Biotech

There's no denying the growth of health tech globally over the past three years thanks to the pandemic. The event has accelerated the use of telemedicine, virtual care and drug delivery, thus fuelling investor interest in the sector. Investment has also trickled down to Africa, with large check

Oura wasn't the first smart ring to market, but over the course of its life, the device has had surprisingly little competition. In general, it's proven difficult for consumer hardware companies to find a toehold beyond the wrist. Though the brand's relative success has no doubt raised

California-based “XR wellness and digital psychedelics platform” Tripp continues its acquisition path to growth with its acquisition of the world’s largest VR meditation community, EvolVR, following its purchase last year of PsyAssist, a mobile app used by people to keep their psy

The next time your doorbell rings, it might be a DoorDash delivery, or one of a handful of startups all vying for grocery delivery supremacy. Or it might be a phlebotomist, ready to do your blood work in the comfort of your living room. That roving phlebotomist is the heart of Getlabs, a startup wh

DeepMind has created an AI capable of writing code to solve arbitrary problems posed to it, as proven by participating in a coding challenge and placing — well, somewhere in the middle. It won’t be taking any software engineers’ jobs just yet, but it’s promising and may help aut

Vegetable oils like canola and palm oil have become a major part of our diet, whether we like it or not, and while they’re useful substances, they’re not exactly good for you and are a major cause of deforestation. Zero Acre Farms is a new company aiming to provide an improved alternati

Last year, Ember outlined one of the more fascinating expansions of recent vintage we've seen in the hardware space. Primarily known for its smart mugs designed to keep their contents hot, the firm took a long, hard look at the cold chain — specifically, the transport of medicine across d

In a blog post yesterday, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek addressed mounting controversy over health misinformation. After Spotify pulled Neil Young and Joni Mitchell's music over protest of the company's deal with podcast monolith Joe Rogan, the executive conceded that the company hasn't “been

Researchers at Johns Hopkins this week issued a report noting that their Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR) system has completed laparoscopic surgery on a pig tissue without human guidance. The surgery, which involves the connecting of two instestinal ends, was performed successfully on animals,

The Vets, a tech-enabled pet healthcare platform that provides at-home care, has raised $40 million in seed funding led by Target Global, PICO Venture Partners and Bolt Ventures. Founded last year as part of co-founder Target Global's venture building program, the team of co-founders including

Berlin-based Mayd, a startup that’s buding an on-demand medicine delivery platform in Europe, has fast followed a chunky seed raise last fall — with a €30 mlion (~$34 mlion) Series A funding round led by U.S. investor Lightspeed Venture Partners. Previous investors Target Global, 468

Bokksu CEO Danny Taing has always been passionate about Japanese food and culture, so he moved to Tokyo after college and lived there for four years. When Taing moved back to NYC, he brought a suitcase full of his favorite Japanese snacks and shared it with his friends. Taing realized other America

In what has to be considered an anticlimactic ending, IBM sold off the data assets of its Watson Health unit to private equity firm Francisco Partners today. The two firms did not share the purchase price, but previous reports pegged the value at around $1 billion. Under the terms of the deal Franc

Advances in the AI realm are constantly coming out, but they tend to be limited to a single domain: For instance, a cool new method for producing synthetic speech isn’t also a way to recognize expressions on human faces. Meta (AKA Facebook) researchers are working on something a little more v