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Here’s what you need to know today in startup and venture news, updated by the ¸½½üÉÏÃÅ News staff throughout the day to keep you in the know.

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Didi Raises $4.4B In IPO

Chinese ride-hailing giant raised $4.4 billion in its IPO after pricing its shares at $14 apiece, the top end of its range. Didi’s fully-diluted valuation comes out to more than $70 billion, . The company, which bought ‘s operations in China in 2016, is backed by investors including and . Shares of Didi are expected to begin trading on Wednesday.

–Sophia Kunthara

Financial regulators levy historic $70M fine on Robinhood

Financial regulators have ordered stock trading app to pay $70 million for what they call “systemic supervisory failures” and “significant harm” caused to consumers related to a variety of issues dating back to 2016 for the popular platform, .

The penalty, which includes a $57 million fine plus $12.6 million in restitution to consumers, is the largest-ever levied by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the agency said Wednesday. The regulator said that its investigation found that Robinhood was negligent in communicating important information to users and exposed them to overly risky investments such as options. The company also suffered from multiple outages on its platform amid heavy trading of so-called “meme stocks,” which disrupted trade for its users, which include many younger investors.

Robinhood has said in statements that since early 2020 it has taken a number of corrective steps, including providing more customer support and monthly account reviews and beefing up its legal team.

Robinhood, which has raised $5.6 billion from investors and is getting ready for an IPO, separately paid $65 million to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission late last year to settle charges that it had misled users about its sources of revenue. Bloomberg earlier this week that the IPO, which was initially slated for June, has been delayed amid scrutiny from the SEC of Robinhood’s cryptocurrency business.

— Marlize van Romburgh

Turntide Technologies raises $225M for smart motors

Sunnyvale, California-based , developer of a self-described smart motor system that it says consumes significantly less energy than rivals, raised $220 million in convertible note financing.

Major backers in the financing include , , and . The investment brings Turntide’s total financing to $400 million.

Founded in 2013, Turntide markets its technology toward multiple industries, including commercial buildings, agriculture and transportation, as a way to  reducing carbon emissions.

— Joanna Glasner

Gaming and entertainment

Turkey’s Dream Games raises $155M: Istanbul-based gaming studio raised $155 million in Series B funding led by and . The funding comes a few months after the release of the startup’s hit game Royal Match.

New funds

BMW i Ventures announces new fund: , BMW’s venture capital firm, announced its second major fund, a $300 million fund focused on sustainability, automotive and transportation, manufacturing, and supply chain industries.

Public offerings

Taboola completes SPAC merger: Online advertising unicorn is set to begin trading on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol TBLA. The company went public through a merger with a SPAC, ION Acquisition Corp. 1.

—ÌýJoanna Glasner

Cybersecurity

Versa Networks raises $84M Series D: San Jose, California-based cybersecurity company raised a $84 million Series D co-led by investors and , with participation from existing investors including . The company now has raised a total of $196 million.

Versa competes in the Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) area of cybersecurity — which delivers networking and security from the cloud to a company’s network edge, avoiding potential bottlenecks in the datacenter. As companies move more to the cloud and toward edge computing, such security is seen as more vital.

— Chris Metinko

Enterprise software

dbt Labs closes $150M Series C: Philadelphia-based raised a $150M Series C co-led by , and . The round included participation from . The company has built an analytics engineering tool that allows for raw data in the warehouse to be prepared for analysis.

The company — formerly Fishtown Analytics — has raised a total of $192.4 million in funding, according to ¸½½üÉÏÃÅ.

— Chris Metinko