Latest Posts

• Walmart, Microsoft Deepen Partnership as Both Grapple With Amazon

  The enemy of my enemy is my friend—even in the retail and cloud computing businesses.

  So says retail giant Walmart (NYSE: WMT) as it announced this morning a five-year partnership with Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) to use machine learning and... Read more »

  Angela Shah7/17/18

• New Ethics Code Urges Tech Firms and Coders To Avoid Harming Society

  Selling a new Web-connected thermostat or other wired gizmo to consumers without a plan to deliver the necessary security patches is not only bad business—it’s unethical. So is failing to challenge a law or tech company rule that governs work on... Read more »

  Bernadette Tansey7/17/18

• Security Firm ObserveIT Grabs $33M to Get Ahead of Insider Threats

  Cyber breaches caused by people within businesses and organizations, both accidental and malicious leaks, continue to multiply. Now, a Boston security startup is arming itself with more cash and enhanced technology to try and stop these insider threats.

  ObserveIT announced... Read more »

  Jeff Engel7/17/18

• City of Detroit Tests Real-World Mobility with Innovation Initiative

  Michigan’s government and business leaders have worked diligently over the past few years to position the state that put the world on wheels to be major player in the development of self-driving cars. (According to a June 25 opinion piece in... Read more »

  Sarah Schmid Stevenson7/17/18

• With $45M, HotSpot Takes Drug Research to New Biological Real Estate

  In real estate, location is key. The same holds true in the hunt for new drugs. HotSpot Therapeutics is trying to break new ground in drug discovery by hitting locations on a protein that aren’t the conventional targets of most medicines.... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan7/17/18

• Ex-HubSpot CMO Volpe to Lead Lola, Founder Paul English Is Now CTO

  [Updated 7/17/18, 11:53 am, with comments from English and Volpe. See below.] Lola, the business travel software startup led by Kayak co-founder Paul English, has brought on a new chief executive: Mike Volpe, the former chief marketing officer at... Read more »

  Jeff Engel7/16/18

• Hyperloop, Cellectar, Cheeks & More: This Week’s Wisconsin Watchlist

  Keep up with news from Wisconsin’s innovation community with these recent headlines:

  —A team of students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has constructed a third prototype for a vehicle designed to zoom through an above-ground vacuum tube at speeds that can... Read more »

  Jeff Buchanan7/16/18

• Foxconn Buys Eau Claire Office Space, Partners with Advocate Aurora

  Foxconn, the Taiwanese manufacturing giant, is making more moves in Wisconsin at it prepares to build a massive electronics factory in the southeast corner of the state.

  Foxconn said on Monday that it has agreed to buy one building in downtown... Read more »

  Jeff Buchanan7/16/18

• New Study Shows CRISPR Can Delete Big Chunks of DNA

  [Updated 7/16/18 4:00pm ET, see note below] As CRISPR-based therapeutics inch closer to human tests in the U.S., academic researchers have kept up a steady drum beat about potential risks of the gene editing technique. They recently published two... Read more »

  Corie Lok7/16/18

• High Alpha Raises $100M+ for Two New Funds, Adds Brad Feld to Board

  High Alpha, an Indianapolis venture capital fund and startup “studio,” announced today that it has raised more than $100 million for two new funds called High Alpha Capital II and High Alpha Studio II.

  High Alpha Capital backs companies the... Read more »

  Sarah Schmid Stevenson7/16/18

• Pliant Picks Up $62M to Test Lung, Liver Fibrosis Drug in the Clinic

  The cause of fibrosis, the hardening and thickening of connective tissue in organs, isn’t known and it has few treatments. Pliant Therapeutics aims to bring patients who have this chronic and life-threatening condition in the lungs or the liver a new... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan7/16/18

• Verge Genomics Nabs $32M For Computation-Heavy Neuro Drug Discovery

  Two years after making her first-ever rounds of business meetings at the J.P. Morgan healthcare conference, Alice Zhang has steered her biotech startup, Verge Genomics, into a $32 million Series A financing.

  Zhang (pictured) was notable then and now for her... Read more »

  Alex Lash7/16/18

• Telkonet Brings on Roth Capital to Explore Sale or Other Deals

  Telkonet, a small Milwaukee-area energy management and connected devices company, said this week it had hired the investment bank Roth Capital Partners “to explore strategic alternatives” with the goal of maximizing shareholder value.

  Jason Tienor, president and CEO of Telkonet (OTCMKTS:... Read more »

  Jeff Buchanan7/13/18

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• With New Data, Amgen Tries Again for FDA OK of Osteoporosis Drug

  More than a year after the FDA rejected Amgen’s experimental osteoporosis drug due to safety concerns, the Thousand Oaks, CA, company has teed up a new application.

  The Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN) drug, romosozumab (Evenity), is an antibody treatment meant... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan7/13/18

• Best Friday Reads: Social Media Rules Us All, and Mints Billionaires

  Humans have had a drastic physical evolution recently—one that has notably taken only a few years. While the evolution from hunched primates to homo sapiens took tens of millions of years, we needed only about a decade to develop an arched... Read more »

  David Holley7/13/18

• Boston Tech Watch: Autodesk, DataRobot, Starry, Perceptive Automata

  It’s time to catch up on Boston tech headlines. This week, we’re tracking acquisitions by Autodesk and DataRobot, a $100 million investment in upstart wireless Internet provider Starry, a new startup from Runkeeper co-founder Jason Jacobs, details about a stealthy autonomous... Read more »

  Jeff Engel7/13/18

• Bio Roundup: Pfizer’s Prices, Novartis Cuts, Gene Therapy Guide & More

  Drug price changes typically happen either at the start of the calendar year or the beginning of the third quarter. Such changes are routine for many companies, but Pfizer took an unusual step this week by rolling back scheduled price increases... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan7/13/18

• C-Motive, Startup Developing Electric Motor Technology, Raises $750K

  Cobalt is one of the ingredients in a type of rare earth magnet that, along with other rare earth magnets like neodymium and dysprosium, can be found in electric motors, smartphone batteries, and other products that are popular among consumers and... Read more »

  Jeff Buchanan7/12/18

• Broadcom Eyes CA Technologies for $19B After Trump Axed Qualcomm Bid

  Semiconductor maker Broadcom, which ended its effort to buy competitor Qualcomm earlier this year, has a new target: New York-based business software maker CA Technologies.

  The pair announced Wednesday that Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO), which moved its headquarters from Singapore... Read more »

  David Holley7/12/18

• Zogenix Epilepsy Data Sets Up Market Battle With GW’s Cannabis Drug

  Just weeks ago, the FDA approved the first ever medicine made from a derivative of marijuana, a drug from GW Pharmaceuticals for a rare form of epilepsy. Yet competition already looms from San Diego’s Zogenix, thanks to new data the Emeryville,... Read more »

  Ben Fidler7/12/18

• With $112M Fund, Glasswing Looks to Drive East Coast A.I. Startups

  In a sea of emerging tech venture funds, Glasswing Ventures is trying to stand out. The Boston firm announced today it has closed its debut investment fund at $112 million.

  That’s bigger than the “micro-VC” funds of the past decade, but... Read more »

  Gregory T. Huang7/12/18

• Indy’s PactSafe Snags $5.5M Series A to Expand Contracting Software

  PactSafe, an Indianapolis startup focused on cloud-based contracting services, announced this week that it has raised a $5.5 million Series A investment round. The round was co-led by Houston, TX-based Mercury Fund and Salt Lake City’s Signal Peak Ventures,... Read more »

  Sarah Schmid Stevenson7/12/18

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• E-Retail Startup Pointy Raises $12M, Helps Small Shops Be Found Online

  Mark Cummins wondered why online search engines could help you locate a landmark halfway around the world in a second but couldn’t tell him whether the corner store had a craft beer he liked.

  That’s what led him to co-found Pointy... Read more »

  Angela Shah7/12/18

• Penrose Studios Raises $10M To Elevate AR/VR Storytelling

  Penrose Studios, which has been scoring film festival awards for its early productions in virtual reality and augmented reality, announced today it raised $10 million in a Series A fundraising round.

  Among the new investors backing the San Francisco studio are... Read more »

  Bernadette Tansey7/11/18

• EU Regulators Approve Akcea’s Inotersen. FDA Decisions Are Next.

  Akcea Therapeutics (NASDAQ: AKCA) has beaten rival Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ALNY) to a first drug approval, getting the nod for its drug inotersen (Tegsedi) in the European Union.

  Akcea and Alnylam, both of Cambridge, MA, are developing treatments... Read more »

  Alex Lash7/11/18

• Otsuka Ramps Up Its Antibody Game with $430M Visterra Acquisition

  Otsuka Pharmaceutical is expanding its pipeline and U.S. reach with an agreement to acquire Waltham, MA, clinical-stage drug developer Visterra for $430 million in cash.

  The deal, announced Wednesday, comes nine months after Visterra closed a $46.7 million Series C round... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan7/11/18

• Dough Pushes Transparency, Culture Change Amid Student Debt Crisis

  Catalina Kaiyoorawongs knows from experience how dire the student debt crisis has gotten in the United States.

  She spent years addressing access to loans for fellow low-income and first-generation students in Florida as part of her advocacy work, calling financial aid... Read more »

  Sarah Schmid Stevenson7/11/18

• BrightStar, Gener8tor Nix Deal Promising Funds for Accelerator Grads

  [Updated 7/11/18 11:02 a.m. See below.] Two Wisconsin-based organizations that invest in startups have done away with an arrangement they made four years ago that was aimed at getting early-stage companies to move to—or stay in—the state, and create... Read more »

  Jeff Buchanan7/11/18

• Samsung, Google Back Tamr as Big Data Startups Try to Find Their Way

  [Updated 7/11/18, 12:01 pm. See below.] Businesses have sunk a lot of money into software tools to analyze the reams of data they’re generating, in search of insights that might help them increase sales or cut costs.

  But analytics... Read more »

  Jeff Engel7/11/18

• BioCryst Drops Idera Pharma Merger After Shareholders Veto Deal

  BioCryst Pharmaceuticals is ending a plan to merge with Idera Pharmaceuticals and form a single company focused on rare diseases.

  Durham, NC-based BioCryst (NASDAQ: BCRX) terminated the merger agreement on Tuesday following a meeting that saw shareholders vote overwhelmingly against... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan7/10/18

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