IKEA won’t just sell you smart lights — it’ll soon sell you the electricity to power those lights, too. IKEA has revealed plans to sell clean energy to Swedish homes through a subscription service.
Hopper raises $175M at $3.5B+ valuation as travel surges and its fintech tools help offset variant concerns
Travel tech company Hopper has raised a $175 million Series G, the company said today. That’s nearly the same amount it raised in a Series F round that closed earlier this year. These are indeed new funds, however, bringing its total raised to date to nearly $600 million, with the company now valued at over $3.5 […]
How one founder identified a gap in education working as a teacher and built a startup to fix it
Amanda DoAmaral was an educator herself before she decided to found a tech company aimed at improving the education system. That’s a surprisingly rare credential for a startup founder in this area to possess — despite the obvious benefits of real, first-hand experience. Her company, Fiveable, focuses on modernizing (including a remote-first approach) a key […]
Foxconn plans to build EV factories in the US and Thailand in 2022
Foxconn is getting more serious about its electric vehicle ambitions. The company told investors during an earnings call that it plans to build EV factories in the US and Thailand in 2022.
Hear how Cityblock Health’s Toyin Ajayi, Carbon Health’s Eren Bali and Forward’s Adrian Aoun see tech impacting access to health at Disrupt 2021
If there’s one thing that the ongoing COVID-19 crisis has proven, it’s that the healthcare system in the U.S. is in drastic need of major transformation. One of the biggest issues to be highlighted by the pandemic in particular is the iniquity in access to care, but there are signs that one of the effects […]
How one founder bucked the data-driven trend and created a startup based on inspiration
When Oleg Stavitsky and his co-founders started Endel, they didn’t necessarily expect for it to become a venture-backed business with the likes of Amazon’s Alexa Fund as investors. Stavitsky and his founding team describe themselves as a “collective of imaginative creatives and artists,” and the group had previously developed a unique set of apps for […]
Craft your pitch deck around ‘that one thing that can really hook an investor’
Michelle Davey’s pitch to Jordan Nof of Tusk Ventures about Wheel, a startup focused on providing a full suite of virtual care solutions to clinicians, was front-loaded with early metrics.
SpaceX stacks the full Starship launch system for the first time, standing nearly 400 feet tall
SpaceX has achieved another major milestone in its Starship fully reusable launch system: It stacked the Starship spacecraft itself on top of a prototype of its Super Heavy booster, which itself is loaded up with a full complement of 29 Raptor rocket engines, and the Starship on top has six itself. The stacked spacecraft now […]
Astra targets first commercial orbital launch for August 27
Astra’s last test launch went better than expected, nearly achieving orbit — kind of a stretch goal for that specific mission. The company at the time said that it would only need to tweak software to reach an orbital destination, and now we know when it’s going to get the chance to prove it: Astra […]
Heatworks opens pre-orders for its plumbing-free countertop dishwasher
Heatworks has at long last opened pre-orders for the Tetra, a countertop dishwasher that debuted at CES 2018. The Tetra doesn’t require any plumbing, just an electrical outlet.