Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Vira Health gets $12M to dial up personalized menopause support
Vira Health, a U.K. startup that offers personalized digital therapeutics for women going through menopause, has closed a second round of funding — taking $12 million from lead investor Octopus…
Booming edtech M&A activity brings consolidation to a fragmented sector
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to force teachers, students and parents to adopt new technologies, edtech’s total addressable market has massively grown in the last several months. The shift has…
Apeel gets more cash to fight poverty and food insecurity in emerging markets with its food-preserving tech
In the first real test of the potentially transformative power of its food-preserving technology, Santa Barbara, California-based Apeel Sciences is bringing its innovative food treatment and supply chain management services…
Bill Gates details how his foundation shifted focus ‘almost entirely’ to addressing COVID-19
Microsoft founder Bill Gates spoke to the Financial Times (via Fast Company) about how the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has shifted “almost entirely” to working on…
Study behind updated FDA guidance shows self-swab tests are as effective as those done by clinicians
Earlier this week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it would be updating its guidance to allow self-swab tests for COVID-19, in which a patient collects a…
Gates, Wellcome and Mastercard launch $125 million fund to finance COVID-19 treatments
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome and Mastercard announced a new initiative yesterday to accelerate technologies designed to identify, assess, develop and scale treatments to the COVID-19 epidemic. The…
Update: Gates Foundation-backed program will soon be issuing home collection kits for COVID-19 in Seattle
Update: This post has been updated to reflect that the kits being distributed are specimen collection kits. Not at-home tests. A project funded by the Gates Foundation will soon begin…
Catalyst Fund gets $15M from JP Morgan, UK Aid to back 30 EM fintech startups
The Catalyst Fund has gained $15 million in new support from JP Morgan and UK Aid and will back 30 fintech startups in Africa, Asia, and Latin America over the…
Some VCs have a bias against startups with an explicit positive social impact on the grounds that they have a smaller addressable market, and that the founders aren’t sufficiently focused…
African fintech has taken center stage for the Catalyst Fund, a JP Morgan Chase and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-backed accelerator that provides mentorship and non-equity funding to emerging markets…
Apeel partners with Nature’s Pride to bring spoilage-resistant fruits and veggies to Europe
Apeel Sciences, the developer of a new technology that makes fruits and vegetables more resistant to spoilage, and Nature’s Pride, one of the largest vendors of avocados and mangos in…
Aiming to change the way people take medicine, Lyndra Therapeutics raises $55 million
A little over two years after Lyndra Therapeutics Inc. first unveiled its technology for time-delayed drug delivery through a simple pill, the company has raised $55 million to continue developing…
Gates Foundation Picks Its Moonshots In India To Reinvent Toilets Globally
From solar-powered electronic toilets to a prototype that helps recharge mobile phones from urine, and another one that could potentially offer advertising slots while pooping among several revenue generating opportunities,…
