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Cannabis startup Caliva raises $75M from former Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz  

San Jose cannabis company Caliva is proving that weed’s still hot, even as some markets cool off. The company is announcing a $75 million round of investment that includes participation from former Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz  and football legend Joe Montana . If that pair seems unlikely, it just goes to show that cannabis attracts an eclectic mix. [ Tech Crunch ]

Asian food delivery startup Chowbus raises $4M

When one food delivery startup fails, another gets funded. Chowbus, an Asian food ordering platform headquartered in Chicago, has brought in a $4 million “seed” funding led by Greycroft Partners and FJ Labs, with participation from Hyde Park Angels and Fika Ventures. The startup, aware of the challenges that plague startups in this space, says offering exclusive access to restaurants and eliminating service fees sets it apart from big-name competitors like Uber Eats, Grubhub, DoorDash and Postmates. [ Tech Crunch ]

Palantir could be heading for a huge IPO, but its CEO says it almost went out of business several times because he didn't know how to pitch to investors

• In the early days of the company, Palantir struggled with selling to investors and nearly went out of business several times, Palantir CEO Alex Karp said. 
• Palantir had to pull the plug on its early products — a challenge because it was already limited on funding. 
• Fast forward to today, and Palantir is looking at IPOing at a $41 billion valuation as soon as this year. [ Business Insider ]

Rory Stirling, ex-BGF Ventures, has joined London seed VC Connect Ventures

When BGF Ventures, the London-based early-stage venture fund of BGF, had a change in “strategy” in early 2018, seeing partners Harry Briggs, Rory Stirling and Wendy Tan White step down, it was always going to be interesting to see where the VC trio would land.

Earlier this week, this publication broke news that Tan White — who previously co-founded and exited SaaS website builder Moonfruit, and was also a general partner at Entrepreneur First — has joined Alphabet’s X (formerly Google X) as vice president. [ Tech Crunch ]

Eugene Wei's Novel Mental Models for Technology

In the car yesterday, I listened to an interview with Eugene Wei, who described the dynamics of consumer technology as if they were plain as day. It’s rare to hear someone lucidly describe complex topics like the reasons for Twitter’s success and struggles. Eugene wrote many of his ideas in this post though there are some ideas that I found only in the podcast. [ Tomtunguz ]

Swarm Technologies raises $25M to deploy its own 150-satellite constellation

Swarm Technologies is one of several companies looking to populate low Earth orbit with communications satellites, setting itself apart with the sheer smallness of its devices — and of course with the notoriety of having defied the FCC and earned a fine. But investors are bullish, and the company has just raised a $25 million Series A round to put 150 of its tiny SpaceBEEs in orbit. [ QZ ]

Going long on LA, India, AI and tech infrastructure March Capital raises $300 million

March Capital Partners, the Los Angeles-based venture capital firm, has raised $300 million for its latest fund.

It’s another indicator that the Los Angeles technology ecosystem is coming of age, but also a sign that March’s core investment strategies — to invest in companies applying artificial intelligence to business use cases and investing in the next wave transforming computing infrastructure — are paying off.  [ Tech Crunch ]

TomTom sells its telematics business to Bridgestone for €910 million

It’s a bit unusual to mention a Japanese tire manufacturer on Tech.eu for the second time within a week but it seems like Bridgestone is getting closer to the European tech ecosystem. Today, it was announced that Bridgestone Europe has paid €910 million for the telematics business of TomTom, the Amsterdam-based location technology company known for its satnav devices and map services. [ tech.eu ]  

Sequoia-backed NEXT gets $97M as investment in logistics heats up

Despite its “unsexy” reputation, the logistics industry is attracting massive investment from venture capitalists.

With a fresh $97 million in Series C funding, NEXT joins a fleet of heavily funded logistics platforms, including Flexport, Huochebang and Convoy. The company, which connects shippers and carriers through an online marketplace, raised the capital from Brookfield Ventures, with participation from Sequoia Capital and logistics solutions provider GLP. NEXT declined to disclose the valuation or whether its latest financing included debt. [ Tech Crunch ]

Live from Davos: Hyperloop and Venture Capital

Hyperloop and the investments behind breakthrough technologies like them. We are live from Davos with an action-packed morning in the Sanctuary. Comment below to get in on the conversation.

Sustained Drug Release Company UroGen Aiming to Raise $150 Million on Nasdaq

Nasdaq-listed UroGen Pharma Ltd., an Israel-based company developing a gel for the sustained release of drugs in the field of urology, has announced on Wednesday it aims to raise $150 million via public offering. Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, JP Morgan, and Jefferies are the joint bookrunners, and Oppenheimer & Co. is lead manager for the offering. [ Calcalis tech ]

Product Hunt Radio: Rethinking the traditional VC model with Bryce of Indie.VC

Bryce Roberts is co-founder and managing director of a different kind of VC firm, Indie.VC. He recently announced v3 of their fund model which is focused on backing revenue-generating companies that are seeking financial independence from the traditional VC rat race. [ Crunch base ]

All Raise Founders Describe Their All-Female VC Coalition

All Raise founders Maha Ibrahim, general partner at Canaan, Kirsten Green, founding partner at Forerunner Ventures, and Aileen Lee, founder and partner at Cowboy Ventures, speak to Bloomberg's Emily Chang on the set of Studio 1.0 about their all-female VC coalition.

Confluent Propels Data Architecture into Event Streaming Era with $125 Million Series D

Confluent, Inc., the enterprise event-streaming platform pioneer, today announced the closing of a $125 million Series D round led by Sequoia Capital, bringing Confluents total funding to $206 million. Existing investors Index Ventures and Benchmark also participated in this round. The Series D raise caps a banner year for Confluent, with 3.5X subscription bookings growth year over year. [ Global banking and finance  ]

Live from Davos: Hyperloop and Venture Capital

Hyperloop and the investments behind breakthrough technologies like them. We are live from Davos with an action-packed morning in the Sanctuary. Comment below to get in on the conversation.

Theranos documentary review: The Inventor’s horrifying optimism

A blood-splattered Theranos machine nearly pricks an employee struggling to fix it. This gruesome graphical rendering is what you’ll walk away from HBO’s “The Inventor” with. It finally gives a visual to the startup’s laboratory fraud documented in words by John Carreyrou’s book “Bad Blood” [ Tech Crunch ]

Tracking Political Manipulation Through Social Media - Samantha Bradshaw

Samantha Bradshaw is a researcher at the Computational Propaganda Project and a doctoral candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute. She’s been tracking the phenomenon of political manipulation through social media. 

What is a sovereign wealth fund? 

Sovereign wealth funds represent around $8 trillion in assets under management. That's more than the world's hedge funds. That's more than private equity. And they number in the hundreds, not thousands.

SWFs like Norway's Government Pension Fund or Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund form part of the broader class of institutional asset allocators. A significant distinguishing characteristic, though, is that an SWF's initial assets typically come from the wealth generated from natural resources, with the investment vehicle of the SWF representing a means of diversifying and providing income for future generations. This mandate means they do not have the acute near-term obligations of, say, a pension plan, and it's this investment horizon that's crucial for understanding the strategic differences of SWFs from other asset allocators.  [ Pitchbook ]