Good morning, Bay Area. In national news, former President Donald Trump said he’s launching a new media company with its own social media platform — Trump Media & Technology Group and its “Truth Social” app — as a rival to platforms that have banned him. Here in the Bay Area, it’s wet and nasty outside — and for almost 10,000 PG&E customers in the East Bay — the power is out as well. And just as the rain has begun to fall in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a drought emergency for the entire state, which now formally extends to San Francisco County. Here’s Thursday’s local business news.
Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) will begin to require unvaccinated employees to test for Covid-19 every time they want to go inside a corporate office. The new mandate will also apply to employees who decline to report their vaccination status to the company, Apple told its employees this week. Vaccinated staff will also be required to take rapid tests once per week. (Bloomberg)
Chase Center will get a safety check by city officials following the death of one fan and injuries to two others at a Phish concert on Sunday night. A case was opened on Monday after a complaint made to the city’s Department of Building Inspection citing “unsafe” guardrails and a “steep” incline in the upper levels at the venue. Inspectors will examine the site’s safety records with the building owners, an action that could possibly lead to a review of the center by the safety board, regardless of whether code violations are found. (San Francisco Chronicle)
Black Sheep Foods, a San Francisco startup that produces plant-based meats and wild game, is debuting plant-based lamb this month at San Francisco’s popular Greek eatery Souvla. Black Sheep Lamb, inspired by a New Zealand heritage breed, Tunis, is the first product to market from the company. Co-founders Sunny Kumar, a tech entrepreneur, and Ismael Montanez, a biochemist, started the company in 2019 after noticing a lack of bold-tasting plant-based meats on the market.
And speaking of plant-based food innovators, San Francisco-based Eat Just Inc. announced on Wednesday that the key ingredient in its plant-based Just Egg products has received approval from the European Food Safety Authority’s expert panel on nutrition, paving the way for the initial launch of Just Egg in Europe in mid-2022 after the European Commission concludes its review. The news does not include the company’s cell-based chicken product, which became available in Asia at the end of 2020. (News release)
Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) announced Thursday that it has bought a U.K. chat app called Sphere. Sphere raised around $30 million between 2017 and 2019 from investors like Index Ventures, Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky, Tinder co-founder Sean Rad and Sequoia venture capitalist Mike Moritz. Terms of the deal were not released. (CNBC)
San Francisco-based GrubMarket said it has completed the acquisition of Vancouver-based Funtech Software, a provider of e-commerce systems and online grocery software to both online grocery companies and brick-and-mortar grocery stores, enabling them to manage their business online and reach more consumers. This is GrubMarket’s first acquisition in Canada and its first software technology R&D center outside the country. (News release)
Stripe agreed to buy Recko, an Indian reconciliation software startup that had raised around $7 million from firms like Vertex Ventures and Prime Movers Lab. (Axios)
Honeycomb, a San Francisco observability platform used by engineering teams to visualize, analyze, and improve cloud application performance, announced Wednesday the close of a $50 million Series C round, led by New York based global private equity and venture capital firm Insight Partners, with participation from existing investors Scale Venture Partners, Headline (formerly e.ventures), Storm Ventures, Industry Ventures, and NextWorld Capital. This round of funding brings the total capital raised to $96.9 million.
Jupiter Intelligence, a San Mateo-based climate risk analytics company, raised $54 million in Series C funding co-led by ClearVision Ventures and MPower Partners. (Axios)
San Francisco startup Udemy Inc. Wednesday set a price range for its IPO, which is expected to happen next week. At the top of its range, the online education company would raise $484 million and have an initial market capitalization of nearly $4 billion. The company’s venture backers valued Udemy at around $3.3 billion as part of its Series F round a year ago. Udemy plans to list its shares on the Nasdaq under the symbol “UDMY.” (Silicon Valley Business Journal)
Houzz, a Palo Alto-based home design platform valued by VCs at $4 billion, hired Goldman Sachs to lead its IPO. (Axios)
In-N-Out has double trouble and is in a pickle of its own making. The SoCal-based chain got in the Covid news after it became the first San Francisco restaurant to be closed for violating the city’s indoor vaccinate mandate when its Fisherman’s Wharf location was temporarily shut down by the Department of Public Health on Oct. 14 for not checking dining customers’ vaccine cards. The company has been aggressively unapologetic about the situation. Now, Contra Costa County’s health department has fined the burger chain’s Pleasant Hill location $750 for the same thing.
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