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It was called “Industry 4.0,” or the Industrial IoT — and it also was pretty much a bust.

But after a pandemic caused massive industrial disruption and business priorities to shift, industrial automation once again has hit that sweet spot with investors. According to Crunchbase numbers, venture capital flowing into the space this year has already topped $1.4 billion in 104 funding deals, setting it up nicely to beat last year’s $1.7 billion in funding in 191 deals.

So far, 2021 is on track to be the best year for the sector since it saw more than $2 billion in venture investment in 2016.

“There does seem to be quite a bit of interest. It’s an exciting time,” said , CEO of New York-based machine-learning manufacturing software developer . The company just completed a $9 million Series A last week.

The space has seen some large rounds this year, including Berlin-based freight-forwarding company raising a $160 million Series D in January, Norway-based industrial IoT data platform closing a $150 million Series B in May, and Wilmington, Massachusetts-based warehouse robotics company announcing a $150 million Series E in February.

Dynamics of a change

Many in the industry say those rounds and the overall increase in funding is due to many of the same factors causing other sectors to go through a digital transformation — namely a pandemic, labor shortages and a desire to be more sustainable.

“Because of COVID, companies want more transparency,” said , managing director at the . “They want to understand what is happening from anywhere they are at.”

Fortino was an investor in the industrial automation space during its previous Industry 4.0 heyday, but sees several differences that makes him believe the time is now.

Along with the great control and transparency companies are seeking after the pandemic shuttered some facilities, Fortino is seeing larger industry players embrace digitization and be more willing to buy new technologies that help analyze their supply chains, improve processes in facilities, and provide great flexibility as market needs change.

“The difference I see from seven years ago is the buyers — they are ready to buy,” Fortino said.

Years ago, startups would try to hook large industrial players on new technology through a variety of pilot programs — all of which they lost money on when those industrial manufacturers declined to buy after the program was over, he said.

“Now these enterprise deals are there,” he said. “Companies are realizing the value.”

The status of the current workforce also undoubtedly plays a role. Birand said just as workers in other industries have become more remote, so has some of the industrial workforce — forcing manufacturers to put in the necessary technology upgrades to allow that to happen.

A dearth of tradespeople like technicians and electricians in the workforce are also forcing companies to look at other ways to compensate.

“Industrial companies are realizing if we can’t get those people then we’ll need to be more efficient,” Fortino said.

New tech

Investors in the space see a variety of new innovations and technology that are interesting buyers as all of these changes swirl about the market. Fortino said he continues to see interest around edge automation — where tech can analyze and even fix machines or equipment in the field.

Fortino himself has placed a bet there, investing in Canada-based oil and gas edge automation company .

Supply chain transparency has also become important as the pandemic highlighted large holes in the way materials and goods flow. Fortino recently invested in Philadelphia-based and expects that area of industrial automation to see growth as large enterprises look to tighten their supply chain and make it less ripe for disruption.

“Companies are seeking to be less reliant on unstable supply chains that have been exposed during the pandemic,” he said. “You are just seeing a much heavier focus on sustainability.”

, a partner at and investor in Fero Labs, said what she sees is tech that makes industrial complexes more “flexible” will continue to attract investors.

She used the example of how so many facilities during the pandemic needed to shift their production away from business-sized or wholesale goods to more residential, individual-sized products as the lockdowns forced many people to abandon their office and work from home.

“That is hard for facilities,” said Smith-Eppsteiner of the change. “Anything that can layer intelligence into robotics or automation will be in demand.”

What a lot of this comes down to is large industrial manufacturers trying to get the most out of what they have — especially as much of manufacturing has relatively low margins.

Oakland, California-based e just last week announced it had closed an $8 million Series A led by . The company’s “FactoryOps” platform helps manufacturers solve production downtime.

“Companies just want to get more out of what they have, out of their existing machines,” said CEO .

Birand adds that the simple rules of supply-and-demand likely will drive industrial companies to adopt more automation technology to take advantage of the market.

“When demand is high, manufacturers just want to know how they can produce more,” he said.

Methodology

Data for this story encompasses startups tagged as industrial automation, according to Crunchbase data. Funding numbers include pre-seed, seed and all ventures rounds.

Illustration:

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate fell from May’s level but held at a historically high level, as millions of Americans remained out of work with the pandemic still under way.

Here were the main metrics from the Department of Labor’s report, compared to consensus estimates compiled by Bloomberg:

• Change in non-farm payrolls: +4.8 million vs. +3.23 million expected
• Unemployment rate: 11.1% vs. 12.5% expected
• Average hourly earnings, month on month: -1.2%vs. -0.8% expected
• Average hourly earnings, year on year: +5.0% vs. +5.3% expected

The June jobs report came following a massive upside surprise in May, during which the economy unexpectedly added payrolls, when a loss of more than 7 million jobs had been expected. May’s payrolls were upwardly revised by 190,000 to 2.699 million, while April’s payroll losses were revised down by 100,000 to 20.8 million.

Estimates for the June payrolls gain also spanned a wide range, though none of the more than 70 economists polled by Bloomberg expected to see net job losses for June.

“We are in a whole new world of trying to model what data is going to be, because there’s not an economist in the world that’s ever gone through a forced economic shutdown,” Tom Essaye, Sevens Report Research founder, told Yahoo Finance’s The First Trade on Tuesday. “And that’s why a lot of these numbers are completely blowing past what the expectation is.”

Other data had underscored the labor market’s steady improvement over the past two months. New jobless claims fell in each week since early April, and continuing unemployment claims began trending lower. Employment indices in each of the Institute for Supply Management’s and improved in the latest reports.

Still, ADP’s monthly jobs report Wednesday missed estimates, and showed net private payroll gains from May’s upwardly revised gain of more than 3 million.

The Department of Labor’s June jobs report was released on a Thursday, or a day earlier than typical, due to the market closures in observance of the Fourth of July holiday on Friday.

This post is breaking. Check back for updates.

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Emily McCormick is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. 

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The duo both teamed up to back , a startup that debuted Tuesday on Toronto’s NEO stock exchange that seeks to use compounds from psychedelics like magic mushrooms or LSD for novel treatments to fix everything from addiction to depression, to ADHD.

For Bruce Linton, the co-founder of the world’s largest cannabis company Canopy Growth, the idea that a once frowned-upon drug might be regulated to eventually be looked at as a viable medical alternative for good isn’t so far fetched.

“They are called psychedelics or psychoactives because they in fact have a neural effect,” Linton told Yahoo Finance’s YFi PM. “What they haven’t been through is a protocol to determine what indications could they most be effective at remedying, and what dosage and what delivery methods.”

Linton joined the company as a director last year after while O’Leary joined on as an investor before Mind Med closed its $24.2 million funding round before going public. The company, which acquired others working on similar efforts to popularize psychedelics for medical purposes, boasts a few clinical trials including a to explore the impact LSD might have on adults suffering from ADHD.

Sill, despite hopes that the company will pioneer psychedelics for medical purposes, Linton caveated that he didn’t see Mind Med as a traditional biotech company.

“I would say it’s a bit disconnected from the traditional biotech because they invent the molecule and wonder if it will work,” he said. “We know it works.”

Whether or not regulators agree remains to be seen.

Zack Guzman is the host of  as well as a senior writer and on-air reporter covering entrepreneurship, cannabis, startups, and breaking news at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter .

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The organization has partnered with firms including VMG Partners, L Catterton, Swander Pace Capital, Alliance Consumer Growth, TSG Consumer Partners, Encore Consumer Capital and CircleUp.

Cassie Nielsen, vice president of talent at VMG Partners, told Yahoo Finance’s , “What we’re doing is bringing together a group of investors that are supporting this initiative, and every six months announcing a cohort of 20 companies that have pledged to add a woman to their board.”

The group of investors represents over $20 billion in assets under management, “and we’re largely competitive in some ways. For us to all be collaborating on such an important initiative, that’s why we started with that community, and they’re all completely supportive,” Nielsen said.

Women on Board has also developed a strategic partnership with theBoardlist, an online talent marketplace that connects CEOs who are looking for female board director candidates, which Nielsen said gave them access to a community of 14,000 women.

Nielsen says it “just makes economic sense” for women to have a voice in the room. “In the consumer industry … purchasing decisions are 70-80% led by women.”

Nielsen hopes women will continue to fight for board positions, explaining, “You don’t have to have been a previous CEO or a seasoned board member to add incredible value at the board level.”

McKenzie DeGroot is a producer at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter:

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A panel of economists now say that a recession is less likely than the same panel forecast last year, adding that the was able to steer clear of a downturn with its three interest rate cuts last year.

The (NABE) reported Monday that only 13% of the business economists surveyed expect a recession this year. The same time last year, 42% of respondents said they expected a recession in 2020.

Instead, about 74% of the respondents said their forecasts had a recession coming in 2021 or later.

The survey collected 210 responses during the last week of January and the first week of February, meaning the survey was conducted when the was only beginning to spread.

The economists appeared to be pleased with the Fed’s efforts to steer clear of a recession.

Last year, the Federal Open Market Committee cut rates three for a total of 75 basis points. At the time, the Fed cited concerns over trade policies and geopolitical tension, adding that inflation was running below its 2% target.

Almost two-thirds, or 63%, of the surveyed NABE members said the Fed now has monetary policy right for the U.S. economy.

The NABE members said some of Trump’s economic policies had helped the economy get a boost to GDP. About 44% of the respondents said policies like the 2017 tax cut and deregulation had provided a “modest boost” to the economy.

But nearly all of the respondents, around 90%, said the tariffs were a net negative and “modest drag” to GDP.

Brian Cheung is a reporter covering the banking industry and the intersection of finance and policy for Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on Twitter .

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‘The opportunity is in everyday grocery aisles’

Johnson and Cezar are childhood friends with a self-described “entrepreneurial itch” that was sharpened by their respective careers: Johnson worked in fundraising, higher education, and health care, and Cezar in merchandising and retail.

The pair – who grew up on the same block in Gary, Indiana – quit their jobs a year ago to support BLK & Bold’s business full-time. It was a risky move because neither Johnson nor Cezar had any experience in the coffee industry, despite being “overenthusiastic consumers,” but they saw a need for more African Americans in the industry.

“That really was the reason why we decided to embark on this entrepreneurial endeavor,” says Johnson. “Foremost, really, because we wanted to have representation on the other side of the counter; wanted to make sure that, considering how much we drink coffee as a culture, that there’s again that representation as merchants as well.”

Cezar saw other opportunities — expanding people’s knowledge of specialty coffees. “The opportunity is in everyday grocery aisles,” he said. “When you look at specialty coffee … there’s specialty coffee on so many corners, right, across the U.S. But if you’re not going into those coffee shops; you’re not really getting educated about specialty coffee. You’re not getting introduced to that experience of the product. [There’s] still an opportunity for retailers in grocery to expand there.”

Coffee with a cause

BLK & Bold touts what Cezar describes as a “domestic social impact model,” which the pair agree is “the heartbeat” of their business.

Five-percent of BLK & Bold’s profits are donated to charitable initiatives, ranging from workforce development to supporting at-risk youth. The mission, Johnson says, appeals especially millennial customers.

“Millennial consumers are looking to invest in companies that resonate with them on a more personal level,” Johnson said. “We were very intentional about including that social impact model in what we do. We’ve chosen initiatives and non-profits that range across the spectrum of urban farming, workforce development, or just general at-the-school programming … There is a void of resources for those type of programs, and so having that embedded in what we do was very on purpose.”

Olivia Balsamo is a producer for Yahoo Finance.

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From house flipping television shows to the Zillow app on cellphones, home buying has become a part of our culture, but for many real estate investing is still out of reach.

But since the relaxed regulations on direct-to-consumer security sales, a new trend called micro-investing has added a new wave of investors to the real estate market. Micro-investing allows consumers to buy shares of properties and customize portfolios, for as little as $5.

“The best portfolios are diversified, and real estate performs very uniquely, in a way that is uncorrelated to the stock market and bonds… We want to offer the same asset class at a lower price point,” said Janine Yorio, founder and chief executive officer of a New York City-based real estate micro-investment app called , which flips properties at a profit for investors.

The model is similar to the traditional real estate investment trust (REIT), but micro-investing companies give investors the ability to become part owners of specific properties — which creates lower fee structures, favorable tax benefits and assets that are not tied to the stock market.

“REITs are just like owning stock, subject to stock market volatility and other unrelated factors to the actual performance of a property. So in addition to REITs, savvy individual investors add private real estate to their portfolios for greater diversification and returns,” said Darren Powderly, co-founder of , Inc., a Portland, Ore.-based micro-investing firm that allows investors to buy shares of commercial real estate around the U.S.

Self-directed investments have become increasingly popular since the advent of the internet, paralleling the rise of retirement investments, said Matt Bronfman, chief executive officer of , an Atlanta-based micro-investing firm that allows investors to buy shares of commercial real estate in Atlanta.

“I think micro-investing and democratization is really interesting and speaks to the future… Democratization of investing coming to real estate is interesting. You can go direct. Traditionally, this is not the way the real estate industry has worked,” said Bronfman.

Providing easy access to ‘a great long-term investment’

For $260, Compound lets people invest in a share of an apartment in the Miami Beach Faena House, a 47-unit ultra-luxury condominium on Miami’s “Billionaire Bunker” island. The condo neighbors properties owned by Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, and Apollo Global Management’s Leon Black.

Compound plans to raise $10 billion a year to buy properties for micro-investments. After three to five years, Compound will sell the properties and distribute the profits among investors. The company has raised $2 million to date, with investors including Glenview Capital President John Rodin, and venture capital funds, including Kairos Ventures, Zing Capital, Blue Ivy Ventures and Republic Labs.

Compound currently offers investment opportunities in and manages four properties in Brooklyn, Austin and Miami. The startup makes money by being the buy-side broker in the initial purchase of each property, charging a brokerage commission to the seller, similar to a typical residential real estate brokerage firm, according to Yorio.

“We’re looking to give people access to properties they would want to own for themselves and are proud to say they own a part of — but that also makes a great long-term investment,” said Yorio, who said that Compound buys properties with potential for price appreciation.

Sarah Paynter is a reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter

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That day in November 2016 was a tipping point for one of the biggest pivots her then-six-year-old startup, Farmgirl Flowers, had made to date.

“The day after the vote went through and it was a ‘yes’ in California, our largest calla lily grower in California took out all of their calla lilies to put in cannabis instead … to get the soil ready for it,” Stembel said

“It was pretty immediate,” she said. “And we had to change our entire supply chain in four months, otherwise we wouldn’t have had enough flowers for Valentine’s Day after the vote.”

Stembel, 42,a San Francisco-based e-commerce flower bouquet delivery company that brought in $30 million in sales last year. Selling an assortment of burlap-wrapped anemones, poppies and calla lilies, Stembel and her team of more than 160 employees have aimed to disrupt a multi-billion floriculture industry rooted in more old-fashioned, cellophane-wrapped arrangements of blood-red roses and baby’s breath.

But Stembel’s business itself was disrupted by recreational cannabis legalization in her company’s home state. After the legalization vote, many of the local suppliers she’d once leaned on to provide the flowers that made up her bouquets were suddenly turning to a new crop.

“There’re only so many farms out there in the United States now,” said Stembel. “And if they can make $2 a square foot or $1.50 a square foot on cannabis, versus $0.05 or $0.10 on snap dragons, it’s a very easy choice for them.”

“I don’t blame them for that,” she added. “They’re business people as well. But there’s definitely a lot of the flower farmers [that] have switched to growing a lot more cannabis and less flowers for that reason alone.”

‘We just ran out of supply’

The U.S. cannabis industry is poised to become a near $30 billion industry by 2025, according to . That would begin to close in on the U.S. floriculture industry, which saw just under , according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data. And unlike the cannabis industry, which is expected to see sales rise at a compounded annual growth rate of 14% through 2025, floriculture sales have stagnated in the low-$30 million range for years.

Farmgirl Flowers has been far from the only player in the cut flower industry to take a hit from burgeoning legal recreational cannabis market. A of have highlighted former Californian flower growers who switched to cannabis, as rising competition from cheaper flowers coming from Latin America drove down prices they could command from their existing flower crops.

And incidentally, Latin America was ultimately where Stembel turned when her former suppliers in the U.S. had shriveled on the vine. After nearly seven years of sourcing from local farmers, Stembel wrote an explaining her decision, and began buying from farmers in South America. The decision was driven both by the disruption from cannabis legalization, and by a broader inability to find enough U.S.-based farms willing to sell to her start-up to keep pace with customer orders.

“We just ran out of supply,” Stembel said. “There was not a supply for our demand, and so I needed to do something different. Or I needed to either stop doing business or stay a very small business and not scale.”

To date, the shift in sourcing has so far worked for Farmgirl Flowers, with the company consistently delivering between 6,000 and 8,000 bouquets per week across 48 states. For the week of Valentine’s Day 2019, Stembel anticipates that number will jump more than 50% over last year to 30,000.

Eventually, Stembel said the pendulum may swing back in the other direction and that farmers may begin shifting back to growing flowers, once the cannabis industry matures and the cultivation market becomes saturated.

“If everybody is growing cannabis, there’s going to be a point, which we probably have already met, where we just have oversupply,” she said. “Maybe it’ll shift back a little bit, but in the meantime, we’re going to have to find other options.”

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Emily McCormick is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. 

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“Healthy consumer fundamentals have been supporting personal spending activity. The improvement in the January ISM non-manufacturing survey likely reflects strong consumer demand to some degree,” according to Nomura. “In addition, warmer-than-usual temperatures during January may have supported a pickup in receipts at building-material and home improvement stores. Sales at auto dealerships likely rose decently, which would be consistent with a rebound in WardsAuto’s light vehicle sales data for January.”

J.P.Morgan economists echoed Nomura’s prediction. “The labor market remained healthy in January and we have seen high levels of consumer sentiment in recent reports, suggesting that there are favorable fundamentals in place for consumer spending.

Economic data releases scheduled for Friday include the following: Import Price Index month-on-month, January (-0.2% expected, 0.3% in December); Retail Sales month-on-month, January (0.3% expected, 0.3% in December); Retail Sales excluding Auto month-on-month, January (0.3% expected, 0.7% in December); Retail Sales excluding Auto & Gas month-on-month, January (0.3% expected, 0.5% in December); Industrial Production month-on-month, January (-0.2% expected, -0.3% in December); Capacity Utilization, January (76.8% expected, 77.0% in December); University of Michigan Sentiment, February preliminary (99.2 expected, 99.8 prior).

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Heidi Chung is a reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter: .

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U.S. stocks jumped Monday after Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross stoked hopes that a first phase trade agreement with China would get done. The comments helped investors shrug off some unfavorable news from companies including McDonald’s and Under Armour.

All three major stock indices sailed to fresh record intraday highs. The Dow hit a fresh intraday high for the first time since July 16, and closed at a record high of 27,462.72.

Here’s where the markets settled Monday at the end of regular equity trading:

• S&P 500 (): +0.37%, or 11.37 points
• Dow (): +0.42%, or 114.89 points
• Nasdaq (): +0.56%, or 46.8 points
• 10-year Treasury yield (): +4.9 bps to 1.777%
• Gold (): -0.07% to $1,510.40 per ounce

On Sunday,�� that he was confident the U.S. would reach the first part of a trade agreement with China this month, sticking to the timeline previously touted by the administration. Ross also said U.S. firms would receive licenses “very shortly” to begin selling parts to China’s Huawei. Shares of U.S.-based semiconductors including Qualcomm () and Intel (), which count Huawei as a customer, outperformed in early trading.

These comments came after the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said in a statement Friday that Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had a “constructive call” with China’s Vice Premier Liu He to discuss the phase one agreement. China’s Ministry of Commerce corroborated this with a statement of its own saying the sides had reached a “consensus on principles.”

More positive rhetoric emerging out of recent U.S.-China trade talks has also led at least one firm to pare back its expectations for further tariff escalation. “tariffs on imports from China have likely peaked,” and that levies would likely remain at current levels through 2020. Assuming the first-phase trade agreement gets signed, Phillips expects the White House will cancel tariffs set to take effect December 15.

Recent upbeat U.S.-China trade remarks, as well as some and a , have combined to push risk assets higher, breaking them free of the weight of uncertainty from earlier this year.

“A confluence of better-than-expected economic data, Q3 earnings results and a third 25-basis point rate cut by the Federal Reserve Board along with some encouraging missives surrounding trade talk progress helped push stocks higher stateside and worldwide last week,” John Stoltzfus, Oppenheimer equity strategist, wrote in a note.

For now, the current economic landscape “persists strong enough for positive data points to continue to offset negative data points when they cross the transom and overwhelm bearish projection pointing instead to an underlying resilience of an economy that is predominantly dependent on the consumer rather than on manufacturing in midst of a global trade war,” he added.

STOCKS: McDonald’s CEO ousted, Under Armour under investigation

McDonald’s () board of directors voted to oust CEO Steve Easterbrook over “poor judgment involving a recent consensus relationship with an employee,” Chris Kempczinski, previously president of McDonald’s USA business, was named CEO, effective immediately.

Easterbrook is credited with having spearheaded the fast food company’s push into digital ordering and delivery, as well as boosting value menu offerings to appeal to customers. The stock has risen 96% since March 2015 when Easterbrook took over as CEO, more than double the return of the S&P 500 during the same period. Shares of McDonald’s, a Dow component, fell 2.5% Monday morning.

Under Armour () shares sank 15% around market open after the workout apparel company  by the U.S. Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission for the past two years.

The announcement outweighed better-than-expected third-quarter results, with earnings of 23 cents per share on revenue of $1.43 billion each topping estimates. However, Under Armour also reduced its full-year sales guidance, and now sees revenue growth of just 2% for the year, down from its previous guidance for between 3-4%.

Saudi Aramco, the world’s most profitable company,  to publicly float shares on the Tadawul stock exchange in Riyadh, at least temporarily putting aside previously reported plans for a foreign listing for the Saudi company. The company, which brought in $111 billion in net income last year, is reportedly being valued north of $1 trillion by banks, even as the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman seeks a valuation of around twice that.

After market close Monday, companies including Uber (), Shake Shack () and Marriott International ()��

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Emily McCormick is a reporter for Yahoo Finance.

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