Good day. The financial standing of millennials has improved dramatically in recent years, as The Wall Street Journal showed in an article last week. This also turns out to be good news for nascent wealth-technology startups.

According to a report published last week by J.P. Morgan, millennials’ expanding share of wealth in the U.S. has helped power the wealth-tech sector’s growing dominance over other fintech segments such as payments and financial services infrastructure.

Last year, there were 155 seed deals for U.S. wealth-tech startups, more than any other fintech segment, the report said. Payments startups netted 89 seed deals, the second-highest among fintech segments. Roughly a decade ago, the two segments were about equal but have since seen a gradual widening in the number of seed deals each generates.

“This indicates millennials' desire for greater control over their finances as they accumulate more wealth,” said Ashraf Hebela, head of startup banking in J.P Morgan's innovation economy business. “Wealth-tech companies are stepping up to meet this need.”

Hebela said that brokerage and digital advisers have raised the most capital—$15.3 billion in the last five years—among wealth-tech companies. These startups include self-directed trading platforms, robo-advisers and other automated financial planning products.

J.P. Morgan itself offers several wealth-tech tools, including a digital personal finance aide.

Millennials’ share of U.S. wealth has grown from 2% in 2014 to 13% in the first quarter of this year, the report said.

And now on to the news ...

Tariffs are on the table, whatever the election outcome. Tariffs are becoming an entrenched tool tying together geopolitics and trade, and they are playing a bigger role in long-term manufacturing and sourcing decisions, The Wall Street Journal reports. Nowhere are they hitting harder than in China, where importers and exporters are navigating an increasingly complicated regime of levies.

• The new era of tariffs kicked off under the Trump administration with duties on imports from a swath of countries and a focus on Chinese products. The Biden administration kept most of the tariffs in place, and then added further duties on Chinese steel, semiconductors and electric vehicles, citing national security concerns and an industrial policy aimed at reviving American manufacturing. 
    
• The two candidates in this year’s presidential election look set to continue the trend, as trade, manufacturing and the tools to tie them together take a prominent role in the campaign.

Private-equity firms are riding a wave of optimism, expecting U.S. interest-rate cuts to help shake off the long dealmaking malaise, WSJ Pro reports. The prospect of imminent Federal Reserve rate cuts is now fueling high hopes among both fund managers and investors. Private-equity dealmakers are salivating at the prospect of cheaper debt supercharging mergers-and-acquisitions, which have already started improving this year.

Advanced Micro Devices, the chip maker better known as AMD, unveiled plans Monday to spend $4.9 billion to acquire ZT Systems, a privately held company that designs and manufactures servers and other types of data-center hardware, WSJ reports. But AMD won’t be keeping most of it; the company said Monday that it plans to seek a buyer for ZT’s manufacturing business once the deal closes. AMD instead will be getting about 1,000 “world-class design engineers with deep expertise in motherboard, power, thermal, networking and rack design,” Chief Executive Officer Lisa Su said on a conference call Monday morning.

Funds

Radical Ventures raised nearly $800 million for its first venture growth fund, which will focus on investments in artificial intelligence.

HighPost Capital’s early-stage investment arm closed its debut fund with $100 million in commitments. Consumer-focused HIPstr Fund I has made six investments to date.

Fabric Cryptography, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based startup building computing chips, software and cryptographic algorithms, scored $33 million in Series A funding co-led by Blockchain Capital and 1kx.

Capitalize, a New York-based platform that helps digitally locate and transfer retirement assets, closed a $19 million Series B round led by RRE Ventures.

UptimeAI, a San Francisco-based provider of plant-monitoring software for industrial businesses, raised $14 million in Series A funding. WestBridge Capital led the round, which included participation from Aditya Birla Ventures and others.

ModelOp, an AI governance software provider, secured $10 million in Series B financing led by Baird Capital.

Mudstack, a provider of file-versioning and asset-management tools for the game industry, picked up a $4 million investment led by Anthos Capital. The company also named James Gwertzman to the post of chief executive officer. He is a co-founder and previous CEO of PlayFab.

Apheros, a Zurich-based startup whose technology helps cool down data centers, landed nearly $2 million in pre-seed funding led by Founderful.

• Mike Lynch, British tech entrepreneur, among the missing after yacht sinks off Sicily coast

• The anti-Adam Neumann of the co-working industry

• GM is cutting more than 1,000 workers from its software business

• Tesla trails rivals in offering driver-assistance features in China

• The 50-year-old technology that brands and retailers are trying to quit

   

• A new loneliness cure: Apps that match you with strangers for a meal (Washington Post)
   
• Inside The Engine Accelerator, the anti-Y Combinator for 'tough tech' startups (Business Insider)
   
• Waymo is developing a roomier robotaxi with less-expensive tech (CNBC)

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, Angus Loten and Marc Vartabedian.

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