💄 The Virtual Beauty Space, the tech carbon footprint… The Seed #23
Welcome to your Weekly News Digest!
Hi everyone,
We hope you are doing well! Welcome to your Weekly News Digest, with the latest news and trends in Tech and Entrepreneurship.
📅 Now let's check out today's program:
The Virtual Beauty Space
Technology's Carbon Footprint
Fast delivery is on fire 🔥
Fundraising alerts: A 🇳🇬 neo-bank, an 🇺🇸 cybersecurity firm, and a 🇩🇪 aerospace startup.
The Virtual Beauty Space
For a few years now, luxury and cosmetic brands have reimagined their interactions with younger customers, leveraging technologies such as Virtual Reality, NFTs, or even metaverses.
👜 Within this context, Dior has recently partnered with Zepeto, a metaverse platform. It has launched a virtual collection that Zepeto users can try on their avatar. A few years ago, Louis Vuitton had also used a similar approach with the game "League of Legends".
🖼️ NFTs are officially everywhere. Major beauty brands, including Givenchy, are now using NFTs to generate additional sales. You can see below what the first edition of Givenchy NFTs (sold in June) looked like!
Technology's Carbon Footprint
Our smartphones, computers, and the various infrastructure needed for our devices to communicate (e.g., the Internet) require electricity. A 2019 study by the Shift project projected that in 2020, 4% of the emissions would be caused by the Digital era.
🌲 Do you want to reduce your carbon footprint? Nicholas Mouret, the founder of Greenmetrics, gives you three easy methods to optimize your digital impact. For example, getting rid of your old emails and favor different communication channels if you can, or using low-consumption devices such as laptops or tablets.
⚡ This article published on Medium explains how technology can be leveraged to reduce our carbon footprint, for example, using smart home devices to spare energy.
Fast delivery is on fire 🔥
The craze around grocery delivery services has not yet stopped.
🇪🇪 Uber's Estonian rival, Bolt, has announced its last fundraising round, leading it to a $4.8B valuation. This fundraising aims to boost its grocery delivery service, Bolt Market.
🇫🇷 Meanwhile, in France, Carrefour (the 8th largest retailer in the world) invests in Cajoo, a 6-month-old French instant delivery startup, to further its delivery service.
Latest fundraisings
🇳🇬 Kuda, the African challenger bank is building a new banking service for every African on the planet. They have just raised a $55m Series B, reaching a $500m valuation. Currently present primarily in Nigeria, the startup hopes to expand to other African countries thanks to this new investment.
🔐 Nozomi Networks, an industry cybersecurity startup that aims to shield critical infrastructure from cyberattacks, has just raised $100m. This fundraising comes in the context of a dramatic increase in the number of ransomware and IoT attacks.
🛰️ Isar Aerospace, a provider of small and medium satellites, has raised $165m in its Series B. The three-year-old startup already has a contract with Airbus Defence.