The latest

AG1, formerly Athletic Greens, has named Kat Cole as its new CEO to lead the nutrition company into its next growth phase, succeeding founder Chris Ashenden, who had served as AG1’s CEO since founding the greens powder brand in 2010.

Cole has served as AG1’s president and chief operating officer since 2021 and will continue to serve on the global nutrition company’s Board of Directors alongside Ashenden.

Since Cole joined AG1, the company has scaled its business operations, tripling the size of its team and developing an in-house research and development team.

Before AG1, Cole was president and chief operating officer of Focus Brands (now GoTo Foods), a restaurant holding company.

DENVER, Colo. – June 26, 2024 – Hummingbird Healthcare Inc. successfully closed a $10 million Series A funding round led by UCHealth. Hummingbird is a tech-enabled managed services company focused on elevating patient access to healthcare and creating good jobs. With this investment, Hummingbird and its clients will expand their work maturing patient access so providers can focus on caring for patients and patients can access care how, where, and when they need it.

“In the U.S. we’ve invested more than $70 billion in digital health in the past five years. And today, only about 6% of appointments are made online. Technology alone can’t solve our access problems,” said Jeremy Schwach, Hummingbird’s CEO. “As a result, we’re focused on partnering with healthcare organizations to do the hard work under the hood to truly unlock the power of new technologies, automation, and AI.”

A group of investors will put up $6 billion to fund development of artificial intelligence by Elon Musk’s xAI.

The company said on its website Sunday that the Series B funding round will be used to take xAI’s first products to market and speed up research. xAI said it has made “significant strides” during the past year in developing the technology, which will continue in the coming months.

Investors in the latest round include Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research, Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and Kingdom Holding.

Musk wrote on the social media site X that before the investment, xAI had a valuation of $18 billion. The new funding should help Musk’s company compete against Microsoft and OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, in the race to develop artificial intelligence.

Empower Finance, Inc. has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Petal, a consumer credit card and financial technology company headquartered in New York, and completed its acquisition of Cashalo, a consumer credit and lending company headquartered in the Philippines. Empower is a leader in alternative credit underwriting and a pioneer in financial product innovations for underserved consumers in the U.S. and Mexico. The combined companies will fold into Empower and continue to transform the way people access and build credit, enabling greater participation in established and emerging credit economies.

Empower underwrites individuals using real-time cash flow, other nontraditional data, and machine learning to assess financial responsibility and credit risk differently than mainstream lenders, which rely primarily on credit agency reporting.

Nov 15 (Reuters) – Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company SpaceX is in talks about an offering of mostly secondary shares that could value the company at up to $150 billion, representing a 20% increase in valuation, sources told Reuters.

The offering would be aimed at helping employees and shareholders cash out, two of the sources said. That view appears to contradict earlier information from a separate source that the offering would raise up to $1 billion for SpaceX via a new share issuance.

Talks with potential investors are centering around a price of $85 apiece for SpaceX shares, up from a split-adjusted $70 per share fetched earlier this year, sources said.

Ashley Graham is building up her brand portfolio with a new investment and partnership.

The model revealed on Tuesday she is joining affordable skin care brand Fig.1 as an investor and partner. In her role, Graham is part of the brand’s board and is involved in product development.

“As a general rule with my business, I really only take on projects that I believe in and products that I like and work,” Graham said. “I wasn’t necessarily looking to start a skin care line or beauty line or anything like that, but I was looking to fill the holes within my skin-care routine and also find something that was a little bit more affordable, so I stumbled on Fig.1.”

Prior to Fig.1’s official launch last year, Graham was introduced to the brand’s cofounder and chairman, Kimmy Scotti, through a mutual friend. Graham was intrigued by the products’ science-based and clinically tested products, as well as its commitment to sustainability through refillable and reusable packaging, which encouraged her to invest in the brand.

Athletic Greens, which created AG1, a powdered beverage designed to provide daily nutrition, raised $115 million in new funding that boosts its pre-money valuation to $1.2 billion.

The New York-based company got its start in 2010 by founder and CEO Chris Ashenden and is the result of his journey to find out why he continued to feel bad.

“I am a health and wellness-obsessed person, and despite knowing what I thought was a lot about nutrition and wellness, I kept getting sick,” Ashenden told TechCrunch.

Alpha Wave Global led the growth funding round and was joined by new investor Mark Vadon, returning investors SC.Holdings, David Blitzer’s family office Bolt Ventures and Dr. Peter Attia, as well as a group of product users. As part of the investment, Rick Gerson, chairman and chief investment officer at Alpha Wave Global, and Vadon, founder of Zulily and Blue Nile and former chairman of Chewy, will join the Athletic Greens board of directors

Spring Hill the content and consumer product company founded by NBA superstar LeBron James and Maverick Carter, has raised a new round of financing that values the company at $725 million.

Investors in the new round include Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird Capital (which is leading the investment round), the athletic apparel giant Nike, Boston Red Sox owner Fenway Sports Group and video game studio Epic Games. James and Carter will remain majority owners of the company.

In addition to helping fund an international expansion, SpringHill says it will use the infusion of cash on “acquiring valuable new IP, pursuing synergistic M&A and investing in emerging creators.”