Lattes With Fungi, Bill.com’s Not-So-Boring Debut, Plus Healthbots

Welcome to the Crunchbase News Weekend Update. An email form of this post went out Saturday morning. Happy reading!

As we all begin attending holiday parties, here’s a not so subtle reminder that your tipped-over champagne glass and dropped hors d’oeuvres don’t clean themselves. Someone has to pick it up, so be mindful while you’re celebrating.

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Now let’s get festive with a company we covered this week that wants you to swap that whole milk in your peppermint latte with some DNA-sequenced fungi. Perfect Day Foods, a Berkeley-based startup, raised $140 million for its dairy-free milk protein.

Other funding continued with Zeus, a corporate housing startup that got an investment from Airbnb among other founders. There was also Ride Home Media, which raised $1 million to build a podcast network, and a drone startup that netted $32 million. Bigger rounds included Charlotte-based Passport’s $65 million Series D, and Hometap’s $100 million to get a stake in customers’ homes. More on funding in Last Week in Venture.

From the M&A front, Apple bought Spectral Edge and Credit Karma bought Haven Money. And from the new fund side, Operator Collective raised its debut $45 million from over 100, well, operators. Meanwhile Piva closed a first fund at $250 million to focus on the energy industry.

Plus, Builders VC chatted with us to share how it invests in “nonsexy” industries.

In the latest turn of events with the scooter industry saga, which we all thought (and I hoped), was over, we saw signs of consolidation within the once highly saturated market. And that reminds me, despite momentum, one report showed that investor confidence as a whole is down.

Finally, Bill.com may seem like a boring IPO compared to its controversial ride-hailing predecessors, but its debut on the public market was impressive.

To close on a more cheerful note than we began, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite holiday drinks (and hacks) of all time: Trader Joes’ Winter Wassail. Thank me later.

Cheers,
Natasha

<em>Illustration: <a href=”https://www.behance.net/user/?username=DomGuzman”>Dom Guzman</a></em>