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Fewer teenagers are smoking cigarettes. Most of us can probably agree that's a good thing.

But for Juul Labs, it's a $15 billion opportunity: That's the valuation the maker of electronic cigarettes attained with a $1.2 billion round of funding in July. Numbers like that are hard to ignore—including for the federal government. Reports emerged this Tuesday that the Food and Drug Administration conducted a raid on Juul's headquarters, seizing sales and marketing documents related to a months-long inspection of whether the company targets underage users with its nicotine-packed wares.
That's not a tiny cloud.
For those with children or siblings of a certain age—or those who spend too much time on the internet—there's little doubt that Juul's products are prevalent among kids. In the form of "Juuling," the company's name has become a verb. Between 2011 and 2017, there was a nearly eightfold increase in e-cigarette use among American high schoolers, according to the CDC, and Nielsen data indicates Juul controls some 73% of the US e-cigarette market. Do the math.

But is Juul actively trying to sell its addictive products to children? That's for the feds to find out. In the meantime, Juul is engaging in some legal action on the side—that's one of six big things to know from the past week in VC: 1. Juul jumps on rivals On Thursday, Juul filed a lawsuit accusing 18 of its rivals of infringing upon the company's patents with copycat products often aimed at underage buyers—including ones sold with flavors like "sour gummy." It's a neat trick, emphasizing the company's commitment to both legality and profits. Even when you're under government investigation, you've still got to protect your corner in a rapidly booming market. 2. Khosla wins by losing An absurd fight that took way too long has seemingly reached a conclusion: The US Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from Vinod Khosla regarding his right to close a path to the beach that traverses a village he owns on the California coast, a battle Khosla has said he never actually wanted to win. OK, then. Also this week, Benjamin Ling left his position as a partner at Khosla Ventures to raise $60 million for an eponymous VC firm of his own, called Bling Capital.
Vinod Khosla wants the right to keep views like this to himself. 3. Skyrocketing valuations Cryptocurrency trading startup Coinbase is said to be raising new capital at an $8 billion valuation, barely a year after being valued at $1.6 billion. Braze, the creator of a marketing platform, hit an $850 million valuation this week, more than doubling its worth. Travel app Hopper saw its valuation jump from $300 million to $780 million. And Tanium, a longtime cybersecurity unicorn, increased its valuation from $5 billion to $6.5 billion with new funding this week. 4. Yes, more new unicorns And then—as always, here in 2018—there was the crop of companies to cross the $1 billion mark for the first time this week. Job search site ZipRecruiter did it, and so did call-center software developer Talkdesk and DevOps software creator JFrog. Combined, the three companies brought in $321 million in new funding in the process. 5. The very fast future Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, which raised nearly $32 million last year at a $347 million valuation, gave the world its first look at the capsule it plans to use to launch people through vacuum tubes at something close to the speed of sound. The car is 105 feet long, weighs 5 tons and looks a bit like one of those elongated, super-aerodynamic cycling helmets. HTT claims it will be passenger ready by next year. You go first! 6. Benchmark's past and future The firm with Silicon Valley's lamest website owned a 15% pre-IPO stake in Upwork, the operator of a platform for freelancers that experienced a promising debut on the public markets this week, seeing its stock open at $23 per share after the company priced its offering at $15, which was already an uptick from its initial goal. Benchmark also this week filed paperwork with the SEC for its ninth flagship fund, which will seek $425 million in commitments.