Arnergy, which provides solar power systems to homes and businesses in Nigeria, raises $3M

December 23, 2024

Forging the digital future

Dan Huttenlocher, SM ’84, PhD ’88, leads the way up to the eighth floor of Building 45, the recently completed headquarters of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. “There’s an amazing view of the Great Dome here,” he says, pointing out a panoramic view of campus and the Boston skyline beyond. The floor features a…

February 15, 2024

Arnergy, a Nigerian cleantech startup that deals in distributed renewable energy products and solutions, has raised $3 million in new financing. The bridge round was financed by All On, a Shell-backed off-grid energy impact investment company. The financing comes five years after Arnergy, a provider of solar power systems to homes and businesses, secured a […]

Three things to love about batteries

February 15, 2024

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. I wouldn’t exactly say I have favorites when it comes to climate technologies. Anything that could help us get closer to tackling climate change is worth writing about, both to share the…

Embracing Old-Fashioned Frugal Living Like Grandma

February 15, 2024

In the age of fast fashion, instant gratification, and ever-expanding credit cards, remembering our grandparents’ simple ways can seem quaint. For one, Grandma didn’t even own a credit card; only…

Evernote and Meetup owner Bending Spoons raises $155M in equity financing

February 15, 2024

Bending Spoons, the owner of popular apps and services like Evernote and Meetup, announced today that it has raised $155 million in a new equity financing round at a $2.55 billion post-money valuation. Durable Capital Partners led the round with existing investors, such as Baillie Gifford, Cox Enterprises, NB Renaissance, NUO Capital and StarTIP (controlled […]

Alibaba faces reckoning with once-vaunted ‘new retail’ strategy

February 15, 2024

In 2017, “new retail” began appearing in Alibaba’s earnings reports. Coined by the Chinese e-commerce behemoth, the term refers to the seamless integration of online and offline retail. Six years later, Alibaba is having a moment of reckoning with this strategy as it looks to offload some of its offline retail assets. On its recent […]

Crypto exits remain low but investors remain unfazed

February 15, 2024

New PitchBook data makes it clear that if the larger startup market is suffering from an exit-drought, crypto startups are possibly even more parched.

GM is expanding its hands-free driving system to rural highways

February 15, 2024

GM is expanding access to Super Cruise with plans to let drivers use the hands-free advanced driver assistance system on about 750,000 miles of roads in the United States and Canada. The expansion, which will nearly double the automaker’s Super Cruise network by 2025, will include rural and minor highways that often connect smaller cities […]

Bluesky and Mastodon users are having a fight that could shape the next generation of social media

February 15, 2024

People on Bluesky and Mastodon are fighting over how to bridge the two decentralized social networks, and whether there should even be a bridge at all. Behind the snarky GitHub comments, these coding conflicts aren’t frivolous — in fact, they could shape the future of the internet. Mastodon is the most established decentralized social app […]

Varda Space Industries finally gets approval to bring its drug manufacturing spacecraft back to Earth

February 14, 2024

Varda Space Industries has received long-awaited approval from regulators to return its first spacecraft to Earth — and with it, a batch of pharmaceutical crystals manufactured on orbit. Varda’s Winnebago capsule has been stuck in limbo for months. The company launched the spacecraft on a SpaceX Transporter mission eight months ago, with the plan to […]

Largest text-to-speech AI model yet shows ’emergent abilities’

February 14, 2024

Researchers at Amazon have trained the largest ever text-to-speech model yet, which they claim exhibits “emergent” qualities improving its ability to speak even complex sentences naturally. The breakthrough could be what the technology needs to escape the uncanny valley. These models were always going to grow and improve, but the researchers specifically hoped to see […]

Forging the digital future