Technology

Taiko Raises US$37M from Top-tier VCs Ahead Of Mainnet Launch

Published

10 months ago

March 2, 2024

QUICK TAKE:

Taiko Labs raised a total of US$37 million across three rounds, with its most recent Series A round led by Lightspeed Faction, Hashed, Generative Ventures, and Token Bay Capital.Taiko is now the largest Discord community in the rollups space.Last month, Taiko launched a new testnet, Katla, which has seen >1.1M wallet addresses and >13M total transactions to date.Taiko recently announced an allocation of nearly US$30 million for its second round of the grants program, making Taiko the only Ethereum Layer 2 to commit such substantial funding to support the ecosystem during a testnet phase.

NEW YORK and LONDON and SINGAPORE, March 2, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Taiko, an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution provider, today announced the close of commitments for a US$15 million Series A funding round led by Lightspeed Faction, Hashed, Generative Ventures, and Token Bay Capital. Other notable participating investors in this latest round include Wintermute Ventures, Presto Labs, Flow Traders, Amber Group, OKX Ventures, GSR, WW Ventures, and more. The close of its most recent round brings Taiko’s total capital raised to US$37 million across three rounds. The closing of its Series A round comes just ahead of Taiko’s highly-anticipated mainnet launch.

Taiko is an Ethereum-equivalent ZK-Rollup, scaling Ethereum by supporting all EVM opcodes in a Layer 2 architecture that is decentralized, permissionless, and secure. Since it was founded in 2022, Taiko has successfully executed six testnets involving over 1,100,000+ unique wallets, 30,000+ proposers, and 14,000+ provers. There are over 100 live apps in the Taiko ecosystem today, supported by a vibrant community of 850,000+ members on Discord.

Taiko has conducted six testnets, each focused on different aspects of the protocol. In each of these testnets, Taiko received substantial support from hundreds of thousands of community members. These members contributed by building dapps, operating nodes, serving as proposers and provers, and engaging with the protocol in various ways — all permissionlessly.

Taiko launched its 6th testnet, Katla, early this year. Katla is the first testnet to use Taiko’s Based Contestable Rollup (BCR) design, a configurable, multi-proof rollup architecture that features a contestation mechanism and based sequencing. Katla serves as the foundation of Taiko’s upcoming mainnet launch.

In the future, Taiko will develop Based Booster Rollup (BBR), a design that tackles the liquidity fragmentation issue by allowing developers to deploy on Ethereum and scale natively across all L2s.

Quote from Lead Investors:

Lead investors praised Taiko for its vibrant community, based sequencing architecture, successful testnets, and more.

“Amongst an explosion of new Rollups, Taiko stands out due to its passionate community, paired with a based sequencing architecture, which uniquely simplifies the L2 value chain, streamlining trust assumptions and removing friction for developer adoption,” said Samuel Harrison, Founding Partner at Lightspeed Faction.

“Hashed is profoundly impressed by Taiko’s leadership in blockchain scalability with its Ethereum-equivalent ZK-Rollup technology. The team’s achievements, including vibrant community engagement and successful testnets, underscore our confidence in their vision,” said Ryan Kim, Founding Partner at Hashed. “Our investment signifies our commitment to pioneering technologies that promise to transform Ethereum scaling and the broader blockchain ecosystem.”

Will Wang, the Managing Partner of Generative Ventures also added: “The scaling of Ethereum is an important prerequisite for the blockchain ecosystem to become the mainstream next-generation global financial system. Our continuous and firm support for Taiko demonstrated through three rounds of investment, reflects our recognition of Taiko’s philosophy and execution. Due to its positioning and capabilities in type1 and BBR, Taiko is a unique choice among the many Ethereum Layer 2 networks, and therefore, we are firmly optimistic about Taiko and will continue to build and invest into the Taiko ecosystem!”

“Taiko has been fully decentralized and permissionless from day one, staying true to crypto‘s original ethos,” said Lucy Gazmararian, Founder of Token Bay Capital. “These core values place Taiko in a strong position to become the default scaling solution for Ethereum, and we look forward to continuing our long-standing relationship with the team, helping them to scale across Asia and the Middle East from Token Bay’s hubs in Abu Dhabi and Hong Kong.”

Quote from Taiko Co-Founders:

“Building the first Ethereum-equivalent based rollup is something we knew was going to be a multi-year adventure,” said Daniel Wang, Taiko’s Co-Founder and CEO. “Now, as we approach mainnet launch, we realize what a ride it has been. We’re determined to ship our products as soon as they’re ready and show the industry that what had been thought of as impossible, is indeed possible.”

“Our commitment to scale Ethereum in the most native way possible is something investors and partners have been very keen to support,” said Taiko’s Co-Founder and COO Terence Lam. “We want to thank everyone who shares our vision and continues to support us in our journey to bring Ethereum to the world.”

About Lead Investors

Lightspeed Faction, a blockchain-focused venture capital firm, recently launched its inaugural US$285 million fund. Hashed is one of the largest crypto-focused venture funds and ecosystem builders in Asia, headquartered in South Korea. Generative Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on investing in companies working on decentralized networks and machine intelligence. Token Bay Capital is renowned for its expertise in blockchain investment strategies.

Note: Certain investments remain subject to regulatory approval.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/taiko-raises-us37m-from-top-tier-vcs-ahead-of-mainnet-launch-302077780.html

SOURCE Taiko

Technology

Inspur Smart Healthcare Participates in GITEX IMPACT 2024 Exhibition

Published

23 minutes ago

December 23, 2024

DUBAI, UAE, Dec. 23, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — From October 13th to 16th, the GITEX IMPACT 2024, Dubai’s Carbon Neutrality and Technology Exhibition, was held in Dubai. Organized by the Ministry of Economy and Ministry of Tourism of the United Arab Emirates, the exhibition focused on the forefront of sustainable development technologies, encompassing a wide range of sectors including construction, oil and gasoline, energy, and healthcare. It stands as one of the largest technology exhibitions in the Middle East and globally. Inspur Smart Health was invited to participate, showcasing its core products and cases of empowering the digital and intelligent transformation of the healthcare industry at the exhibition.

At the exhibition site, Inspur Smart Health introduced a series of products and solutions to government agencies and medical institutions, including the Health and Medical Big Data Intelligent Platform, Inspur Medical Industry International Trade Platform, Integrated Healthcare and Long-term Care Platform, Health Examination Center Solutions, Medical Group Information Management Platform, Internet Hospitals. These presentations comprehensively demonstrated Inspur Smart Health’s product innovation advantages and service capabilities.

Through this “debut” in the Middle East and even the global market, Inspur Smart Health has laid a solid foundation for further expanding its overseas “circle of friends” and establishing international brand recognition. In the future, Inspur Smart Health will continue to leverage its technological advantages in big data and artificial intelligence, constantly enhance the internationalization level of its products and solutions, deepen the exploration of overseas markets, and contribute to the thriving development of the global medical digital industry.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/inspur-smart-healthcare-participates-in-gitex-impact-2024-exhibition-302338199.html

SOURCE Shandong Inspur Intelligent Medical Technology Co., Ltd.

Technology

UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP AND AMAZON MUSIC EXPAND GLOBAL RELATIONSHIP

Published

23 minutes ago

December 23, 2024

Reflects New Era in Music Streaming, Including Artist-Centric Principles and Furthering Authentic Engagement Between Artists and Fans

SANTA MONICA, Calif., Dec. 23, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Universal Music Group (UMG), the world leader in music-based entertainment, and Amazon Music today announced an expanded global relationship that will enable further innovation, exclusive content with UMG artists, and advancement of artist-centric principles including increased fraud protection.

UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP AND AMAZON MUSIC EXPAND GLOBAL RELATIONSHIP

This reflects the two companies’ shared commitment to advancing and safeguarding human artistry, while ensuring UMG’s artists achieve their commercial potential through the service’s continued product enhancements and exclusive content that elevate authentic engagement between artists and fans.

UMG and Amazon Music will work closely to explore new and enhanced product opportunities designed to benefit artists and enrich the experience of their fans. UMG will also collaborate with Amazon Music as it continues to expand in audio, including further innovation in audiobooks, audio and visual programming, and its investment in livestreamed content that has connected millions of fans with their favorite artists across all genres and corners of the world. UMG and Amazon will also work collaboratively to address, among other things, unlawful AI-generated content, as well as protecting against fraud and misattribution.

Sir Lucian Grainge, Chairman & CEO, Universal Music Group said, “We are very excited to advance our long-standing, excellent partnership with Amazon Music that marks a new era in streaming—Streaming 2.0. We appreciate Amazon Music’s deep commitment to the interests of our artists, and look forward to progressing our shared artist-centric objectives through product innovation and accelerating growth of their service.”

Steve Boom, VP of Audio, Twitch and Games for Amazon said, “UMG has always been a collaborative partner to Amazon Music, and as we continue to invent and introduce more artist-to-fan connections through our product and exclusive content, we’re redefining what it means to be a streaming service. We’re thrilled to expand our relationship with UMG which will enable us to partner on meaningful new ways for artists to deepen their engagement with fans around the world, while working together to protect the work of artists, songwriters and publishers.”

Notes to editors:

About Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group exists to shape culture through the power of artistry. UMG is the world leader in music-based entertainment, with a broad array of businesses engaged in recorded music, music publishing, merchandising and audiovisual content. Featuring the most comprehensive catalogue of recordings and songs across every musical genre, UMG identifies and develops artists and produces and distributes the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful music in the world. Committed to artistry, innovation and entrepreneurship, UMG fosters the development of services, platforms and business models in order to broaden artistic and commercial opportunities for our artists and create new experiences for fans. For more information, visit www.universalmusic.com.

About Amazon Music
Amazon Music is an immersive audio entertainment service that connects fans, artists, and creators through music, podcasts, and culture. Amazon Music brings fans closer to what they love, with curated and personalized playlists, artist livestreams, artist merch, and Amazon Exclusive podcasts. Prime members get access to over 100 million songs in shuffle mode, All-Access playlists, plus the largest catalog of top ad-free podcasts, included with their membership. Customers can upgrade to Amazon Music Unlimited for full, on-demand access to 100 million songs in HD, a growing catalog of Ultra HD and Spatial audio, and the world’s largest selection of audiobooks from Audible. Anyone can listen to Amazon Music by downloading the free Amazon Music app, or wherever they listen to music including Alexa-enabled devices. Learn more at amazon.com/music.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/universal-music-group-and-amazon-music-expand-global-relationship-302338093.html

SOURCE Universal Music Group

Technology

Repurchase of Loomis’ shares during the fourth quarter 2024 completed

Published

23 minutes ago

December 23, 2024

STOCKHOLM, Dec. 23, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Loomis AB has through the repurchase program that was resolved and communicated on October 28, 2024, repurchased 590,100 shares. Loomis AB’s holding of own shares thereby amounts to 2,514,653 shares, corresponding to 3.54 percent of the outstanding shares in the company. The total number of shares in Loomis AB, including the company’s own shares, amounts to 71,000,000.

For information about transactions in the repurchase program, please see:
https://www.nasdaq.com/european-market-activity/news/corporate-actions/repurchase-of-own-shares.

This press release is also available on the company’s website, www.loomis.com.

For more information, please contact:

Jenny Boström
Head of Sustainability and IR
jenny.bostrom@loomis.com
+46 79 006 45 92

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/loomis-ab/r/repurchase-of-loomis–shares-during-the-fourth-quarter-2024-completed,c4086142

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/51/4086142/3187900.pdf

Repurchase of Loomisâ€™ shares during the fourth quarter 2024 completed

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/repurchase-of-loomis-shares-during-the-fourth-quarter-2024-completed-302338207.html

SOURCE Loomis AB