Author: pekandesigns

These days, it seems like everyone is building their own electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. The race is clearly on to develop these vehicles in a bid to anticipate the next major sea change in how we get around cities, but what we’ve seen so far of these vehicles is usually quick clips […]

Smartly.io, a company helping advertisers automate their campaigns across Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest, has sold a majority stake to Providence Equity Partners for €200 million (approximately $223 million). Helsinki-headquartered Smartly.io says it automates ad production, ad buying “and everything in between.” Founded in 2013, the company has more than 350 employees across 16 global offices, […]

Meet GIGXR, the new owner of all of the assets of Pearson Immersive Learning Group, a subsidiary of the education and media publishing giant, Pearson. Formed specifically to roll up Pearson’s virtual and augmented reality assets, GIGXR is helmed by David King Lassman, the founder of streaming media company Vyclone and the Southern Californian venture […]

When it comes to calibrating for an optimal workforce, diversity and inclusion have become a more prominent priority for companies in recent years. Today a startup that’s built a recruitment platform to help organizations source and hire in a more holistic way is announcing a round of funding to capitalise on a rise in demand […]

The European Space Agency (ESA) launched a satellite early this morning aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket that took off from the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana. Atop the Soyuz is the so-called “Characterizing Exoplanet Satellite” (CHEOPS for short) that will deploy to orbit around Earth, where it’ll have a better view of nearby stars […]

In a world where ad rates are declining for traditional broadcast media, the corporations responsible for making the fictions that millions devour daily need to find a new business model. Subscription services are on the rise — with every major broadcaster launching an on-demand service — and so are ad-supported video streaming services to replace […]

TrialJectory, which is developing a new technology service to match cancer patients with clinical trials, has raised $2.7 million to finance its continued growth. Led by Contour Venture Partners, the new financing will be used to accelerate TrialJectory’s operations by adding more clinical trials for different cancer types and expanding the company’s outreach to caregivers, […]

Hugging Face has raised a $15 million funding round led by Lux Capital. The company first built a mobile app that let you chat with an artificial BFF, a sort of chatbot for bored teenagers. More recently, the startup released an open-source library for natural language processing applications. And that library has been massively successful. […]

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the grey space in between. Today we’re looking into Uber’s bike bet and what the push could mean for Lime and other micromobility companies working to find a sustainable business model. As profitability comes back into vogue among investors at […]