AI for novel proteins: EvolutionaryScale has raised a massive $142 million seed for its AI model, ESM3, which can create proteins to enable entirely new classes of drugs, tools and therapeutics. Designing proteins in the lab is costly, and the company says ESM3, trained on a dataset of 2.78 billion proteins, can "reason over" protein sequences, structures and functions to generate new proteins for much cheaper. Read More
Save the plants, save the world: Not very long ago, everyone made fun of tree-huggers, but as we can all see now, they were right to protect trees. Foray Bioscience agrees, and has raised $3 million to use biomanufacturing to grow harvest-free plant-based materials, seeds and molecules. The startup uses a database approach to provide predictive insights and experimental direction to speed up R&D for plant species. Read More
Improving on the ghost kitchen model: General Catalyst has led a $40 million investment in Local Kitchens, a multi-brand restaurant concept that operates like a cloud or ghost kitchen. The cloud kitchen model is hard to run, but the winning difference here is Local Kitchens employs the people cooking the food, and works with partner restaurants and chefs to train its staff on their recipes. It also offers dining room service, and its digital format helps it manage orders for multiple brands from a single kitchen. Read More
TechWolf takes AI-sized bite out of internal recruiting: Tech talent is hard to come by, and that shortage is prompting companies to focus on how their talent is managed. Enter TechWolf, a Belgian startup whose AI engine can ingest data from internal workflows and spit out judgements about employees' work ethics and skill sets. TechWolf already works with big names like HSBC and Booking.com, and has just raised almost $43 million to expand its business. Read More
Apple shelves Meta AI partnership over privacy concerns, reports Bloomberg. That's not surprising at all, since Apple and Meta have long differed over their approach to privacy. When iOS updates made it difficult for apps and advertisers to track user activity, Facebook complained loudly that the move would hurt small businesses, when it was probably concerned about its own advertising revenue. Read More
Shipping containers can be interesting, too: The COVID-19 pandemic might be over, but the need to quickly and securely send valuable, fragile medicines endures. That's why Swiss startup SkyCell just closed a $116 million Series D at a $635 million valuation. The startup builds "smart containers" that use software to maintain strict temperatures, humidity levels and levels of vibration, as well as a logistics system to transport the drugs around the globe on behalf of its pharma customers. Read More
Yelp updates accessibility features: Apparently Yelp has seen a 40% rise in searches for "wheelchair accessible" places between 2020 and 2023. So the company is updating its app to add attributes to businesses around mobility, hearing and vision to help people find accessible places. The update also brings AI-powered alt-text for images. Read More
Snapchat makes it easier to block creeps: Snapchat is introducing a new suite of safety features to make it harder to get creeped on. You can now see when someone you've blocked has created a new account on the same device, and the app will block new friend requests from someone if you'd already blocked them on a different account. Another feature reminds users who they're advertising their location to on Snap Map, and recommends that users only share that info with close friends. Read More
From TikTok famous to acquisition: Swipewipe, a photo management app that gamifies the process of clearing out unwanted photos from your camera roll, recently got super popular with Gen Z on TikTok. And such was its fame that French mobile app publisher and developer, MWM, decided to acquire it. The deal gives Swipewipe's founder access to life-changing money today and continued revenue-sharing in the future. Read More
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