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Sneakerheads worldwide are likely standing in awe to find out that an unreleased version of Air Jordan 13s has made it off Michael Jordan’s feet and onto the auction stage. Worn during Jordan’s final playoff run in the 1998 NBA Finals, the version of the shoe was never released to the public — but some lucky patron could be the owner of the one-of-one shoe.
Seeing some people despite their availability to be there in person has just gotten easier. Proto, Inc. (formerly PORTL) and Diddy have joined forces, announcing that the Bad Boys founder is an advisor to the holoportation firm. Porto operates in numerous industries that include but is not limited to entertainment, education, retail, fashion, and marketing. Sean Combs invested in Proto’s advanced proprietary technology that allows interactive holoportation possible. The company’s technology allows any person to “beam” to any location in real-time when they cannot be there physically. The hip-hop mogul was first introduced to the holoportation technology when he beamed from Miami to Los Angeles to sing happy birthday to his son, Christian “King” Combs. “Sean Combs has always been an inspiring pioneer in music and business, constantly changing the game with whatever he does,” said David Nussbaum, CEO, and Founder of Proto Inc. “We were honored to bring his family together last Spring,...
For former NFL player Gerome Sapp, transitioning from the world of professional sports to the world of business came with ease once he found the right concept. After retiring from the league in 2008, he was inspired to start a new career as a tech founder, and his latest conquest in the industry is proving to be quite a force in the investment space. With his driven mindset and finance background, the athlete-turned entrepreneur came up with an innovative concept to educate his community on what it means to make smart investments in assets that especially resonate with them — sneakers. This simple yet revolutionary idea is what paved the way for his new fintech startup Rares — a product of the Techstars Los Angeles Accelerator program — to launch as a platform to help people to invest in shares of particularly notable sneakers. The business, which launched earlier this year, was born amid the pandemic and gave Sapp the opportunity to combine his two passions — the Stock Market and...
Are flying cars officially real? A prototype flying car has officially completed a test flight between two cities, ABC 7 reports. The Klein Vision AirCar spent 35 minutes airborne between two cities in Slovakia, Nitra, and the capital Bratislava. According to Klein Vision, the AirCar Prototype 1 has now completed over 50 hours of test flights which includes flying at 8,200 feet and reaching a maximum cruising speed of 190 kilometers. Its engine is powered by a 160 horsepower BMW engine and comes equipped with a fixed propeller which allows it to transform from aircraft to road vehicle in less than three minutes. Upon landing in Bratislava on Monday (June 28), once the aircraft transformed into a car, it was driven into the city center by Klein Vision CEO Stefan Klein and company co-founder Anton Zajac. “AirCar is no longer just a proof of concept,” said Zajac in a press release. “It has turned science fiction into a reality.” Klein Vision is also developing a model called the AirCar...
Companies are increasingly blending storytelling, commerce, and technology in today’s rapidly evolving media landscape. One such company is pgLang, the multidisciplinary agency founded in 2020 by Kendrick Lamar and Dave Free. While it has often been described as a creative agency, pgLang operates across multiple industries and platforms — from music and film to brand partnerships and live events — positioning itself as a hybrid model within the broader creative economy. Based on a previous AFROTECH™ report, pgLang describes itself as a “multilingual” company, referencing its spoken language component and ability to communicate across forms: music, television, film, books, podcasts, and visual media. The company’s creative outputs reflect this flexibility, leveraging cross-platform strategies to distribute content that resists traditional industry categorization. This approach earned the company recognition from Fast Company, which named pgLang one of the World’s 50 Most Innovative...
On March 15, 2025, the U.S. bombed Houthi terrorist targets across Yemen. But two hours before the world knew, a Signal message had already mapped the strike. The sender? Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. The recipients? Top intelligence officials, but also Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic — a journalist inadvertently folded into the highest levels of American military planning. This wasn’t a clandestine leak. It was a raw, unfiltered display of the fragility of power in the digital age. It was a breach not orchestrated by a hostile foreign actor but self-inflicted — executed casually, almost thoughtlessly, by the nation’s top security officials on a consumer messaging app. For those of us who approach these matters with a deep understanding of U.S. statecraft and a critical perspective shaped by intellectual and resistance traditions, the story may demand more than mere procedural outrage. It calls for an unflinching analysis of how an empire, when unmoored from...
On the first day of the new Trump administration, the President issued an executive order to revoke several DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) protections. This policy change enabled companies across the country to eliminate DEI hiring practices, protections and related incentives. As a result, many prominent businesses revealed that their commitment to DEI had largely been driven by legal requirements rather than genuine support. While some companies, such as Costco, Apple and Delta Airlines, have maintained a strong commitment to supporting marginalized communities , numerous others in the tech, automotive and grocery sectors have removed DEI frameworks from their policies. Given the growing importance of DEI to a significant portion of the American public, consumers are increasingly making more informed choices about where they spend their money. In fact, many have begun to consider boycotting businesses that do not align with their values. For those who prioritize DEI, we...
A group of HBCU students were awarded during the week of Super Bowl LIX for their innovative pitch in sports technology. Diverse Representation, a company focused on increasing the number of Black agents, attorneys, managers, and publicists across sports, hosted its inaugural HBCU Sports Business Pitch Competition in New Orleans, LA, in partnership with the talent agency William Morris Endeavor (WME) on Friday, Feb. 7, 2025, during Super Bowl LIX week. According to information shared with AFROTECH™, the competition was launched to provide local HBCU student entrepreneurs the opportunity to pitch sports-related concepts for a chance to receive funding and connect with decision-makers in the industry. “When I initially launched Diverse Representation, I’ve always been very, very clear about what our mission is: to help Black professionals in the sports and entertainment industry,” Diverse Representation Founder Jaia Thomas told AFROTECH™. “Not minorities, not people of color—Black...
In the wake of the catastrophic midair collision between an American Airlines plane and a U.S. military helicopter near Washington, DC — one of the deadliest in more than two decades — President Donald Trump has falsely pointed to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies as a possible contributor to the crash. Though there are urgent questions surrounding aviation safety and regulatory oversight, Trump has suggested that DEI initiatives “could have been” to blame despite no factual connection between diversity efforts and the circumstances of the crash. Yet, just days before this devastating collision, Trump made a decision that leaves questions about his judgement. Based on a report from the New Republic, he eliminated the full membership of the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Aviation Security Advisory Committee, a move that effectively removed key leadership that has overseen regulatory compliance and risk mitigation within the industry since 1988. He also fired...
South African billionaire Elon Musk is known for his desire to swallow up companies and rebrand them with his own trendy vision. The Tesla CEO previously used his familial wealth to purchase stakes in such businesses as PayPal, SpaceX and of course, X (formerly Twitter). Now, according to official statements made by the Trump administration cabinet pick, the emerald mine profiteer is considering buying the rights to Vine, a defunct app which predates TikTok . This would be a major development in the world of social media, since the latter is still potentially facing a long-term ban within the United States, unless the app’s parent company ByteDance can agree to divest to American financial interests. When prompted by a fellow X user about bringing Vine back into the fray to fill in the power vacuum left by TikTok, Musk simply responded, “We’re looking into it.” So, now seems like as good a time as any to examine what Vine is (or was), how Elon could bring it back to compete with...
Tyrre Burks’ background in sports gave him an upper hand as a business founder. As AFROTECH™ previously reported, Burks is the founder of Player’s Health, a platform offering solutions including insurance, an athlete safety suite with education and training, injury management forms, incident reporting, compliance forms, and tools to support name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals, geared toward sports organizations, teams, leagues, and clubs. The inception of Player’s Health dates back to Burks’ time as a former college athlete who turned pro. Becoming an athlete was a means of escaping the realities of living on the Southside of Chicago, IL. “I had a choice and sports was one of ’em or the streets. And luckily, I chose football; I chose wrestling. I chose every sport that I could choose to keep me out of the streets. And that kept me safe. It kept me out of the streets, and it kept me out of trouble. And that led to college and professional football,” he said during a podcast...
Serena Williams is supporting innovation in women’s health. Teal Health The tennis star has aligned herself with Teal Health, a women’s health startup founded by Kara Egan (CEO) and Dr. Avnesh Thakor in 2020. According to the company website, Teal Health’s inception trickles back to Thakor’s medical experiences over the years. He observed insufficient innovation around cervical cancer screenings and created a self-collect prototype. With Egan’s two decades of experience in finance, health, and technology, the company was formed with the vision to develop an at-home self-collect cervical cancer screening kit, currently under FDA review. A user can start by requesting a kit, which initiates a vetting process to confirm eligibility. Once approved, the kit will be delivered to your home for sample collection. The sample is then mailed to a lab, and results are shared through Teal Health’s application. Users also have the option to speak with a provider for additional support. Teal...
Engineering was once foreign to Logan Hickox but is now integral to his daily work at Nike. During an interview with Fast Company, he shared that while sports had been a significant part of his upbringing, engineering was not. His interest in the field was sparked when he noticed flyers at his school promoting a meeting for students interested in robotics. “You have the notion that engineers might be of the nerdier type, or maybe they’re not athletic, or they’re not into theater, or whatever it might be,” he said to the outlet. “And especially as a Black man myself, not having seen that representation before, that was something that I was definitely apprehensive about at first. Being able to really push outside of my comfort zone and being able to see it’s not just one mold that people fit, that was something that was super eye-opening to me.” Hickox attended the University of Florida in 2016 and obtained a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering five years later, his LinkedIn...
The concept of work/life balance has been a significant sticking point in the social consciousness for years now, especially highlighted in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and beyond. For some working individuals, going above and beyond seems to be the only way to feel valued at work, while others argue that they’re only willing to offer minimum performance for minimum payment . The value of hard work has long been a topic of debate, sparking discussions among young professionals and seasoned industry leaders alike—from boardrooms to online forums and beyond. Most recently, American tech mogul Marc Andreessen weighed in, introducing his argument for keeping the so-called “full self” out of the office. To understand the breadth of Andreessen’s comments, we’ll have to briefly unpack what it means to present your full self, dive into the collective opinion on American workplace values, and study industry trends in both social and professional spaces. It’s unlikely that we’ll...
Green technology, also known as cleantech or sustainable technology, refers to innovations designed to reduce environmental impact, conserve resources, and promote sustainability. It focuses on creating solutions that are energy-efficient, low-emission, and environmentally friendly, addressing issues such as climate change, resource depletion, and pollution. Green technology covers various sectors, including renewable energy, water conservation, waste management, and sustainable agriculture, and plays a crucial role in protecting the planet while supporting economic growth. What Is Green Technology? At its core, green technology is aimed at improving environmental sustainability. It includes technologies that promote the use of renewable energy sources like solar and wind, as well as those that enhance energy efficiency and reduce waste. The goal of green technology is to minimize the environmental footprint of industries and individuals by shifting away from fossil fuels and...