Inside NASA’s bid to make spacecraft as small as possible

October 24, 2023
The NASA probe’s retrorockets pressed desperately against the apricot afternoon skies of Mars. It was November 26, 2018, by Earth’s calendar. As the InSight lander worked its way down, slowing from 12,000 miles per hour to a graceful landing, overhead a pair of robots coursing through space monitored its progress. Though InSight was the size…

In the wake of Dash’s closure due to fraud, 5 investors talk due diligence in Africa

October 24, 2023

It’s been a tough year for tech startups globally. These struggles have manifested in layoffs, down rounds and complete shutdowns caused by current market conditions, utter mismanagement or fraud. This August, SoftBank sued one of its portfolio companies, IRL, a social media platform poised to become an event organizing alternative for Gen Zs, for fraud. Earlier […]

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This new tool could give artists an edge over AI

October 24, 2023
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. The artist-led backlash against AI is well underway. While plenty of people are still enjoying letting their imaginations run wild with popular text-to-image models like DALL-E 2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion,…

New solar mini-grids in Africa to be powered by Husk Power Systems’ $103M Series D

October 24, 2023

Husk Power Systems, a clean energy company at the forefront of fueling rural electrification since 2008 and that announced plans to launch 500 solar mini-grids in Nigeria over the next five years, has raised $103 million Series D in equity and debt to meet its objectives. The capital injection includes $43 million in equity, which […]

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Oxolo bags €13M for Gen AI-driven video platform which can optimise engagement on the fly

October 24, 2023

Much has been made of AI-powered videos which can either make a real person speak different words or other languages, or generate a synthetic person which can speak on-demand. A few years ago former football star David Beckham helped push the idea into the mainstream via a video from Synthesia, where he spoke different languages […]

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Byju’s CFO quits in six months amid delayed accounts

October 24, 2023

Byju’s CFO Ajay Goel, who joined the edtech giant in April this year, has already resigned, the two said Tuesday, in the latest setback for the startup that is grappling with scores of challenges. Goel will leave Byju’s after completing the long-delayed audit formalities for the financial year ending March 2022 and return to mining […]

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Byju’s CFO quits in seven months

October 24, 2023

Ajay Goel, who joined Byju’s as CFO in April this year, has already quit the edtech giant, the two said Tuesday. Goel will leave the firm after “completing the audit formalities” for the financial year ending March 2022 and return to mining conglomerate Vedanta, Byju’s said. Byju’s said it has appointed industry veteran Pradip Kanakia […]

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Two years after pausing service, Roblox China cuts a small number of staff

October 24, 2023

Roblox China was once full of promise. Since its localized platform, which is a joint effort with Tencent, abruptly halted operation nearly two years ago, the company has been quiet about its standing in the world’s second-biggest gaming market until now. TechCrunch learned that Roblox China, also called LuoBu (罗布乐思), initiated a round of layoffs […]

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Smart upcycling machine dissects batteries to save them

October 24, 2023

Circu Li-ion cofounder and CEO Antoine Welter says his startup’s upcycling machine can diagnose batteries in seconds. “We know exactly which cell can be reused and which one can’t,” he told TechCrunch on Monday. Circu Li-ion is in the business of saving usable battery cells from shredders. The German startup’s machine identifies batteries by their […]

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