Now that humanoids are all the rage in the robotics industry, Boston Dynamics on Tuesday officially retired theirs.
Boston Dynamics has been focused on commercializing technologies for a number of years now.
Boston Dynamics was, of course, well ahead of the current humanoid robotics curve.
Another wrinkle in today’s news is that, as of February, Boston Dynamics was still showcasing Atlas’ capabilities.
Meantime, in lieu of a gold watch, Boston Dynamics is offering up a video featuring some of Atlas’ greatest hits and most spectacular falls.
Design firm Zypsy will do $100,000 worth of work for 1% equity for early-stage startupsZypsy, a design firm with a track record of helping early-stage startups, has launched a new and somewhat unique venture investment program.
Instead startups will pay by issuing Zypsy 1% equity of their companies via a SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity).
Zypsy has already added five startups to the first cohort of the design capital program (alphabetical order):Pilot projects with over 25 startups for three yearsThe six-year-old design company has worked with more than 25 startups.
“They are ‘cash-based clients, not an ‘equity-based portfolios’ like five companies we mentioned in the first design capital program,” he said.
In 2023, Zypsy raised $3 million to establish Design Capital.
For the firm that calls itself “the first check in deep tech,” the last check for SOSV’s latest $306 million fund took a bit longer than founder Sean O’Sullivan would have liked.
“We’re concentrating and double doubling down on deep tech,” O’Sullivan said.
We’re doing a fewer number of companies, more like 80 deep tech companies per year.
O’Sullivan said that SOSV intends to invest about 70% of the funds in climate tech companies, 25% in health tech, and the remaining 5% will be reserved for opportunistic investments.
“We have a special place to serve because we do deep tech, because we do get into the biology, we do get into the chemistry, the physics and the electronics.
Airtree Ventures already returned its first fund thanks to Canva while maintaining the majority of its stakeVenture secondaries has exploded over the last couple of years.
While some firms have used the increase in activity to build up their positions in their most promising portfolio companies, Airtree Ventures is taking advantage of the momentum a little differently.
So in 2021 Airtree started seeking out alternative ways to get liquidity for some of their earliest stakes, Blair said.
Airtree got a 1.4x return on Fund I from this transaction alone and was able to maintain the majority of their original stake.
They aren’t wrong, and Blair acknowledges that when a company does eventually exit, Airtree makes less money off of it because of this strategy.
U.S. consulting firm Greylock McKinnon Associates disclosed a data breach in which hackers stole as many as 341,650 Social Security numbers.
The data breach was disclosed on Friday on Maine’s government website, where the state posts data breach notifications.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.
We received confirmation of which individuals’ information was affected and obtained their contact addresses on February 7, 2024,” the firm wrote.
GMA told victims that “your personal and Medicare information was likely affected in this incident,” which includes names, dates of birth, home address, some medical information and health insurance information, and Medicare claim numbers, which included Social Security Numbers.
Avendus, India’s leading investment bank for venture deals, is looking to raise about $300 million for its private equity unit, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
With its third private equity fund, Avendus plans to write larger checks more frequently, one of the sources said.
The firm raised its second fund, amounting to around $185 million, in 2021.
Avendus employs over 150 bankers and was the top financial advisor in India last year.
In the past decade, similar to financial advisors in other regions, Avendus has diversified its offerings, venturing into wealth management, credit financing, and private equity.
Was the fundraising process any more or less difficult this time given the market?
If you really rewind the clock, back in 2018 when we raised our sixteenth fund, it was a “normal” environment.
There’s obviously a valuation reset going on for every company seemingly that’s not a large language model company, which is a lot of companies.
I’d guess that gives you easier access to top companies, but also hurts some of your existing portfolio companies.
I don’t think anyone has ever reached a great venture outcome feeling like, ‘Man, I got a steal on that deal.’ You always feel slightly uncomfortable.
Bay Area/Colombia-based delivery robotics firm Kiwibot this week announced that it has acquired Auto Mobility Solutions.
The Taipei firm produces chips specifically for the world of robotics and autonomous driving.
Kiwi founder and CEO Felipe Chávez Cortés does, however, tell TechCrunch that rising tensions between the U.S. and China are a key motivator for the purchase.
Prior to this, the U.S. government had set its sights on various Chinese tech giants, including Huawei and DJI.
Taiwan’s tenuous geopolitical situation, coupled with its vastly outsized share of the semiconductor market, has placed it at the center of the conflict.
DCVC wanted to raise $500M for its first climate fund, but the market had other plansDCVC’s target for its first climate-focused fund, DCVC Climate Select, has been all over the place and highlights the roller coaster venture fundraising conditions of the last few years, and how LPs aren’t as quick to back new strategies from established managers.
The Silicon Valley VC firm launched the fund in December 2022 with a $500 million target, according to a SEC filing.
This climate fund is targeting climate startups at the mid-stages where the firm thinks the climate startup ecosystem is currently underfunded, according to materials from a recent New Mexico State Investment Council meeting where the GP presented.
Tiger Global’s latest fund raised $2.2 billion of its $6 billion target.
In the first half of 2023, firms including Founders Fund, Insight Partners and TCV all slashed their fund targets.
Venture firm Maniv has grown by nearly every measure since it launched eight years ago in Israel — from its investor base and 40-startup portfolio to its geographic focus, footprint and fund size.
There are, however, some notable evolutions that hint at the Maniv’s investment strategy with its third and latest fund known as Maniv III, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
Maniv, once firmly focused on Israeli startups, continues to expand its geographic focus and now has active portfolio companies in nine countries.
The VC firm has also largely stopped using the once trendy umbrella term “mobility,” (often leaving it out of its original name Maniv Mobility) and has opted instead to talk about deep tech, decarbonization and digitization of the transportation sector.
“I thought the trajectory of that term (mobility) was going to continue to clarify overtime, but in fact, I think the opposite has happened for a bunch of reasons,” Granoff explained, adding that while the term mobility might not be used as often, it is still very much central to its mission.
