Want to stay up to date on the latest startup fundings, launches, and expansions in Austin? Startup Over Coffee’s weekly roundup of Austin startups to watch will keep you in the loop on the latest Austin tech news. Catch up on previous weekly roundups here.

Tesla 

After employing thousands of people in a matter of months of moving to Austin, Tesla‘s new robotic and vehicle advancements continue to expand across the city’s tech scene. In recent news, Elon Musk announced his intent to move the company’s headquarters from California to Austin. 

Although Tesla will continue to grow in California, the size of the state’s plant has made it challenging to increase development. In addition, the surge in the cost of living has compelled many employees to move further away, making the commute to work longer. 

Currently, Tesla is in the works of building a four-to-five-million-square foot gigafactory. Although it already has 350 open positions on its website,  the new factory is estimated to hire around 5,000 employees. According to Built in Austin, Musk’s SpaceX, which is a company developing technology that reduces space transportation costs, has a new factory in Austin that’s developing equipment for a Starlink, which is a division of SpaceX that produces high-speed, low latency broadband internet via small, low-orbit satellites.  

Airtable 

Founded in 2012, San Francisco-based Airtable is a cloud collaboration service that creates flexible data models such as long text notes and checkboxes and provides tools that make it easier to arrange your work in a way the customer likes. Airtable will open its first Austin office at 501 Congress Ave as the Austin remote team expands. It will limit in-person work at the new office to vaccinated employees.

Airtable makes it easier for businesses to collaborate and connect employees with its cloud collaborations services, providing a visual tool to accompany remote work. 

Airtable is expected to hire 50 employees in its sales and engineering departments by the end of this year and already has 28 job listings on its website. The company is currently worth $5.7 billion, according to Built in Austin.

Rocket Dollar 

Henry Yoshiba, the previous co-founder of Honest Dollar, noticed an emerging trend of investing alternative assets in retirement plans. His experience with financial services  enabled him to create Rocket Dollar. This fintech startup provides retirement accounts and permits customers to invest in alternative funds like cryptocurrency and real estate safely, securely and quickly. 

Rocket Dollar announced closing an $8 million Series A funding round with the help of Coastal Institutional Investors. This new funding will assist the company in growing its platform and increasing its customer base. According to Silicon Hills, the company continues to work remotely; however, through social functions and team meetings, employees still have ways to interact and socialize together.

50/50 Women on Board 

Although gender equality in the workforce improves every year, much work still needs to be done to attain diversity on corporate boards successfully. For example, the Russell 3000 Index has 267 Texas companies on it’s list, and only 23 percent of those companies had women on their board of directors. 

However, 2021 has seen a 2.9 percent growth since last year, and 50/50 Women on Boards aims to be the future of this change. The non-profit organization’s goal is to guide the movement towards gender balance in workplaces. Silicon Hills announced that 50/50 WOB’s first event is on Nov. 12, which will consist of three board chairs, Laura Webb, Wendy Howell, and Michele Skelding, discussing a one-hour strategic networking session. 

About Michelle Vernaza: Michelle is a Business Development Associate Intern for Swyft, which is a tech PR firm in Austin and Houston and a top digital marketing and PR agency in Denver since its founding in 2011. Swyft also has a small satellite office where it offers tech PR in San Francisco. Swyft has been listed as one of the top tech PR agencies in Texas for two years running by the B2B services review site, Clutch.co.