Startups Weekly: Enjoying the reprieve

Summary

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. Startups aren’t isolated from the world. But this week, funding news felt positively uncorrelated from the overall news cycle, offering somewhat of a reprieve — or perhaps just more time to prepare to invest in “planetary and societal health,” as one new fund plans to. Most interesting startup stories from the week Image Credits:Getty Images This week included an exit, a lawsuit, a disappointing sale, and a scientific controversy. OpenAI alumni: Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati secured two new high-profile advisers with past ties to OpenAI for her new venture, AI startup Thinking Machines Lab. As for OpenAI co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, he chose Google Cloud’s TPU chips to power the research conducted by his new AI startup, Safe Superintelligence. Friends and foes: OpenAI is reportedly considering spending $500 million to acquire io Products, the AI hardware startup that Jony Ive is building with Sam Altman, although the two companies could end up partnering instead. Meanwhile, OpenAI’s quarrel with Elon Musk continues, this time with a countersuit against its former supporter. Leaving Deel: Deel’s head of communications left the HR tech company, which is accused of planting a spy at rival startup Rippling. Colossal or not: Colossal Biosciences claims to have resurrected the dire wolf, but scientists without ties to the company challenge the claim — and there’s still a debate over its $10.2 billion valuation and whether it’s undervalued or overblown. Yo-yo: Lyst, the British fashion marketplace once valued at around $700 million, has been acquired for just $154 million in cash by Japan-based Zozo. Not so solid: Banking-as-a-service startup Solid filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing “significant and costly litigation.” It had raised nearly $81 million but faced a legal challenge in...