The funding, which would go to Rocket Lab subsidiary SolAero Technologies, would help increase the company’s compound semiconductor production by 50% within the next three years.
The funding would help the company build out its Albuquerque-based facilities and create more than 100 direct manufacturing jobs, Rocket Lab said in a statement.
Rocket Lab acquired SolAero, which operates a ~115,000-square-foot manufacturing facility, in 2022 for $80 million.
The company is one of just two in the United States that specializes in the production of space-grade, radiation-resistant compound semiconductors, or space-grade solar cells.
SolAero is highly vertically integrated: In addition to the solar cells, the firm also manufactures solar panels and power modules.
While funding for Italian startups has been growing, the country still ranks eighth in Europe by VC investment, according to Dealroom.
Newly created Italian Founders Fund (IFF) hopes to help with the catching up, both in quantity and in quality.
It will use this geographical flexibility to also back Italian founders operating abroad, as well as foreign startups interested in entering the Italian market.
It will also help that some of its LPs are GPs of foreign funds, and that it plans to back Italian founders with global ambitions.
Global Italian startups include Bending Spoons, the owner of popular apps and services like Evernote and Meetup, which is valued at $2.55 billion.
Google has developed a new AI tool to help marine biologists better understand coral reef ecosystems and their health, which can aid in conversation efforts.
The project began by inviting the public to listen to reef sounds via the web.
By crowdsourcing this activity, Google was able to create a library of new fish sounds that were used to fine-tune the AI tool, SurfPerch.
Although bird sounds and reef recordings are very different, there were common patterns between bird songs and fish sounds that the model was able to learn from, they found.
The project continues today, as new audio is added to the Calling in Our Corals website, which will help to further train the AI model, Google says.
Apple News is testing a new game for iOS 17.5 called Quartiles, which requires players to organize a grid of 20 syllables into 5 four-syllable words.
Spotted by Gadget Hacks, the interface for Quartiles looks a lot like the New York Times’ newest hit, Connections.
Did Apple News sherlock the New York Times?
While it may appear odd for a news aggregator to continue investing in games, that’s exactly what has been working for the New York Times.
But given that the New York Times is low-key running a gaming studio now, it’s not a bad idea for Apple to churn out some new, preferably square-shaped games.
In a move implying that the launch went well, JFFVentures today unveiled its second fund, JFFVentures Fund II, with a target of $50 million.
So how is JFFVentures Fund II planning to avoid these pitfalls?
Well, Raja says, while the fund is operationally independent from JFF, JFFVentures Fund II will benefit from the wider JFF community, including its connections with government, corporate, education and nonprofit partners.
“We’ve committed in our fund docs that at least 50% of Fund II founders will identify as underrepresented in terms of founder backgrounds,” he said.
Kerszenbaum pointed to JFFVentures’ inaugural fund performance as evidence Fund II can succeed, though.
The no-code development platform previously focused its outreach on robotics firms.
They were like, ‘we’re not a robotics company — we do food processing, we do PLC automation, we do boats, we’re not robots.’”Further complicating messaging was the fact that — while the company is simply named “Viam” — its various social media platforms are “Viam Robotics,” owing to the fact that it was unable to secure the four-letter word.
Viam’s large office overlooking New York City’s Lincoln Center has a lab space, where members of the local robotics community are invited in to use its platform to develop automation applications.
“When people ask me what I do and what [Viam’s software] does, I usually use an example from their life.
We are a platform that lives at the intersection of real-world hardware and real-world software and the cloud and machine learning.
SpaceX has performed 13 crewed missions, and all of them launched from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
But the company has long intended to upgrade a second pad — SLC-40 at the neighboring Cape Canaveral Space Force Station — to expand its crew launch capacity.
Teams test the new emergency chutes from the pad 40 crew tower in Florida pic.twitter.com/rWVj7zaHp0 — SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 19, 2024As a next step, SpaceX is going to launch the CRS-30 cargo resupply mission.
In a media teleconference in February, SpaceX’s VP of build and flight reliability, Bill Gerstenmaier, said the cargo flight is an incremental step to astronaut launches.
“We would like to do a cargo flight first if we can.
Reddit is introducing a new ad format that looks similar to posts made by users on the platform, the company announced on Thursday.
The new ad format, called free-form ads, is designed to feel similar to the content that users share with each other in order to help advertisers get maximum engagement.
Although the new format may be enticing to advertisers, ads that look like regular posts may not be a welcome addition for users.
The company says the new ad format would be a good way to do things like launch a product or introduce a brand to a new audience.
Similar to other ads on Reddit, users will be able to differentiate between free-form ads and regular posts through a “Promoted” label displayed next to the company’s name on a post.
Slack’s new CEO looks to bring stability after a turbulent period Three chief executives in one year will do thatIt’s not often you see an established company burn through three CEOs in less than a year.
But through circumstances beyond its control, that’s what has happened at Slack, the company Salesforce acquired in 2020 for $28 billion.
Jones herself had replaced company co-founder Stewart Butterfield when he announced that he was leaving at the end of 2022.
“And then you think about Salesforce having this incredible set of customer data, some of the world’s most valued data.
Even though Harris brings a long history of building Salesforce, Slack is losing a person who has a deep understanding of Slack’s technical underpinnings.
Dating app maker Bumble is rethinking its vision for the company’s future after announcing weak earnings and massive job cuts that will see the company cutting a third of its staff, or around 350 employees.
“Candidly, we have been slow to realize this broader vision with Bumble BFF thus far,” she told investors on Tuesday’s Q4 2023 earnings call.
The CEO noted that the current BFF product has a small, but strong following.
This is due to BFF using the same one-to-one match paradigm for friendships as Bumble uses for dating.
That could limit BFF’s ability to monetize as Bumble’s dating product does.
