President Trump shot the jobs data messenger on Friday, following a weak July report that included major downward revisions for May and June.

• The White House and its defenders offered shifting justifications for the first such firing over nearly a century, but Trump's initial statement was clear: "In my opinion, today's Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad."

The big picture: Trump is claiming, without evidence, that the jobs report was politicized. Even his own former BLS chief says that such a con would be impossible for his successor to have accomplished, given the volume of number crunchers and paper trail.

• The upshot is that companies and investors may view future BLS reports with skepticism, whether earned or not. Or, put another way, Trump will have fomented the politicization that he's ostensibly eradicating. Let confusion reign!

📜 Flashback: This sort of conspiracy theory isn't new. The late Jack Welch claimed jobs report fraud in October 2012, just ahead of Obama vs. Romney.

• Welch at the time wrote columns for Fortune and Reuters, and didn't appreciate subsequent criticism by reporters at those outlets (yes, including yours truly). So he quit.

Zoom in: What makes the Trump and Welch arguments so flimsy is that they fall apart when attacked by a light breeze.

• It goes one of two ways: BLS is faking bad job numbers to hurt a Republican (i.e., Trump) or it's faking good job numbers to help a Democrat (i.e., Biden or Obama). And we know this because of future revisions.
• That's right: Both sets of numbers — the initial report and the revisions — come from the exact same source. They're apparently lying one month, but telling the truth the next. Or vice versa, depending on the revision direction. If BLS was cooking the books, why would it give up the game so readily?

Zoom out: This gets even sillier when you look at the actual reports in question.

• If BLS really wanted to hurt Trump, wouldn't it have "rigged" the jobs numbers before he got his signature tax bill signed into law? What does it accomplish in early August?
• The final jobs report before the 2024 presidential election was revised higher after the election. If the goal was to hurt Trump and help Harris, shouldn't it have gone in the opposite direction?
• There also was a lousy jobs report before the 2016 election, helping Trump and hurting Clinton, but Jack Welch didn't say a word.

What to know: Revisions aren't new nor do they mean someone made a mistake. Last month's were very large, although not the largest on record.

The bottom line: There should be little argument that improving government data collection would be a net positive, even if advisory groups charged with this mission were recently disbanded.

• But you don't get there by baselessly attacking the integrity of those doing the job.

Joby Aviation (NYSE: JOBY), a developer of electric air taxis, has agreed to buy Blade Air Mobility's (Nasdaq: BLDE) urban air taxi business for up to $125 million.

Why it's the BFD: This is a signal that electric air taxis are finally on the horizon, after more than a decade of funding and hype, with Joby paying helicopter-focused Blade for landing pads, routes, and other operational infrastructure.

• It's also a reflection of how the urban helicopter transport market is tapped out, in part due to noise restrictions. Blade flew nearly 100,000 passengers last year, mostly around New York City, but struggled to expand.

Zoom in: Blade will retain its organ transportation business, which comprises around 60% of its $250 million in revenue, and remain publicly traded but rebranded as Strata Critical Medical.

• Blade founder and CEO Rob Wiesenthal will join Joby, while remaining nonexec chair of Strata.
• The acquisition will be paid in cash or stock, with $35 million tied to earnouts.

Catch up quick: Both companies went public via SPAC in 2021.

• Joby was valued at around $6.6 billion at the time, and closed Friday with a $14.4 billion market cap. Blade was valued at $825 million, closing Friday at $306 million.
• President Trump recently signed an executive order creating a pilot program for testing electric air taxis.

The bottom line: "Electric air taxis represent the next era of aviation, enabling passengers to quietly soar over traffic en route to the airport or across crowded cities." — Joann Muller, Axios

• Fundamental Research Labs (fka Altera.AL), an SF-based developer of collaborative AI agents, raised $33m in Series A funding. Prosus Ventures led, joined by a16z, Patron, First Spark, Factorial, VamosVentures, and Patrick Collison. axios.link/4m2ettc

• Pantomath, a Cincinnati-based data ops platform, raised $30m in Series B funding, per Axios Pro. General Catalyst led, joined by Sierra Ventures, Bowery Capital, Epic Ventures, Hitachi Ventures, Cintrifuse Capital, and Foster Ventures. axios.link/3U6PcSi

• QuamCore, an Israeli quantum computing scalability startup, raised $25m in Series A funding. Sentinel Global led, joined by Arkin Capital, Viola Ventures, Earth & Beyond Ventures, Surround Ventures, Rhodium, and Quantum Leap. quamcore.com

• OpenMind, an SF-based startup seeking to "to connect all thinking machines," raised $20m. Pantera Capital led, joined by Ribbit Capital, DCG, and Coinbase Ventures. axios.link/4mufSbH

• Subzero Labs, developer of a blockchain for "internet‑scale decentralized applications," raised $20m. Pantera Capital led, joined by Coinbase Ventures, Fabric Ventures, Mysten Labs, Susquehanna Crypto, and Varient. axios.link/45jetOn

• Qbeast, a Spanish data infrastructure startup, raised $7.6m in seed funding. Peak XV led, joined by WK Tech Investment and Elaia Partners. qbeast.io

• Arivihan, an Indian automated learning platform, raised $4.2m. Prosus and Accel led, joined by GSF Investors. axios.link/47fnNoN

⚡ Pearl Edison, a Detroit-based home electrical upgrades startup, raised $3.3m in seed funding. New System Ventures and Commonweal Ventures led, joined by Lightbank and Newlab. axios.link/45frw39

• Cloudera, a portfolio company of KKR and CD&R, acquired Taikun, a Miami-based Kubernetes and cloud infrastructure management platform. axios.link/45v7tz3

• H.I.G. Capital completed its purchase of London-based media measurement firm Kantar Media from Kantar Group, a Bain Capital portfolio company. axios.link/3J027mC

• ICG agreed to pay around £200m to buy U.K. regional airports in Bournemouth, Exeter and Norwich from Rigby Group. axios.link/3HcShxg

• ICG also invested in Excellera Advisory Group, an Italian corporate affairs advisory group.

🚑 Machinify, a health-care intelligence firm recently acquired by New Mountain Capital, agreed to buy Performant Healthcare (Nasdaq: PHLT) for $670m, or $7.75 per share. axios.link/41jB8Zw

• Mumtalakat, Bahrain's sovereign wealth fund, acquired a stake in Abu Dhabi-based PE firm BlueFive Capital. axios.link/4lYEw4f

• Spectris (LSE: SXS), a U.K. testing equipment maker, agreed to a sweetened £4.78b (including debt) takeover offer from Advent International. axios.link/3JdfGz3

Three companies plan to price significant U.S. IPOs this week: Firefly Aerospace, Heartflow, and WhiteFiber.

• Bullish, a crypto exchange and owner of media outlet CoinDesk, set IPO terms to 20.3m shares at $28-$31. It would have a $4.3b fully diluted market value, were it to price in the middle, and plans to list on the NYSE (BLSH). axios.link/4fhstws

⚡ Lummus Technology, a Houston-based maker of process technologies for the oil and gas industry, said it's filed confidential U.S. IPO papers. Backers are Rhône Group and Haldia Petrochemicals. axios.link/46BYtcx

• Moove Lubricants, a Brazilian auto lubricants business owned by Cosan, formally withdrew registration for a $400m U.S. IPO that it had postponed last October due to "adverse market conditions." axios.link/3H96YBy

• Acon Investments agreed to sell its control stake in Amfora Packaging, a Colombian provider of beauty and personal products packaging, to Albéa Group. amforapackaging.com

Aviation Industry Corp. of China (AVIC) is weighing spinoffs of is securities and trust units, per Bloomberg. axios.link/4mrS601

Investcorp hired HSBC to find a buyer for Saudi IT firm NourNet, per Bloomberg. axios.link/4muwXm0

• Amphenol (NYSE: APH) agreed to buy the broadband connectivity and cable unit of CommScope (Nasdaq: COMM) for around $10.5b (including debt), per the WSJ. axios.link/4lbHXDK

• GIC agreed to buy a 25% stake in a Spanish fiber optic broadband JV between MasOrange (retrains 58%) and Vodafone Spain (17%). axios.link/4m0J0HS

• HNI (NYSE: HNI) agreed to buy Michigan-based furniture maker Steelcase (NYSE: SCS) for arond $2.2b in cash and stock. axios.link/41pdzhZ

• Altai Ventures, a Connecticut-based VC firm focused on financial services, is raising up to $100m for its third fund, per an SEC filing. altaiventures.com

• Carlyle raised $9b for its 10th U.S. opportunistic real estate fund. carlyle.com

• CRV raised $750m for its 20th flagship VC fund. axios.link/46GgXJ0

🚑 OrbiMed raised $1.85b for its fifth health-care royalty and credit fund. orbimed.com

• Donal McMahon joined Genstar Capital as head of AI and data science. He previously was VP of AI and engineering at Indeed. axios.link/4m0usbh

• Amit Spitzer joined Glilot Capital Partners as CTO and CISO. He previously was with Cato Networks. axios.link/4mrNoPY