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Philly daily roundup: EDA awards Tech Hub grants; Phenom’s 5th acquisition; Fastmail layoffs

Plus, the City of Philadelphia released a multilingual video series to help business owners who speak another language access resources from the city.

VIEW OF THE PHILADELPHIA SKYLINE FROM THE ART MUSEUM STEPS (SARAH HUFFMAN/TECHNICAL.LY)

EDA snubs Philly for Phase 2 Tech Hub grant

The Economic Development Administration announced 12 awardees for the Phase 2 Tech Hub funds, but Philadelphia and Baltimore were not chosen. Despite the tech hubs getting $10 billion through the CHIPS and Science Act, Congress has only appropriated $541 million toward the program so far.

The Philadelphia region’s $80 million proposal for a precision medicine tech hub included collaboration from organizations in New Jersey and Delaware.

➡️ Read on to find out how Philly still has a chance to apply for future grants

Phenom announces its 5th acquisition

Ambler-based Phenom acquired its fifth company in four years. The AI-powered HR tech company bought Tydy because of its onboarding and offboarding technology.

Phenom had been considering possible companies to work with for the past six months but ultimately went with Tydy because of its team, Mahe Bayireddi, CEO and co-founder of Phenom, told Technical.ly.

➡️ Read more about Phenom’s acquisition strategy

News Incubator: What else to know today

• Independent email provider Fastmail laid off 10 employees last week, including 60% of the company’s bargaining unit. These layoffs were a result of the company shutting down two of its US-based teams. [Technical.ly]

• Technical.ly received a $50,000 grant from the Lenfest Institute as part of its Every Voice, Every Vote project. The grant will support reporting about cybersecurity and generative AI around this year’s election. [Technical.ly]

• The City of Philadelphia released a multilingual video series to help business owners who speak another language access resources from the city. [City of Philadelphia]

• Joe Woods, creator of the Philly Tech Calendar, and Anthony Putignano discussed Philly’s meetup community and why free meetups are important.   [Technical.ly/Anthony Putignano]

• Nominate a technologist for the 2024 RealLIST Engineers list by July 15. We want to hear about the best and brightest technologists Philly has to offer. [Technical.ly]

🗓️ On the Calendar

• Philly Founder Night Out Welcome Wagon networking event is on July 3. [Details here]

• Philly Data Visualization’s July Meetup is on July 11. [Details here]

Sarah Huffman is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.

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