On the rAIdar: Upcoming meetup & Apple's secret project
Necessary Nuggets
Happy Tech Tuesday! For those new here, welcome to Necessary Nuggets. We deliver exciting updates from Necessary Ventures and some helpful tidbits on the tech world to you bimonthly. If you can’t get enough of the newsletters, don’t worry! You can access every edition on our blog — perfect for when you can’t wait for the new edition and are dying to read more or just need a midnight snack.
THIS WEEK’S FEATURES ⚡
📅 St(AI)y Woke – See below for an opportunity to join a community of technologists and founders in the AI space.
⭐ Forbidden Apple – Top secret tech for monitoring blood glucose.
⭐ Innocent Until Coded Guilty – The Supreme Court takes on Big Tech.
⭐ Walk-Ins Only – Unintended side effects to ending the COVID-19 crisis.
🔥 Will the FTC Aim FTW? – Amazon spent $3.9 billion.
UPCOMING EVENT 📅
AI you, what are you doing on March 9th? Check out this awesome opportunity to get involved with AI, start building, and have an impact:
JOBORTUNITIES 🚨
You don’t need a leap year to take a leap of faith. If you’re looking for meaningful new work, one of these positions with an NV portfolio company might be a good fit for you:
Taro is on the hunt for a product engineer to help them deliver health insurance designed to keep you healthy.
Are you someone who likes developing good software and is looking to make a big impact on not only a product but also a company’s growth and operations? This is your gig.
From Taro: “Our patients and doctors are actively using our software to navigate care and billing now, and we have lots of workflows we want to improve. We’d love any referrals to this role!"
Relief is hiring a strong back-end engineer to help them get people out of toxic debt.
Do you want to contribute to a fast-growing startup in the FinTech space? Even better, do you want to help Americans say bye to their debt for free? This is the perfect chance.
If you know of anyone, please reach out to us or send an email to careers@relief.app.
Particle Health is hiring a senior software engineer to help create the new world of healthcare data exchange.
Are you exhilarated by the thought of using your skills to think big and reinvent industry standards? This might be for you.
This role allows you to own all steps in the development process from design to implementation, solving complex technical challenges and driving adoption of those solutions.
Feel free to reach out with any questions! All 181 open job postings are listed here.
NV Portfolio Highlight 🎢
If you think recruiting for a quiz bowl team sounds hard, try recruiting for a clinical trial. Finding people both qualified and willing to participate in clinical trials is one of the biggest challenges in drug development. Taking logistics out of it, clinical trials also pose an ethical dilemma. Patients enrolled in clinical trials are searching for better treatment, but the most they’re promised is investigational therapy, rolling the medical dice for critical care or just a placebo.
Unlearn is reinventing clinical trials with digital twins. Digital twins can be software simulations of anything in the real world, but in Unlearn’s case, the digital twins are individualized simulations of people. Rather than delivering experimental treatments on real people, Unlearn uses historical and real-world data about particular diseases to deliver experimental treatments to a patient’s digital twin.
With the present AI revolution, Unlearn is poised for rapid growth. The company is currently partnered with Merck KgaA, a major German pharma company, to develop immunology products. In September 2022, the European Medicines Agency gave the go ahead for Unlearn’s platform to be used for Phase 2 and Phase 3 clinical trials. Who knows? Your digital twin might just be the key to the next medical breakthrough.
If you’re interested in working with digital twins, you can apply to open roles with this link.
GOOD READS 📖
Americans’ appetite for embryo testing is growing. A study published by Science revealed that 40% percent of Americans would be more likely than not to test and choose IVF embryos for intellectual aptitude. However, predictive embryo tests are still highly unregulated and controversial – many view them as an unproven, unethical practice. Although the technology hasn’t been developed yet, it’s likely not far away, especially if greater positive sentiment towards IVF is any indicator.
EV tech is as prolific as EVer. Ford is building a $3.5 billion factory in Michigan to develop new EV batteries with lithium iron phosphate (LFP) chemistry. Ford claims the batteries will be more durable, faster charging, and more affordable. The LFP batteries will be developed alongside China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited who will provide “knowledge and services” while Ford owns and operates the plant.
Apple has made significant progress on a top secret project: noninvasive glucose monitors. In the works for over 12 years, Apple intends to integrate the technology into Apple Watches, cementing it as a major player in the healthcare industry if realized. The technology reportedly uses silicon photonics to detect the concentration of glucose in a person’s blood. Eliminating the need for pricking, it’s a potential game changer for diabetics.
The Supreme Court is taking heat as it attempts to regulate Big Tech and content moderation. The argument stands that although Big Tech companies shouldn’t be liable for content created by users, they should be liable for what their algorithms promote. Pro-tech lawyers are concerned that the courts do not understand or appreciate technical complexities in the modern web. It’s unclear what implications the rulings on recent lawsuits against Google and Twitter may have.
With the beginning of the pandemic also came the beginning of the age of telemedicine. Doctor’s offices prioritized virtual visits to keep non-Covid patients away from waiting rooms. An unintentional positive side effect of this was the growth of gender-affirming care, as hormone replacement therapies could operate away from physical office spaces. With the White House declaring an official end to the public health emergency on May 11, controlled substances will return to in-person prescriptions only – an undoubted setback for gender-affirming care.
STARTUPS & MERGE-UPS 🔥
One Medical, a leading primary care organization, merged with Amazon this past week in a $3.9 billion dollar deal. If the FTC does not challenge the deal, Amazon has staked its largest claim in the healthcare industry to date.
Plantd is decarbonizing the construction industry by replacing oriented strand board (OSB) with panels made from grass. The startup just raised a $10 million Series A round at a $65 million postmoney valuation.
Synchron is developing a brain interface to transform life for people with paralysis. Sychron secured a $75 million financing round in December, and last month, its trial results were published in JAMA Neurology.
Tome is building productivity software unlike any other platform on the market thanks to its AI-based approach. Tome reached one million users just 134 days after launch. Last week, the company announced a fresh $43 million in Series B funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and is currently valued at $300 million.
REDDIT HIGHLIGHT 📈
At the current rate tech is advancing, the only way to beat computers is to join them. I found this Reddit post pretty handy for that mission.
Do you have other AI tools you would add to this list?
It’s hard to tell whether AI is integrating into industries or forming its own mega-industry. Maybe it’s both. No matter what the case, it’s becoming impossible to keep up. I’m hoping the next AI pop-up is an AI-depot where you can walk down aisles like a grocery store and pick out a program for whatever you need. It could be the first ret(ai)l store in the metaverse.
OUTRO
Feel free to reply to this email with all questions, feedback, or comments. We’ll be iterating and curating the NVTC newsletter according to your interests.
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Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
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