A lot of government support, it appears China’s autonomous vehicle industry first started seeing some traction around 2016, when a bunch of ambitious startups mushroomed following advances in lidar, computing and machine learning. But the nascent sector was still driving in low gear, as the people working on the tech mostly had computer science backgrounds,…
Astra launched its first rocket from Florida’s ‘Space Coast’ today, with a liftoff from Space Launch Complex 46 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. It was the startup’s second attempt after an earlier one was scrubbed on Monday due to a technical issue, and this time the rocket got off the pad — but unfortunately,…
Tracking the influx of tech money into Formula 1, a racing series famous for its high costs and reputation-laundering for authoritarian governments, has been a fun game in recent years. Tech concerns, flush with capital and power, have poured money into F1 teams and F1 branding because they can afford it — and the sport…
Startups have sought to use technology to digitize processes in Africa’s B2B e-commerce and retail space over the past couple of years. While many focus on moving products and providing credit, issues around cash overdependency haven’t been tackled at scale. Here’s why this is a critical problem. When traditional distributors move goods from manufacturers and…
Meal deliveries in Vietnamese cities typically take less than half an hour, but grocery deliveries are lagging behind, sometimes taking up to two to three hours, says Rino founder Trung Thanh Nguyen. By creating a vertically-integrated logistics infrastructure centered around “dark stores,” or stores set up for order fulfillment only, Nguyen says Rino can cut…
Today, if a hematologist wanted to dive into the exact organization and structure of your blood cells, they’d probably need a microscope in a lab. Scopio, an Israel-based startup that just closed a $50 million Series C round, argues that soon, a lot of that work could be done with nothing more than a laptop.…
Census, a startup building a data layer between business operations and a company’s data warehouse, confirmed an Axios story from earlier this week that it has raised a $60 million Series B on a valuation of $630 million. CEO Boris Jabes said that from the start he wanted to build something that would allow mostly…
Nigeria has more than 12 million registered vehicles, and approximately 90% of them are used cars that need frequent checkups to prevent recurring breakdowns. Given this number, one would expect effective vehicle maintenance to be standard in Nigeria. But that’s not the case: Most of the service providers in the country, usually auto mechanics, are…
Most companies today recognize the importance of global warming. As such, they are redefining their goals in an effort to address the climate change issue. Envisioning Partners, a Seoul-based venture capital firm, has secured its latest impact fund, the oversubscribed $64 million (76.8 billion KRW) Envisioning Climate Solutions (ECS) Fund, to back startups combating the…
The U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) has seized over 94,000 bitcoins that were allegedly stolen in the 2016 hack of crypto exchange Bitfinex and arrested a married couple suspected to have laundered the money, the department announced today. The couple — Ilya Lichtenstein, 34, and Heather Morgan, 31 — faces charges of conspiring to launder money…
