👋 Maven and its co-founders part ways: Kenneth Stanley, the former OpenAI researcher who co-founded the social media platform, is stepping down. Maven was designed to facilitate serendipitous interactions. This move comes as another of his co-founders, Blas Moros, decided to pursue other opportunities as well, in order to extend Maven's runway. Read more
💰 Mechanical Orchard raises $50M: Rob Mee was inspired to form Mechanical Orchard to tackle the challenges around digital transformation of old infrastructure. The startup, which uses "AI-enhanced" tools and cloud instances to build modernized copies of companies' aging apps and services, caught the eye of Alphabet's GV — and others — and now has $50 million in new venture capital. Read more
🚨 Social media platforms warned of inciting violence: The U.K.'s internet regulator, Ofcom, published an open letter to social media platforms raising concerns about their tools being used to incite violence. The development follows days of violent civil unrest and rioting in towns and cities around the United Kingdom after the slaying of three young girls in a knife attack in Southport on July 30. Read more
⌨️ Magnets + wood = keyboard: If you like the clickity-click of mechanical keyboards, Frederic Lardinois takes you on a tour of Keychron's K2 HE. Spoiler, there is no number pad. Read more
🖼️ Turning text into visuals: Napkin is launching out of stealth today with $10 million in funding. The company is the brainchild of Pramod Sharma and Jerome Scholler, who started Napkin after becoming frustrated with the endless number of documents and presentation decks that have become the norm in the corporate world. And, of course, generative AI is involved. Read more
📱 Much ado about Nothing: Nothing's budget-focused Phone 2a Plus is now available in the United States as part of a beta program. If you're interested in the $399 smartphone, Brian Heater explains how you can get one. Read more
🤝 U.K. gives HP thumbs-up on acquisition: Hewlett Packard's potential Juniper Networks acquisition is one step closer to reality after receiving a greenlight from the United Kingdom's antitrust entity. Barring anything from the United States, the deal will move ahead and be completed sometime in 2025. Read more
💼 Hourly workers deserve good jobs, too: Most startups are looking to solve a problem inside a business, but Bandana has a different goal: to help people at the lower end of the wage scale find better jobs with higher wages and good benefits, all while being closer to home to reduce commuting time. Investors were interested and gave the startup $8.5 million in new capital. Read more
🎧 When not to hop on the AI bandwagon: On today's episode of Equity, Flourish Ventures co-founders shared their insights on AI hype, the latest wave of fintech M&A, and an interesting phenomenon in emerging markets: repeat founders. Listen here
