BetaBoston

Greentown Labs expands cleantech network with NYU partnership

Emily Reichert, Chief Executive of Greentown Labs.

Somerville’s Greentown Labs, which bills itself as the country’s largest incubator for cleantech startups, is partnering with a like-minded incubator from New York University to build a network of East Coast startups dedicated to sustainable technology.More →

Google

Swiss startup wants to buy Boston Dynamics

By Hiawatha Bray Follow

Demiurge Technologies AG, a Swiss startup that works on artificial intelligence, says it’s interested in acquiring Boston Dynamics, the Waltham robot maker put on the auction block last week by Alphabet Inc., parent company of Google.More →

Acquisition

ThriveHive is acquired by Propel Business Solutions for $11.8 million

By Janelle Nanos Follow

ThriveHive was acquired for $11.8 million by Propel Business Solutions on Tuesday.

Ever since it launched in 2011, the Cambridge-based marketing startup ThriveHive has publicized itself as the HubSpot for small businesses. On Tuesday, when Propel Business Solutions of Quincy announced it was acquiring ThriveHive for $11.8 million, its chief executive threw down a good-natured challenge to the bigger marketing rival.More →

Maxwell Health

Maxwell Health raises $22m in Series C funding

By Janelle Nanos Follow

Maxwell Health allows users to track their benefits with ease.

Maxwell Health, the Boston-based startup providing cloud-based benefits software for HR managers, has acquired a total of $56.4 million. More →

Social Media

Online memorial service Mylestoned, the latest startup from Dave Balter

By Curt Woodward Follow

Balter has raised $1.5 million in seed investment for Mylestoned, from Founder Collective, Boston Seed Capital, Converge, and angel investors. He said there are seven people already working on the company, which hopes to create a more modern way to remember the departed.More →

Virtual Reality

For virtual reality, enthusiasm reigns

By Timothy Loew Follow

Palmer Luckey at Oculus Game Day during GDC.

SAN FRANCISCO — Virtual reality ruled the week at the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC), turning the 26,000-person gathering into a tour de force of the much-hyped technology.

With the first virtual reality (VR) headsets reaching consumers — and gamers in particular — at the end of this month, enthusiasm for the immersive entertainment platform was everywhere from the expo show floor and demo booths to the developer sessions and private parties.More →

Cleantech

Energy efficiency startup Next Step Living shuts down, raised more than $70M

By Curt Woodward Follow

The shutdown comes about three months after Next Step Living announced it was replacing founding CEO Geoff Chapin with the company’s finance chief, Chris Catalano, who was charged with leading the company into new markets and continued growth.More →

Gaming

Fast, faster, fastest: How Akamai makes games play better

By Timothy Loew Follow

The Cambridge company is demonstrating at the big Game Developers Conference just how its technology can reduce much of the friction – such as poor Web performance – that can effect a player’s experience in a big way.More →

Innovation Economy

How Cambridge became the life sciences capital

By Scott Kirsner Follow

Al Vellucci, mayor of Cambridge, in his City Hall offices on Sept. 26, 1989. Vellucci once hoped to pass a two-year moratorium on gene splicing in Cambridge.

If you’ve assumed that biotech companies cluster in Cambridge to be close to Harvard and MIT, that’s only part of the story — other cities were far less welcomin. When a Harvard spin-out, Genetics Institute, tried to set up an office in Somerville in 1981, a public hearing aired concerns about rats and roaches carrying newly invented organisms out of the labs and into a nearby supermarket.More →

Digital Health

Boston Medical Center is using an app to help employees sleep — and work — better

By Nidhi Subbaraman Follow

The “Prof” and Pavlov are animated characters in a digital sleep training program called Sleepio, which claims to teach its users how to sleep better. In December, it became the latest addition to the benefits package for staff at the BMC.More →

Food

Chef Nightly food delivery app shuts down amid intense competition

By Curt Woodward Follow

It’s the second on-demand food service to shut down just this week: Berkeley, CA-based SpoonRocket announced it was shutting down on Tuesday.More →

3-D Printing

This Harvard lab is making 3-D-printing ‘inks’ from metals and living cells

By Nidhi Subbaraman Follow

Lab manager Scott Slimmer holds a 3D printed spherical dipole antenna, used as proof of concept to show that antennas can conform to any shape, at the Lewis Lab at Harvard.

If we can make matter that affects people’s lives in a material way that would be a tremendous thing to accomplish,” said professor Jennifer Lewis. More →

MIT

Berkman Center lawyer to run new cyberlaw clinic for BU, MIT students

By Curt Woodward Follow

The new Technology and Cyberlaw Clinic will help students tackle regulatory and legal hurdles that might trip up their cutting-edge research projects — something that MIT students in particular have run into before.More →

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