Li-Cycle opens battery recycling plant in Alabama

Li-Cycle, a Canadian lithium-ion battery recycler, has opened a battery recycling facility in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The Toronto-based company, which also operates plants in Gilbert, Arizona and Rochester, New York, can now process up to 10,000 tons of manufacturing scrap and end-of-life batteries per year, the equivalent of approximately 20,000 EVs annually. The latest facility is … Read more

Microsoft’s AR glasses aren’t cutting it with US soldiers, says leaked report

Microsoft’s AR goggles are intended to provide soldiers with live information via a head-up display. | Image: US Army Microsoft’s augmented reality Hololens goggles are getting a rough ride in tests by the US Army, according to internal military evaluations seen by Bloomberg and Insider. Soldiers testing the headsets have complained about their “mission-affecting physical … Read more

Microsoft has teased a Windows 11 floating taskbar

Image: Microsoft Microsoft has shown off a floating Windows 11 taskbar. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed what looks like a concept UI during his keynote presentation at Microsoft Ignite yesterday. Twitter users were quick to spot the unusual taskbar, with its system tray and widgets appearing at the top of the desktop. The floating Windows … Read more

Nudge Security emerges from stealth to tackle cybersecurity’s people problem

Social engineering attacks are on the rise. These low-tech but high-impact attacks — where hackers manipulate employees into granting them access to companies’ services and data — increased by almost threefold last year, and have so far this year claimed several high-profile victims, from Twilio and Mailchimp to Revolut, and most recently Uber. As these … Read more

Analytics operating system Redbird makes data more accessible to non-technical users

Data engineers have a big problem. Almost every team in their business needs access to analytics and other information that can be gleaned from their data warehouses, but only a few have technical backgrounds. Redbird was created to help everyone in an organization create and run analytics without using code, therefore reducing the amount of … Read more

Vedantu acquires majority stake in Deeksha for $40 million in offline push

Indian edtech Vedantu has acquired a majority stake in education chain Deeksha for $40 million, the latest in local online learning platforms’ growing attempts at tapping opportunities in the offline market. The Bengaluru-headquartered Vedantu, which became a unicorn last year, said it will integrate its technology into offline centers of Deeksha as part of the … Read more

MoKo, Kenya’s home furniture startup, raises $6.5M

Kenya has the largest and most thriving furniture industry in East Africa, but the sector’s potential is hindered by several challenges among them production inefficiencies and quality concerns, forcing most major retailers to settle on imports. MoKo Home + Living, a Kenya-based home furniture manufacturer and omnichannel retailer, saw this gap and over several years … Read more

Here’s an early look at Android’s app archiving feature

The feature should display how much storage space you can save by archiving an application instead of having to completely uninstall it. | Image: Google / @AssembleDebug While we’ve been waiting to hear more about Google’s upcoming tool that “archives” certain apps to help free up space on your device, @AssembleDebug has managed to activate … Read more

Microsoft Office will become Microsoft 365 in major brand overhaul

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is making a major change to its Microsoft Office branding. After more than 30 years, Microsoft Office is being renamed “Microsoft 365” to mark the software giant’s collection of growing productivity apps. While Office apps like Excel, Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint aren’t going away, Microsoft will now mostly refer to these apps … Read more

Zen Educate, a marketplace that matches schools with teachers, raises $21M to fuel U.S. expansion

Zen Educate, an online marketplace that algorithmically matches schools with the best available teachers, has raised £19.3 million ($21 million) in a Series A extension round of funding. Founded out of London in 2017, Zen Educate is setting out to supplant the traditional approach to recruiting teachers, a system that typically involves third-party agencies and … Read more