Startup based in Paris filigree is quickly becoming the subsequent cybersecurity rocket to observe: the corporate just raised $35 million in a Series B round, just just a few months after it raised $16 million in a Series A round.

Filigran’s most important product is OpenCTI, an open-source threat intelligence platform that permits firms or public sector organizations to import threat data from multiple sources and enrich this dataset with information from providers resembling CrowdStrike, SentinelOne or Sekoia.

The open source version OpenCTI has attracted contributions from 4,300 cybersecurity professionals and has been downloaded tens of millions of times. The European Commission, the FBI and the New York Cyber ​​Command use OpenCTI. The company also offers an enterprise version that might be used as software-as-a-service or hosted on-premises, and its customers include Airbus, Marriott, Thales, Hermès, Rivian and Bouygues Telecom.

Filigran used this success so as to add additional products and construct a full-fledged cybersecurity suite called the eXtended Threat Management (XTM) suite.

The next product is OpenBAS, a beach and attack simulation platform. You can use OpenCTI and OpenBAS individually, but using them together provides a greater overview of potential threats.

Filigran takes advantage of the incontrovertible fact that it’s all the time easier to launch a second product when the primary product is popular. The startup is already working on its third product.

“By 2026, our goal is to offer a comprehensive suite of three complementary products that provide end-to-end threat management solutions that directly address the complex cybersecurity challenges facing organizations today,” co-founder and CEO Samuel Hassine told TechCrunch.

Interestingly, Filigran also draws inspiration from GitHub and Hugging Face, major hubs for open source software development and artificial intelligence development, respectively. Filigran goals to launch XTM Hub – “a collaborative platform designed to empower the cybersecurity community” – by the top of the yr, Hassine said.

“The hub will serve as a central forum where users can access resources, share crafts and connect with others in the Filigran ecosystem,” he added.

Insight Partners is leading the Series B round, with existing investors Accel and Moonfire reinvesting. In addition to product development, a part of this funding round can be used to expand Filigran’s presence in other regions. The company operates in France, the USA and Australia, and plans to expand to Germany, Japan and Singapore.

A video’s popularity on Instagram can impact its actual quality: in line with Adam Mosseri (executive of Meta, which runs Instagram and Threads), more popular videos are displayed in higher quality, while less popular videos are displayed in lower quality.

In the movie (via The Verge) Mosseri said Instagram strives to display “the highest quality video it can,” but added, “if something isn’t watched for a long time — because the vast majority of views happen initially — we’ll move to lower-quality video.”

This isn’t entirely latest information; Meta wrote last 12 months about using different encoding configurations for various videos depending on their popularity. But after someone shared Mosseri’s video on Threadsmany users had questions and criticisms, and one among them even went further describe the corporate’s approach as “really crazy.”

The discussion prompted Mosseri to offer more details. First of all, him explained that these decisions are made at an “aggregate level, not an individual level”, so this isn’t a situation where the viewer’s individual involvement could have an impact on the standard of the film played for them.

“We focus on higher quality (CPU-intensive encoding and more expensive storage for larger files) for creators who generate more views,” Mosseri added. “It is not a binary value (threshold), but rather a sliding scale.”

Many users have also suggested that this approach creates a system that privileges popular creators over smaller ones – popular creators can post at the best quality, which boosts their popularity, while smaller creators cannot break through.

Mosseri he said is a “valid concern,” but he said, “In practice, it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference because the change in quality isn’t much, and (whether or not) people interact with the videos is much more based on focus on video content rather than quality.” Quality, he said, turns out to be “way more vital to the unique creator.”

Solar panels are almost everywhere. There’s likelihood one among your neighbors has them on their roof, as does the big store down the street. As you drive there, you could see a field of them displayed along the road. With such ubiquity, you would be forgiven for pondering there isn’t any room for improvement.

Venkatesan Murali would really like to prove you unsuitable.

Murali, founder and CTO of the company Merlin Solarhas been working on a brand new approach to solar energy for nearly a decade. He founded the company in 2016, after Solyndra’s spectacular implosion in 2011, as Chinese manufacturers pushed panels down a dizzying cost curve. Murali, nonetheless, remained unmoved, although he learned lessons from this defeat.

“Don’t scare people with something new,” he told TechCrunch. “No new particles, no new physics.”

Instead, Merlin Solar turned to an existing and widely used solar technology, monocrystalline silicon. Solar cells constituted of this material are inexpensive but fragile; to forestall cracking, corporations typically encase monocrystalline silicon in two panels of glass surrounded by a metal frame. This makes the panels heavy and limits where they might be installed.

Murali wanted flexible solar panels, but using monocrystalline silicon was a challenge. “Everything crystalline will eventually crack,” Murali said. “Can we be sure that every electron will find its way, even if a bullet goes through it?”

To answer this query, the company modified the way the cells are connected in the panel. Merlin increased the variety of joints at the front and rear, and between the links made the joints springy in order that they may bounce when bent.

“Suddenly we had a product that was not only crack-resistant, but also electrically crack-resistant,” he said.

Merlin panels are much lighter than a typical glass panel, and their flexible nature changes the way and place of their installation. The panels have adhesive on the packaging, so that they might be stuck to the surface like a toddler’s sticker. The curved design follows the contours of assorted surfaces, allowing for installation on, for instance, the roof of a Winnebago Airstream trailer.

Merlin claims its panels cope higher with partial shading than traditional panels. In a conventional panel, when something like a leaf shades the corner of the cell, energy production drops dramatically. Merlin’s network of connections allows more power to be distributed around the shaded cell.

The added flexibility, light weight and skill to handle shading have made Merlin panels a favourite amongst recreational vehicle owners. The company also sold panels to corporations reminiscent of Perdue, Daimler and Ryder to be used of their trucks, which allowed them to scale back idling or use of fossil fuels to power on-board fridges.

Merlin’s improvements mean its products cost greater than typical solar panels, which has forced the company to get creative with who it sells to. “We are entering spaces where we don’t compete solely on cost,” Murali said. “When I minimize vehicle idling time, I expose myself to the dirty and expensive energy produced by burning diesel fuel. So when I go against it, my return on investment is usually a year and a half.”

In addition to RV owners and shippers, the company can be the rooftop photovoltaics industry, where a good portion of solar panels are installed. To scale its operations, the company recently raised $31 million in Series B funding led by Fifth Wall with participation from Saint Gobain and Ayala.

Merlin hopes that Saint Gobain, one among the largest roofing corporations, will grow to be one among the startup’s largest customers and its panels will go into Saint Gobain solar shingles, said Laura Allen, Merlin’s chief operating officer.