Nice.
Synthetic RNA kit business Synthego has raised $41 million to step up its efforts to make CRISPR gene editing easier and more accurate. The West Coast startup relied heavily on tech VCs for the cash, but also gained validation from having CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna invest in its business.
Redwood City, CA-based Synthego exited stealth in August, four years after it was set up by two former SpaceX computer engineers. In those early years, which were bankrolled by an $8.3 million investment in 2013, Synthego established an automated manufacturing process for guide RNA products that it thinks sets it apart from larger competitors in terms of cost, turnaround time and editing efficiency.
Sythengo has persuaded some big names it is on to something. 8VC, an infrastructure-focused VC that also invested in uBiome, led the round with support from fellow new backers AME Cloud Ventures, Elements Capital, OS Fund, Alexandria Equities and ZhenFund. Existing investors including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Menlo Ventures also contributed to the Series B round.
A future in which human workers are replaced by machines is about to become a reality at an insurance firm in Japan, where more than 30 employees are being laid off and replaced with an artificial intelligence system that can calculate payouts to policyholders.
Insurance firm Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance is making 34 employees redundant and replacing them with IBM’s Watson Explorer AI.
“I’m a political theory researcher at Sciences Po, and this talk draws on modern political theories of liberalism, the latest transhumanist literature, and ancient Greek theories of the good life.”
The Transhumanist Paradox.
Deciding between technological utopias in a liberal state.
In Brief
According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 285 million people are visually impaired, with 39 million living with blindness and the other 246 million having low vision.
In a world of modern technological advancements, visual impairment has been the subject of much medical research. Perhaps the most notable among these are those that use artificial intelligence (AI), specifically through machine learning. Google’s DeepMind has been working with the UK’s National Health Service to do ophthalmology research.
Posted in robotics/AI
In Brief
Foxconn Electronics, the Taiwanese manufacturing company behind some of the biggest electronic brands’ devices, including Apple’s iPhone, has announced that it will ramp up automation processes at its Chinese factories. The goal is to eventually achieve full automation.
In an article published in Digitimes, General Manager Dai Jia-peng of Foxconn’s Automation Technology Development Committee explains that the process will unfold in three phases.
