Skydiving Out of a Failed Airplane & Zooming into a Microchip

January 11, 2022 No. 14

Highlights this week: 🪂skydiving out of a failed airplane, 🔬zooming into a microchip, and 📭an empty CES.

🔗 Last week’s most-clicked link: A plant-derived compound that leads to longer life.

⚡️ Analog Insights: Semiconductor Spend 💵

Startup News 🚀💰:

Mojo Vision, the smart contact lens startup, announced a $45 million Series B-1, led by Amazon Alexa Fund, PTC, Edge Investments and HiJoJo Partners.
Xage (pronounced Zage) is a startup working to keep critical infrastructure like oil and gas pipelines, water supplies and electrical grids up and running securely announced a $30 million Series B led by Piva with participation from Momenta, Valor Equity Partners and OurCrowd, along with existing investors March Capital, City Light Capital, Saints Capital and Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures.
Doosan Robotics, known for its collaborative robots (cobots), whose use run the gamut from manufacturing and research to the coffee-making barista robot, Dr. Presso announced $33.7 million in funding, led by Praxis Capital Partners and Korea Investment Partners.
Arive, a company partnering with premium stores and brands to sell and deliver items from Apple to Van Moof electric bikes, announced a Series A of $20 million led by Balderton Capital, with Global Founders Capital, Burda Principal Investments, La Famiglia and 468 Capital.
Remilk, the company that produces cultivated dairy, raised $120 million in a Series B funding round led by Hanaco Ventures.
The ePlane Company announced a $5 million series A round, led by deep-tech venture capitalist Speciale Invest and EV/climate-focused fund Micelio.
Comprehensive review of hardware startup funding rounds in December (focus on semiconductor)

Interesting Links 🔗:

Youtuber Trevor Jacobs jumped out of his airplane after experiencing an engine-failure above the mountains…. The aviation community is highly skeptical of the situation, and thinks it’s entirely contrived. Personally, I think he faked it. Now the FAA is involved.
Amazing video zooming into a microchip down to 20nm transistors. Yes, things have gotten even smaller today, but this is still pretty amazing for scale.
‍Reverse-engineering an unusual IBM modem board from 1965. Thru-hole haven. Schematics, oscilloscope waveforms, teardown pics, BOM breakdown, and more.
Elevators are extraordinarily safe. In New York City, home to fifty-eight thousand elevators, there are eleven billion elevator trips a year—thirty million every day—and yet hardly more than two dozen passengers get banged up enough to seek medical attention. An average of twenty-six people die in (or on) elevators in the United States every year.
Digital Weights, like those used by Tonal and Nordic Track fitness machines, are interesting in that they are able to simulate large amounts of weight without requiring the extra space traditional weights would take up. This is achieved by taking advantage of the principles of electromagnets to generate fine-tuned resistances with electronics. Here’s a pretty good breakdown of the technology. This expired patent from 1984 started getting there… then didn’t.
In 2014, the total value of the insurance policies on insured satellites was $25.7B. Approximately US$1.5 billion of that is represented by low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites. Great read on how Lloyds of London and other prominent insurers have gotten into space insurance in a massive way.