Up to £23 million in government funding will create more AI and data conversion courses, helping young people from underrepresented groups including women, black people and people with disabilities join the UK’s world-leading Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry. Up to two thousand scholarships for master AI conversion courses, which enable graduates to do further study courses in the field even if their undergraduate course is not directly related, will create a new generation of experts in data science and AI. The UK has a long history in AI, from codebreaker Alan
Alejandro Cordero, a professor of electronics and the CEO & Founder of Innova Space, which is reportedly the only company in Latin America that specializes in the design and development of PocketQube pico-satellites. Innova Space was born from an educational project led by Cordero and his seventh-year students. Cordero had challenged his students of Technical High School, which is dubbed number five in the city of Mar del Plata, Argentina with designing a satellite in 2019. In the process, Innova Space received an offer from a startup accelerator. An investment of $100,000
Nestcoin, a Black-owned company founded last November with a mission to build, operate, invest in web3 applications and make crypto accessible to everyone, has raised $6.45 million pre-seed. The company’s products cut across Decentralized Finance (DeFi), media, digital art, and gaming. Described by its founder as a venture collective, it launched its media arm called Breach last year to create bite-sized and informative crypto content for the average African. It also set up Metaverse Magna (MVM), a gaming guild that introduces users to the world of play-to-earn crypto-powered games like Axie
NALA, a Tanzanian cross-border payments company that recently pivoted from local to international money transfers, has raised $10 million in a new fundraising round. It comes almost three years after NALA secured a seven-figure pre-seed round led by Accel in 2019. It received funds from an impressive group of angel investors — Jonas Templestein, co-founder and CTO of Monzo; Vladimir Tenev, Robinhood co-founder and CEO; Deel founder Alex Bouaziz; Laura Spiekerman, co-founder of Alloy; Peeyush Ranjan, the head of Google Payments and early employees at Revolut and TransferWise. Sheel Tyle,
Michael Jordan and former rival Allen Iverson are among the 90 – or so – investors participating in a just-completed $46 million funding round for Metaplex, a startup that reportedly allows users to build their own Solana-based non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces. The funding round was co-led by investment firm Multicoin Capital and Jump Crypto, with participation from Solana Ventures, Alameda Research, Animoca Brands, and more than 90 individual supporters. These supporters included legendary basketball player Michael Jordan who last year announced the launch of the HEIR platform on Solana, William Wesley, Allen Iverson, Shari Glazer, RÜFÜS DU
Sorare, the player-owned fantasy sports game leveraging NFTs, has welcomed Serena Williams as an advisor to its board of directors. One of the most iconic athletes, Williams is also an entrepreneur, brand builder, and investor at the forefront of sports and technology. Sorare is combining NFT collectibles with fantasy sports to drive long-term utility and value for NFTs on the platform and beyond, unlocking a new era of sports fandom on and off the field. Since it was founded in 2018, the company has experienced incredible demand and hypergrowth, increasing
Rapper Nas has joined US private equity firm Andreessen Horowitz and Alphabet Inc.’s Google in an investment round for Africa-focused mobile gaming platform – Carry1st. Carry1st, a South African publisher of social games and interactive content across Africa, has raised $20 million Series A from the investors. The startup, launched by Cordel Robbin-Coker, Lucy Hoffman and Tinotenda Mundangepfupfu in 2018, also received investments from Avenir and the founders of Chipper Cash, Sky Mavis and Yield Guild Games, took part. It wants to use this additional capital to scale interactive content across Africa, build the workforce and acquire new users. The
Ghanaian startup Float has picked up a significant round of funding with $17M already in the bag in the first few weeks of the year. The fintech which provides credit lines for businesses says the funding will be used to bolster its offerings and expand around the globe. The seed round was a mix of $7 million equity and $10 million debt. While Cauris provided debt financing, Tiger Global and JAM Fund, the investment firm of Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen co-led the equity bit. Other VC firms involved in the equity round include Kinfolk,
We’ve started a new weekly series looking at founders from different communities absolutely killing it in the tech space. Following on from our ‘Meet 3 Standout Latinx Founders Using Data And AR To Do Some Pretty Cool Things‘ feature piece – we’re now taking a deep dive into Black founders in fintech and blockchain that you should look out for this year. These financial technologies (fintech) companies use the internet, blockchain, and software technologies, as well as algorithms, to offer or facilitate financial services traditionally offered by banks. David Potter
Over the last year, I have been on the lookout for Latina founders, and I found them through Google searches, Twitter threads, and referrals. So this week, we’re taking a look at some amazing Latina entrepreneurs in tech and highlighting the work they’ve been doing for the past few years. I’ll aim to do a shortlist every week. Let’s go! Agustina Sartori, founder of GlamST, GlamST’s proprietary technology allows people to try on makeup through AR, representing the finishes, color, and texture of the products in a highly realistic and accurate
