I alluded to it above, but I get a LOT of emails from them (bare minimum is a livestream schedule and development update each week). As such, I don’t read them too closely.
That being said, Jacobs said last week that there are 4 upcoming big announcements, starting Thursday (which is today). It looks like today’s announcement is the additional funding secured that Telefrog linked. I don’t know what the other three announcements will be exactly, but I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them is finally announcing a start date for the Beta phase of development. That’s when a lot more people will start piling in to test the game.
I would be very shocked it if released this year, but that’s just my gut feeling.