Chinese media called the TikTok deal extortion, signaling Beijing’s unwillingness to approve any deal that would see the company under complete American ownership. The reports follow contradictory understandings regarding the deal's ownership structure. Oracle released a statement claiming that ByteDance would retain no ownership, while ByteDance insisted that it would hold a controlling 80% stake.

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• Oracle claimed all shares in the new entity set up by the deal, TikTok Global, would be distributed to existing stakeholders.
• ByteDance released a statement underscoring its intent to retain its economic ownership of TikTok. It is operating with the understanding that Oracle and Walmart would own 20% of the new entity, with ByteDance controlling the rest 80% stake.
• Trump initially approved of the deal but retracted his support after learning that ByteDance would still control the new company. He also stipulated that the new entity create a $5B patriotic education fund, the news of which ByteDance claimed to have first heard from newspaper reports. 
• Oracle announced that the deal would create 25 thousand jobs, in addition to paying $5B into the treasury. Walmart claimed that TikTok Global would go public within 12 months.

Palantir projected revenue of over $1.05B-$1.06B for 2020 in its latest earnings report. This constitutes 41% growth YoY and is predicated on a 47% YoY rise in Q3 to around $278M-$280M. The news comes as the company is set to directly list on the NYSE on Sept. 30.

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• The company has yet to turn a profit and lost $579M in 2019, stable compared to 2018. Its cash-burn for 2019 came in at $165M, a 300% increase YoY. 
• The direct listing is expected to cost the company $54M.
• Despite well-publicized work for ICE, the SEC filing makes no explicit mention of this revenue source. It instead emphasizes military contracts. CEO Alex Karp calls Palantir’s work with ICE minimal, although it is Palantir’s second-largest US government client.
• Palantir was recently valued at $20B, though some are calling for that number to be reduced to $8.7B given its latest figures. It raised $2.6B to-date.
• Even More: Asana, a work management platform with $413M raised to-date, will directly list on the same day as Palantir.
• From Twitter: The NYT’s Erin Griffith noted that Palantir is particularly opaque regarding its governance structure, and directs readers to this article.
  

Analyses Made Easy

Charting the COVID Effect on Fintech*

*All graphs and figures are taken directly from the a16z report, which was put together by Anish Acharya, Seema Amble, Rex Salisbury, Matthieu Hafemeister, and Lauren Murrow. The report seeks to unearth the actual figures behind the widespread hype around fintech since the outbreak of the pandemic.

As interest rates remain at an all-time low, for those who kept their jobs, it is an excellent time to take out a loan. Charge-offs, which occur when a consumer fails to pay down a loan for six months, actually declined during the lockdown, with 25% of stimulus checks being used to pay down debt. Online loans, which were already on the up, saw a spike in interest (see graph).

The booming stock market has provided another avenue for fintech spending. Platforms like...

Quick Hits

• Russian search engine Yandex agreed to acquire the country’s top online bank Tinkoff for $5.5B in a cash-and-stock deal. The deal provides an 8% premium over its share price.
• Cloud-based IT team platform PagerDuty will buy Rundeck, a technical troubleshooting software provider, for $100M, 60% of which is cash, the rest in stock. Rundeck had only raised $3B to-date, providing a large exit.
• The co-creator of Facebook’s proposed Libra digital currency Morgan Beller will join NFX as a general partner. She will not focus exclusively on crypto, but on seed-stage companies in general.
• Electric truck-maker Nikolas’ CFO defended the company’s practices against allegations that it misled investors. The company’s CEO Trevor Milton left the company on Sunday and was replaced by former GM exec Stephen Girsky.
• Check out this deep dive into VC Mike Speiser’s strategies, which have seen his bets on Snowflake and Pure Storage pay massive dividends.
• Brands see 18.5% of e-commerce revenue from SMS marketing. See 6 top SMS campaigns here.* 

*This is a sponsored link.

Today's Funding 💸

Aerospace

• ICEYE (Finland), Synthetic-Aperture Radar small satellites: $87M C led by True Ventures, participation from OTB Ventures.

AI/ML

• Beyond Limits (Los Angeles, CA), industrial and enterprise-grade AI tech: $133M C led by Group 42.
• DeepCube (Tel Aviv, Israel), deep learning inference accelerator: $7M A led by Awz Ventures, participation from Koch Disruptive Technologies, Nima Capital.

Biotech/Health

• Virogin Biotech (China/Canada), biopharmaceuticals: $62M C led by CDH Investments, SDIC.
• Salvia BioElectronics (Eindhoven, Netherlands), neurostimulation platform targeting chronic migraine: $30.4M (€26M) led by Panakès Partners, INKEF Capital, SHS Gesellschaft für Beteiligungsmanagement, participation from BOM Capital, Thuja Capital, Dolby Ventures.
• Siolta Therapeutics (San Carlos, CA), microbiome-based medicines and diagnostics...