News

A new on-demand microtransit service launched in the Kent area today. Known as Pingo, King County Metro is piloting the service throughout much of the Kent Valley, East Hill, and Panther Lake areas.

Companies

• The Routing Company

Boston Metal's green steel solution will help car companies reduce their carbon footprint by developing a more environmentally friendly manufacturing process.

Companies

• Boston Metal

A major breakthrough was achieved in a key technology for commercial fusion power, and very likely sets up the first ever net-energy-out fusion plant being commissioned four years from today.

Companies

• Commonwealth Fusion Systems

Form Energy recently brought in $240 million to advance their pivotal technology navigating the power grid.

Companies

• Form Energy

Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) completed the successful test of a key technology — a very powerful magnet — at the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center in Cambridge, Mass.

Companies

• Commonwealth Fusion Systems

Infection mimicry enhances humoral and cellular immune responses to flu vaccine. Silk microneedle patches achieve influenza vaccine release for 2 weeks in mice.

Companies

• Vaxess Technologies

While most of the quantum computing world is focused on achieving fault tolerant computing – some day – with intermediate applications for NISQ (near intermediate scale quantum) systems emerging along the way, Zapata Computing is taking a different approach.

Companies

• Zapata AI [NASDAQ: ZPTA]

CFS shares that its nearing a technological milestone that could take the world a step closer to fusion energy, which has eluded scientists for decades.

Companies

• Commonwealth Fusion Systems

VC darling Form Energy’s unproven path to market could become a model.

Companies

• Form Energy

Mariana Matus & Newsha Ghaeli of Biobot Analytics were recognized as two of the 50 emerging female tech leaders to watch in 2021.

Companies

• Biobot Analytics

Form Energy has built an inexpensive battery that can discharge power for days using one of the most common elements on Earth: iron.

Companies

• Form Energy

Hedron (formerly Analytical Space) won a $26.4 million contract to develop and launch six cubesats and two hosted payloads to begin establishing the Fast Pixel Network for optical communications.

Venture capitalists are betting that technology from startup Cellino Biotech Inc. will help enable a host of diseases to be cured through stem-cell therapy.

Companies

• Cellino

Cellino Biotech has concluded a $16 million seed financing round that will further advance technology that ultimately seeks to generate autologous induced pluripotent stem cells at scale.

Companies

• Cellino

Boston Metal, which previously raised $20 million back in 2019, uses a process called molten oxide electrolysis (“MOE”) to make steel alloys — and eventually emissions-free steel.

Companies

• Boston Metal

In a society where speed is of the essence, startups are tackling large, urgent problems that quick fixes can’t solve.

The Engine has completed a $230-million funding round, including Harvard as an important new partner in the venture, and bringing its total capital commitments to $435 million.

The Engine has raised $230 million toward the firm’s second fund, which on top of the firm’s first fund brings it to a total of $435 million under management.

During a year when venture capital firms are chasing hyped software and artificial intelligence startups more than ever, Harvard University is joining MIT to invest in less-sexy — and research heavy — companies aiming to fix more existential problems.

The Engine has raised $230 million in its second round of funding, and will begin making investments in additional startups focused on conceiving and commercializing solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges.

WoHo (short for “World Home”) is trying to rethink how to construct a modern building by creating more flexible “components” that can be connected together to create a structure.

Companies

• WoHo

New peer-reviewed papers predict SPARC, a compact fusion device designed and built by Commonwealth Fusion Systems and MIT will achieve net energy from fusion.

Companies

• Commonwealth Fusion Systems

Zapata Computing has released software designed to make it easier for companies to use algorithms invented for quantum computing to improve business processes.

Companies

• Zapata AI [NASDAQ: ZPTA]

At WIRED25, Arlan Hamilton and Katie Rae shared their insights on investing in companies that help humanity, and what's stopping other organizations from doing the same.

People

• Katie Rae

Michael Kosta talks to Biobot Analytics co-founder Newsha Ghaeli about her company's national campaign to fight America's coronavirus pandemic by studying samples of human excrement.

Companies

• Biobot Analytics

Sericulture startup Mori raises $12m Series A to preserve food with silk.

Companies

• Mori

The Engine had companies working on COVID-related research, and continued to stay open as an essential business during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Katie Rae shares that The Engine is “rewriting some of our policies to be more proactive, to hold ourselves to account there” and holding open forums with its community of founders.

People

• Katie Rae

About 400 U.S. wastewater-treatment facilities have turned to Biobot Analytics for help assessing the pandemic’s prevalence.

Companies

• Biobot Analytics

Quaise developed a millimeter wave drilling technology to access deep geothermal energy and raised $6 million in seed funding.

Companies

• Quaise