Good day. SVB Capital, the nearly $10 billion venture-capital investing sibling of failed Silicon Valley Bank, is reassuring its portfolio startups, investing firms and limited partners that it is still up and running after parent company, SVB Financial Group, filed for bankruptcy on Friday.

“The SVB Capital funds and their general partner entities are not included in SVB Financial Group’s Chapter 11 proceeding and SVB Capital is operating in the ordinary course,” the investing unit said Monday in an internal email viewed by WSJ Pro. “We remain focused on delivering value for our LPs by investing in some of the world’s most innovative fund managers and companies,” the email said.

SVB Capital is both a direct investor in startups—including online residential-real-estate startup Opendoor Technologies Inc.—and a fund of funds backing venture-capital stalwarts like Sequoia Capital and others.

SVB Financial owned Silicon Valley Bank until roughly two weeks ago, when the bank was taken over by federal regulators following a run on deposits. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has since renamed it as Silicon Valley Bridge Bank.

William Kosturos, SVB Financial Group's chief restructuring officer, said in a statement Friday that the chapter 11 process will allow SVB Financial to protect its more valuable assets, singling out SVB Capital, which is a subsidiary that operates as a separate legal entity.

By filing for bankruptcy, SVB Financial is hoping to preserve the value of SVB Capital and other assets by ridding them of any liabilities associated with the parent company, said Jay Ritter, a finance professor at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business.

The idea is to make SVB Capital as appealing as possible for a potential buyer, a process that is already underway “and has attracted significant interest,” SVB Financial said Friday.

But selling a VC firm in today’s down market won’t be easy, analysts said. With valuations dropping from towering 2021 highs—and fundraising and initial public offerings slowing to a crawl—even the healthiest investing firms are mostly laying low.

Worse, SVB Financial's fourth-quarter report cited losses of more than $100 million at SVB Capital by the end of 2022, which it attributed to depressed valuations and other distressed market conditions.

And now on to the news...

Advice for startups on cash management. Venture capitalists are advising entrepreneurs on how to manage their cash. Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse and the financial crisis at First Republic Bank, both popular with startups and venture capitalists, have prompted a renewed focus on money management among entrepreneurs and investors. Here are highlights from emails venture investors have sent to startups recently. 

More coverage:

• Dimon Leading Discussions on New First Republic Rescue
• Small Businesses Stress Test Their Banks After SVB’s Collapse
• SVB Collapse Shows Smaller Banks Can Pose Risk in Numbers
• U.S. Could Move to Protect Deposits at Other Banks
• Anxiety Strikes $8 Trillion Mortgage-Debt Market After SVB Collapse
   

Companies are hoovering up more data than ever before, with the goal of leveraging it for insights and efficiency. But in many cases, the amount of data is leaving them lost—drowning in a sea of terabytes they don’t know how to make sense of, The Wall Street Journal reports. “In some instances, it is overwhelming,” said Sam Jaddi, chief information officer for security company ADT Inc. The company collects three to four terabytes of data every day—“a significant amount of data to sift through,” he added.

Some U.S. public pension and investment funds are pulling back on private equity after a decade of state and local retirement systems aggressively pursuing the expensive, risky and hard-to-trade asset class, the Journal reports. Maryland’s $65 billion retirement system is investing less new money in private equity. At Alaska’s $77 billion state fund, the investment chief wants to cancel a planned ramp-up. And the $615 million pension fund of Mendocino County, Calif., last month opted against introducing private equity to its investment mix.

People

Autonomous flight technology provider Merlin appointed Travis Mason to the post of chief policy officer. He was most recently at Seven Seven Six.

Exits

Hewlett Packard Enterprise agreed to acquire IT operations management provider OpsRamp for an undisclosed amount.

Rippling, a San Francisco-based workforce management platform, raised $500 million in Series E funding led by Greenoaks Capital Partners.

Operto Guest Technologies, a Vancouver-based startup providing smart property automation technology to the hotel and vacation rental sectors, secured $25 million in Series B financing led by Centana Growth Partners. Sam Shank joined the company’s board.

Illumix Inc., a low-code augmented-reality software startup, closed an $18 million Series A round from investors including LightShed Ventures.

Aembit Inc., a workload identity and access management platform, launched with $16.6 million in seed funding from Ballistic Ventures and Ten Eleven Ventures.

Trala Inc., an online music school, closed an $8 million Series A round led by Seven Seven Six.

• Elon Musk’s cost-cutting targets at Tesla pressure EV rivals 
   
• These people avoid the TikTok app, not the TikTok videos 
   
• Google halts download of Chinese app Pinduoduo over security concerns
   
• Chinese antigraft watchdog lodges corruption allegations against ex-head of chip conglomerate
   
• Fleetcor strikes board agreement with activist shareholder D. E. Shaw
   
• ChatGPT helped win a hackathon

• PitchBook’s new tool uses AI to predict which startups will successfully exit (TechCrunch)
   
• Crypto wants its shine back (New York Times)
   
• Boom times in San Francisco’s AI underground (The Information)

This newsletter was compiled by Angus Loten and Zachary Cole.

WSJ Pro Venture Capital is a premium service of The Wall Street Journal. We cover venture capital and the global startup ecosystem. Share your tips, comments and questions: vcnews@wsj.com

The Team: Matthew Strozier, Yuliya Chernova, Brian Gormley, Angus Loten, and Marc Vartabedian.

Follow us on Twitter: @wsjvc