Good day. Amazon.com has led an $81 million funding round for battery startup Blue Current, a deal that comes as the e-commerce giant is expanding its fleet of electric delivery vans.

James Hamilton, a senior vice president and distinguished engineer at Amazon, is joining Blue Current’s board and will help guide technology development and commercialization, the startup said.

Blue Current is making battery cells at a facility in Hayward, Calif., and said its batteries could be on the market by 2030. Founded in 2014, Blue Current says its silicon solid-state batteries can power a variety of vehicles and offer them longer range and faster charging rates than existing electric-vehicle batteries.

The venture-capital arm of industrial conglomerate Koch, investment firms Piedmont Capital and Rusheen Capital Partners, and investment bank Allen & Co. participated in the Series D round, which closed in September but was only announced today.

Solid-state batteries are prized by automakers looking for safer alternatives to combustible lithium-ion batteries, as well as for their potential to store greater amounts of energy and charge faster than their lithium-ion rivals. But costly manufacturing and other hurdles have kept them from becoming commercially viable.

Read the full article here.

And now on to the news...

Rocket deal. SpaceX is kicking off a secondary share sale that would value the rocket maker at $800 billion, people familiar with the matter said, surpassing OpenAI to make it the most valuable U.S. private company.

• The company’s chief financial officer, Bret Johnsen, told investors about the sale in recent days, and SpaceX executives have also said the company is weighing a potential initial public offering in 2026, some of the people said.
   
• The $800 billion valuation is double the $400 billion value it fetched in a recent secondary share sale.

Following a streak of disappointing performance, tension over profit-sharing and complaints about a negative culture, Sequoia’s $9 billion hedge fund is trying a new approach to leadership: “No kings.” The firm has installed a group of four leaders in an attempt to make the hedge fund’s operation look similar to that of its more famous relative, Sequoia Capital, the giant venture-capital firm, according to people familiar with the fund. It is an unusual move for the hedge fund world, where co-portfolio manager relationships have been known to blow up and clients tend to like a single boss. Sequoia Capital Global Equities is a large hedge-fund investor in tech and has long been seen as a way for clients to get some access to Sequoia’s private investments. It is a growth investor with bets on both public and private tech companies. Its private portfolio has included Stripe, TikTok parent ByteDance, SpaceX, Chinese food-delivery giant Meituan, Chime Financial and failed crypto firm FTX.

It is one of the biggest, unresolved economic debates: Just how many white-collar professionals will lose their jobs because of artificial intelligence? At The Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live Qatar event last week, the question came up on stage, over meals and in conversations alongside the conference. Even the most optimistic technology executives said the labor market should brace for at least some disruptions in the months ahead. Exactly how much pain workers endure—and which roles face the greatest likelihood of being overtaken by AI—brought conflicting views.

Correction: The photo of the Excelsior Sciences lab in Thursday’s Health Pulse newsletter was by JW Headshots. The newsletter incorrectly credited the photo to Brooke Alexander/Studio Brooke.

Exits

Cancer-diagnostics company Foresight Diagnostics has been acquired by cell-free DNA-testing company Natera. Natera said it acquired Foresight in an all-stock transaction for $275 million up front and $175 million in earnouts tied to the achievement of revenue- and reimbursement-based milestones. Foresight venture backers included Civilization Ventures.

Paradigm Health said it has raised $78 million in Series B financing. The company says its artificial-intelligence platform and clinical network make clinical trials faster and more accessible, and that it supports Phase 1 to Phase 3 oncology trials for several large drug companies. ARCH Venture Partners led the financing.

Simular, a San Francisco-based startup building AI infrastructure for autonomous computers, raised $21.5 million in Series A funding led by Felicis.

Addis Energy, a Cambridge, Mass.-based clean ammonia production startup, nabbed $8.3 million in seed funding. At One Ventures led the round, which saw participation from Engine Ventures and Pillar VC.

Auxilius Pharma, a Boston-based biotechnology startup, collected $4 million in Series A funding from investors including ff Venture Capital to advance its lead cardiovascular program.

Corma, a Paris-based startup helping teams manage their internal software stack, was seeded with a €3.5 million investment. XTX Ventures led the round, which included participation from Tuesday Capital, Kima Ventures and others.

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This newsletter was compiled by Marc Vartabedian and Matthew Strozier.

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 and Marc Vartabedian.