Quick News №4

Starting with the impressive funding of a Russian startup: BioMicroGels raised ₽1B from Gregory Berenstein, founder of Zoom Capital. The project is developing environmentally friendly cleaning products for water and hard surfaces. According to Mr. Bernstein, as a minimum, the biodegradable household chemicals market has a good future; as a maximum, the development of BioMicroGels was used to clean up the environmental disaster in Norilsk.

Angels Band — а syndicate of Belarusian business angels, invested in a startup with Russian roots CopyMonkey.ai. The round for ₽5.5M was led by investor Kirill Golub. The startup with Russian roots is developing a “killer” for copywriters: their AI-powered platform is capable of generating product descriptions for retailers based on keywords.

On the other hand, bitcoin was unlucky last week: its value fell below $50000. According to analysts, the fall will continue, and it is attributed to changes in the US tax system, which is pushing investors to get rid of the cryptocurrency.

Meanwhile, Zoom, which grew to incredible proportions during the pandemic, is launching a $100M venture fund to support developers who use Zoom technology in their business. The amount of funding will range from $250 000 to $2.5M, and it will allow the company to build a full ecosystem around the platform. Applications are being accepted on the Zoom website.

The week will be remembered for two other launches in addition to the new fund. First, Facebook announced a voice chat, audio publishing and podcast creation feature within the social network. The feature includes a full-fledged audio editor as well as audio rooms. Following the example of Clubhouse, audio content creators will be able to monetize within the platform itself.

Second, Yandex launched the Documents service for collaborative work with documents — text, presentations and spreadsheets. Within the service it is possible to open files in DOCX, XLSX and PPTX formats, as well as to convert older formats into them. File sharing is also available to users without a Yandex account.

Ending the digest with some “green news” in every sense. X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis along with renowned entrepreneur Ilon Musk will raise $120M to support a competition to develop low-carbon solutions. All applicants are welcome, but special attention will be given to student projects.

Have a productive week!