Good day. Pear VC, a Menlo Park., Calif.-based venture firm led by Founding Managing Partners Mar Hershenson and Pejman Nozad, closed on $432 million for its fourth fund, in a tough market for venture fundraising.

What may be an even bigger challenge for seed funds like Pear is moving their portfolio companies to the Series A stage.

The count of early-stage rounds in the first three months of this year dropped to its lowest showing since the third quarter of 2017, according to data from the latest PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor report. There were just 825 early-stage deals, generally classified as Series A or B, in the first quarter, according to the data.

That’s a problem for seed funds that need their portfolio companies to get marked up and get resources to grow so they can eventually exit big.

“Fewer companies meet the ‘Series A’ criteria,” Hershenson said. Yet money is available for the right businesses, she said. “We’re seeing that companies that have true product market fit and strong growth metrics are still raising competitive Series A rounds with multiple offers,” she added.

Pear has been investing into services it offers, confident that will help its portfolio startup success rate. The firm added about 10 people to its team in the past year, a time when some venture firms have been downsizing.

Pear spends 10% of its management fee on its four-person talent team, for example, Hershenson said. The investment is worth it, she said. Pear made more than 30 hires for its portfolio companies between November and the end of March.

“For early-stage founders, hiring the right team is often the difference between them reaching or missing their goals,” Hershenson said.

The SPAC boom cost investors billions. Insiders in the companies that went public were on the other side of the trade, The Wall Street Journal reports.

• Executives and early investors in companies that went public via special-purpose acquisition companies sold shares worth $22 billion through well-timed trades, profiting before share prices collapsed.
   
• Some of the biggest winners were Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores’s investment firm Platinum Equity, British billionaire Richard Branson and convicted Nikola founder Trevor Milton. They were among many insiders who got shares on the cheap and sold them as they rose in value, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of insider-trading disclosures associated with more than 200 companies that did SPAC deals.

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes reported to prison on Tuesday to start her 11-year sentence for defrauding investors, marking a closing chapter in the downfall of one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent entrepreneurs after revelations about the company’s unreliable blood-testing technology, WSJ reports.

• A spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons confirmed Holmes arrived at the Bryan facility Tuesday afternoon local time.
   
• She was escorted into the facility by prison officials, said current inmate Rhonda Rosales, who is serving a 13-year sentence after pleading guilty to allowing the sale of methamphetamine at her home. Part of the prison was shut down during Holmes’s arrival, she said.

Tech executives and artificial-intelligence scientists are sounding the alarm about AI, saying in a joint statement Tuesday that the technology poses an extinction risk as great as pandemics and nuclear war, WSJ reports.

• More than 350 people signed a statement released by the Center for AI Safety, an organization that said it works to reduce AI risks.
   
• “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” the organization said.
   
• The signatories said they wanted to open up discussion about the most severe risks of AI. Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, the company that developed ChatGPT, and Mira Murati, the company’s chief technology officer, are among those who signed the statement.

Vectara, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based conversational search platform, raised $28.5 million in seed funding led by Race Capital.

Acadeum, an Austin, Texas-based course-sharing platform for colleges, closed an $11.9 million Series B round led by Green Street Impact Partners.

CUR8, a London-based carbon removal startup, raised £5.3 million $6.6 million) in pre-seed funding. Led by GV, the round included participation from CapitalT. The company is building tools to accelerate the carbon removals industry. Carbon removal technologies include afforestation, direct air capture and enhanced weathering.

• Once mighty Intel struggles to escape ‘mud hole’
   
• The AI boom runs on chips, but it can’t get enough
   
• Nvidia touches $1 trillion market cap
   
• Ex-Coinbase manager settling SEC’s crypto insider-trading claims
   
• Fast fashion’s curious comeback
   
• To work fewer hours, they put AI on the job
   
• Inside Samsung’s and Apple’s manufacturing moves outside of China (Video)
   
• China launches three astronauts, including first civilian, into orbit
   
• Why Microsoft’s bid for Activision Blizzard hinges on Call of Duty
   
• Kia, Hyundai thefts continue three months after carmakers deployed fix
   
• FTX founder could have some charges dropped if Bahamas objects
   

• Assault allegations plague a $1.4 billion home eldercare startup (Bloomberg)
   
• MoonPay CEO, other executives cashed out before crypto business dropped (The Information)
   
• How can Congress regulate AI? (The Conversation)

This newsletter was compiled by Yuliya Chernova 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