The Matter standard arrived in October, promising a new era of compatibility and interoperability for smart-home tech.

Matter is the latest in a long line of protocols attempting to unite the smart home, many of which have struggled to gain traction largely because of lack of adoption or complexity in design.

This time around...There’s hope from smart home developers that the broad buy-in around Matter will help make it successful—and if it does succeed, it will likely be because of a critical piece of technology called Thread.

• Thread is the technological core of Matter, which smart-home experts have heralded as the next big step in smart-home adoption due to its potential to facilitate interoperability across different brands of smart-home devices.

Zoom in: Thread, at its technical essence, is a low-power mesh networking protocol that very literally threads smart-home devices together in a home. In practice, Thread helps IoT devices like door locks, smoke detectors, lights, and motion sensors connect with each other while making sure they do it quickly and without draining a lot of battery. Keep reading about the tech underpinning Matter here.—JM

You may not be familiar with the term “femtech,” which menstrual health app Clue’s founder Ida Tin coined in 2016, but investors are starting to get hip to it—and throwing money its way.

• Femtech—which hit $16 billion in total industry funding this summer per a FemTech Analytics report, up 15% from December 2021—is technology focused on the health needs of cisgender women, as well as people who have similar health needs and identify as transgender or nonbinary.
• Examples of femtech include menstrual products, gynecological devices, and fertility solutions.

Big picture: Though this uptick in investment marks significant progress, funding for women’s digital health companies still made up just 7% of total US digital health funding from January to August 2021, according to a report from venture fund Rock Health.

“The women’s health and sexual health space is massively underserved. And it’s only recently with a new demographic of venture capitalists that we’re seeing investments go toward other areas besides fertility,” said Carli Sapir, founding partner at Amboy Street Ventures, a venture fund dedicated to women’s health and sexual health startups.

So, what types of women’s health tech are attracting investor dollars? Click here to read the full story from Healthcare Brew and find out.—MA

Coworking is a weekly segment where we spotlight Emerging Tech Brew readers who work with emerging technologies. Click here if you’d like a chance to be featured.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in tech?

I am responsible for the correct product delivery. I assist customers to help them be successful when using Hotelverse products before, during, and after going live. I also act as a link between customers, sales, and IT to make sure everyone is on the same page.

What’s your favorite emerging tech project you’ve worked on?

This one by far. Being part of helping define what the metaverse could mean for the travel industry is amazing. It is usually quite a traditional industry, so including immersive experiences is a huge step forward.

What emerging tech are you most optimistic about? Least? And why?

I am really interested to see quantum computing evolve and how we will interact with it. Will we be able to ask the right questions? What kinds of problems will we be solving that cannot be solved by current technology and computing capacities?

On the other hand, I am not that optimistic about the AI hype or chatbots replacing interaction with people. There is an important bias, which is the same human capacity. So I don’t believe computers will ever outsmart us or have feelings. Feelings are too complex and spiritual to be taken lightly and to be translated to 0s and 1s (or, for that matter, to quantum states).

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile?

I am a huge nature and animal lover. I have three cats at home, and I have come to believe that they are the ones ruling the house.

Stat: OpenAI is reportedly expecting to hit $1 billion in revenue by 2024.

Quote: “Is there some lack of commitment to Amazon’s devices and services business? By any measure, the answer is no.”—Dave Limp, Amazon’s SVP of devices and services, in response to questions about job cuts at Amazon, including in its Alexa division

Read: Forrester analysts lay out their tech predictions for 2023.

It’s time for the last news quiz of 2022. Can you end the year on a high note?

Click here to play this week’s trivia.

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• A major homebuilder tests the market for climate-conscious homes
• Here’s how the battery industry evolved in 2022
• Meet the organization helping aviation companies harness digital twins