| Hi, Agen. Tech layoffs seem to be receding, but we’re also noticing many companies lay off their entire staff — in effect, shutting down. Is this the start of the “mass startup extinction event” some tech watchers have been warning about? On a sunnier note, we also look at the startups that raised the most money last week, and five interesting companies that got funding in July. After a kind of sleepy July, August came roaring back with a whole bunch of nine-figure funding rounds to U.S. startups last week. That includes big checks to a networking startup headed by the former longtime CEO of Cisco, a company working on turning greenhouse gasses into a useful material it calls “AirCarbon,” and a startup hoping to make shopping for car insurance suck a little less. A total of 14 tech startups joined our Layoffs Tracker last week. Four of them laid off all their workers and shut down. At the top of the shut-down list was a hot indoor farming startup that raised nearly $700 million from venture investors before going public via SPAC. A handful of funding deals caught our eye in July: a couple of startups applying AI in interesting ways, one looking to preserve your privacy, another fighting wildfires with AI, and one in spacetech. At some point, you may be approached by a strategic buyer or a private equity fund interested in buying your company. How should you consider an unsolicited offer? Guest author and startup adviser Gaurav Bhasin walks us through a list of questions to ask if a buyer comes knocking. A year ago, well-known venture firms including Andreessen Horowitz were near the top of our list of most active U.S. venture investors, making at least 10 bets on innovative startups. But most firms have since eased off their investment pace. Let’s look at some of the top firms by the numbers. Hopin, the virtual events platform backed by big-name investors, saw its valuation skyrocket to $7.75 billion by the end of the pandemic. But last week, the company said it agreed to sell off its core events product and other assets — an ominous sign for the dozens of other startups related to virtual events that raised millions of dollars from venture investors in 2020 and 2021. | 
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