Big push to transport us in a new world 🛸
Weekly press review in Tech & Web3 - 18th April 2022 - Issue #45
I’m Sebastien co-founder and CEO of Early Metrics. TechWatchbySeb is a weekly newsletter to provide Tech Investors, Entrepreneurs & Innovators with my selection of news on the Tech and Web3 ecosystems.
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Summary for this week: Big push to transport us in a new world 🛸
Before starting ☕️
Section 1 - Tech main news:
Full on the Transport Tech
Food for better planet
Dance with the Robot
Section 2 - Web3 main news:
Coinbase wants to grab a slice of the NFT cake
Stripe to connect its users with Crypto
Robinhood finally coming to the UK
Total of articles reviewed this week: 15
Before starting ☕️,
This I decided to talk about an important topic and probably one of the most challenging crisis the humanity is facing: Climate Change.
Specifically on this topic, it will be key to leverage all the players to generate big changes:
Large companies for the coverage they have and industrial capabilities
Smaller Tech companies for the capacity to innovate, test, learn and scale when it works
Anyone who, by small dailies actions can participate in trying to improve tomorrow’s world.
With my Early Metrics research team, we have published a paper to highlight:
10 tech startups helping fight climate change
I encourage you to have a read on it
Before starting, the result of last week Survey:
What do you think of Elon’s intention to acquire Twitter? 😎😎
On my side I voted for the first option. Even if I understand the con’s and the impact Elon’s already has on the market, I don’t think it will change drastically the current situation. Also, on socials, it’s the user that dictate where they want to spend their time on. On the other side, I’m not particularly excited on the great news, and I hardly see the positive impacts. Let’s wait and see :)
Next question for this week at the bottom
🥇Full on the Transport Tech
Last week was a big push on transport companies with several fundraising, including one of the most buzzing personality Elon Musk with The Boring Company:
The Boring Company 🇺🇸: The company co-founded by Elon Musk is an infrastructure and tunnel construction company that facilitates underground transportation networks. It aims to create safe, fast-to-dig, and low-cost transportation, utility, and freight tunnels. The company just announced to raise $675M in funding at $5.675B Valuation.
Beta Technologies 🇺🇸: The company founded in 2017 designs and develops electric aircraft including advanced flight control and electric propulsion systems, with a focus on clean aviation technology. Beta designs a self-sufficient eVTOL aircraft ecosystem that satisfies the needs of humans, embraces the laws of nature, and works in harmony with the planet. The company just announced a $375M fundraising let by Fidelity Management and Research company 🇺🇸.
Convoy 🇺🇸: Company founded in 2015 is a digital freight network that moves truckloads and design solutions that address supply chain inefficiencies. The company announced to have close a $160M Series E.
Sources:
The Boring Company: Fortune.com
Beta Technologies: Axios
Convoy: Techcrunch
🥈Food for better planet
Lab-Grown Meat Producer Upside Foods Raises $400 Million
UPSIDE Foods 🇺🇸, founded in 2015 develops meat produced directly from animal cells without the need to raise and slaughter actual animals. This approach requires significantly less water, land, and energy than conventional meat production, enabling consumers to enjoy meat that is clean, humane, and free of harmful chemicals.
The company announced last week to have closed $600M led by Abu Dhabi Growth Fund. Bill Gates, is also part of the investors.
Source: Wall Street Journal
🥉Dance with the Robot
Agility Robotics’ Digit brings in $150M
Agility Robotic's 🇺🇸 legged locomotion expertise is built on a history of academic research, including the bipedal walking and running robot ATRIAS. Agility Robotics is leveraging this work to create products that address the real world needs of rugged, efficient, and highly capable mobility platforms.
The company has announced to have raised $150M series B led by DCVC a Deep Tech Fund.
Source: The Robot Report
🥇Coinbase wants to grab a slice of the NFT cake
Coinbase launches NFT marketplace in hopes of appealing to crypto and mainstream users
Six months ago, Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange in the U.S. by volume, announced that it was launching an NFT marketplace, but provided few details as to when it would actually arrive. Fast-forward to today: “Coinbase NFT” launched its beta mode with collections of NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain.
During the beta launch, Coinbase is curating and showcasing a number of NFT collections like Doodles, World of Women and Azuki. Any Ethereum-based collection will be accessible on Coinbase NFT, with “more [blockchains] available soon,” Alex Plutzer, NFT product lead at Coinbase NFT, said during a press conference. “We’ll cycle these [collections] out over time to help introduce people to awesome NFTs on the platform, especially for people who aren’t as familiar with NFTs.”
Source: Techcrunch
🥈Stripe to connect its users with Crypto
Stripe launches crypto support in Connect, starting with payouts for creators on Twitter
Stripe rolling out a new service — initially with one partner, Twitter — to get some activity going on its network. The payments giant is adding crypto payouts to Connect, its programmatic (API-based) payouts platform; and Twitter will be the first platform to let people get payouts in crypto using it.
Added to this, Stripe last month released a series of APIs and other tools for developers to start integrating Stripe’s crypto features. Support to use fiat currencies to buy more than varieties of 135 crypto tokens (not a fragmented market at all!), cash-out facilities, NFT trading and compliance features like Know Your Customer (KYC) were among the functions that were rolled out across some 180 countries.
Source: Techcrunch
🥉Robinhood finally coming to the UK
Robinhood Agrees to Acquire UK Crypto Platform Ziglu
Ziglu 🇬🇧 was approved to offer crypto services in the U.K. by the Financial Conduct Authority in 2020.
Online brokerage platform Robinhood has agreed to acquire London-based crypto platform Ziglu, giving it a Financial Conduct Authority-regulated arm in the U.K.
Ziglu offers buying and selling services for 11 cryptocurrencies as well as a "Boost" product that earns users yield on their holdings.
The firm won approval to offer crypto services in the U.K. by financial watchdog the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in 2020, the third firm to gain such approval.
Source: Coindesk
First of all thanks for your help to expand the #TechWatchbySeb community.
Question of the week
Have already heard about the algorithmic Stablecoins ? 😎😎
Comment and share 🔥👾🔥👾
Feel free to comment on what you think about those news, what you liked, what you disliked.
And last but not least, feel free to share the newsletter to keep growing the community 🚀
👍 That’s it for this week, wishing you a great week ahead, and feel free to share if you like 😁