sub required).

Investor Josh Elman will join the commission-free trading platform Robinhood as its VP of product. He’ll also retain a venture partner role with the firm Greylock Partners, which Elman joined as a full-time partner in 2013.

RIP, Stephen Hawking.

Axios spoke with Box founder and CEO Aaron Levie about what surprised him in the Dropbox numbers, how the market should view Dropbox vis-à-vis Box, and what he makes of Salesforce buying into the IPO.

Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk has doubled down on his dire warnings about the dangers of artificial intelligence, warning an audience at the South by Southwest conference earlier this week to “mark my words — A.I. is far more dangerous than nukes.”

Jun Ying, a former Equifax exec who was reportedly next in line to be the company’s global CIO, has been charged with insider trading by the SEC. The agency says he knew that Equifax had been hacked and that he sold his company shares before the public was notified.

IAC is looking to hire an associate director to help evaluate and execute M&A transactions and investments. The job is in New York.

E-cigs breed more smokers than they stop, according to a study published today by researchers at Dartmouth. From a Bloomberg write-up of the study: “Using 2014 census data, published literature and surveys on e-cigarette usage to build a model, the scientists were able to estimate that about 2,070 cigarette-smoking adults in America quit in 2015 with the help of the electronic devices. However—and perhaps more alarming—the model estimated that, at the same time, an additional 168,000 adolescents and young adults who had never smoked cigarettes began smoking and eventually became daily cigarette smokers after first using e-cigarettes.”

Twitter is reportedly working on a camera-first feature that could threaten Snap.

It’s a matter of when, not if, the Bitcoin bubble will pop, says Allianz Global Investors, which manages almost 500 billion euro. According to an overlooked, six-day post that just caught the attention of Bloomberg, the firm argues that Bitcoin is worthless, even if blockchain technology is able to bring significant benefits to investors.

It’s Pi Day again. Here’s why it matters.

Damien Hirst’s post-Venice, post-truth world.

The newest travel trend: pop-up luxury hotels.

Imperial Walker Bed. (When you really want to win at parenting.)

Perhaps you’ve heard? U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was fired today. On Twitter. Shortly afterward, the State Department’s Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Steve Goldstein, who’d tweeted that Tillerson “did not speak to the President and is unaware of the reason” for his firing today, was himself fired today. “It was chaos . . . it was a ‘W.T.F.’ moment,” a current state department staffer tells Vanity Fair of the episode.

Trump is separately seeking to impose tariffs on $60 billion of Chinese imports and will target the technology and telecommunications sectors, a source who discussed the issue with the White House told Reuters earlier today. More here.

Today’s sponsor, the Financial Solutions Lab, knows that when it comes to fintech, finding solutions that reflect the diversity of populations who need them most is easier said than done. This virtual accelerator program — where selected companies receive $250K plus access to unparalleled resources — strives to remove selection bias from its process of identifying solutions that can help improve Americans’ financial health. Apply now and share with all the fintechs you know!

Snoop Dogg, the rapper, entertainer, and businessman, can claim another small victory in a long string of career highlights. The venture firm that he cofounded a couple of years ago, Casa Verde Capital, has closed its debut fund with $45 million.

The money was raised in earnest last year, says managing partner Karan Wadhera, an alum of both Goldman Sachs and Nomura Securities who joined the outfit in the summer of 2016 to take over the process of securing capital — as well as investing it along with fellow managing director Evan Eneman.

We talked with Wadhera yesterday to get a better handle on the firm, which makes seed and Series A bets on ancillary businesses in the cannabis industry. Our chat has been edited for length.

You have what seems like a pretty traditional banking background. How did you wind up at Snoop Dogg’s venture firm?

I did have a traditional path, joining Goldman out of school and working in San Francisco, Hong Kong and later India for 11 years, where I ran trading desks [for numerous investment firms]. But I’m also an avid musician and fan. In college [at Babson in Wellesley, Ma.], I worked on a site and radio show about U2 that kind of got me connected to U2’s management and label and I soon started coming out to L.A. as a consultant working on projects for artists and labels. And Snoop was one of the first people I started working with. I was helping out on the new media side and helping a small team of people sort of run the Snoop show — not just his label but his clothing line, film, TV projects…

That sounds very entrepreneurial for a college student. Did you head to Goldman to make your family happy?

Exactly. [Laughs.] But that career path did take me around the world, which was super exciting. In India, too, I was able to dig into some of those interests. I helped start the sort of Us Weekly of India called Miss Malini. I kept on doing entertainment stuff. In 2008, I helped put Snoop in a big Bollywood movie. So we kept our relationship going.

Then you moved to L.A. to run this fund.

When I left the institutional finance world, I knew I wanted to focus more on the private end of things. And as I started to dig in and understand the work that Snoop and [firm partner Ted Chung] and Evan — who I’ve known for 20 years — were laying out for the cannabis industry, I realized it was a huge white space and that not enough people were focusing on it. Of course, that’s changing.

How many investments has the firm made so far?

We’ve made eight, with a couple of new investments to be announced in the next few weeks. We’re very active. If we aren’t leading a deal, then we’re co-leading and taking board seats or board advisory roles. we have a lot of access and touch points into this industry.

But you aren’t investing in just any cannabis startup, correct? Explain what you’re looking to fund and what size checks you’re writing.

We’re writing seed-stage to Series A-size checks, so $1 million plus, with roughly half our fund reserved for follow-on investments, where we can write another $3 million to $5 million [to a limited number of breakout companies]. And we’re only focused on the ancillary part of the cannabis industry, so we won’t invest in companies that touch the plants.

More here.

Airspace Systems, a three-year-old, Bay Area-based counter drone technology company, has raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Singtel Innov8 withs28 Capital, Shasta Ventures and Granite Hill Capital Partners also participating. The startup has now raised $25 million to date. TechCrunch has the story here.

Artland, a 1.5-year-old, Copenhagen-based mobile art app that connects art collectors and galleries worldwide, has raised $1 million in seed funding from individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Blast, a year-old, Newport Beach, Ca.-based fintech app that employs gamification to help users save money, has raised $5 million in seed funding from the Forbesand Roth families, Core Innovation Capital, Great Oaks Venture Capital, Snowmass Private Equity and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. More here.

Carbon Lighthouse, an eight-year-old, San Francisco-based company that sells software and strategies to help buildings reshape their energy supply-and-demand profile, has raised $27 million in growth equity funding led by GRC SinoGreen, with participation from JCI Ventures, Ulupono Initiative, WV Tech Ventures,Radicle Impact Partners and Ekistic Ventures. More here.

Imply, a three-year-old, Millbrae, Ca.-based event analytics platform, has raised $13.3 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Khosla Ventures, among others. More here.

Moogsoft, a nearly six-year-old, San Francisco-based tech startup whose machine learning algorithms aim to help developer teams quickly remediate issues, has raised $40 million in Series D funding. Goldman Sachs Growth Equity led the round, with participation from earlier backers HCL, Northgate Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Singtel Innov8, STTelemedia and Wing VC. More here.

Ofo, the 3.5-year-old, Beijing-based bike-sharing startup, has raised $866 million in new financing led by Alibaba Group to fuel its expensive competition with Mobike, which is backed by Alibaba rival Tencent. TechCrunch has more here.

RapidAPI, a 3.5-year-old, San Francisco-based company that currently offers a directory of some 8,000 APIs, has raised $9 million in Series A funding led byAndreessen Horowitz, which also led the startup’s $3.5 million seed round. Other participants in the round include SV Angel,  Green Bay Capital and Tony Jamous, the co-founder and CEO of Nexmo. TechCrunch has more here.

TAE Life Sciences, a year-old, Foothill Ranch, Ca.-based med tech company that’s dedicated to advancing the potential of Boron Neutron Capture Therapy, has raised $40 million in Series A funding led by ARTIS Ventures. More here.

Wefarm, a three-year-old, London- and San Francisco-based startup whose mobile-phone platform connects rural farmers, including in Africa and Latin America, so they can ask and answer questions about agriculture, has raised $5 million in fresh funding. True Ventures led the round, with participation from Skype cofounder Niklas Zennström, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, Blue Bottle Coffee CEO Bryan Meehan, and the Norrsken Foundation, as well as earlier backers LocalGlobe and Accelerated Digital Ventures. More here.

Yogome, a nearly six-year-old, Mexico-based company that makes educational digital games for children, has raised $26.9 million in Series B funding led byExceed Capital Partners, with participation from Seeya Ventures, Insight Venture Partners and Variv Capital. More here.

Not a new fund exactly, but payments company Ripple says it plans to invest in startups and technology companies to develop more uses for XRP, its cryptocurrency that is currently the third largest digital token behind bitcoin and Ethereum based on total market cap. TechCrunch has the story here.

Publicly traded MindBody, a maker of business management software for wellness companies, is paying $150 million in cash to acquire Booker Software, a seven-year-old, New York-based business management platform for salons and spas. According to Crunchbase, Booker had raised $77 million from investors, including Medina Capital, Revolution, and Bain Capital Ventures. The San Luis Obispo Tribune has more here.

Salesforce is set to buy CloudCraze, a nine-year-old, Chicago-based enterprise e-commerce software company that’s built on its cloud-based customer relationship management platform. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. TechCrunch has more here.

Tandem, a London-based challenger bank co-founded by fintech veteran Ricky Knox, is on a shopping spree. After purchasing Harrods Bank, the banking arm of the famous luxury British department store, the company is now acquiring Pariti, a 3.5-year-old, London-based money management app that has garnered 95,000 users and looks to have raised less than $1 million from investors. Pariti’s CEO and CTO are joining Tandem as part of the deal. TechCrunch has more here.

Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, long a favorite in tech circles, is reportedly still under armed guard after being abducted along with 200 other people last November and seemingly fleeced as part of an anti-corruption campaign. The prince, who was released in January, also no longer has final say over how his investment firm, Kingdom Holding — which has backed Twitter, Lyft, and many other companies — puts its capital to work.

Women at Microsoft, working in U.S.-based technical jobs, filed 238 internal complaints about gender discrimination or sexual harassment between 2010 and 2016, according to court filings made public yesterday. The figure was cited by plaintiffs suing Microsoft, says Reuters, adding that their attorneys are pushing to proceed as a class-action lawsuit.

The Winklevoss twins have a new plan to police cryptocurrency trading.

Point72 Ventures, the early-stage venture capital firm funded exclusively by hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen, is looking to hire a VP of operations. The job is in Palo Alto, Ca.

Per SEC filings, WeWork has raised more than $400 million to buy its own properties, reports Crunchbase. (Our sources say it’s much more.)

Larry Page’s Kitty Hawk has finally taken the wraps off its Cora aircraft, a hybrid vertical take-off and landing design that can take off like a helicopter but fly like a plane. (Maybe we’re impossible, but we were expecting . . . more.)

Qualcomm, national security, and patents: an explainer.

The valuation of Apple — which today announced the dates for its annual developers conference — could reach $1 trillion, soon.

Tom Brady eats a strawberry at long last.

No! We were just about to figure out who these two people are.

Boaty McBoatface is back from its most perilous mission yet.

Mirrored shades, knee-high socks, embroidered mocknecks: bad jock style is secretly high fashion, says GQ. Take note!

Lyft said today that its revenue is growing nearly three times faster than that of Uber.

A better electric toothbrush. Quip was created by dentists and designers to guide the good habits that matter — starting at $25. Brush heads ($5) are delivered for an automatic refresh every three months. Get your first refill free.

BioCatch, a seven-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based behavioral biometrics company, has raised $30 million in funding led by Maverick Ventures, with participation from American Express Ventures, NexStar Partners, Kreos Capital, CreditEase,OurCrowd, and JANVEST Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Epsagon, an eight-month-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based company that sells automated end-to-end performance monitoring tech for serverless architectures, has raised $4.1 million in seed funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, StageOne Ventures and Stratoscale founder Ariel Maislos. Tech.eu has more here.

Gousto, a nearly six-year-old, London-based online meal kit company, has raised £28.5 million ($39.6 million) in new funding, including from Hargreave Hale,Angel CoFund, MMC Ventures and BGF Ventures. The round brings the company’s total funding to date to £56.5 million. More here.

KIXEYE, a nine-year-old, San Francisco-based developer of online combat strategy games, has raised $20 million in funding led by Icon Ventures, with participation from Ridge Ventures, Trinity Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

NSLComm, a six-year-old, Israel-based startup whose antennas aim to optimize currently available satellite communications technologies, has raised $6.25 million in Series B funding, including from Jerusalem Venture Partners, Liberty,OurCrowd, Hawk GF, and Cockpit Innovation. SatNews has more here.

Rent the Runway, a nine-year-old, New York-based company that enables women to rent apparel and accessories, has raised $20 million in strategic funding fromBlue Pool Capital, a financial firm that principally invests the wealth of Alibaba founders Jack Ma and Joe Tsai. According to Recode, Blue Pool invested on the same terms as the company’s Series E investors, at a post-money valuation of between $750 million and $800 million. More here.

Scout Exchange, a five-year-old, Boston, Ma.-based platform for marketplace recruiting, has raised a whopping $100 million in funding — all from TRI Ventures, the investment vehicle of staffing industry veteran John Chuang. Xconomy has  more here.

TurnKey, a nearly five-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based full-service vacation rental property management company, has raised $31 million in Series D funding led by current investor Adams Street Partners, with participation from Altos Ventures(also a previous backer) and two new, unnamed institutional investors. The company has now raised $72 million altogether. More here.

Unearth, a two-year-old, Seattle, Wa.-based software startup that uses drones and aerial images to create interactive site maps for large-scale commercial and civil construction projects, has raised $3 million in funding led by Madrona Venture Group, with participation from Vulcan Capital. GeekWire has more here.

Voci Technologies, a 10-year-old, Pittsburgh, Pa.-based startup that sells speech-to-text transcription and analytics to  companies, has raised $8 million in Series B funding co-led by Grotech Ventures and Harbert Growth Partners.

Singapore’s Golden Gate Ventures is raising a $100 million third fund to continue investing in Southeast Asia’s burgeoning market for e-commerce, payments and mobile apps, according to Bloomberg. More here.

Math Venture Partners, a Chicago-based early-stage firm, is raising upwards of $39 million for its second fund, according to an SEC filing first flagged by Axios. The two-partner outfit had closed its debut fund with $28 million in 2015.

Sofinnova Partners, the 46-year-old Paris-based venture capital firm that specializes in life sciences, has closed a new, €125 million ($154 million) fund to back industrial biotechnologies, with a focus on startups in Europe and North America.

Ah, retirement. The Golden Years of Seemingly Unanswerable Questions. Are you saving enough? Will you outlive your money? Turns out that Matt Carey has given this a lot of thought. His company, Blueprint Income, calls itself the “first digital retirement plan that guarantees you won’t run out of money.” As it happens, Blueprint Income was part of the Financial Solutions Lab’s 2017 class. Want your startup to be the next Answerer of Seemingly Unanswerable Questions? Apply todayto be part of FinLab’s next class — selected companies get $250K+ more.

Apple is making an acquisition that could help it lay out a position as a purveyor of trusted information; it’s acquiring nine-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based Next Issue Media, whose app Texture is a virtual magazine newsstand that offers readers access to around 200 magazines for a monthly fee of $9.99. TechCrunch has more here.

Publicly traded Nutanix is acquiring Netsil, a San Francisco-based application discovery and operations management company that had raised $5.7 million, including from Mayfield Fund, Plug and Play, Moment Ventures andEngineering Capital. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. ZDNet has more here.

Dropbox disclosed in a filing today that it will sell new shares in its IPO at between $16 and $18 a share, meaning it will be valued at  $7 billion at the high end of the range — $3 billion less than the valuation the storage company was assigned when it raised its last round of private funding in 2014. More here.

Jeff Bezos may be plugging more into space travel than previously imagined.  “I’m in the process of converting my Amazon lottery winnings into a much lower price of admission so we can go explore the solar system,” Bezos said Saturday night in New York, accepting the Buzz Aldrin Space Exploration Award at the Explorers Club Annual Dinner. Notes Bloomberg of the appearance: “Bezos previously said he’s funding [his reusable] rocket company Blue Origin to the tune of $1 billion a year through the sale of Amazon stock. His comments at the event suggest that may be only the start of his financial commitment to the project . . .”

Matt Brennan has joined General Catalyst as a partner. Brennan, based in New York, had spent the previous five years as a principal with Bain Capital Ventures and the three years before that with Insight Venture Partners.

Paige Craig, founder of the L.A.-based seed-stage venture firm Arena Ventures, has joined Bird, the L.A.-based scooter company that just raised $100 million in fresh funding, as its head of U.S. city operations. Craig told Fortune in January that Arena Ventures was hitting the pause button. It sounds now like he has closed up shop entirely to focus full-time on his new gig.

Change is coming to Vice Media, where cable giant Nancy Dubuc is in “advanced talks” to assume the CEO role from co-founder Shane Smith, says Variety. More here.

Venture capitalist and lifelong Democrat Josh Kushner has quietly donated $50,000 to March for Our Lives, Axios reported over the weekend. (More here on March for Our Lives, a student-organized rally for gun control that’s taking place in Washington on March 24.) Kushner’s older brother Jared is, of course, Donald Trumps’s son-in-law and for now a White House senior advisor.

Jon Miller, a longtime digital media exec, is working with the private equity fund TPG to gobble up digital media properties, ostensibly making them more valuable by consolidating their sales and back-office operations. Recode has more here.

Vincent Ramos, the founder and CEO of Canada-based Phantom, has been charged and arrested by the FBI with racketeering conspiracy. According to the agency, his company removed the microphones and cameras of Blackberry and Android devices as part of a sales process to violent international criminal organizations. Gizmodo has more here.

Goldman Sachs said this morning that co-president Harvey Schwartz would retire, potentially clearing the way for his fellow president and co-chief operating officer,David Solomon — who moonlights as D.J. D-Sol — to become the company’s next chief executive when CEO Lloyd Blankfein leaves the bank. Dealbook has more here.

Wave Capital, started by veterans of Airbnb, is looking to invest in their former colleagues.

SoftBank is positioning itself to invade Wall Street’s turf, too.

YouTube thinks you want extremist content, so that’s what it’s giving you.

Reddit and the quest to de-toxify the internet.

John Oliver explains Bitcoin the way that only John Oliver can explain things.

Why you don’t see people-sized salmon any more.

Famed former spy Christopher Steele uses one of these, a “pouch, of military-tested double-grade fabric, designed to block signal detection.” Should you need something like it for your own phone(s).