Highlights this week:🎟 the free hardware event of the year, 🛩 the coolest aircraft you've never heard of, and 🌪 the impact dust has on electronics.
🔗 Last week’s most-clicked link: A great introduction on how to read electronics datasheets.
⚡️ Analog Interviews: Markell Baldwin, Partner at Drive Capital
Startup News 🚀💰:
- Instrumental, a startup that uses vision-powered AI to detect manufacturing anomalies (and newest TheAnalog.io sponsor!), raised a $50M Series C led by BAM Elevate with help from existing investors Canaan, Root Ventures and Eclipse Ventures.
- Swappie, a company that refurbishes and resells used iPhones raised $124 million in a Series C round led by growth equity firm Verdane.
- Scrona AG, the tiny printing tech company aiming to 3D print electronics such as PCBs raised $6.7 million in a Series A round led by AM Ventures.
- Homebound, a tech startup enabling people to build a home anywhere raised $75 million in a Series C round led by Khosla Ventures.
- Volta Trucks, an electric vehicle startup has raised $260 million in a Series C round led by Luxor Capital.
Interesting Links 🔗:
- Dust has a real impact on the reliability of electronics. There’s even a significant difference between indoor and outdoor dust, with indoor dust containing more water soluble salts and being generally more conductive.
- A simulation of waves (from e.g. an earthquake) propagating through the subsurface. “The simulation shows both vertical and horizontal motions. The quick waves, are pressure waves. The slower ones are shear waves. One can see how structure in the subsurface might guide and amplify oscillations.”
- A fantastic read on the semiconductor industry at large, from the history of ASIC’s and FPGA’s, to commentary from Xilinx and Cadence, to the business of fabless semiconductor companies and design houses. “The first Xilinx FPGA was created in 1985 in a mature 1.2 µm manufacturing process. It ran at 18 MHz and had a 1000-gate equivalence, meaning that it could be used to implement the functionality of about 1000 gates, even though it actually contained more like 20,000 gates.”
- The DarkAero 1 is the coolest aircraft you’ve never heard of. Founded by 3 brothers, DarkAero is building a two-seat kit aircraft engineered specifically for high speed, long range flight. The plane is constructed from carbon fiber and aerospace alloys, and can be reserved today for $1,000.
- A good breakdown on Intel's latest investor meeting. "A lot of what Intel is doing is adopting best practices from others. The big take away to me is that they appear to have gotten back on track on development and are executing on a roadmap that has the potential to get them back at or near process leadership".
- A nice primer on black holes. Primordial black holes are “the smallest type of black holes. Their size can be as small as a single atom but with the mass of a large mountain”.
- Imaging satellites can also capture data outside of the visible-light spectrum. The near-infrared band is widely used in agriculture, for example, because these images help farmers gauge the health of their crops. “Longer-wavelength “thermal” IR does a good job of penetrating smoke and picking up heat sources, making it useful for wildfire monitoring”.
- The bicycle was not invented until the late 1800s. Yet it was a simple mechanical invention, requiring no brilliant inventive insight. Why wasn’t it invented much earlier? The answer may lie somewhere between the correct design not being obvious, manufacturing capabilities yet to be invented, and the economics of the time.
One Interesting Tweet 🐦: progress 📈
