First-generation products from new startups are notoriously so, regardless of how much money and excitement you’ve managed to drum up.
Given all that, it’s likely few are too surprised that Humane’s upcoming Ai Pin has been pushed back a bit, from March to “mid-April,” per a new video from the Bay Area startup’s Head of Media, Sam Sheffer.
The Ai Pin was finally unveiled at an event in San Francisco back in early November, where we were able to spend a little controlled hands-on time with the wearable.
Humane is positioning its product as the next step for a space that’s been stuck on the smartphone form factor for more than a decade.
The Ai Pin is currently available for preorder at $699.
An engineer by training, Meyerowitz leans heavily on that concept at Clairity Technology, the direct air capture startup he founded in 2022.
The company is currently working on the next size up, which should be able to capture one metric ton per year.
Clairity is one of the latest entrants into the direct air capture (DAC) market, where companies compete to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at the lowest cost.
He and his team, now eight strong, have designed a box that’s “good enough” to capture carbon dioxide over 80% purity, he said.
By using carbon dioxide as an ingredient, “it improves the quality of the concrete.
But this example is eerily similar to the pitch many startup founders make to potential investors.
For a startup, the “finished house” isn’t bricks, mortar, and those cool USB power sockets, but it’s built with milestones and achievements.
These are the “rooms” and “fixtures” investors are looking to find in the startup house.
The journey of building a startup is an adventure filled with unexpected twists and turns, much like the construction of a dream home.
That’s startup life: You roll with the punches.
Hexa, the Paris-based startup studio that recently raised $22 million, is launching a new vertical focused on improving the healthcare system.
Julien Méraud, a senior team member of the French unicorn startup Doctolib, is joining the startup studio .
After a while, startups “graduate” from the startup studio and continue their life as independent companies — Hexa keeps a stake in its portfolio companies.
As Hexa starts to branch out to other verticals, the startup studio is also rethinking its strategy.
For the health vertical, Hexa is not only hiring Julien Méraud.
The expectation that modern AI tech will find a home in every part of our lives is pandemic.
Fittingly, startups and investors are working overtime to build and fund new technology companies to either create or implement new AI tech.
But despite all the enthusiasm, there’s a niggling detail that deserves our attention: AI startups often have worse economics than most software startups.
The conversation around AI gross margins is not new.
Back in 2020, venture firm a16z argued that AI startups would have lower gross margins due to “heavy cloud infrastructure usage and ongoing human support.”
Bulk Exchange, a startup building a marketplace that lets construction companies and contractors buy and dispose materials in bulk, has raised $4.5 million in seed funding.
If Bulk Exchange can get enough providers on to its platform, estimators may be able to execute their work more quickly.
Second, once contracts are signed, Bulk Exchange can convert estimates into sales by linking buyers and sellers on the platform.
Instead, Bulk Exchange intends to charge for its services similar to a SaaS model.
If Bulk Exchange can scale and collect lots of data, it could have a second business and revenue stream in time.
Much of the intriguing climate tech that crosses our desks is theoretical or only just coming to market — think: tech that sucks carbon out of the sky, emerging lithium-ion battery alternatives and bio-plastics that’ve yet to seriously scale.
The Toronto-based venture firm just announced the close of a $335 million fund (USD) — its third and largest to date.
“If you’re not making money, you’re not having impact,” McCaig told TechCrunch.
“Climate tech tends to be fairly distributed around the globe, more so than AI and software, which tends to concentrate in California,” added McCaig.
The venture firm’s second fund clocked in at $150 million (USD), while its first — a seed fund — totaled $30 million.
Top executives report to the CEO, the CEO answers to the board, and the board serves at the whim of the shareholders.
On Sunday evening, the oil supermajor filed a lawsuit in federal court asking for permission to ignore a shareholder resolution at its next annual meeting.
The new shareholder resolution calls on the oil company to reduce its Scope 3 emissions or those that result from the use of its products.
Other shareholders tended to be deferential to management, letting them run their business as they saw fit.
But as shareholder primacy took root in the public consciousness, more shareholders began to exercise their rights.
Funding to Black founders was down in 2023 for the third year in a rowBlack founders in the U.S. raised 0.48% of all venture dollars allocated last year.
The past two years saw Black founders raising at least 1%.
Last year, though, suspicions were confirmed as the market cooling really did appear to have an extreme impact on the Black community.
In Q1’23 and Q2’23, Black founders raised 0.74%.
There’s been a consistent yearly decline in funding since the murder of George Floyd in 2020, which saw a record-breaking amount of capital flow to Black founders as the tech industry promised to better support them.
As more than $1 trillion flows into climate tech, incentive-tracking apps find firm footing Websites, apps and startups are rushing to track government incentives for climate techSpend some time with people in the climate tech world and you’ll soon learn that a lot of them share something in common: They’re not used to having a lot of money.
That’s because for years, climate represented a cost for many businesses, not an opportunity.
Investment in climate tech has been gathering pace over the past five years or so.
The IRA alone might yield more than that since many of the tax credits are uncapped; Goldman Sachs estimates the law’s climate provisions might pay out $1.2 trillion in incentives, spurring some $3 trillion in private investment.
Making sense of it all“Unfortunately, there’s no comprehensive database out there for all of these rebates and incentives,” said Thomas Stephens, co-founder of Upfront, a startup that’s cataloging incentives for merchants.
