Startup Monday: Latest tech trends & news happening in the global startup ecosystem (Issue 67- August 14)

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Top startups news to follow this week:

1. Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare Market Size Was Valued at USD 7.9 Billion in 2021 and Will Achieve USD 201.3 Billion by 2030 growing at 43.4% CAGR

The Global Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare Market Size is valued at USD 7.9 Billion in 2021 and is estimated to achieve a market size of USD 201.3 Billion by 2030; growing at a CAGR of 43.4%.

Artificial intelligence (AI), like any other industry, is transforming the healthcare industry in a variety of ways. Global health systems can benefit from artificial intelligence in terms of speed, efficiency, and effectiveness. The growing number of patient data sets, as well as the growing demand for lower healthcare costs, will drive the global artificial intelligence in healthcare market revenue. AI has been a game changer in the healthcare industry, revolutionizing applications such as radiology, patient risk identification, drug discovery, and diagnosis, to name a few. Data mining, surgical robots and drug design are also recent AI in healthcare trends that are transforming the industry's growth.

2. Saudi Aramco’s venture capital firm Prosperity7 invests $95 million in AI drug discovery company

Insilico completed the second closing of its Series D round, led by Prosperity7 Ventures, the diversified growth fund of Aramco Ventures, bringing the total Series D financing to $95 million. Other global investors with expertise in the biopharmaceutical and life sciences sectors also participated. The financing was brought about by Prosperity7 as a new investor alongside current investors in the Series D round, including a large, diversified asset management firm on the US West Coast, B Capital Group, Warburg Pincus, BHR Partners, Qiming Venture Partners, Deerfield, Pavilion Capital, BOLD Capital Partners, and WS Investment Company. Insilico’s founder and CEO, Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, also invested in the Series D round.

Aysar Tayeb, Executive Managing Director of Prosperity7 Ventures, said: “The deepening application of AI and machine learning for drug discovery has demonstrated a transformative positive impact on the pharmaceutical industry and we are delighted to embark on this partnership with Insilico Medicine, a frontrunner in this innovation. Backed by the breadth of Aramco’s ecosystem across geographies and sectors, we look to support the company to scale up and expand its footprint globally, to drive biotechnology excellence, and to bring positive impact for greater wellbeing.”??

The new Series D capital will support the continued advancement of Insilico’s pipeline, including its lead program which is currently in a Phase 1 study in New Zealand and in China, as well as several pipeline programs in IND-enabling studies. The proceeds will also fund other key strategic initiatives, including further development of its end-to-end Pharma.AI platform, the launch of a fully automated, AI-driven robotic drug discovery laboratory and biological data factory, and the establishment of regional centers.

3. Google fined $40M+ for misleading location-tracking settings on Android

Google has been sanctioned A$60 million (around $40 million+) in Australia over Android settings it had applied, dating back around five years, which were found — in a 2021 court ruling — to have misled consumers about its location data collection.

Australia’s Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) instigated proceedings against Google and its Australia subsidiary back in October 2019, going on to take the tech giant to court for making misleading representations to consumers about the collection and use of their personal location data on Android phones, between January 2017 and December 2018.

In April 2021 the court found Google had breached Australia’s Consumer Law when it represented to some Android users that the “Location History” setting was the only Google account setting affecting whether it collected, kept and used personally identifiable data about their location.

In actuality, another set — called ‘Web & App Activity’ — also enabled Google to grab Android users’ location data and this was turned on by default, as the ACCC noted in a press release today. Aka, a classic dark pattern. (Actually, Google deployed nested dark patterns, plural, as we detail below.)

4. Hyundai announces $400M AI , robotics institute powered by Boston Dynamics

When Hyundai acquired Boston Dynamics at the end of 2020, there were plenty of open questions. Chief among them was why we should assume this acquisition would be any different from the past few. The 30-year-old bleeding-edge robotics firm had been an uncomfortable fit for its last two owners, Google and SoftBank, but the Korean automotive giant insisted things would be different.

The pairing has, thus far, been something of a mixed bag. As Boston Dynamics looks to pragmatic applications to commercialize robots like Spot and Stretch, Hyundai has used the technology for some wild sci-fi demos, including one at this year’s CES featuring Spot hanging out on Mars as a metaverse avatar.

This morning, the company announced that the robotics firm will form the foundations of the Boston Dynamics AI Institute, which aims to advance research in artificial intelligence and robotics. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts’ Kendall Square, the institute will be led by Boston Dynamics founder Marc Raibert, who transitioned away from the CEO role at the end of 2019, leaving longtime COO Rob Playter to take the reins.

Research has long been a foundational part of what Boston Dynamics does, a tradition that has continued after it began working toward commercializing its technology. It’s also a big piece of what Raibert, a former professor at MIT and CMU, has focused on during his three decades with the company.

“Our mission is to create future generations of advanced robots and intelligent machines that are smarter, more agile, perceptive and safer than anything that exists today,” Raibert said in a release tied to the news. “The unique structure of the Institute — top talent focused on fundamental solutions with sustained funding and excellent technical support — will help us create robots that are easier to use, more productive, able to perform a wider variety of tasks, and that are safer working with people.”

5. Miami cybersecurity startup Lumu raises $8M, led by Panoramic Ventures

It’s a critical time for companies and organizations to prioritize cybersecurity as nation-state criminal groups target everything from business IP to government secrets and critical infrastructure. At the same time, these companies are grappling with a weakening economy and the hiring restraints that come with that.

That’s where the Miami-based cybersecurity startup?Lumu ?comes in. Companies of all sizes need tools that enable their already stretched security teams to gain?an accurate understanding of a potential attack in real-time, enabling a swift response.?

“Cyber adversaries are forcing companies of all sizes to do a better job and Lumu is the company that is helping any organization to do so,” says Lumu founder and CEO Ricardo Villadiego, in an interview with?Refresh Miami.?“We help cyber defenders to do a better job of identifying what could do harm to their business.”

Today, Lumu announced it has closed an $8 million investment round led by?Panoramic Ventures . Participants in the round include SoftBank Group’s SB Opportunity Fund, KnowBe4 Ventures, Land Bess, a former Zscaler and Palo Alto Networks executive, and Tom Noonan, former CEO at Internet Security Systems. Lumu is also announcing a partnership with the Clearwater-based?KnowBe4, the leading security awareness training platform for employees.

Including?its $7.5 million round?secured in March 2021 in which Lumu was?one of SoftBank Group’s first investments in its $100M Miami Initiative, Lumu has now raised $15.5 million in venture capital.

?In the past year, the Miami startup has seen 200% year-over-year growth, and its platform is used by more than 3,100 organizations, up from 1,300 in March 2021, Villadiego said. To date, the Lumu platform has analyzed more than 1 trillion metadata and detected more than 345 million adversarial contacts.

“I think we have demonstrated here that there is a growing conviction that cybersecurity requires a different operation mindset,” Villadiego said, leading companies to adopt Lumu’s Continuous Compromise Assessment model. In the past, to build the type of capabilities that Lumu enables for companies took months to develop, he said. “Lumu enables those capabilities in less than 30 minutes for companies. That is something the market is demanding. Now it’s time to accelerate our response to the market.”

6. How an Armenian startup plans to use new innovation to tackle the billion-dollar phishing

So-called “Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance,” or DMARC, is a technical standard that is designed to protect the senders and recipients of email from spam, spoofing and phishing. Before you fall asleep, it’s worth pointing out that this is a booming tech sector.

What the fast-growing DMARC protocol is doing now is what “https” did for the web: making email more communication secure. There were 6 million domains using DMARC in 2021 and 10 million in 2022. It’s growing, fast.

Companies in the space include Valimail (raised $84 million) and RedSift (raised $64.8 million), among others.

And they are tackling a big problem. According to Statista, 333 billion emails are sent every day. And email remains an enormously powerful brand communication platform. But 84% of emails are spam (July 2021). Meanwhile, a vast number of cyberattacks are carried out through simple phishing emails. And yet email remains one of the few non-proprietary methods of communication online, given so much of our interactions are now effectively owned by platforms like Facebook and Google.

Back in 2016, Gerasim Hovhanisyan says he was working as an information security consultant when he was asked to look into the aftermath of a severe email phishing attack on a multibillion-dollar company.

He looked into the latest email security technologies but decided that there were a variety of solutions but none which packed the DMARC protocol into something relatively easy for businesses to use. So together with co-founder Avag Arakelyan, in 2018 they launched their startup to tackle this problem.

The resulting?EasyDMARC ?is a B2B SaaS solution that claims to make email authentication simple for SMEs by securing domain and email infrastructure, protecting from phishing and increasing email deliverability. It does this by making sure there are security protocols for a business that stop hackers from sending phishing emails on their behalf, among others things.

The startup now says it has 30,000 clients from 130 countries and has analyzed a staggering 9 billion emails.

7. Digital health unicorn Truepill conducts a third round of layoffs in 2022

Truepill , a platform?that helps other companies offer diagnostics, telehealth services and prescriptions, has conducted its third mass layoff in a string of workforce reductions, sources tell TechCrunch. The layoff impacted about third of the company or 175 people . The company did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

One source says that Truepill’s entire U.K. team was laid off, as well as a meaningful portion of the virtual pharmacy platform’s product team. The data team was also impacted, while the diagnostics and telehealth components of the company — its core services — will be only lightly supported going forward. Impacted employees were told that they lost their jobs via a Zoom call, and some were told that severance details would be shared in the next few days.

Truepill’s next chapter will be the pharmacy operations portion of the business, a return to form after Truepill’s frantic COVID-19 product sprint. When Truepill first launched, it described itself as the AWS for pharmacies, powering companies like Hims, Nurx, LemonAID and other direct-to-consumer healthcare brands.

8. Berlin-based Junto scores €5 million for its innovative digital learning platform

Edtech startup?Junto? has just secured €5 million in Seed funding for its digital learning platform. The Berlin-based team is taking a holistic approach to learning, combining tech with interactive, live experiences and a learner community.?

The world of work has been dogged by two major challenges in recent years – a global talent shortage and the ‘great resignation’. While these two phenomena show no sign of fixing themselves, it’s become clear to businesses and organisations that in order to future-proof themselves with a strong and impactful cohort of leaders and talent, they need to develop employees’ skills, across the duration of their career.?

Meanwhile, employees expect professional development to come part and parcel with their role. Employees want to progress and develop, to feel part of the growing company, and companies need to facilitate this. It’s brought about a shift in employee/employer relations, and a new wave of edtech and digital learning has sprung up.

Putting its hat into the ring to boost the sector is?Junto ?– the Berlin-based digital learning platform. The startup has today announced a raise of €5 million to grow.?

Just three months after picking up €1.2 million from over 40 well-known business angels, the edtech startup has now raised an additional €5 million – an extremely promising reflection of the startup’s potential.

The new capital was led by Earlybird with participation from Picus Capital, Emerge Capital and 10+ top business angels. This is the first time that the company, which was only launched in January, has brought institutional investors on board for further growth.

9. UK-based Patchwork Health raises €24 million to tackle the healthcare staffing crisis

Healthtech startup?Patchwork Health?has just raised €24 million to address the growing staffing crisis in the healthcare sector. Built by doctors for doctors, the platform is now planning to expand from the UK across European and international markets.

A global pandemic, drastic funding cuts, labour shortages, and supply chain issues. Just a?couple of things the healthcare sector has had to deal with in the past decade (if not longer). It means that now, healthcare providers across Europe are in a state of crisis. Healthcare staff are bearing the brunt of it, with shocking numbers suffering from burnout and work-related stress.?

It’s been reported that, in the UK, nearly half of all healthcare staff have felt unwell as a result of work-related stress in the last 12 months and 1 in 5 have said they are likely to leave their organisation in the next year. This staffing crunch is occurring against the backdrop of record waiting lists, with 6.6 million people waiting to start treatment. And these trends are being reflected across the continent.?

Aiming to do something about it,?Patchwork Health ?is scaling up.

Patchwork Health: By Doctors for Doctors

Founded in 2016 by NHS medics, Dr Anas Nader and Dr Jing Ouyang, Patchwork Health is a pioneering healthcare workforce platform.?It provides tech-powered solutions that address staffing challenges and allow healthcare teams to manage their permanent and temporary workforces through one fully-integrated platform.

Co-Founder and CEO, Dr Anas Nader, commented:?“Healthcare staff are resilient, resourceful and deeply committed to their work. But they’re not super heroes. As the world of work shifts around them, staff are locked into rigid schedules whilst demand escalates. This is pushing clinicians out of healthcare careers as they’re too exhausted to continue. And that heaps further pressure on those who remain. It’s a vicious cycle we can ill-afford. Too many clinicians have, like myself and my co-founder, found themselves trapped in a schedule which can grind you down and push you out of a career you love.”?

10. Dutch medtech startup Xeltis secures €15 million to develop pioneering medical treatments

Xeltis , a Dutch MedTech startup, has secured €15 million of fresh investment from a Chinese firm, Grand Pharma. The startup is developing medical devices to treat cardiovascular disease and as a result, aims to lessen the incidence of CKD.

Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is reported to affect 9% of the population – and its prevalence is growing due to a simultaneous increase in cardiovascular diseases around the world (including diabetes, hypertension and diabetes). CKD is now accounting for more deaths than breast and prostate cancers combined. Traditional hemodialysis is overwhelmed with demand, and patients are now experiencing long waiting times to get access to the treatment they need.?

Xeltis is developing polymer-based restorative devices for cardiovascular treatment. The restorative devices include implantable small diameter blood vessels for hemodialysis vascular access and for coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery and pulmonary heart valves, for which clinical trials are ongoing. The aim is that these devices can provide more durable, transformative treatment options for patients worldwide.?

To develop the product, the Dutch startup has just picked up €15 million in new investment.?

11. Berlin-based Green Generation Fund has raised €100 million to fuel food tech and green tech innovation

Impact investors?Green Generation Fund ?has announced its first generation €100 million fund . The Berlin-based team are investing in Europe and the US, supporting innovators that are creating more sustainable approaches and solutions.?

The impact investment space is starting to pick up pace. It’s now being increasingly recognized that investment and impact can go hand in hand. Entrepreneurs, businesses and organizations are now starting to build processes and strategies that are underpinned by sustainability and it seems like a new era, or generation, of green investment, is emerging.?

Recently, the Portuguese impact finance platform?GoParity ?announced it was accepting overfunding after the successful launch of its crowdfunding campaign. Nordic-headquartered?Summa Equity?expanded across the Atlantic and we have had funds like?Polestar Capital’s €100 million fund open up. At EU-Startups, we have also chatted to prominent food tech?investors, impact investors such as?Tim He?and green tech entrepreneurs like?Ellen Moeller?to learn more about how Europe is paving the way in sustainability and impact-driven ventures.?

Now, a Berlin-based firm has joined the mission:?Green Generation Fund , a women-led firm dedicated to food and green tech innovation.?

Green Generation Fund

Founded in 2021, Green Generation Fund is turning heads for a couple of reasons. The fund invests in disruptive technologies at seed stages to enable breakthroughs in food tech and green tech – two verticals that are crucial in shaping the future. The firm supports passionate, mission-driven founders who build game-changing companies within the realm of environmental sustainability, the single most urgent goal of humankind.

Have a great news to share? or Feedback? Email?at [email protected] .

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