Tag Archives: securing

Hurricane Risks in Florida Are Growing: Challenges in Securing Flood Insurance

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The threat of hurricanes in Florida is increasing, driven by anthropogenic climate change that warms our atmosphere and elevates sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico. Warmer conditions retain moisture, enhance hurricane intensity, and create more powerful storms, making Florida more susceptible to storm-related damage. During Hurricane Helen, extreme rainfall surged by 10%, with some regions in Florida receiving up to 26.95 inches of rainfall.

Jeremy Porter, a climate risk expert at the First Street Foundation, points out that soaring insurance costs reflect the significant effects of climate change in West Florida, where areas like Fort Myers Beach are grappling with recurring losses and expensive recovery efforts.

“In recent decades, we’ve been catching up with the reality of climate risks that weren’t adequately reflected in risk modeling. Now, as we reassess, premium costs are rising rapidly, impacting people’s household budgets,” Porter noted.

Due to a scarcity of home insurance options, residents are increasingly opting for coverage through Citizens Insurance Property Corp., a state-supported non-profit insurer in Florida.

Porter anticipates that by 2055, home insurance premiums in the Tampa Metro region could soar by 213% because of hurricane risks. Climate-related threats are similarly disrupting insurance markets in other states; for instance, Sacramento, California, may see a 137% rise due to heightened wildfire risks.

Porter also mentioned that declining home prices in Florida could influence insurance costs and accessibility. If property values fall below a certain threshold, insurers exposed to hurricane risks may view this as a warning sign, leading to increased scrutiny and potential hikes in premiums during the underwriting process.

Zillow data indicates that the value of homes in Fort Myers Beach has decreased by approximately $200,000 from pre-pandemic levels, with around 86% of last year’s sales reflecting this price drop.

Before Hurricane Ian, the average home value on Sanibel Island, a favored destination in Lee County, stood at nearly $1.3 million. Today, it has plummeted to $868,000, with 93% of homes having sold at reduced prices.

Joan Krempner, a part-time resident of Fort Myers Beach since 2016, stated that selling her home is not financially feasible after substantial rebuilding costs following Hurricane Ian. With few alternatives but to remain in Fort Myers Beach, Krempner expresses concern about the long-term implications of climate change on the community’s future.

“We must face that this is a long-term issue. The critical question is whether people want to keep investing in Fort Myers Beach,” Krempner remarked. “If there hasn’t been a hurricane in 30 years, the risk seems worthwhile for living in paradise. But if three major hurricanes strike within 18 months, doubt creeps in.”

Jacki Liszak, president and CEO of the Fort Myers Beach Chamber of Commerce, asserts that Fort Myers Beach remains an attractive place to live and visit, highlighting community efforts toward resilient architecture and the construction of homes above flood levels.

“Homes must be built strong and elevated,” Liszak emphasized. “This is beneficial. People are already here, and they’ll continue to come. They cherish this lifestyle—it’s truly a beautiful part of the world.”

Source: www.nbcnews.com

After securing the meta contract, Arm unveils its own chip launch

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The UK semiconductor designer ARM reportedly plans to launch its own chip this year after landing Meta as one of its first customers.

The move represents a massive overhaul of the SoftBank-owned group’s business model, licensing chip blueprints to Apple and Nvidia.

ARM CEO Rene Haas is set to announce its first in-house chip as early as this summer, according to a Financial Times report citing people familiar with the plan.

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Since the company was founded in 1990, more than 300 million chips have been shipped based on ARM design, and almost all world smartphones are based on ARM technology. Moving from chip design to manufacturing a full, proprietary processor could also compete with the largest customers in the £500 million semiconductor industry.

ARM declined to comment. The company’s shares rose more than 6% on Thursday after finance reported its plans.

Financial Times also has its own intellectual property by creating a vast infrastructure network for AI, which has shifted to the production of AI chips by the son of SoftBank founder Masayoshi, and building a vast infrastructure network for artificial intelligence. It reported that it is one step in a big plan to make more money from.


Masayoshi Son, CEO of Softbank Group. Photo: Mitsui/Aflo/Rex/Shutterstock

Last month, Son announced its Stargate initiative at Openai. It spends an estimated £400 million building AI infrastructure, funded by Abu Dhabi State Fund MGX and Oracle, and is armed as a major technology partner alongside Microsoft and Nvidia.

According to those familiar with the plan, ARM’s chips are the central processing units (CPUs) of servers in large data centers and are expected to be customizable for clients, including Meta. These people said production will be outsourced to manufacturers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

Another transaction essential to ARM’s chipmaking project is SoftBank’s anticipated acquisition of Ampere. It could be valued at nearly $6.5 billion (£5.155 billion).

Cambridge Headquarted Arm has more than doubled to $173 million since it was listed on the Nasdaq in 2023. Before SoftBank took over it in 2016, ARM was previously listed in London.

Meta is the latest big tech company that looks to ARM for power-efficient server chips instead of Intel and AMD. Meanwhile, ARM’s Nvidia partnership with Amazon has driven the rapid growth of data centers that power Openai, Meta, and human AI assistants.

Source: www.theguardian.com

Early-stage investors respond to increasing challenges in securing Series A funding

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Lightspeed Venture Partners officially moves forward with scaling efforts as other companies make similar moves

Connie Loizos

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hurdle Series A funding has increased significantly compared to a year ago, and investors in seed-stage companies are having to react.

If they want their startup to survive, they don’t have many options. When the market suddenly changed in the spring of 2022, late-stage companies were the first to feel the pain. But that downward financial pressure has also recently affected newer companies, resulting in lower valuations in subsequent rounds, up from 1.6x in the second quarter to 2013, according to Pitchbook data. This is the lowest value since the third quarter, making selection difficult. Series A investors with plenty of options.

There are countless ways VCs can get creative on this front. European venture firm Breega touts a “scaling team” to back many of its seed investments. Pear VC, a Bay Area-based seed-stage venture firm, continues to roll out new programs to support and educate the early teams it supports.

Even larger, more agnostic companies are doing more to show they’re responsive to today’s market. For example, in October, investment firm Greylock launched Edge, a three-month company-building program “aimed at taking selected pre-idea, pre-seed, and seed founders from launch to product-market fit.” It started.

VC powerhouse Lightspeed Venture Partners is also stepping up its efforts. The company has long written early (and in some cases first) checks to startups, including the messaging app Snapchat. application performance management company AppDynamics (acquired by Cisco just before his IPO); and publicly traded cloud computing company Nutanix (current market cap: $11.2 billion).

The company says it has long focused on polishing these rough diamonds. Still, given the rising standards for Series A investors overall, Lightspeed told TechCrunch that some of the mentorship the company has provided to portfolio companies for years will be extended to company-building for founders. He said that he decided to make it official through the program. launch.

The idea, led by partner Luke Betheda, is not to attract more founders to Lightspeed, but to pave the way for already-funded startups to advance to Series A rounds. It is said that Betheda explains that almost everyone faces the same questions and obstacles. “They need to know: How do I get a business up and running? How do I hire and build a core team? Build product strategy through customer interviews and build partnerships. How can we design and drive revenue?”

Going forward, Lightspeed hopes to answer these questions more systematically through expert-led workshops, seed “playbooks,” and other toolkits Lightspeed offers through new programs.

Certainly, any help, no matter how small, is greatly appreciated at this time.

While many startups simply disband, at least 3,200 According to data compiled by Pitchbook for the New York Times, venture-backed U.S. companies are expected to go out of business in 2023, but companies that focus on year-over-year growth and annual recurring revenue are realistic. Some companies think they won’t go out of business any time soon.

At this time, it also includes a Series A stage.

“In 2020, 2021 and towards the end of 2022, we went through a period of tremendous market excitement, where there was a sense that gravity was non-existent,” Benchmark VC Sarah Tavel said at TC told. At an event earlier this month, she spoke about the changing landscape of Series A funding.

“Now we’re back to the point where everyone realizes that the job of building a company is really hard. You have to have great direction for your customers. You have to have incredible direction to the fundamentals of the business you are in.”

Mr Tavel said: “It’s not just the cosmetic metrics, the top-line numbers, that get a lot of people confused. [succeed] It is what generates profits and cash flow. ”

Source: techcrunch.com