| Hi, it’s Katie Roof from San Francisco. Venture capital firms are selling private stock amid lackluster deal activity. But first... Three things you need to know today: • Salesforce will cut jobs at newly acquired Own, signaling a change in its deal strategy
• Qualcomm says expanding into new markets will generate $22 billion in sales by 2029
• T-Mobile contained a breach of its network before it reached customers’ phones In the not-so-distant past, there was a stigma in Silicon Valley if a venture firm sold a lot of shares in a portfolio company before an initial public offering. The secondaries — where backers of closely held companies sell stakes to others — were often seen as a sign that the firm didn’t believe in the startup’s continued growth. Yet after three years of an almost dormant tech IPO market, alongside challenges to mergers and acquisitions, secondaries are no longer viewed unfavorably. In many cases, the private stock sales have become the new exit, with secondary markets set to reach record levels this year. “The stigma is evaporating,” said Ravi Viswanathan, founder and managing partner at NewView Capital. He said that when he first started the secondaries-focused firm six years ago, the perception was different. When firms sold shares, people would ask, “Are you giving up on the company, what’s happening?” He said now it’s a “natural evolution” in the marketplace, especially since venture capitalists often don’t have the luxury of waiting 15 years for an IPO, because of pressure from their own investors. Large-scale company secondary transactions known as tender offers are not new, but the frequency has been greater. In recent months we’ve seen tender offer talks for companies like SpaceX, Stripe, Databricks, Wiz and Fanatics. OpenAI completed its own deal earlier this year. Some of the hottest names in Silicon Valley had already been taking advantage of the opportunity to provide employees and other shareholders liquidity for several years, but now we’re “seeing a big pickup” with the smaller unicorns, startups that have topped the $1 billion valuation, said Greg Martin, co-founder of private trading platform Rainmaker Securities. “Until an exit environment emerges,” in which it’s easier and more beneficial to go to the public markets or negotiate an acquisition, he expects the venture capitalists to continue to cash out.— Katie Roof The quest to make money from artificial intelligence, particularly among Big Tech companies, is taking many different avenues. Microsoft Corp. reached a deal with News Corp.’s HarperCollins that will let the software company use nonfiction titles from the book publisher to train its AI models, including a not-yet-announced model. The deal came as Microsoft unveiled new tools at its annual Ignite conference to help cloud customers build and deploy AI applications. Motorola CEO Greg Brown thinks Donald Trump will be good for his business. Ben Ling’s venture firm Bling Capital raised $270 million to invest in early stage startups. Oura, which makes smart rings that track a wearer’s health and fitness, was valued at $5 billion in a deal with glucose device maker Dexcom. | 
