Northrop Grumman hit a new milestone in extending the life of active spacecraft as a purpose-built spacecraft, MEV-2, docked with Intelsat’s IS-10-02 satellite to give it another five years of life. It’s a strong demonstration of the possibilities in a growing field of orbital servicing operations. MEV-2 launched in August Read more…
Ben Sun Contributor Share on Twitter Ben Sun is co-founder and general partner at Primary Venture Partners, a seed-stage VC firm based in NYC. A month ago, Coupang arrived on Wall Street with a bang. The South Korean e-commerce giant — buoyed by $12 billion in 2020 revenue — raised Read more…
Blue Origin is making progress toward its goal of flying human astronauts aboard its spacecraft, with a plan to run an “astronaut rehearsal” during a launch it has planned for Wednesday, April 14. The launch of Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital, reusable rocket will be a key step in verifying Read more…
Tiger Global has invested in DealShare, a startup in India that has built an e-commerce platform for middle- and lower-income groups of consumers, just three months after the Indian firm concluded its previous $21 million Series C funding round. The New York-headquartered firm has led the $100 million Series D Read more…
WeRide, the Chinese autonomous vehicle startup that recently raised $310 million, has received a permit to test driverless vehicles on public roads in San Jose, California. WeRide is the seventh company, following AutoX, Baidu, Cruise, Nuro Waymo and Zoox, to receive a driverless testing permit. In the early days of Read more…
A collection of tech and auto industry executives met with the White House to discuss solutions for the worldwide chip shortage Monday. CEOs from Google, Intel, HP, Dell, Ford and General Motors attended the virtual summit on semiconductors and resilience in supply chains. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of Read more…
The US tech giant is buying artificial intelligence firm Nuance, best known for developing Apple’s Siri. Source: BBC
Iran blames Israel, but was this a cyber attack or physical act of sabotage? Source: BBC
The man allegedly wanted to bomb an Amazon data centre to wipe out 70% of the online world. Source: BBC
The ITV show has hooked up with the dating app to find this summer’s hopeful singletons. Source: BBC
“It’s a little bit of a messy story,” Adam Leeb says with a laugh. The story that landed Astrohaus in Detroit on two separate occasions is a bit tangled, certainly. The hardwre startup’s cofounder and CEO isn’t the sort of hometown cheerleader you often encounter when speaking with executives who’ve Read more…
Don’t sleep on Detroit. The city that put America in motion is quickly growing into a startup hub with a wide variety of successes. From sneakers to mortgages to houseplants, companies are finding success in Southeast Michigan thanks to welcoming investors, access to amazing engineering talent, and a deep history Read more…
Iran’s foreign ministry blames Israel for Sunday’s incident at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant. Source: BBC
IonQ, the trapped ion quantum computing company that recently went public via a SPAC, today announced that it is integrating its quantum computing platform with the open-source Qiskit software development kit. This means Qiskit users can now bring their programs to IonQ’s platform without any major modifications to their code. Read more…
The tool is being tested by Google’s Android operating system, reports suggest. Source: BBC
Microsoft agreed today to acquire Nuance Communications, a leader in speech to text software, for $19.7 billion. Bloomberg broke the story over the weekend that the two companies were in talks. In a post announcing the deal, the company said this was about increasing its presence in the healthcare vertical, Read more…
Ethical investing remains something of a confusing maze, with a great deal of ‘greenwashing’ going on. A new UK startup is hoping to fix that with the launch of its new app and platform for retail investors. Clim8 Investhas raised $8 million from 7pc Ventures (early backers of Oculus, acquired Read more…
The details for Ant’s restructuring plan after its IPO was called off have arrived. Ant Group, the fintech affiliate of Alibaba controlled by Jack Ma, will be restructuring as a financial holding company, China’s central bank said on Monday. Ant, which provides online infrastructure for payments and other financial services, Read more…
Memic, a startup developing a robotic-assisted surgical platform that recently received marketing authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, today announced that it has closed a $96 million Series D funding round. The round was led by Peregrine Ventures and Ceros, with participation from OurCrowd and Accelmed. The company Read more…
Apple is reportedly working on a couple of new options for a renewed entry into the smart home, including a mash-up of the Apple TV with a HomePod speaker, and an integrated camera for video chat, according to Bloomberg. It’s also said to be working on a smart speaker that Read more…