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☆ How Ark Invest's Cathie Wood is investing behind the artificial intelligence boom
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-01 | by ( Yun Li | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Ark Invest's Cathie Wood said Wednesday said artificial intelligence is the most important catalyst in every corner of her disruptive innovation strategy. "Many people say data is the new gold as they were talking about the cloud and other movements in technology, I think that's ever more true now with artificial intelligence," Wood said on CNBC's " Squawk Box ." "I think there's going to be a lot of commoditization in in this industry, in the whole artificial intelligence movement." In September, Ark Invest launched a new venture capital fund, targeting individual investors with a minimum investment of just $500. The actively managed Ark Venture Fund invests in 70% private firms and 30% public companies focused on technologically enabled innovation.

☆ In leaked document, Ohio venture capitalist and Sequoia alum Mark Kvamme shows off plans for a $500 million state-focused fund
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-01 | by ( Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

VC Mark Kvamme is raising $500 million for something akin to a sovereign wealth fund for Ohio. Dubbed The Ohio Fund, the investment company will be funded by Ohio institutions and individuals. The Ohio Fund will need to hire investors who founders want to work with. Mark Kwamme, partner emeritus at Drive Capital, is raising a statewide fund in his home state, Ohio. If The Ohio Fund reaches its fundraising goals, Kvamme, according to the presentation, plans to serve as president and chief investment officer.

☆ Twitter is down to fewer than 550 full-time engineers
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( Lora Kolodny | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Twitter's full-time headcount has dwindled to approximately 1,300 employees, including fewer than 550 full-time engineers by title, according to internal records viewed by CNBC. Around 75 of the company's 1,300 employees are on leave including about 40 engineers. The company's trust and safety team, which makes policy recommendations, design and product changes with the aim of keeping all of Twitter's users safe, is down to fewer than 20 full-time employees. Before Musk led a $44 billion leveraged buyout of Twitter last year, Twitter's headcount stood at about 7,500 employees. Since taking over Twitter, Musk has faced a shareholder backlash at Tesla for being distracted, for stirring up political controversy with his strategy at Twitter, and for selling billions of dollars worth of his Tesla shares to finance his Twitter takeover.

☆ The company Walgreens uses to target shoppers with ads on digital cooler doors is expanding its screens to more in-store locations
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-17 | by ( Lara O'Reilly | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Cooler Screens, which provides in-store ad screens on cooler doors, has detailed expansion plans. Cooler Screens, the company that provides "smart" digital advertising screens on refrigerator doors in Kroger, Walgreens, and Circle K locations, said Tuesday that plans are underway to extend its network to more screens at different areas inside stores. Cooler Screens currently offers a digital merchandising platform that brightly displays the products that sit inside a retailer's cooler units and additional advertising space. A slide from a Cooler Screens ad sales pitch deck, showcasing its plans for additional in-store billboards. Cooler Screens has raised more than $100 million in funding from investors including Verizon Ventures, Microsoft's M12 venture fund, and GreatPoint Ventures.

☆ 11 podcasts that busy venture capitalists and founders say they trust right now
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-15 | by ( Robin Madell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

Investors at JetBlue Ventures, Mighty Capital, and other VC firms shared their favorite podcasts. Another recommendation is "Origins" by partners at the biotech VC firm Notation Capital. Here are 11 great options, recommended by VCs, founders, CEOs, and other industry insiders. "The main thing about the VC world is building relationships, and Harry is an example of a great networker," Gershfeld said. "BTC is the single-most important asset in the world, and that podcast gets to the heart of why that is."

☆ Sequoia Capital cuts fees for new funds amid VC slowdown
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-13 | by ( Krystal Hu | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Jan 13 (Reuters) - Sequoia Capital has lowered management fees in its two recently-launched venture funds as it braces for a slower investment environment, partner Alfred Lin said on Thursday. Sequoia launched a $950 million ecosystem fund to back scouts and funds formed by Sequoia alums, and a $600 million crypto fund to invest in crypto companies and tokens. So far, 10% of the crypto fund has been deployed, Lin said. The move marks an unusual concession by the world’s top venture investor after U.S. venture capital deals fell from their 2021 peak by 31%. Lin said the firm remained committed to crypto investment.

☆ Bank earnings are under way. Here are the biggest storylines everyone on Wall Street is focused on.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-13 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Starting today, the six big US banks (Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo) report their Q4 and year-end earnings. But instead of a boring preview on what to expect, I figured I'd have some fun by setting gambling lines on some of the biggest storylines heading into earnings. OK, let's get into the biggest storylines and their odds:David Solomon discusses the recent headcount reduction at Goldman Sachs. What'll be interesting is if he teases even more cuts coming down the line as the bank looks to cut costs. (-150)Background: The bank got ahead of this one by announcing its plans to step back from mortgages earlier this week.

More than a decade later, those that heeded this advice went on to become game-changing tech behemoths, including CNBC Disruptor 50 companies Block , Pinterest , Slack, Twilio , and Cloudera. Seed rounds had a record deal value in 2022, and valuations continued to grow even as late-stage venture companies nearer to the public market suffered. Venture funds raised a record amount of money in 2022, with $162.8 billion closed across 769 funds, according to PitchBook and the NVCA. We've seen companies struggle as public companies and then skyrocket, so a lower value-IPO is not the end of the road." "But when you can generate new share in a difficult market, when the market does turn, they are in a perfect position to capture more market share and customers."

☆ Venom, Iceberg set up $1 bln fund to invest in blockchain firms amid crypto winter
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-11 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Jan 11 (Reuters) - Blockchain firm Venom Foundation and Abu Dhabi-based investment manager Iceberg Capital Ltd on Wednesday launched a $1 billion crypto venture fund and said it was leading a $20 million funding round in virtual world platform Nümi Metaverse. The fund, called Venom Ventures Fund (VVF), aims to invest in early-stage startups focused on payments, asset management, banking services and gaming on Web3, a much-hyped vision of a future internet built on blockchain. The launch comes at a time when funding for crypto startups has slowed following the global risk off mood and a series of crypto blowups that culminated in the high-profile downfall of FTX and shook investor sentiment. Cryptocurrencies have crept into the new year, licking their wounds with bitcoin steady at $17,421, after tumbling 64% in 2022. Venom Ventures fund is chaired by former BlackRock chief investment officer Peter Knez, and will be operated by investment firm Iceberg Capital that is regulated by Abu Dhabi Global Market - the emirate's international financial center.

☆ FTX's venture backers included Patriots owner Robert Kraft and billionaire Paul Tudor Jones, new filings show
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( Rohan Goswami | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

The roster of high-profile investors who lost money betting on crypto exchange FTX also included New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones, according to court filings released late Monday. FTX's venture investors included a host of luminaries. Dan Loeb controlled over 6.1 million preferred shares through Third Point-connected venture funds. Rival exchange Coinbase held nearly 1.3 million preferred shares. CNBC has compiled and analyzed the following preferred share ownership using Delaware bankruptcy court filings.

☆ Pitch Decks That Advertising Tech Startups Used to Raise Millions
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( Business Insider | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +19 min

Check out these pitch decks that they've used to sell their vision and raise millions from private equity and VC investors. Blocking ad fraudAdtech startup Lunio, announced a $15 million Series A funding round in September 2022. In May 2022, the software-as-a-service startup raised a $30 million Series B round, led by Insight Partners. Marketing in the metaverseAnima, an augmented-reality startup, raised a $3 million funding round from investors in Janury. He raised $50 million in Series D after closing a $34 million Series C last year, bringing its total raised to $100 million.

Proptech customers, employees, and investors said they went from delighted to disillusioned. Proptech investors eager to capture these trends pumped $32 billion into the industry in 2021. As markets deteriorated, disillusionment set in among proptech customers, investors, and employees. Some customers say they were disappointed buying homes via proptech startupsReal-estate startups like Divvy Homes and Better launched under the auspices of helping customers afford quality homes. Investors in proptech firms are taking financial hitsYou don't need to ask proptech investors whether they're disappointed in the sector's performance — just look at share prices.

Jan 5 (Reuters) - Alex Mashinsky, a co-founder of bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network who prosecutors allege bilked investors out of billions, is a serial entrepreneur who has portrayed himself as a modern-day Robin Hood. The civil lawsuit seeks to ban Mashinsky from doing business in New York and have him pay damages, restitution and disgorgement. James' lawsuit is the latest black eye for the crypto sector, which has been rocked by accusations against FTX crypto exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Mashinsky became involved in crypto in 2017, when his venture fund Governing Dynamics brought on blockchain company MicroMoney as a strategic partner. In an "Ask Mashinsky Anything" YouTube video on June 10, the entrepreneur said "Celsius has billions in liquidity."

"As counterintuitive as it may sound, this layoff left me in a really good position," the 24-year-old said. U.S. tech giants including Meta, Microsoft (MSFT.O), Twitter and Snap (SNAP.N) have purged more than 150,000 staff, according to Layoff.fyi, which tracks technology job losses. Day One Ventures, an early stage venture fund in San Francisco, launched a new initiative in November to fund startups founded by people who had been laid off from their tech jobs, touting the slogan "Funded, not Fired". Silicon Valley investor U.S. Venture Partners and Austrian VC firm Speedinvest have meanwhile earmarked a similar amount for newly founded companies. Fong told Reuters that experience in Big Tech firm gave founders a "strong brand that can be leveraged to meet investors, potential customers, and recruit team members".

☆ How tech groundbreaker Greg Smithies went from Elon Musk's inner circle to tackling real estate's $18 trillion carbon-emissions problem
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-02 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Greg Smithies leads the biggest fund focused on the decarbonization of real estate. Smithies has worked on sustainability issues and with Elon Musk's The Boring Company. But Smithies is no stranger to investment-led decarbonization efforts, having tackled the problem for much of his career. "At the end of the day, software isn't going to solve the climate crisis," Smithies said. But above all, he's focused on the money and the potential savings that low-carbon technology can have on real estate.

☆ From TerraUSD's meltdown to the collapse of a $32 billion crypto empire, here is a full timeline of the crypto market's year in 2022
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-31 | by ( Morgan Chittum | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Insider spoke with several crypto experts and charted the most influential events for the industry in 2022. The firm filed for insolvency in June, leading to widespread contagion. A month later, the firm filed for bankruptcy, listing $4.31 billion in assets and $5.5 billion in liabilities. The world's largest asset manager agreed to offer clients access to Coinbase's crypto trading and custody services. Radix's Epstein warned the industry must brace for more FTX contagion, but predicted crypto markets will rebound eventually.

☆ Singapore's venture capital scene looks set for a 'pretty decent' 2023, investment firm says
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-30 | by ( Sheila Chiang | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Singapore's tech start-up scene has grown in recent years, and the city-state ranked seventh in the latest Global Innovation Index 2022. Global venture dollars may have dropped in 2022, but Singapore's government-owned tech investment firm is optimistic about 2023. "2023 is probably going to be a pretty decent year for venture capital in Singapore," Hsien-Hui Tong, executive director of investments at SGInnovate, told CNBC's "Squawk Box Asia" Wednesday. Unlike global markets more generally, the venture capital scene in Singapore is "still very active," Tong said. Global markets, on the other hand, tend to be at the "more mature" stages of Series B and C, where venture capital has "dried up a little bit."

☆ The year that brought high-flying Silicon Valley back down to earth
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-30 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

The tech industry, already dominant, only seemed destined to grow even bigger at the start of this year. The spread of the Omicron variant suggested a continued pandemic-fueled demand for digital goods and services, which had buoyed many tech companies. The result was a bloodbath unlike anything the tech industry has seen in the past decade. For years, Silicon Valley has held up its founders as visionaries who can see far into the future. “I do not think venture is cratering, or the tech industry is cratering as an industry.”But for now, at least, there appears to be no end in sight to the pain for Silicon Valley and those who work in it.

☆ Startups find better access to talent as top tech companies cut jobs, freeze hiring
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-29 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +8 min

More than 50,000 tech workers were let go from their jobs in November, according to data collected by the website Layoffs.fyi. “Given the tech layoffs and lower hiring by the big-tech companies, folks are looking for smaller tech companies to join,” said Christopher Fong, founder of Xoogler.co, a network for ex-Google employees. In the absence of the stability that the largest tech companies once offered, workers are looking to startups and midsize companies that offer greater flexibility and, in some case, the opportunity to have a bigger impact. “I tried not to think a lot about tech layoffs when interviewing," Bell said. Lauren Illovsky, talent partner for Alphabet's CapitalG venture firm said “hiring has gotten a little easier" for the group's portfolio companies.

FTX Ventures was described as a $2 billion venture fund, in its press release with Dave. FTX Ventures was allegedly part of that scheme. But the investments appear to be the first identified examples of customer money being used by FTX and Bankman-Fried for venture funding. In explicitly linking the two $100 million investments to customer money, the SEC has raised the possibility that they'll be prospects for clawbacks. FTX's $100 million investment was through a convertible note, a short-term loan of cash that FTX could convert into shares at a later date.

☆ 71 top VCs landed on Insider's 2022 list of investors to watch. Here's what they're looking for in startups to back in 2023
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-27 | by ( Madeline Renbarger | Stephanie Palazzolo | Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Despite a tumultuous market for startup investing, VCs still landed top deals at hot startups. Behind these successes were the smart and savvy rising-star VCs working to transform the industry. Here are some of the rising stars of venture capital who are names to watch in 2023. Insider asked the VCs we named in last year's rising-stars list and the general public to nominate this year's most promising venture investors. For instance, OMERS Ventures' Chrissy Farr made the jump to healthtech investing after working as a journalist covering the venture industry for CNBC.

☆ Proptech is losing money left and right, but Fifth Wall's Brendan Wallace is ready to spend $866 million as the sector enters its 'proving ground'
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-26 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Fifth Wall's Brendan Wallace says today's rough markets are a "proving ground" for the industry. Earlier this year, it announced a $500 million climate fund and a $147 European proptech fund. There are also fewer paths to go public, as the blank-check-company model that takes companies public with fewer disclosures via a merger has dried up. After successfully bringing SmartRent public via its own blank-check company in 2021, Fifth Wall canceled its second blank-check company in March of this year. Procore, which raised $634.5 million in a public offering in May 2021, is an investor in the new Fifth Wall fund.

☆ Conservationists move to permanently protect areas around proposed Alaskan mine
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Dec 22 (Reuters) - The United States' top environmental non-profit and a regional land trust have raised $20 million to permanently protect 44,000 acres at an Alaskan watershed, that could be another major roadblock for a controversial proposed mine. The proposed Pebble Mine, being developed by a unit of Canada-based Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd (NDM.TO), has been through a roller coaster of regulations for the past 15 years. "Notably, this effort will restrict development of an access road critical for the proposed Pebble Mine," said the Fund's spokesperson, Valerie Keefer. read moreThe fundraiser counted Patagonia's Holdfast Collective among its donors, along with The Wyss Foundation and Alaska Venture Fund. Reporting by Sourasis Bose, Ruhi Soni and Arshreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh KuberOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Indian startups raised a record $49 billion in 2021. Here's 5 reasons why the region is set to become the next tech powerhouse, according to investors.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( Riddhi Kanetkar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

India's startup ecosystem is one of the world's largest, trailing behind Europe and the US. Startups in the region landed a record $49 billion in 2021, according to Dealroom data. It was a major milestone for the country's tech ecosystem — and one that highlighted the momentum the region has gained over the past six years. India's tech ecosystem has long been in the shadow of its more established counterparts like China, Europe, and the US. But 2021 was a pivotal year for India's startup ecosystem.

For startup founders and venture capitalists, the office holiday party is a December tradition. For many venture capitalists and the startup founders they invest in, December is synonymous with two things: end-of-year paperwork and office holiday parties. But this year, holiday parties in startup-land look a little different. "Align those goals with your holiday party, and you can do something powerful and cost-effective," she said. "You should maybe cut some travel, maybe you don't have a big holiday party, but that's all drop in the bucket compared to head count," he said.

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