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Former FTX exec testifies against SBF, US VC deal volume drops to lowest level since 2018

Former FTX Head of Engineering, Nishad Singh, testified that SBF used FTX customer deposits, via loans from Alameda, to contribute $90M+ to political campaigns and invest “hundreds of millions” in K5, a California investment company led by Michael Kives - Link

In Q3, US VC deal value fell to its lowest level since Q2 2018; 2023 is on pace to be the worst year for US VCs in terms of deal value since 2019 - Link

Stack Overflow cut 100 employees, primarily in sales and support roles, as more of its traffic gets taken away by AI-powered coding tools - Link

Nirvana Insurance, an insurtech startup that uses AI and IoT to calculate risk models for trucking fleets, raised a $57M Series B led by Lightspeed - Link

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Sunny Madra joins Jason to demo an AI-enabled survey tool (1:31), ChatGPT’s multimodal UI feedback (44:58), Google generative image search (59:15), and much more! - Link

ScyllaDB, a startup building NoSQL databases for low-latency, high-throughput workloads, raised a $43M round led by Eight Roads Ventures - Link

Prove Identity (fka Payfone), a startup building a smartphone-based ID verification solution, raised $40M at a $1B+ valuation co-led by strategic investors MassMutual and Capital One - Link

Netflix will air its first live sports event, a golf tournament called "Netflix Cup," which will feature "Drive to Survive" F1 drivers facing off against "Full Swing" golfers - Link

Patreon has acquired Moment, a live-streaming platform that integrates events and ticketed experiences like podcast recordings and concerts; the acquisition will not require regulatory approval, meaning the deal was likely less than $100M - Link

This Week in Startups

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