📷 Disturbing facial recognition technologies, the EdTech sector boom…
Weekly News Digest… The Seed #19
Hi everyone, we hope you are doing well!
Welcome to another Weekly News Digest, with the latest news and trends in Tech and Entrepreneurship.
📅 Today’s program:
Disturbing facial recognition technologies
The EdTech sector
A new 🇫🇷 unicorn, a neighborhood social media, and an 🇮🇳 exit!
Disturbing facial recognition technologies
The use of facial recognition technologies in public areas is frequently denounced by activists, especially since the algorithms may be biased and discriminate against minorities. Now, the technology is also being used to prevent some behaviors in a private setting…
🕹️ Tencent, the Chinese tech giant, recently implemented facial recognition to prevent Chinese teenagers from playing online games at night, from 10 pm to 8 am. It is already available in more than 60 games.
🧐 At least 4 facial recognition companies in Russia have developed tools to identify a person’s race. While the intent is probably not to discriminate against ethnicities, some are afraid that it could be used to do so.
The promises of the EdTech sector
EdTech companies, which use software and scientific discoveries to favor learning, have recently been booming thanks to the pandemic and recent IPOs: indeed, it helped investors realize the potential size of the market…
💻… So it does not come as a surprise that PowerZ, which only released the first version of its product in February, has just raised $8.3 million for its Series A. The company made public its deck that helped her raising millions without stunning metrics so far.
👁️ Brighteye Ventures, the leading EdTech VC fund in Europe, has recently issued its mid-2021 Funding report, which explains in more detail the EdTech sector in Europe. It has, for instance, highlighted the biggest funding rounds for EdTech startups since 2018. As you can see below, the biggest 2018 round only represents the 5th biggest in 2021… with 6 months left to go!
Latest Unicorns, IPOs, and exits
🔧 ManoMano, the French market place focused on gardening and handwork tools raised $355 millions to a $2.7B valuation, making it another French unicorn!
💰 We often talk about "going public" but right now, many companies decide to go public via SPAC's, for Special purpose acquisition companies. One of the reasons is the shorter timeline of SPACs. Last week, the social media for neighborhoods, Nextdoor, went public via a SPAC, valuing the company in excess of $4 billions.
🎮 PlaySimple, an Indian gaming startup, has been acquired by the Swedish MTG (Modern Times Group) to become one of Indians’ biggest exits! This is a huge success for this startup which only raised $4.5 million in 7 years!