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CJ HDC biosol held the Opening Ceremony to Celebrate the Completion of New Bioplastic Compounding Plant

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CJ HDC biosol held the Opening Ceremony to Celebrate the Completion of New Bioplastic Compounding Plant
  • New venture will focus on development of differentiated eco-friendly materials to become a ‘global green product hub’ for building a circular plastic economy
  • New South Korean-based compounding facility has annual production capacity of 11,000 tons

CJ HDC biosol (biosol) and CJ Biomaterials, Inc., a division of South Korea-based CJ CheilJedang and a primary producer of polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA), will work together to accelerate the development and commercialization of ecofriendly bioplastics. biosol has completed construction of a new South Korean bioplastic compounding plant in Jincheon, Chungcheongbuk-do, which has capacity to produce 11,000 tons of bioplastics annually. CJ HDC biosol, established in February 2022, is the result of the joint venture between CJ CheilJedang and HDC Hyundai EP, South Korea’s largest plastic compounding manufacturer, to create an eco-friendly material compounding business.

Compounding is a process of mixing or blending polymers and additives together to create a customized plastic solution to meet specific color, property and performance requirements. biosol’s new facility will focus on developing sustainable solutions using a variety of biopolymers, such as CJ Biomaterials’ amorphous PHA, cellulose, polylactic acid (PLA) and others. CJ Biomaterials is the leading producer of amorphous PHA, which is a softer, more rubbery version of PHA that offers fundamentally different performance characteristics than crystalline or semi-crystalline forms of PHA and is a very good modifier for other bioplastics. It has strong biodegradability and compostability properties and can contribute to marine or soil biodegradable, or home compostable products in a variety of applications.

biosol has started production at its approximately 40,000 square-foot compounding facility, which will help bolster the success of CJ CheilJedang and HDC Hyundai EP commitments to a sustainable future. The new plant will allow CJ CheilJedang to expand its business area to encompass more eco-friendly materials beyond its PHA technology, introducing a new growth engine for the company, while HDC Hyundai EP is expected to further consolidate its position as South Korea’s leading compounding business.

“Global customers are setting aggressive environmental, social and governance goals, focusing on sustainable management amid the rising trend toward carbon neutrality,” said CJ CheilJedang CEO Choi Eun Seok, at a ribbon cutting officially opening the Jincheon site. “We are committed to devoting resources to support biosol and the goals of the joint venture to become a leading eco-friendly material solutions company by providing our differentiated PHA material to combine with the cutting-edge compounding capabilities of HDC Hyundai EP.”

Chung Joong Kyu, CEO of biosol, added: “We are focused on the development of differentiated eco-friendly materials and committed to moving forward as a ‘Global Green Product Hub’ to help establish a ‘plastic circular economy.”

For information on CJ Biomaterials, visit our website at https://www.cjbio.net/en/products/cjPha.do.

About CJ BIOMATERIALS

CJ Biomaterials, a business unit of CJ BIO, is a part of CJ CheilJedang, a global lifestyle company with a vision to inspire a new life filled with health, happiness and convenience. CJ Group has organized its business portfolio into four core sectors: Food & Food Service, Bio & Pharma, Entertainment & Media, and Retail & Logistics. CJ BIO is the world’s leading supplier of fermentation-based bioproducts for animal nutrition, human nutrition, and biomaterials at its thirteen manufacturing facilities worldwide. It is the mission of CJ Biomaterials to develop meaningful solutions to the global problem of plastic waste and other sustainability challenges at scale. CJ Biomaterials has been working toward bio-based chemicals and biopolymers as part of a long-term vision to expand into technologies that can help create a more sustainable future. CJ Biomaterials is a leader in the manufacture of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) – both polymers and related chemistries. We have the core technology platforms necessary to implement PHA-based solutions at scale including bioscience, chemical engineering, materials innovation and applications development. We have the technology, expertise and capacity to make an impact with PHA in global markets and important applications, ranging from flexible and rigid packaging, 3D printing and agricultural films to coatings, personal care, and healthcare.

As a socially responsible company, CJ Biomaterials strives toward practicing carbon-neutral manufacturing operations by utilizing renewable raw materials and developing value-added coproducts to minimize environmental waste.

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Cosmology Raises $5M to Simplify Web3 Application Development

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Cosmology

The “Adobe for Web3” makes building dApps accessible to a wide range of developers, not just those who have expertise with the entire blockchain stack

Cosmology, the tech suite that enables developers to build Web3 apps in the Cosmos ecosystem, has closed its $5M seed round, co-led by Galileo and Lemniscap with participation from Dispersion, Hashkey, Tuesday Capital, the Osmosis Foundation, Chorus One, Informal Systems, and angels including Kevin Lin, Zaki Manian, Leland Lee, and Ethan Beard. As an official part of the Interchain Stack, Cosmology empowers over 2,000 developers to build applications like dYdX, Osmosis, and Celestia. This funding allows Cosmology to support the growth of the interchain, and provide tools that make app development accessible without requiring deep technical blockchain knowledge.

“Having spent nearly three decades at the intersection of design and technology, I see the potential of Web3 and the need to lower the barriers to development,” said Dan Lynch, Founder of Cosmology. “Our mission is to empower a broad range of developers, driving innovation and the shift from Web2 to Web3. We achieve this by enabling builders to swiftly turn their ideas into launched applications, focusing on big-picture concepts rather than the low-level technical details of blockchain.”

Cosmology’s tools make the development of Web3 applications dramatically simpler for developers throughout the interchain and have been downloaded over 5 million times. They’ve created tools like Telescope, which generates easy-to-use TypeScript libraries for developers to access the functionality of Cosmos blockchains, and Cosmos Kit, a universal wallet adapter for quickly making apps that easily interact with Cosmos blockchains and wallets.

“Dan’s work building developer tooling has led to huge growth in the number of applications being built in Cosmos,” said Sunny Aggarwal, Founder of Osmosis. “Cosmology is making app development on the 100+ blockchains in the ecosystem a streamlined, elegant process.”

Initially focused on front-end tools, Cosmology is now broadening its scope of services to offer a comprehensive full-stack environment for developers. The team now includes experts in key blockchain technologies like Tendermint, Cosmos SDK, and IBC Protocol, enhancing its suite’s capabilities across the board. This expansion gives Cosmology extra bandwidth to support developers from design to deployment, covering everything from user interface design all the way to backend blockchain and smart contract tooling.

“Cosmology is the bedrock underlying everything being built right now in the Cosmos and Celestia ecosystems,” said David Feiock, Managing Partner at Galileo. “As an integral part of building application-specific blockchains, Cosmology tools like Telescope materially reduce the complexities for developers allowing for much quicker innovation and iteration cycles, which will be an essential component of this next phase of growth in crypto.”

Commenting on the announcement, Roderik van der Graaf, Founder of Lemniscap, said: “To date, the perceived complexity of Web3 has kept many Web2 developers from exploring novel use cases that would enhance their product offerings. Cosmology is playing a pivotal role in enabling developers to incorporate Web3 elements in their applications, while circumventing the steep Web3 learning curve. We’re delighted to have co-led this funding round and look forward to supporting Dan and the team in executing a strong growth strategy in 2024 and beyond.”

“Dan’s experience building and exiting low-code platforms like Brandcast is invaluable in the Web3 space, where building applications can prove daunting,” said Pat Gallagher, Managing Partner at Tuesday Capital. “Cosmology is democratizing the digital landscape for businesses and developers alike with an Adobe-style suite of products that lower the barrier to entry, so decentralized application development doesn’t require the full-stack expertise that very few software engineers possess.”

“In the early days of the internet, the concept of every business having its own website once seemed like a pipe dream. Today, we’re at a similar point in time before the brink of a revolution with the Internet of Blockchains. Much like low and no-code platforms transformed Web2, making digital participation accessible to all businesses, I see a future where Web3 is equally open and user-friendly,” said Dan Lynch.

As Cosmos becomes an increasingly interwoven mesh of blockchains, Cosmology is at the forefront of enabling developers to build interchain-native applications. This raise helps the team further build out the essential tooling that’s making Cosmos one of the most attractive places to build in Web3 today.

About Cosmology

Cosmology is creating the Adobe of Web3 – a suite of products that work interdependently to catalyze creativity for builders.

Cosmology is building a unified developer experience for cross chain dApps, streamlining everything from low-level encoding and signing to user interfaces and wallet adapters. Our tools are becoming the standard in the interchain, where our community has now grown to 100+ chains and countless smart contract projects across the Cosmos ecosystem.

Hundreds of developers leverage Cosmology’s software to build DEXes, wallets, governance tooling, NFT platforms, lending, leverage, and liquid staking protocols. These include Osmosis, dYdX, Celestia, Cosmostation, Stride, Juno, DaoDao, Stargaze, Mars Protocol, Leap Wallet, AstroTech, Persistence, Quicksilver and more.

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Seattle based Enzzo Announces $3M in Seed Funding to Accelerate Hardware Product Development

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Enzzo supercharges the product definition and requirements process for companies creating hardware. The $3 million seed investment was led by Unlock Venture Partners with participation from PSL Ventures and the Mayfield/Pioneer Square Labs AIStudio Fund.

Enzzo, a company reimagining how hardware products are created by leveraging generative AI, announced today that it raised a $3 million seed investment led by Unlock Venture Partners with participation from PSL Ventures and the newly created Mayfield/Pioneer Square Labs AIStudio Fund. With this round of funding, the company will be expanding the team refining and building its platform.

“I know what it takes to define and ship great products,” said Andy Liu, Managing Director of Unlock Venture Partners, and former VP at VIZIO. “Enzzo is reimagining the process to amplify the abilities of product companies and manufacturers to take an idea, understand the requirements and cost, and get it to market faster with higher quality than ever before. It is a real game-changer for all hardware-related companies.”

Defining new products is challenging enough for software, but hardware’s unique variables and regulatory requirements add complexity. Companies and teams creating hardware are interested in moving faster from a vision to an in-market product but must start by defining the product and developing requirements, which typically take weeks to months. The definition phase is critical, as any hardware changes become increasingly expensive as development progresses, underscoring the critical need for comprehensive requirements and risk assessment from the outset.

To address these problems, Enzzo empowers teams to define innovative products and their requirements faster and more efficiently than is possible today – from weeks or months to days – saving time and expense. Enzzo runs in modern web browsers and leverages the power of foundation models along with company-provided data to prompt, synthesize user inputs, and then generate key outputs. The service features product management expertise accessible via a chat interface, a collaborative workspace for team members and partners to work on requirements, and document generation capability to accelerate the definition of new products.

“Enzzo represents what we believe is the new way that product teams will work by leveraging gains from AI in combination with human creativity to define and create hardware products faster,” said Ford Davidson, co-founder and CEO. “We are thrilled to have awesome investors helping us to grow the company and catalyze the next wave of hardware product innovations.”

Enzzo is a spinout of Seattle-based startup studio Pioneer Square Labs. “I have known Enzzo CEO Ford Davidson for over 20 years and we worked closely together building Dashwire into a successful acquisition by HTC in 2011,” said Geoff Entress, Managing Director. “Ford’s incredible background helping create new category devices and services at Microsoft, HTC, Amazon and, most recently, Meta make him the perfect leader to build Enzzo into a massive player in the hardware space.”

About Enzzo
Enzzo, Inc. is a Seattle, Washington-based company founded in 2023 by product innovators who have worked on award-winning products at startups and tech companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Samsung, HTC, and Roku.

About Unlock

Unlock Venture Partners is an early stage venture capital firm run by founders and operators that invest in world-changing technology companies based in Seattle and Los Angeles.

About PSL Ventures
PSL Ventures is a venture capital fund located in Seattle, WA. The fund is affiliated with Seattle-based startup studio Pioneer Square Labs. The organization partners with exceptional founders at the earliest stages to help build and invest in market-defining technology companies, primarily based in the Pacific Northwest.

About Pioneer Square Labs (PSL)
Pioneer Square Labs is a Seattle-based startup studio that creates and launches technology startups.

About AIStudio Fund
AIStudio Fund is an investment vehicle backed by Mayfield to invest in AI spinouts of Pioneer Square Labs.

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Word-of-Mouth Commerce is the Next Evolution of Influencer Marketing

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Aspire.io drives word-of-mouth commerce at scale for 900+ global giants and high-growth DTC brands, cutting through the noise of traditional paths to purchase.

Fighting rising acquisition costs, the sunsetting of third-party cookies, and the dwindling returns of once highly-profitable advertising channels, marketing leaders are shifting their channel mix towards a source of unmatched returns: letting consumers themselves (and people they trust) do the selling. Aspire.io, the world’s leading word-of-mouth commerce company, has built a powerhouse platform and industry-leading Agency to drive revenue in the way commerce began – trusted, word-of-mouth recommendations through ambassadors, influencers, affiliates, customers, user-generated content, and social ads to drive efficiency across paid, owned, and earned.

“With rising ad costs and the loss of cookie tracking, the best brands are going back to the basics, tapping into their communities to drive sustainable growth,” said Anand Kishore, CEO at Aspire. “Word-of-mouth used to be associated with unpaid, unscalable growth, but today is highly scalable, profitable, and efficient.”

Traditional, brand-produced content is no longer effective, especially with younger Gen Z audiences who crave authenticity, realness, and low-fidelity content. Consumers want product recommendations from trusted, familiar faces and peers with 69% of buyers trusting influencer recommendations. Plus, marketing channels such as email and websites are losing the consumers’ attention to social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram – which are now search, content, and point-of-purchase powerhouses. The distance between inspiration and transaction is shorter than ever, and Aspire operationalizes word-of-mouth marketing at the largest scale and on the biggest stage – social media platforms.

92% of consumers trust recommendations over a company’s messaging and 73% of online shoppers agreed that user-generated content made them more confident when purchasing. With the world’s largest creator marketplace of 1 million+ influencers; an industry-leading Agency Services team with over 100 subject matter experts; customizable, flexible workflows; and trusted first-party data integrations with social networks, Aspire helps leading brands find influencers, manage customer advocacy campaigns, create ads, and optimize revenue performance – all in one place. Marketers can consistently improve attributable ROI through the power of word-of-mouth generated content and maximize time and resource efficiency with product fulfillment, customizable workflows, seamless brief sending, and content approval.

Aspire’s word-of-mouth commerce platform helps ecommerce teams maximize conversions, drive revenue, and lower content production costs. Additionally, Aspire’s in-house, full-service agency has helped Fortune 500 companies and fast-growing e-commerce brands alike quickly develop and execute high-impact word-of-mouth campaigns with over 600,000 campaigns and $100M has paid out to creators. With bespoke, performance-driven strategies for household names like M&Ms, Keurig, Samsung, Dyson, and more, Aspire’s Agency Service team offers a unique blend of technology and transparent, upfront pricing and fees.

“Aspire unlocked the ability for us to attribute value to our influencer program,” said Lauren Rueter, Influencer and Community, at RugsUSA. “We can now reliably track the impact of conversions, engagement, and impressions that come from word-of-mouth marketing.”

About Aspire

Aspire.io is the world’s first word-of-mouth commerce platform that leverages your brand’s ambassadors, influencers, affiliates, customers, user-generated content, and social ads to accelerate marketing results across paid, owned, and earned channels. Since 2014, Aspire’s industry-leading software platform, combined with our award-winning Agency Services team, has served household names such as M&Ms, Keurig, Samsung, HelloFresh, Dyson, and many other high-growth ecommerce companies while paying out $100M to creators around the world.

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