SPACE CARGO enters the capital of NOVESPACE to connect parabolic flights and orbital factories
SPACE CARGO is making a strategic investment, the amount of which is not communicated, in NOVESPACE, a CNES subsidiary headed by Thomas Pesquet; its CEO Nicolas Gaume joins the board of directors. NOVESPACE’s parabolic flights provide approximately 22-second sequences of microgravity to test technologies, while SPACE CARGO’s BentoBox platform targets longer manufacturing missions in orbit and back to Earth.
PHOTOROOM renews its technological and commercial management
Eliot Andres, co-founder of PHOTOROOM with Matthieu Rouif, is leaving his executive functions after seven years but remains a member of the board of directors. He is replaced as CTO by Javier Sotelo, a former manager of GROUPON who joined the company at the beginning of the year. Michelle Belcic is also leaving her position as VP Sales & Partnerships after three years. These two movements reconfigure the technological and commercial framework of a company valued at 500 million euros since its Series B of 43 million raised in 2024
APPLE turns a page with Tim Cook and Phil Schiller
On his last day as CEO, Tim Cook sent a memo to employees before handing over management of APPLE to John Ternus on September 1st. Phil Schiller is also relinquishing oversight of the App Store and product events, while remaining with the company to work on as-yet-unspecified initiatives. The simultaneous withdrawal of these two historic figures accelerates the generational renewal of APPLE at a time when the group must catch up in AI and open a new product cycle
FTC and 22 states accuse AMAZON of hiding advertising surcharges
The FTC and attorneys general from 22 states are suing AMAZON, accusing it of secretly adding price markups resulting from its Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands auctions. According to the complaint, in 2024 this mechanism led to nearly 80% of Sponsored Products auctions charging the amount proposed by the winner, effectively transforming a system presented as a second-price auction into a first-price auction. AMAZON denies any deception, asserts that the FTC demonstrates neither price increases for consumers nor harm to advertisers, and accuses it of misunderstanding how the advertising market works.
LIGHTSOLVER finds a circuitous route to the Nasdaq via a biotech valued at $7 million
Four days after the finalization of PASQAL’s SPAC, another deeptech is preparing to take a circuitous route to the Nasdaq. LIGHTSOLVER, which is developing a photonic computing architecture expected to be commercialized in 2028, is to be acquired by COLLPLANT, a listed Israeli biotech that was only worth about $7 million before the announcement. But behind the acquisition lies a much more unusual operation: LIGHTSOLVER shareholders will receive shares, pre-funded warrants and up to 224 million additional warrants linked to the achievement of milestones. Ultimately, they could become a large majority in the diluted capital. After quantum, photonic computing in turn shows why certain deeptechs are now seeking financing from public markets even before having reached the maturity of a traditional IPO.
When an American API renames a Canadian lake
Several Canadian sites, including those of HYDRO ONE, the LCBO and GO TRANSIT, have temporarily displayed “Lake America”, while GOOGLE officially reserves this name for American users. The incident appears to come from maps integrated via third-party providers without an explicitly defined Canadian region, while the API allows the parameter to be set region=CA. In digital technology, a non-choice is already an infrastructure choice: leaving the default configuration amounts to delegating its nomenclature and update rules to the supplier. Companies can correct this setting or turn to MAPBOX, MAPLIBRE/OSM, ESRI, HERE or WOOSMAP, but sovereignty begins less with the name of the provider and more with control of data, parameters and dependencies.
