Innovation and Technology Wars, Fundings: Range Force, Inflection, Starfighters
8 March 2023 - A Weekly Publication by New North Ventures
Founded: 2014
Key People: Co-founded by Taavi Must, Jaanus Kink, & Margus Ernits
Elevator Pitch: A learning platform intended to provide cybersecurity training and exercises.
Funding: The company raised $20 million of Series B venture funding in a deal led by Energy Impact Partners and Paladin Capital Group on March 6, 2023.
Founded: 2022
Key People: Co-founded by Mustafa Suleyman, Karén Simonyan, & Reid Hoffman
Elevator Pitch: An artificial intelligence-based platform designed to improve human-computer interaction.
Funding: The company is reportedly in the process of raising an estimated $675 million of venture funding on March 3, 2023.
Founded: 2022
Key People: Co-founded by Rick Svetkoff and Olga Balanovskaya
Elevator Pitch: Aviation services intended to offer efficient assets to support aerospace.
Funding: The company raised $860,100 of seed funding from undisclosed investors on March 2, 2023.
China Leading US in Technology Race in All but a Few Fields
China leads in 37 of 44 technologies tracked in a year-long project by thinktank, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The fields include electric batteries, hypersonics, and advanced radio-frequency communications such as 5G and 6G.
The report concluded that China was at high risk of establishing a monopoly in eight technologies, including nanoscale materials and manufacturing, hydrogen, and ammonia for power, and synthetic biology.
However, the report showed that the US was the leader in just the remaining seven technologies, such as vaccines, quantum computing, and space launch systems.
The report disclosed that its research was funded by the US state department’s global engagement center and a grant from the Special Competitive Studies Project, a foundation that aims to strengthen America’s long-term competitiveness.
U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) announced a new joint effort to establish the Small Business Investment Company Critical Technologies Initiative (SBICCT), designed to grow investment in critical technologies vital to U.S. national security.
Underpinning this partnership is a new regulation that the SBA has proposed, which expands the SBIC program and introduces a new financial instrument called the Accrual Debenture. This instrument is designed to align with the cash flow patterns of startups, and supports the long duration often required to incubate and scale technology investments.
Many defense technologies require heavy research and development investment, and this instrument is designed to attract the patient private capital necessary to support these innovations.
Rising Premiums, More Restricted Cyber Insurance Coverage Poses Big Risk for Companies
Costly data breaches, ransomware, and other security attacks are making for pricier cyber security insurance premiums. Cyber insurance premiums increased by an average of 28% in the first quarter of 2022 compared with the fourth quarter of 2021.
If rates continue to climb and insurers offer more limited coverage, however, cyber insurance might become more and more difficult for many companies to afford or obtain. Insurers are also getting more demanding in terms of how they want their clients to defend themselves.
Lack of cyber insurance could also have broader impacts. For example, a catastrophic cyber attack against a critical infrastructure entity could have an enormous financial effect on multiple organizations.
Look for an episode of Securing the Future Podcasts wherever you listen. In our latest episode, we have guest Daniel Turner sit down with General Partner Jeremy Hitchcock for an engaging conversation where Turner explores his path from the intelligence community to the startup world, his biggest takeaways as a first-time founder, and the application of his government background in the private sector. Listen below on Spotify.