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Y Combinator backed 54gene has laid off 95 employees, about 30% of its LinkedIn-sourced 290 plus staff. This retrenchment from the young startup further raises questions about whether or not African tech companies run too fast fueled by investors' cash. 54gene for instance was founded in 2019.
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“Like so many others navigating this current market situation, we are not immune to having to make adjustments to headcount and our financials, in order to remain competitive within the market,” a spokesperson said of the fallout.
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Below are the tech stories and news you need to know to start your day, carefully curated by Technext.
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Summary of the news
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- African genomics startup 54gene has laid off 95 employees
- Bitcoin has plunged below $20,000
- Grey has raised $2 million for cross-border payments and regional expansion
- Trademark filings suggest Apple is possibly gearing up for AR/VR headset launch
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54gene cuts staff
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African genomics startup 54gene has laid off 95 employees, or about 30% of its LinkedIn-sourced 290+ employees, TechCrunch reports.
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Founded in 2019 by Dr. Abasi Ene-Obong, the three-year-old startup seeks to address the gap in the global genomics market where less than 3% of genetic material used in pharmaceutical research is African. This is despite reports saying Africans and people of African ancestry are more genetically diverse than all other world populations combined.
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As one of Africa’s most audacious projects, 54gene has received enormous backing from the likes of Y Combinator, Adjuvant Capital and Cathay AfricInvest Innovation Fund (CAIF) and several investors who have invested $45 million in the company, including a $25 million Series B last September; a large chunk of the company’s investment goes into its biobank (which now has a capacity of over 300,000 samples) and lab testing centers.
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“Like so many others navigating this current market situation, we are not immune to having to make adjustments to headcount and our financials, in order to remain competitive within the market,” said the spokesperson, adding that the company implemented the staff reduction on August 18.
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"What is BaaS?" One might ask. BaaS helps non-banking businesses with financial infrastructure, allowing them to deliver their products faster to the market.
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Now, this is where Fincra comes in. At its core, Fincra provides banking services for platforms on the API level, with the goal of building API infrastructure that connects Africa to the rest of the world. With Fincra's APIs, platforms can build quick and seamless financial applications for scalability across Africa and the rest of the world.
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Bitcoin under $20,000
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Flagship digital asset bitcoin has seen a sharp decline in the last few days. It is currently trading at its lowest levels in August after a few weeks of a sustained upsurge, Technext reports. According to data from Coinmarketcap at press time, bitcoin is trading at $19,879 and has lost 7.34% of its market value in the last seven days.
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The main catalyst for the current price dive is last Friday’s announcement by the chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell. He stated that the United States Central Bank will remain hawkish for a while, which goes against previous expectations of financial markets that expected a soft landing only a few weeks ago.
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Being hawkish means that the Central Bank is in support of raising its interest rates to fight inflation even to the possible detriment of economic growth and employment. Bitcoin has shown previous tendencies of nosediving following similar updates. Almost every other crypto asset has always taken a hit too.
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Also, there has been a lack of institutional investors in the market in the past weeks. According to data from TradingView, the crypto market saw outflows rather than inflows in the last two weeks. In view of that, the market will not see an upward price trend until institutional investors feel it is time to get back into the crypto market.
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Grey has raised $2 million
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The provision of virtual foreign bank accounts has become a common strategy for fintechs to enable Nigerians and Africans to facilitate international transfers. In the latest development, Grey, a fintech in this category that provides virtual international bank accounts to African freelancers and remote workers, is announcing that it has raised $2 million in seed funding, TechCrunch reports.
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Idorenyin Obong and Femi Aghedo founded Grey in July 2020 as an instant exchange service to help Nigerians exchange foreign currencies in their domiciliary account for local money — the naira. Last year, the startup raised an undisclosed pre-seed investment and got accepted into YC’s winter batch this March. The YC-backed Nigerian fintech has since expanded into East Africa, starting with Kenya.
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“Grey was founded to empower people to live a location-independent lifestyle. “I believe that the least of your worries as a freelancer, remote worker, or digital nomad should be sending or receiving payments, so we’ve made it easy,” said CEO Obong. “We like to say that we’re on a mission to make international payments as easy as sending an email. We want to do impactful work to improve how Africa as a continent interacts with money across its borders.”
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Apple's possible AR/VR headset
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New trademark filings suggest that Apple is gearing up to soon launch its first AR/VR headset as it looks to secure several possible names and marketing terms for its upcoming headset, including "Reality Processor," "Reality Pro," and "Reality One."
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The filings, reported by Bloomberg, were filed in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Costa Rica, and Uruguay and are listed under shell companies used by Apple in the past to trademark names. Apple regularly uses shell companies to trademark names as it allows the company to maintain secrecy over unannounced products, services, or software.
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According to MacRumors, Apple is planning to call the software that runs on its AR/VR headset "realityOS," so "Reality One" could make sense for the name of its first AR/VR headset. Other trademarked terms, including "Reality Processor," could refer to the chip that runs on the headset.
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Bloomberg reports that Apple is planning to use an M2 Apple silicon chip with 16GB of RAM for the AR/VR headset but notes Apple may need more powerful graphics to handle the experience. Apple's first AR/VR headset, expected to be announced as soon as this January, will be a high-end niche device that could cost upwards of $3,000.
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Latest in funding
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Other stories we are following
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