Cauldron Ferm has an unlikely origin story, as startups go. Its core technology can be traced back to the 1960s, or maybe the 1970s. The exact start is a bit hazy, actually. What is known is that David and Polly McLennan had a dream of feeding the world using protein grown from microbes.

The pair knew they needed to improve the process, which was pricy and time consuming. Most fermentation happens in batches. Picture a brewery or a vineyard. Ingredients go in and the microbes work for a while, but then the process stops when it’s time to take out the finished product. It works for alcohol because booze commands a premium price. Food, though? That needs to be cheaper.

Still, the McLennans stuck with it, starting a small business that would over the course of 40 years refine their approach to continuous fermentation, which turns microbes into assembly lines capable of cranking out products uninterrupted.

“We didn’t know what we had,” Michele Stansfied, co-founder and CEO of Cauldron Ferm, told TechCrunch. But eventually, Stansfield who arrived at the McLennans’ company in 2012, realized they had more than initially thought.

“We didn’t understand the challenge of continuous fermentation for synthetic biology,” Stansfield said. But when she did, she sought to transform the company from a small fee-for-service operators to a fast-moving startup. “At that point, I raised a seed round and acquired the IP, physical, and business assets.”

Cauldron has now raised $13.25 million in a Series A2 round that was led by Main Sequence Ventures with participation from Horizons Ventures, NGS Super, and SOSV, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. It had previously raised $6.5 million in 2024. Cauldron plans to use the funding to “increase the technology moat,” Stansfield said. 

The company calls it’s technology “hyper fermentation,” which helps keep microbes in their maximally productive state. It can work in existing batch fermenters with a few modifications to the facility to accommodate the process. Cauldron’s customers bring their own microbes and strains, and the startup works to tweak their growing conditions, including nutrients, to keep them humming.

Currently, Cauldron is focused on producing fats and proteins, including whey protein, “a product that can just slip into supply chains,” Stansfield said, though she adds there are more products the company has its eyes on.

“Sixty percent of all inputs to global economy can be produced from biology,” she said. “Food was where we started, but now we’re starting to really diversify.”

The Federal Communications Commission has ordered a ban on the import of new consumer routers that are manufactured overseas, citing cybersecurity risks.

The order, published late Monday, said the import ban will “include all consumer-grade routers produced in foreign countries.” The FCC said the order does not affect imports or usage of existing routers, but new devices may be granted an exception if the Departments of Defense or Homeland Security approve.

The FCC claimed foreign-made routers “pose unacceptable risks” to U.S. national security, referring to a threat from China-backed hacking groups Volt, Salt, and Flax Typhoon.

According to Reuters, China is said to command around 60% of the market for consumer routers, which connect homes and businesses to the internet.

The FCC said it was taking action because malicious hackers have exploited flaws in foreign-made routers to attack U.S. households, disrupt networks, and enable cybercrime and surveillance. 

Government-backed hackers and cybercriminals alike have long targeted routers because they allow access to home or business networks. Hackers can also hijack routers to pummel other companies or businesses with disruptive events designed to overload servers with junk network traffic, known as distributed denial-of-service attacks.

The FCC did not provide evidence to show that U.S.-made consumer routers are more secure than routers developed overseas. An FCC spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Salt Typhoon, a China-backed espionage group that has hacked into dozens of phone and internet companies across the world, including in the United States, has been known to exploit vulnerabilities in routers made by American networking giant Cisco. Flax Typhoon, another hacking group backed by China that U.S. authorities have accused of running a massive botnet of hijacked devices, targeted both U.S.-made and foreign-made routers to hack at least 126,000 devices in the United States, as well as thousands more around the world. 

FCC chairman Brendan Carr said in prepared remarks that the agency will “continue do [sic] our part in making sure that U.S. cyberspace, critical infrastructure, and supply chains are safe and secure.”

Despite the raft of Chinese hacks targeting U.S. businesses and government agencies, Carr was among the two FCC commissioners who voted in November to scrap cybersecurity rules that required telecom operators to secure their lawful intercept systems from unauthorized intrusions.

Roku announced on Tuesday that Howdy, its $3 ad-free streaming service, is launching on Amazon’s Prime Video. The announcement marks the service’s first expansion outside the Roku ecosystem.

Launched in August 2025, Howdy features a library of nearly 10,000 hours of content from Roku’s partners, including Lionsgate, Sony Pictures, Disney Entertainment, Warner Bros. Discovery, and FilmRise, alongside select Roku Original titles.

Subscribers can watch titles like “A Haunting in Venice,” “Ice Age,” “Weeds,” and “Kids in the Hall,” as well as rom-coms, medical dramas, ’90s comedies, classics, and more.

At launch, Roku said Howdy was designed to complement, not compete with, premium services.

To sign up for Howdy via Prime Video, you’ll need either an Amazon Prime membership or a standalone Prime Video subscription.

“Our goal has always been to make great entertainment more accessible,” said Gil Fuchsberg, president of Subscriptions, Partnerships, and Corporate Development at Roku, in a press release. “Expanding to Prime Video builds on our momentum and furthers our mission to deliver an ad-free streaming experience at a price that makes it easy for audiences everywhere to enjoy content they love.”

The expansion to Prime Video doesn’t come as a surprise, as Roku CEO and founder Anthony Wood said at CES in January that Howdy would be coming to other platforms.

Roku’s launch of Howdy came two months after the company paid $185 million to acquire Frndly TV, a streaming service that offers live TV, on-demand video, and cloud-based DVR.

Howdy joined the company’s Roku Channel, its free, ad-supported (FAST) streaming service. According to a report from last year, The Roku Channel is the most popular FAST service, ahead of competitors Tubi and Pluto TV. More than 125 million people use the platform every day, Roku says.

Roku released its fourth-quarter earnings for 2025 last month, posting a net income of $80.5 million. The company also announced that it’s going to launch new streaming bundles.