| Hi, Agen. The largest acquisition so far this year by a venture-backed startup just happened, and it’s not in enterprise software or any of the usual suspects for such deals. Instead, the $1.5 billion acquisition is by Metropolis, an AI- and computer vision-assisted parking technology platform. Plus, we look at startup funding in North America. And, as Sam Bankman-Fried goes on trial for the FTX collapse, we plot how the crypto exchange’s spectacular downfall impacted venture investment this year. If we had to summarize the North American investment environment in Q3 in three letters, “meh” might be a good pick. Last quarter was a decidedly ho-hum one for startup investing in North America, the largest venture market in the world. We saw a few big venture-backed IPOs, most notably Instacart and Klaviyo, debut to tepid early performances. But we also saw some big rounds led by AI and sustainable battery tech. And we saw a bit of recovery in later-stage financings. We break it all down here. Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial kicked off this week in a Manhattan federal courthouse. The disgraced crypto wunderkind faces seven counts involving fraud and conspiracy charges related to the implosion of FTX. Since the crypto exchange’s collapse is the biggest startup failure in history — yes, bigger than Theranos — we look at what’s happened in crypto investing and VC in general since it filed for bankruptcy almost a year ago. Related Crunchbase Pro list: Crypto Funding Since FTX’s Collapse Checkout-free parking startup Metropolis is taking logistics firm SP Plus private in a deal worth about $1.5 billion. The deal is the biggest M&A transaction of the year by a VC-backed company, per Crunchbase data. For the first three quarters of 2023, global startup funding reached $221 billion, marking a 42% decline, exclusive Crunchbase numbers show. Alarmingly, early-stage funding showed the steepest decline year over year compared to all other stages. But it’s not all bad news: late-stage funding, powered by huge rounds for AI startups and other sectors, actually increased. We break down our just-released Q3 funding data. Hey, Claude, how much are you worth? Anthropic, the ChatGPT rival with its own AI assistant Claude, is reportedly in talks with investors about raising another $2 billion in funding at a valuation as high as $30 billion. And speaking of ChatGPT, parent company OpenAI is reportedly in talks to sell shares at a staggering $90 billion valuation. In a new column, we look at that and the other big sums floating around artificial intelligence as the AI gold rush continues. | 
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