TechWire rewind: African American tech leaders speak out; GRAIL’s Durham expansion; 8 startups raise cash + 70 other headlines

As Monday morning rolls in, we’re providing TechWire readers with a quick recap of the past week’s news headlines.

Last week, we continued our ‘new normal’ series about how local communities are adapting to COVID-19: Read about suburban Wake County and RTP. We also launched a new series of stories on how local African American tech leaders are demanding change in the wake of George Floyd’s death: The series interviews Donald Thompson, William Spruill, Margaret Brunson, Angela Connor and Tim Humphrey.

In other news: California biotech firm GRAIL will invest $103 million to build a lab in Durham, adding 400 jobs; nearly 1 million people have applied for unemployment benefits in NC; Amazon is bringing a retail store to Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh; two Triangle startups, CourtRoom5 and MuukLabs, landed coveted spots in the Techstars Kansas City Accelerator.

Several NC startups raised cash last week, including Durham-based VADE ($428,000), Raleigh-based Global Data Consortium ($3.5 million), Durham-based Renovion ($3.1 million), Raleigh-based Equity Shift ($750,000), Raleigh-based Agile Sciences ($1 million), Charlotte-based Atom Power ($17.8 million, including backing from ABB Technology Ventures), Cary-based Kronoverse (undisclosed amount) and Cary-based Atmospheric Plasma Solutions ($3.5 million).

As part of TechWire’s new “Startup Monday” segment, we recently launched column that summarizes local startup news coverage over the past week. Read last week’s edition here.

And, in national news: Facebook employees voiced opposition to Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to leave up posts by President Donald Trump; a national survey found that 70 million Americans plan to look for more pandemic-proof jobs; here’s how major tech execs responded to George Floyd’s death; the Congressional Budget Office said it could take 10 years for the U.S. to recover from COVID-19 economic fallout; the S&P hit a record 50-day rally; 42.6 million people have filed for unemployment across the U.S.; the U.S. unemployment rate fell to 13.3% in May, sending stocks soaring.

Keeping with our Monday tradition, here’s a look back at 79 local, state and national headlines as reported by WRAL TechWire last week: