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In that past year, there’s been a lot hype around biomanufacturing — from growing cell-based meat to microbe-powered medicine manufacturing. But none of synthetic biology’s darlings without one key piece of equipment: a bioreactor. While the world debates how best to bring biology-fueled manufacturing into existence, one company is already rethinking its most important instrument. Stämm Biotech , founded in 2014, is developing a desktop-sized bioreactor that looks pretty different from the tanks, tubes, and knobs traditionally seen in industrial or even benchtop bioreactors. The Buenos Aires-based company just announced a $17 million Series A round; combined with previous seed and pre-seed rounds, that brings its total raised to $20 million. To get what Stämm is doing, you have to know what a bioreactor usually looks like, and what’s going on inside it. At a basic level, industrial scale bioreactors are giant, sterilized tanks. Those tanks are filled with the medium needed to grow a

The market for mechanical keyboards has boomed in recent years and the pandemic only added fuel to it as people looked to improve their home setups (and spend their stimulus checks). Today, you can find anything from a $20 AliExpress special to a $600 Keycult board — before keycaps and switches, if you can even get one. And then there is Angry Miao’s Am Hatsu, a wireless ortholinear split ergo keyboard with an aluminum body that sold for $1,600 (but with switches and keycaps). It can charge wirelessly and if you opt for the company’s Cybermat, you’ll never have to think about charging it. That’ll set you back another $380, though. So, for $2,000, you get a whole new typing experience and a heck of a learning curve, but you’re going to have a hard time finding one. Angry Miao tells me it doesn’t currently have plans for another Am Hatsu production run, so chances are the prices on the secondary market will be quite a bit more than the original retail price. Now, let’s just get this ou

The world’s labs are under pressure to do more tests and process more materials, not just due to COVID but from the growing biotech and drug development sectors — and automation is the sure path forwards. Automata, which got its start making a robotic arm for handling individual tasks, has now raised $50M to automate entire lab processes from start to finish. When we last talked with Automata in 2019 , the company had just raised a $7.4M A round and was focusing on developing and deploying its Eva robotic arm, which could be used for a variety of common tasks: moving glass around, performing simple samples, that sort of thing. But they soon found that life as a robot provider for small, highly individual projects and labs wasn’t a viable business model. “It’s not enough to engage with your customer at one stage — like, ‘here’s the most affordable robot arm on the market, good luck!’ If companies buy one or two robots, it optimizes a few processes but it doesn’t revolutionize how that

Apple today is announcing a series of coming updates for AirTag and the Find My network aimed at addressing the problem of AirTag accessories being used to stalk individuals or people’s property without their knowledge or consent. Following the AirTags’ spring 2021 introduction , numerous media reports and updates from local police departments have warned of incidents where AirTags were being used for unwanted tracking, including of people and valuable property — like cars thieves intended to steal. This resulted in a growing PR nightmare for Apple, which had positioned itself as a consumer privacy-focused company. Today, Apple is responding to feedback from consumers, safety experts and law enforcement agencies with plans to change how AirTags work. The company announced it will soon implement a series of updates to both AirTags and the Find My network, initially beginning with new privacy warnings, alerts and documentation. It’s also “investigating” the introduction of other c

Virtual production has rapidly become one of the most promising techniques in media. But while a huge and sophisticated real-time display instead of a green screen solves many problems, it also creates new ones. The creators of Netflix’s mind-bending Dark took on this challenge for the production of their new show, 1899 — and combined old-school cinema chops with cutting-edge tech and one giant, ambitious mechanism to build something literally revolutionary: a facility that they call Dark Bay. Most people will probably be familiar with the virtual production style through the publicity surrounding The Mandalorian, which was the first content to be shot largely in this way . But even that show shot half its scenes on location — something that was more or less impossible for 1899. I talked with Philipp Klausing, producer on the show and managing director of Dark Bay (the overarching production company is called Dark Ways). “We’re a little different because we come to it from a creati

Today, if a hematologist wanted to dive into the exact organization and structure of your blood cells, they’d probably need a microscope in a lab. Scopio, an Israel-based startup that just closed a $50 million Series C round, argues that soon, a lot of that work could be done with nothing more than a laptop. Founded in 2015 , Scopio is an imaging company looking to re-imagine a common blood test called a peripheral blood smear. In essence, that’s a test where a doctor, usually looking to understand an anomaly in a blood cell count, literally takes a look at your blood cells. That process involves placing a smear of blood onto a slide, and examining the shape, size and structure of certain cells using a well-trained eye. Scopio has developed a scanner, called Scopio100x , capable of imaging that whole blood sample, while maintaining the ability to achieve 100x magnification. The result is a zoomable, digital image that CEO and founder Itai Hayut argues will allow peripheral blood sme

A huge amount of energy use on our planet goes toward creating heat, and not only that, but a large amount of that energy is wasted and byproducts like CO2 blasted into the atmosphere. Modern Electron could change that with a new system that captures the emissions and produces clean hydrogen, right inside a home or building. $30 million in Series B funding will power its upcoming push to become a household name. Natural gas is the most common way houses, apartment buildings, and offices create heat. It’s a pretty simple process: you burn the gas, it produces heat, carbon dioxide, and water. The heat is piped in, the other stuff is piped out. But as Modern Electron co-founder and CEO Tony Pan explained, this may be convenient but it’s not ideal (though admittedly it’s much better than oil and coal). “If you’re burning fuel just for heat, from a physics standpoint it’s very wasteful,” he said. “If you were burning natural gas or coal or biofuels in a power plant, you’d be generating

Over the course of the last few years, Firewalla ‘s combined firewall and router devices have made a name for themselves as the go-to hardware security tools for many enthusiasts and small businesses. Today, the company started shipping its newest device, the Firewalla Purple , a diminutive gigabit firewall and router that is currently retailing for $319. With the Purple, Firewalla, which was founded in 2015, is filling a hole in its lineup, which until now included 100 Mbps and 500 Mbps devices for home and small business users with prices ranging from $129 to $199, as well as a $458 3 Gbps+ device for larger businesses. With many homes now having access to gigabit internet connections, though, the Purple slots in nicely in the middle there. Image Credits: Firewalla Like its other devices, the Purple’s core function is as a firewall, but with a device watching over your network, you can obviously do a lot more. In addition to monitoring and controlling your internet usage, the