Electrifying fleet 🔌
Musk’s new adventure, Palantir jibe, and venture deals.
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Market summary: 📊
US:
S&P 500 - up 1.02%
Nasdaq 100 - up 2.13%
India:
Nifty 50 - up 0.67%
Sensex - up 0.59%
In case you missed it… 🗞️
YC’s demo day ran for the past couple days and nearly 200 trail blazing companies showcased their progress to potential investors. Here’s one and two lists covering all the companies if you want to see what’s hot!
Moving forward…
Fighting out for moral high ground 👊
Palantir’s CEO had some harsh words for Silicon Valley, lashing out at engineers and companies judging Palantir’s secretive work with the government.
CEO Alex Karp’s comments in the official S-1 filings docs go like this - “The engineering elite of Silicon Valley may know more than most about building software. But they do not know more about how society should be organized or what justice requires.” Read more.
The comments are meant to berate the behaviour of tech employees (mostly from big tech companies) who have been voicing protests and are forcing giants like Microsoft, Google and others to stop kowtowing to the government. As a result, several big tech companies have drastically been reducing the scope of their involvement with governments.
Why do we care: the debate is part of a larger discussion on Silicon Valley’s “monoculture” and its unchecked influence on the rest of the world, which is going to receive an increasing amount of heat going forward as tech takes center stage in the world economy and politics. However, nobody had used their stand on the subject to appease investors in the past. This is a first.
What’s hot in startup land? 🔥
Loosely based on YC’s startup school and accelerator program, early-stage fund Accel Partners has launched a new program, 'Seed to Scale', to help early-stage founders with targeted content, sector-focused programmes and mentorship.
The platform, aimed at creating a repository of knowledge, will deliver a startup playbook comprising insights, learning programmes, commentary, and networking. Entrepreneurs and companies outside of Accel’s portfolio are open to apply as well.
The effort is meant to complement Accel’s $550 million India focused fund that was raised in December last year, and will leverage Accel’s global learnings to speed venture growth locally. Read more.
In similar events,
Virohan, a Gurugram-based healthcare vocational training company, has raised $2.8 million (about ₹20.7 crore) across its seed and series A funding rounds.
The company trains healthcare students in specialized medical-assistance roles such as medical lab technicians, emergency response technicians, specialized device operators etc. and plans to expand offerings with the newly raised capital. Regional language focus to include upto 15 languages as well as industry partnerships expansion is on the table. Quite innovative!
In logistics,
Exprs, last-mile logistics firm, has raised ₹4.5 crore in seed funding, led by angels Sweta Rau and Sandeep Kapoor, together with participation from LetsVenture, AngelList and DCF Advisory.
The logistics provider helps leading e-commerce and third-party logistics firms build out last yard deliveries from campus gates to customer doorsteps, helping them improve efficiency and save costs. The next immediate goal for them is trying to arrange over 500 nano distribution hubs in massive residence complexes and tech parks throughout India.
Build me some of those quantum computers 🖥️
The US government has announced a $1 billion initiative to accelerate the pace of innovation in quantum computing and multidisciplinary AI research.
Citing the importance of national security, the program will be looking to fund about 12 hubs of research within several federal agencies. Responsibilities will span diverse objectives such as leveraging machine learning for atmospheric and ocean science, to speeding up high-energy physics simulations with quantum systems
Once lauded for spearheading the Manhattan Project (nuclear bomb) or for seeding technology innovation via Silicon Valley in the post war era, the US government has lately been labeled sluggish and political in its scientific research investments. However, as China counters with its ambitious plans to invest aggressively in AI and build capabilities by 2030, the government is forced to act.
Honestly, a billion dollars may be too little to make a difference, but it's a good start. You hearing this India? Read more.
Local EV ambitions catch wind 🔌
A couple of great events that show India’s electric-mobility agenda moving ahead:
First up,
Ola Electric, the electric vehicle arm of Ola Cabs, will add about 2,000 people globally as it aims to build homegrown electric vehicles across segments, while also developing batteries as a service applications for shared mobility - that the company plans on licensing out.
The company will add about 1,000 engineers while the other recruits will be towards operations and management. Read more.
Next is Flipkart,
The company, in a bold commitment, will work to transition its entire fleet to electric vehicles by 2030. Flipkart said it was committing to the global electric mobility initiative of non-profit Climate Group, EV100 and will transition both its owned and leased fleets in a phased manner. Read more.
Musk’s new promise 🤝
Elon Musk is all set to demo a brain machine neural interfacing device this Friday, that his secretive company Neuralink is developing. The tech works to help people control devices with their minds.
Here’s where things get wacky — the Neuralink device will be sewed onto our heads, connecting tiny electrodes smaller than your hair to your brain through a minimally invasive process. So far most BMI devices have stiff electrodes that risk causing damage so Elon’s folks have built a robot to perform this fragile procedure. Crazy!
The company funded by the man himself has been seeded with more than $150 million so far. The bigger promise however is to fuse our brain with externally trained AI models, and Musk believes we can augment the data crunching and learning capacity of our brains that way. All eyes will be on Elon this Friday. Read more.
Tweet of the day -
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
🧸 Making right by legacy - while other British retailers cut jobs and scale back operations, Reliance is planning on expanding operations of London’s Hamleys — a toy brand the company bought last year for $92 million. The brand, operating since 1760, is hoping for a better run with its new partners and RIL seems optimistic of pulling through with a success.
🚕 Long-term rentals - Uber will let you book longer rides on its platform, for upto 8 hours, reserving a driver for a day’s journey with multiple stops along the way. The service is now live in Bengaluru and is available in Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune.
Hope you took a thing or two away from today’s edition. 😀
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