The article says “hamster wheel”, not that they didn’t take it. The headline here adds ambiguity that wasnt written

OK, we've disambiguated that in the title above. (Submitted title was "Zapier reached a $5B valuation without VC funding".)

If there is a valuation, then there was funding or there will be funding.

Looks like funding came from YC, so yeah, they were funded.

Not necessarily! Shares trade all the time without funding the company. The valuation depends on what people pay for those shares.

It's strictly speaking correct in that the $5B valuation was established purely on the secondary market and only from sales of shares of investors (not common holders), which doesn't give the company any VC funding. Also $1.3M in seed funding is a rounding error to get to $5B.

This smells like a sophisticated investor pump and dump: sell a small number of shares for a stupid amount to use the new valuation as the marker.

I would trust this number far less than a number one would arrive at a new VC round

Unlikely due to the buyers also being sophisticated. "Sequoia and Steadfast Financial bought shares at a $5 billion valuation from some of Zapier’s original investors."

It is really unclear, but I suppose maybe they only took money from angel investors?

It looks like they were part of the S12 cohort for YC, and that is definitely VC money.

Very unlike HN to upvote a comment that has reacted only to the headline on HN, not even the articles own headline, even less the body of the article. Maybe because everyone reading the comments is doing it the same way?

How is that "unlike HN?" I pretty regularly see comments that either make it clear the author didn't read the article (e.g. arguing against points not made, or "adding" additional information that's in the second paragraph) or explicitly say they're only responding to title or some tangential point.

What's wrong with criticizing a headline that presents factually untrue information?

It tends to take the thread to a shallow place, when there are usually much deeper and more interesting aspects to discuss.

It's a editorialized headline that only appears on HN. The submission itself (it's content) doesn't actually say anything like the title is (was? Seems title changed)