Good day. Last week we asked about how the stock market selloff is affecting the outlook for venture investment.

• Murat Bicer, general partner of CRV, said, “As words like plunge and retreat continue to be associated with the major market indices, early-stage businesses ought to batten down the hatches. Savvy CEOs will want to make sure they have enough cash runway and extra cushion to make it through what could be a bumpy back half of the year.”
   
• Blair Silverberg, co-founder and chief executive of Hum Capital, said, “Market volatility, rising interest rates, and the corresponding stock market selloff undoubtedly can lead to panic among VCs—both on the investor and the founder sides. VCs will likely grow increasingly wary of risk, which could turn the market against founders, in VCs’ favor.”
   
• William J. Taranto, president of Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, said, “While the recent public-market selloff may change expectations around the potential for near-term exits, venture investors are typically concerned with longer-term trends. In our case, digital health remains an obvious and significant opportunity to transform healthcare. Interest rate fluctuations may change the math a little, but venture-backed companies driving better health outcomes at lower cost will generate value in the long run.”

This week’s question: What advice are you giving to entrepreneurs who haven’t lived through a downturn?

Please email responses to vcnews@wsj.com.

And now on to the news...

Rough results. SoftBank Group Corp., one of the world’s most aggressive high-tech investors, said Thursday it lost more money in its last fiscal year than it ever has—$13.2 billion—and will cut back its pace of new investments, The Wall Street Journal reports. “The world is in a chaotic situation,” said Chief Executive Masayoshi Son, citing Covid-19 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “In this chaotic world, the approach we at SoftBank should take is defense.”

• The rough results at the Tokyo-based conglomerate come as investors throughout the globe are dealing with a dramatic pullback in tech stocks, particularly the young, high-growth companies that were a magnetic investment for investors until recently.
   
• Rising interest rates and other global concerns have caused investors to flee unprofitable companies with lofty valuations, causing pain well beyond SoftBank.

Instacart Inc.’s plans to launch a public offering puts the grocery-delivery company up against this year’s volatile stock market and longer-term questions about how consumers shop for staples, WSJ reports. San Francisco-based Instacart said late Wednesday that it confidentially filed for an initial public offering, less than two months after cutting its valuation by nearly 40%. By filing confidentially now, Instacart is positioning itself to go public as early as September, according to people familiar with the offering. The filing comes at a challenging time for Instacart amid a volatile stock market, and reflects optimism among some companies and their advisers that the choppy stock and IPO markets may be temporary.

WeWork Inc.’s first-quarter loss narrowed sharply as gross desk sales reached prepandemic levels with the gradual return of employees in the U.S. to in-person work, WSJ reports. The shared-office company said Thursday its top line rose 28% from a year ago, with 166,000 desks sold, the highest level since the first quarter of 2020. Revenue was higher than WeWork’s forecast for the period and the company raised the low end of its revenue outlook for the year. The results are the latest sign that in-person work is slowly normalizing, after the pandemic forced many office workers to work from home and companies reassessed their real estate needs.

Funds

Web3 platform Flow launched a $725 million fund. Investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue Management, Greenfield One, Union Square Ventures, Cadenza Ventures, Coinfund and several others.

Growth capital firm Endeit Capital added €50 million to its third fund, closing the vehicle with €303 million in commitments, to continue investing in the information and communications technology sector across Europe. Recently, the German-Dutch investor made two major investments in the Nordics and opened an office in Stockholm. KFW Capital is among the new fund’s limited partners.

Elsewhere Partners closed its second fund with $175 million in commitments to continue investing in business-to-business software companies located outside of traditional venture capital hubs. The firm also promoted Sloane Child and Nick Stoffregen to principal. Before joining Elsewhere Partners, Ms. Child was a business operations director at Grovo. Mr. Stoffregen was previously a senior associate at Serent Capital.

People

Full Harvest, a business-to-business marketplace specializing in surplus and imperfect produce, appointed Nicolas Genest as chief technology officer and Brenton Keath as chief financial officer. Mr. Genest was most recently founder and chief executive of CodeBoxx. Mr. Keath was previously chief financial officer and chief operating officer at Rakuten Medical. In addition to the hires, Full Harvest added $5 million in growth financing from Rabo Investments’ Rabo Food & Agri Innovation Fund and JAL Innovation Fund to close the company’s Series B round at $28 million.

Credit card startup Petal Card Inc. named Ali Heron to the post of chief technology officer. Prior to joining the company, she was a senior vice president at Two Sigma Investments. In January, New York-based Petal said it raised a $140 million Series D round from investors including Tarsadia Investments, Valar Ventures, Volery Capital Partners, RiverPark Ventures and Afore Capital.

Identity verification provider Veriff appointed Caroline Mogford as chief marketing officer. She was most recently senior vice president of marketing at Qualtrics. Veriff has raised $200 million in funding from investors including Tiger Global Management, IVP,  Accel, Mosaic Ventures and Y Combinator.

Exits

Schneider Electric agreed to acquire AutoGrid Systems Inc., a provider of artificial intelligence-powered optimization and controls for the energy industry, for an undisclosed amount. In October 2021, Redwood City, Calif.-based AutoGrid raised an $85 million Series D2 round from SE Ventures, Moore Strategic Ventures, National Grid Partners, Shell Ventures, GS Futures, Microsoft and others.

Digital-payments processor Checkout.com agreed to purchase digital identity verification startup ubble. Terms weren’t disclosed. In January, London-based Checkout.com raised $1 billion in a share sale from investors including Franklin Templeton, Qatar Investment Authority, Insight Partners and Tiger Global Management. Ubble is backed by Partech, Breega and Kima Ventures.

Verbit Inc., a transcription and captioning platform, purchased closed captioning services provider U.S. Captioning for an undisclosed sum. New York-based Verbit is backed by investors including Third Point Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, Disruptive AI, Vertex Growth, TCP Venture Capital and Samsung Next.

Rippling, an employee data and operations management platform, fetched $250 million in Series D funding, valuing the company at $11.25 billion. Bedrock and Kleiner Perkins co-led the investment, which included support from previous backers Y Combinator, Sequoia Capital and others.

Aiven, a Helsinki-based cloud-data infrastructure manager, secured $210 million in Series D funding at a pre-money valuation of $3 billion. Eurazeo led the round, which included participation from IVP, Atomico, Earlybird Venture Capital, World Innovation Lab, Salesforce Ventures, and funds and accounts managed by BlackRock.

Chainalysis Inc., a New York-based blockchain data platform, snagged $170 million in Series F financing, bringing the company’s valuation up to $8.6 billion. Lead investor GIC was joined by Accel, Blackstone, Dragoneer Investment Group, FundersClub and Emergence Capital in the round.

Carbon Clean, a London-based carbon capture technology provider, nabbed $150 million in Series C funding led by Chevron. New investors including Samsung Ventures, Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures and TC Energy also participated in the round, alongside existing backers Cemex Ventures, Marubeni Corp. and WAVE Equity Partners.

KuCoin, a cryptocurrency exchange, scored $150 million in pre-Series B funding, bringing the company’s valuation up to $10 billion. Lead investor Jump Crypto was joined by Circle Ventures, IDG Capital and Matrix Partners in the round.

MOMA Therapeutics, a Brighton, Mass.-based startup, completed a $150 million Series B round led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management to advance multiple precision oncology programs toward the clinic. Additional new investors Section 32, Pavilion Capital, Invus and LifeSci Venture Partners also contributed to the funding, which included returning backers Third Rock Ventures, Nextech Invest, Cormorant Asset Management, Casdin Capital, Rock Springs Capital, Creacion Ventures, Alexandria Venture Investments and others. Amit Sinha, head of life sciences investing within Goldman Sachs Asset Management, was added to the MOMA Therapeutics board.

Pyramid Analytics, an Amsterdam-based business intelligence and analytics platform, closed a $120 million Series E round. Led by H.I.G. Growth Partners, the funding included contributions from Clal Insurance Enterprises Holdings, Kingfisher Capital, General Oriental Investments, Jerusalem Venture Partners, Maor Investments, Sequoia Capital and Viola Growth. Scott Hilleboe, co-head of H.I.G. Growth Partners, will join the Pyramid Analytics board.

Dock, a full-stack payments and digital banking platform serving Latin America, grabbed $110 million in growth funding, giving the company a valuation of more than $1.5 billion. Lightrock and Silver Lake Waterman led the investment, which saw support from Riverwood Capital, Viking Global Investors and Sunley House Capital.

Talos Inc., a provider of institutional digital asset trading technology, collected $105 million in Series B financing, valuing the company at $1.25 billion. Led by General Atlantic, the round included support from Andreessen Horowitz, PayPal Ventures, Stripes, DRW Venture Capital, LeadBlock Partners, Castle Island Ventures, Notation Capital and several others.

6K, a North Andover, Mass.-based producer of sustainable advanced materials for energy storage and additive manufacturing powders, secured $102 million in Series D financing. Koch Strategic Platforms led the round, which included participation from Energy Impact Partners, Albemarle, HG Ventures and existing investors. Previous 6K backers include Volta Energy Technologies, Prithvi Ventures, LaunchCapital and Anzu Partners.

Hugging Face, a New York-based provider of ready-to-use machine learning models for businesses, raised a $100 million Series C round. Lux Capital led the funding, with additional participation from Sequoia Capital, Coatue Management, Addition and others.

Solfácil, a Brazilian solar power system platform, landed $100 million in Series C funding. Led by QED Investors, the round included additional contributions from SoftBank Latin America Fund, VEF and Valor Capital Group.

SirionLabs Inc., a Bellevue, Wash.-based contract lifecycle management platform, raised $85 million in Series D funding. Partners Group led the round, which included additional support from Avatar Capital, Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global Management. Partners Group’s Cyrus Driver will join the company’s board.

• Twitter freezes hiring as two senior executives leave the company
   
• Apple is no longer world’s most valuable company
   
• Foxconn faces Covid logistics disarray in China
   
• AI hiring tools can violate disability protections, government warns
   
• California’s AI-powered wildfire prevention efforts contend with data challenge
   
• Spring Lane Capital backs Soluna Computing’s data centers
   
• FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried buys 7.6% stake in Robinhood

• Messaging app IRL says it has 20 million users. Some employees have doubts about that. (The Information)
   
• How Twitter lost the celebs (Washington Post)

This newsletter was compiled by Matthew Strozier 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 and Marc Vartabedian.

Follow us on Twitter: @wsjvc, @ychernova, @BrianPGormley, @marcvarta.