CHICAGO | Economic & Business Development

[marothisu]

Fast-growing cannabis startup Fyllo raises $30M to double staff

https://www.bizjournals.com/chicago/...aises-30m.html

Fyllo, a fast-growing Chicago startup that helps cannabis firms with marketing and compliance, just raised a new round of funding as it looks to double its headcount in the next year.

Fyllo announced Tuesday that it raised a $30 million Series B round co-led by JW Asset Management and Sol Global. Other backers include K2, Entourage Effect Capital, Arcadian Capital Management, Salveo Capital, 2 NRP Managers and George Steinbrenner IV, the grandson of the late New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.

Founded in 2019 by Chad Bronstein, Aristotle Loumis and Erik Shani, Fyllo has now raised nearly $60 million in funding to date. The startup currently has 120 employees, Loumis said, and it plans to double its headcount in the next 12 to 18 months.

Fyllo's software helps cannabis brands ensure that their ads comply with state and federal advertising regulations, and is used by cannabis dispensaries like Columbia Care and Grassroots Cannabis. But Fyllo believes its software can grow beyond the legal marijuana space and help companies in other highly regulated industries with advertising.

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Bartesian lands $20M and Mila Kunis endorsement as it aims to become the ‘Peloton of home cocktails’

https://www.bizjournals.com/chicago/...dorsement.html

Bartesian, a Chicago-based startup selling a Keurig-like machine for cocktail making, has raised new funding as it works to become the “Peloton of home cocktails.”

Bartesian raised $20 million in a Series A round led by Cleveland Avenue, a Chicago VC firm from former McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson.

The new funding will be used to expand into international markets and double Bartesian's staff, said founder and CEO Ryan Close.

He would not disclose how much capital Bartesian has raised since it launched, but Tom Ricketts, the chairman of the Chicago Cubs, and Beam Suntory, the owner of bourbon whiskey brand Jim Beam, have previously invested undisclosed amounts in the company.

In addition to the funding round, Bartesian also announced Tuesday that actress Mila Kunis has joined the company’s board of advisors. Close would not disclose whether Kunis has invested in Bartesian but confirmed that she has an ownership stake in the business.

Bartesian debuted on Kickstarter in 2015 as a countertop device that creates cocktails on demand. The device, which retails for $350, was named to Oprah's Favorite Things list in 2019, which helped propel it into mainstream popularity.

Bartesian works by using Keurig-like capsules, which are used to make drinks like an old fashioned, margarita, gin martini or a long island iced tea. Each pod offers the appropriate amount of bitters, extracts, juice concentrates and other ingredients needed to make the cocktail. Users provide their own alcohol and simply push a button to make a drink.

During the pandemic, as bars closed and people began drinking more at home, Bartesian saw 975% year-over-year revenue growth in 2020, with subscribers growing more than 30 times since March 2020.

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Shell invests in Chicago company making sustainable jet fuel

https://www.bizjournals.com/chicago/...-lantajet.html

A Chicago firm that's bringing clean energy to the aviation industry by converting alcohol into jet fuel just received backing from oil giant Shell.

Shell announced Tuesday that it has invested in LanzaJet, a spinoff of Chicago-based LanzaTech that's making sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel for the commercial aviation market. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but Shell's funding is part of a phased investment approach that will allow the company to make further investments in LanzaJet over time, the company said.

Shell joins other high-profile backers of LanzaJet –which just launched in 2020– including British Airways, All Nippon Airways and Suncor Energy.

..

LanzaJet is building a plant in Soperton, Georgia, that can make up to 10 million gallons of jet fuel per year – with operations scheduled to begin in 2022. With its technology that converts alcohol to jet fuel, the company says it can produce up to 90% of its fuels as sustainable aviation fuel, with the remaining 10% as renewable diesel.

LanzaJet says its fuel delivers more than a 70% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional fossil jet fuel.

[IrishIllini]

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/resi...enix-or-dallas

Red don't show up on inbound and green doesn't show up on outbound. Marothisu should find us numbers

Top 10 destinations for moves out of Chicago:
1. Phoenix
2. Dallas-Fort Worth
3. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, Calif.
4. Denver
5. New York
6. Houston
7. Nashville, Tenn.
8. Atlanta
9. Miami/Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.
10. Tampa, Fla.

Top 10 cities for moves to Chicago:
1. New York
2. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, Calif.
3. Houston
4. Washington, D.C.
5. Dallas/Fort Worth
6. Denver
7. Seattle
8. Detroit
9. Atlanta
10. Philadelphia

[SIGSEGV]

UChicago putting 20 million behind quantum startups

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/john...antum-startups

The University of Chicago is launching an accelerator for quantum technology startups.

It’s committing at least $20 million to invest in startups over 10 years in hopes of generating jobs and wealth from Chicago’s rapidly expanding research effort in quantum mechanics to make the next leap in computing.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by IrishIllini

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/resi...enix-or-dallas

Red don't show up on inbound and green doesn't show up on outbound. Marothisu should find us numbers

Looks like you have to request the data from them. What you have shown at least for inbound isn't that much of a surprise. The Census has the FlowMapper which does this county-to-county but the last data they have is the 2018 (via 5 year ACS).

I actually had looked at a handful of MSA to MSA movement previously. For Chicago at least here's some numbers. I'm not counting MSAs in the region like Indianapolis, Milwaukee, etc here:

From ___ MSA to Chicago MSA in 2018:
NYC: 7307 people
Los Angeles: 4753 people
Washington DC: 3531 people
Atlanta: 3271 people
San Francisco: 2865 people
Boston: 2677 people
Phoenix: 2587 people
Dallas: 2569 people
Miami: 2534 people
Houston: 2518 people
San Diego: 1928 people
Virginia Beach: 1745 people
Denver: 1723 people
Philadelphia: 1616 people
Seattle: 1607 people
Austin: 1367 people


Chicago MSA is actually a larger destination of people moving from NYC than Dallas who seems to always tell people just how many people are moving there from NYC apparently. They do, however, get a lot of people from LA.

I should continue this analysis..

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

UChicago putting 20 million behind quantum startups

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/john...antum-startups

That's great. I hope some great things will come out of. It'll be awhile before we see anything super super useful application wise but these things are important. Hope the Chicago region can keep companies/orgs who provide any breakthroughs. The entire paradigm of how a quantum computer works down to how the algorithms work is completely different than a classical computer.

[SIGSEGV]

(accidental double post)

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by marothisu

The entire paradigm of how a quantum computer works down to how the algorithms work is completely different than a classical computer.

Can we start calling ourselves Qubit Prairie?

[marothisu]

Superposition city?

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by marothisu

Superposition city?

maybe too nerdy for here, but...

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

maybe too nerdy for here, but...

I want to be smart enough to understand that.

But I guess I'll just have another beer instead.

Beer is pretty good.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

I want to be smart enough to understand that.

But I guess I'll just have another beer instead.

Beer is pretty good.

Well it's a chi and an expectation value, with some notation abuse... (or, less abusive but even more obscure, some other operation using Dirac notation, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bra%E2%80%93ket_notation).

[Steely Dan]

^ the fuck?

Now I'm gonna need like six more beers.

[marothisu]

I think the wiki article made it look much more difficult to understand than it actually is LOL. A lot of quantum computing is based off of simple matrix/vector math, and some rules around the new logic gates.

Watch this. Pretty simple, ultimately:
https://youtu.be/F_Riqjdh2oM

P.S. welcome to some actual computer science.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by marothisu

Looks like you have to request the data from them. What you have shown at least for inbound isn't that much of a surprise. The Census has the FlowMapper which does this county-to-county but the last data they have is the 2018 (via 5 year ACS).

I actually had looked at a handful of MSA to MSA movement previously. For Chicago at least here's some numbers. I'm not counting MSAs in the region like Indianapolis, Milwaukee, etc here:

From ___ MSA to Chicago MSA in 2018:
NYC: 7307 people
Los Angeles: 4753 people
Washington DC: 3531 people
Atlanta: 3271 people
San Francisco: 2865 people
Boston: 2677 people
Phoenix: 2587 people
Dallas: 2569 people
Miami: 2534 people
Houston: 2518 people
San Diego: 1928 people
Virginia Beach: 1745 people
Denver: 1723 people
Philadelphia: 1616 people
Seattle: 1607 people
Austin: 1367 people


Chicago MSA is actually a larger destination of people moving from NYC than Dallas who seems to always tell people just how many people are moving there from NYC apparently. They do, however, get a lot of people from LA.

I should continue this analysis..




That's great. I hope some great things will come out of. It'll be awhile before we see anything super super useful application wise but these things are important. Hope the Chicago region can keep companies/orgs who provide any breakthroughs. The entire paradigm of how a quantum computer works down to how the algorithms work is completely different than a classical computer.

The top three (NY LA DC) make complete sense. Just speaking to urbanity, you get a great dose of it here for WAY less cash.

Funny that Virginia Beach made the list, weird really. I mean, I am apart of that inbound number, but still.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

Well it's a chi and an expectation value, with some notation abuse... (or, less abusive but even more obscure, some other operation using Dirac notation, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bra%E2%80%93ket_notation).

The only B I've been giving in grad school was from a quantitative class that required I use Chi and other mathematical crap I am completely obvious to. I even paid for tutors and still couldn't make an A!

I seriously would rather give a speech in Chinese than do that type of math.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

The top three (NY LA DC) make complete sense. Just speaking to urbanity, you get a great dose of it here for WAY less cash.

Funny that Virginia Beach made the list, weird really. I mean, I am apart of that inbound number, but still.

I had a limited set of MSAs I checked out so far, and most of what I put was every non Midwestern metro I'd checked out. Virginia Beach to for Chicago was relatively high though compared to some other cities getting migration from Virginia Beach.

[glowrock]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ the fuck?

Now I'm gonna need like six more beers.

Hopefully I can get back to drinking some beers tonight or tomorrow, since my intake has been zero for the last 4-5 days due to food poisoning.

While I really don't fully understand SIGSEGV's equation, I do like how, when all's said and done, it's just another Chicago. Maybe turn that into a T-shirt for the nerdy engineering crowd? Haha

Aaron (Glowrock)

[the urban politician]

^ If you want the buzz of beer but way lower calories, drink White Claw. You’re also supporting a local company (had to throw that last part in to keep the post “on topic” with this thread)

[sentinel]

Even the Washington Post mentioned UC's new startup:

Quantum technology emerges from the lab to spark a mini start-up boom
University of Chicago and partners launch the nation’s first accelerator to support quantum startups as interest in the technology grows

"Forty years after the renowned physicist Richard Feynman floated the idea for a quantum computer, the technology is starting to seep out of academic labs and into the real world.

Several companies are making progress developing quantum computers and are selling access to the machines via the cloud. Software ventures are cropping up to write programs for the powerful new computers. And on Wednesday, the University of Chicago and partners launched the nation’s first program to support quantum-tech start-ups..."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/techn...p-accelerator/

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by marothisu

I think the wiki article made it look much more difficult to understand than it actually is LOL. A lot of quantum computing is based off of simple matrix/vector math, and some rules around the new logic gates.

Watch this. Pretty simple, ultimately:
https://youtu.be/F_Riqjdh2oM

P.S. welcome to some actual computer science.

Yes, all of QM is basically just linear algebra, and in simple systems (what Quantum Computing is TRYING to achieve, through lots of dirty work hiding the details so you can reason about the results), states are sort of like vectors and operators are sort of like matrices. But you have to be careful with this analogy outside of the well-curated states of QC, since generally states transform under different algebras (even simple things like spinors). Anyway this is getting way off topic .

[sentinel]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

Yes, all of QM is basically just linear algebra, and in simple systems (what Quantum Computing is TRYING to achieve, through lots of dirty work hiding the details so you can reason about the results), states are sort of like vectors and operators are sort of like matrices. But you have to be careful with this analogy outside of the well-curated states of QC, since generally states transform under different algebras (even simple things like spinors). Anyway this is getting way off topic .

You forgot the tachyons...Won't somebody PLEASE think of the tachyons??!