GeekWire - Seattle SPAC stocks suffering

Seattle SPAC suffering: Four companies from Seattle — Porch, Nautilus Biotechnology, Rover, and Leafly — went public via a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, within the last two years. Their stock prices have all dropped at least 50% from previous all-time highs amid a broader economic downturn. 

Beanless coffee startup brews up $40M: Seattle’s Atomo, which has been perfecting the reverse engineering of the coffee bean since 2019, raised new funding as it starts to sell its drinks online. The company’s goal is to mitigate the effects of climate change on coffee-growing regions around the globe and substitute the environmentally destructive process of coffee farming.

Advancing protein-folding: Three Seattle biotech companies are joining forces to support open-access development of protein folding and design software. The project, called OpenFold, brings together Cyrus Biotechnology, Outpace Bio, and Arzeda, startups developing new proteins that can be used as drugs or in industrial applications.

‘This is a crisis of their own making’: Covering expenses for tech company workers who need to travel to get abortion care is a “cheap, disingenuous ploy” that could also be dangerous for employees, writes Megan McNally, a business attorney and founder of FBomb Breakfast Club.