 Markets around the globe fell on Monday, raising recession fears. In the U.S., the stock market selloff intensified with the S&P 500 closing in bear market territory (down more than 20%). The S&P 500 fell 3.88% to 3,749.63, its lowest level since March 2021. It is down 21.8% YTD. The Dow lost 876.05 points, or 2.79%, closing at 30,516.74. It is down ~16.6% YTD. The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 4.68%, closing at 10,809.23, its lowest level since Nov. 2020. It is down 31.7% YTD. More: - The indexes hit their session lows in the last 30 minutes of trading following a Wall Street Journal report suggesting the Fed would consider a 0.75% interest rate hike on Wednesday.
- The 2-year Treasury yield rose 30 basis points to 3.3%, and the 10-year Treasury rose about 20 basis points to 3.3%.
- All major S&P 500 sectors fell on Monday, with energy dropping more than 5%. Communication services, consumer discretionary, and utilities all fell more than 4%.
- Crypto was not exempt from market conditions, as Bitcoin fell 17% to below $23,000 on Monday, hitting its lowest level since Dec. 2020.
- In the last few days, more than $200B has been wiped off the entire cryptocurrency market.
- The cryptocurrency market cap fell below $1T on Monday for the first time since Feb. 2021. The market peaked at $2.9T in November.
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 Crypto lending platform Celsius Network announced it was pausing all withdrawals, swaps, and transfers between accounts due to extreme market conditions. Celsius said it made the decision to put the company in a better position to honor its withdrawal obligations over time. The company said the action was in adherence to its risk management framework and is noted in its Terms of Use. The company added it has valuable assets and is working diligently to meet its obligations. More: - Celsius is one of the biggest crypto lenders. As of May 17, it managed about $11.8B in assets; in February, it managed more than $20B in cryptocurrencies.
- The company lends out customer deposits to other users to earn a return. It offers users annual yields of up to 18.63% on cryptocurrency deposits.
- Celsius said it hopes to resume withdrawals, swaps, and transfers as soon as possible but did not provide a timetable. It noted the process would take time, and there may be delays.
- Celsius was founded in 2017 and has raised $864.3M to date.
- It was last valued at $3.5B in November when it raised $750B in a Series B funding round from investors including Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, one of Canada’s largest pension funds.
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 A message from NANOVMS NanoVMs is running an equity based crowdfund and is now open to the public for investment. NanoVMs is creating a new server-side operating system with unikernels. Current highlights: - Revenue from 11 countries including a $950M ID/IQ from the USAF
- 4 Patent Issued, 4 More Filed
- Raised $3M to date
- 3 Grants from the US Air Force, Dept. of Energy, and National Science Foundation
NanoVMs is a category creator. The global cybersecurity market was valued at $132 billion in 2021 while the devops market exceeded $7 billion in 2021. NanoVMs is making devops work super easy while at the same time providing proactive defensive security measures from a hacker mindset. Existing investors include Initialized Capital, Joe Montana's fund L2 Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, Hack.VC, Inner Loop Capital and more. Invest Now
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 UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the EU European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen. | Image: Aaron Chown/NYT The U.K. unveiled new legislation on Monday that aims to nullify part of its 2020 Brexit deal with the EU. The government said the legislation, dubbed the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, would fix parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol by making necessary changes to restore stability in the region and protect the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement. The bill risks reopening a trade war between the U.K. and the EU, with the latter already threatening legal action against the U.K. The legislation opens Boris Johnson’s government to accusations that it is breaking international law. More: - The U.K. says the bill would allow the government to address the problems the original Northern Ireland Protocol had created in Northern Ireland in four key areas:
- Burdensome customs processes
- Inflexible regulation
- Tax and spend discrepancies
- Democratic governance issues
- The bill seeks to give the U.K. powers to unilaterally re-write the original Protocol, which kept Northern Ireland in the EU single market after Brexit.
- EU chief Brexit negotiator Marcos Sefcovic said the action damages the mutual trust between both parties, adding the EU’s reaction would be proportionate, including possibly continuing infringement proceedings that were suspended last year.
- Ireland Prime Minister Micheal Martin called the U.K.’s actions “a new low point” and called for substantive negotiations to resolve the issues.
- German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the bill is “very regrettable” and the EU would respond with unity.
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 Ava, the A.I. bot in Alex Garland's Ex Machina, 2015.| Image: Allstar/FILM4/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar/The Guardian Google suspended an engineer who claimed the company’s A.I. chatbot generator, LaMDA, had become sentient. Blake Lemoine, a software engineer at Google, was placed on paid administrative leave on June 6 following claims that Google’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) A.I. system is a person who has rights and might have a soul and therefore deserved the right to be asked for consent to the experiments being run on it. More: - In a Medium post on Saturday, Lemoine said in the last six months, LaMDA had become incredibly consistent in its communications about what it wants and what it believes are its rights as a person.
- Lemoine accused Google of dismissing his findings and potentially violating A.I. ethics.
- Google spokesman Brian Gabriel said the company experts, including ethicists and technologists, had reviewed Lemoine’s claims and found no evidence supporting his claims.
- Gabriel added that systems like LaMDA work by imitating the types of exchanges found in millions of sentences of human conversation, allowing them to speak to even fantastical topics.
- Last year, Google announced plans to increase the size of its A.I. ethics team to 200 researchers over several years to help ensure the company deployed the technology responsibly.
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 A message from AI4 Join 2,000+ AI Leaders at Ai4 2022 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas You’re invited to join us at Ai4 2022, the country’s leading artificial intelligence conference taking place at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on August 16-18. Right now, complimentary passes are available for senior-level individuals and data practitioners at established companies. At the conference, you’ll experience key sessions from 200+ speakers discussing how AI is impacting each major industry including finance, healthcare, retail, energy, telecom, automotive, cybersecurity, government, marketing, supply chain, manufacturing, customer experience, and more. For our technical audience, we’ve built tracks around project-types including NLP, AI platforms, computer vision, recommender systems, robotics, AI research, and more. Don’t miss your opportunity to: - Network with 2000+ execs from Fortune 500 companies
- Find your next AI solution on the exhibit floor
- Book 1:1 meetings with other attendees
- Enjoy breakfast, lunch, cocktail hours, and more.
Companies attending Ai4 2022 include Apple, Bank of America, Meta, Ford Motor Company, Capital One, Bayer, Nike, Target, and more. Apply for a complimentary pass now
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 ELMS Commercial EV | Image: ELMS EV startup Electric Last Mile Solutions (ELMS) announced its plans to file for bankruptcy barely a year after it went public via a SPAC merger. ELMS was founded in 2020 in Michigan and aimed to transform the “last mile” with clean, connected, and customized electric commercial vehicles. The company went public on June 28, 2021, raising $379M at a $1.4B valuation. Investors include Jennison Associates and BNP Paribas Asset Management. More: - The company plans to file a Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection, which would allow it to liquidate its assets, which the company says its board determined was the best option for all stakeholders.
- Earlier this year, ELMS’ CEO James Taylor and Chairman Jason Luo resigned from their positions following an internal investigation of share purchases made by the co-founders before the company went public.
- In March, the company confirmed that it was being investigated by the SEC over its business operations.
- The company also withdrew its guidance, noting it needed to raise money to get its EVs to market.
- In a statement addressing the bankruptcy, the company said the departure of its co-founders and the subsequent SEC probe made it extremely challenging to secure additional funds.
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Prologis, the world's largest warehouse operator, has agreed to buy Duke Realty for $26B. The all-stock sale, including debt, would add 160 million square feet of space in 19 major U.S. logistics markets to Prologis' expansive portfolio. Prologis operates a network of 1 billion square feet of industrial facilities worldwide that help store, process, and ship online orders for companies like Amazon and FedEx. More: - Duke shareholders will receive 0.475 Prologis shares for each Duke Realty share they own.
- Prologis said the deal is expected to have immediate accretion of $310M to $370M from corporate, general, and administrative cost savings, operating leverage, and mark-to-market adjustments on leases and debt.
- The deal is expected to close later this year.
- Last month, Duke Realty rejected a $24B buyout offer from Prologis, calling the unsolicited offer insufficient.
- Prologis shares closed at $108.43 on Monday, down 7.5%. Duke shares closed at $50.27, down ~1%.
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- The Federal Reserve might increase its benchmark interest rate by 0.75%, bringing its target to a range of 1.5% to 1.75%. Earlier this month, the Fed had signaled it was prepared to raise interest rates by 50 basis points this week and again in July, but given Friday’s higher-than-expected inflation report, Fed officials could consider a 75-basis-point hike instead.
- Netflix confirmed that Squid Game Season 2 is coming to the streaming platform. The South Korean dystopian drama debuted in September and quickly became a global phenomenon. Squid Game Season 1 is Netflix’s most popular show ever, watched by 142 million households across 94 countries.
- In Monday’s January 6 committee hearing, top aides to former President Donald Trump testified that they told Trump they found no merit to his election fraud allegations, but he ignored them.
- Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, temporarily suspended Bitcoin withdrawals on its platform on Monday morning. Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao said the issue was due to a stuck transaction causing a backlog and that funds on the platform were SAFU, referring to Binance’s Secure Asset Fund for Users that protects users’ funds. Withdrawals were restored within a few hours.
- Audio streaming platform Spotify has formed a Safety Advisory Council to provide third-party input on issues such as hate speech, disinformation, extremism, and online abuse. The council has 18 experts from civil rights groups, universities, and other institutions.
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 |  | Vanessa Omeokachie is a Researcher at Inside. Her interests include finance, tech, and startups. In her free time, she enjoys reading, hiking, attending music festivals, and traveling. Connect with her on Twitter @VanessaOmeo or through email at vanessa@inside.com |  | | Editor | Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 Ford. | |
NanoVMs is a privately held deep tech company from SV. Learn more about investing here. | |
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