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Ex-HubSpot exec builds an AI-powered CRM that learns for you, with $4M seed led by Sequoia

Christopher O’Donnell has hobbies. He likes music and playing guitar, but above all, he loves building software. Which is why three years after leaving HubSpot, he built Day.ai, a CRM for the age AI. Unlike modern CRMs, which are essentially giant spreadsheets that somebody needs to populate and keep updated, Day learns everything about a […]

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Unigrid wants to make batteries cheaper and safer using sodium

If there’s one thing holding back batteries, it’s cost. The most widespread type of battery, lithium-ion, still costs around $140 per kilowatt-hour for a pack. While that’s low enough to have triggered quickening adoption of electric vehicles, even the cheapest lithium-ion chemistries are still too expensive to put a big battery in every home to

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Aepnus wants to create a circular economy for key battery manufacturing materials

Earlier this year, BASF had to delay the opening of a battery materials plant in Finland when a court agreed with environmental groups that the company didn’t have a good plan to deal with its wastewater.  As battery factories spring up around the world, the specter of wastewater threatens to stall their construction. One startup,

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Civic Renewables is rolling up residential solar installers to improve quality and grow the market

For an industry that’s about 20 years old, residential solar is still pretty tumultuous. Some of that can be blamed on shifting regulations, like what happened in California last year where a policy update lengthened the amount of time it took for homeowners to recoup their investments. But other bumps can be attributed to the

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Anterior grabs $20M from NEA to expedite health insurance approvals with AI

Anterior, a company that uses AI to expedite health insurance approval for medical procedures, has raised a $20 million Series A round at a $95 million post-money valuation led by NEA, according to two people familiar with the deal. Existing investors Sequoia, which led Anterior’s $3.2 million seed round last September, and Neo, an accelerator

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‘Star Wars’ lasers and waterfalls of molten salt: How Xcimer plans to make fusion power happen

Conner Galloway and Alexander Valys have followed developments in nuclear fusion research since they were roommates at MIT some 20 years ago. For much of that time, it wasn’t the most exciting pastime: breakthroughs were few and far between, and commercial fusion remained perpetually on the horizon, always 20 years away from providing inexpensive, inexhaustible,

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