Good day. Moderne Ventures has raised roughly $230 million for its third fund, tapping investors in part on the thesis that relationships with companies in the real-estate industry will give the firm a leg up in spotting promising technology.

Chicago-based Moderne targets seed- to Series B-stage deals with a particular specialty in backing startups in real-estate and related sectors such as finance and insurance. Roughly 30% of investors in Moderne’s new MV Core Fund III are companies in the real-estate sector or related industries, giving the firm insight into problems the industry seeks to tackle and potential customers for its portfolio companies, said founder and managing partner Constance Freedman.

“This is how we can supersize our returns,” Freedman said. “They’re helping us find things that customers actually want since they are the customers.”

Venture firms typically raise most of their capital from sources such as institutional investors, endowments and public pensions.

Read the full story here.

And now on to the news...

Biotech IPOs. Three drug developers went public Friday, and their performance over the coming weeks will act as a barometer of investor interest in biotechnology initial public offerings, WSJ Pro reports.

• Cancer drugmaker Bicara Therapeutics, MBX Biosciences, which develops treatments for endocrine and metabolic disorders, and immunology-focused Zenas BioPharma upsized their offerings and made their debuts on Nasdaq.
   
• Boston-based Bicara increased its offering to 17.5 million shares from 14.7 million and went public at $18, the top of its expected range. MBX, based in Carmel, Ind., boosted its IPO to 10.2 million shares from 8.5 million, and also priced at the high end of its range, going public at $16.
   
• Waltham, Mass.-based Zenas sold 13.2 million shares, up from more than 11.7 million, priced at $17, the midpoint of its expected range.  

Oracle announced a partnership with Amazon’s cloud unit, cementing its strategy of joining with once sworn rivals, and finding its own niche in the cloud and artificial intelligence era, The Wall Street Journal reports. The Austin-based tech giant, which has lagged behind Amazon, Microsoft and Google in cloud-computing for years, has now built partnerships with all of them. And it is doing so by wielding the flagship database software that has for decades powered large businesses’ operations, transactions and customer data.

Global private-credit fundraising is declining for a third straight year, despite the rising popularity of the asset class among institutional investors, WSJ Pro reports. Overall capital collected fell to $215.4 billion last year from $245.8 billion the previous year, marking a 12.4% decrease, according to research provider PitchBook Data. This year through Aug. 22, credit fund sponsors had raised $118.8 billion, suggesting a further slowing. “Investor allocations have been challenged because of the significant exposure that investors have had to private equity and venture capital,” said Jeffrey Griffiths, the global head of private credit at Campbell Lutyens, a firm that provides capital-raising services for private-fund managers.

The fanatic amateur investors behind Palantir. Even though it isn’t a consumer brand, Palantir Technologies has developed an avid fan base among amateur investors, WSJ reports. They exchange detailed analysis and plenty of memes on social-media platforms such as X, and make videos dissecting everything from earnings reports to product news on YouTube. Roughly half of Palantir’s available shares are owned by individuals, according to FactSet. That is a higher portion than most companies including Tesla, a favorite among small investors.

People

Lessen, a property management technology provider, appointed Sean Miller as chief revenue officer. He previously held the same role at Sensor Industries.

Second Front Systems, a Wilmington, Del.-based software accreditation and deployment platform, closed a $70 million Series C round led by Salesforce Ventures.

Reverion, a Germany-based startup building carbon-negative power plants, scored $62 million in Series A funding led by Energy Impact Partners.

Inflammatix, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-headquartered startup developing novel diagnostics that rapidly read a patient's immune system to improve patient care, closed a $57 million Series E round led by Khosla Ventures and Think.Health.

XP Health, a San Carlos, Calif.-based digital-first vision care platform, landed $33.2 million in Series B funding led by QED Investors.

Pieces Technologies, an Irving, Texas-based clinical generative AI startup, picked up a $25 million growth financing round from investors including Concord Health Partners and Rittenhouse Ventures.

Nirvana, a New York-based health insurance verification technology provider, secured $24.2 million in Series A financing led by Northzone.

Landbase, a San Francisco-based go-to-market automation platform, emerged from stealth with $12.5 million in seed funding from investors including A* and 8VC.

Operant AI, a San Francisco-based runtime application protection platform, raised $10 million in Series A funding co-led by SineWave Ventures and Felicis. Patricia Muoio of SineWave Ventures and Nancy Wang of Felicis will join the company’s board.

• Waymo to offer self-driving cars only on Uber in Austin and Atlanta
   
• Biden takes aim at China’s Temu and Shein with trade crackdown
   
• Vodafone’s U.K. merger with Three raises competition concerns, regulator says
   
• Google’s breakup is starting to get priced in
   
• Apple has a hot new product. It’s a hearing aid.

This newsletter was compiled by Marc Vartabedian 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 X: @wsjvc