Sana, a healthcare insurance company, Tuesday announced it has laid off 19 percent of its staff.

Will Young, Sana CEO and Co-Founder, announced the layoffs in a LinkedIn Post late Tuesday afternoon. He also posted a statement on the company’s blog. He said the layoffs were painful but necessary to keep the company operating successfully in today’s environment. 

Laid-off Sana employees began posting “open to work” status on LinkedIn Tuesday. Sana had around 210 employees. A source reported 40 employees were let go this week.

Sana is providing its laid off employees severance pay equal to three months of their base salary, paid medical, dental and vision insurance coverage through May 31st, the ability to keep their laptops, removal of the one year cliff for equity and three months of career services through RiseSmart, a job placement services firm.

For the past few years, Sana has focused on “accelerating growth and product development came at the cost of higher risk tolerance and greater expenses,” according to Young’s blog post. He wrote that the company is “fundamentally well-positioned to weather downturns.

“However, we need our investments to reflect the realities of the current macroeconomic environment and funding climate,” Young wrote. “This means re-orienting our company for leaner times today so we can continue delivering on our mission decades from now.”

To date, Sana, founded in 2017 by Young and Nathan Hackley, has raised $107 million. In June of 2022, Sana closed on a $60 million in Series B funding. 

Sana provides health care options for small businesses. The company reports that Sana’s customers often save up to 20 percent compared to legacy insurers. It also provides telehealth care and low co-pays. Itoperates in eight states.

In January of 2022, the company opened Sana MD in Austin. It is Sana’s first primary care health center for members. In addition to in-person office visits, Sana gives employees access to virtual care with providers specializing in primary care, pediatrics, maternity and mental health.

The news of Sana’s layoffs come a week after Decent, another healthcare startup based in Austin, announced plans to wind down operations to a core team and layoff most of its 40 employees. 

Nationwide, tech companies have been trimming staff. Zoom announced on Tuesday it was cutting 1,300 employees, according to the New York Times. Other tech companies in Austin laying off employees include Dell, which announced this week plans to cut 6,500 employees worldwide, according to the Times. Microsoft, Alphabet, Salesforce, Meta, Amazon and PayPal have all announced layoffs recently, the New York Times reported. 

By Laura Lorek, Publisher of Silicon Hills News

First, Colossal Biosciences announced in September of 2021 plans to bring the woolly mammoth back from extinction.

The next year, the synthetic biology company announced plans to bring the Tasmanian tiger, also known as the thylacine, back to life.

Now Colossal is announcing the launch of its avian genomics group, which will bring back the Dodo, a bird species extinct since 1662. Colossal is using breakthrough gene-editing technologies to recreate the woolly mammoth, Tasmanian tiger, and dodo.

Colossal Biosciences also announced on Tuesday that it raised $150 million in Series B financing. To date, the company has raised $225 million since launching in September of 2021. The funding makes Colossal a Unicorn company, meaning its valuation is more than $1 billion.

“It’s exciting being a Unicorn, but I don’t think it’s more exciting than bringing back the woolly mammoth,” said Ben Lamm, co-founder, and CEO of Colossal.

In addition,  Colossal spun out, Form Bio, a software platform last September, which raised a $30 million Series A round. Colossal, which has 80 employees and 40 external collaborators, has labs in Austin, Dallas, Boston, and Melbourne, Australia. Colossal expects to add additional employees as the various projects progress, Lamm said.

“The projects we are working on, we are seeing early success in the de-extinction efforts, and technology development,” Lamm said.

Colossal’s latest round is led by the United States Innovative Technology Fund, known as USIT, a private equity fund founded by U.S. Billionaire Thomas Tull, a technology investor. Other investors included Breyer Capital, Bob Nelsen, Animal Capital, Victor Vescovo, In-Q-Tel, Animoca Brands, Peak 6, BOLD Capital, and Jazz Ventures, among others.

“This support by Thomas Tull and the others ensures that we will get further faster,” Lamm said.

There is a hunger for this kind of moonshot type initiative that can move the needle forward for all of humanity, Lamm said.

“The World Wildlife Fund found that in the last 50 years, Earth’s wildlife populations have plunged by an average of 69% at the hands of mankind,” Lamm said. Colossal Biosciences has put together teams of some of the smartest people on the planet to tackle that problem, he said.

“By gathering the smartest minds across investing, genomics, conservation and synthetic biology, we have the opportunity to reverse human-inflicted biodiversity loss while developing technologies for both conservation and human healthcare,” Lamm said.

The launch of Colossal’s new avian genomics group will help to address the decline in the world’s bird population, which has lost more than 3 billion birds in the last 50 years, a stat from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

“The IUCN Red List also now categorizes more than 400 bird species as either extinct, extinct in the wild or critically endangered,” according to Colossal. “Colossal is on a mission to reverse these staggering statistics through genetic rescue techniques and its de-extinction toolkit.”

The work to bring the Dodo back to life is being spearheaded by Beth Shapiro, Ph.D., Colossal Scientific Advisory Board member, and lead paleogeneticist.

“The Dodo is a prime example of a species that became extinct because we – people – made it impossible for them to survive in their native habitat,” Shapiro said in a statement. “Having focused on genetic advancements in ancient DNA for my entire career and as the first to fully sequence the Dodo’s genome, I am thrilled to collaborate with Colossal and the people of Mauritius on the de-extinction and eventual re-wilding of the Dodo. I particularly look forward to furthering genetic rescue tools focused on birds and avian conservation.”

The dodo is iconic, and Shapiro has been working on it for more than a decade at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Lamm said.

“It is the symbol of manmade extinction,” Lamm said.

Most of the work on dodos will be done in Texas and the first dodo brought back to life will be a Texas dodo, Lamm said.

Lamm sees other applications for Colossal’s gene editing technologies in agriculture with new biofuels and preserving biodiversity, as well as in healthcare with gene therapies and vaccine development. Some of the technologies Colossal is developing will also have government applications, Lamm said.

“Dr. George Church and Colossal’s deep work in genomics is creating some of the most cutting-edge advancements in biotech,” according to Tull, USIT Chairman. “Their innovative technology has important applications for scientific discoveries, including biomedicine, and we look forward to supporting this crucial work.”

Colossal’s woolly mammoth de-extinction team, which is headed up by Church, now has more than 40 scientists and three laboratories. They are working with Asian and African elephants to implant an embryo to bring back the woolly mammoth. The team also launched a children’s education and research project with the University of Alaska Fairbanks on woolly mammoths in Alaska.

The Colossal thylacine team with 30 scientists in the U.S. and Australia has done a lot of work with stem cells in the lab and they have prototyped an artificial ex-utero development for early-stage marsupial gestation.

“The work is massively accelerated and currently ahead of our internal schedules,” Andrew Pask, Ph.D., Colossal Scientific Advisory Board member, and thylacine lead, said in a news statement.

In addition, Colossal recently launched its Conservation Advisory Board adding Forrest Galante, Virginia Riddle Pearson, Iain Douglas-Hamilton Ph.D., Former Lt. Governor of Alaska Mead Treadwell, permafrost research Jim Coates, Alaska’s Head of Fish and Wildlife Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang, and Former Director of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Aurelia Skipwith, J.D.

Colossal has also established partnerships with WildArk, Aussie Ark, Save the Elephants, Elephant Havens, the International Elephant Foundation, Re:Wild, and the AZA’s SAFE.

Colossal also added new members to its Scientific Advisory Board including world-leading scientist Christopher E. Mason, Ph.D., Doris A. Taylor, Ph.D., Rachel J. O’Neil, Ph.D., Austin Gallagher, Ph.D., Tom Gilbert, Ph.D., Mike McGrew, Ph.D., Matthew Wooller, Ph.D., and Duane Froese Ph.D.

Colossal Biosciences has 80 employees and Austin-based Form Bio has 45 employees. Colossal may spin out new companies in its not-too-distant future, Lamm said.  

“I’m excited about Texas and what we are developing here,” Lamm said

Decent, the Austin-based health insurance provider is “shutting down all of its operations to just a core team,” according to a blog post published Friday afternoon by Nick Soman, the company’s founder, and CEO.

“Decent’s mission since Richard Luck and I founded the company five years ago has been to deliver affordable health insurance for all. Starting in Texas in 2018, we launched health plans for 35% less than market rates with a Net Promoter Score of 79 vs. the industry average of 14. In 2021 we launched a professional employer organization to help small businesses band together to get even lower rates, and saw 100% renewal among eligible small businesses. I’m proud of what we’ve built, and prouder of the team that has built it.”

“Unfortunately, we just hit a massive and unexpected setback. It’s not impossible to move forward, but we will need time to figure out how,” Soman wrote. “For that reason, we are winding down all of our operations to just a core team.”

The company had 60 employees, according to an interview with Soman last November. The current number of employees is 40, according to a spokeswoman.

Decent, founded in 2018, has raised $43 million to date including a series that closed in December of 2021, according to a spokeswoman.  Last fall, the company launched a massive ad campaign in Austin promoting its services on billboards around town.

In his post, Soman reports that Decent had been working with a major partner to prepare for nationwide expansion this quarter. It wound down its product in anticipation of the partner’s new and improved one, according to Soman.

“We were all systems go as of last Wednesday,” Soman wrote. “Then late last week, our major partner pulled out without warning, citing unspecified concerns from their executive team and leaving us with no near-term path to market. We explored every possible avenue to salvage the partnership, but to no avail.”

That left Decent without a health insurance product, and as a result, it has to stop serving customers, according to Soman.

Decent will let its team go in the coming months with notice and severance, according to Soman.

Correction: Title corrected and updated to reflect Decent winding down operations to a core team, but not shutting down completely. Also, the article was updated with the current employee count and funding amount of $43 million.

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The Austin area saw a huge slowdown in venture capital invested in the fourth quarter with $775 million flowing into 78 deals, according to PitchBook-National Venture Capital Association Venture Monitor data.

That is down 50 percent in dollars invested from the fourth quarter of 2021 which recorded $1.5 billion in 122 deals, according to the Pitchbook report. It is also a 36 percent decline in the number of deals being done.

The data comes from the Q4 2022 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, jointly produced by PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association with support from Insperity, J.P. Morgan, and Dentons.

“After years of frenzied investments and soaring company valuations, venture capital investment levels are readjusting as businesses assess the current economic landscape,” according to the report.

Despite the fourth quarter slowdown, overall, for 2022, the Austin area still had a phenomenal year with $4.9 billion of venture capital invested in 416 companies.

That’s on par with stats from 2021 when Austin had a record-breaking year with $4.9 billion in venture capital investments. And it’s actually an increase in deal flow by nearly 7 percent from 387 companies in 2021.

Overall, companies in Texas raised $1.6 billion in venture capital in the fourth quarter of 2022, in 180 deals. That is down nearly 56 percent from $3.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021. And down nearly 34 percent in deal flow from 271 deals in the fourth quarter of 2021.

For all of 2021, Texas companies raised $9.5 billion, down nearly 20 percent from $11.9 billion raised in 2021. Deal flow also dropped 16 percent in 2022 to 840 companies funded, down from 1,004 in 2021.

In Austin, the biggest deals in the fourth quarter went to Jasper, a content generation platform, that received $141 million in venture funding. The Series A round made Jasper Austin’s latest Unicorn company valued at more than $1.5 billion. Jasper is one of the startups developing conversational AI and image generation AI similar to Open.AI’s ChatGPT. Its investors include Insight Partners, Coatue, Bessemer Venture Partners, IVP, Foundation Capital, Founders Circle Capital, HubSpot Ventures and more.

The second largest deal went to Infinitum, based in Round Rock, which is developing motors and generators powered by its patented technology. It raised $110 million in a Series D round. Its funding came from Riverstone Holdings Latin America, Alliance Resource Partners, Caterpillar Venture Capital and Cottonwood Technology Fund. 

And rounding out the top three deals is Dabbsson, which has created a clean energy backup generator for homes. It landed $75 million.

Protopia AI, based in Austin, announced it has closed on a $6 million seed round of funding led by ATX Venture Partners.

The company has developed a software solution that allows big companies to tap into key data by using artificial intelligence and machine learning to extract insights without exposing sensitive information.

Protopia cites a Gartner report on AI which found that CEOs major problem in using AI is data accessibility.

Other investors in the round included Galaxy Interactive, Silverton Partners, and DNX Ventures. Protopia has raised a total of $8 million, which includes an initial $2 million pre-seed round. All existing investors extended their commitment by participating in the new round.

Protopia AI’s core technology is based on inventions by Professor Hadi Esmaeilzadeh, endowed chair of computer architecture at the University of California San Diego. He is also Protopia AI’s co-founder and chief technology officer.

“We are at an inflection point where AI has unprecedented capabilities — but at the cost of losing the control and ownership of data,” Esmaeilzadeh said in a news release. “Protopia AI is the vision to enable practical AI without losing the control/ownership of data.”

Portopia.AI plans to use the funds raised to hire engineers and on product development. It is currently in beta-testing with customers in financial services, government and health care.

Funds raised from the round will be used to build out engineering teams and advance the product. The company is currently beta-testing its product across industries where data sensitivity causes the most operational slowdowns, including financial services, government and health care.

“Protopia AI empowers enterprises to extract maximal value using AI and machine learning from their data by providing the governance and protection that is necessary,”  Eiman Ebrahimi, Protopia AI co-founder and CEO, said in a news release.

“Today, companies are looking to create real value from their data using artificial intelligence and machine learning, according to Protopia AI. “They frequently are blocked or slowed down by data-sensitivity issues. According to a Seagate Technology and IDC survey, respondents estimated their organizations collect only 56% of their operational data. Out of that 56%, 43% of data remains unused. Protopia AI solves this dilemma with its easy-to-use Stained Glass Transform™ that enables the operation of AI and ML while removing the need to access the company’s data in identifiable form.”

“Data-centric AI is the future, and Protopia is positioned to emerge as an industry innovator and market leader,” Chris Shonk, ATX Venture Partners managing partner, said in a news release. “No other software company in the market is offering a solution with privacy in mind, at all stages of the ML lifecycle, including deployment, in mind from inception. We have a shared vision for maximal data protection and are pleased to fund the company at this critical growth stage.”

Austin-based Ribbon has closed on $2.7 million to help nonprofit organizations.

The company has created a software platform that gives individuals and businesses the banking, accounting, fundraising, and organizational tools they need to build a successful charity under the umbrella of a fiscal sponsor.

Ribbon’s fiscal sponsorship model allows individuals looking to conduct charitable work to partner with existing 501c3s to help them accomplish their goals while enjoying the sponsor’s tax-exempt status.

“We believe starting a new charity should be quick, easy, and effortless,” Ribbon CEO Braden Fineberg said in a news release. “We already have 1.6 million registered nonprofits in the U.S. In a crowded market, there is a growing demand for a platform that makes charitable work more accessible without the need to create a new 501c(3).”

Austin-based Trust Ventures led the investment round.

“You can start a company in a day for a few hundred dollars, but a nonprofit can take years and thousands of dollars, not to mention countless hours working through legal red tape,” said Salen Churi, General Partner at Trust Ventures. “Ribbon helps those in the nonprofit sector move at the speed of business, spending their time and resources doing good rather than on tax lawyers.”

Ribbon thinks its sponsorship model will replace the vast majority of new nonprofit organizations. The platform aims to save nonprofit organizations time and money in filing and managing their charitable status.

“Imagine the good that could be accomplished if people who wanted to do charitable work could, in effect, create a nonprofit in minutes, enable tax-deductible donations instantly, and not have to manage their nonprofit status,” Fineberg said. “With IRS backlogs and the acceleration of Open Banking APIs, the industry is ripe for this product.”

Open banking is a system under which banks make their application programming interfaces (APIs) accessible for third parties to develop new apps and services. Ribbon’s fiscal sponsorship model will be the first product to allow this to happen in the nonprofit sector, Finberg added. 

NASA has awarded Austin-based ICON a contract worth $57.2 to develop construction technologies that could help build habitats, landing pads, and roads on the moon.

NASA is planning for long-term human exploration of the moon under Artemis.

“In order to explore other worlds, we need innovative new technologies adapted to those environments and our exploration needs,” Niki Werkheiser, director of technology maturation in NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD). “Pushing this development forward with our commercial partners will create the capabilities we need for future missions.”

ICON already received a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) dual-use contract with the U.S. Air Force, partly funded by NASA. The new NASA SBIR Phase III award will support the development of ICON’s Olympus construction system, which is designed to use local resources on the Moon and Mars as building materials. The contract runs through 2028.

“To change the space exploration paradigm from ‘there and back again’ to ‘there to stay,’ we’re going to need robust, resilient, and broadly capable systems that can use the local resources of the Moon and other planetary bodies. We’re pleased that our research and engineering to-date has demonstrated that such systems are indeed possible, and we look forward to now making that possibility a reality,”  Jason Ballard, ICON co-founder and CEO,  said in a news release. “The final deliverable of this contract will be humanity’s first construction on another world, and that is going to be a pretty special achievement.”

ICON will work with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, under STMD’s Moon to Mars Planetary Autonomous Construction Technologies (MMPACT) project.

Previously, ICON 3D printed a 1,700-square-foot simulated Martian habitat, called Mars Dune Alpha, which will be used during NASA’s Crew Health and Performance Analog, or CHAPEA, analog mission starting in 2023.

ICON also competed in NASA’s 3D Printed Habitat Challenge. The company partnered with the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, and the team won a prize for 3D printing a structure sample that was tested for its ability to hold a seal, for strength, and for durability in temperature extremes.

The announcement comes after ICON’s warehouse and original headquarters in South Austin were severely damaged by a fire in the building the day after Thanksgiving, according to the Austin American Statesman. The paper reported a cause for the fire has not been determined.

3D Printing on the Moon and Beyond for NASA | Project Olympus – Off-world Construction | ICON

ICON TO DEVELOP LUNAR SURFACE CONSTRUCTION SYSTEM WITH $57.2 MILLION NASA AWARD SBIR Phase III Contract Furthers ICON’s Space-based Construction Technology Developments & Will Target Humanity’s First-ever Construction on Another Planetary Body ….. ICON, a leader in advanced construction technologies and large-scale 3D printing, announced that it has received a contract awarded under Phase III of NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.

A ransomware attack at San Antonio-based Rackspace Technology has caused service disruptions for thousands of its customers.

The attack began last Friday, Dec. 2^nd, and continues although the company reported Friday night that two-thirds of its customers’ services have been restored.

The ransom wear incident affected Rackspace’s Hosted Exchange Email business, which represents one percent of Rackspace’s total annual revenue and is comprised of primarily small and medium businesses that solely use this product, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“No other Rackspace products, platforms, solutions, or businesses were affected or are experiencing downtime due to this incident,” according to Rackspace.

Rackspace hired a leading cyber defense firm to investigate along with its security team.

“Ransomware is a type of malicious software or malware that prevents you from accessing your computer files, systems, or networks and demands you pay a ransom for their return,” according to the Federal Bureau of Investigations. “Ransomware attacks can cause costly disruptions to operations and the loss of critical information and data.”

Computers can become infected with ransomware by opening an email attachment, clicking an ad, following a link, or even visiting a website that’s embedded with malware, according to the FBI.

“Once the code is loaded on a computer, it will lock access to the computer itself or data and files stored there,” according to the FBI. “More menacing versions can encrypt files and folders on local drives, attached drives, and even networked computers.”

Rackspace has been working with its customers to migrate them to a new environment as quickly as possible, according to a news release.

“Rackspace maintains cybersecurity insurance commensurate with the size of its business, and is confident in its ability to absorb potential financial costs associated with the incident and fulfill its obligations to other customers,” according to a filing with the SEC.

“As of today, more than two-thirds of our customers on the Hosted Exchange environment are back on email,” according to Rackspace. “Every customer who has reached us has been offered support to transition to Microsoft 365.”

“We are continuing to make significant progress in our recovery efforts. We have engaged industry-leading global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to help investigate and remediate,” according to Rackspace. “Due to swift action on the Company’s part in disconnecting its network and following its incident response plans, CrowdStrike has confirmed the incident was quickly contained and limited solely to the Hosted Exchange Email business.”

Rackspace is still investigating the root cause of the incident.

Meanwhile, Rackspace faces two class action lawsuits filed on December 6^th against the company last week in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas.

Chris Ondo, represented by Jon B. Ellis of Sadovsky & Ellis, filed a class action lawsuit against Rackspace seeking injunctive relief and damages for alleged negligence and breach of confidence.

In addition, Garrett Stephenson and Gateway Recruiting, LLC, represented by Cole & Van Note, filed a class action lawsuit, Stephenson, et al. v. Rackspace Technology, Inc.  for negligence and related violations arising out of the email hosting provider’s recent high-profile data breach. In addition to monetary damages, the suit demands Rackspace Technology implement and maintain sufficient security protocols going forward so as to prevent future attacks.