Thiel becomes the second PayPal co-founder to put money into the UK’s Transferwise, which lets users send money internationally at much lower rates than those offered by traditional banks. Read more »
Thiel Foundation subsidiary Breakout Labs has funded two new startups called SkyPhrase and Stealth Biosciences that, respectively, are trying to reinvent natural language processing and improve our ability to interact with individual cells. Read more »
A proposed MIT Media Lab project backed by Lab director Joi Ito would allow the lab’s corporate sponsors to fund work by promising graduates. Read more »
2013 is turning out to be the year when entrepreneurs and investors are embracing using technology to create more sustainable food products, from plant-based egg, meat, and cheese replacements, to healthier candy and salt. Read more »
Max Levchin, who in his past life started PayPal and Slide is back at it again. He has started a new hybrid R& D Lab/Incubator (HVF) and his focusing on opportunities created by the digitization of our physical world and explosion of data. Read more »
Canadian entrepreneur Louis Michaud, who has spent years trying to commercialize his “out there” technology to harness tornadoes for power, has received a small grant from PayPal co-founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel’s early stage lab Breakout Labs. Read more »
So what if it’s geeky power grid gear. Entrepreneurs, investors, and innovators are working hard on developing the next-generation of compressed air energy storage technology. Like an air battery. And Bill Gates is a fan. Read more »
Peter Thiel is leading a large investment into an air energy storage startup called LightSail Energy. Thiel joins Bill Gates and Khosla Ventures as investors. Compressed air energy storage tech pumps air into tanks and releases it on demand to create a sort of air battery. Read more »
European vacation rentals site HouseTrip has everything going for it right now: not least fast growth and a fresh new round of funding. Co-founder Arnaud Bertrand lays out why he thinks his site can carry on winning — and reveals the scale of his ambition. Read more »
Airbnb is reportedly in talks to raise even more money, with a financing round said to be led by Peter Thiel. The cash infusion of $150 million would be more than double what the online room rental service company has raised so far. Read more »
British arch-satirist Armando Iannucci – best known for his documentary-style dissections of the political classes — is getting ready to take on his next project: a black comedy based on Silicon Valley’s worst moments of excess. Fish, meet barrel. Read more »
Founders Fund and Dustin Moskovitz’s Good Ventures have led a $15 million round in a company that is trying to replicate the intelligence of the human brain in software. Vicarious’ goal is to help humanity thrive by inventing the algorithm to create to intelligent machines. Read more »
Sounds creepy, but someday we may need to change out the blood cartridges in our printers before we can print out dinner. Peter Thiel’s Breakout Labs is investing in a cultured food startup called Modern Meadow, which aims to combine in-vitro meat with 3D printing. Read more »
Meet America’s young entrepreneurs: not through The Social Network or an overly dramatic reality TV series, but in a new documentary following the next class of Thiel Fellows, individuals emboldened (and compensated) to drop out of school in pursuit of their science and tech dreams. Read more »
Former Google exec David Girouard’s Upstart wants to match promising, not-necessarily-techie college entrepreneurs with backers and mentors. The goal is to fuel the creation of a new generation of startups that would otherwise never see the light of day. Read more »
Peter Thiel may be advising entrepreneurial kids to drop out of university to focus on building their ideas – but not everyone thinks the same way. Wunderkind app maker Nick D’Aloisio told me he still wanted to go to college, and explained why. Read more »
Investor Peter Thiel, who has long been bullish on cleantech investing, just announced that he’s the largest investor in a new potentially $1 billion growth fund that will back companies across sectors including in energy and those tackling resource constraints. Read more »
Felicis Ventures, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture fund started by early Google employee Aydin Senkut has raised a new $70 million fund. The investment group is well known for its investments in Angry Birds’ parent, Inkling and Shopify. This is their second institutional seed fund. Read more »
The $50-million funding round that Quora recently closed has raised some eyebrows. Is this just another example of a bubble-style atmosphere in Silicon Valley’s venture capital community, or is the crowdsourced question-and-answer site really onto something that could be a multibillion-dollar idea? Read more »
Quora, a Q&A service has raised a whopping $50 million in funding from co-founder Adam D’Angelo along with Facebook funder Peter Thiel, Northbridge Ventures and Matrix Ventures. One of the most over-hyped startups, the question is why is it valued so highly despite mediocre progress. Read more »
Bethnal Green Ventures thinks it can have an impact on the big issues with an accelerator program for support technology companies working on social and environmental problems. Can it work? Read more »
According to Edward Aten, founder of Swift.fm, Facebook is recreating and competing with nearly every significant Internet product of the last few years. It’s an unprecedented pivot that threatens Facebook’s core products and may eventually benefit the very same startups Facebook is trying to crush. Read more »
Sarah Lacy, a book author and a veteran journalist (and most recently with TechCrunch) is launching PandoDaily, a daily technology news blog focused on startups and the startup ecosystem. The company is being funded by a $2.5 million investment from Silicon Valley elite. Read more »
Peter Thiel, the tech industry magnate known for co-founding PayPal and being an early investor in Facebook, is launching a new program called Breakout Labs aimed at funding cutting edge technology research ideas. It’s a big effort, but Thiel himself is known for bold ideas. Read more »
Let’s face it: Cleantech investing doesn’t seem to be working for a whole lot of people. Yes, we’re still knee deep in these companies trying to scale, but web investors are certainly glad they haven’t jumped in. What’s going on? Read more »
Despite a lot of talk about a Facebook initial public offering, early investor and director Peter Thiel says don’t count on it until 2012. Thiel, who was extremely critical of the regulatory environment when speaking to Fox Business about what comes next for technology. Read more »
Did PayPal discover some sort of magic recipe that allowed so many of its former executives and other staff to create startups like YouTube, Slide, Yelp and the newly public Tesla Motors? PayPal staffers say it was smart management, but some PayPal cash probably helped, too. Read more »
The Founders Fund has a raised a new $220 million fund, their second. They will invest in 15-to-20 early stage start-ups, they announced today. The four managing partners of FF include Peter Thiel, well known for his investment in Facebook and Sean Parker, who was involved with […] Read more »
