Virgil Abloh’s impact in the technology and fashion industry continues to go unmatched. Mercedes-Benz is honoring Abloh, who passed away late November after an aggressive battle with cancer, announcing the Project Maybach concept. He worked on the initiative alongside Mercedes-Benz Chief Design Officer Gordon Wagener. The 41-year-old guided the luxury vehicle’s design, which carries the essence of the former Mercedes-Maybach 6 concept released in 2016. Abloh’s creativity birthed Project Maybach’s front-end features such as circular headlights, according to a report by Car and Driver, as well as the four auxiliary lights enhanced by
CinetPay has secured $2.4 million in seed funding with venture capital funding from 4DX Ventures and unicorn Flutterwave. The startup, a payment gateway that allows e-merchants and merchants to accept mobile money and other payments in Francophone Africa, was founded by Idriss Monthe and Daniel Dindji in 2016. It acts as an online and point-of-sale payment solution for merchants to process payment from more than 130 payment operators — mobile money, bank cards, wallets. On the platform, merchants have to open an account and upload their KYC, integrate Cinet’s APIs, and collect payments. It came
Gender Equality in Tech (GET) Cities, led by SecondMuse Foundation and Break Through Tech, has launched a third city hub in Miami as part of Pivotal Ventures’ $50 million investment focused on diversifying the tech industry. The hub, dubbed GET Miami, will work collaboratively with the region’s tech ecosystem to propel more women, trans, and nonbinary people, particularly Black, Latino/a, Indigenous, and people of color, into tech education, careers, and leadership. The company’s main blueprint is to address the challenge of inclusion by leveraging three key pillars – academia, industry, and entrepreneurship. GET Miami will
TechRise, a program from tech organization P33 that’s been hosting a weekly pitch competition this year for Chicago’s Black and Latino entrepreneurs, will return next year after a successful 2021 run. The program was launched with a $ 5 million fund to invest in startups owned by diverse entrepreneurs up and down the city in April. TechRise aims to channel more funds to minority-owned startups, which receive just 1.9% of all startup funding in Chicago, according to P33. In addition, corporate sponsors like Verizon, Discover, and Valor Equity Partners have
New York City is making a bold move by introducing a new law to combat race and gender bias in hiring processes when businesses use artificial intelligence tools to screen out job candidates. Under the new law – employers in the city will be banned from using automated employment decision tools to screen job candidates unless the technology has been subject to a “bias audit” conducted a year before using the tool. The new act passed the measure on November 10 and it takes effect on January 2, 2023. A PricewaterhouseCoopers 2017 study found
Hundreds of Black women in Georgia will receive a guaranteed monthly income of $850 to improve their mental health and address the racial wealth gap. This money has no conditions attached, meaning they could use it towards their startup costs. The In Her Hands program will grant 650 Black women below the federal poverty line the cash with no conditions attached for two years. Launching early next year and distributing more than $13 million, it is poised to be one of the US’s largest guaranteed income pilot programs. The median Black family in the U.S.
Tyson Clark, a general partner at Alphabet Inc.’s venture arm GV and one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent Black startup investors, has died at the age of 43. GV CEO David Krane just issued a statement about the team losing the father-of-three, writing, “With great sadness, we share the news that Tyson Clark, our friend, and GV general partner, passed away yesterday due to sudden complications from a health issue. We are stunned and shattered by this loss. “The GV team extends our deepest sympathies to Tyson’s family and loved ones.
Venus Williams To Give $2M In Free Online Therapy Through Initiative With Women’s Tennis Association
Williams has teamed up with online mental health platform BetterHelp and the Women’s Tennis Association to offer the unique gift of more than $2 million in free therapy sessions, The New York Post reports. Before matching you with a therapist, the online platform asks you a series of questions including if you would like to be linked with a religious therapist, your reasons for needing therapy, and what it is you’re looking for in a therapist. For example – someone that teaches new skills, challenges beliefs, assigns homework, or proactively
Black people produce and share substantially more content than other groups on Facebook. While Facebook Stories has low usage in most of the U.S., it has “clusters of intense production” in places with a high concentration of African Americans, such as the arc in the Southeast known as the Black Belt, Facebook research found. But increasingly, the community seems to be turning away from the app. The number of Black monthly users on Facebook declined 2.7% in a single month to 17.3 million adults, according to a research report, “Industry Update on
Detroit-based StockX has appointed Robin Washington as its new audit committee chair; the company shared in a press release. Washington, a greater Detroit native, joins StockX’s board with a wealth of experience advising tech and life science companies. In her new role, she’ll advise its leaders as StockX plans for international expansion and diversifying its catalog. She served as executive vice president and CFO at Gilead Sciences for almost 12 years, where she oversaw the global finance, facilities and operations, investor relations, and IT organizations. Washington also currently serves on the boards of Alphabet
