Friday, and what a week it has been! 🫠

Hope you have a happy weekend, everyone. We ran out of time to write much today (our new job is keeping us busy), but for the newest StrictlyVC Download, we were able to catch up this morning with the one and only Keith Rabois of Founders Fund, who may be even busier than we are. For one thing, in addition to actively investing, he's also running the company that he most recently cofounded, OpenStore, as its CEO.

Rabois called us from his office in Miami -- where he moved roughly three years ago and whose praises he continues to sing -- and we talked about a lot of things, including politics (he likes U.S. presidential candidates Nikki Haley and Governor Ron DeSantis but compared Vivek Ramaswamy's "foreign policy knowledge" to that of his two-year-old). We also talked about why his venture firm cut its newest fund in half, the deal in the Founders Fund portfolio that seems to have him most excited right now, and what he thinks of Marc Andreessen's latest manifesto.

Hope you enjoy it. Thanks to this week's sponsor, the PE/VC Cares Fundraiser, happening November 8 at the Pearl in San Francisco to raise money for the Help for Children foundation. More here and more Monday.:)

Prosecutors in the fraud trial of FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried compared the company's explanation of its customers' missing funds to the movie Dumb & Dumber, in which actor Jim Carrey claims that IOUs are “as good as money.”

Identity management provider Okta has been hacked, leading its stock to drop 11.5% today in heavy trading.

Elon Musk confirmed on his platform today that X will soon launch two new premium tiers - one with ads and one without. "The current premium plan promises to show 'half ads' to subscribers," TechCrunch observes.

Now Google and Meta are also dropping out of Web Summit in response to comments by CEO Paddy Cosgrave about the Israel-Hamas war. 

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Zhipu, a four-year-old Beijing startup that is developing foundational generative AI models à la OpenAI and Anthropic, raised a $340 million round. Investors included Alibaba, Tencent, Ant Group, Xioami, and HongShan. TechCrunch has more here.

Cosmos Innovation, a Singapore startup that is designing solar panels using perovskite silicon tandem solar cell technology, raised a $16.8 million Series A round led by Temasek's Xora Innovation, with additional participation from Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavors and Two Sigma Ventures. The company has raised a total of $19.7 million. TechCrunch has more here.

FieldPulse, an eight-year-old Dallas startup that develops scheduling, invoicing, and customer relationship management software for field service businesses, raised a $21 million Series B round led by Fulcrum Equity Partners, with previous investors Capri Ventures and Superseed Ventures also participating. More here.

Forge, a three-year-old San Francisco startup that rewards gamers who connect their gaming accounts to Forge for activities such as playing games, completing achievements, and participating in the community, raised an $11 million seed round. Makers Fund, Bitkraft Ventures, and Animoca Brands co-led the deal, with additional capital provided by Hashkey Capital, Polygon Ventures, Formless Capital, and Adaverse. VentureBeat has more here.

Hayden AI, a four-year-old San Francisco startup that develops hardware and software to provide governments with bus lane and bus stop enforcement capabilities, raised a $53 million Series B round. Drawdown Fund was the deal lead. More here.

Imbue, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that is developing foundational generative AI models, raised a $12 million Series B extension at a $1+ billion valuation, increasing the total size of the round to $212 million. Investors in this tranche included Eric Schmidt and Amazon's Alexa Fund. Reuters has more here.

Neo, an Indian startup that provides wealth and asset management services for businesses, sovereign and pension funds, large family offices, and individuals with an "ultra-high-net-worth," raised a $35 million round. Peak XV Partners led the transaction. TechCrunch has more here.

Overstory, a five-year-old Amsterdam startup that uses satellite imagery and AI to provide vegetation management services to electric utilities, raised a $14 million Series A led by B Capital, with The Nature Conservancy also chipping in. TechCrunch has more here.

Sidebar, a San Diego startup that is developing a group peer coaching program focused on driving individual career growth, raised a $13.5 million seed round from Foundation Capital, Scribble Ventures, and Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp. TechCrunch has more here.

Warmly, a three-year-old San Francisco startup that is focused on providing warm leads for sales departments by pushing data about people who are in active "buy mode" on a website, raised an $11 million Series A round led by Felicis and including NFX, Zoom, F-Prime Capital, and Maven Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Beluga, a San Francisco startup that aims to help consumers manage their crypto investments, raised a $4 million seed round led by Fin Capital, with Anagram, UDHC, Dispersion Capital, Aptos Labs, 2 Punks Capital, Borderless Capital, Kyber Capital, 186 Ventures, W11 Capital, and Rubik Ventures also stepping up. More here.

Cloover, a one-year-old Stockholm startup that enables vendors of renewable energy technologies to offer their services as a subscription, raised a $7.4 million pre-seed round led by 9900 Capital, with QED, Broadhaven Ventures, Index Ventures' Scout Fund, and Centrotec also anteing up. EU-Startups has more here.

Harvest Thermal, a startup based in Berkeley, Ca., that is developing a smart panel to help homeowners make their heat pumps operate more efficiently, raised a $4 million round led by Earth Foundry, with MUUS Climate Partners, Starshot Capital, and Portfolia also contributing. The company has raised a total of $11 million. The San Francisco Business Times has more here.

Luzia, a months-old, Spain-based startup that's trying to address the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking market for chatbots, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Khosla Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Poppins, a five-year-old French startup that develops digital therapeutic musical video games for children with neurodevelopmental disorders, raised an $8.5 million round led by Eurazeo, with Verve Ventures, Allianz France, and HEC Ventures also taking part. The company has raised a total of $13.7 million. Tech.eu has more here.

SwingVision, a four-year-old startup based in Saratoga, Ca., that has built a tennis coaching and analytics app, raised a $6 million Series A round led by Authentic Ventures. SportsPro Media has more here.

A good coach goes a long way. Especially when it comes to money. That’s where Cleo comes in. She’s the world’s first AI assistant dedicated to personal finance. Cleo's advice is personalized and guides you toward making smarter decisions with your hard-earned cash and avoiding overdrafts. Recently named a Forbes 2023 Next Billion-Dollar startup with 100% YoY growth and $72m ARR, learn more about Cleo and why 71% of users feel more optimistic about their financial future.

Newly retired Golden State Warriors star Andre Iguodala is retiring from pro basketball to focus on his other career: startup investor. He tells Dealbook that he'll run Mosaic, a $200 million venture fund that he just raised with his longtime business partner, Rudy Cline-Thomas to invest in seed- and early-stage teams in enterprise software, fintech health care and sports companies. More here.

Dropbox is reportedly giving back over 165,000 square feet of its San Francisco headquarters to the landlord, representing more than a quarter of its space there. Nearby, adds CNBC, Uber is reportedly close to subleasing part of its headquarters to OpenAI. Office vacancies in the city are at their highest level since at least 2007, says the outlet.

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon is retiring from his side hustle as a DJ.

Elon Musk is claiming that he and his engineers are responsible for a bullet-ridden Cybertruck that was captured on video recently. "We emptied the entire drum magazine of a Tommy gun into the driver door Al Capone style. No bullets penetrated into the passenger compartment," he wrote on X.

A new IBM chip inspired by the human brain surpasses "state-of-the-art AI chips" on benchmark image recognition tests while consuming one fifth less energy, according to a new paper in Science.

A startup that offers fans a way to buy personalized videos from celebrities was supercharged by pandemic boredom and venture capital. All it had to do was grow forever.

How Meta plans to incorporate AI into its products.

Why LLMs have a hard time with math.

Apple TV+ is reportedly saying sayonara to Jon Stewart's talk show because of the comedian's interest in delving into two delicate subjects for the Cupertino colossus: AI and China.

New York is considering requiring a criminal background check for anyone interested in buying a 3D printer.

According to a Yahoo/YouGov poll, only 22% of Americans are donning Halloween costumes this year. Could "Halloween anxiety" be the culprit?

In an example of what social psychologists call the Dunning-Kruger effect, a Warsaw man tried to steal jewelry from a store by posing as a mannequin.

You loved his jeans, so why not buy his house? Tommy Hilfiger's impeccable Greenwich estate can be yours for $9.65 million.