The company that assembled your iPhone unveiled its first EVs today.

Hon Hai Technology Group, better known as major Apple supplier Foxconn, is the largest contract electronics manufacturer in the world. As smartphone sales declined last year, the Taiwanese tech giant announced its plans to get into the automotive business.

Last week, Foxconn released a video teasing its Foxtron EVs ahead of the Hon Hai Technology Day event earlier today.

Back up...This time last October, Foxconn revealed the details of MIH, its open-source EV platform, and said it wanted to become the “Android of EVs.”

Chairman and CEO Young Liu also shared an ambitious goal: Foxconn wants to supply about 10% of global EVs by 2027. The company plans to work with multiple auto makers to hit that target, which is expected to be about 3 million vehicles.

Foxconn has been forging partnerships over the last few years with companies across the EV supply chain, from semiconductor and battery makers to electric motor manufacturers.

• In 2020, Foxconn made a deal with Fiat Chrysler (now Stellantis) that established a joint venture to develop and produce EVs and internet-connected vehicles.
• Earlier this year, Foxconn agreed to work with Los Angeles–based EV startup Fisker to assemble its vehicles.

The Foxtron electric bus, Model E sedan, and Model C “recreation vehicle“ (read: crossover) making their debuts today come from Foxconn’s partnership with Taiwanese car maker Yulon Motors.

What’s next: The company said it aimed to account for 5% of global EV revenue by 2025, meaning about $30 billion in sales. Foxconn also aims to bring a solid-state EV battery to market by 2024.

In August, Liu told investors that Foxconn planned to begin mass-producing EVs in the US and Thailand in 2023 and was in negotiations about potential manufacturing plant locations in Europe.

At the end of September, Ohio–based EV automaker Lordstown Motors Inc. agreed to sell its electric truck factory for $230 million.

• Foxconn will manufacture Lordstown’s electric pickup truck, the Endurance, and use the site for production of Fisker’s vehicles as well.

Zoom out: The challenge of getting EVs into production today is that most traditional automakers have the manufacturing infrastructure, but lack the tech expertise, and most EV startups have the tech, but need ungodly amounts of capital to actually build their vehicles.

Foxconn seems to be stepping right into this gap with both experience manufacturing devices powered by chips and the money to make deals happen quickly.Click here to view this story on-site.—GD

If the past few months have taught us anything, it’s that billionaires love space tourism—and VCs do, too.

So far, 2021 has already meant big money for space tech—a record number of space tech startups SPAC’d in Q1, and the sector received more than 3% of this year’s overall VC deal flow. With $24.8 billion so far, 2021 is on track to beat last year’s investment total for space companies ($30+ billion), according to the Space Investment Quarterly report.

• For comparison: The US spent about $30 billion on the space race from 1957 to 1969. (Depending on the year you calculate for, that’d be between $52 billion and $68 billion in today’s dollars.)

Last week especially, the movers and shakers of private space tourism were all abuzz. Here’s what you may have missed...

Speeding up: Space Perspective, a Florida–based luxury-spaceflight startup, raised $40 million for its giant space balloons—yes, you’re reading that right. The idea: Launch customers inside a football-stadium-sized balloon 20 miles into the air, to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. The startup’s inaugural six-hour flight costs a cool $125,000 per ticket.

Slowing down: Virgin Galactic announced it will delay its future commercial spaceflight aspirations until at least Q4 2022, to stockholders’ dismay. The company was initially slated to launch a crewed flight with Italian Air Force passengers this fall, but on Thursday, it announced that lab tests ahead of planned maintenance projects revealed a potential issue.

• The tests ID’d a potential problem with the strength margins of “certain materials used to modify specific joints,” according to Virgin Galactic. So it’s back to the lab for inspection until those materials get the green light.

Talk of the town: After Blue Origin sent T.J. Hooker’s William Shatner to space, Shatner told Jeff Bezos it was “the most profound experience I can imagine.” He added, “It’s extraordinary. I hope I never recover from this...It’s so much larger than me and life.”

• Even Elon Musk had something nice to say on Twitter, calling the idea to send Shatner to space “cool.”

A critic’s POV: Prince William told the BBC that “we need some of the world’s greatest brains and minds fixed on trying to repair this planet, not trying to find the next place to go and live,” saying that it “really is quite crucial to be focusing on this [planet] rather than giving up and heading out into space to try and think of solutions for the future.”Click here to view this story on-site.—HF

If you pay any amount of attention to the tech powering the $455 billion world of digital advertising, you’ve heard of it: the third-party cookie.

But...What actually is a cookie? And why is it such a big deal that it’s going away in the near future?

The fun folks over at Marketing Brew answered these questions and much, much more in their new comprehensive guide to all things cookies. They talked to more than a dozen industry experts, mapped out the history of the tracking device, and went deep into the annals of one of the most consequential marketing technologies ever devised.

Click here to read the full guide.

Stat: Covering 50% of the world’s roofs with solar panels would provide enough capacity to meet the world’s annual electricity needs, per a new paper in Nature. (Double stat: Rooftop solar panels are now way cheaper than in 2010—like, up to 79% cheaper.)

Quote: “We estimate that we may action as little as 3-5% of hate and ~0.6% of V&I [violence and incitement] on Facebook, despite being the best in the world at it.”—An internal Facebook document obtained by WSJ, referring to the company’s AI-based content moderation systems

Read: What’s been lost in the evolution of the internet—and why regulating tech platforms is such a challenge.

Growing pains gains: Help Scout offers the custom tools you need to manage a growing business. Scout’s honor. Are you a customer support leader at an online business with 51–200 employees? Take a qualified meeting with Help Scout and get a $100 Amazon gift card.*

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Currently CRISPR treatments for cancer have to be individually tailored to each patient, but preliminary results show promise for an off-the-shelf option from CRISPR Therapeutics.

In a study of 24 adults with advanced B-cell lymphoma, 14 responded to the treatment, and nine saw tumor cells disappear entirely. Four of those nine patients have remained in complete remission for six months or more—an important sign of the durability this CRISPR therapy could offer patients with a type of cancer that doesn’t respond to existing treatments.

Since CRISPR gene-editing capabilities were discovered in 2012, the technology has been used to alter the DNA of plants, animals, and human embryos.

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

• Inside the curious world of physical data transfers
• Report: AI jobs are growing fast—much faster than education and workforce policy
• Lithium for EV batteries could face a shortage by 2023. This startup wants to help.