If you injure your elbow, surgery can help. If you lose a leg, prostheses are available. But problems within the brain are more difficult to treat, and for stroke victims rehabilitation is largely left to the body’s own repair mechanisms. BrainQ aims to change that with a device that stimulates the damaged part of the […]
Pyka shows off its new electric passenger plane, the P3
Pyka appeared out of nowhere in 2019 with an unusual take on electric aircraft: a pilotless crop duster. The success of this first plane led the company to begin developing its next one, the P3: a 9-passenger craft with a totally unique propeller setup aimed at making regional flights cheaper and simpler. It could be […]
Feds dismantle Blue Origin and Dynetics protests of NASA’s SpaceX lunar lander award
Blue Origin and Dynetics are still steaming over NASA’s decision to award only one contract — to SpaceX — to build a Human Landing System for the Artemis program. Their protest of the decision was recently rejected, and now the Government Accountability Office’s arguments, which Blue Origin publicly questioned, are available for all to read. […]
OpenAI upgrades its natural language AI coder Codex and kicks off private beta
OpenAI has already made some big changes to Codex, the AI-powered coding assistant the company announced last month. The system now accepts commands in plain English and outputs live, working code, letting someone build a game or web app without so much as naming a variable. A few lucky coders (and, one assumes, non-coders) will […]
44.01 secures $5M to turn billions of tons of carbon dioxide to stone
Reducing global greenhouse gas emissions is an important goal, but another challenge awaits: lowering the levels of CO2 and other substances already in the atmosphere. One promising approach turns the gas into an ordinary mineral through entirely natural processes; 44.01 hopes to perform this process at scale using vast deposits of precursor materials and a […]
$100M donation powers decade-long moonshot to create solar satellites that beam power to Earth
It sounds like a plan concocted by a supervillain, if that villain’s dastardly end was to provide cheap, clean power all over the world: launch a set of three-kilometer-wide solar arrays that beam the sun’s energy to the surface. Even the price tag seems gleaned from pop fiction: one hundred million dollars. But this is […]
Australia’s v2Food aims to expand its plant-based meats to Europe and Asia with €45M raise
V2Food is one of many new contenders in the alternative protein space, founded in Australia but now setting its sights on Europe, Asia and beyond. It has a few key advantages over the competition, and with €45 million in new funding it may be finding its way to plates in the Eurozone soon. The company […]
Oh, Facebook changed its privacy settings again
Ever considerate of its users, Facebook has determined that its privacy settings needed a bit of a shuffle to keep things clear and easy to find. To that end they’ve taken the “privacy settings” settings and scattered them mischievously among the other categories. “We’ve redesigned our entire settings menu on mobile devices from top to […]
Launchpad hiccups indefinitely delay Boeing’s troubled Starliner orbital test
Boeing’s Starliner capsule is leaving the launchpad after a series of delays that prevented takeoff over the last few days. NASA and the beleaguered aerospace giant will take “whatever time is necessary” to find and fix the issue, but it’s beginning to feel like this long-in-development spacecraft may never make it to the ISS. This […]
Planted raises another $21M to expand its growing plant-based meat empire (and add schnitzel)
Swiss alternative protein company Planted has raised its second round of the year, a CHF 19M (about $21M at present) “pre-B” fundraise that will help it continue its growth and debut new products. A U.S. launch is in the cards eventually but for now Planted’s exclusively European customers will be able to give its new […]