As we all begin attending holiday parties, here’s a not so subtle reminder that your tipped-over champagne glass and dropped hors d’oeuvres don’t clean themselves. Someone has to pick it up, so be mindful while you’re celebrating.

Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily

Now let’s get festive with a company we covered this week that wants you to swap that whole milk in your peppermint latte with some DNA-sequenced fungi. Perfect Day Foods, a Berkeley-based startup,��raised $140 million for its dairy-free milk protein.

Other funding continued with Zeus, a corporate housing startup that got an investment from Airbnb among other founders. There was also Ride Home Media, which raised $1 million to build a podcast network, and a drone startup that netted $32 million. Bigger rounds included Charlotte-based Passport’s $65 million Series D, and Hometap’s $100 million to get a stake in customers’ homes. More on funding in Last Week in Venture.

From the M&A front,��Apple bought Spectral Edge�����Ի���Credit Karma bought Haven Money. And from the new fund side,��Operator Collective raised its debut $45 million from over 100, well, operators. Meanwhile Piva closed a first fund at $250 million to focus on the energy industry.

Plus, Builders VC chatted with us to share how it invests in “nonsexy” industries.

In the latest turn of events with the scooter industry saga, which we all thought (and I hoped), was over,��we saw signs of consolidation within the once highly saturated market. And that reminds me, despite momentum, one report showed that investor confidence as a whole is down.

Finally, Bill.com may seem like a boring IPO compared to its controversial ride-hailing predecessors, but its debut on the public market was impressive.

To close on a more cheerful note than we began, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite holiday drinks (and hacks) of all time: Trader Joes’ . Thank me later.

Cheers,
Natasha

<em>Illustration: <a href=”https://www.behance.net/user/?username=DomGuzman”>Dom Guzman</a></em>

1. Start near the food, preferably the people hovering around the cheeseboard.
2. Instead of asking about a person’s job, ask if they want to find a way to divide and conquer the revolving hors d’oeuvres. Trust me, that kind of collaboration surpasses any connection swapping business cards could manage.

Want this email every weekend? Subscribe here to Crunchbase News emails! 

With the very serious housekeeping out of the way, let’s get into the stories that come out of our conversations here at .

To address the impeachment in the room, let’s get into the slew of executives exiting this week: Juul’s CEO, Kevin Burns,��stepped down amid the teen vaping crisis, and WeWork’s CEO, Adam Neumann,��stepped down after a botched IPO. Plus, reports came out that another SoftBank-fueled real estate company faced its own series of departures. Picking on SoftBank a bit more,�� unpacked how he thinks the Vision Fund’s method of valuing companies looks a bit off.

On a sweeter (and for now, safer) note,��Sweetgreen raised $150 million, and Divvy Homes raised $43 million to help renters become homeowners. We also wrote about the “Chime of Mexico,” a Dublin-based no code solution, and a startup that raised $4.5 million to help us create less trash.

On the IPO front,�� gave us a snapshot of Peloton’s pricing. Feel free to send over . (Sadly, the IPO parade is about to slow down due to the holidays.) For more on Sophia’s reporting and how Crunchbase News thinks about IPOs, check out our first installment of a podcast mini-series: Some Personal News.

On a final, local note, San Francisco may want to be the “funky, fog-laced city of steep hills and charming Victorians,” but as  points out,��the data says otherwise.

Until next week,

�������ܲ��ٰ����پ��Dz�:��.

After living in San Francisco for six months, I’ve started to roll my eyes at Brex-branded hot chocolate with Bailey’s. What makes me pause, however, is seeing Patricia. She’s the florist in my neighborhood who tirelessly tends to the orchids every day but somehow also remembers my name.

So, half a year in, I’m a bit more cynical about  (let’s get more creative than weather jokes). This makes it all the more exciting when exceptions arise. This week there were two.

Uber, the ride-hailing company announced $5.48 billion in operating losses last week, and now is looking at stopping anniversary balloons as a cost-saving measure.

I guess Uber popped after all.

Next up in the news you don’t hear every day: I stood in line for ice cream that’s valued, apparently, at $200 million. The millennial pink jumpsuits didn’t throw me off, but the fact that one customer would’ve paid an entrance fee of $300 dollars just for an Instagram picture definitely did.

While the quirks stopped there, it wasn’t a calm week by any means. One of  filed to go public: WeWork. Our team broke down the big numbers�����Ի���charted the (ludicrous) S-1 for you. Cloudflare also filed with strong revenue growth (big numbers,��charts), and Postmates will likely deliver next month.

Now onto some funding news. Lucidworks raised $100 million for AI-powered search; Energy Vault landed $110 million from SoftBank’s Vision Fund for a jenga-style tower of power; and OpenSpace, a construction tech startup,��raised $14 million from investors. Also,��Twitter led a $100 million investment�����Գٴ���Sharechat,��India’s rival to WhatsApp. In acquisitions,��Tumblr was bought (again) and Scaleworks scooped up Nextopia.

Finally, read about how gender disparities continue to exist within venture capital firms. That in mind, read about where your potential future technical co-founder likely went to school.

Until next week,

Natasha

��.��.����DZ����Ƿ��� about living in San Francisco, and Crunchbase News on Twitter�����Ի���Facebook for daily updates.

�������ܲ��ٰ����پ��Dz�:��

Hot takes feel lukewarm these days. I’d wager that if we spent less time arguing about cold brew versus iced coffee, that same energy could be pivoted to shed light on more pressing topics.

Complacency about caffeine is not a sin, people.

Want this email every weekend? Subscribe here to Crunchbase News emails! 

For example, we wrote about how Webflow raised a $72 million Series A this week. A debate followed on whether it was fair to compare Webflow to other companies that have raised outsized Series As. In this case, it felt helpful to use a take to clarify how ���ٳ󾱲԰����about the ever-changing definition of this round.

Plus, it sets the scene for the next section I want to get into: the funding rounds we covered this week.

Starting big, Ibotta, an in-app coupon company,��raised a nine-figure Series D. It’s the only tech unicorn in Colorado right now. Another company worth around $1 billion dollars, Cybereason,��raised $200 million led by Softbank (We covered SoftBank’s earnings as well, so head here to learn about how the Vision Fund is doing).

While SoftBank’s name pops up in some of the biggest deals we see, reporting on smaller news gives us the best ins for big trends. For example, when Airbnb acquired another company,��we looked at the broader travel startup market. Or as Lyft and Uber reported their Q2 performance,��we asked what it meant for other ride-hailing companies. We also got into the cannabis market with LeafLink’s $35 million raise, and how Smart News is joining a friend group of Chinese-news focused unicorns. For quirkier hits, check out Last Week In Venture.

Beyond breaking news,�� took us through a growing trend of hypergiant rounds, which are private financing totals of $250 million or more. We also took a look at two different geographic regions: ’s look at a lukewarm Texas VC scene, and  inaugural column on Boston,��which had its slowest July in VC funding since 2014.

Finally, to better learn about the people behind the constant deals we read about,�������Գٱ��������ɱ����NFX’s co-founder James Currier, and I chatted with Alex Marshall from First Round Capital. Learn about why one thinks Buzzfeed is dead, and why the other can’t handle hearing about crypto.

Until next week,

�������ܲ��ٰ����پ��Dz�:��.

P.S. I put out a personal newsletter every Monday, if you’re interested!