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Volatility Slows IPOs Again
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By Yuliya Chernova, WSJ Pro
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Good day. Everyone in venture capital felt jolted by recent events in the market. The one clear consequence of volatility is that the IPO window remains barely cracked.
“Deal flow started at a decent pace but failed to pick back up after the February lull, as hawkish signals from the Fed, renewed recession fears, and turmoil within the banking industry caused a spike in volatility,” is how public-offerings tracker Renaissance Capital put it in a preliminary report on the results of the first quarter.
Four venture-backed companies went public raising $584 million in the first quarter, marking the slowest first quarter by deal count since 2009. according to Renaissance. They averaged an 8% return.
On the bright side, the Nasdaq Composite Index stood in positive territory year-to-date, up 11.9%. Still, the likelihood of a robust welcome from public investors is low, giving companies fewer options for growth capital at a time when venture capital valuations are down and debt got more expensive.
And now on to the news...
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Binance founder Changpeng Zhao said the CFTC complaint is ‘unexpected and disappointing.’ PHOTO: HUGO AMARAL/ZUMA PRESS
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Binance sees $2 billion in outflows. Traders are pulling billions of dollars from Binance as problems plaguing the world’s largest crypto exchange continue to mount, The Wall Street Journal reports.
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The Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Monday sued Binance, alleging the exchange operated illegally in the U.S. and violated rules designed to prevent illicit financial activity. Last week, Binance announced it would charge fees on spot bitcoin trading again after cutting them to zero last summer. It also had to temporarily suspend spot trading for hours while it fixed a software error.
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As of Monday evening, Binance had experienced net outflows of $2.1 billion on the Ethereum blockchain over seven days, according to crypto data provider Nansen. Overall, Binance holds $63.2 billion in the exchange’s publicly disclosed wallets, Nansen data shows.
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$34 Billion
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Russia's budget deficit in the first two months of this year.
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Lawmakers Scold Fed Over Silicon Valley Bank Collapse
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Senators rebuked the Federal Reserve for failing to prevent the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank despite identifying risks beforehand, while the central bank’s top regulator blamed the firm’s executives for not fixing its problems, WSJ reports.
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In an appearance Tuesday before the Senate Banking Committee, Michael Barr, the Fed’s vice chairman for banking supervision, defended the actions of the Fed’s supervisors and said the central bank had privately raised concerns with SVB before its March 10 collapse and had given the lender poor ratings for managing its risks.
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FTX Founder Bankman-Fried Charged With Bribing Chinese Officials
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Prosecutors accused FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried of conspiring to bribe Chinese government officials to regain access to more than $1 billion in frozen cryptocurrency, in a new indictment that charged him with violating U.S. anticorruption law, WSJ reports.
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The indictment, unsealed Tuesday, is the third Mr. Bankman-Fried has faced since the collapse of the crypto exchange. It alleges that in 2021 he authorized bribing one or more Chinese government officials with at least $40 million in cryptocurrency to regain access to accounts that the country’s law enforcement had frozen as part of a continuing investigation into a party that traded with his crypto-investment firm, Alameda Research.
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Climate Funding Gets Squeezed by Volatile Markets
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The interest-rate increases and market volatility that hit risky investments last year have finally caught up with green startups, WSJ reports.
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In the first quarter, funding for these companies has fallen almost as much as total venture-equity funding. Clean-energy startups have privately raised about $8 billion in equity in the first quarter, a drop of nearly 40% from a year earlier and the lowest figure since 2020, PitchBook data show.
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People
CoinFund, a Web3 investment firm with offices in New York and Miami, appointed Jenna Pilgrim as head of portfolio growth. She was previously at Mayflower Strategic.
Cemvita, a provider of technologies for the decarbonization of intensive industrial processes such as natural resource extraction, promoted Tara Karimi to chief science officer and appointed Liz Dennett to the post of chief technology officer.
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Graphiant, a San Jose, Calif.-based provider of next-generation edge services, scored $62 million in Series B funding led by Two Bear Capital.
Hygraph, a Berlin-based federated content management platform, landed a $30 million Series B round led by One Peak.
Type One Energy, a Middleton, Wis.-based fusion energy startup, completed a $29 million round co-led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, TDK Ventures and Doral Energy Tech Ventures. The company also appointed Christofer Mowry to the post of chief executive. He was previously CEO at General Fusion.
Perplexity AI, a San Francisco-based conversational answer engine, raised $25.6 million in Series A funding. New Enterprise Associates led the round, with General Partner Peter Sonsini joining the company’s board.
OQmented GmbH, a Germany-based provider of technology for the manufacturing of augmented or mixed reality glasses, snagged $20 million in Series A financing from investors including Vsquared Ventures.
Mixergy, a U.K.-based home energy and heat storage technology provider, secured a £9.2 million investment from EDP Ventures, Oxford Science Enterprises and others.
Cega Finance, a Singapore-based decentralized finance application, picked up a $5 million investment led by Dragonfly Capital.
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Jack Ma has generally avoided public statements or media events in recent years, after he gave a speech critical of China’s financial regulations. PHOTO: CFOTO/ZUMA PRESS
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