| Happy Tuesday, all! We are publishing tomorrow, just fyi (though the newsletter is likely to be short and sweet). Safe travels if you’re already off to a vacation for the rest of the week. |
| Top News |
| Even before Donald Trump’s new Supreme Court nominee is announced, a fight over the choice is raging on social media. |
| Sponsored By . . . |
| Recently ranked as the #17 team in the Wall Street Journal, the Gullixson Team is proud to present another incredible listing. Today’s showcase property is an award winning French Normandy estate in the heart of Atherton, Ca. Designed by renowned Bay Area architect Albert Farr and recently renovated and expanded under the artful eye of the current owners this extraordinary estate is a complex combination of history, 21st century innovation and the beauty and serenity of nature. |
| New Fundings |
| 4Front Holdings, a seven-year-old, Phoenix, Az.- and Boston-based retail and brand development company centered around the medical cannabis industry, says has raised $13.4 million in Series D funding. The sources of that capital aren’t being disclosed. More here. Airwallex, a 2.5-year-old, Hong Kong-based company that handles cross-border transactions for companies that do business in multiple countries using international currencies, has raised $80 million in Series B funding co-led by earlier backers Tencent and Sequoia Capital China. TechCrunch has more here. Juul, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based nicotine vaporizer company, is reportedly raising $1 billion in a new round of funding that will value the company at roughly $16 billion. The Information first reported talks of a new round, which it says Tiger Global Management is leading with a $600 million check. More here. MeetFrank, an 11-month-old, Estonia-based startup whose recruitment app uses machine learning plus a chatbot wrapper, has raised $1.1 million in seed funding from Hummingbird VC, Karma VC, and Change Ventures. TechCrunch has more here. PlainID, a three-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based authorization management platform that disrupts the way identities, human and non-human, access data assets on premises and in the cloud, has raised $11 million in Series A funding led by Viola Ventures, with participation from Capri Ventures, Springtide Ventures and iAngels. More here. Planck Re, a two-year-old, Tel Aviv- and New York-based startup that’s looking to simplify insurance underwriting with artificial intelligence, has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Arbor Ventures, with participation from Viola FinTech andEight Roads. TechCrunch has more here. ThetaRay, a five-year-old, Hod HaSharon, Israel-based company that uses mathematics to provide early detection from cyber threats, has raised $30 million in fresh funding that brings its total funding to roughly $60 million. Investors includeJerusalem Venture Partners, GE, Bank Hapoalim, OurCrowd, SVB Investments and others. Reuters has more here. Unify Square, 10-year-old, Bellevue, Wa.-based maker of software and cloud managed services for Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business, has raised $10 million in Series C funding led by Primepulse SE, a global investment holding group. The company has now raised around $45 million altogether. More here. |
| New Funds |
| Earlybird Venture Capital, the 21-year-old, Berlin, Germany-headquartered early-stage venture firm, says it has closed its sixth fund with 175 million euros (or $204 million). More here. Nebari Ventures, a New York City-based venture firm investing in early-stage consumer companies, including food and beverage startups, is looking to raise $15 million for its first fund fund, shows an SEC filing. Nebari is controlled by a holding company of the same name that also features a special situations unit, a unit focused on blockchain infrastructure tech, and a fourth unit focused on providing senior debt capital to metals and mining companies. More here. Telescope Partners, a growth-equity firm founded in 2015 by former Sequoia Capital partner Mickey Arabelovic, raised $79.1 million for its debut fund shows a new SEC filing that lists 15 investors. More on the San Francisco-based firm here. |
| Jobs |
| Canaan is hiring an analyst to work alongside industry veterans on enterprise/deep tech deals. Canaan is an early-stage firm with a history of company building across life sciences and tech. It’s currently investing its eleventh, $800 million, vehicle; the 30-year-old firm has $5 billion in assets under management altogether. More here. |
| People |
| Oath CEO Tim Armstrong is reportedly exploring strategic options for the digital media division created from the combination of Yahoo and AOL, that could include buying the business out of Verizon. Google Cloud COO Diane Bryant has left the company after less than a year. She previously spent more than 25 years at Intel before joining Google in late November. Jonathan Hsu, a partner and the head of data science at Social Capital, has left the investment outfit in the wake of numerous other departures. According to Axios, he’s expected to join another newly former partner, Arjun Sethi, at a new venture firm being formed. Zain Jaffer, the cofounder and former CEO of Vungle, was completely exonerated yesterday, roughly nine months after being arrested at his home on charges of sexual abuse and battery. Jaffer’s lawyers argued persuasively that Jaffer was taking two different medications prescribed to him by different doctors that caused him to act violently. It was also determined that a hold he’d had on his young son the day of his arrest was a jiu-jitsu move, a form of martial arts that the entire family reportedly practices. |
| Essential Reads |
| Inside Amazon‘s fast-paced warehouse world. Tens of thousands of “Fortnite” players have been infected by malware that hijacks encrypted Web sessions so it can inject fraudulent ads into every website a user visits, says the company. |
| Detours |
| International-style bank robbing comes to the U.S. How many friends you need to be happy. Safari lodges meant to look like shipwrecks. |
| Retail Therapy |
| If Apple made a motor boat. |