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XNewlight Technologies Turns Pollution into Purses and Plastic
Breanna de Vera is dot.LA's editorial intern. She is currently a senior at the University of Southern California, studying journalism and English literature. She previously reported for the campus publications The Daily Trojan and Annenberg Media.

Newlight Technologies, a biotech company that will use microorganisms to produce biodegradable clothes and utensils, closed a $45 million Series F financing round last week. Houston-based Valedor Partners joined existing Newlight investors GrayArch Partners in completing the Series F financing.
This announcement comes a month after the opening of Newlight's commercial scale production facility in Huntington Beach. That facility was set up to produce the company's AirCarbon material, an alternative to synthetic materials made from the secretions of pollution-eating microorganisms. It will be the main ingredient in the company's two new brands: Restore, an alternative to plastic utensils and Covalent, a high-end fashion brand aimed at the eco-conscious consumer.
Newlight Technologies, founded in 2003, has spent over a decade developing materials the company says produces net zero pollution. They created AirCarbon through replicating natural processes that occur in our oceans.
"Today, we are primarily focused on producing AirCarbon in increasing quantity, bringing it to market through our foodware and fashion brands, and continuing to work with our partners to help increase the speed of our growth both on the supply and application sides," said Mark Herrema, Newlight's chief executive officer.
Consumers and companies' concern over climate change has increased demand for alternatives to plastics and other carbon-based products. The fashion industry, in particular, has come under fire for their heavy production of polyester clothes, which are petroleum-based and don't easily break down.
At their Huntington Beach production facility, Newlight recreates ocean water conditions that are ideal for the microorganisms they later add to thrive and consume dissolved greenhouse gases. They then collect pollutants such as methane gas to feed to the microorganisms. Afterward, the creatures excrete it, and their waste is dried into pellets, which are then melted and made into different materials.
This process produces no carbon waste and no greenhouse gases. In fact, they're actually consumed and do not return to the atmosphere. AirCarbon is also biodegradable, as it was made entirely by natural processes and organisms.
Joseph Greene, a professor of sustainable manufacturing and engineering at California State University, Chico, said he is looking forward to seeing them develop sustainable plastics for other manufacturing companies and industries as well.
"I'm not aware of any other company producing PHA with technology like this," said Greene, referring to polyhydroxyalkanoate, the term for biopolymer materials such as CarbonAir. "I think that Newlight has an excellent opportunity to transform the marketplace with a low-cost biodegradable PHA plastic."
Newlight has been producing straws and cutlery under their Restore brand, which hasn't yet been released, though the company offers pre-ordering online. These products are durable enough to be reused, though they disintegrate over time in ocean water.
Restore is a line of straws and cutlery, a few of the items most commonly found as plastic ocean-bound waste.Photo courtesy of Newlight Technologies.
"AirCarbon can be used to replace plastic and leather in a variety of applications, but we looked to see where we could have the most immediate impact. Since it is natural and ocean-degradable, and since foodware — things like straws, forks, cups, bottles — represent the majority of plastic product types in the ocean, we are focused today on using AirCarbon under our Restore foodware brand to make natural foodware to replace plastic foodware," said Herrema.
Newlight's luxury fashion brand, Covalent, allows consumers to dive into even more detail about the carbon footprint of their purchases. Using the timestamp that marks the day AirCarbon for the product was created, customers can use this "Carbon Date" to access IBM blockchain production history via the Covalent website for their purchase and the carbon footprint related to each part of the production process.
Covalent focuses on eyewear, but offers a line of purses and cases as well.Photo courtesy of Newlight Technologies.
"We have developed a way to use AirCarbon to replace high-performance plastics, like acetate, and also animal and synthetic leather, so we are producing AirCarbon eyewear and AirCarbon Leather goods through our Covalent fashion brand to bring carbon-negative products into fashion, and help try to turn fashion into a force for environmental good," said Herrema.
Newlight's carbon footprints are verified by the Carbon Trust, a third party organization that offers carbon certification services. They found that for every kilogram of AirCarbon produced with renewable methane using Newlight's natural ocean microorganisms, 88 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gas are prevented from entering the atmosphere.
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Breanna de Vera is dot.LA's editorial intern. She is currently a senior at the University of Southern California, studying journalism and English literature. She previously reported for the campus publications The Daily Trojan and Annenberg Media.
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Inspectiv Raises $8.6M To Build a Better Cybersecurity Platform
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
What do education startups, maternal care platforms and Minecraft servers have in common? They’re all susceptible to hacking.
Also, businesses in each industry use software created by Manhattan Beach-based Inspectiv, which announced Thursday that it’s raised an $8.6 million Series A round to continue developing its artificial intelligence that detects and wipes out security threats.
The new funds bring the total Inspectiv has raised to $16.6 million since its 2018 launch. Founder and chairman Joseph Melika told dot.LA the company’s recent growth has largely been steered by the pandemic as companies put a higher value on data security.
The heightened need for better security, according to Melika, is due to recent changes in how people work. “Just people, frankly, getting distracted,” he said, has made some businesses more vulnerable to hackers.
“They’re working remotely, their laptops are from home [with] no firewall,” he said, adding that has left a lot of systems potentially exposed to hacks.
Inspectiv’s risk management platform runs autonomously 24/7 and is constantly scanning for threats, Melika said. The software isn’t just run on A.I., it's also combined with a network of security researchers. Melika said part of Inspectiv’s intelligence comes from the input of thousands of researchers.
Once it finds a threat, the software alerts Inspectiv, whose vulnerability spot-checkers verify it and identify it to the client. Then, Inspectiv scans its other clients for the same threat, or similar invasions that could be lurking. There’s also the potential for the software to review backup files, in case a company wants to make sure no older resolved threats spring back to life.
Melika pointed out several current Inspectiv clients using its software are local, including GoGuardian, maternal care company Mahmee and Minehut, a platform for people to host custom “Minecraft” servers.
The funding round was led by StepStone Group, among a suite of existing Inspectiv investors including Westwood-based Fika Ventures, San Francisco’s Freestyle Capital and Santa Monica-based Mucker Capital.
CEO Ryan Disraeli (left) and Founder and Chairman Joseph Melika (right)
Courtesy of Inspectiv
Inspectiv also announced a leadership transition this week alongside several new hires – former CEO and co-founder of fraud prevention service Telesign Ryan Disraeli will take the reins as CEO of Inspectiv, while Melika will remain on board as the company’s board chairman.
“Inspectiv is really helping secure the internet, and that was something that personally I could get passionate about,” Disraeli said. “To be able to work with a team of people that we brought in that also has that security background, but also experience scaling up organizations was a pretty exciting opportunity.”
The company also hired Karen Nguyen as chief revenue officer, Ray Espinoza as chief information security officer and Ross Hendrickson to be vice president of engineering. Disraeli said the Inspectiv team is currently 22 people but the company is “adding aggressively to that number” by expanding its product development team.
Disraeli wouldn’t disclose revenues but told dot.LA he’s confident he can grow Inspectiv quickly.
“There's a lot of companies raising money that don't have customers and don't have real growth,” Disraeli said. “This is a company that has real customers that are growing and growing with us.”
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Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
Activision Buys Game Studio Proletariat To Expand ‘World of Warcraft’ Staff
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
Activision Blizzard intends to acquire Proletariat, a Boston-based game studio that developed the wizard-themed battle royale game “Spellbreak.”
VentureBeat first reported that the Santa Monica-based publisher was exploring a purchase, noting its ongoing mission to expand the staff working on Blizzard’s hit massively multiplayer online game “World of Warcraft,” which launched in 2004.
Proletariat’s team of roughly 100 people will be merged into Activision’s “World of Warcraft” team to work on its upcoming expansion game. Though there’s no release date as yet for the title, “World of Warcraft: Dragonflight” is expected to debut before the end of this year.
Activision did not immediately return a request for comment. Financial terms of the deal were not available.
This Proletariat deal is Activision's latest push to consolidate its family tree by folding its subsidiary companies in under the Blizzard banner. More than 15 years after it bought out New York-based game developer Vicarious Visions, Activision merged the business into its own last year, ensuring that the studio wouldn’t work on anything but Blizzard titles.
The deal could also have implications for workers at Activision who have looked to unionize. One subsidiary of Activision, Wisconsin-based Raven Software, cast a majority vote to establish its Game Workers Alliance—backed by the nationwide Communications Workers of America union—in May.
Until recently, Activision has remained largely anti-union in the face of its employees organizing—but it could soon not have much of a say in the matter once it finalizes its $69 billion sale to Microsoft, which said publicly it would maintain a “neutral approach” and wouldn’t stand in the way if more employees at Activision expressed interest in unionizing after the deal closes.
Each individual studio under the Activision umbrella would need to have a majority vote in favor of unionizing to join the GWA. Now, Proletariat’s workforce—which, somewhat ironically given its name, isn’t unionized—is another that could make such a decision leading up to the Microsoft deal’s expected closing in 2023.
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
Snap Officially Launching ‘Snapchat Plus’ Subscription Tier
Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
Snap is officially launching Snapchat Plus, a paid subscription plan on Santa Monica-based social media company’s flagship app.
Snap is now the latest media company to tack a “plus” to the end of its name—announcing Wednesday that the new service will provide users with “exclusive, experimental and pre-release features” for the price of $3.99 a month. The first features available to paying subscribers include the ability to customize the style of app’s icon, pin a “BFF” to the top of their chat history and see which users have rewatched a story, according to The Verge.
The new product arrives after Snap confirmed reports earlier this month that it was testing Snapchat Plus—though the version that it has rolled out does not incorporate the rumored feature that would allow subscribers to view a friend’s whereabouts over the previous 24 hours.
Snapchat Plus will initially be available to users in the U.S., Canada, U.K., France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. While certain features will remain exclusive to Plus users, others will eventually be released across Snapchat’s entire user base, Snap senior vice president of product Jacob Andreou told The Verge. (Disclosure: Snap is an investor in dot.LA.)
The subscription tier introduces a new potential revenue stream for Snap, which experienced a “challenging” first quarter marked by disruptions to its core digital advertising market. However, Andreou told The Verge that the product is not expected to be a “material new revenue source” for the company. He also disputed that Snap was responding to its recent economic headwinds, noting that Snap had been exploring a paid offering since 2016.
Despite charging users, Snapchat Plus does not include the option to turn off ads. “Ads are going to be at the core of our business model for the long term,” Andreou said.
Snap is not the first popular social media platform to venture into subscriptions: Both Twitter and Tumblr rolled out paid tiers last year, albeit with mixedresults.Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.