IoT for your skin

Title IV raises some serious series A funds and Apple is killing the butterfly keyboard.

Steph Newton

Published in

Hardware News

4 min readJul 18, 2019

What’s New In Hardware:

The Volkswagen group is conceding cities to electric scooters. (Forbes)
Walmart is using VR to help figure out which employees should be promoted. (Fast Company)
Apple is said to be giving up on the keyboard design that frustrated a lot of people. (The Verge)
Skincare is now part of the IoT, at least according to Shiseido. (Fortune)
California has issued a permit to Waymo allowing them to transport people in their autonomous vehicles. (TechCrunch)

Offbeat Tidbits You Might’ve Missed:

Deep learning makes it theoretically possible for a robot made out of just about anything — like tree branches — to teach itself to walk. (IEEE Spectrum)
In a few years, Saturn’s moon Titan will be home to the most far-flung quadcopter (or octocopter) in existence. (Space News)
It doesn’t fly very far or for very long — but the world’s first untethered flapping-wing micro-drone has been created. (MIT Technology Review)

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Electric vehicle charging solutions startup Current Ways has secured $3 million in funding in a round led by First Analysis.
Connected Robotics, a five-year-old developer of restaurant kitchen robotics, has raised roughly $7.8 million in a series A funding round led by Global Brain Corporation. 31VENTURES Global Innovation Fund, UTokyo Innovation Platform, Sony Innovation Fund, and 500 Startups JP also participated in the round.
Dott, a micro-mobility startup based out of the Netherlands, has raised a little over $33.6 million in series A funding. The round was co-led by EQT Ventures fund and Naspers. Axel Springer Digital Ventures, Felix Capital, FJ Labs, and U-Start Club also joined the round.
Tier IV, an open-source autonomous driving startup based out of Tokyo, has raised more than $100 million in a colossal series A round led by Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Insurance. Earlier backers Yamaha Motor, KDDI, JAFCO, and Aisan Technology also participated in the round.
Wind Mobility, an e-scooter rental startup, has raised $50 million in series A funding. The round was led by Chinese Source Code Capital and HV Holtzbrinck Ventures.
Belgian drone traffic management startup Unifly has secured a little over $19 million in series B funding. Investors include Deutsche Flugsicherung, SFPI-FPIM, Terra Drone, QBIC, and PMV.
Rockley Photonics, a silicon photonics chipset designer and manufacturer based out of London, has raised $52 million in early series E funding from their current investors and a few new ones including Morningside Technology Ventures of Hong Kong and fiber optic cable manufacturer, Hengtong Opto-Electric.