Happy Tech Tuesday! For those new here, welcome to the NVTC weekly newsletter. Here you’ll find recent updates from the tech world, insightful articles related to startups and highlights from NV portfolio companies.

THIS WEEK’S FEATURES ⚡

⭐ Catch a Waveform – An AI-powered, deep-data medical platform.

⭐ Oldies but Goodies – Hold onto your old flip phones; they’re going places.

⭐ No Tumor-row – CRISPR says it’s time for tumors to say their goodbyes.

🔮 Startup Savvy – Startups making headway (yes, even in a recession).

📈 Twitter – Jeff Bezos? Jeff Be-almost poor.

NV Portfolio Highlight 🎢

Perhaps the largest trend in healthcare tech is the use of AI to analyze medical data. AI is understood by many to be an essential catalyst for next generation healthcare, notably for medical imaging, remote patient monitoring, and early stage intervention, to name a few use cases. Ensodata takes millions of data points floating around the medical world, think heartbeats, breathing patterns, and glycemic index dynamics, and applies AI to find clinical value.

All of those attributes have one thing in common: they can be measured in waveforms. Traditionally, clinicians analyzing waveforms put in thousands of hours to manually mark each complex event. Ensodata’s technology replaces that workflow, delivering a diagnosis in a matter of minutes.

Ensodata’s technology addresses some of the toughest pain points in healthcare, notably clinician burnout and access and affordability for patients. EnsoData launched its first product, an FDA-approved sleep study analysis platform called EnsoSleep. EnsoSleep integrates with sleep labs, automatically analyzing and scoring sleep studies. EnsoData is currently looking for a front-end engineer and quality assurance engineer, and you can see more details on that here.

GOOD READS 📖

The lawsuit that could rewrite the rules of AI copyright

Lawsuits, software, and big tech, oh my! Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI might be facing a class action lawsuit for the companies’ creation of an AI coding assistant that allegedly relies on large-scale software piracy. GitHub Copilot, like many other programs, was trained using copyright-protected data, and it’s been found by users to regurgitate sections of license-protected code without any credit. Yikes.

Your old phone's battery could power your next car

Mining is out; recycling is in. Audi dealers are leading the charge for a domestic battery supply chain by collecting household electronics to be recycled into electric car batteries. This consumer recycling program is a partnership between Volkswagen Group and Redwood Materials, and it’s the first time household lithium-ion batteries are being put to use in EV. Aside from increasing sustainability, it’s also predicted to make EVs cheaper.

Kaley’s Comment: Redwood Materials is a company worth watching. In October, the company finished testing at Argonne National Laboratory which revealed its batteries made from recycled material performed just as well as raw materials. Coupled with clauses in the Inflation Reduction Act which require EV batteries to be sourced from recycled minerals, Redwood Materials is seizing a huge opportunity.

CRISPR cancer trial success paves the way for personalized treatments

A Phase I clinical trial revealed that CRISPR gene editing can be used to alter immune cells and specifically target solid tumors, including in the breast and colon. The complicated therapy creates an army of T cells from a patient’s natural biology. Much work remains to speed up the therapies’ development, but it’s an encouraging first attempt to combine gene editing and T cell engineering.

Kaley’s Comment: The background story to this finding is also notable. Chief researchers Stefanie Mandl and Dr. Antoni Ribas took a highly personalized approach to developing this treatment. Mandl’s and Ribas’ teams combed through thousands of mutations to identify the proteins unique to a patient’s cancer cells and not found on their normal cells. After countless hours, they winnowed the list down to just 200 that were specific to each patient’s cancer type.

Mathieu Flamini has a plan to decarbonize the chemical industry

If you’re a dedicated Arsenal fan, you might be familiar with the name Mathieu Flamini. Flamini began his career in soccer, but he shifted his focus to sustainability in 2008 after leaving Arsenal, co-founding GFBiochemicals. GFBiochemicals is focused on mass-producing levulinic acid from agricultural waste, which would provide a key alternative to oil-derived chemicals in thousands of products. Recently named CEO, Flamini will lead the company through a massive time of growth, following his goal to become the “Intel of the chemical world.”

Rats are invasive menaces. These cameras spy on them

It seems like big brother has been demoted to big rodents. Conservationists on Santa Cruz island are using a network of wildlife camera traps and face recognition AI software, which alerts biologists when a rat is in view of the camera. This sets up a powerful system to keep out invasive species, which ravage crucial native species from plant seeds to bird and reptile eggs to local crops.

STARTUP SNIPPETS 🔮

Maven: a women and family health startup with unicorn status
The raise: $90 million in Series E funding

Lead investor: General Catalyst

Quix: a company dedicated high-speed data processing to empower better real-time decisions
The raise: $12.9 million in Series A funding
Owl Labs: a startup developing AI-powered meeting hardware
The raise: $25 million in Series C funding
Lentra: Indian embedded finance startup expanding its digital loan services

The raise: $60 million in Series B funding

Lead investors: Bessemer Venture Partners and Susquehanna International Group

Obralink: Chilean startup developing specialized technology for the outdated construction sector

The raise: $2 million in seed funding

Lead investors: Grúas M10 and CEMEX Ventures

TWITTER HIGHLIGHT 📈

This week on Twitter, one trending post poked fun at Jeff Bezos, after he pledged during an interview with CNN to give away the majority of his wealth.

Is this actually a holiday miracle? It’s uncertain to say for sure, but it seems like Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard started a trend.

Which ultra wealthy person will be the next to cut their fortunes for the greater good? And who will emerge on top as the recipients of these charitable acts?

OUTRO

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NVTC Newsletter No. 11