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Alexa now notifies you when items in your Amazon cart or wishlist are about to go on sale | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 3 | 31 | Amazon is introducing a new Alexa feature that will notify you if an item on your wishlist or in your shopping cart is about to go on sale, the company on Thursday. Alexa will now notify users up to 24 hours in advance of a deal going live and then order it on your behalf if you ask it to do so. The feature will also work with items that were marked “saved for later” on the platform. The new feature is now available for Amazon Prime customers in the United States across all newer-generation Echo smart speakers. You can enable the feature in the Alexa app by navigating to the “Amazon shopping” section from your notifications settings and selecting “shopping recommendations.” When the feature is enabled, your Amazon Echo ring will turn yellow when an item goes on sale. You can ask Alexa to remind you about the deal when it goes live. You can also say “Alexa, buy it for me” if you want to purchase it. Alexa will then use the default payment and delivery address in your Amazon account to process the purchase. Amazon says that you won’t be charged until your order is successful. Once you place an order, you’ll receive a notification via the Amazon app along with an email confirmation with the order details. Amazon says the new feature is designed to make daily tasks more convenient and will complement Alexa’s existing shopping tools, such as its feature, which notifies you when you may be running low on essentials that you frequently purchase from Amazon. “Our vision is to make every aspect of your shopping journey simpler and more convenient, and to help you discover savings and save time along the way,” the company said in a about the announcement. “We’re excited to continue innovating in this space and to deliver even more seamless ways for customers to shop with Alexa.” The launch of the new feature comes as reports have indicated that consumers as quickly as expected. While consumers have been happy to bring smart speakers into their home, they continue to use them more often for simple commands — like playing music or getting information, for example — not for making purchases. But, it doesn’t look like Amazon is ready to give up on trying to make voice-based shopping more popular with the launch of this new feature while hinting towards more in the future. |
Everything you need to know about YC Demo Day Winter 2022, part 2 | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 3 | 30 | The second day of Demo Day is now behind us, and the TechCrunch team is from watching hundreds of pitches in quick succession. Every accelerator demo day is a marathon, but the U.S. group has worked with more startups over time, making its pitch sessions a veritable deluge of new companies and founders. Recall that nearly 400 companies presented at YC Demo Day from a cohort of 414 in total. So, TechCrunch took on the group from a variety of perspectives. What follows is our collected coverage from the day so that you can dive into the areas that you care about most. Yesterday we at startups in the batch that hailed , that , are and that , and we also . Today, we’re taking a look at AI startups, open source-focused companies, and, yes, more favorites. Recall that Y Combinator , adding more capital to each company that it funds. That means that the startups in its latest cohort are better funded than probably ever before. And we’re seeing some signals that investors are paying more for shares in the current YC Demo Day batch than in prior years. It’s a rich time to build a nascent tech company. Let’s learn more about what’s under construction! Day two is in the books! TechCrunch once again spent much of the day watching a parade of startups present as part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2022 cohort, Demo Day . Yeah, that’s a mouthful. But we did learn quite a lot. Reporters Alex Wilhelm, Christine Hall, Mary Ann Azevedo and Devin Coldewey share their favorite startups to come out of day two of YC Demo Day. Dozens of startups in Y Combinator’s Winter 2022 cohort do something that could be described as AI. Though the term has lost much of its meaning, it’s still an important part of the tech landscape, and both using it and enabling it are fertile ground for new companies. Y Combinator’s Winter 2022 open source founders have some interesting ideas up their sleeves. And since they’re open source, some of these companies will let you join in on the fun of collaboration. too. TechCrunch has covered more African startups in the last year than any period in our history, and it’s no coincidence. Many of these African companies are Nigerian, which had the most active venture capital scene in Africa in 2021. The country’s rise has been sufficiently sharp — it makes sense that Nigeria garners the most African representatives in any Y Combinator batch. Over 400 companies presented at YC Demo Day Winter 2022; that’s over 400 logos. Senior Editor shuffled through the entire list to call out some of the best logos in the Winter 2022 batch. There are a lot of solid ones, a few clunkers and a handful of nice ones. |
Tier Mobility’s buy of Fantasmo brings camera positioning tech in-house | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 3 | 30 | Shared micromobility company Tier Mobility said on Wednesday it has acquired , a U.S.-based computer vision-powered e-scooter parking startup whose tech Tier had been trialing in multiple cities in Europe. Tier will bring on all of Fantasmo’s 15 staff members and continue to invest in and develop what will now be an in-house Camera Positioning System (CPS) technology that the company says is more accurate than GPS and can validate e-scooter marking within 20 centimeters or less. The acquisition signals both Tier’s commitment to abating the “public nuisance” effect of scooters parked on sidewalks and its continued pattern of acquiring strategically to either vertically integrate capabilities or gain more land and vehicles. Neither company would share the terms of the deal, something we’ve come to expect from Tier. This is the Berlin-based company’s fourth buy in five months, each one as financially mysterious as the last. In November 2021, Tier , and in December, it . More recently, , marking its sweeping entrance into the North American market. Tier has been implementing Fantasmo’s mapping solution to eliminate irresponsible parking for the last year, first in Paris and later in other locations, including London, York, Dusseldorf and Leipzig. The CPS technology involves riders using the camera on their phones to scan the environment around where they’ve parked the scooter, taking in information like patterns in buildings or signage to determine the position of the vehicle. That metadata is then compared against Fantasmo’s 3D maps to position exactly where the vehicle is located. Fantasmo has about 20 to 25 cities mapped out predominantly in Europe, with some in North America, according to Ryan Measel, co-founder and CEO of Fantasmo. With Tier’s backing, that number will likely grow, but not just for Tier’s benefit. Fantasmo has other micromobility operators in its portfolio, including Helbiz. Tier said it doesn’t intend to cut any relationships if the counterpart has an interest to continue, and is committed to making Fantasmo’s technology widely available by expanding its R&D budget to accelerate development. This means that not only does Tier benefit from bringing Fantasmo’s tech onboard, but it can also potentially add another revenue stream by selling the service to other operators or applications. Most of the major players in the industry are currently trialing or implementing some version of that not only protects against bad parking, but also inappropriate riding. For example, to integrate the company’s hyper-accurate location-based technology that can also detect and correct unsafe riding behavior. . On Wednesday, Tier also announced its plans to introduce a new computer vision-based driver assistance technology that can detect traffic violations and collisions, as well as reckless scooter riding. This tech will be enabled by Fantasmo’s CPS for high positional accuracy and centimeter-level mapping and paired with a vision sensor and Tier’s new IoT platform. “Riders who do not follow the rules and regulations will be alerted to their offenses and may even be fined or banned,” Tier said in a statement. “The new technology is currently being tested privately and will be rolled out in cities around the world in the coming months.” The company would not supply any more information about this “new technology,” like what specifically is meant by “vision sensor” and how Tier’s new IoT platform would help facilitate this. The company did say, however, that it is working with existing companies to determine the best solution for sidewalk detection and inappropriate riding behavior. Spin, which, again, is now part of Tier, is working with Drover AI to implement computer-vision technology that essentially involves strapping a camera to a scooter, allowing it to “see” if it’s being ridden in the correct road lane, if it’s on a sidewalk or if it’s parked inappropriately. . Drover AI said it wasn’t working on a new project with Tier, but Tier said it would continue to work with Luna in Ireland and with Drover via Spin in the U.S. |
Gumi Cryptos Capital closes $110M second fund to back blockchain startups | Kate Park | 2,022 | 3 | 30 | San Francisco- and Tokyo-headquartered gumi Cryptos Capital (gCC), a venture capital firm that focuses on blockchain startups, said it has launched a new $110 million early-stage fund. The venture capital firm’s second fund aims to back approximately 50 blockchain companies in the early stage from pre-seed to seed, managing partner of gCC told TechCrunch. Industries include blockchain games, infrastructure, web3 applications, tools, DeFi (decentralized finance)/CeFi (centralized finance), DAOs and guilds. The check size will range between $500,000 to $5 million per investment through initial and follow-on investments. The second fund of gCC will invest in both equity and tokens. “We live in the Experimental Age,” said , managing partner of gumi Cryptos Capital. “Tokens represent monetary experimentation powering web3, DAOs and guilds are governance experiments. NFTs are experimental digital assets. The metaverse is a collection of experimental realities.” Its limited partners include Japanese game company , Shinsei Bank, Cygames, Mistletoe Venture Partners, Marui Group, GMP Capital and Polygon. Three managing partners of gumi Cryptos Capital, , Zhang and Matsumura will lead gCC Fund II. Despite the similarities in branding, Zhang told TechCrunch gumi Cryptos Capital (gCC) is not a subsidiary or corporate venture capital arm of gumi, though Zhang notably still holds a position as a vice president at gumi in addition to his role as a managing partner at gCC. Zhang said that the second fund has already made nine investments as the lead investor or co-lead investor, including Proof of Learn, XY Finance, Solv Finance and Alliance Labs. The new vehicle is almost five times larger than the $21 million gumi Cryptos Capital Fund I, which backed 36 portfolio companies in their seed round fundings, including NFT marketplace OpenSea, Yield Guild Gaming, Celsius Network, Qredo, Agoric, Astar, 1inch and VEGA. The firm said its first fund, gCC fund I, attained a 24.6x return on capital employed (TVPI) as of January 2022. “We have unique access to both Silicon Valley startup culture and capital markets as well as access to the Japan market,” said Kunimitsu. “Japan is also home to unique intellectual property assets, especially in the fast-growing gaming sector.” |
8 open source companies from YC Demo Day Winter ’22 | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 3 | 30 | Wicked fast VPNs, data organization tools, auto-generated videos to spice up your company’s Instagram stories … Y Combinator’s Winter 2022 open source founders have some interesting ideas up their sleeves. And since they’re open source, some of these companies will let you join in on the fun of collaboration too. Here are all of the open source related companies presenting at Demo Day in the Winter 2022 cohort. 2021 Salt Lake City, Utah Tuva cleans messy healthcare data to help the healthcare industry build scalable data products. Tuva wants to become the open standard for healthcare data transformation and build the data network for multisite benchmarking and research. Tuva uses machine learning to further develop its technology. Co-founders Coco (Jorge) Zuloaga and Aaron Neiderhiser have worked in healthcare data science for a decade. They’re using that experience to help digital health companies get their data ready for analytics and machine learning. Have you ever gone to the doctor and waited for minutes while the nurse’s computer — running Windows 2000 — struggles to open your chart, only to find that they don’t have updated information about what meds you’re on? We can only imagine how mind-numbingly tedious it would be for health tech companies to organize all this stuff, so it seems like Tuva Health is doing a good service by making their software open source. Now, to get that nurse off of Windows 2000… 2021 Mountain View, California Firezone is building an open source alternative to OpenVPN and Cisco AnyConnect using a new VPN protocol called WireGuard. The company is targeting businesses to help remote workers access private networks. Apparently, using WireGuard makes Firezone faster than its competitors. Speed! Cryptography! It’s also worth noting that fellow cohort members Netmaker are also developing open source software based on WireGuard. Co-founder Jamil Bou Kheir spent eight years at Cisco, a direct competitor! Spicy! Bou Kheir also lived in a “ ” for two years, which … while we don’t want to know what the tiny hacker house smells like, we appreciate the out-of-the-box idea. Faster VPN options? Sounds good to us. We’re a bit more fixated on the tiny hacker house, though. What’s going on there? 2020 Palo Alto, California GrowthBook is an open source platform to help companies make data-driven product decisions with feature flags and A/B tests. GrowthBook focuses on feature flagging and experimentation and operates under the ethos that this is the best way to build products at scale. GrowthBook says that an existing SaaS solution, LaunchDarkly, requires a company to send them all of their data, which poses high costs and security concerns. GrowthBook says it solves this by using a company’s existing data infrastructure and business metrics. Co-founders Jeremy Dorn and Graham McNicoll both used to work at as chief architect and CTO respectively. After ’s exit in 2019, the two of them began working on GrowthBook. Startups will likely be more comfortable using open source software to help them make product decisions rather than sending all of their data to a third-party provider. 2022 San Francisco, California Eventual is a data warehouse for images and video, making it easier for enterprise machine learning teams to design continuous pipelines that ingest, organize and process imaging data. Eventual wants to help companies save time and money by optimizing workflow. Eventual says that it’s the first turn-key data warehouse for images and video. Instead of using SQL, Eventual’s query interface is a Lambda function that can be written in the programming language of your choice. Jay Chia and Sammy Sidhu both have backgrounds in deep learning — they worked together on to build autonomous driving technology that was acquired by Toyota. If these founders can get cars to drive autonomously, data organization via machine learning should be a piece of cake, right? (At least it’s a business endeavor less likely to result in an accident.) 2021 Asheville, North Carolina Netmaker is an open source tool based on the WireGuard VPN protocol. Netmaker claims to operate 15 times faster than OpenVPN. Netmaker and its cohort-mate Firezone are both open source, faster alternatives to existing VPN software. CTO Dillon Carns and CEO Alex Feiszli left their software engineering gigs to develop Netmaker. Feiszli formerly served as a senior engineer at IBM, a consultant at Deloitte and a contractor for Red Hat. Without testing the products, we can’t really say whether Netmaker or its cohort-mate Firezone is faster, but we do know that Netmaker’s CTO has a dog named Pepper. The ball’s in your court, Firezone. 2021 Mountain View, California Per Toolchest’s website, “We have felt the pain of implementing and scaling computational biology tools. We’re here to build better core tooling for bioinformatics.” Toolchest says it will make it possible for drug discovery companies to get analysis results up to 100 times faster. Users don’t need to migrate their data or learn how to use a new platform. Toolchest makes implementing and scaling computational biology tools just three lines of code. CTO Bryce Cai has an academic background, researching computational chemistry and mathematics at Stanford. CEO Noah Lebovic previously lead software engineering at a now-acquired microbiome startup. Toolchest is so open source that its signature three lines of code are literally just on the homepage of their website. 2021 San Francisco, California Unai is developing a VR headset and virtual world that aims to help people feel connected to one another in the virtual world. Unai wants to make VR interactions look, feel and sound like they do in real life. Unai believes that “virtual presence” is the “first killer use case” for VR, not gaming. Maxim Perumal built Relativity, an open source VR headset, at age 15. Now, as CEO of Unai, Perumal recruited a team with former senior engineers from companies like Apple, Nvidia, Intel, Activision, Meta and Sony. Since Unai is still in stealth, it’s hard to say what makes its technology different from mainstream headsets like the Meta Quest 2. But we cannot understate Unai’s biggest advantage, which is that Mark Zuckerberg is not its CEO. 2022 Victoria, Canada Instant Domains claims that in less time than it takes to create a social media profile, businesses can buy a domain, launch a site and start collecting revenue. Instant Domains is encrypted and promises to never collect data about its users. Technically, you can set up a Squarespace or a Wix site pretty fast too — but Instant Domains says it’s even faster and easier. It may not be as flexible as other no-code website builders, but it’s less expensive ($10 a year for a domain, plus an optional $5 a month for extra features). Some business owners might not need all of the bells and whistles on other platforms. Instant Domains is an outgrowth of Instant Domain Search, a side project that CEO Beau Hartshorne built in 2005, which now makes around $1 million in annual revenue. Hartshorne is joined by CTO Dirkjan Ochtman, a 20-year veteran in software engineering and accomplished open source maintainer. Hot take: Squarespace is expensive. Normally, I urge people to just make a free WordPress site and attach their own domain to it, but if Instant Domains can accomplish what it sets out to, maybe we won’t have to mess around in cPanel to get an affordable website up and running. Instant Domains kind of feels like Linktree but with custom domain management built in. 2021 Seattle, Washington Uberduck calls itself “Canva for programmable video,” making video that can be automatically generated via API. Within minutes, Uberduck will generate dynamic videos that can be personalized with customer data. Uberduck can also be used to develop advertisements and social media posts. You can also … clone your voice? Deepfake yourself? Use wisely. Uberduck boasts a Discord community of almost 3,000 members who collaborate to turn AI research into design tools for the app. Samson Koelle holds a Ph.D. in statistics and has worked for places like Amazon and the National Institutes of Health. Koelle is joined by co-founders William Luer and Zach Wener, who was once an editorial fellow at The Atlantic (is the tech journalist to tech founder pipeline a thing?). Finally, a startup that calls itself “Canva for [use case]” that actually makes sense in comparison to Canva. |
Daily Crunch: ‘Strategic finance platform’ Mosaic raises $25M Series B | Christine Hall | 2,022 | 3 | 30 | Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Wednesday, March 30, 2022! It’s day two of Y Combinator’s Demo Day, which means that the TechCrunch team has been looking at more than 400 startups over two days. If you’ll forgive us, our brains are dripping out of our ears as we stare vacantly in the middle distance after some information overwhelms – but one thing’s for sure: It’s hella exciting times in startup land and across the ecosystem. Dive in; the water is non-fungible, COVID-free, and will probably launch a corporate credit card before long. – and It’s day two of Y Combinator Demo Day, and the TechCrunch team is back on the case, sifting the sparkly from the meh for your reading pleasure. Lucas examined , and we took a separate look at and as well. If you have wild dreams of raising funding from Y Combinator yourself, pop along to our Early Stage conference in a couple of weeks, where . If you want to submerge yourself in demo days, check out today’s excellent episode of our “Equity” podcast as well. I mean, with a title like ,” how could you not? In exciting hardware news, . It’s not as cute as the dog-shaped robot, but probably more helpful for maneuvering around a warehouse. 🎵 Come with me, and you’ll be, in a world of pure imagination: Paolo Farinella / Getty Images When you have an opportunity to sell an investor on your idea, it will likely be via a video call, not across a table or desk. Considering how many pitch calls investors take on a daily basis, “this new pitching model presents a new problem for founders,” says Flint Capital partner Andrew Gershfeld, whose firm reviews approximately “1,500 online pitches per year.” To cut through the noise, he recommends that founders create a “teaser trailer” to share with their network before they begin approaching angels and VCs. According to Gershfeld, “since we’re not getting the same in-person meeting opportunities, this is how founders can hook investors’ attention.” |
Our favorite startups from YC’s Winter 2022 Demo Day, part 2 | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 3 | 30 | two in the books! TechCrunch once again spent much of the day watching a parade of startups present as part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2022 cohort, Demo Day . Yeah, that’s a mouthful. But we did learn quite a lot. You can find all our coverage , but what matters is that themes are emerging from the YC milieu. Southeast Asia is a huge startup target, with a host of business models building for its population. Fintech was, again, a huge category of work around the world. There were also a few surprises. Frankly, we expected more crypto (web3? blockchain?) companies to be in the mix. And while there were a number of API-first startups, there were fewer than we might have guessed. That said, we don’t know the precise monetization method of every software startup that pitched, so we could be undercounting. As always, to cap off the day, we’ve picked a few favorites from the day’s presentations. Every TechCrunch reporter has their own set of interests and topic areas, so we’re not endorsing any particular company or declaring winners. Instead, they are , the companies that caught our eyes as the most interesting. A big thanks to Devin Coldeway, Mary Ann Azevedo and Christine Hall for contributing. If you more on demo days, . And with that, we can get started! |
Dear Sophie: What can we do to help employees who are Ukrainian citizens? | Sophie Alcorn | 2,022 | 3 | 30 | of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies. “Your questions are vital to the spread of knowledge that allows people all over the world to rise above borders and pursue their dreams,” says , a Silicon Valley immigration attorney. “Whether you’re in people ops, a founder or seeking a job in Silicon Valley, I would love to in my next column.” TechCrunch+ members receive access to weekly “Dear Sophie” columns; . Dear Strong, I applaud your efforts to plan ahead and support your team! TPS, which stands for Temporary Protected Status, is something I talked about in a , along with a rundown of how President Joe Biden has proceeded so far on immigration reform. that it will be phasing in Premium Processing for more case types throughout 2022, including EB-1C multinational managers, EB-2 NIWs, I-539 changes of status for various types of workers (E-2, E-3), students (F, J, M) and some spouses and even I-765 work permits. More details about the rollout should be published shortly, and changes will begin to take effect before the end of Q2. Stay tuned here for additional updates! Joanna Buniak / To answer your questions about supporting Ukrainians in your team, let me give you a little background on TPS. The Secretary of Homeland Security, who oversees U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), has the power to designate or extend TPS to a country if circumstances — such as an armed conflict or natural disaster — make that country unsafe. A citizen of a country designated for TPS is allowed to remain and work in the United States and travel abroad if that individual was present in the U.S. on the effective TPS designation date. Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas designated Ukraine for TPS, effective on March 1, 2022, for 18 months. That means any Ukrainians in the United States as of that date are eligible to apply for TPS (the last day to apply is August 28, 2022). If TPS is granted, individuals may remain and work in the United States through September 1, 2023. At that time, Mayorkas can determine whether to extend the current TPS designation for Ukraine or redesignate TPS eligibility to those who arrived in the United States after March 1, 2022. Ukraine joins 12 other countries that currently have TPS designation: Myanmar, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen. |
Apploi raises $25M to address the healthcare hiring crunch | Kyle Wiggers | 2,022 | 3 | 30 | Healthcare has a hiring crises. Nearly 20% of medical workers have quit their jobs during the pandemic, according to a recent Morning Consult . Some studies the healthcare system’s burnout cost at about $4.6 billion a year before the spread of COVID-19, a number that has likely risen. Organizations have increasingly ramped up benefits and hiring in an effort to address the . But they still face roadblocks, including overly long onboarding and vetting for employees. Adam Lewis pitches the platform he founded eight years ago, , as the solution. Originally aimed at a hirers and job seekers across a range of industries, Apploi has since narrowed its focus to healthcare as it looks to stand out in a sea of HR startups. Apploi Investors are rewarding the pivot with an infusion of fresh capital. Apploi today announced that it raised $25 million in a Series B round led by m]x[v Capital with participation from Defy and Underscore, bringing the company’s total raised to $38 million. When Lewis to TechCrunch in 2015, he framed Apploi as a way to allow service industry workers to “put their best foot forward” with tools to share videos of their personality and skills. The company offered mobile-, web- and kiosk-based apps designed to help users submit multiple applications while providing companies “with the data that they need to make informed decisions.” Apploi is decidedly more employer-focused, now, having invested in a suite of hiring and onboarding tools tailored for healthcare companies. For example, Apploi can assist with the collection, monitoring and updating of staff credentials with reminders to keep nurses’ and caregivers’ licensures up to date. Digital employee records integration helps recruiters reconnect with past applicants, while built-in messaging (for email and text) and interview scheduling ostensibly simplifies the hiring process. “Early on, we noticed very unique challenges existed in healthcare — an industry that has significant demand. Because of this, in 2018, the company decided to focus exclusively on the healthcare industry, in helping organizations provide the best care to the most vulnerable populations by hiring and retaining the right people,” Lewis told TechCrunch via email. “The company offers an end-to-end software-as-a-service platform to help healthcare organizations recruit, onboard, credential and manage high-volume hires, particularly nurses and nursing aids.” Apploi also keeps tabs on the conversion rates of job posts, showing where candidates are coming from and can track job post-performance across social sites or follow candidates throughout a recruiting workflow. Beyond this, Apploi can kick off screenings and walk candidates through steps including license verification, background checks and miscellaneous paperwork tasks before extending an offer. Apploi’s tools are all very exhaustive — at least from the outside looking in. And there’s plenty of venture capital in the health tech industry, with Silicon Valley Bank reporting that health tech companies raised $39.7 billion in 2021. But the trick for Apploi going forward will be continuing to differentiate itself from vendors like , Vivian Health (formerly NurseFly) and Incredible Health. Lewis asserts that Apploi is already accomplishing this, pointing to its 2020 acquisition of healthcare credentialing platform Healthgig. Apploi, whose workforce numbers over 100 people, has 6,000 customers and claims that revenue grew 130% in 2021. “The additional funding will allow us to develop additional healthcare-specific functionality throughout our whole suite of products to ensure a tailored and superior end to end experience,” Lewis said, “as well as increasing our sales and marketing functions across the country … Our product is adored by customers with 99.6% monthly retention.” |
Who knew you could magically finger copy stuff from iPhone to iPad? Not us. | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 3 | 30 | iOS picks up more and more features with each major release, which unfortunately means some of them aren’t exactly … obvious, making for great fodder for “things you didn’t know about your iPhone” TikTok. Example #4123131, this video: with @partyshirt I am way too late to this party 😅 You probably know about Apple’s long-existing and newer by now — it’s not groundbreaking to copy and paste links from your phone to your laptop. But, as seen above, even former Apple employees didn’t know that now you can use the pinch gesture to pick up and drop images between your iPhone and iPad like you’re some kind of tech-savvy sorcerer who rolled a natural 20 on arcana. It’s the same old features that have been around for months, just cooler and more wizard-like. As long as you’re using two touch-screen Apple devices with the same Apple ID, you should be good to go. If you knew about this already, congrats. But, out of a sample size of five procrastinating writers in the watercooler channel of TechCrunch Slack, 100% of us had no idea you could do this. |
The best logos of YC’s Winter ’22 cohort | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 3 | 30 | Hundreds of companies presented at , and I looked at pretty much all their logos. There’s a lot of solid ones, a few clunkers and a handful of really nice ones. Here’s a list of the latter for your pleasure and edification. I haven’t put these in any order — in fact the order they appeared in when I put the images in the post was a complete surprise. Let’s go! : With a shape specified right there in the company name, you’d think they’d go full circle, so to speak, but this loopy spiral thing is a way better choice in my opinion. The company does recycling, if I remember correctly, so the idea of a more complex loop, and connecting one end to another, is apropos. Not only that, but by doing it this way you hide a C in there as well. The cranberry (mulberry?) color is a solid choice too. Wait… I just realized it’s the Life360 logo rotated about 40 degrees. Well, there’s nothing new under the sun, it seems, and honestly this one is better. Admittedly not the best start for the list, but I didn’t pick the order. : I like this particular configuration of the letters in a sort of sticker format, but elsewhere they do the type differently. But the idea everywhere is one of slight disorder and unease, which is of course also suggested by the name. Since they make a cream for irritated skin, it’s a frank acknowledgement of the problem, refusing to dance around it with a medical or aspirational name. Unusual, but potentially smart branding choice for a skin-care company. : There were a few fingerprint or biometric-type logos in this batch, but this is the best one. It shows identity, impersonation and protection all at once, leaving the specific interpretation up to the viewer. I have to hand it to the artist for picking the right “quadrant” of a fingerprint to be able to suggest facial features without looking too weird. Plus it “goes” left to right, which helps it track. : This is a great logotype. Aligning the letter cuts to the same degree makes for a cohesive look, but they didn’t take it too far, letting the G’s descender and various other tails stay natural. It’s also a good typeface for a logo at this size, where you can see the unusual styling of the curves on the letters. From a distance it just looks bouncy but a bit sharp, and after only a few seconds you have something really recognizable. : Putting an animal in the logo is always a risk, since it can easily be too cute or too detailed, drawing too much attention. Plover does it just right with a little bird that’s not only well drawn and, with its little legs, recognizable as a shore bird, but simultaneously forms the stem of the P and defines its negative space without interfering. I doubt it’s the first bird-based P logo out there, but this is a nice one. I wonder if they should have aligned the tail horizontal with the horizontal from the bottom of the P curve… nah. It would make the bird too flat. : This soft, cute droplet simultaneously suggests motherhood, babyhood, caring and liquid; quite a feat. The color I imagine is meant to suggest skin, and it does to a certain extent, but you always have to be careful with that, as using one skin tone excludes others. : This is a simple one, but a V is best for directional logos — in this case up and to the right, suggesting profits, while the green suggests go, money and all that positive stuff. The thick ribbon-like V slash is also different enough from the thin V in the type that it doesn’t seem redundant. I’d go with a more geometric font though. (And once you see the logo as a mint-licorice candy corn, you can’t unsee it. Sorry!) : Stacking and gradients were common in this batch, and Nimbus was my favorite of them. The cloud icon is incredibly common these days and has its own connotations, but the proportions of this particular stack and gradient, with the thick line work, make it seem more substantial and cohesive. The type is good too, mirroring the lines of the logo and also making the whole thing soft and fluffy. You know… like a cloud. But you got that already because it’s a good logo! : First of all, the type. And it was the right decision (if it was one) to join the K and A (and what an A!) and control the white space. The bouncing or curving ribbons/chevrons are interesting and form a nice K shape, though it is a bit busy. I wonder if it could be simplified or condensed a bit to make it seem less tangled. : A little form meets function here. I’m not in love with the type but I think the logo does a lot once you know the company is doing laser-based data transfer. The spike is right out of a spectrogram and the waves coming out of it are like Wi-Fi, so it’s a frequency that’s sending data… all wrapped up in a nice little circle. That’s clever, though it helps to understand what they do first. : I’m not completely sold on this one, but this is one logo that, if the app takes off, will be immediately recognizable from a distance. In a way it’s just a weird F… but the tilt helps your mind see it differently. Sometimes when you have that two-letter synthesis option, you just have to commit and hope simplicity pays off. : I just like the proportions on this one. I’m not sure it suggests a forest at all, but it does do homes and clouds, which is more to the point anyway. The house position and the door are very slightly off-center, which combined with the smallest circle emphasizes the perspective while staying totally flat. Details matter! : The color choices here are great, and these shapes all stand out despite each being a close muted shade to its sibling. The S is suggested elegantly and creatively, and along with the name the viewer is also reminded of leaves and fruit, food servings and portions (a halved head of lettuce and two tangerines… see it?). I can’t remember what this company does but that’s probably intentional. (Actually, it’s something about doing remote meetings, so… unsure.) There you have it! Pretty good logos, right? You can check out our more substantial coverage of the companies in this batch . |
Tumblr expands its tip jar feature to enable blog-level tipping | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 3 | 30 | Tumblr is expanding its tip jar feature by introducing blog-level tipping for its iOS and web applications, the company on Wednesday. The company rolled out its tip jar feature allowing users to leave tips on posts. Today’s expansion will allow users to leave tips on blogs. Tumblr says the expansion will benefit creators because it permits tipping at the blog level without tying the tip to a specific post. You can now enable tipping for your blog in your profile or blog view. Once you sign up for tipping, a tip button will become available on your blog view header. To tip a blog on the web, you can select the “Tip” button and select how much you’d like to gift. On the iOS app, you can select the “Support” button to send a tip. Tumblr says it’s working on adding blog-level tipping feature to its Android app soon. When users tip a creator, they can send a note alongside the tip. Anonymous tips are allowed, but in that case, the tipper isn’t able to leave a message. Users can send tips of up to $100 each. Tumblr doesn’t take a cut from these payments, but standard credit card fees (2.9% + $0.30) apply. The company told TechCrunch that it will not rely on the Apple and Google internal billing systems to facilitate mobile tips, which means that creators won’t lose an extra 30% to fees. The company’s tip jar feature follows its launch of last fall, which allows users to charge a monthly fee for access to exclusive posts. The post with open arms on the platform, as some Tumblr users that they would have preferred a tip jar feature over a subscription feature. It appears that Tumblr took creator feedback by finally launching Tumblr Tips. Tumblr is among several other platforms that offer tip jar features to allow users to send one-time payments to creators. Twitter a tip jar feature last May that is designed to give users a way to quickly tip creators with a few taps. In addition, TikTok began testing a new in-app tipping feature in October. The feature allows creators to accept money from fans outside of TikTok LIVE streams, where gifting is already supported. |
OpenStack launches Yoga, its 25th release | Frederic Lardinois | 2,022 | 3 | 30 | , the massive open source infrastructure-as-a-service project that allows enterprises and public hosting services to run their own on-premise clouds, today released version 25 of its software, . Like all large open source projects, OpenStack has gone through its ups and downs, but as the , the organization behind OpenStack and a number of other projects like Kata Containers, , OpenStack now manages over 25 million CPU cores in production and nine out of the top 10 telcos now run OpenStack, as do large enterprises like Bloomberg, Walmart, Workday and TechCrunch parent Yahoo. China Mobile alone runs an OpenStack deployment with 6 million cores, and more than 180 public cloud data centers now run OpenStack. Even after 25 releases in 12 years, the OpenStack community is still adding new features, in addition to the usual bug fixes and maintenance updates. As with most recent releases, this means increased support for additional hardware, for example. With Nvidia now a major contributor to OpenStack, there is new support for SmartNIC DPUs, that is, the ability to offload network processing to specialized cards, in OpenStack’s core networking and compute services. The OpenStack Cinder storage service now also supports LightOS for new storage types like NVMe/TCP and NEC V Series Storage. Not something you’d need for a small deployment, but features that will matter to some of OpenStack’s largest users. “It’s great to see all of those hardware manufacturers getting involved directly in OpenStack to make sure that we correctly support and expose the features in their hardware,” said the Open Infrastructure Foundation general manager . It’s worth noting that the general manager position is still quite new, with Carrez moving to the job in January of this year after being the VP of Engineering for the OpenStack/Open Infrastructure Foundation for many years. In this new role, he now oversees the foundation’s operations, covering engineering, product, community and marketing. Other major updates in this release include a new soft delete scheme for OpenStack Manila, the project’s shared file system service. , the senior upstream developer advocate for the Open Infrastructure Foundation, likened this to the recycle bin on your desktop. “It’s one of those things where it’s like, you know, why don’t we do that? We could have been doing this the whole time and I think that Manila has been pretty stable for a while, so [the developers were] like, ‘Oh, well, let’s go and do the obvious things that we could have done all along’,” she said. With this release, OpenStack is also expanding its support for a number of cloud-native infrastructure projects like the popular monitoring system and and Kubernetes tools, and welcoming two new projects, the and log management module. As for the Foundation itself, it’s worth noting that 12 new companies recently joined the organization. These new members are mostly in the lower silver tier, like B1 Systems, Okestro, OpenMetal and TransIP, but Vexxhost, for example, is joining as a gold member. Overall, the organization’s corporate membership is up 20% since November 2021. Later this year, the Open Infrastructure Foundation will also host its first in-person conference again, the , Germany, in early June. “When we launched the Open Infra Foundation, we said we were going to bring together a community to build the next decade of open infrastructure after 10 years of OpenStack and related projects,” Open Infrastructure Foundation CEO and Executive Director Jonathan Bryce said. “We’re a year into it and it’s been really exciting to see this coalition of companies who are joining across vendors, new tech leaders like Nvidia, new users like BBC and others, along with the projects that are coming in. I’m really excited to finally get all of these people back together for the first time since the pandemic.” Soon, the OpenStack project will also change its release cadence. Currently, the community is publishing two releases a year. Starting in 2023, it’s moving to a “tick-tock” schedule, with one major and one minor release on the same six-month cadence as today. In part, this is because of feedback from operators who don’t want to have to upgrade their environments every six months. “This really helps the smaller OpenStack clouds, because you can reliably like ‘okay, well, we have a year to breathe now before the next one,’ as opposed to every six months,” Bryce said. “There’s much less risk than there used to be in terms of upgrading, but it’s still a lot of work, so for those companies that use OpenStack that are a little bit smaller and have smaller teams or maybe are newer to it, this like long-term support cadence should really help them get off the ground and get moving. And then, the bigger companies that are used to the six-month release cadence like Red Hat are still going to be able to get their features right when they’re coming out.” |
Apple to now allow ‘reader’ apps to use external links, if approved | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 3 | 30 | Apple today it will begin to allow a subset of applications sold on its App Store to link to an external website where users can create or manage their accounts with the app developer. The change to Apple’s App Store Review guidelines only applies to what Apple calls “reader” apps — meaning, apps designed primarily to provide access to some sort of digital content, like magazines, books, audio, music or video. Apple’s plans were first announced last September in the context of the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC), and had been set to arrive sometime in early 2022. The company had earlier said the changes would apply globally to all reader apps on the App Store when they went live, but had not provided an exact launch date. Today, Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines have been that explains how Reader apps can implement this feature. Specifically, Apple instructs developers to apply for something it calls the in order to provide this functionality in their own apps. An entitlement is something Apple uses when it wants to still have control over the situation in terms of which developers can implement a certain feature. That is, instead of just changing the App Store rules so this type of behavior is broadly permitted for apps in the supported category, the entitlement process requires developers to ask and then receive approval for this special use case. This way, Apple can very carefully vet the apps being allowed to add the links instead of leaving it up to its App Review team. The company also published for developers who are approved to use the external link option. Here, Apple explains that not all apps that offer access to digital content will be approved — the access to digital content has to be the app’s “primary functionality,” Apple states. For instance, a social networking app ( ) where users can also stream videos would not be eligible. Apple also says that, in order to be eligible, the apps must allow the users to access content or services they had previously purchased outside the app; they must allow people to sign in to their account; and they cannot facilitate real-time, person-to-person services — like live tutoring, fitness instruction, real estate tours or medical consultations. Apple Notably, Apple says apps that choose to use the External Link Account Entitlement cannot offer in-app purchases on either iPhone or iPad devices. It’s an either/or situation. Apple’s instructions detail how the links should work, too, including how they must open up in a new browser window and not a web view, for instance, and how the links should appear. The developer’s web page also can’t advertise the pricing offered outside the App Store. It can only say something very simple like: There are several other more technical requirements, as well. It’s worth pointing out that these changes have only come about due to governmental regulations and not because Apple believes this is the right thing to do for its App Store. It’s clear from the heavy-handed way it’s implementing this support — and the rules around its use — that the company views this change as a slippery slope that could ultimately lead to App Store revenue loss. The changes come at a time when lawmakers and regulators alike have been putting pressure on the app store providers, Apple and Google, in the wake of anti-competitive complaints. The platforms are also battling this out in the courts, as Apple and Google are doing now with Fortnite maker Epic Games, whose antitrust case with Apple is . Another class-action that developers were allowed to contact their customers about payment methods using the contact information they collected in their apps. In addition to today’s change for reader apps, South Korea has legislation that bans Apple and Google from requiring that developers use their respective payment systems. More recently, a bipartisan App Store bill targeting Apple and Google was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, suggesting that U.S. legislation is on the horizon, too. But instead of getting ahead of the changes with an overhaul of how the App Store operates, Apple has been clinging on to every last bit of control it has even as it attempts to adhere to the regulations. This stance has gotten so bad that, in the Netherlands, by the local regulatory authority for non-compliance with new rules around third-party payment support for dating apps. Though Apple has opened up access to request the External Link Account Entitlement today, it notes the API will be available for reader apps to build and test in an “upcoming beta release of iOS and iPadOS.” |
Mojo Vision takes another step toward AR contact lenses with new prototype | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 3 | 30 | We’ve known Mojo Vision’s journey to market was going to be a long and deliberate one since we saw an early prototype in Las Vegas . You can multiply all of the talk of hardware being hard a few times over when attempting to execute something novel and tiny that’s designed to be worn on one of the more vulnerable parts of the human anatomy. Today the Bay Area-based firm announced a new prototype of its augmented reality contact lens technology. The system is based around what Mojo calls “Invisible Computing,” its heads up display technology that overlays information onto the lens. Essentially it’s an effort to realize the technology you’ve seen in every science-fiction movie from the past 40+ years. The set-up also features an updated version of the startup’s operating system, all designed to reduce user reliance on screens by — in a sense — moving the screen directly in front of their eyes. The system is building around a 0.5 millimeter microLED display with a remarkably dense 14,000 pixels per inch. The text overlays are highlighted through micro-optics, while data is transferred back and forth via a 5GHz band. All of that is powered by an ARM Core M0 processor. An eye-tracking system is on-board, utilizing acceleromter, gyroscope and magnetometer readings to determine the motion of the wearer’s gaze. That, in turn, forms the foundation of the system’s hands-free control. The company writes: Since we first revealed Mojo Lens to the world in January 2020, we’ve been innovating and building, and integrating systems that many people thought couldn’t be built, let alone operational in a contact lens form factor. The most common thing we hear as we share this latest prototype is, “I knew there would be smart contact lenses, but I thought they were 10 or 20 years out, not now.” This is happening and I’m excited about our next milestones and realizing the promise of Invisible Computing. Of course, things are still in the prototype phase — so “now” isn’t now, exactly. The company continues to work with the FDA to help bring the tech to market as part of its Breakthrough Devices Program. The company also announced previous partnerships with fitness brands like Adidas Running to develop workout applications for the tech. |
null | Carly Page | 2,022 | 3 | 31 | null |
YouTube may be getting a dedicated podcasts homepage | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 3 | 30 | There were already several hints that YouTube was getting more serious about podcasts, after reports indicated the company , Kai Chuk, to lead its efforts in the space and had to popular podcasters to film their shows. Now, a leaked document has unveiled more about YouTube’s plans in this area, pointing to a future podcasts homepage on YouTube.com and other monetization features. The details were , which recently got its hands on an 84-page presentation where YouTube described its podcasts roadmap. Here, the company says it will improve podcast ingestion by piloting the ability to pull in podcast RSS feeds. It also noted it plans to centralize podcasts on a new homepage at YouTube.com/podcasts. The URL doesn’t yet work; but it also doesn’t automatically redirect to the YouTube homepage — which is what it does if you put other random words after the slash. Not surprisingly, Google sees podcasts as a way to expand its advertising business on YouTube. The document suggests YouTube will feature audio ads sold by Google as well as other partners. It mentions the support of “new metrics” designed for audio-first creators and the ability to integrate YouTube data into industry-standard podcast measurement platforms. One page shows brands like Nielsen, Chartable and Podtrac listed as partners. The addition of a new “podcasts” vertical to YouTube would be a logical next step for the company. Over the years, YouTube has highlighted the service’s larger content categories by giving them their own homepages, as back in 2015 and with . Plus, YouTube content helps to power Google’s music streaming service, YouTube Music, which competes with other services like Spotify, where podcasts are a competitive advantage. Spotify has been looking to dominate the podcast advertising market and has made several acquisitions to bring related adtech in-house. As a result, Spotify has since been able to , introduce , launch and . Meanwhile, as a video-centric platform, YouTube has been left out of much of this ad market growth. Podnews didn’t publish the full document and it’s not clear when the document was first produced or distributed, given references to launches that are listed as coming “in 2022” and the mention of Chartable, a company Spotify last month. YouTube didn’t comment to Podnews, per its article. We’ll update if a comment is provided to us. |
Why Nigeria leads the way in YC’s participation in Africa | Tage Kene-Okafor | 2,022 | 3 | 30 | that TechCrunch has covered more African startups in the last year than any period in our history. Many of those companies are Nigerian, and when we look at venture capital data, we can see why. The country had an incredible 2021 as the most active venture capital scene in Africa, collecting more than $1.8 billion, or 34% of the $5 billion raised across the continent, according to , a pan-African VC firm that also tracks investments. The country has posted steady progress in the last three years as the leading African startup market. In 2019, startups based in Nigeria attracted $747 million, or 37% of Africa’s total VC investment. Those numbers decreased to $307 million, or 21% of the continent’s total, the following year, though 2020 was a venture capital year much impacted by outside forces. Thanks in part to a global boom in venture capital activity last year, Nigeria became the first African country to singlehandedly cross the billion-dollar mark while also collecting bragging rights as the preferred destination for mega-investors like Tiger Global and SoftBank. The ample optimism in Nigeria’s tech community and belief that better days are ahead are unsurprising, despite questions around investors’ due diligence and the eyebrow-raising valuations of some of the nation’s startups. Speaking of valuations, no seed-stage company in the country is better priced than . Yesterday, the accelerator graduated its first startup batch featuring its newly revamped terms. The new “standard deal” at YC now features more capital, and prices for Y Combinator graduates are reportedly greater than ever. (Keep in mind that only 10% of the current Y Combinator batch had monthly revenue of more than $50,000 when they were accepted into the program.) Apart from revenue thresholds, the accelerator shared another interesting statistic concerning Nigeria. With 18 startups, it is the first African country to have the third-largest representation when categorized by country. That’s a milestone for Nigeria, yes, but also an indication of how quickly the African startup scene has developed in a short period of time. |
Are plastic bag bans backfiring? | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 3 | 30 | Plastic bags are bad. Ban them from supermarkets, and the problem is solved, right? Right? Turns out, as is often the case, there may be a little bit more to that story. Researchers at the University of Georgia suggest that banning the sale of plastic bags may come with a side-dish of unintended consequences. The new analysis suggests that plastic bag ban policies — while well-intentioned — may end up having the opposite effect. The issue that comes up is that grocery bags are viewed as single-use items, but they often get a (brief) second lease on life as liners for small trash cans. Without the shopping bags available, people look for alternatives — which the researchers suggest means they buy small plastic garbage bags. “We know there is a demand for using plastic bags, and we know, if these policies go into effect, some bags will disappear or will become more costly to get,” said Yu-Kai Huang, a postdoctoral researcher at the UGA Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources. “So, we wanted to see the effectiveness of this policy in reducing bag usage overall.” Previous studies have looked at the effect of bag bans on plastic consumption, but not the combined effects of fees or a bag ban. An environmental economist, Huang used a new way to calculate the effect of either policy while also accounting for variables such as residents’ income levels and an area’s population density, both of which influence the amount of trash generated in a community. Keeping in mind the second life that plastic grocery bags take on in many homes, the team measured plastic trash bag sales in counties with bans or fees in place and compared them to other counties without such policies. The study found California communities with bag policies saw sales of four-gallon trash bags increase by 55%, to 75%, and sales of eight-gallon trash bags increase 87%, to 110%. These results echo earlier studies that also showed increases in sales of smaller plastic trash bags. While sales of smaller garbage bags jumped after policies were implemented, sales of larger 13-gallon trash bags — the size often found in kitchen trash cans in the U.S. — remained more or less unchanged. “Carryout grocery bags were substituted for similar sizes of trash bags before implementing the regulations,” the researchers wrote in the research paper. “After the regulations came into effect, consumers’ plastic bag demand switched from regulated plastic bags to unregulated bags.” If the average plastic bags drawer is anything to go by, most households use far more single-use bags than they have a need for trash bags, so it’s probably fair to say that taxing or banning single-use plastic bags is a net positive. But I found it interesting to remind us that even the best laid plans can have unintended consequences; a truth that appears to be as true in climate policy as it is elsewhere. |
Legendary hackers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek talk cybersecurity and autonomous vehicles at TC Sessions: Mobility 2022 | Kirsten Korosec | 2,022 | 3 | 30 | |
Quantum Machines acquires QDevil to build out its full-stack quantum orchestration platform | Frederic Lardinois | 2,022 | 3 | 30 | , the well-funded Israeli startup that specializes in building control systems for quantum computers, today that it has acquired , a well-known Danish company that specializes in building control hardware for quantum systems. The two companies did not disclose the financial details of the transaction and, according to , the company only raised about €1 million, mostly in the form of grants. But it has become a significant player in the market and counts many of the established quantum computing research institutes and commercial entities as its customers. Quantum Machines founder and CEO Itamar Sivan told me he first met the QDevil team in person at the last in-person March meeting back in 2019 and the companies continued to talk over the course of the next few years. “At some point, we realized that it would be highly impactful to join forces, because their products are actually complementary to ours. And therefore, we can now provide a more comprehensive orchestration platform,” said Sivan. It’s one thing to build a quantum processing unit, after all (or ), but it takes a lot of expertise to then turn that into a complete quantum computer. Quantum Machines One of QDevil’s main products is its , a “high-precision low-noise computer-controlled voltage generator,” as the company describes it. Qubits obviously hate nothing more than noise, so QDevil’s low-noise DAC makes it easier for operators to control their qubits. In addition, QDevil also offers a range of other electronics and specialized components for operating quantum processors. Combined with Quantum Machines’ Pulse Processing Units and software, this will allow the two companies to offer a full-stack solution for orchestrating quantum computers. Sivan also stressed that QDevil has done quite a bit of work on controlling quantum dots, which are an increasingly hot topic in the quantum computing world. “QDevil is one of the premier providers of electronics for quantum computing,” said Dr. , CEO of QDevil. “We’re delighted to join up with Quantum Machines, a company whose mission and goals align so perfectly with our own. Together we will continue to further develop the quantum community in and deliver revolutionary technologies that will make it seamless for companies developing quantum computers to realize the potential of their QPUs.” Sivan also noted that this acquisition brings a lot of new talent to Quantum Machines — and there is only a finite number of PhD physicists with a specialization in quantum mechanics on the market. “It’s an amazing acquisition for us because it’s both the technology, the products, the customer base and the people,” Sivan said. “It’s really all of that. They have accomplished amazing achievements and I can firmly say now that [Quantum Machines] plus QDevil is selling to almost all the players in quantum computing globally — above 90% — including corporates, startups, national labs.” Chances are, this isn’t Quantum Machines’ last acquisition. The company has now raised , so it has a bit of a war chest to acquire smaller companies and build out its platform. We’ll likely see the same play out across the market, given how many small, highly specialized companies there are right now, with a number of larger players trying to build full-stack platforms. “I believe that yes, acquisitions are definitely going to be a strategy for Quantum Machines and, I believe, for other companies as well,” Sivan said. “Because as the value chain forms, I believe that you will see that eventually, there will be layers in the value chain that will be more or less significant.” |
For China bulls like Jim Breyer, Russia ties present ‘geopolitical challenges and questions’ | Connie Loizos | 2,022 | 3 | 8 | China has emerged as one of the most powerful countries in the world. Now, its close ties with Russia — against which the rest of the world has swiftly united since its invasion of Ukraine — have put the world’s most populous country in a precarious position. It’s not so comfortable for foreign proponents of China, either. While many investors with longstanding relationships in the country, such as the private equity firm Carlyle and the venture firm Sequoia Capital, have demonstrated their ongoing commitment to the region — even in the face of the Chinese government’s year-long private-sector crackdown in pursuit of “ ” — China’s ongoing support of the most reviled leader on the globe could potentially prove a step too far for even the country’s most passionate supporters. In a conversation earlier today with Jim Breyer, the famed billionaire VC who has been happily investing in China for the last 17 years — including through numerous funds he has jointly raised with the Chinese venture firm IDG Capital Partners and across bets that have included Baidu, Tencent, Xiaomi, and, more recently, Binance — he sounded concerned about the changing landscape, even as he spoke in characteristically measured tones about what is unfolding in Europe. We’ll have more from that wide-ranging conversation soon, but some quick notes from our chat as it pertains to China are below, edited lightly for length. Doug and I talk about it often. For sure, the last 18 to 24 months in China have been challenging in a number of ways. Cross-border investments and partnerships, about two years ago, completely stopped [whereas for many years] there was strong cross-border investing. My partners and I were the Series A investors in Baidu and Tencent — we were very fortunate — and the Tencent network and the Baidu network in China is extraordinary, with a number of entrepreneurs who have come out of those companies. But now they’re focused on the Chinese domestic market. If you look at what the change has been, it is largely a focus on the Chinese market. There are certain areas like sustainability and health care and medicine that I am personally passionate about, and I’m hopeful that in the future, we can get back to cooperating — at the United States and China level — in areas like sustainability and healthcare and medicine. But for sure, it has become a far more complex environment. The investments that the IDG team is making are in areas like sustainability, healthcare, medicine — and focused on domestic markets. By and large, that’s been a very significant change. I’m very happy to have been part of the investment community for the last 16 years, and I fully am passionate about continuing that for many years. I’m involved with the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management Advisory Board, which is really a wonderful who’s-who list of American executives. I was the chair until a year ago, and Tim Cook is now the chair. We did not get together in China over the last year and a half. That’s been via Zoom. But those meetings will start up again later this year. I was stunned. I’ve known Jack for many years, he’s an extraordinary talent, and I was completely surprised. Simple as that. I think that, if anything, we’re seeing the importance of companies adhering to the “middle of the road” politically. And that’s true in many parts of the world that have prevented mutual cooperation from occurring the way, in some cases, that we were on a path to mutually cooperate. I can’t predict the future of politics in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, China, but [politics] for sure has become a more important factor in terms of how one thinks about global investing. My view is there are some areas that are so important for all of us — again, sustainability, medicine, healthcare — and that’s where I see areas of real cooperation and hope. I’m optimistic that we will find more and more ways to cooperate around the world, but for sure, it’s extraordinarily challenging right now. Well, of course. I think there are a number of challenges. I’m on the board of Blackstone; I speaking to you from the Blackstone offices here in New York. [There are many] geopolitical challenges and questions. Within China, the vast majority of investments that we’ve made over the last 18 to 24 months in the areas of healthcare, medicine and sustainability — themes that are global and fundamentally important and that be the set of themes for the Chinese investments. In the U.S., [my firm has] for the last six years gone very deep and very big in artificial intelligence and now in quantum technologies. And my belief is the U.S. is the world leader and will only accelerate its lead in and around areas like artificial intelligence and quantum technologies. Europe has become a big challenge, of course, with all that’s going on with the huge slowdown in a number of the European economies. There are a number of fintech investments I’ve made in Europe. I see growth there but also a significant slowing of what the revenue growth will be this year and next due to a lot of what we’re currently all experiencing firsthand with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. You may remember, but my parents were born and raised in Hungary. In 1956, they were students in Budapest. The Russian tanks entered Budapest, they spent six months in Vienna at the University of Vienna, and then my mom and dad came to the United States in 1957. I’m a huge believer in immigrants being phenomenal entrepreneurs and leaders, and a huge believer that [entrepreneurship] is best accomplished in the United States of any area. |
E-bike subscription service Dance adds new cities and mopeds | Romain Dillet | 2,022 | 3 | 8 | After raising a few months ago, Berlin-based startup is expanding its electric bike subscription service to a handful of new cities. In addition to Berlin, people living in Hamburg, Munich, Vienna and Paris will be able to rent an e-bike for a fixed monthly price. Dance isn’t just another e-bike manufacturer; the company designed e-bikes specifically to rent to customers. The Dance One has integrated lights, a carbon belt, hydraulic discs and a smartphone mount on the handlebar. You can unlock the battery to charge it at home without having to bring your bike inside. Customers can reserve their own Dance bike for €79 per month, which includes both theft protection and repairs. When there’s something wrong with your bike, you can schedule a repair over the next 24 hours. That’s part of the reason why Dance is limited to a handful of cities. The startup doesn’t plan to stop at e-bikes, though. The company’s goal is to accelerate urban mobility changes with a complete offering. That’s why Dance has quietly acquired , an electric moped leasing company based in Berlin. Terms of the acquisition remain undisclosed, though Rollich founder Felix Schaar is joining Dance. Essentially, Dance wants to focus on moving people across cities. Lighter vehicles, such as electric mopeds and bikes, combined with services should help when it comes to congestion and urban pollution. “Our goal at Dance has always been to spark a global movement towards creating safer, more livable cities by offering a flexible and convenient way to travel,” co-founder and CEO Eric Quidenus-Wahlforss said in a statement. “Now is the right time: with increased cycling infrastructure, public discourse and political will across Europe to create more sustainable cities, we can help more people choose a more sustainable commute.” Dance Dance is partnering with NIU for its mopeds. It sounds like Dance is mostly rebranding existing NIU mopeds and integrating them with its service. Mopeds will only be available in Germany for now. There’s another new vehicle in the lineup, as you can see in the photo at the top of the article, which looks like an ad for car-free cities with a car-ad budget. Dance is introducing a low-step variant of its . It works pretty much like its existing e-bike, but with a different frame that’s more suitable for shorter people. While Dance originally focused on no-commitment plans, customers can now choose to pay for a yearly subscription and get a small rebate. E-bikes now cost €79 per month, or €59 per month if you’re willing to pay for a yearly subscription. Mopeds cost €119 per month, or €89 per month with a 12-month plan. Right now, plans are a bit cheaper due to introductory prices. Finally, Dance wants to address the B2B market with a new Dance for Business offering. This service isn’t designed for quick-commerce or food delivery companies. Instead, companies can leverage Dance for Business to offer the option to get an e-bike as an employee benefit. This is a smart move as many companies already pay for public transportation passes. The ability to choose between a public transportation pass and an e-bike would be nice for many employees. Dance |
Indian food delivery giant Swiggy eyes $1 billion IPO | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 3 | 8 | Indian food delivery giant Swiggy has hired bankers as it gears up for an initial public offering next year, a source familiar with the matter said. The startup, which was in January this year, is looking to raise as much as $1 billion in the IPO, which it plans to file as early as the first half of next year, the source said, requesting anonymity as the deliberations are ongoing and details are private. Swiggy IPO’s timing and just how much money it wishes to raise from the public market are likely to change depending on market conditions and other factors, the source cautioned, adding that the startup will be raising at least one more large financing round before the IPO. The startup — which counts Prosus Ventures, Accel and SoftBank among its backers — has hired JP Morgan and ICICI Securities in recent weeks to run its books for the IPO, the source said. The startup is likely to add a couple more investment banks in the coming months. The fact that Swiggy — whose chief rival, Zomato, — is eyeing for an IPO has been apparent for some time. It has told several investors in recent quarters that it is gearing up for an IPO. Several late-stage and pre-IPO investors, such as Invesco, IIFL AMC Late Stage Fund and Axis Growth, invested in the startup’s most recent financing round. Swiggy has also been working to improve its finances, and by the quarter that ended in September last year, it had fully recovered from the pandemic’s losses. It’s also gearing up to make some acquisitions and large investments; the startup is in talks to acquire restaurant reservation app Dineout, according to one person familiar with the matter. (Indian news outlet Inc42 about the talks.) “Since the start of the financial year, Swiggy has focused on recovery by reactivating users, increasing monthly frequency, and returning user conversion to pre-Covid-19 levels. This strategy paid off as Swiggy reactivated 128,000 restaurants on the platform (100% of pre-Covid-19 level), achieved 1.59 million orders per day, and GMV of $984m, up 69% on the comparable period,” Prosus Ventures shared in its financial report in November. “This growth reflects higher average order values compared to pre-pandemic periods and higher revenues from delivery fees and advertising sales.” Swiggy said in January that it had nearly doubled its food delivery business’ gross order value, and Instamart, its instant delivery service, was on track to reach an annual GMV run rate of $1 billion in the next three quarters. “Our goal is to make Swiggy the platform that 100 million consumers can use 15 times a month. We will continue to invest in our people, products, and partners to create a positive impact on the ecosystem and accelerate the digital transformation in food and grocery delivery and other on-demand services,” Sriharsha Majety, co-founder and chief executive of Swiggy, said in January. At stake is India’s food services market, which is expected to reach $97 billion by March 2026, analysts at Bernstein wrote in a report to clients last year. |
TechCrunch+ roundup: Box unfolds a surprise, robotics pitch tips, BNPL growing pains | Walter Thompson | 2,022 | 3 | 8 | Swedish fintech giant Klarna was doing well before the pandemic, but today, it’s a mega-unicorn: In June 2021, it reached a $45.6 billion valuation after raising $639 million. Much of this growth was fueled by U.S. consumers, which makes sense, considering that most of us still can’t cover a $1,000 emergency expense. Today, BNPL can be used to facilitate the purchase of a pizza oven — or just a single pepperoni pie. Growth is good, but like the James Brown song, : The BNPL leader generated $1.375 billion in 2021 revenue, but it had “a $658 million operating loss and a $709 million net loss,” reported Alex Wilhelm in The Exchange. “It may bear out that Klarna’s high spend in 2021 set the groundwork for a strong 2022, with the company’s cost growth slowing and its revenue growth maintaining pace,” wrote Alex. Smaller competitors like Affirm and Afterpay are in similar straits: Affirm is trading around $35 per share this morning, a long way from its 52-week high of $176.65. Amid shrinking profits for BNPL companies and a cooling stock market, I asked Alex if he expected any consolidation, and he outlined two scenarios: one where smaller players join forces and another where platform fintechs acquire BNPLs to augment their service offerings. “Regardless, with falling BNPL corporate valuations and lots of expensive competition amongst existing players large and small, I suspect that we’ll see at least a handful more tie-ups and acquisitions before the year is out,” he said. “Everyone has cash, and when potential acquisition targets get cheaper, who doesn’t love a deal?” Thanks very much for reading TC+ — have a great week! Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch+
Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch The robotics industry is advancing in leaps and bounds, and if you’ve witnessed the parkour performance by Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robots, you’ll understand that I’m being literal. Even so, founders should be prepared to discuss practical applications, as opposed to simply touting the benefits of their technology. In a recent episode of TechCrunch Live with Agility Robotics co-founder and CTO Jonathan Hurst and Playground Global founding partner Bruce Leak, they looked back at how Agility’s early pitch deck related its impressive tech to the needs and wants of its prospective customers. “From the customer’s point of view, you can see how they’d look at it and say, ‘Oh, I can imagine how this is going to solve my problem,” says Hurst. “It’s not just technically interesting. That’s the transition right there.” Following up on a prior column that looked at corporate venture capital activity in 2021, Anna Heim and Alex Wilhelm interviewed three execs “to look more deeply into why companies are building their own investing arms.” Justin Sullivan / Getty Images Last year, a proxy fight led by a group of activist investors nearly pushed out Aaron Levie, CEO and co-founder of cloud storage company Box. But last quarter, Box reported $233 million in revenue, a year-over-year increase of 17%. “Now that the proxy fight is over, it’s clear that some of the initiatives that Box had been building over the past few years to move further into the true enterprise market are paying off,” said Alan Pelz-Sharpe, principal analyst at Deep Analysis. Yuichiro Chino / Getty Images Six publicly traded enterprise companies released their earnings last week, and each of them (Box, Splunk, Salesforce, Nutantix, Okta, Snowflake) saw strong increases in yearly revenue. The stock market, however, was less enthralled: Four of these six firms saw their share price decline, with Snowflake taking the biggest hit. Alex Wilhelm and Ron Miller pored over the results to find out “if these companies truly warrant the reaction they got, or if Wall Street is just being skittish like the rest of us.” / Getty Images It’s tempting to relax if you’re a founder who’s already received a tranche of funding and have another to look forward to. But when the winds in the private markets are blowing stiff and cold, having a long runway is not your best protection. That’s why some entrepreneurs are looking to pivot now, says Natasha Mascarenhas. “Some may re-prioritize objectives to reduce risk, while others may pursue new, more near-term business models to finally get some revenue in the door,” she writes. |
Even an expensive new Mac couldn’t save Apple’s stock today | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 3 | 8 | It is TechCrunch tradition to look at Apple’s stock price during and after its . Why? Because we enjoy it, and we’re always curious what impact the company’s news has on its actual financial worth. The answer is usually very, little. This may surprise you. After all, Apple details its new hardware and software at its confabs, which means that the goods it intends to sell in the coming quarters are being shown off before investor eyes for the first time. Sure, Apple leaks more than it used to, but that doesn’t mean that everything comes out early — its events are still events. Why don’t investors seem to care about products? It’s a little fuzzy, but data indicates that Apple could launch anything short of a car and still get blanked by the capital classes. Anyway, here’s a chart of Apple’s share price, along with price data from a Very Special Guest: It was a wild day in the markets. Stocks were down! Then they went up! And then they went down! If you watched the ticker-symbol world today, it’s fine to reach for your favorite psychoactive at this point and chill. You deserve it. So, up goes Apple and down goes Intel? Right? There was some hubbub that Intel’s shares fell when Apple announced its M1 Ultra chip, so I charted the two at the same time and asked myself to find the dip afterward, without checking timings from my notes. Good luck, yeah? By the end of regular trading, Intel actually came out ahead. After announced neat new silicon. Is the stock market a meaningless random-number generator? No, not completely. But the above data does help us better understand what the stock market actually is, at least for the largest companies. Namely, it’s a macro-sentiment engine powered by a million vampire computers, unmoved by pedestrian things like new phones, but stirred instead by alchemical analyst expectations and newly announced share buybacks — paid for with debt, natch. While investors paid no attention to what Apple announced today, I paid attention to investors paying attention to what Apple announced today. What follows is my notes sheet (typos and all) from the event, which as you can tell led to a simply brilliant piece of post-beauty poetry: +1.57% at start Naz +2.11% [rebound!] stocks going up, now 1.98% AAPL new iphone colors LOL apple silicon – new daoly high +2.19 Now into the Iphoen and ipad news – back down to 1.77% = naz +2.3% Chips – naz falling some, apple now up just 1.1% Talking chips with randos, now just up 1% — naz 1.27% new Mac Studio – now up jsut 0.66% – naz 1.13 INTEL LOST GROUND AT 1:20 – around chip timing? new max expensive We’ll be back for Apple’s next event with another episode of “Does Anything Matter?” |
Pony.ai to issue recall of autonomous driving software | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 3 | 8 | Autonomous vehicle startup Pony.ai will issue a recall for three vehicles following an October crash in California, according to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA). The agency said on Tuesday that this was the first recall of an automated driving system, . “Whether the vehicle is operated by a human driver or an automated driving system, the need to protect roadway users remains the same,” NHTSA Deputy Administrator Steven Cliff said in a statement. “As this first recall of an automated driving system underscores, NHTSA will ensure that vehicle manufacturers and developers prioritize safety while they usher in the latest technologies.” Toyota-backed Pony.ai had been testing its pilot fleet of 10 Hyundai Kona EVs without a human safety operator in California for several months when one of its vehicles collided with a lane divider and a street sign in Fremont. No other vehicles were involved, and no one was injured, but as well as a formal inquiry from NHTSA. The agency told Pony.ai it believed the software had a safety defect and requested a recall, the startup said in a filing. The software issue in the vehicle that crashed was also found in two other Pony.ai vehicles, all three of which have been repaired, according to the startup. Pony also said it has updated its software code. “This was the first and only time such an incident has occurred in a Pony.ai autonomous vehicle,” a Pony.ai spokesperson told TechCrunch, noting that the startup has completed more than 6 million real-world autonomous driving miles and 305,617 miles driven autonomously in California last year. Pony’s driverless permit will remain suspended until the DMV has verified that the startup has taken appropriate action to correct the deficiency that caused the suspension, an agency spokesperson told TechCrunch. Pony’s drivered testing permit in California remains unaffected. Earlier this week, Pony.ai said its valuation has surged to $8.5 billion after the close of its Series D funding round. While the startup hasn’t had the best of luck in the United States, due to its U.S. trucking division all but dissolving and several key executives leaving to start rival companies, it is steadily building out its trucking and robotaxi business in China. |
Twitter rolls out a new tool for creators to manage their earnings on the platform | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 3 | 8 | Twitter is introducing a new tool for creators called the “Creator Dashboard,” the company on Tuesday. The social media giant says the new tool is designed to help creators analyze how they make money on Twitter and how much they’re earning from monetization features, such as and . Creators can also use the dashboard to search through their payment history and see information about their upcoming payouts. The new dashboard can be accessed from the app’s “Monetization” tab and is available to iOS creators in the United States who have more than 10,000 followers and are participating in Ticketed Spaces and Super Follows. The company’s Super Follows feature allows creators to generate monthly revenue by offering paywalled content to followers who subscribe to them, whereas the Ticketed Spaces feature enables creators and hosts to set a ticket price for their Spaces broadcasts. introducing the Creator Dashboard 🤩 a new way to help you view your earnings & track your Super Follow subscriptions over time for now, we’re testing with some creators on iOS—can’t wait to hear what you think! — Super Follows (@SuperFollows) The Creator Dashboard will display a list of new Super Followers, a list of Super Followers who renewed their subscription and your total estimated earnings through the monetization feature. As for Ticketed Spaces, the dashboard will display information about how many tickets you’ve sold, a list of people who bought tickets and your total estimated earned revenue for each of your Ticketed Spaces. “Twitter is where people go to have conversations about what’s happening, and creators help lead those conversations,” a spokesperson from Twitter told TechCrunch in an email. “With the Creator Dashboard, we are continuing to elevate our commitment to creators on Twitter by giving them a transparent way to better understand their estimated earnings.” The company says it plans to enhance the dashboard in the future and ensure that it becomes a place for creators to find ways to further grow their communities and analyze the money they’re making through the platform. Twitter has been rolling out several new features and tools over the past year to support creators on its platform. Last October, the company began rolling out for businesses and creators. The new profile setting gives users additional tools to distinguish their profile, quickly promote content through ads and capitalize on Twitter’s future . Although Twitter has introduced monetization options for creators, it hasn’t widely introduced different profile types for businesses, which its competitors at , and have already had for a while. Also in October, Twitter launched a for Spaces called the Twitter Spaces Spark Program. The program is a three-month accelerator that aims to reward successful Spaces on Twitter with financial, technical and marketing support. |
Daily Crunch: Discord and Spotify resuming service after widespread outage | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 3 | 8 | Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Tuesday, March 8, 2022! Today was an Apple event day, which means that the larger tech industry ground to a halt to sit ‘round and see what Cupertino cooked up. We have full notes in case you are behind, yeah? And a lot of startup news to boot, so let’s get to work! – The TechCrunch crew has been more than busy in the last 24 hours, so buckle in for a deluge of data. First, however, a few spotlights: Adventuring fintech reporter has been crushing the Better.com beat as the previous public-company candidate implodes. In the latest chapter of its larger layoff saga, another chunk of the consumer mortgage service’s staff was laid off. This time some of them when they got paid severance before the news dropped. Whoops. And the company’s former CFO just , which is taking on the accounts payable market, Mary Ann reports. Yesterday we noted reporting on . Kene-Okafor today that is taking part in Y Combinator’s current batch. It turns out that Bloom, the company in question, is the first startup from Sudan to take part in the U.S. accelerator. has a few notes on the site today that I think we should group. The first is . is the Spanish word for , so you can imagine where the fund is planning on investing! And Mascarenhas . Angelist is perhaps best known these days for helping birth the rolling-fund boom, so the company that helps other people raise money to invest just raised money to invest in itself. Neat. / Getty Images It’s tempting to relax if you’re a founder who’s already received a tranche of funding and have another to look forward to. But when the winds in the private markets are blowing stiff and cold, having a long runway is not your best protection. That’s why some entrepreneurs are looking to pivot now, says Natasha Mascarenhas. “Some may re-prioritize objectives to reduce risk, while others may pursue new, more near-term business models to finally get some revenue in the door,” she writes. And as I am low on word count, let’s squeeze in a few things quickly: Instagram is ; Meta ; . |
Instagram warns users who share Russian state media, hides following lists in Russia and Ukraine | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,022 | 3 | 8 | Instagram announced Tuesday that it would implement steps to dampen Russian government propaganda and protect the privacy of users across Ukraine and Russia. The company will begin from Russian state-affiliated media, placing any stories from those outlets below other content from other sources. Users who go to share stories originating with any of these accounts will now see a pop-up message cautioning them against spreading “Russia state-controlled media.” “Instagram believes the account that created this post may be partially or wholly under the editorial control of the Russian government,” the message reads. Instagram Users who share stories with link stickers pointing to domains associated with Russian state media will get the same treatment. Content from Russian state-linked accounts will also no longer appear in Instagram’s algorithmically populated discovery areas, like Reels and the discovery tab, and Instagram says that it also won’t show up as readily in search either. Instagram’s efforts to stem the flow of state-backed disinformation about the Russian invasion of Ukraine follows Facebook’s own parallel efforts. Facebook announced last week that it would similarly attempt to bury Russian state media . At the time, Meta Head of Security Policy Nathaniel Gleicher said the labels were on the way “in the days ahead.” Instagram is also adding a new privacy measure for some users based in Ukraine and Russia. Now, private accounts based in those countries will have their following and follower lists private and their mutual friend lists hidden, adding a layer of protection that obscures real-life social connections. Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta previously announced that it would make to all adult users in Ukraine and Russia and make it easy for accounts in those countries to bulk delete content and activity. |
Meta’s NPE Team launches a new tasks app, Move, for group organization and to-dos | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 3 | 8 | Meta’s internal R&D group known as NPE Team just launched a new social app, , designed for both personal and group to-do lists. The app allows people, including individuals or groups organizing around a project, to create to-do lists and send out nudges and reminders for items that still need to be completed. However, unlike traditional to-do apps, Move gamifies the experience by allowing users to earn points for tasks that are completed which in turn allows them to customize an alpaca avatar with accessories like hats, clothing, sunglasses and more. The idea, apparently, is to encourage group participation, as the avatar’s customization allows users to see which group members are the most productive. That is, if your avatar has no accessories, then it’s clear you haven’t participated in the group’s project yet. This could serve as a subtle form of social pressure to get more involved. Meta confirmed Move is still a small, early test from the company’s New Product Experimentation (NPE) team, which it imagines could be used for things like community initiatives or class projects. It sees the app as a sort of “social tasking” tool, which makes a group’s to-dos both easier to access and more transparent. Ahead of the launch, the app was tested with a small group of community organizers for early feedback. The company suggests Move could be used for student group projects, sorority or fraternity projects, roommate to-do lists, neighborhood groups, community projects or even personal to-do lists or family chores. Meta’s NPE Team has been to take a more global focus, rather than trying to create the next new social experience. So far, Meta has in an AI-powered developer platform for building virtual characters, Inworld AI, and has been working on other non-social apps, like one that would help the formerly incarcerated re-enter society, and another for LGBTQ families who were on a journey to become parents. NPE’s change in strategy also included plans to invest in small, entrepreneurial teams, the company said. Task’s launch seems to indicate the group hasn’t entirely given up on social projects, but we understand the app had been in development ahead of NPE’s in focus this past December. The app is currently available in the U.S. as a free download. There are no in-app payments or subscriptions required. Meta says it will be looking to learn more from this initial release. |
Apple’s brand new 27-inch Studio Display is basically a bodiless iMac | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 3 | 8 | Apple today launched a $1,599 display that packs a processor, high-quality speakers, a microphone array, a high-quality camera, three USB-C ports and 96 watts of power delivery over Thunderbolt. Oh, and it has a screen, too. The Cupertino company has had a curious and checkered history with displays, launching and then forgetting about a series of options over the years. The and the both lifted their collective heads over the parapets, only to immediately be relegated to obscurity, with extremely slow update cycles, underwhelming specs and extortionate prices. was launched a couple of years ago, and while it had a hell of a spec, with a 32-inch Retina 6K resolution and ultra-high contrast, it also carried a $4,999 price tag for the standard glass version, and an eye-watering $5,999 for the nano-texture glass version that reduces reflections. The Apple Studio Display is aimed at a very different audience, and with a $1,599 price tag it isn’t exactly pocket change, but it does something really important. Pair it with the freshly launched , and it finally decouples the screen from the computer. For a company that likes to shout about its environmental chops, it’s about damn time… The number of iMacs I’ve sold because the processor is slow as winter molasses while the screen is still in perfect shape has been a source of infinite frustration. Being able to upgrade just the screen or just the brains of the workstation, while staying within the Apple ecosystem, has been a long time coming. The new display is fantastically impressive on paper. It includes a 12mpx ultra-wide camera that supports “center stage”, meaning it can follow you around the room as you pace around doing your Steve Jobsian keynote presentations. It’s the same camera Apple has been using on its iPads. It includes a three-microphone array that makes audio clearer than ever before and can use filtering tech to reduce the audio you don’t want to include. It has a six-speaker sound system that Apple describes as the best speakers it has ever shipped. The chip integrated into the screen means that the display can split out the multi-channel surround sound and create a more immersive experience than if you just plug in a set of stereo speakers. The system also supports spatial audio for audio and music with Dolby Atmos. The display includes a three-port USB-C hub running at 10gps for attaching high-speed accessories such as hard drives and recording devices, and there’s a Thunderbolt port that can supply 96W worth of power, which means that you can charge the full range of Apple laptops directly from your display. Oh, yeah, and it has a screen, too. It packs in a 27-inch 5K retina display with 600 nits of brightness and an extra-wide color gamut. Its specs look suspiciously similar to those on the current-gen iMacs. The screen includes an all-aluminum enclosure, and Nano glass, which reduces reflections, is available as an option, as are various stands and mounting options, including a VESA mount option. |
Here’s everything Apple announced at today’s ‘Peek Performance’ event | Greg Kumparak | 2,022 | 3 | 8 | It’s Apple event day! Apple / Apple Apple’s more wallet-friendly iPhone, the iPhone SE, is getting an upgrade: it’ll now run A15 Bionic (the same chip as the iPhone 13), which means it can handle things like live text (copying real-world text from your camera view). It now offers up 5G support, and promises “better” battery life. Meant largely for the folks who miss things from the iPhones of yesteryear, it’s still got a home button (with fingerprint reader), and a 4.7″ display (now with the same more durable glass featured on iPhone 13). It’ll start at $429, shipping March 18. Apple Apple IPad Air is going M1, with Apple’s custom-built silicon (first found in its laptop lineup) making its way to this latest generation. Also making its way to the Air is Center Stage, which allows the wide-angle front-facing camera to pan around the room to automatically keep your face centered during video calls. This latest gen of iPad Air will start at $599, and start shipping on March 18. Apple Apple’s got more new silicon! Rather than jumping from M1 to M2, though, they’re expanding the M1 line with the “M1 Ultra” — so there’s now M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max and M1 Ultra. It’s basically two M1 Max bridged together in a way that looks like one chip to the OS, bringing ridiculous performance with ultra-high efficiency. . But where will they put this thing? First, it’s heading to the all new… Apple At 7.7×7.7×3.7 inches, the Mac Studio looks like a Mac Mini that… isn’t quite so Mini. Apple says this new machine, thanks to M1 Ultra, is 2.5x faster on the CPU front than the fastest 27-inch iMac, and 50% faster than a Mac Pro with a 16 core Xeon processor. On the back: four Thunderbolt 4/USB-C ports, 10-gigabit ethernet port, HDMI port, two USB-A ports and an audio jack. On the front: two more USB-C ports, and an SD slot. The Mac Studio will start at $1,999 with an M1 Max, with that starting price shooting up to $3,999 if you want that shiny new M1 Ultra. Starts shipping March 18. . Apple Apple Been waiting for a new Apple display? Their newest, now called the Studio Display, is a 27-inch 5K display. It’s got an ultra-wide 12 megapixel camera (with center stage support) built-in, a three-mic array, and a six-speaker sound system with spatial audio support. It’s got 3 USB-C ports on the back, plus one thunderbolt port. Apple says it’ll have multiple different mounting options: a tilting stand, a tilt/height adjustable stand and a VESA-mount option. The Studio Display will start at $1,599. Like everything else, it’ll start shipping on March 18. . Apple Apple |
Apple TV+ to stream weekly Major League Baseball games in its first live sports deal | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 3 | 8 | Following that Apple was on an “aggressive hunt” for new sports deals for its Apple TV+ streaming service, Apple today announced it was bringing a number of Major League Baseball games exclusively to Apple TV+. The company said fans will be able to tune into two games on Friday night during the regular season, which will also include a pregame and postgame show. The games and shows will be available in eight countries, according to a joint by Apple and MLB today. This includes the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, South Korea and the U.K. Apple said it expects to expand the offering to more countries at a later date. In addition to what Apple has dubbed “Friday Night Baseball,” U.S. fans will also be able to tune in to a new live show called “MLB Big Inning,” which will feature highlights and look-ins and will air every night during the regular reason. And fans in both the U.S. and Canada will gain access to a new 24/7 livestream with MLB game replay, news, analysis, highlights, classic games and more, as well as on-demand programming that includes highlights and other original MLB content. The games and shows will stream across the Apple TV+ service, where they won’t be subject to local broadcast restrictions, Apple notes. The Apple TV+ works across devices, including Apple’s own iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV and website at tv.apple.com, as well as other game consoles, smart TV and some cable set-top boxes through partner deals. Notably, the MLB games will serve as a way to attract users to the Apple TV+ streaming service. Apple says the games will be available on the service “for a limited time” without a need for a subscription. (The company would not clarify in a later briefing how long this “limited time” would last.) “Just like all baseball fans, we can’t wait for the season to open,” said Peter Stern, Apple’s vice president of Services, in a statement. “Baseball has a special place in the heart of so many Apple customers — not just in the United States, but in many countries around the world. We’re proud to make Apple TV+ the home for great baseball moments throughout the season.” As a part of the new deal, Apple and MLB will also provide enhanced league and team coverage for fans to follow in the Apple News app, which will offer a way to watch highlights, as well. The news was announced during Apple’s live event on Tuesday, where the company had showcased the latest updates for iPhone, iPad and Mac. that Apple was in discussions with MLB for live sports had circulated last month. Other suitors included NBC Sports — its parent was interested in adding more sports content on its own streaming service, Peacock, which the deal would have allowed. The deal value had been in the $100-150 million range, had said. (Update: a report by on March 9, 2022 said the deal value was actually worth $85 million annually over seven years.) Apple and MLB have worked closely together in previous years, as MLB was often an early adopter of new Apple technology, like , or services, like or . Apple also had once partnered with MLB to . “Apple is the ideal partner to bring ‘Friday Night Baseball’ to fans around the world,” said Noah Garden, MLB’s chief revenue officer, in an announcement. “Following milestones like the launch of At Bat on day one of the App Store in 2008 to the integration of Apple technology in ballparks across the country, this robust new game package is the perfect next collaboration in our long history of offering quality and innovative content to our fans. With national availability and international reach, MLB on Apple TV+ offers an exciting new platform to fans that allows a wider audience to connect with the game,” he said. |
Spotify bounces back as Discord hobbles back online after outage | Jordan Crook | 2,022 | 3 | 8 | Spotify and Discord both appear to be down. TechCrunchers and the Twittersphere alike are experiencing difficulty logging in to Spotify. Folks are reporting on Twitter that opening the Spotify app on mobile leads to a login flow, but even the correct username and password results in a failed attempt to in fact log in. The music streaming company confirmed the issue on Twitter: Something’s not quite right, and we’re looking into it. Thanks for your reports! — Spotify Status (@SpotifyStatus) Discord confirmed it’s also experiencing an issue that affects message delivery/receipt. We’re aware of an issue causing message failures and are working on a fix. Apologies for the disruption & thx for hanging tight! — Discord (@discord) We’ve reached out to Spotify and Discord to learn more about the issue and will update when we hear back. In the meantime, you could always check out the , or… Enjoy these tweets about Spotify going down: Spotify logged me out … Discord won’t load … will Apple stop at nothing to get me to watch this B-tier keynote — Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) live footage of the ppl at spotify headquarters rn — tea ✵ 📌 (@C4STAMERE) me pretending that spotify doesnt exist so it can come back faster — 📨 (@heartsdaIe) why is spotify gaslighting me into thinking i don’t know my own password — 👒 (@taylorismother) Spotify responded and basically pointed us . So we’ll keep watching Twitter. Actual response: We’re aware of the issue and have posted an update on . We’ll post another update when things are back to normal. At 2:39pm ET, about an hour after reports started flooding in that Spotify had gone down, @SpotifyStatus said everything seems to be back up and running. Everything’s looking much better now! Give a shout if you still need help. — Spotify Status (@SpotifyStatus) Spotify told TechCrunch directly that they’re still investigating the root cause of the issue, but that they have no reason to believe it was caused by a malicious hacker. Here’s the official statement provided: Spotify and several other platforms experienced a brief service outage today beginning around 1:15pm EST. As of 2:40pm EST Spotify is back up and functioning normally for most users. You can check @SpotifyStatus for any additional updates. Discord is also coming back online, with a few straggling features. Discord is back up and running for messages, calls, and streams! We are still working on a few things like attachments and typing events, but those should come back online soon. Thanks for the patience everyone~ — Discord (@discord) |
null | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 3 | 30 | null |
Apple launches the M1 Ultra | Frederic Lardinois | 2,022 | 3 | 8 | Apple today announced the launch of its new M1 chip at its “ ” event: the M1 Ultra. This chip, Apple said, is the last one in the M1 family, which previously included the M1, M1 Pro and M1 Max. The Ultra is based on two M1 Max dies that use an existing, but apparently dormant, connection on the existing M1 Max chip. This interconnect allows for 2.5TB/s of bandwidth between the two chips. Apple calls this “Ultra Fusion,” because that’s how Apple names things. Since it’s two M1 Max chips combined, it’s no surprise the Ultra version features twice as many CPU and GPU cores. That’s 20 CPU cores — 16 high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores — and 64 GPU cores. The chip can support up to 128GB of unified memory. There’s also a 32-core Neural Engine for machine learning workloads. All of this adds up to 114 billion transistors. All of this, Apple says, should make the Ultra eight times faster than the M1, while the chip still beats even 10-core desktop chips in CPU performance per watt, both in terms of CPU and GPU. Apple didn’t say which desktop chips it is comparing the M1 Ultra to, though. Apple launched When it launched in 2020, the 8-core M1 made its debut in the Mac mini, Macbook Air and MacBook Pro. Apple then followed this up with the significantly more powerful and chips, with up to 10-core CPUs, 32-core GPUs and support for 64GB of unified memory (unlike the original M1, which topped out at 16GB). Those chips made their debut in the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros. The M1 Ultra will make its debut in the new Mac Studio. Chances are, we’ll see Apple introduce M2 Pros and Max chips at a later event, assuming the company sticks to this naming scheme going forward. |
Apple releases iPad Air 5 with M1 processor, positioning it as a laptop replacement | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 3 | 8 | At Apple’s event today, the company released a shiny new iPad Air. It packs the M1 Apple Silicon chip into the iPad Air form factor we know and love. Apple’s choice of using the M1 processor, rather than its A15 chips, shows that the iPad has aspirations as a laptop replacement, rather than just being an overgrown iPhone. This is the same type of chip that we have in the iPad Pro. The iPad Air 5 includes a 12mpx ultra-wide camera, meaning that the entire iPad line now supports , which essentially adds a camera operator to your video calls. “This is the same M1 chip that we brought to iPad Pro, and the 8-core design of the CPU delivers up to 60% faster performance over the A14 in the previous generation of iPad Air,” announced Angelina Kyazike, Engineering Program Manager, iPad. “The 8-core GPU delivers amazing graphics performance — up to twice as fast in fact, M1 in the new iPad Air makes it faster than the fastest competitive tablet, and the new Air is up to two times faster than the best-selling Windows laptop in its price range.” Angelina Kyazike, Engineering Program Manager for the iPad shows off the new iPad Air 5. The new iPad packs a 5G chip, a faster USB-C port than before and supports Apple Pencil. It’s powered by the iPadOS version of iOS, which enables better multitasking than before, packing a frankly ridiculous amount of power into a device at an incredible price point. IPad Air supports the Smart Keyboard Folio and Magic Keyboard, adding the additional functionality laptop users need to turn the iPad Air into a functional laptop. As a climate fan, I’m encouraged to see Apple continue its commitment to sustainability. The new Air has 100% recycled aluminium in the enclosure, and is using a number of recycled materials in things like the solder of the logic board, etc. All small things, but they make a difference. The new device is available in a weird rainbow of colors; “space gray”, “starlight”, “pink”, “purple” and “blue”. It keeps the same price point as the previous iPad Air — $599 — and is available to order from Friday, and starts shipping on March 18. |
TechCrunch reacts to the new iPhone SE with glee | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 3 | 8 | While the TechCrunch team is hunkered down , we’re taking a short break from our more serious coverage to share our real-time reactions to . After Tim “Apple” Cook announced the new piece of hardware, our Slack room for the event had an immediate, and immediately positive, reaction. So, if you wanted to know what TechCrunch is saying behind the scenes, here’s a look at our first take: Haje, naturally, made a word joke. I lost my mind about the iPhone feature I miss the most, and both Devin and Zack scrambled for their wallets. Consider this a riposte to the general vibe that tech journalists only want phablet-style megaliths with 17 cameras and the rest of the usual cruft. Mostly phones are for Twitter and avoiding email. So who doesn’t want a smaller, simpler device? Call it . |
Apple introduces a brand new Mac, the Mac Studio | Romain Dillet | 2,022 | 3 | 8 | Apple announced a handful of new products in a pre-recorded online event. And the company announced a brand new desktop computer called the Mac Studio. It’s a small tower computer that looks a bit like two Mac Mini computers stacked on top of each other. It has an SD card slot and two Thunderbolt 4 ports at the front. Half of the interior is occupied with the thermal system to keep the system cool during heavy load. At the back of the device, you’ll find an additional four Thunderbolt 4 ports, a 10 Gbps Ethernet port, two USB Type-A ports, an HDMI port and a “pro” audio jack port. It supports Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5. The Mac Studio features Apple’s own systems on a chip, including the newly announced . The M1 Ultra is an even faster variant of the M1 chip — it’s more powerful than the M1, M1 Pro and M1 Max. And this new chip lets you do a lot of things. For instance, you can connect up to four Pro XDR displays a 4K TV. Apple The Mac Studio comes with an M1 Max or an M1 Ultra system on a chip, and Apple shared some performance charts for the Mac Studio with the M1 Ultra. With the M1 Max, you can expect 3.4x faster GPU performance compared to the Radeon Pro W5700X in the Mac Pro. You can expect a 90% jump in computing performance compared to the 16-core Mac Pro. If you max out the existing Mac Pro, the M1 Ultra is supposed to be 80% faster than the fastest Mac Pro. And it supports up to 128GB of memory. The M1 Max is limited to 64GB of memory. The Mac Studio with an M1 Max chip, 32GB of unified memory and 512GB of storage costs $1,999. The Mac Studio with an M1 Ultra chip, 64GB of unified memory and 1TB of storage costs $3,999. They’ll be available on March 18. Apple Apple |
The iPhone SE returns for $429 | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 3 | 8 | Two years after reviving the line, Apple’s bringing the SE back for another go. The iPhone’s little sibling won support when it was unveiled in 2018 as a low-cost alternative to the flagship smartphone. The line is a way of keeping the iOS software fresh, while maintaining lower price points through older designs and some last-gen components. For those who’ve lost the Apple design thread post-iPhone X, it’s a welcome way to maintain a more classic design. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s a way to stay in the Apple ecosystem in an age when flagships routinely top $1,000. The new handset arrives with an upgraded chip — the A15 bionic, the same chip found on the company’s latest flagship, iPhone 13. That’s coupled with the arrival of 5G, bringing the latest cellular technology to the entire line. As expected, the new version of the budget device sticks to the old glass and aluminum design, built around a 4.7-inch Retina HD display (a decided downgrade from the iPhone 13). The device is IP67 water resistant and — perhaps most notably — retains its Touch ID button, which has been long gone from the premium Face ID-sporting devices. The battery has been improved over the last model, though it’s not entirely clear whether that’s an upgrade in capacity or simply a result of the new chip. Apple The camera gets upgraded with a 12-megapixel lens, coupled with a number of computational photography upgrades that come along with that new chip. That includes improved skin tone shots and reduced noise in photos. Like the battery, this is likely more a direct result of the new chip versus any major hardware upgrade. Apple Software is a big reason to buy the new phone, versus just going with a similarly specced old unit. As such, the company notes that the new device will continue to get iOS updates for “years to come.” The handset is still easily the cheapest in the iPhone family, though it gets a bump over the $399 of the last generation. This one starts at a (still reasonable) $429. It goes up for preorder this Friday and will hit stores March 18. |
AngelList Venture takes on rare capital at a $4 billion valuation | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 3 | 8 | After seven years since its last financing round, AngelList Venture has raised new capital, according to sources familiar with the matter. The company announced in a that it has raised a $100 million Series B led by Tiger and Accomplice at a $4 billion valuation. TechCrunch has reached out for further comment. AngelList Venture is also opening up a community round, raised on the platform itself, for GPs who have made an investment with them over the past year, the blog post stated. The fresh capital comes after a massive launch spree from the company, which spent the pandemic beefing up its founder-focused services through rolling funds, roll-up vehicles, AngelList Stack and even a new $25 million fund . Plus, it’s adding more capital as it supports more capital. Per data provided by the company, the startup supported 11,300 startup investments last year, up from 3,800 the year prior. It also grew to hold $10 billion in assets, up from $3 billion the year prior. A question I’ve had for AngelList, for years now, is why not raise venture to meet demand amid and burgeoning startup formation across the world? It’s the exact question I posed to CEO Avlok Kohli last month when we spoke. He responded with their thesis on hiring. Kohli said that the company has intentionally kept headcount small so as to limit red tape, and continue to prioritize a high employee to impact ratio. “We’re growing very, very quickly and our expenses are growing linearly, so we actually have very strong leverage on the financing,” Kohli then said. “That’s the reason why we’ve been in a very different position to be able to continue to grow without needing to take on VC funding.” He added: “We haven’t had to raise another round of funding, but to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with it: some companies just need capital, sometimes they’re in a race to grow very quickly because it’s a winner take all mentality and the characteristics of that market.” A counterpoint to his answer is that raising venture isn’t just used for race purposes, it is also used to pursue new opportunities and acquire competitive intelligence. Kohli said he wasn’t compromising, he was just focused on keeping AngelList Venture at a high shipping velocity. “I think ultimately, companies that raise typically also increase headcount pretty significantly,” he said. “You get slower as you grow, and that’s actually really tough for a technology company, because if your entire focus is on shipping velocity and shipping great product, growing headcount is actually counter to that.” So, if the capital isn’t for headcount, what is it for? AngelList has told me that they’ve considered taking on some acquisitions in the past, but talks have never gotten to a serious point. It could be for research and development, new funds or, heck, if they want me to stop guessing and just tell me, |
Accel announces new $650 million fund to back Indian startups | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 3 | 1 | Accel has announced its seventh India fund, with $650 million to invest as the storied venture investor looks to double down on its bet on the world’s second-largest internet market and also be more aggressive in the Southeast Asia region, two partners told TechCrunch in an interview. The unveiling of the new fund, whose first set of checks are expected to be wired within weeks, comes less than two and a half years after Accel . The Silicon Valley venture capital firm, one of the earliest investors in India, has a large portfolio of unicorn startups in the South Asian country. Some of its notable investments include backing Flipkart, which sold a majority stake to Walmart in 2018; Freshworks, which went public last year; top food delivery startup Swiggy; institutional crypto trading and management platform FalconX; used-car marketplace Spinny; online learning platform Vedantu; and business-to-business marketplaces Zetwerk, Infra.Market and Moglix. In the vast majority of its backings, Accel is the first institutional investor in a startup, said Shekhar Kirani, a partner at Accel. For instance, it participated in the seed financing round of e-commerce firm Flipkart, which was then valued at $4 million post-money. Walmart bought a majority stake in Flipkart for $16 billion. (This helped Accel net more than $1 billion in return from Flipkart, which is now valued at over $36 billion.) Some of the firm’s top-performing startups put together have exceeded $100 billion in valuation, he said. Kirani, who has been with the firm for a decade, especially credited the emergence of railroads such as the payments infrastructure UPI and taxation system GST for propelling the growth of the Indian startup in the past decade. The Indian economy, he projected, will surpass the growth seen in the past decade within a few years. The firm plans to be more aggressive in certain sectors, including web3 and business-to-business marketplaces, said Barath Subramanian, another partner at Accel. The firm, which began investing in Southeast Asia a few years ago, also plans to be more aggressive in the region with the new fund, they said. Accel today competes with — or as its partners would say, collaborates with — many peer U.S. funds, including Sequoia Capital India and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Unlike many of its rivals, Accel has demonstrably been more conservative, writing few checks and backing away from startups if they don’t think they can work with the founders. “We have to work with a startup for 10 years. It’s very important for us to know that we all can work together,” he said. A lot has changed in the Indian startup ecosystem since Accel first arrived in the country. Local firms , up from a few million dollars from a decade ago. But signs are emerging that investors may have been too optimistic in how they priced some startups in recent quarters. Tiger Global, Alpha Wave Global and SoftBank were very aggressive in India last year. The former two won many deals because of the valuation and amount of capital they offered to startups. The firms also claimed some deals because they did not fight for many future rights. In recent months, as , many investors are beginning to become more conservative again, putting back the future rights and cutting valuations. “The public market usually sets the tone for private market because eventually all these startups have to go public and have to list at the right valuations. The public market in 2019, 20, and 21 went through the roof in terms of multiples and you saw its reflection in the private market,” he said. “That valuation multiple also benefited our startups as well. But the only thing I would say is that if you look at our companies, they are all good, durable-unit-economics companies and not fluffy-without-revenue companies. So we have been very cautious and careful as we have been traditionally very conservative. We don’t like our founders go gaga over valuations and keep raising money,” he said. |
Gopuff officially launches its instant delivery service in France | Romain Dillet | 2,022 | 3 | 1 | After launching its service in the U.K. , Gopuff is officially expanding to Europe starting with France. In addition to the Paris area, the instant grocery delivery service is now live in Marseille, Lille and Toulouse. There are more European countries on the company’s road map, such as Spain. For today’s market launch, the company is taking advantage of its which had already soft-launched its service in France before Gopuff acquired the European startup. Gopuff has a ton of cash on hand — it last year and is of raising $1.5 billion. Just like in other markets, the company operates a network of 20 dark stores with around 4,000 different products. Customers can order groceries, household essentials, alcohol, ice cream, diapers, iPhone chargers — you name it. Gopuff also tries to partner with local brands to customize its offering to local customers. In France, it means that you’ll find fresh baguettes from La Parisienne as well as beers from La Fédération Française de l’Apéritif. In France, Gopuff will compete with quite a few companies in the space, such as Flink, Gorillas, Getir, Zapp, Cajoo and more. And yet, in an interview with TechCrunch, Gopuff’s co-founder and co-CEO, Yakir Gola, was quite confident in his company’s ability to execute well and become a market leader. “The reason why we’ve expanded to Europe is because the customers have demanded it,” he told me. “We only come into a market once we’re really ready to win.” He said Gopuff in particular has the best technology stack — both on the consumer side and rider side — to operate this kind of service at scale. It also has quite a big team already, with 2,000 people working for Gopuff in Europe — in France alone, there are 600 Gopuff employees. When asked about the company’s performance in the U.K., its first foray outside of the U.S., Gopuff is satisfied with its current growth rate. “We’re probably close to becoming the number one from a ‘daily new users’ perspective in the U.K.,” Gola said. While instant delivery companies generate a ton of headlines from their big funding rounds, Gopuff thinks it isn’t successful because it has raised a lot of money. It can close big rounds it is working well. “If you look at a market like Philadelphia, we have a double-digit penetration of the market — double-digit percentage of the people living there are Gopuff customers. But the market is also growing by double-digit rates year on year,” Gola said. “We can take the profits from existing markets and reinvest them into new markets like Europe,” he said earlier in the interview. There are many challenges ahead for this nascent industry. In addition to heated competition, some local governments have been working on against instant delivery services. “The approach that we have taken as Gopuff — as a market leader — is a very different approach. Considering what we’ve done in the U.S., we’ve been very proactive with local governments,” Gola said. He admitted that Gopuff is trying to profoundly transform the grocery sector. “Look, we’re disruptors,” he said, adding that Gopuff is making the world a better place. “We’re changing people’s lives for the better and we’re doing it in the right way by partnering with neighborhoods.” |
BharatPe founder Ashneer Grover siphoned off money, Indian startup says | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 3 | 1 | BharatPe co-founder Ashneer Grover and his relatives engaged in “extensive misappropriation of company funds” and “siphoned [off] money,” the Indian fintech startup said, citing a review by independent advisers, the latest in a series of strange turns and public drama at one of the fastest-growing firms in the country. The disclosure came a day after Grover . “The Grover family and their relatives engaged in extensive misappropriation of company funds, including, but not limited to, creating fake vendors through which they siphoned money away from the company’s expense account and grossly abused company expense accounts in order to enrich themselves and fund their lavish lifestyles,” the startup said Wednesday, adding that it reserves rights to take “further legal action against him and his family.” The board of BharatPe, a three-year-old startup that helps millions of merchants accept money digitally and provides them with credit, directed a thorough review of the company’s internal controls in January this year after receiving complaints, it said. “I am appalled at the personal nature of the company’s statement, but not surprised,” Grover said in a statement. “It comes from a position of personal hatred and low thinking. I think the Board needs to be reminded of $1M of secondary shares investors bought from me in Series C, $2.5M in Series D and $8.5 M in Series E. I would also want to learn who among Amarchand, PWC and A&M has started doing audit on ‘lavishness’ of one’s lifestyle? The only thing lavish about me is my dreams and ability to achieve them against all odds through hard work and enterprise. I hope the Board can get back to working soon — I as a shareholder am worried about the value destruction. I wish the Company and the Board a speedy recovery.” Earlier this year, an alleged audio clip surfaced on Twitter of a man — presumed to be Ashneer — hurling abusive and life-threatening statements over a phone call to a Kotak Bank representative over not getting financing to buy shares in fashion e-commerce Nykaa’s IPO. The clip, which went viral on social media, that prompted the board to conduct an investigation. But in the background, several board members and investors at BharatPe have been plotting to remove Grover from the startup for more than a year, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. Grover, a Shark Tank India host who owns a more than 9% stake in BharatPe, has maintained innocence in recent weeks, and in a televised interview on Tuesday threatened to make public “dirt” on investors and board members if the startup continues to hurt his reputation. He said his investors are “removed from the reality” and treat founders as “slaves.” “The company has taken strong objection to Mr. Grover spinning lies and hurling baseless allegations and threats,” the startup said Wednesday. An investor of BharatPe — which counts Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital India, Insight Partners and Ribbit Capital among its backers — said the recent events at the startup have been the most bizarre episode he has ever witnessed in the Indian startup ecosystem and have wiped off billions of dollars of value. He requested anonymity to speak about private matters. “The Board will not allow the deplorable conduct of the Grover family to tarnish BharatPe’s reputation or that of its hard-working employees and world-class technology. As a result of his misdeeds, Mr. Grover is no longer an employee, a founder, or a director of the company,” BharatPe said. “The Board is taking all necessary steps to further strengthen the company’s corporate governance, including the appointment of an audit committee, an internal auditor, and the implementation of other key internal controls. The success of BharatPe is a result of the collective effort of a large team of dedicated and talented professionals, and not any one individual. We are confident that the company is marking the beginning of a new chapter in its success — one grounded in trust and integrity — and we are excited to embark upon this next leg of our journey.” |
Source makes greenhouses smarter to secure the future of food supply | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 3 | 1 | Agtech startup today announced it harvested a $10 million investment to make greenhouses smarter. The founders have set their eyes on a horizon where, driven by climate change and a rapid increase in global food demand as population continues to increase, more crops are being forced indoors to secure greater crop yields. You wouldn’t believe the amount of restraint it takes to not make a pun about seed funding in a piece about greenhouses. I have no such restraint, so let’s report on this, ahem, growth industry. The $10 million funding round was led by , with participation from the and food-focused venture firm . The company also raised from industry insiders, including the international association of (mostly) salad growers , tomato specialists and bell pepper specialists . The company is developing software to empower greenhouses to get smarter. The company argues that greenhouse agriculture is a safer, more reliable and more climate-resilient mode of food production, producing up to 15 times higher yields, using a twentieth as much water as traditional agriculture. What Source adds to the mix is the ability to use data and AI to help greenhouses operate at even higher levels of efficiency and repeatability of high-yield harvests. “Climate change is driving substantial scarcity and strains in our global food supply. As this accelerates in the coming years, we must find ways to scale efficient growing solutions that lighten the footprint of agriculture,” said Lucas Mann, managing partner at Acre. “Greenhouse agriculture is a proven and viable solution, but without innovation, demand will be impossible to meet. We believe Source.ag can play a vital role in driving its global scalability.” The funding will be used to accelerate product development and expand commercial collaborations. “Greenhouses come in all shapes and forms — both more and less technically advanced. On the higher-tech side, want to have control over every dimension you can imagine, including humidity, irrigation and nutrition. Tomatoes, for example, don’t grow in soil. They go in substrate slabs. That means that these operations are arable land independent,” explains Rien Kamman, co-founder ad CEO at Source. “Because you have more control, you’ll have to make more decisions every day. Growers are making decisions on 60-70 parameters every day, which influences how this crop will grow for the rest of the season. You need to get the decision right every day. This might include what to feed the plant, plant-specific parameters, pruning, etc. It’s really a craft and this is why it’s still so hard. You need decades of experience to be doing well at it.” The complexity of the farming operation itself isn’t in doubt, and Source’s pitch is to take all of these growth parameters, combine that with historical crop yield data and market pricing etc., to create a better experience for the growers. “Our system is comprised of two aspects. One is a recommendation system that assesses the current state of the plant. It looks at forward-looking predictors like resource prices, weather, etc. And then gives very concrete recommendations to the grower. What should you do today and tomorrow, both on the plant (i.e. how should you trim it, prune it, etc.) and on the indoor climate around the plants to maximize sustainability and production. The second part is what happens when something doesn’t go to plan? This is where the algorithms come in,” Kamman says. “They collaborate with the different control systems to take that strategy and actually make sure to do so implemented in the most efficient way possible.” Indoor farming still requires a fair chunk of manual labor, especially for big-vine crops such as tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, etc.; but Source suggests that it can be helpful there, too — by choosing how and where to prune or how many crops to leave to ripen on the vine, you can affect various aspects of the plants’ growth. The interesting thing is overlaying real-time pricing data here — by speeding up or slowing down ripening, I can imagine that could potentially time the harvest time around when your competitors have ripe products, potentially even trading lower yields for better prices, or working with temperatures and weather conditions to reduce production costs, for example. The company is running on a SaaS model, charging growers on a sliding scale depending on the amount of space they are using for growing. The company declined to share screenshots of its product, stating it was “competitively sensitive”. |
Electric Capital closes $1 billion in funds to back crypto startups, buy tokens | Lucas Matney | 2,022 | 3 | 1 | The fervor surrounding opportunities in the crypto space has seemed to upend the venture world over the past couple of years, with major players shaking up how their firms are fundamentally organized in order to compete with so-called crypto-native investment firms. While a plethora of breakout web3 funds popped up in the past several months, a smaller class of crypto VC firms working on their second or third dedicated fund are increasingly ready to cash in on being early to the ecosystem by raising mega funds designed to milk every rising opportunity in the web3 world. announced Tuesday that it closed $1 billion for a pair of crypto funds — a $400 million vehicle for making equity investments in startups and a $600 million fund intended to invest directly in crypto tokens. This capital raise pushes the Palo Alto-based fund toward the company of larger firms like Andreessen Horowitz, which closed a $2.2 billion crypto fund this past June, and crypto VC Paradigm, which debuted a $2.5 billion fund in November. The dueling funds follow a $110 million vehicle that the firm announced in August 2020. Electric co-founder Avichal Garg says the early-stage firm has generally made investments of $1 million to $5 million in pre-seed to Series A-stage startups. “At that kind of check size on the equity, you have to size your fund appropriately, otherwise you’re going to end up doing so many investments and each individual investment is non-meaningful to the fund return,” he tells TechCrunch. Garg and co-founder Curtis Spencer plan to make bets across the broader crypto ecosystem with a particular near-term focus on startups enabling DAOs and infrastructure for NFTs. Some of Electric’s investments include the decentralized exchange DYDX, crypto index fund Bitwise, the NEAR blockchain and DAO tooling startup Syndicate Protocol. |
Struggling EV startup Lordstown Motors loses GM as investor | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 3 | 1 | General Motors sold its stake in Lordstown Motors, an electric vehicle startup that has struggled to get its first vehicle, the electric pickup truck Endurance, to production, reports the . GM’s 7.5 million shares of common stock, which was less than 5% of the company, had an initial equity value of $75 million. The automaker sold its stake in the fourth quarter of 2021 following an undisclosed lock-up period. The news comes after Lordstown disclosed a widened loss of $81.2 million, or $0.42 per share, for the fourth quarter. During its earnings call on Monday, the startup shared plans to produce and sell up to only 3,000 Endurance trucks through 2023, with 500 of those expected to sell this year. That is, if the company raised more money. On Monday, Lordstown told investors it needed to raise another $250 million in order to build the 500 trucks. The extra plea for money already doesn’t look great, but what’s more is that the updated guidance is far below the 32,000 units former management promised investors in the lead up to Lordstown’s public listing via a SPAC deal in October 2020. Lordstown’s relationship with GM goes back to 2018 when GM said it would be closing down its Lordstown factory, which former President Donald Trump took issue with. GM then sold the plant to another toiling EV company, Workhorse (which, by the way, is still struggling per its own Q4 earnings that showed a quarterly loss of $1.13 per share). Workhorse’s founder and former CEO, Steve Burns, started Lordstown Motors with plans to build electric trucks in the old GM factory, and GM invested $75 million in the company. Lordstown invested about $240 million into the factory, but wasn’t able to get it off the ground. Following a series of dramas, including , Lordstown revealed it didn’t have enough cash to make it to 2023, so it sold the factory in September to . However, the deal hasn’t closed yet, and Lordstown’s leadership said on Monday that the factory deal was not as far along as they expected, another announcement that undoubtedly caused investors to squirm in their seats. |
Mercury restricted a number of accounts linked to African startups and didn’t exactly say why | Tage Kene-Okafor | 2,022 | 3 | 1 | This is not a good look. I have a list of over 20+ African startups whose bank accounts were mass-blocked at around the same time by yesterday. I love Mercury a lot but they can’t just do this to an entire continent. It is not right & we need to all speak up. — Moe is mourning her crocs (@Mochievous) Mercury restricted a large number of African startups’ bank accounts enmasse due to “unusual activity”. Like that number of accounts. At the same time. Wild. — 10X Tech Bro (@OdunEweniyi) |
Nexon founder Jung-ju Jay Kim has passed away at age 54 | Kate Park | 2,022 | 3 | 1 | null |
Biden will address social media’s mental health impact at State of the Union | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 3 | 1 | In advance of President Biden’s first State of the Union address, the White House announced plans to address the nation’s , specifically calling out social media’s impact on kids and teens. This issue has been top-of-mind for some members of Congress, especially after whistleblower leaked a trove of from Facebook (now Meta), including evidence that the company is aware of its on teens. According to the White House, President Biden will call on Congress to strengthen privacy protections, ban targeted advertising to children and urge tech companies to stop collecting children’s personal data. “The President believes not only that we should have far stronger protections for children’s data and privacy, but that the platforms and other interactive digital service providers should be required to prioritize and ensure the health, safety and well-being of children and young people above profit and revenue in the design of their products and services,” the White House’s reads. This language is reminiscent of Haugen’s rhetoric throughout her appearances in Congress, as she has repeatedly noted since her “60 Minutes” interview that, from her perspective as a former employee, Facebook prioritizes profits over safety. The president also outlined a plan to invest at least $5 million toward research on how social media harms us, and what clinical and societal interventions can be used to address these harms. The Department of Health and Human Services will also launch a national Center of Excellence on Social Media and Mental Wellness, which will educate the public about the impact of teen social media usage. Biden is also expected to call on Congress to ban excessive targeted advertisement and data collection on children. Effective in 2000, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) is and targeting of users under the age of 13, but the law can’t be enforced unless a platform is proven to be aware of its users’ ages. So, COPPA often isn’t easily enforceable, since a child can simply click a “yes, I am 13” box and access content not intended for them. Already, some legislators have attempted to update COPPA to make it more effective. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) and Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) proposed a bill last year that would make it illegal for internet companies to collect personal data from users between 13 and 15 without their consent. This legislation would also create an “erase button,” which would allow users (or their parents) to manually erase the data that a company has collected about them. The concept of an “erase button” also appeared in the recently introduced Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), brought forth by Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). Back in October, representatives from YouTube, TikTok and Snap all agreed at a Senate hearing that parents should have the ability to for their children or teens. The White House briefing also addresses how algorithmically-served content can result in negative mental health impacts, especially among young women of color. “Searches for ‘Black girls,’ ‘Asian girls’ or ‘Latina girls’ too often return harmful content, including pornography rather than role models, toys or activities. Platforms shape how our kids understand what is possible and access opportunities,” the briefing says. “We must ensure that platforms and other algorithmically-enhanced systems do not discriminatorily target our kids.” Besides dedicating $5 million to research and setting up a national Center of Excellence on Social Media and Mental Wellness, Biden’s commentary on social media and mental health merely echoes what has been debated in Congress for years. But these messages confirm that Biden is at least somewhat paying attention to the lives Americans lead online. At the State of the Union address, Biden did indeed find time to allude to his plans for taking on social media giants: He said: “Children were also struggling before the pandemic. Bullying, violence, trauma, and the harms of social media. As Frances Haugen, who is here with us tonight, has shown, we must hold social media platforms accountable for the national experiment they’re conducting on our children for profit. It’s time to strengthen privacy protections, ban targeted advertising to children, demand tech companies stop collecting personal data on our children.” Haugen also commented on the President’s remarks after the speech: “I’m grateful that President Biden elevated this issue in the State of the Union so we can continue exposing the truth of what social media is doing to kids’ mental health and empower all parties to change this horrifying reality,” she said in a statement emailed to press, which she also on Twitter. “Facebook and Instagram are flawed products designed to addict and amplify the worst in our children and ourselves. They are buying their profits on the backs of our kids’ mental health.” |
Daily Crunch: Drone service Wing completes 200K commercial deliveries, partners with supermarket chain | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 3 | 1 |
Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Tuesday, March 1, 2022. Akin to how it takes nation-states a little time to get sanctions up and running, tech companies don’t roll out responses to geopolitical changes in a moment. But today we have notes on what tech companies doing in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Before we get into the news, however, our . See you there! – TechCrunch has been tracking growth in the number of startups in the market selling their wares via API . The boom in API-first startups fits neatly into the evolution of software pricing away from traditional SaaS methodology . Anyway, I . As a teaser, it includes links to around 84 trillion API startups, in case you wanted a look at the segment. And there was : , , , , and Starship Technologies – a very good name, I would add – . I retract my naming praise! / Getty Images When we published our last low-code/no-code investor survey in August 2020, the former president had decided to ban TikTok, Epic was filing antitrust cases against Apple and Google, and movie theaters around the U.S. were shuttering to slow the spread of the then-novel coronavirus. Seems like a long time ago. Since then, many of the key trends and themes we surfaced have come to pass: Airtable clinched an $11 billion valuation in December 2021 after raising a $735 million Series F with help from Salesforce Ventures and Michael Dell’s MSD Capital. Not to be outdone, Microsoft’s Power Fx low-code programming language now connects hundreds of apps. A year and a half ago, many companies were starting to get comfortable with no-code and low-code software. Today, “it’s transforming entire categories of enterprise software,” says Navin Chaddha, managing director at VC firm Mayfield. To learn more about how the space has evolved in the last year and a half “and when they expect their investments to start paying off,” Karan Bhasin interviewed: SEAN GLADWELL / Getty Images TechCrunch is recruiting recruiters for TechCrunch Experts, an ongoing project where we ask top professionals about problems and challenges that are common in early-stage startups. If that’s you or someone you know, you can let us know . |
One decade in, Homebrew says it’s becoming self-funded | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 3 | 1 | has a new cup of tea (or coffee, or beer, or beverage of your choosing). The venture capital firm roots — and its traditional venture structure — and pursuing a more stage-agnostic evergreen model that is funded solely by and , Homebrew’s general partners. “When we sat down together in 2021 to plan for Homebrew’s future, the most obvious choice was raising a larger fund with even more capital to invest since that’s the way the industry has moved,” co-founders Hunter Walk and Satya Patel wrote earlier today in a blog post. “But we never started Homebrew to be capital accumulators and have never optimized for assets under management as a business model.” With it’s new evergreen approach, Homebrew will have an open-ended fund structure with no termination date. The strategy should also allow the co-founders to recycle capital from realized returns without constraints. Asked for more specifics about how much the team plans to put to work and the size checks it intends to write, Walk said that there’s no fixed amount of capital that Homebrew intends to deploy and suggested that while he’s uncomfortable sharing a specific investing range, Homebrew will be making a “meaningful commitment, at least for us,” when it invests in startups. Homebrew’s pivot is happening at a crucial market moment for tech startups. Public tech stocks are being hammered regardless of sector. And while early-stage private startups seemingly remain largely unscathed, owing to an influx of venture capital, later-stage companies are finding themselves in a tougher position right now, with deep-pocketed investors like Tiger Global and D1 Capital reportedly backing away from the megadeals for which they’ve become known and flocking instead to younger and less mature companies, It’s a notable shift for Homebrew, which has stakes in companies such as Winnie, Stir, Mercury and Plaid. Since inception, Homebrew has closed three core funds and two overage funds to support breakaway winners in its core funds. The change also comes at a natural point for the firm, which is no longer making new investments out of Fund 3. The move is also notable in a market where raising larger and larger (and larger) funds has become routine. Of course, the perennial challenge that comes when raising more capital is that an investor then has more pressure to deliver on those outcomes. You may have been able to provide outcomes at a 5x rate on a $15 million fund, but can you still hit venture-like targets when you ask them to back a $150 million fund? What about $1.5 billion? Walk, in an e-mail, told TechCrunch that their return target isn’t changing from “what a good early stage fund should strive far” sticking to shooting for 5x. Homebrew isn’t the first evergreen fund and it won’t be the last. One reason why more seed-stage focused investment firms may choose the same path is that it alleviates the pressure a firm may feel to be in constant fundraising mode. It also allows investors to take their time; with a traditional venture capital fund, the clock starts ticking when a fund is raised and it’s expected that investors will put the money to work in a relatively short amount of time, no matter the market conditions. There are downsides to evergreen funds, however, including unstable cash flows, confusion from co-investors and potential impact from illiquidity, In other words, by continuing a fund indefinitely a team may enjoy more flexibility with less pressure to exit but face other challenges. Either way, it’s becoming more difficult for smaller firms to raise subsequent funds, per analyst sources in the venture industry. As an investor, the best way to de-risk your next fund might be to not raise in a traditional way at all. Walk says that “capital was not the limiting factor here” when considering the change in strategy. “Our LPs told us they were happy to experiment with us and would be happy to be a part of whatever Homebrew evolves to,” Walk said in an email. “So, [they are] a little disappointed maybe but overall happy and eager for us to experiment. And to be in business together.” He continued on to write that there will be “different ways” that Homebrew will work with the limited partner base in the future, and that he and Patel are keeping LPs updated on the new fund’s investments. |
Waabi’s Raquel Urtasun on the importance of differentiating your startup | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 3 | 1 | , founder and CEO of autonomous vehicle technology company Waabi, , a time when it seemed like the AV industry was consolidating. Urtasun and her team of 40 in Toronto and California came out the gate swinging with an $83.5 million raise from a series of high-profile investors, including Uber, Aurora and Khosla Ventures. Waabi uses an AI-first approach to commercialize autonomous freight faster and more efficiently than its competitors, Urtasun told TechCrunch. As a professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, a co-founder of the Vector Institute for AI, and former chief scientist at Uber ATG, , she has acquired some insights into both the industry and the science backing it up. After all, despite consolidation and gains from a few major players, no one had really figured it out yet. So what does an AI-first approach really look like? In February 2022, Waabi launched , a high-fidelity closed-loop simulator that doesn’t just virtually test Waabi’s self-driving software, but can also teach it how to drive. Waabi World automatically builds digital twins of the world from data, performing near-real-time sensor simulation, manufacturing scenarios to stress-test the Waabi Driver, and teaching the driver to learn from its mistakes without human intervention. This, Urtasun said, saves countless hours of human labor to train the Waabi Driver both in simulation and on the roads. The entirety of Waabi World is powered by AI in a way that other companies’ simulators aren’t because it relies more heavily on deep neural nets, AI algorithms that allow the computer to learn by using a series of connected networks to identify patterns in data. Historically, developers haven’t been able to figure out the how and why behind an AI’s decision-making when using deep neural nets, which is very important when putting self-driving vehicles on public roads, so they’ve fallen back on machine learning and rules-based algorithms to tie into a broader system. Urtasun said effect behind deep neural nets by combining them with probabilistic inference and complex optimization. The result? The developer can trace back the decision process of the AI system and incorporate prior knowledge so they don’t have to teach the AI system everything from the beginning again. We sat down with Urtasun to discuss the pros and cons of starting a business after working for a larger company, the surprises of being a founder and why freight will be the first AV industry to commercialize at scale. When I decided to start Waabi, I didn’t necessarily know what being a founder meant. I’ve been working in industry and in this field and whatnot, but as a founder, you need to wear so many hats and there is so much going on. I didn’t expect that. And Waabi now is very different from what it was to start with, so there’s something that surprised me. But it’s been an incredible ride. I have to say there is nothing like building what you really believe in with a team that you love to work with. There is nothing that can’t be done. I was part of the executive team at Uber, so I had a lot of impact and, you know, a lot of say in many things. But it’s different when you’re building — and this is not just Uber, this is in general. If you are in a large company with 1,000-plus people who are going in one direction, even if you all agree that you need to steer to something else, it is so difficult and slow to actually do this process. From that point of view, being in a startup, which is much more dynamic, is very exciting, but it’s not Uber versus not Uber. I think any big company would be similar. But I had a great time at Uber. I learned so many things and really discovered what it meant to really be part of a big problem, and really prepared me really well for what I’m doing today. |
Rivian raises price on R1T electric truck, R1S SUV ahead of new dual-motor versions | Kirsten Korosec | 2,022 | 3 | 1 | Rivian has raised the price of its all-electric R1T pickup by 17% and R1S SUV by about 20% as the newly public automaker tries to adjust to inflationary pressure, increases in the cost of raw materials and parts as well as a prolonged chip shortage. The price change, which was Tuesday afternoon, is part of Rivian’s broader plan to introduce a new dual-motor version of the truck and SUV in 2024, according to the company. That new propulsion system will include motors designed and manufactured by Rivian, a reflection of CEO R.J. Scaringe’s goal to vertically integrate the company. Customers were also informed via email this Tuesday afternoon about the change. Rivian first introduced the R1T and R1S in 2018 as all-wheel drive EVs equipped with a quad-motor system that pumped up the horsepower and torque and helped the startup stand out. Until today, The price adjustments will affect the majority of customers who pre-ordered, or reserved, the truck or SUV. Customers who were already in the final steps of completing their transaction with Rivian will be locked into that lower price, according to the company. The rest will have to pony up the extra money. Rivian’s chief growth officer Jiten Behl provided a lengthy statement explaining the move, citing inflation, component costs and supply chain constraints. Behl noted that the prices for the R1T and R1S models were established in 2018. Since then, the average transaction price for new cars has risen 37%, the company said, citing data from Edmunds. “Like most manufacturers, Rivian is being confronted with inflationary pressure, increasing component costs, and unprecedented supply chain shortages and delays for parts (including semiconductor chips),” Behl said in an emailed statement: This rise in cost and complexity due to these challenging circumstances necessitate an increase to the prices of the R1T and R1S models we offer today — prices which were originally set in 2018. This decision will allow us to continue to offer competitive products that maintain the high standard of quality, performance and capabilities that our customers expect and deserve from Rivian. Along with the adjusted prices for our current offerings, we are also announcing Dual-Motor AWD and Standard battery pack options for R1T and R1S, which will provide a broader range of choices for customers as part of our expanding portfolio of options, upgrades and accessories. Rivian said it plans to start production of dual-motor versions of the R1T and R1S in 2024. These vehicles, which will be equipped with a propulsion system designed and manufactured by Rivian, will take over the lower base price position previously held by the original quad motor variants. The company tweeted that the dual-motor AWD configuration and its ~260-mile standard battery pack was open for preorders. Introducing our new Dual-Motor AWD configuration and our 260+ mile Standard battery pack, available today for preorder. — Rivian (@Rivian) The dual-motor R1T and R1S vehicles will still offer customers the all-wheel drive functions, albeit with some adjustments to horsepower and torque. On the upside, the range will likely increase. The produces more than 800 horsepower, 900 lb-feet of torque and has 11,000-pound towing capacity. It also has a 314 miles EPA-rated range. The dual-motor will have a projected 600 horsepower and 600 lb-feet of torque. Rivian isn’t saying what its range will be, except that it should be more than 320 miles. Unlike the quad system, which uses a combination of Bosch motors and electronics and Rivian inverters, this new system will be entirely from the automaker. The electric motors, which Rivian will produce at its Normal, Illinois factory, will be placed on the front and rear axles. The single-drive units actually slot into the existing space used by the quad motor system, which means the entire underlying architecture can remain unchanged. The end result will be a propulsion system that is cheaper and lighter, and a higher-range vehicle that still has the traction control that is in line with the adventure vehicle performance that Rivian has built its business around. Richard Farquhar, vice president of propulsion at Rivian, said early conversations with Scaringe centered on how to offer adventure vehicles that don’t compromise on what its customers want. “All-wheel drive is key to that,” Farquhar said, a comment that suggests Rivian will not offer the truck or SUV with a single-motor powertrain. This new drive unit will include the first Rivian designed and manufactured electromagnetic motor, a second-generation inverter, new active cooling system for the rotor and stator of the motor, an optimized gear ratio and a feature that disconnects the drive at the output of the rear drive unit to allow maximum vehicle range in specific drive modes, according to Farquhar. “We’ve obsessed over this cooling and electromagnetic design to get as much performance and efficiency out of the integrated motor, inverter and gearbox system, which includes optimized gear ratios,” Farquhar said. “We believe AWD gives us the uncompromised adventure vehicle and with that criteria, we’ve focused on making this single-motor drive unit as compact, efficient, lightweight and low cost as we possibly can with the technology.” |
Nextdoor beats expectations in first earnings report since going public last year | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 3 | 1 | Today after the bell, locally focused social network Nextdoor reported . The company combined with a SPAC , making today its first quarterly report since going public. In good news for both Nextdoor investors and the general SPAC market, the company managed to best revenue expectations, leading to modest share-price appreciation in after-hours trading this afternoon. While still sharply under its pre-combination price of $10 per share — Nextdoor’s stock is worth $6.50 after its small after-hours gains — the company’s results are generally positive and worth our time to unpack. In the fourth quarter of 2021, Nextdoor recorded revenues of $59.3 million, up 47.9% from its year-ago tally of $40.1 million. However, the company also had an expensive quarter, with operating costs of $88.6 million — up sharply from a year-ago mark of $55.5 million — leading to a larger net loss of $29.3 million in the quarter, up from $14.9 million in Q4 2020. What drove the huge gain in costs that led to Nextdoor’s profitability taking a hit? Partially a sizable uptick in share-based compensation costs, something that we often see in companies that recently went public. For that reason, adjusted EBITDA may be a more reasonable profit metric for Nextdoor for this particular quarter. By that metric, Nextdoor lost a far-smaller $7.8 million, up only marginally from a year-ago adjusted EBITDA deficit of $7.6 million. Social networks tend to provide a set of user-focused metrics to go along with their raw financial data, giving investors a look inside the mechanics of their community. Nextdoor is no different. I present to you a set of colorful bar charts: Nextdoor investor presentation Revenue we have discussed, so let’s focus on the other two datasets. WAU, or weekly active users, is a key metric for Nextdoor; if its user count falls, it likely won’t be able to close a revenue gap by merely squeezing more top-line from remaining users. Recall that . In good news for Nextdoor, WAU growth looks pretty solid in its last few quarters. Even more, the company set what is at least a local maximum in its ARPU per WAU. What does that mean? The metric tracks for I guess we could call this ARPWAU? Which, incidentally, is the same sound that one might make if someone threw a bowling ball into their stomach. Regardless, WAU and ARPU per WAU means revenue. Which is what Nextdoor wants. Investors had expected Nextdoor to report $55.4 million in revenue in Q4 2021, . The company beat that mark. Looking ahead, investors anticipate revenue of $48.41 million in Q2 2022 and $260.0 million for the year. In its earnings report, Nextdoor said that it expects $48 million worth of revenue for the current quarter and “between” $254 million and $256 million in revenue for the year, up from a prior target of $252 million. Why aren’t shares of Nextdoor appreciating more in light of its revenue beat and generally OK-looking user activity results? Perhaps the slight gap between its full-year 2022 guidance and street expectations. Investors like strong trailing results, but they also covet forecasts that best expectations, and Nextdoor didn’t manage to both in its latest report. |
Apple pulls Russian state-owned media outlets RT and Sputnik from global App Stores | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 3 | 1 | After days of mounting on tech companies to take further action against Russia in the wake of its invasion into Ukraine, Apple today it will remove the Kremlin-based media outlets Russia Today (RT News) and Sputnik News from the App Store in all markets outside Russia itself. The changes taken against these two state-owned media operations both in the EU and globally. In recent days, Microsoft RT from its Windows app store and de-ranked both news sources in its search engine Bing. Google the RT News app in Ukraine at the request of the government in Kyiv. Roku RT from its streaming platform. Twitter from the media outlets with warnings and de-ranked their tweets. Facebook to the sites, making them unavailable in the EU, as did TikTok. And Google also removed them from YouTube. Apple’s move to pull RT News and Sputnik News from its global App Stores follows a request from Ukrainian vice prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who to Apple CEO Tim Cook asking Apple to stop device sales in Russia and block access to the App Store entirely. According to data provided to TechCrunch by app intelligence firms Sensor Tower and Apptopia, the two Russian media apps had millions of lifetime downloads and were live as of yesterday in global markets. In the U.S. App Store, RT News had been ranked No. 42 in the News category as of February 28th, and Sputnik was ranked No. 85, Sensor Tower said. In addition, worldwide installs of RT News for iOS were up 241% in the last seven days compared to the seven days prior. And Sputnik installs on iOS were up 163% for the same period, the firm noted. It noted the app had been pulled from some 100 global markets. (In the E.U., the news outlets are , essentially banned by law, but this is a broader removal). The two app store intelligence firms reported different estimates for the Russian apps’ footprints, however. Sensor Tower reports that RT News had 5.7 million installs worldwide since its launch in May 2013, 1.7 million of which were on the App Store specifically. Sputnik had 2 million installs worldwide since its release in March 2015, and around 470,000 of those were on iOS. Meanwhile, Apptopia’s data indicates the apps had a wider reach. It sees RT News with 10 million lifetime global installs, 2.5 million of which were on iOS. And Sputnik News had 3.85 million downloads, 960,000 of which were on iOS. Neither firm has an exact number because they don’t work off direct access to App Store data — only Apple and the apps’ publishers know the true install figures. Instead, both generate estimates using statistical models. The news sites weren’t the only impacted apps related to the Russian-Ukraine war. both traffic and live incidents in Apple Maps in Ukraine as a safety and precautionary measure for Ukrainian citizens, it said, following a by Google. |
How Stellantis plans to double revenue, electrify lineup, by 2030 | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 3 | 1 | Stellantis, the automaker that owns Fiat, Chrysler, Dodge, Ram, Jeep, Peugeot, Maserati and more, is rolling out a new plan that will help it become carbon net zero by 2038, with 50% reduction by 2030. At the same time, the automaker plans to double net revenues to $335 billion a year by 2030 and maintain double-digit profit margins as it ramps up efforts to electrify versions of its cars. Stellantis, which was born out of a merger between Fiat Chrysler and Groupe PSA, also unveiled during a strategy meeting on Tuesday the first-ever fully electric Jeep SUV, which is expected to launch in early 2023, two years earlier than Stellantis had predicted last summer. The new Ram 1500 BEV pickup truck arriving in 2024 was also previewed on Tuesday. Last year, Stellantis to electric vehicles and new software over the next four years as part of its push away from internal combustion engine vehicles. The automaker joins many of the other legacy brands, like Ford, General Motors and Volkswagen, in its move away from internal combustion engine vehicles. Like them, Stellantis will face the challenge of completely restructuring its operations while maintaining high profit margins. In addition, the automaker is targeting a 25% to 30% dividend payout ration through 2025 and the repurchase of up to 5% of outstanding common shares. During the strategy call, Stellantis said it aims to achieve 100% of sales in Europe and 50% of sales in the United States to be battery electric by the end of the decade, with a global annual sale of BEVs at 5 million. Through its 14 brands, . By 2030, the product lineup is expected to reach 75 BEVs globally, with a specific U.S. product offensive of more than 25 all-new BEVs. By following this plan, Stellantis expects new car revenues from premium and luxury vehicle segments to increase fourfold. Another way Stellantis hopes to bring in revenue outside of sales, financing and repairs is through software that can sell products and subscriptions to passengers and drivers. , a target that’s in line with competitors, by having 34 million connected cars on the road by 2030. Aside from selling products and subscriptions, Stellantis has eyed ways to monetize connected vehicles via partnerships with BMW, Foxconn and Waymo, and at the strategy call, the automaker divulged more details of a plan to launch a “Delivery-as-a-Service” program with Waymo. Stellantis is also pursuing a more vertically integrated manufacturing approach, which includes increasing its planned battery capacity by 140 gigawatt-hours to approximately 400 GWh, as well as expanding its hydrogen fuel cell technology to large vans in 2024 before further expanding into heavy-duty trucks. To spur the adoption of advanced technologies, the automaker has opened the Stellantis Corporate Venture Fund with $334 million of initial funding. |
What US startup founders need to know about the R&D tax credit | Ardy Esmaeili | 2,022 | 3 | 1 | you to learn the government — federal and many states — is on your side when it comes to innovation? Yes, the very government that loves to collect taxes from you may be willing to give some of that money back through a particular credit that encourages innovation. The Research and Development (R&D) tax credit lets businesses deduct R&D expenses up to $250,000 per year from payroll tax, or an unlimited amount against income tax if your startup qualifies. Over several years, this credit could save you millions of dollars. It’s important to start the review process early not only to help avoid penalties, but to take advantage of all opportunities, and to know that not all opportunities can be leveraged at the same time. It may seem obvious, but everything begins with great bookkeeping. Your records are the first and biggest step to successfully getting an accurate calculation. Additionally, it’s important to keep technical records in good order. You must be able to produce evidence of the technical R&D process. Even an investor presentation about progress on the product could be considered backup documentation for R&D. One of the requirements to qualify for this tax credit is that activity needs to be “technological in nature.” So anything to do with engineering, physics, biochemistry, medical, hard sciences, computer sciences, or mathematics will almost guarantee you qualify. If you’re in one of these industries, you’re already meeting that minimum requirement. But if you’re not operating in one of these — say you’re in clothing or food — you might still be experimenting with technology that makes your business better. Just because you have an available product and customers, doesn’t mean you’re automatically ruled out. Many companies are never finished with R&D. You might be always creating new solutions, answering new questions, or thinking about how to achieve something. Even improving your product that’s already on the market could contain work that’s eligible for the R&D credit. Finally, the only people who are going to be eligible are U.S. employees and contractors. So consider that if you’re trying to decide between being international or based in the U.S. We know innovation is expensive and often goes nowhere, but it’s impossible to innovate without investing in R&D. So, the government offers a way to make it less expensive to take the risks involved with innovation, especially for startups. |
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Apple halts product sales in Russia following Ukraine invasion | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 3 | 1 | Apple today confirmed that it has halted product sales in Russia following last week’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine. The news comes days after the hardware giant pulled Sputnik and RT News from the App Store and . Today’s news also finds its disabling certain Apple Maps features, following . A spokesperson for the company offered TechCrunch the following statement: We are deeply concerned about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and stand with all of the people who are suffering as a result of the violence. We are supporting humanitarian efforts, providing aid for the unfolding refugee crisis, and doing all we can to support our teams in the region. We have taken a number of actions in response to the invasion. We have paused all product sales in Russia. Last week, we stopped all exports into our sales channel in the country. Apple Pay and other services have been limited. RT News and Sputnik News are no longer available for download from the App Store outside Russia. And we have disabled both traffic and live incidents in Apple Maps in Ukraine as a safety and precautionary measure for Ukrainian citizens. We will continue to evaluate the situation and are in communication with relevant governments on the actions we are taking. We join all those around the world who are calling for peace. Last week, Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov to CEO Tim Cook. “I appeal to you and I am sure that you will not only hear, but also do everything possible to protect Ukraine, Europe and, finally, the entire democratic world from bloody authoritarian aggression – to stop supplying Apple services and products to the Russian Federation, including blocking access to [the] App Store,” wrote Fedorov, who also serves as the country’s Minister of Digital Transformation. Today’s news represents the biggest step from one of the world’s largest companies and finds Apple issuing a verbal rebuke of Russia’s actions in recent weeks, along side . |
Reddit quarantines r/Russia due to ‘high volume’ of misinformation | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,022 | 3 | 1 | As major social platforms grapple with an influx of misinformation around the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Reddit is having its own reckoning. On Tuesday, Reddit added the subreddit r/Russia to its quarantine list, restricting the community from popping up in search results and marking it with warning messages. The intermediate measure is the same step that , one of its most infamous toxic communities, before the subreddit eventually . Now, visiting r/Russia brings up a page with the warning “This community contains a high volume of information not supported by credible sources.” While Reddit users can still visit r/Russia by clicking through the warning, the message remains at the top of the page. The subreddit r/RussiaPolitics was also added to the quarantine list and given the same treatment. Mashable first reported the , which boasted 265,000 members just prior to the quarantine. The day before r/Russia was quarantined, posts pinned by its moderators were accompanied by the tag “denazification” and a Ukrainian flag followed by flames. Another pinned post falsely accused Ukraine’s government of intentionally maximizing casualties, using human shields and refusing negotiations. According to Reddit, quarantine status is designed to “prevent [a subreddit’s] content from being accidentally viewed by those who do not knowingly wish to do so, or viewed without appropriate context” — leaving a community accessible to the users who were already participating but limiting its reach. While r/Russia appears to have earned its quarantine by disseminating pro-Russia misinformation about the invasion of Ukraine, one of its moderators also ran afoul of Reddit’s rules. Reddit noted that it “removed a moderator for acting in bad faith” and has connected with the remaining mods to “remind them of our policies.” The company declined to elaborate further on the moderator’s behavior. “We are clear in our policies that moderators and users may not attempt to manipulate and interfere with the conversations or communities on our platform,” a Reddit spokesperson told TechCrunch. |
Ali Partovi has a new accelerator promising to connect founders with star engineers | Connie Loizos | 2,022 | 3 | 1 | Ali Partovi prides himself on the many relationships he has built throughout Silicon Valley as a highly successful entrepreneur and investor. For example, two years ago, Partovi launched a program through his nearly five-year-old networking organization and associated firm, , wherein he connects computer engineering students he helps to vet to fast-growing companies like the design software . Partovi does it to build goodwill. He knows students sometimes become founders and that company executives might be more inclined to make room for Neo in future funding rounds if Neo has helped them win the war for talent. But Partovi is now putting some of those company relationships to the test. How? Through a three-month accelerator program taking place this summer for just 20 teams that will end not with an investor demo day but with a presentation to top engineers who might be willing to throw in their lot with a promising brand-new outfit. It’s an accelerator that’s focused on hiring and not fundraising and could, in some cases, put Neo in the category of foe and not friend. Partovi acknowledges it’s a “valid issue and it’s one that we need to put more thought into solving.” He also says that “each person is their own individual with their own journey” and that “if somebody is at a company where they’re unhappy, it’s not doing anyone a service to try to prevent them from seeing their options.” Certainly, it would take a bold company to cut off access to Partovi for opening Neo’s doors wide to engineering talent. He has co-founded numerous companies, including LinkExchange, which sold to Microsoft for roughly $250 million in stock in the late ’90s. He also has a solid track record of investing in talented founders, including Mark Zuckerberg and Drew Houston. For his part, Partovi doesn’t view his accelerator as a threat to growth-stage teams so much as to other accelerators and, seemingly, Y Combinator in particular — though he speaks in general terms about the competition. “It’s hard to find anybody from a top university or a top tech pedigree applying to an accelerator,” asserts Partovi. Partly, he believes, it’s because “other accelerators have pivoted to focus on the developing world and to pursue quantity over quality.” Neo’s goal, he continues is “not to beat any of these existing accelerators,” he adds, “but to reimagine the accelerator to make it relevant again.” Whatever the case, it’s easy to appreciate why promising teams would be drawn to what Neo is putting together. In addition to the hiring help that Neo is promising, it’s offering the teams that it accepts access to a four-week residential campus at an “all-inclusive mountain retreat in Oregon,” which does not sound terrible. It is offering up to $625,000 for a maximum of 5% of their company and with a $20 million “floor” valuation (more on that ). It is also giving every founder a small share in every other startup in the batch as an incentive to help each other. Not last, Neo is giving the teams access to some heavyweight tech veterans, including Alfred Lin of Sequoia Capital; LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman; Notion’s marketing chief Camille Rockets; investor Brianne Kimmel; Lin-Hua Wu, who is a VP of global communications at Google; and actor-investor Ashton Kutcher. Partovi notes that the “VIPs” involved in the program are diverse because the program itself counts diversity as a pillar. (He says that since inception, 49% of Neo’s capital has funded companies led by female or underrepresented minority CEOs, which far surpasses broader industry stats.) It’s worth noting that, as with YC, Neo is willing to be flexible around how “set” or not an idea is. Neo’s accelerator is also willing to accept founders who have no idea, as well as solo founders, says Partovi. Where it won’t budge, he says, is on having at least one strong technical leader involved, whether it’s the founder or a three-person team with a strong CTO on board. “No matter how awesome your business idea is, and no matter how charismatic you might be, recruiting a technical partner is probably the hardest part of starting a company, so that’s a key qualification, Partovi says. “It’s also the thing that we have the most experience and credibility at assessing.” As for the biggest selling point of Neo’s accelerator plans — the promise that it will help startups recruit engineers — Partovi is persuasive in explaining why, in today’s fundraising market, it might mean far more to founders than help with fundraising. “Right now, if you’re leaving Figma or Stripe or even just graduating from MIT, you can fundraise by changing your Twitter bio to say you are starting something new,” notes Partovi. (We wrote recently about the willingness of VCs to write checks to people with , based on their education and employment history.) “Literally, you do that and within a week, you’ll probably have a term sheet.” With Neo, he says to “imagine not a Demo Day but a pitch day that’s more like a career fair, where you get to present to hundreds of star engineers and where, instead of walking off stage to a dozen meeting requests with potential VCs, you walk off stage with a dozen meeting requests [from] potential candidates to join your team. That,” Partovi says, “is the real pain point for startups right now. That is something that, even people who are already funded, when they hear it are like, ‘Oh, wow, I wish I’d had that.'” |
Sequoia Capital India, STV back Dubai-based BNPL provider tabby in $54M extension round | Tage Kene-Okafor | 2,022 | 3 | 6 | null |
Indian carrier Airtel launches credit card | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 3 | 6 | Airtel said on Monday it is launching a credit card, the latest attempt from the Google-backed Indian telecom operator to make inroads with financial services as it looks to expand its offerings in the world’s second-largest internet market. The network, managed by billionaire Sunil Mittal, said it has inked a strategic partnership with Axis Bank, the nation’s third-largest private sector bank, to co-launch what they are describing as “a first-of-its-kind” credit card. The Airtel Axis Bank Credit Card will provide customers with pre-approved instant loans and buy now, pay later offerings and reward them for paying Airtel services’ bills and making transactions on Airtel’s app, the two said. The card, which will only be made available to Airtel subscribers, is aimed at reaching customers in smaller Indian cities and towns, they said. Airtel has amassed over 340 million subscribers in India. As part of the partnership, Axis Bank will begin to use Airtel’s C-PaaS platform – the telco’s suite that includes services such as streaming, call masking and contact center solutions – as well as “various” cybersecurity services. The two will also explore collaborating across cloud and data center services, they said. This isn’t the first time Airtel is attempting to make a push into financial services, a fast-growing sector that has also attracted the attention of rival billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Platforms — and yielded a similar level of success. Airtel operates a digital payments bank, which has been struggling to make a dent in the market. The firm, which has also pushed to expand its premium offerings in recent years to improve its ARPU (revenue per user), approached Paytm two years ago to explore offloading the payments business, according to three sources familiar with the matter. India’s credit card market is severely underserved; there are fewer than 30 million Indians with a credit card even as nearly a billion bank accounts exist in the country. Scores of startups, including and Sequoia Capital India-backed OneCard, are attempting to bring credit card features to more Indians. Many large firms, including Flipkart and Amazon, as well as ride-hailing startup Ola, have also for their respective customers. (OneCard is in talks to raise capital from Singapore’s Temasek in a round that is likely to , TechCrunch reported last month.) “Joint credit-card deals like this are fundamentally about leveraging distribution of the partner, which in this case, is Airtel. Airtel has a large premium base of users, which has become even more stronger due to Vi’s loss in market share,” said Himanshu Gupta, a veteran fintech executive. “If a user, after taking card, makes this their primary mode of payment for most of their shopping elsewhere, there is an opportunity to make revenue from interchange and late fees as well. So one can expect this to be a successful joint card.” But that success, he said, will require addressing several challenges. “The challenge for bank partnership credit cards like Airtel-Axis’ is that banks’ credit card stacks are relatively old and are not very flexible for the younger generation needs. And while Airtel does have a large userbase, it has very limited surface area in the lives of a user since most users probably come to Airtel Thanks app once in 3 months to do their prepaid recharges. “So in reality, Airtel gets only a limited opportunity to cross-sell any such products. Newer fintech card startups today are able to build more consumer need-driven products, and use smarter marketing to acquire users which generally banks or telcos are not great at.” Monday’s announcement follows Google disclosing earlier this year that it will and work with the carrier to develop “innovative affordability programs” to explore partnerships with smartphone makers to produce affordable handsets. “Airtel is building a formidable financial services portfolio as part of its endeavor to offer world-class digital services to its customers,” Gopal Vittal, managing director and chief executive of Bharti Airtel India and South Asia, said in a statement. “We are delighted to join forces with Axis Bank in this exciting journey. Through this win-win telco-bank partnership, Airtel customers will get access to Axis Bank’s world-class financial services portfolio and exclusive benefits, while Axis Bank will benefit from Airtel’s strong digital capabilities and deep distribution reach.” |
India’s Captain Fresh more than doubles valuation to $500 million in three months | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 3 | 6 | Captain Fresh, a farm-to-retail platform for animal protein, has more than doubled its valuation to $500 million in three months as the Indian startup deepens its footprints in the local market and begins to expand overseas. Existing backers Prosus Ventures and Tiger Global have co-led the startup’s $50 million Series C funding, Captain Fresh founder and chief executive Utham Gowda told TechCrunch in an interview. Existing investors including Accel also participated in the new round. The business-to-business marketplace for seafood, which has raised over $100 million to date and was valued at about $200 million in its Series B round disclosed in December, is in talks to top up as much as another $10 million in the new round, a person familiar with the matter said. Gowda declined to comment on any extension to the Series C round and the startup’s valuation. Gowda, a former investment banker, previously spent years tracking the seafood industry. He helped one of the largest exporters in the sector at a time when it was exploring to become public. Though the plan changed, it helped Gowda learn the ins and outs of the market. “It’s a very large sector but also very messy,” he said, adding that it still drives consumption of billions of dollars each year. “I got a good perspective on how India as well as developed markets were looking at this category and had the opportunity to spend a lot of time on the production floor and deal with purchases.” , founded in 2019, is taking a different approach to serving the farmers and customers. “Every other player in the industry has been trying to solve this from the brand perspective or from the end-customer perspective. We believe that the core problem is in organizing the supply,” he said. “It’s a commodity business, but a supply-deprived industry.” The bet appears to be paying off. Captain Fresh today helps farmers and fishermen sell close to a hundred ton of fresh fish and over three dozen other seafood species each day, he said. The startup, which has set up over 50 collection centers, is helping farmers sell to over 2,500 businesses across nearly all the coastal states in India. Captain Fresh today also operates in the U.S., Spain and the Middle East, and the international business, which was kickstarted less than three months ago, already amounts to 20% of the overall business. Most big brands – including some e-commerce services and offline retailers – in India have become Captain Fresh customers. The market for animal protein is highly fragmented. Historically, farmers buy fish and other seafood through an auction and bring produce to wet markets. But this approach is riddled with inefficiencies. For one, if the supply doesn’t come to the wet markets on time, several players don’t have the means to secure the produce. “We are bringing reliability, which essentially means that [businesses] can place an order to us, we confirm the order to them and next day deliver the product at 6 a.m. So they can then spend all their bandwidth on marketing and sales of the product rather than worrying about procurement and other things,” he said. “We are also solving for quality. For instance, in our supply chain we measure the quality by what we call the number of touches the fish has had. The more touches it has, the worse the quality will be. We have been able to get the touch points to under five or four from the point the fish was caught to the point of sale, compared to over 25 to 30 touches seen in the traditional supply chain,” he said. Captain Fresh’s approach has enabled it to extend the shelf life of fish and other seafood by a day to a day and a half. “In a category where the inventory has a three-day shelf life, a day and a half is a significant bumper for anybody who is associated with us as the window they have to make the sale increases by 40%,” he said. The startup is seeing similar opportunities in international markets, where the supply chain faces the same challenges. “I can now claim that the meat retail in the U.S. is not as evolved and we have a lot of things that we can do to add value to even developed markets,” said Gowda, who joined the Zoom call from the U.S. Captain Fresh plans to deploy the fresh funds to expand to a few additional geographies, including some in Southeast Asia and Africa. It is also eyeing some inorganic growth via acquisitions, he said. The startup is also experimenting with social commerce model to help farmers sell more. On its app today, Captain Fresh offers these farmers advisories and content. And, “if you are a fisherman, you can load up your inventory details on our platform and we will sell it on a real-time basis. Then our fulfillment takes over,” he said. The idea with the social commerce is to help fishers be able to more efficiently replicate the offline experience on the digital platform, he said. “On the supply side, from a seafood marketplace, Captain Fresh is now entering into the larger animal protein industry,” Ashutosh Sharma, Head of Investments for Prosus Ventures in India, said in a statement. “On the demand side as well, they have expanded their focus by adding new export markets. All this is enabled by the same underlying tech infrastructure highlighting the platform potential. Captain Fresh continues to execute very well and at a rapid pace. We are delighted to support their mission and partner in their growth.” |
Samsung suspends product shipments to Russia | Kate Park | 2,022 | 3 | 6 | Samsung Electronics has suspended shipments of all products to Russia “due to the current geopolitical developments,” the company said on Saturday. “We continue to actively monitor this complex situation to determine our next steps,” the company said. Samsung declined to comment on whether it plans to cease services in Russia. The products that have been suspended include smartphones, semiconductors and consumer electronics, a person familiar with the matter told . Shipping channels and flights into Russia have been halted after global shipping companies such as MSC and Maersk, which participated in sanctions, decided to suspend all operations at Russian ports. South Korean shipping company Hyundai Merchant Marine also ceased its cargo service to St. Peterburg last week, disabling Korean companies such as Samsung, LG and Hyundai from sending products to Russia. Last Friday, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s vice prime minister and minister of digital transformation, urged Samsung to temporarily halt supplying services and products in Russia by sending a letter to Samsung’s vice chairman, Han Jong-hee. , I urge you to take a step towards world peace! As long as Russian tanks and missiles bomb kindergartens and hospitals in Ukraine, your cool equipment cannot be used by Russians! — Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) “We want you to be part of history and help us such an extraordinary situation,” Fedorov said in the letter that he tweeted on Friday. “We believe that such actions will motivate the youth and active population of Russia to proactively stop the disgraceful military aggression. We need your support – in 2022, modern technology is perhaps the best answer to the tanks, multiple rocket launchers and missiles targeting residential neighborhoods, kindergartens, and hospitals. Stay with Ukraine and save millions of innocent lives!” Samsung said in a statement: “Our thoughts are with everyone who has been impacted and our priority is to ensure the safety of all our employees and their families. We plan to actively support humanitarian efforts around the region, including aid for refugees.” It is donating $6 million, including $1 million in consumer electronics products, as well as voluntary donations from its employees. Samsung leads the smartphone market in Russia, holding approximately 26.6% of the market share, followed by Apple (23%) and Xiaomi (19.9%) in 2021, per . This news comes days after a decisions to stop operating services in Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Apple announced last week it has halted product sales in Russia. Microsoft also said it has suspended all new sales products and services in Russia. |
Aston Martin to develop battery cell technology with Britishvolt | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 3 | 6 | British luxury carmaker Aston Martin has signed a memorandum of understanding with lithium-ion battery cell technologies company Britishvolt. The companies will work together toward developing battery cell technology designed for high-performance cars. Aston Martin plans to launch its first battery-electric vehicle in 2025, which is of one of the automaker’s current sports cars. The automaker also aims to provide an electrified powertrain option to all new product lines by 2026, with a target of displaying a fully electrified core portfolio by 2030, the company said. Aston Martin has not yet published a road map to full electrification. Together, a joint research and development team from Aston Martin and Britishvolt will design, develop and industrialize battery packs, which will include bespoke modules and battery management systems. The companies did not respond to a request for more information as to where this joint R&D will take place, though Britishvolt is working on its 45 GWh Gigaplant site in Cambois, Northumberland, which is expected to be fully operational in 2027 and able to produce battery packs for 450,000 EVs annually. In January, Britishvolt secured for the project, money that will see Britishvolt focus on developing batteries with high nickel content and more energy-dense materials to galvanize mass production. Last month, the company announced a , money that kicked off Britishvolt’s Series C. The company is aiming to raise around $264 million in total for the round, some of which will go toward the planned battery factory and an R&D center. Britishvolt also said last month that it signed agreements with four carmakers, one of which is British carmaker Lotus. It’s possible that Aston Martin was also one of the four, but the company did not confirm. As part of Aston Martin’s electrification road map, the company is planning to begin deliveries of its first plug-in hybrid car, the Valhalla, by early 2024. The automaker did not say whether Britishvolt batteries would be involved in the Valhalla. |
Fintech Roundup: Fintechs and banks are getting cozier | Mary Ann Azevedo | 2,022 | 3 | 6 | weekly fintech-focused column. I’ll be publishing this every Sunday, so in between posts, be sure to listen to the Tenderly Forage. Left to right: Justin Intal (CEO), Ofek Lavian (COO) and Victor Fimbres (CTO) Kin Insurance. Co-founders Lucas Ward and Sean Harper |
Tracking the future of crypto controversy | Lucas Matney | 2,022 | 3 | 6 | Hello readers, and welcome back to ! Last week, I talked about the environmental impacts of crypto with Kimbal Musk, early Tesla investor and brother of Elon. This week, I’m talking a bit about myself, this newsletter and the future of the web. If someone forwarded you this message, you can get this in your inbox from the , and follow my tweets I’ve got a secret to tease that I’ve been sitting on for a few months and am thrilled to share. Later this month, I’ll be sending out the first edition of , my new TechCrunch newsletter focused on crypto, web3 and the metaverse, with all of its opportunities, hype, scams and controversy. The extra-exciting part about this weekly newsletter is that there will be a weekly podcast attached to it, co-hosted by me and my fellow TechCrunch crypto enthusiast . We’ll discuss the hot news, trends and crypto drama while interviewing high-profile investors, entrepreneurs and skeptics. You can pre-subscribe to on our . Now, the sad part. A couple of weeks after the newsletter launches, I will be stepping aside from writing and handing over the reins to my more than capable colleague , who has done a killer job taking over this newsletter when I’ve been out over the years. I’ve loved sending out this newsletter every weekend; it’s always given me a chance to clear my brain, reflect on the state of the tech industry and voice my opinions on where it’s headed. I increasingly feel like the future of the tech industry will be embracing an internet with more complex economic models attached to its platforms, ones which can do good and bad things for consumers but should ultimately open up the web and give users more agency in how big platforms operate. The future, as cleanly imagined by tech’s founders and investors, is rarely the one we find ourselves living in, but that future is also infrequently what tech’s naysayers predict. The backlash to crypto over the past year has been interesting to witness. Viral YouTube videos and tweets paint a crushing portrait of tokens and NFTs with phrases like “Ponzi schemes,” “money laundering,” “fraud” and ‘scams,” and there is certainly much of that to be found. But the reality is that many consumers are simply discovering through NFTs and crypto that high finance and the concept of economic value are not the wholly rational institutions they had once imagined them to be. The idea of spending millions of dollars to own a link to an image file in a distributed database appear wholly nonsensical to most, but if that prospect seems reasonable to enough buyers, then its value is a product of the owners’ collective delusions — but much of the modern economy is built around these same delusions. Getting access to this uncomfortable realization is a gift in and of itself, but there are constructive and destructive places to take it. The criticism I find more philosophically concerning is that tokens and NFTs rein in the possibilities of a boundless and unfettered web. Gamers are particularly pissed about the idea of digital scarcity and hyper-capitalism finding its way into fantasy. No one can have it all on an internet where some element of the experience is gated from users based on their economic class in the real world. It’s a conversation that’s particularly concerning as massive companies like Meta begin talking about the idea of the metaverse so earnestly. The crypto space has a couple trillion dollars tied up in it at this point, but the remarkable thing is just how transitory it all feels. It’s part of the reason that highlighting informed criticism is so worthwhile right now, because the industry can still change. The informed middle ground is a space where there’s not much critical discourse happening on a regular basis. Most existing newsletters or podcasts are from institutional players or retail investors with projects to shill and disclosures to ignore. Meanwhile, the bulk of tech media critiques seem to be from folks who cover several things and are frankly less incentivized to spend the time tirelessly dissecting a confusing industry. I’ve been at TechCrunch for nearly seven years. During that time I’ve worn many hats, having been the go-to reporter for topics like gaming, artificial intelligence and virtual reality. Over the past year, I’ve devoted the bulk of my time to understanding what’s going on in the crypto world. I’ve dialed up investors, chatted with founders, played around with the platforms myself, and spent an awful lot of time on Twitter and Discord. What I’ve found is a multi-faceted industry with a high barrier to even understanding the basics. I want to serve as a place where readers and listeners can dial in and learn alongside me as I talk with stakeholders and skeptics and try to get to the heart of where this all is headed. All that to say, please and join me on this journey!
There’s a new kind of iron curtain going up between Russia and the West, as sanctions intensify, internet platforms grow more emboldened and the Russian government gets more defensive. After announcing last week that they would limit Facebook’s service due to the platform’s restrictions on state media, Russia has changed course and announced that they plan to outright ban the service. There’s been a lot of chatter around how crypto could help wealthy Russians evade sanctions, but Ukraine’s government is also using crypto to find aid and raise funds. My colleague Romain dove into the topic of how Ukraine was spending these funds and found a lot of unanswered questions. TechCrunch has aimed to cover every angle of how the Ukraine invasion not only impacts the tech industry across the globe but inside Eastern Europe. This week, we caught up with Ukraine’s deputy minister for Digital Transformation, Oleksandr (Alex) Bornyakov, who discussed the country’s digital strategy moving forward.
“Late-stage tech startups are facing a changing public market environment, but their early-stage counterparts are in a different world altogether. The cohort has had access to ample capital in recent quarters, giving them a bubble of venture capital that somewhat protects them from rapid changes in the greater economy.”
“Why are companies that went public via SPACs struggling so much? Did they catch a headwind from changing market conditions that previously helped push them forward? You bet.
“As a result of the heightened likelihood of cyberthreat from Russian malactor groups, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an unprecedented warning recommending that ‘all organizations — regardless of size — adopt a heightened posture when it comes to cybersecurity and protecting their most critical assets.'” If you’re reading this on TechCrunch you can subscribe to Week in Review (and Chain Reaction!) in your inbox from the , and follow my tweets |
TikTok suspends content in Russia in response to ‘fake news’ law | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 3 | 6 | TikTok is suspending livestreaming and new content to its video service in response to Russia’s new “fake news” law, the company said on Sunday. The law, which the lower chamber of Russia’s parliament approved on Friday, threatens prison time for anyone who publishes what the Kremlin deems to be false information about the country’s invasion of Ukraine. Those who are found guilty of disseminating false data about Russia’s armed forces would face up to 15 years in prison or a fine of 1.5 million rubles, or USD $14,000. TikTok have decided to suspend operations in the country to maintain the safety of employees and users that might use the app to “provide a source of relief and human connection during a time of war when people are facing immense tragedy and isolation,” the social media company. The Kremlin describes its actions in Ukraine as a “special military operation” and a “peace-keeping mission,” so any descriptions to the contrary could be dangerous. This law, as well as Russia’s decision to block Facebook, demonstrates the government’s push to stifle any narrative that contradicts the Kremlin’s official statements or exposes the role of the country’s military in sparking a humanitarian crisis. More broadly, the law represents Russia’s moves to tighten the screws on any opposition. The country has erupted in anti-war protests, with across 53 cities. In Moscow alone, that number was 1,400. TikTokers have been documenting the protests and other actions on the ground, such as how the economic sanctions are affecting everyday Russians. Any suspensions give nationals trying to speak out against their government one fewer conduit to the rest of the world. This most recent crisis isn’t the first time the . A year ago, young people began taking to the app to create videos in support of free speech and to rally against the government’s treatment of anti-authoritarian, anti-Putin, anti-corruption politician and activist Alexei Navalny. Among other political conflicts, Navalny has faced multiple imprisonments, a poisoning and a conviction for violating a previous parole from Putin’s government. To drum up support for Navalny, as well as express anger and dissatisfaction with the Russian government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and a weakened economy, the app became flooded with videos of teenagers cutting up their passports or throwing them away or creating how-tos for protesters. In response to TikTok’s suspension, some TikTokers who have been posting such information have lamented the ability to reach new audiences and share their stories, but are resolved to use Instagram and YouTube to get information out, provided those platforms don’t shut down to Russian users, as well. They are also inviting watchers to join their Telegram channels. |
Indian fintech CredAvenue turns unicorn with fresh $137 million funding | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 3 | 6 | Debt marketplace CredAvenue, which helps businesses and enterprises secure debt from lenders, has become the fastest Indian fintech startup to join the unicorn club, it said on Sunday. The two-year-old startup has raised a $137 million Series B financing round led by Insight Partners, B Capital Group and Dragoneer, it said. The round values , which was founded by Vivriti Capital co-founder Gaurav Kumar, at $1.3 billion, up from about $410 million in September last year, it said. The startup, which counts Sequoia Capital India, Lightspeed Venture Partners, TVS Capital, Lightrock, Vivriti Capital and Indian fintech CRED among its backers, has raised over $227 million to date. Businesses face scores of challenges — including opacity about interest rates and market evaluation — when they need to raise debt. “This is my fourth startup and I have spent over 16 years in the lending space,” Kumar said in an interview with TechCrunch. “The deepening in the debt market is not happening.” CredAvenue has built what it says is India’s most comprehensive technology stack to meet businesses’ complete debt cycle from disbursal to collections. It operates platforms for giving term loans and working capital solutions to enterprises, an origination platform for banks and non-banking financial institutions to partner for co-lending, and a bond platform for helping institutional and retail participants with bond issuance. Additionally, it also offers trade financing and end-to-end securitization and portfolio buyouts. “If you’re an enterprise and prefer direct finance, you can come to our loan stack, bond stack and ABS stack. If you have an indirect financing needs, you can set yourself on the co-ending platform and bring your retail customers. Our customers are any enterprise with revenue of more than $1.3 million,” he said. “Once a partner — whether it’s a bank on the lender side or a borrower — integrates with us on our operating system, you get access to everyone sitting on our network. At the core, our offering is about interoperability. We are paving the way for India’s debt market to realise its full potential, and we plan to soon being a leading player in the global debt markets with our unique and diversified product suites.” It recently acquired a collection startup called Spocto, which has operations in three markets. But the startup broadly plans to continue to focus on India, Kumar said. “We have barely scratched the surface.” CredAvenue has facilitated loans of over $10.5 billion to date, Kumar said. Over 2,300 corporates, 450 enterprises and 750 lenders are active on the platform, he said. The startup plans to deploy the fresh funds to expand its business in India and is also looking to acquire companies to inorganically fuel its growth. “We are excited about CredAvenue’s value proposition of bringing investors and borrowers on a single-window ecosystem to discover, facilitate and track debt products. I have had the privilege of knowing Gaurav for several years, and it’s exciting to back the strong team that is digitizing Indian debt markets. Debt in India is still under-penetrated as a % of GDP at ~60%. This creates a massive opportunity for a leading player like CredAvenue,” Kabir Narang, Founding General Partner at B Capital Group, said in a statement. “At $1.9 trillion, the Indian debt market is still underserved. CredAvenue helps automate and increase efficiency across the value chain. This is reflected in the strong retention amongst borrowers and repeat deals with investors. We like their tech-first approach to solve this problem. Beyond the business, what is even more exciting is the mission and impact they are having by providing access to debt to unlock human potential.” |
Colabs gets $3 million seed to expand across Pakistan, launch back-office SaaS solution | Annie Njanja | 2,022 | 3 | 24 | Lahore-based coworking space startup is set to roll out a SaaS product to enable businesses to meet back-office needs including company registration, talent sourcing and management, payroll processing, and legal and tax compliance. It also plans to hire more staff, which will include increasing the product team for its SaaS workspace business service that is emerging from the beta phase. The new plans come after the startup secured $3 million in seed funding in a round led by Indus Valley Capital, Zayn Capital and Fatima Gobi Ventures, the first time that the three Pakistan-focused VCs are investing in a startup together. “We realized that people setting up operations in Pakistan need other services; they need help to set up companies, process payrolls and to ensure tax compliance,” Colabs co-founder and CEO , a former investment banker, told TechCrunch. “That is why we introduced our business solutions.” “Our plan is to get to 600 paying customers in the next 12 months, and from there we will roll this product out to the market,” said Shah. Shah and his twin brother co-founded Colabs as a coworking outfit for entrepreneurs launching businesses and multinationals setting up hubs in Pakistan. This was in 2019, when they were inspired by the flourishing startup ecosystem and advancing technology space in the country. Prior to launching Colabs, Shah worked in the private equity sector for about eight years, with his last assignment at Abraaj Capital, before he collaborated with his brother, who operates long-established family-run real estate and development firm SABCON, to launch the startup. The family-owned real estate firm develops Colabs spaces. The startup hosts over 100 companies with a combined 1,200 people across its three locations in Lahore. It plans to open 100,000 seats across the country over the next five years in a nationwide expansion to major cities, including Islamabad and Karachi. Colabs wants to be the gateway to Pakistan for tech companies and a launchpad for startups. Colabs “The idea for Colabs is to create spaces across the country, where we can service freelancers, startups, SMEs and large enterprises. It is a community for anyone who wants to start up their career or a company or wants to enter the country. Colabs will support them in their journey. We want to become that gateway into Pakistan,” said Shah. “Our growth plan is very ambitious. But we see a demand for what we are offering because by the time we open our new spaces, they are already sold out. And this is because there are so many companies that are entering the country. And so many startups here that are raising capital and want to be inside spaces like ours, as opposed to investing in their own campus,” he said. The rise of flexible workplaces has also grown amid the pandemic as more companies reduce the overhead associated with operating exclusive physical locations. Coworking spaces like Colabs also host events, which are important for networking, learning, or meeting potential investors or clients. According to Shah, the rising in Pakistan by means that the growth of the country’s startup ecosystem is set to continue, increasing the demand for spaces like Colabs. Investments into Pakistan to $350 million in 2021 amid a fintech and e-commerce boom. Colabs’ new funding brings the total amount raised by the startup to $4 million, including capital from an unannounced pre-seed round. Aatif Awan, founder and managing partner of Indus Valley Capital, said, “We’re thrilled to partner with the Colabs team to help them build the leading platform and community that will power the growth of Pakistani tech across startups, freelancers and global companies expanding into Pakistan.” The seed round was joined by Shorooq Partners, Kinnow Capital, Muir Capital, Sai Ventures, and some key angels, including Turner Novak, William Hockey and Teddy Himler. Zayn Capital co-founder and managing partner Faisal Aftab said, “I have closely watched Colabs grow into one of the key players in Pakistan’s startup ecosystem. We were fortunate enough to have met some of the startups we invested in, in their spaces.” |
Europe says yes to messaging interoperability as it agrees on major new regime for Big Tech | Natasha Lomas | 2,022 | 3 | 24 | The European Union late Thursday secured agreement on the detail of a major competition reform that will see the most powerful, intermediating tech platforms subject to a set of up-front rules on how they can and cannot operate — with the threat of fines of up to 10% of global annual turnover should they breach requirements (or even 20% for repeat violations). In three-way discussions between the European Council, Parliament and Commission, which ran for around eight hours today, it was finally agreed that the Digital Markets Act (DMA) will apply to large companies providing “core platform services” — such as social networks or search engines — that have a market capitalization of at least €75 billion or an annual turnover of €7.5 billion. To be designated a so-called “gatekeepers,” and thus fall in scope of the DMA, companies must also have at least 45 million monthly end users in the EU and more than 10,000 annual business users. This puts U.S. tech giants — including Apple, Google and Meta (Facebook) — clearly in scope. While some less gigantic but still large homegrown European tech platforms, such as the music streaming platform Spotify, look set to avoid being subject to the regime as it stands. (Although other European platforms may already have — or gain — the scale to fall in scope.) SMEs are generally excluded from being designated gatekeepers as the DMA is intended to take targeted aim at Big Tech. The regulation has been and is set to usher in a radically different ex ante regime for the most powerful tech platforms, in contrast to the after-the-fact antitrust enforcement have largely been able to shrug off to date, with no discernible impact to market share. Frustration with flagship EU competition investigations and enforcements against tech giants like Google — and widespread concern over the need to reboot tipped digital markets and restore the possibility of vibrant competition — have been core driving forces for the bloc’s lawmakers. “The agreement ushers in a new era of tech regulation worldwide,” Andreas Schwab, the European Parliament’s Rapporteur for the file, said in a statement. “The Digital Markets Act puts an end to the ever-increasing dominance of Big Tech companies. From now on, they must show that they also allow for fair competition on the internet. The new rules will help enforce that basic principle. Europe is thus ensuring more competition, more innovation and more choice for users.” In another statement, Cédric O, French minister of state with responsibility for digital, added: “The European Union has had to impose record fines over the past 10 years for certain harmful business practices by very large digital players. The DMA will directly ban these practices and create a fairer and more competitive economic space for new players and European businesses. These rules are key to stimulating and unlocking digital markets, enhancing consumer choice, enabling better value sharing in the digital economy and boosting innovation. The European Union is the first to take such decisive action in this regard and I hope that others will join us soon.” Key requirements agreed by the EU’s co-legislators include interoperability for messaging platforms, meaning smaller platforms will be able to request that dominant gatekeeper services open up on request and enable their users to be able to exchange messages, send files or make video calls across messaging apps, expanding choice and countering the typical social platform network effects that create innovation-chilling service lock-in. That could be hugely significant in empowering consumers who object to the policies of a giant like Meta, which owns Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, but feel unable to switch to a rival because they would lose the ability to message their friends. There had been some debate over whether messaging interoperability would survive the trilogues. It has — although group messaging interoperability is set to be phased in over a longer period than one-to-one messaging. Speaking to TechCrunch ahead of today’s fourth and final trilogue, Schwab emphasized the importance of messaging interoperability provisions. “The Parliament has always been clear that interoperability for messaging has to come,” he told us. “It will come — at the same time, it also has to be secure. If the Telecoms Regulators say it is not possible to deliver end-to-end encrypted group chats within the next nine months, then it will come as soon as it is possible, there will be no doubt about that.” Per Schwab, messenger services that are subject to the interoperability requirement will have to open up their APIs for competitors to provide interoperable messaging for basic features — with the requirement intentionally asymmetrical, meaning that smaller messaging services that are not in the scope of the DMA will not be required to open up to gatekeepers but can themselves connect into Big Tech. “The first basic messaging features will be user-to-user messages, video and voice calls, as well as basic file transfer (photos, videos), and then over time, more features such as group chats will come,” noted Schwab. “Everything must be end-to-end encrypted.” Interoperability for social media services has been put on ice for now — with the EU co-legislators agreeing that such provisions will be assessed in the future. In another important decision that could have major ramifications for dominant digital business models, the P “Data combination and cross use will only be possible with explicit consent,” said Schwab. “This is especially true for the purpose of advertising and also applies to combination with third-party data (e.g., Facebook with third parties). This means more control for users whether they want to be tracked across devices/services, even outside of the networks of Big Tech (hence the third party data), and whether they want to receive tracking ads. “Lastly, to avoid consent fatigue, Parliament will limit how many times gatekeepers can ask again for consent if you refused it or withdrawn consent to these practices: once per year. This has been very important to me — otherwise, consent would be meaningless if gatekeepers can simply spam users until they give in,” he added. Another Parliament-backed requirement that survived the trilogue negotiations is a stipulation that users should be able to freely choose their browser, virtual assistants or search engines when such a service is operated by a gatekeeper — meaning choice screens, not pre-selected defaults, will be the new norm in those areas for in-scope platforms. Although email — another often bundled choice that European end-to-end encrypted email service ProtonMail had been arguing should also get a choice screen — does not appear to have been included, with lawmakers narrowing this down to “the most important software,” as the Council put it. Other obligations on gatekeepers in the agreed text include requirements to: And among the restrictions are stipulations that gatekeepers cannot: The commission will be solely responsible for enforcing the DMA — and it will have some leeway over whether to immediately crack down on duty-breaching tech giants, with the text allowing the possibility of engaging in regulatory dialogue to ensure gatekeepers have a clear understanding of the rules ( rather than reaching straight for a chunky penalty). Today’s agreement on a provisional text of the DMA marks almost the last milestone on a multi-year journey toward the DMA proposal becoming law. But there are still a few hoops for European lawmakers to jump through. It’s still pending approval of the finalized legal text by the Parliament and Council (but getting consensus agreement in the first place is typically the far harder ask). Then, after that final vote, the text will be published in the EU’s official journey and the regulation will come into force 20 days later — with six months allowed for member states to implement it in national legislation. EU commissioners will be holding a series of — doubtless very jubilant — briefings tomorrow to flesh out the finer detail of what’s been agreed, so stay tuned for more analysis. |
null | Walter Thompson | 2,022 | 3 | 1 | null |
Google-backed Glance acquires gaming platform Gambit in NFT push | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 3 | 24 | Glance has acquired India’s Gambit as the Google-backed firm looks to supercharge its mobile games offerings and introduce NFTs to its Gen-Z users, TechCrunch has confirmed. Piyush Shah, co-founder of InMobi Group and COO of Glance, confirmed the acquisition but declined to share the financial terms of the deal. In an interview with TechCrunch, he said the acquisition will help the to bring live game shows and NFT-based incentivization to its users to enrich their gaming experience. Gaming is the latest focus for Glance, which partners with phone makers to bring media, entertainment and news content to users’ lock screens on handsets. The startup, with a presence on over 400 million devices, piloted casual games on its platform last year and immediately found acceptance among users. Glance, which has acquired younger firms Roposo and Shop101 in recent years, is known to acquire small firms and significantly scale their offerings while broadening Glance’s platform. “Almost 10 million people are watching live game streaming on Glance every month. So our idea was, how do we also bring live game shows on the platform?” said Shah. He said NFTs will deliver myriad benefits to users. “It will have utilitarian benefits — where owning the digital virtual assets will allow users to build strong character in games — and at the same time these NFTs could be listed and traded on NFT marketplaces and exchanges to help users earn and own,” he said. He declined to reveal which blockchain the startup is using to launch NFTs and the players it intends to partner with, noting that the web3 push of Glance is still in its early days. But said Glance has been evaluating the space for over nine months. The startup plans to partner with gamers and influencers as well as other gaming firms, he said. The NFTs on the platform will capture micro-moments from the game and high-order virtual avatars, he added. “This will potentially enable creators, streamers and developers to monetize through assets and NFT-based game creation, while giving gamers unique experiences that they love,” the startup said. (Glance is avoiding bringing fantasy sports offerings of six-year-old Gambit, which operates Nostragamus, citing local regulation in India.) “With Glance and Gambit’s combined strengths and our belief that there is a game for every person, we envision doubling the number of monthly active gamers on Glance Games in the next year,” Yashashvi Takallapalli, co-founder and chief executive of Gambit, said in a statement. Glance, valued at about $1.7 billion, is the latest major firm from India to make a push into web3. Fantasy sports giant Dream11 is in talks to acquire a 30% to 40% stake in NFT startup Rario for about $100 million, according to a person familiar with the matter. (Indian newspaper Economic Times earlier reported some details of the deal.) Sequoia Capital India-backed NFT startup FanCraze, which maintains an exclusive partnership with the ICC, said earlier this week it had raised $100 million in a funding round. Indian game developer SuperGaming last month partnered with Siddharth Menon, co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange WazirX, to launch a web3 games marketplace called Tegro. |
Too much email? Try Gated, which asks unknown senders to make a donation first | Connie Loizos | 2,022 | 3 | 24 | If you aren’t drowning in email these days, you either don’t have an email account or you are a very young person who marketers haven’t discovered quite yet (they will!). To push back against the assault, a 10-month-old, Bay Area-based startup called has emerged with an approach to help both overwhelmed email recipients — and hopefully benefit society at large. The big idea: to force unknown senders to donate to a nonprofit chosen by the email recipient in order to get into their inbox. Want to tell strangers about your event next month, pitch your company, sell your gizmo? That’s fine, but it’s going to cost you — maybe a lot, depending on who you’re trying to reach. Gated — founded by Andy Mowat, an angel investor who was most recently the VP of growth operations at the employee engagement startup CultureAmp — works by creating a separate folder in one’s Gmail account. According to Mowat, the software automatically builds a list of allowed senders based on who the email holder has communicated with previously; when unknown senders reach out, they’re promptly moved into this separate folder, where they’re told they can only reach the user’s inbox if they make a donation to that person’s charity of choice. The individual sets the price — beginning with a minimum of $2 per email — after which 70% of the payment goes to the (vetted) nonprofit. The rest flows to Gated, whose software is free. Unsurprisingly, venture capitalists, who are the target of hundreds of pitches each day, love the idea. Indeed, Gated is announcing that it has raised $3.3 million in seed funding led by Corazon Capital, with participation from Precursor Ventures, Burst Capital, Tuesday Capital and other early-stage funds. Of course, as much as the concept may resonate with potential users (waves hand), it also raises questions, including, first and foremost, around privacy. For its part, Gated says it never reads the contents of any message. “We’re only looking at the metadata, the ‘to’ and the ‘from,'” says Mowat. Even still, there are only so many people being flooded by enough strangers’ requests that Gmail filters aren’t enough. Some of those people are likely influential in their own way and might not love Gated mapping their connections over time. Another challenge is that uses Gmail, which is the only platform to approve the use of Gated’s software to date. (Mowat says the company is going through the “next round of reviews” with Microsoft, noting that some email platforms have “had some other partners burn them in the past” so they “put everyone through a security review.”) Gated is also not a lucrative business to start, though as with most startups, that could surely change. As Mowat tells us, a large chunk of the revenue Gated expects to receive will end up going toward payment fees to cover the cost of all these transactions. While he and his small team are already thinking about micropayments schemes so Gated isn’t eaten alive by credit card fees, it’s not there yet. As for how Gated grows, beyond articles like this one, the outfit is counting on a heavy viral component to spread the word at first. That seems like a reasonable approach, given that even two weeks ago, Gated already had a wait list of 2,500 people, according to Mowat, despite having not yet launched publicly. Later, Gated also plans to develop a business-to-business product, where marketers work with Gated to develop a budget that allows their sales teams to send out a certain number of emails per month. By the way, if you’re wondering: An email recipient who uses Gated is under no obligation to answer an email, no matter how much someone has paid to get it into their Gmail account. According to Mowat, the response rate the company is seeing with its beginning user base is higher than average. “Between 40% to 60% of all donated emails are replied to, with some users replying to every single email because they really appreciate people respecting their time.” Others, he adds, still reply “very infrequently.” It’s also worth noting that a “donor” does not have unfettered access forever to the inbox of an email recipient. “There’s some subtleness to it,” says Mowat, but basically, if a recipient responds to an email, the email sender is placed in a known sender group by default. Still, that sender can be dragged back to that Gated folder at any time, or else put into “mute” mode. Says Mowat, “That basically means, ‘Don’t send them another challenge email. But also don’t put them in my inbox.'” |
Daily Crunch: Wearable health tracker Oura has sold more than a million rings | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 3 | 24 | Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Thursday, March 24, 2022! I am happy to report that is taking on the day’s startups section, as he will be sharing the Daily Crunch writing load starting next week (along with )! A big thanks to the two of them for jumping in and taking on this lovely letter. Before we start the news rundown, a few house announcements. Our ! It’s focused on the crypto world and features and . And from the events world, , and . Now, to work! – The startup ecosystem has traditionally been less-than-friendly to women founders and investors, but argues things aren’t as dire as the common narrative seems to indicate. We still have a ways to go, but . Valuations are valuable – there’s a trend going around where people are sharing their salaries with their co-workers, in part to keep the bosses honest about gender pay gaps. We are seeing a similar trend among startups sharing their valuations. , , and are some recent examples. Trust me; your competitors will know what valuation you raised at anyway, and you may help along some of your fellow entrepreneurs by sharing the valuations of your fundraise with reporters. (And journalists love it!) As a fan of circular hardware, it pleases me that Oura is continuing its quest toward creating a ring to rule them all, a ring to find them, a ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them. In the Land of Mordor where the shadows lie, the company today announced it has . My precious. Other awesome things happening across the startup ecosystem: Oh, and don’t miss ’s excellent , released today, which scans the world of robotics for signs of self-awareness, just in case we have to start gearing up for a Skynet invasion. ! / Getty Images Banks and fintechs have access to more data than ever, but many of the benefits have flowed in one direction. Inflation and stagnant wages limit consumers’ ability to save, but services like buy now, pay later make it much easier to spend. To give customers more financial support, “modern banks can use data and build trust to improve consumer financial health,” writes Uday Akkaraju, CEO of fintech firm Bond.ai. We often begin our startup coverage with a group, so why not do the same with our Big Tech notes today? Let’s talk about mobility. First up, to list taxis in its app in New York City. The Uber-versus-taxi saga has been long, winding and complex. But I did not see this bit of news coming, frankly. Next up, , which seems like good news. And Bird, the , is for folks who need other options for getting around. Which we are more than here for. |
Former TikTok content moderators file lawsuit over ‘psychological trauma’ | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,022 | 3 | 24 | A pair of former TikTok content reviewers is suing the company, alleging that it failed to adequately support them as they engaged in the deeply disturbing work of removing objectionable videos from the social network. NPR , which was . Plaintiffs Ashley Velez and Reece Young both did moderation work for TikTok on contract through third-party companies — Canadian tech firm Telus International and a New York-based company called Atrium, respectively. Velez and Young are seeking class-action status, which would allow other TikTok content moderators alleging that they were negatively impacted by the companies’ practices to join the lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges that TikTok and ByteDance violated California labor laws by failing to provide Velez and Young with adequate mental health support in spite of the mental risks of the “abnormally dangerous activities” they were made to engage with on a daily basis. It also claims that the companies pushed moderators to review high volumes of extreme content to hit quotas and then amplified that harm by forcing them to sign NDAs so they were legally unable to discuss what they saw. “Defendants have failed to provide a safe workplace for the thousands of contractors who are the gatekeepers between the unfiltered, disgusting and offensive content uploaded to the App and the hundreds of millions of people who use the App every day,” the lawsuit states. It alleges that in spite of knowing the psychological risks of prolonged exposure to such traumatic content, TikTok and ByteDance made no effort to provide “appropriate ameliorative measures” to help workers cope with the extreme content after the fact. The suit describes how both plaintiffs spent 12-hour workdays reviewing extreme, disturbing content including “child sexual abuse, rape, torture, bestiality, beheadings, suicide, and murder.” Beyond the graphic content, the lawsuit describes how Velez and Young were also repeatedly exposed to hate speech and conspiracy theories which also had a negative impact on their mental well-being. Another TikTok content moderator, Candie Frazier, , though NPR reports that case is no longer moving forward. The new TikTok suit follows in the footsteps of a class-action lawsuit that the same legal team . The company settled that suit two years later with an agreement to pay out $52 million to more than 11,000 moderators who struggled with mental health as a result of the content they were tasked with sorting through on a daily basis. |
Such great heights | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 3 | 24 | inbox is overflowing with agtech pitches, and frankly I only have myself to blame after bringing it up the last two newsletters (damn, just did it again, didn’t?). As for where this whole thing started? I blame the fact that spring officially sprung at precisely 11:33 AM ET in my home hemisphere. Flowers are blooming, birds and singing and we’re all thinking about how we might employ robots to deal with it all. There’s also the (possibly related fact) that the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit kicked off in San Francisco this week, which is at least partially to blame for the pitches filling the air like so many pollen grains. Not that I’m annoyed or anything (if I sound it, that’s the literal pollen speaking, which now comprises roughly half my brain). In fact, if anything, it’s offered some interesting insight into the big trends in the category. I had said early on that agtech robotics thus far haven’t seen the adoption rate many were anticipating, and that still stands. But it’s not for lack of trying. The biggest thing in the category is currently surveying — specifically monitoring crops for potential issues. I frequently cite the statistic that the average age of a farmer in the U.S. is 57.5 years, and about a decade older in Japan. Here in the States, the age has been increasing for around four decades. I mention that because farming can be extremely difficult work, and at an age when many are (at least theoretically) considering what retirement looks like, they’re out there in the fields at sunrise. Traditional surveying monopolizes a lot of tedious hours during the day. And if not done right, it’s hard to catch problem areas before they become actual problems. Growmark/Solinftec Four of the key methods I’ve been seeing pop up are satellite imagery, IoT devices, drone surveillance and robotics, like . Surveying is going to be an important first step in introducing robots into farms, though a far more compelling model combines that functionality with other tasks, whether it’s picking fruit, weeding or plowing. Given that many of these devices are effectively rented from companies, I’m guessing farmers will want the most bang for their buck. All right, enough farm talk this week. Let’s discuss the future of robotic ubiquity for a minute. Toward the end of last year, CMU’s new robotics director about his new role. He capped the interview off by telling me, “If you go to a factory floor or a few other places, you can see a robot. Maybe you have a robot vacuum, but I want it to be at a point where you look out your window and see a robot.” Let’s be super literal here for a minute and discuss Skyline Robotics (not to be confused with the strange regional chili of the same name). As I mentioned in a recent write-up, I’d put window washing high on my list of jobs to automate. Until I looked into it this week, I assumed one could make some great scratch, given the relative hazards of such an occupation, but the figures I’ve seen don’t really reflect that. Statistically it might not be the most dangerous job in the world, but it’s probably among the most harrowing, just dangling on a platform in the sky, hundreds of feet above street level. Skyline got some ink late last year, showing off its system, which effectively features two Kuka robotic arms on a suspended platform. Yesterday, it in funding, bringing its total raise up to $9 million. “This successful funding round and first Ozmo deployment shows that the demand for our product and services are not just tangible and felt by investors, but that there’s a major business opportunity ahead of Skyline,” says CEO Michael Brown. “The conviction of our team is being matched by the investment community.” OTTO Speaking of hazardous jobs, as I mentioned last week, forklifts can be deceptively dangerous. Naturally, more firms are looking to automate the process, including Ontario-based OTTO. The Canadian company this week announced the availability of its new autonomous pallet mover, the OTTO Lifter. Andrew Job, Founder & CEO of Plotlogic. Photo by Sarah Keayes/The Photo Pitch Meanwhile, Devin had the story about . The Brisbane startup uses hyperspectral imagery to find difficult to detect elements in the soil. Says CEO Andrew Job: We see three types of benefits: financial, environmental sustainability and safety. The operation can process more ore and less waste, making it more profitable. They can be more precise, leaving more rocks in situ and not expending fuel and greenhouse gases moving waste. And finally, it reduces human exposure hours in the mine. Nvidia This week at GTC, Nvidia continued its push into the world of robot development with the launch of the . The $2,000 developer kit offers a pretty massive computing increase over its predecessor. Production units, meanwhile, are arriving in Q4. Automation is poised to revolutionize the $10 trillion construction industry over the next few years, so to become more automated. The company announced that it’s pushing to turn its field printers to become fully self-operating for potential 24/7 usage. The systems print building layouts on the floor to give workers a precise idea of where to build. This week, the company raised $9.4 million, following up on a $2.5 million round back in 2019. “We set out to modernize the construction industry, and to build practical solutions that solve the pain points contractors struggle with every day,” says CEO Derrick Morse. “We believe that layout is the ideal starting point. Layout is the beachhead for construction automation. It sits at the intersection of the digital and physical world, solves a huge problem and unlocks the ability to deploy robotics onto job sites in a very meaningful way.” Today is our tenth birthday! 🎂 On this special occasion, we take a look back at all we've accomplished and the community that has made it all possible. — Open Robotics (@OpenRoboticsOrg) Oh, and hey, before I leave you for the week, to Open Robotics. I’m still unsure of what to get the Robot Operating System maintainer who has everything, so a little column space will have to do. Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch |
Ola to acquire fintech Avail Finance | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 3 | 24 | Ola said on Thursday evening it has reached an agreement to acquire Avail Finance, a financial services startup that serves the blue-collar workforce, as the ride-hailing giant looks to expand its financial services offerings. The two startups did not disclose the terms of the deal. Avail Finance had raised about $38.5 million (including about $4.5 million in venture debt) across multiple rounds and was valued at $86.6 million, according to insight platform (paywalled). It’s worth noting that Ola co-founder and chief executive Bhavish Aggarwal and Avail Finance founder and chief executive Ankush Aggarwal are brothers. The two companies share Alpha Wave Global and Matrix Partners as major common investors. The deal is seeking approval from shareholders. Ola said the acquisition will help the startup “strengthen its play in the credit underserved segments that comprise blue-collar workers such as Ola’s driver-partner ecosystem.” That play includes cross-selling “multiple lending products” to its driver partners, it added. The bigger startup said it has invested nearly $104 million into its financial services business, which it said is already “showing strong growth across both its lending and insurance verticals.” “Ola Postpaid, its BNPL offering, is available to 40 million customers, its vehicle financing business is growing rapidly in conjunction with Ola Electric as well as Ola Cars, its used cars business. With Insurance, Ola has built a first-of-its-kind embedded motor insurance journey for Ola Electric and Ola Cars, where customers can seamlessly select Insurance; and add ons like roadside assistance or zero depreciation within the buying journey,” it added. |
Netflix adds two more games, will release its first first-person shooter title soon | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 3 | 24 | Streaming service Netflix is once again with the launch of two more titles, which went live on Tuesday. The new games are called “Shatter Remastered” and “This Is A True Story.” The two new titles are now available for iOS and Android users. Netflix also teased its first upcoming first-person shooter title called “Into the Dead 2: Unleashed.” The first new game, “Shatter Remastered,” is a retro-inspired brick-breaking game from New Zealand developer PikPok. The game is an updated version of Shatter, a game from New Zealand developer Sidhe that was originally released on the PlayStation 3 in 2009. The refreshed mobile-optimized version includes global leaderboards so users can track their high scores against other players around the world. Netflix The second title, “This Is A True Story,” is a game that’s designed to raise awareness about the lack of safe drinking water in some parts of the world. The game was developed by Frosty Pop in collaboration with Charity: Water, a nonprofit organization that is working to bring clean and safe drinking water to people in developing countries. The game shares a true story of a sub-Saharan African woman’s daily struggle to get water for her family. It’s based on actual interviews and experiences and allows players to explore a hand-painted landscape while surviving a windstorm, catching poachers, befriending a goat and more. As for “Into the Dead 2: Unleashed,” Netflix hasn’t specified when exactly the game will launch, but notes that it’s “coming soon.” Like “Shatter Remastered,” the title was developed by PikPok. The game is a sequel to the zombie action game “Into the Dead.” In the game, players must fend off zombie threats while crossing treacherous terrain. The game features multiple chapters, stages and challenges where players can unlock weapons, firearms, explosives and more. Netflix Like Netflix’s other games, users are directed to the new titles through the company’s apps on iOS and Android. On Android, users can find games in multiple places, including on a dedicated gaming tab in the app’s main navigation. On iOS, games are featured in a dedicated row. The games themselves are hosted on the platforms’ respective app stores, not on Netflix’s infrastructure, but they can only be played by Netflix users. After installation, the games will prompt users to authenticate with their Netflix account information to get started. Netflix has been building out its gaming service since , when the company debuted its initial lineup that included a couple of “Stranger Things”-themed titles and other casual games. Since then, Netflix has rolled out several other titles, including “Arcanium: Rise of Akhan,” “Asphalt Xtreme,” “Bowling Ballers,” “Card Blast,” “Dominoes Café, “Dungeon Dwarves,” “Hextech Mayhem: A League of Legends Story,” “Knittens,” “Krispee Street,” “Shooting Hoops,” “Teeter (Up)” and “Wonderputt Forever.” |
TechCrunch debuts ‘Chain Reaction,’ a new podcast about the wild world of web3 | Lucas Matney | 2,022 | 3 | 24 | are more confusing or intimidating than crypto. The industry has attracted trillions in investment, but it can still be tough to even buy tokens or NFTs, let alone understand what these things actually do. As a result, crypto has courted a fairly controversial reputation among consumers, who are struggling to reconcile the views of optimists promising a new world order with the present-day reality of influencers pushing doggy coin scams and suspect NFT deals. There’s a lot to be wary of in the world of web3, but there’s also plenty of promise — both of which we want to help our readers understand. TechCrunch is launching a new podcast called , which will dive into the world of crypto, web3 and NFTs. Each week, TechCrunch Senior Editor and Crypto Reporter will break down a handful of trending crypto topics (and why they matter) before sitting down for an interview with an industry expert, be they an investor, founder, personality or skeptic. Our goal is to learn alongside readers about a budding industry with potentially huge implications for the future of everything — from finance to art to the internet itself. Alongside the podcast, we’ll also be sending out a weekly Chain Reaction newsletter digging into the week’s web3 happenings with more granular detail, highlighting notable funding rounds, acquisitions, heists, personnel moves and spicy tweets. You can sign up for the newsletter . Our first episode and newsletter will go live next month. Listen to the trailer below to get a taste of what’s in store, follow and subscribe now on your favorite podcast app. |
Uber will list NYC taxis to combat driver shortage and high fares | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 3 | 24 | If you can’t disrupt them, join them? Once poised to render the taxi system obsolete, Uber to list all New York City taxis on its app. Later this spring, New York City riders will be able to hail a cab right from their Uber apps, helping the company combat its driver shortage and rising fares. “Our partnerships with the taxi industry look different around the world and as we look at the next five years, we strongly believe that there is no world in which taxis and Uber exist separately,” Uber spokesperson Conor Ferguson told TechCrunch via email. “There is just too much to gain for both sides. Taxis help us unlock new markets. In fact, it’s now our primary product in places like Hong Kong and Turkey.” The partnership works by integrating Uber’s software with existing taxi software from companies like CMT and Curb, which run in 14,000 New York City taxis. According to reports from , taxi fares via Uber will be the around the same price as a generic Uber X. Cab drivers who pick up Uber passengers will be paid the same rate as standard Uber drivers — their payment is determined by a minimum time and distance rate. But Uber uses different metrics to calculate pay than taxis. So, taxi drivers will be able to see their expected earnings before accepting an Uber passenger, a courtesy that Uber doesn’t extend to its existing drivers. Uber takes about , according to its investor reports, but Uber has not disclosed the terms of its deal with the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, like what kind of cut will be deducted from taxi rides. Taxi drivers around the world have the prevalence of ride share businesses like Uber. In France, the company to lure customers and drivers away from existing infrastructure. This overall model of to keep prices low continued until the company a small profit in Q3 2021, despite still losing $2.4 billion dollars. The decision to work with taxi drivers has overseas — Uber has partnerships with taxi providers in countries like Spain, Colombia, Austria, Germany, South Korea and more — so it’s no wonder that the company will try this in one of its biggest U.S. markets. |
Data obscures positive trends in VC dollars reaching women-founded startups | Mimi Aboubaker | 2,022 | 3 | 24 | billion in venture capital was deployed, and only 2% of that number went to companies founded only by women and 15.6% to teams with both women and men on their founding teams, . In my view, the correct statistic is about 18%, not 2% — as we should take into account deals that had mixed-gender founding teams. Eighteen percent of $330 billion translates to $59 billion, or 25% of all venture transactions (e.g., deal count), and these three figures are the numbers that should be reported. It is disrespectful to exclude founding teams with both women and men from women-founded company fundraising statistics, period. Doing so ascribes all the fundraising success and the leadership work underpinning it to the founders who are men, effectively propagating gender bias. Beyond the dismissal of companies with mixed-gender founding teams that had tremendous successes in 2021 — consider Alloy ( ), Cityblock Health ( ) and Nubank ( ) — the correct statistic reflects a dramatic change in gender disparity. At 2%, only one in every 50 venture dollars is allocated to women-founded companies, while 18% puts this in the ballpark of one in five venture dollars. Both reflect that there is more to do on the issue, but they exemplify different starting points and, by extension, the ground that needs to be covered. If our ultimate objective is to understand the current state of opportunity and its expansion over time, we need to, in the words of , : representation in early-stage financing. Specifically, we need to be tracking as metrics: (i) the number of first institutional round venture deals, (ii) the demographics of the founders of those companies and (iii) the composition of the funders on an annual cohort basis. The rest is noise. I ran the most recent numbers, and shows that in 2021, women founders (defined here to include mixed-gender teams) pulled in 24% of first-financing venture deals that disclosed founder identities. (Of 4,375 deals, 3,659 disclosed founder identities, and 895 were either women-led or led by individuals of both genders.) From this perspective, one in four first-financing deals is into a company with a woman founder — a dramatically different picture than the outrage-inducing 2% narrative circulating in the industry. Again, we still have work to do on the matter, but we’re not pushing a boulder up a hill — we’re halfway there. To put the number in context, women-founded companies have accounted for around 24% of annual first-financing deals that we know had mixed-gender teams since 2017. From 2012-2016, this number hovered around 20% and, in the mid- to late 2010s, the number was in the mid-teens. This implies that first-financing transactions to companies with women founders have grown at a faster rate than overall first-financing dealmaking. The data supports this, as the numbers for women founders and the overall first-financing growth are 1.6x compared to 1.4x from 2016 to 2021, 1.4x to 1.1x from 2011 to 2016 and 3.8x to 2.2x from 2006 to 2011, respectively.¹ On a five-year compounding annual growth rate (CAGR) basis, the numbers are 6.2% and 2.5% for women founders and the overall first-financing market, respectively, for 2015-2020.² Slowing growth in first-financing venture deal count over the last 15 years is perhaps most surprising given the considerable rise in emerging fund managers, particularly those with women-founder investment mandates, venture investors who are women and commitments from storied firms to increase support for underrepresented founders in recent years. This calls into question the efficacy of reporting and related advocacy initiatives. How did all the top funds rank in 2021 across different founder backgrounds? Unclear. How do emerging fund managers stack up to storied firms? Unclear. If I am a newly wealthy individual interested in becoming a limited partner (LP) in funds that have the best first-money-in track record on women founders, Black founders, immigrant founders or other areas of affinity … how does everyone rank on deal count basis? Unclear. Is it actually true that women investors are leading more first-financing deals in women-founded companies? Unclear. What percent of emerging fund managers are raising for and investing in pre-seed or seed — which is the opportunity bottleneck — versus Series A and B? Unclear. Without funder-side reporting that matches the rigor of founder-side analysis, coverage falls short of true accountability. Distinguish those leading the charge from those lagging behind as well as first-check writers — those truly sponsoring opportunity — from others supporting women by other definitions. It’s a worthwhile endeavor, as benchmarking funds and investors by deal count allows all participants in the ecosystem to transact more efficiently based upon their priorities. Moreover, capital allocations to women founders ought to be segmented into racial, socioeconomic and academic subgroups, because women have biases, too. Homophily, which underpins the thesis that more women investors will yield more women founders, does not cut on gender lines alone — it also cuts across pedigree, sociodemographic, behavioral and intrapersonal characteristics. The homogeneous roster of women founders, the challenges and personal development arcs discussed, and proposed solutions to issues of disparities to date, demonstrates this to be true. Further, trickle-down representation simply feels inadequate to many individuals. While there are limitations to how granular we can get with firm-reported data, the point remains: You cannot hold accountable individuals whose records are unclear, and accountability brings out the best in people. Aggregate numbers have many distorting factors baked in that make them meaningless metrics. I’ll illustrate using edtech, which had another blockbuster year. However, the fact that (women-founded) , (men-founded) and (men-founded) in 2021 tells us nothing about the state of access to capital for underrepresented founders or gender disparities in capital allocations today. That’s because while these three companies pulled in $415 million in 2021, their fundraising successes today are the result of being given an opportunity six or seven years ago and consistently delivering results. In short, annual deal value is a lagging indicator, skewed by late-stage financing into companies formed five to 10 years ago, and it suffers from survivorship bias, as funding after the first financing round is contingent on performance. Further, deal value is not a comparable metric for myriad reasons. The concentration of founders across industries, the capital intensity of said industries, the stage distribution of companies and management business planning (e.g., how much runway to raise for, whether to optimize for growth or profitability, etc.) all have a hand in aggregate fundraising statistics. All this makes the number less meaningful than it appears to be at first glance, and ineffective for comparison on a gender level. As an illustrative example, Cruise, a men-founded autonomous vehicles (AV) company, raised in 2021, accounting for nearly 1% of the year’s venture capital dollars. This transaction alone was more than the $2.6 billion women founders , an industry that had a historic year. There’s work to be done, but pretending aggregate deal value is the metric that matters is malpractice. If true accountability is the goal, the ecosystem would be better served by a more rigorous progress scorecard — one that zeroes in on first-financing deals on a deal count basis, disaggregates women founders into subgroups, and benchmarks fund participation. |
Using data to solve key pain points for today’s banking customers | Uday Akkaraju | 2,022 | 3 | 24 | reaction; the more you have, the more you can earn. But it can have an exponentially adverse effect if you don’t have it. This holds true for data as well. Vast amounts of information improve banks’ ability to support customers, but financial institutions must know how to use it. Today’s banking customer is in serious need of guidance from banks, whether it’s about spending, saving, borrowing, planning or all of the above. After all, today struggle with their finances. In addition, their loyalty shifts easily, considering that neobanks are more accessible with instantaneous onboarding processes. Modern banks are challenged to familiarize themselves with their customers, dig deeper into the reasoning behind their financial decisions and enhance their fidelity. Yet, without knowing what data to look for and how to understand their customer’s individual needs, blanket approaches and loosely categorized consumer profiles leave customers excluded from adequate financial support and the same financial position, if not worse. Let’s look at how modern banks can use data and build trust to improve consumer financial health. Banks must recognize that past financial history and characteristics of those categorized as similar represent merely of the customer at hand. Say a young woman took an interest in a $1,000 coat. Algorithms told you that women her age bought this, and your system began to push notifications for BNPL. However, what happens if the woman loses her job? What if she can’t make her BNPL payment? BNPL can be a convenient way to make large purchases with attractive interest rates, but in an emergency, she might resort to making payments with a credit card. This would extend the life of that BNPL debt while adding additional interest on top. Even if she finds a new job, she might have put herself through more financial struggles, which negates the benefit of BNPL. It’s all about the whole picture. Open banking provides fintech banks with information from their customers’ primary accounts to inform you where they shop, how much they spend on certain products, whether they have a car and insights into their family. However, staying on top of the latest data protection regulations means you have to constantly readjust operations. Modern banks need to ensure they are in compliance with privacy and security regulations to make their customer data safe. Under the consumer data rights legislation and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), banks must strictly use data for reasons agreed upon with the person’s consent. They need to ensure consumers understand how their bank uses their personal information with third parties. Here are three steps modern banks can follow to tackle their pain points with data. |
Polestar’s long range single motor Polestar 2 arrives in the US | Andrew Tarantola | 2,022 | 3 | 24 | Following the release of its dual-motor variant late last year, Polestar announced on Wednesday that the 270-mile long range, single-motor version of its is now available for sale in the US. Starting at $45,900 — — the single-motor Polestar 2 is $4,000 less expensive than its AWD sibling ( ) and provides 16 extra miles of driving range to the all-wheel’s 249 miles. Other than the number of e-motors affixed to their axles, the two are functionally identical. Folks looking to stick it to their local petrochemical conglomerate can schedule a test drive either through the or at one of the company’s physical retail locations located in major cities throughout the US. |
UK police arrest 7 people in connection with Lapsus$ hacks | Carly Page | 2,022 | 3 | 24 | Police in the United Kingdom have arrested seven people over suspected connections to the Lapsus$ hacking group, which has in recent weeks targeted tech giants including , , and . In a statement given to TechCrunch, Detective Inspector Michael O’Sullivan from the City of London Police said: “The City of London Police has been conducting an investigation with its partners into members of a hacking group. Seven people between the ages of 16 and 21 have been arrested in connection with this investigation and have all been released under investigation. Our enquiries remain ongoing.” News of the arrests comes just hours revealed a teenager based in Oxford, U.K. is suspected of being the mastermind of the now-prolific Lapsus$ hacking group. Four researchers investigating the gang’s recent hacks said they believed the 16-year-old, who uses the online moniker “White” or “Breachbase,” was a leading figure in Lapsus$, and Bloomberg was able to track down the suspected hacker after his personal information was leaked online by rival hackers. According to , the teenager purchased Doxbin last year, a site where people can share or find personal information on others, before giving up control of the website in January and leaking the entire Doxbin data set to Telegram. The Doxbin community retaliated by releasing personal information on him, including his home address, social media photos and details about his parents. TechCrunch has seen a copy of the the suspected hacker’s leaked personal information, which we are not sharing — but it matches Bloomberg’s reporting. City of London Police, which primarily focuses on financial crimes, did not say if the 16-year-old was among those arrested At least one member of Lapsus$ was also apparently involved with a recent data breach at Electronic Arts, according to Krebs, and another is suspected to be a teenager residing in Brazil. The latter is said to be so capable of hacking that researchers first believed that the activity they were witnessing was automated. Researchers’ ability to track the suspected Lapsus$ members may be because the group, which now has more than 45,000 subscribers to its Telegram channel where it frequently recruits insiders and leaks victims’ data, does little to cover its tracks. In this week, Microsoft said the group uses brazen tactics to gain initial access to a target organization, which has included publicly recruiting company insiders. As reported by Bloomberg this week, the group has even gone as far as to join the Zoom calls of companies they’ve breached and taunted employees trying to clean up their hack. The Lapsus$ hacking group first came to light in December 2021, when it mainly focused on targeting organizations in the U.K. and South Africa. Earlier this week, its latest victim was confirmed as Otka, which on Wednesday admitted that around . |
Reddit weighs new video feature with ‘reactions’ for use in its online discussions | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 3 | 24 | Reddit is exploring the idea of bringing more user-generated video content to its online discussion forums, the company has confirmed. Not much has yet been determined about this potential new video feature — which hasn’t been launched into testing, we should note. But we understand it may involve the use of TikTok-like video editing tools including, most notably, the ability for people to “react” to videos posted by others by adding their own video to another’s. The ability to combine videos from different people grew popular on TikTok through features known as and , which have has since been adopted by TikTok rivals and , to varying degrees. In Reddit’s case, however, the goal is not necessarily to build out its own TikTok competitor aimed at creators as other large social giants have done, but rather create a video tool that would continue Reddit’s mission of enabling its users to engage in discussions on topics they care about. Today, many of these discussions on Reddit’s site are written in text, but video reactions could add a new layer to these online conversations. (To be clear, video is already supported on Reddit’s platform, but video reactions — similar to “Stitches” — are not.) The company will be reaching out to various communities, known as subreddits, to determine whether they would be interested in exploring video in such a way. Specifically, it will be looking to particular communities where it thinks the video feature could be a good product fit. But those community tests have yet to begin. “In line with our work to help people engage in the topics that matter to them through social audio, video, text, memes, and more, we’re in the process of reaching out to a few Reddit communities to see if a new video feature we’re working on is something they find useful and fun,” a Reddit spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch. “After getting feedback from Redditors, we’ll explore an initial test for this new capability,” they noted. The potential “reactions” feature in the new video project was first uncovered by iOS developer Other video editing tools could also be a part of the tests, including those for adding effects, filters, and stickers to videos backed by music, among other things. Some of this functionality was added to the Reddit camera app last November as part of Reddit’s ongoing video efforts. In December 2020, Reddit signaled its interest in expanding further into video after it . The company shut down the app this year after first the startup’s video creation tools into Reddit. As part of that integration, it would introduce new camera features, including the ability to set a timer and change recording speeds, use effects, add voiceovers, trim and adjust multiple clips, and more. Reddit users today can access these video features by way of the “new post” tool, then selecting the video option and choosing “camera” to record a video. In addition, Reddit last summer on its iOS app which, when tapped, would show a stream of short videos in a vertical feed. Users could upvote, downvote, comment, gift an award, or share the video from this feed, then swipe up to see more. Neither of those projects is directly related to the forthcoming video test, which is focused on exploring a new use case for video on the platform. But the underlying video technology acquired from Dubsmash would be involved. As this product is still in extremely early stages — not even alpha testing yet — a lot could still change. There’s also the possibility that Reddit’s communities show no interest in testing such a video product and the idea is scrapped. The video feature appears to be inspired by TikTok, which already allows creators to engage in discussions using video comments. And this functionality has been subsequently cloned by other social apps including , , and . But perhaps video discussions on Reddit more closely align with an idea proposed by an (clearly ahead of its time), which once theorized that people would respond to posts, blogs, and other text-based content by leaving video comments. What’s old is new again, it seems. |
Grab your early-bird founder pass to TechCrunch Early Stage before prices increase | Alexandra Ames | 2,022 | 3 | 24 | |
HBO Max adds a new shuffle button for select TV shows on its platform | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 3 | 24 | is introducing a new “shuffle” button for select TV shows on its platform, the company announced this week. The new button started rolling out globally on Tuesday and is only available on the desktop version of the streaming service. The new feature shuffles episodes from a specific TV show. For example, if you want to watch “Friends,” but don’t know which episode to watch, you can use the button to go to a random episode from the series. The button works with 45 TV shows, including “Friends,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “The Big Bang Theory,” “Looney Tunes,” “Rick and Morty,” “Teen Titans Go!,” “Selena + Chef,” “Whose Line Is It Anyway,” “Fresh Prince,” “Tom and Jerry,” “Young Sheldon,” “The Office” and more. “Unlike other offerings, the HBO Max shuffle button randomizes episodes rather than series, giving users some context into the content they will be shown,” a spokesperson for HBO Max told TechCrunch in an email. “Available globally on the desktop experience, users can select the shuffle button on the series detail page for 45 curated shows. With an added element of serendipity, selecting the shuffle button lets you kick your feet up and start watching faster.” The company says that the button was a highly requested feature. HBO Max hasn’t shared details about whether it plans to expand the feature’s functionality to more content on the platform or if it will roll out to its mobile and TV applications. The move comes almost a year after Netflix its “play something” button, which works by playing a movie or TV show that you may like based on your interests and past viewing habits. Netflix’s feature is more broad in its content discovery capabilities and is available on connected TVs and Android phones and tablets. and are also looking to add shuffle functions to their apps. The launch of the new feature comes as HBO Max to 15 more countries, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia. The streaming service will expand to six more European countries later this year, including Greece and Turkey. |
Captain’s contractor lending tool aims to speed up home repairs after natural disasters | Christine Hall | 2,022 | 3 | 24 | Repairing a home that’s been destroyed in a hurricane, tornado, flood or fire can take quite a while, displacing homeowners during that time. founder and CEO Demetrius Gray noted that following storms, like the Katrina and Sandy hurricanes, the average primary recovery period was 14 months. Smaller storms can still take up to five months for financing and repairs to be completed as the homeowner works with their mortgage company, insurance provider and contractor to get the work completed. Add in that the average homeowner insurance deductible is $1,000 and the fact that the average consumer has only $400 in savings, and you can imagine that homeowners have to find creative solutions to get back to normal and tolerate that it will take time, he added. That’s where Captain comes in. The fintech company, founded in May 2021, came out of stealth mode Thursday with a lending tool aimed at bridging the gap between those policyholders, insurance companies and contractors so that a homeowner can choose a contractor and have repairs completed within 30 days versus 180 days. “There is a new paradigm of severe events occurring and there has to be climate adaptation,” Gray told TechCrunch. “People are waiting years after events to recover or are searching for how to pay for that. The way in which Captain can help is by giving contractors all of the tools they need to get through the claims process faster and easier.” Prior to starting Captain, Gray was an accountant in construction companies focused on insurance restoration work. He saw that no one was really merging the data for how roofing contractors inspected work, and if you could bring that together, you would be able to tell which house should file a claim and which shouldn’t. That turned into WeatherCheck, a Kentucky-based damage prediction company that was part of Y Combinator’s winter 2019 batch. He still owns the company and plans to use WeatherCheck’s data at Captain in the future. The contractor business is still mainly done with pen and the three-ply contracts we all know well. Captain took that process, digitized it and embedded it into an application combined with legal due diligence for state and local requirements. Once the contractor and work is vetted and approved for financing, the company vets the data coming from the insurance company and determines if that is correct or not. Approval to begin work and get financing with Captain takes about 30 minutes. Captain then manages the interaction with the insurance carrier and other third parties and pays all of the bills for the work, eliminating the lien risk for the policyowner and enabling the process to run smoother and for the contractor to focus on the work. The company is already working with 50 contractors throughout the U.S. and paid out $5 million. Gray anticipates being able to deploy another $20 million to contractors in the next three months, thanks in part to $104 million in total financing that the company raised. The funding includes $4 million in seed capital backed by NFX, GGV Capital and Red Swan. The other is $100 million in debt financing from CoVenture. In addition to deploying more capital, Captain will use the new funding to expand its sales and engineering teams and round out its leadership team with new hires for roles, including vice president of engineering, head of growth and head of talent. The company has nine employees currently, and Gray expects to expand that to between 50 and 75 by the end of the year. The company is also targeting new cities, including Dallas, Denver and Chicago, which often have exposure to hail. Up next, Gray sees Captain looking at other offerings, for example, to finance projects for homeowners in places where there is no requirement for insurance once you own your home. The company is preparing for California’s fire season by recruiting homebuilders and remediation contractors there. Captain is not alone in offering lending to contractors; for example, Sunlight Financial, Enhancify and Billd all provide some kind of funding to contractors. Where Gray sees his company differentiating itself is by focusing on the policyholder versus the insurance company, like others. “The lens in which we view ourselves is how we can help the policyholder put their life back together as quickly as possible,” he added. “It is about introducing solutions targeted on the other side of the insurance contract. The policyholder has rights, but don’t know what they are and are often left to fend for themselves. We are giving guided solutions for when the unfortunate does occur.” |
Mozilla launches paid subscriptions to its Developer Network | Frederic Lardinois | 2,022 | 3 | 24 | Mozilla today , a paid subscription product on top of the existing (and ) Mozilla Developer Network (MDN), one of the web’s most popular destinations for finding documentation and code samples related to web technologies like CSS, HTML and JavaScript. The new subscription offering will introduce features like , (think lists of articles you want to save) and for when you want to access MDN when you’re not online. There will be three subscription tiers: MDN core, a free limited version of the paid plans; MDN Plus 5, with access to notifications, collections and MDN offline for $5 per month or $50 per year; and MDN Supporter 10 for those who are willing to pay a bit more to support the platform in addition to getting a direct feedback channel to the MDN team (as well as “pride and joy,” Mozila says). As the name implies, that more expensive plan will cost $10 a month or $100 for an annual subscription. Mozilla There are no changes to the content of the MDN Web Docs. Those will continue to be freely available. “We will continue to develop & maintain our web documentation that will remain free and accessible for everyone. There will be no change there. Even more, we believe that MDN Web Docs will benefit from MDN Plus, as we plan to reinvest part of the gains from MDN Plus and improve our documentation as well as the overall user experience on the website,” the organization explains . Mozilla MDN Plus is launching in the U.S. and Canada today. It’ll come to France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands, Ireland, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore in the coming months (launching a global subscription service tends to involve a lot of lawyers). The launch of MDN Plus today doesn’t come as a surprise. Mozilla started testing the waters for this move last year. At the time, there was a bit of confusion around the pricing, with Mozilla A/B testing both $5 and $10 tiers, but most developers were of the effort, given how much value MDN tends to bring them. Mozilla It’s also worth noting that Mozilla quite a few MDN staffers during its layoffs in 2020, but kept the core engineering team mostly intact. During a different period in Mozilla’s history, offering a free service like MDN was squarely in its mission statement and easily subsidized by other income streams. With these paid tiers, Mozilla surely hopes for MDN to become self-supported over time. For now, though, all Mozilla currently says about how the revenue will be used is that it will “stay within Mozilla.” |
Digital lenders in Kenya must disclose source of funds as new law takes effect | Annie Njanja | 2,022 | 3 | 23 | Digital credit providers (DCPs) in Kenya will have to disclose their sources of funds and provide evidence of the same after a law meant to regulate the sector came into effect. The new regulations Monday by the country’s financial regulator, the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK), also require digital lenders to get a license from the country’s monetary authority or wind down their operations by September 2022. The digital lenders were previously only required to register the businesses to begin operations in the country. Disclosing the source of funds, the CBK said, is meant to ensure that lenders are not engaging in financial crimes like money laundering. “A digital credit provider shall provide to the Bank (CBK) the evidence and sources of funds invested or proposed to be invested in the digital credit business and demonstrate that the funds are not proceeds of crime,” read the DCP regulations. Development Financial Institution (DFIs), commercial banks, private equity firms and high-net-worth individuals are some of the popular sources of funding, especially debt, which is used for onward lending by creditors in the digital space. The new regulations come into effect after the country’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, in December last year, giving the bank the authority to issue digital lenders licenses and to ensure “the existence of fair and non-discriminatory practices in the credit market,” bringing order to a sector that had for years regulated itself. Kenya is home to over a hundred lending apps, which are popular for their unsecured and instant loans disbursed through mobile phones. However, concerns have been raised about how most of them operate – with some accused of exploitative interest rates and debt-shaming recovery tactics. Among the popular apps are Silicon Valley-backed Tala and Branch, as well as Zenka Finance, which is owned by . Others are Opesa, Okash and Credit Hela, which are all linked to . With the new law, digital lenders will have to disclose all conditions and fees for loans, including interest rates, and the total amount to be paid back. They will also be required to seek the bank’s approval before changing their pricing models. Additionally, they have been and from using threatening language, accessing or getting in touch with their customer’s phone contacts, and using “unconscionable debt collection tactics.” “The Regulations seek to address concerns raised by the public given the recent significant growth of digital lending particularly through mobile phones. These concerns relate to the predatory practices of the previously unregulated digital credit providers, and in particular, their high cost, unethical debt collection practices, and the abuse of personal information,” said the CBK. “The Regulations provide for inter alia the licensing governance, and lending practices of DCPs. They also provide for consumer protection, credit information sharing, and outline the Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) obligations of DCPs.” Digital lenders who flout the new regulations, including sharing the personal data of loan defaulters with third parties, risk penalties or license withdrawals. |
LG Energy increases battery production in the US with $1.4B investment | Kate Park | 2,022 | 3 | 23 | South Korea’s LG Energy Solution, which supplies electric vehicle batteries to Tesla, Lucid Motors, General Motors and Proterra, said on Thursday it is investing $1.4 billion (1.7 trillion KRW) to build a cylindrical battery plant in Queen Creek, Arizona. The move is a clear indication that LG Energy is increasing its presence in the United States. In January, the company said it plans to spend to build a in the U.S. Last year, . LG’s Arizona investment comes at a time when the demand for cylindrical cells and applications that use cylindrical batteries, such as electric tools that need instant power or mobility devices like EVs or e-bikes, is on the rise in the North American market. That’s because these types of batteries are relatively smaller but have high energy density, according to an LG spokesperson. The 11-gigawatt hours capacity site construction is set to begin in the second quarter of 2022, with mass production starting in 2024, according to the company. LG Energy said the factory will be the first cylindrical-type batteries manufacturing plant in North America to be supplied to EV manufacturers. According to a report from , EV makers like Tesla, Lucid and Proterra could be its potential customers. LG said it has contracts in the works, but declined to share which companies it would supply to via its Arizona factory. LG Energy said it is considering seeking additional U.S. production capacity. In January, . Japan’s Panasonic, which also supplies battery products to Tesla, is seeking sites to build a factory in either Oklahoma or Kansas, reported in February. in the U.S., with the aim of starting production in 2025. The influx of foreign battery companies developing batteries in the U.S. could be a product of President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill, which is putting aside billions in funding to develop a national battery supply chain. LG did not reply in time to confirm whether it is eligible for funding from the U.S. for setting up such supply chains. |
The Web Foundation is taking on deceptive design | Natasha Lomas | 2,022 | 3 | 23 | The ‘s is working on an interesting-looking project to — aka dark patterns* — with the goal of producing a portfolio of UX and UI prototypes which it hopes to persuade tech companies to adopt and policymakers to be inspired by as they fashion rules to make the online experience less exploitative of web users. The Design Lab was launched last year to be the “action arm” of a wider Web Foundation initiative, announced back in late 2018 — when the not-for-profit digital access group proposed a “ ” ahead of the 30th anniversary of World Wide Web founder Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s invention. Kaushalya Gupta, its program management lead — who also heads up the Tech Design Lab — told TechCrunch that the goal for the deceptive design patterns project will be to bring “human-centered design” to bear on critical web interactions. The project will fed by collaborative discussions involving a range of industry and user stakeholders, via a series of workshops taking place later this year, to co-design the prototypes. The hope is to end up with a series of pro-user interface design templates that will stand as benchmarks to nudge how tech platforms shape and mould these critical (and all too often cynically configured) decision/interaction pipelines. “The Lab is a place where people’s experiences drive policy as well as product design,” explains Gupta. “Where solutions take into account the full diversity of those who use digital tools. And in terms of our policy development approach it is informed by design thinking and human-centered design.” Work to spec out the deceptive design patterns project was preceded by a survey, as the Lab polled the thousands of organizations and entities signed up to the Contract to decide what should be its first focus — whittling some 200 “promising topics” down to deceptive design. Western internet users may be most familiar with deceptive design patterns in a niche like cookie consent banners which typically (intentionally) fail to offer parity between the ease of agreeing to give up your privacy to the data industrial adtech complex and refusing tracking — making the latter horribly hard (if they even offer that choice at all). There are also plenty of shamefully familiar examples in e-commerce too. Just look at how aggressively Amazon nudges users toward inadvertently agreeing to sign up to its subscription-based Prime membership scheme — teasing a carrot of free shipping at the point of purchase in a bid to distract the shopper from the simultaneous sleight of hand as shipping is only free if you to sign up to a free trial of Amazon’s Prime scheme, after which the e-tail giant will start to bill you for what is normally a paid service. (And of course it also makes users go on a not-so-merry dance through multiple menu layers to find the button to cancel Prime if you inadvertently sign up for this “free” shipping/trial.) But Gupta makes the salient point that deceptive design is also rampant in the global south where design tricks may also, she emphasizes, be disproportionally harmful — given there may be many more web users with relatively little online experience getting subjected to this cynical, tricksy stuff, who are not so accustomed to the “usual tactics”, making it harder for them to detect and avoid dark patterns and the harms that flow on from them. People in the global south may also be more likely to have to access the internet through smaller devices, she also notes — which can make deceptive nudges easier to pull off. Less screen real estate means it’s likely harder to spot what’s going on. “ from India is about this edtech company, called ,” says Gupta. “They have these subscriptions that look like free at first glance. And now there are thousands of unassuming parents who are actually trapped in debt because they’re trapped into these subscriptions.” The pandemic edtech boom has likely exacerbated the volume of harm flowing from such deceptive subscriptions. “A lot of these people actually come from quite humble backgrounds, they’re not really all that rich — so to be trapped into subscription has been [very harmful],” she adds. “Here we’re talking about debt — so this is where the issue of dark patterns goes from being annoying or frustrating to actually impacting people’s lives and savings.” Gupta argues that it’s not for want of examples of consumer harm that practical action to try to counter deceptive design has been relatively limited to date — with perhaps the most focus on the topic coming from academics. (That said, data protection regulators in Europe have also finally started paying attention — with some major enforcements around ; while, just this week, the European Data Protection Board put out on spotting and avoiding dark patterns in social media interfaces, along with a call for feedback.) “The challenge with deceptive design is it’s such a nebulous space,” suggests Gupta. “I think that’s what’s been limiting action in this area — because it’s so nebulous. It’s such a big grey area.” Part of the Lab’s work will therefore be on trying to nail down a scope that’s “not too broad so that we can’t really create impact — and not too narrow where the exercise becomes redundant”, as she puts it. “Through the consultation sessions [we’ve held so far] — in terms of priorities — people are most interested in tackling data protection issues as well as consumer protection,” she continues. “So our focus is definitely going to be on consumer protection but we’re also going to be seeing how we can establish cross-cutting teams and address the most important issues under data protection and privacy as well. We’ll try to tackle a range of harms. “In terms of specific industries [we may focus on] or not, we’ve been speaking to people across different industries and groups to identify a wide range of harms. Right now we’re synthesizing all of our findings and working with the design firms to create the workshops.” Gupta says the Lab expects to have prototypes ready to present by late summer — after which it hopes to engage policymakers with the detail of what’s been developed. And of course the work won’t stop there; the Lab will also be pressing for adoption of the (non-deceptive) design templates — such as by seeking commitments from tech firms to, at least, test them. Gupta points to an — focused on — which she says led to commitments from a handful of tech giants to trial recommendations, adding that the Lab is continuing to follow up on those pledges. How much “Yes of course we’re hoping for success,” she responds, before deflecting the direct question into a description of how the Lab intends to measure success — saying it will benchmark results on “adoption” (i.e. uptake of non-deceptive design suggestions); as well as “sustainability” — which means finding partners who will be able to carry the work forward once the Lab moves on to new projects; and on “accountability”, meaning the follow up element (i.e. did firms really carry through and stick with reformed designs?) will be key. As noted above, we are finally seeing some privacy-focused regulatory action in Europe against cynically designed defaults and “no choice” screens that infringe on consumer autonomy — with a number of complaints and investigations into problematic design patterns also being driven by consumer protection watchdogs. (See, for example, a .) Europe is a region with longstanding consumer protection and data protection legislation which should be able to lend consumers a degree of shielding against manipulative interfaces — yet a historical lack of enforcement has allowed the problem to be seeded online, spread and become entrenched on the modern web. A purge is well overdue. On that front, EU lawmakers are now picking up the baton — and proposing to further beef up consumer rights in this area. Such as by incorporating (although it remains to be seen whether such details survive trilogue negotiations which are ongoing to hash out a final agreement between the EU’s trio of institutions). Child safety is another area where lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic are now paying a lot more attention to and/or which target children, such as design tricks that nudge minors to weaken privacy protections, hand over lots of personal data and/or relentlessly pester them for attention to rack up more revenue. Another interesting development in the interface navigation space that’s been proposed by privacy campaigners in recent years, and attracted some attention from lawmakers, is the potential to use automated tools to help users navigate hostile menus — such as privacy campaign NGO noyb’s suggestion for an ; or a recent proposing to automatically filter and block non-essential cookies so that consumers don’t have to keep wasting their time saying no. A U.S.-led publisher coalition also revived back in 2020 — with the goal of building momentum for a global standard to make it easier for web users to signal opt outs of the sale of their data to businesses. However such automated approaches don’t pretend to be panacea that can universally tackle the scourge of deceptive web design in every place it rears its ugly head — as they really need relatively narrow and/or specific fields of application (not to mention legal mandates) to stand a chance of functioning as intended. Whereas disingenuous menus and choice screens can pop up all over the darn place. A genuine cure will need tech companies to be willing to turn over a new leaf en masse — and/or be shamed into it by ethically minded rivals getting there first. What do tech companies tell the Lab when asked why they keep choosing to deploy all these cynically deceptive designs? “Um, that they’re working on it,” responds Gupta with a little hesitation as she chews on the question. But she quickly follows up by blaming the siloed structure of many tech firms as an integral part of the problem. “What’s interesting is that there are product teams, there are policy teams — and so the designers aren’t really working with the policy people. And so even the work in companies takes place in silos. So when we want to work with companies it’s not that their UX designer is creating a deceptive design — it’s like everyone is part of a bigger picture and what the user ultimately experiences is deceptive design,” she tells us. “I think these things are actually perpetuated from the university level — where designers [and other professionals, such as engineers] aren’t taught about these things. “One great thing is Stanford, for example, in fall this year they’re launching a pilot course on deceptive design and tackling that. And that’s great to see a university is actually doing something… What’s important is to look at the entire life cycle. These things start off at the university level, they get perpetuated when people join the industry. And I think the people work inside the industry is what also exacerbates the issue — because no one is ultimately responsible.” So while Gupta believes there is rising awareness among design professionals of the concept of ethical (and thus unethical) design — and that “a lot of designers are actually doing their best to learn more about it and see how they could apply it in their work” — she also argues that “when it comes to [acting ethically] at a company level it’s challenging because of the silos”. This is why the Lab’s outreach for this project already involves speaking with people from a variety of different teams, not just designers. And why the role corporate structure itself may play in programming and perpetuating deceptive design is likely to end up being an important focus for the project. “It also means working together with the UX designers, with the product teams, with the policy teams,” adds Gupta. “And that’s also been something that’s interesting when we’ve reached out to companies; identifying the right person to speak to in the company it’s a process. When we’ve been engaging governments we know who to engage with. With civil society, it’s very easy to get engagement with them. With companies, there’s a lot of complexity about finding the right person to engage with. “Once we have been speaking with them they’re very supportive of taking part in the workshops — so I think the fact that they’re even willing to have a conversation at this point is a small win… but of course we definitely need commitments and we need to hold them to account.” The Lab is asking tech firms and other stakeholders who want to register an interest in the — and potentially participate in the upcoming workshops — to fill in this . *The Lab is intentionally avoiding use of the term “dark patterns” for this project, in favor of the more accessible/less obscure descriptor “deceptive design” — which both neatly explains the problem and does not inadvertently reinforce negative linguistic stereotypes (i.e. that dark equates to bad). |
Daily Crunch: YouTube will let US users stream full seasons of nearly 4,000 TV shows (with ads) | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 3 | 23 | Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Wednesday, March 23, 2022! Lots to talk about today, including bushels of news from both startups and Big Tech alike. But as we are entering , a reminder that , and . – Before we get into discrete funding events and startup product launches, a word about pro rata. Pro rata rights are privileges investors often work into deals so that they can defend their ownership percentage in a startup over time. With pro rata, investors that buy 5% of a company early on can pay up in later rounds to ensure that they are not overly diluted. However, and should go. Food for thought. Back in the day, a $100 million Series A fund was news. Today, nine-figure startup can slip through the cracks. To avoid that, TechCrunch wrote up , and . And . So if you are not enthused by current handset OEMs, well, you have a new option coming. / Getty Images In a previous era, companies threw elbows and money around as they entered new markets and acquired customers. Today, a decade or more into the End User Era, consumers are the tail that wags the dog. Product-led growth models have been widely embraced: Instead of devoting resources to customer acquisition, PLG companies scale faster and more efficiently. Vidya Raman, a partner at Sorenson Ventures and former product manager, for making PLG efforts more successful and sustainable. “Think in bite-sized experiences, each of which would be a meaningful outcome for the customer,” she says. |
NASA is looking for a second company to develop a human moon lander alongside SpaceX | Aria Alamalhodaei | 2,022 | 3 | 23 | NASA will be giving another company a chance to send a lander to the moon, nearly a year after the agency announced that SpaceX beat out competitors including Blue Origin and Boeing for the opportunity. Under the new plan, the agency will be opening up a second competition for a lander system for all American companies other than SpaceX, with the aim of having a second lander prepared to fly by 2026 or 2027. The winner of that second contract, dubbed the Sustaining Lunar Development contract, along with SpaceX “will pave the way to future recurring lunar transportation services for astronauts at the Moon,” NASA said. This isn’t just good news for competitors. The agency also said that it is expanding its existing contract with SpaceX for yet another lander, which will fly an additional crewed demonstration mission in the latter part of the decade. NASA’s announcement Wednesday marks a major expansion for the Artemis program, the agency’s ambitious series of planned missions to return humans to the moon for the first time since the Apollo days. It’s also something of an about-face. The agency came under fire from both private industry and Congress after it awarded a single $2.89 billion contract for a landing system , with Blue Origin going so far as to sue NASA . (This was after the company and defense contractor Dynetics filed an objection — which was — with a government accountability watchdog.) But this time around, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the agency was all about fostering competition. “We think, and so does the Congress, that competition leads to better, more reliable outcomes and benefits everybody,” he said. “It benefits NASA, [it] benefits the American people. It is obvious, the benefits of competition.” The agency will release a draft request for proposals at the end of the month, HLS program manager Lisa Watson-Morgan told reporters Wednesday. That will be followed by a final request for proposals later in the spring, which will be open to all American companies besides SpaceX. So far, NASA is staying mum on how much all of this is likely to cost, beyond that it will be a fixed-price contract — which is significant, as the agency said the reason it selected only one bidder for the landing system last year was partly due to budgetary constraints. Further details on the value of the contract will be coming next week, after President Biden announces the fiscal year 2023 budget, Nelson added. “We’re expecting to have both Congress[‘s] support and that of the Biden administration,” he said. A Blue Origin spokesperson told TechCrunch, “Blue Origin is ready to compete and remains deeply committed to the success of Artemis. We will continue to work with NASA to achieve the United States’ goal to return to the Moon as soon as possible.” |
Okta says hundreds of companies impacted by security breach | Zack Whittaker | 2,022 | 3 | 23 | Okta says 366 corporate customers, or about 2.5% of its customer base, were impacted by a security breach that allowed hackers to access the company’s internal network. The authentication giant after the Lapsus$ hacking and extortion group posted screenshots of Okta’s apps and systems on Monday, some two months after the hackers first gained access to its network. The breach was initially blamed on an unnamed subprocessor that provides customer support services to Okta. In an on Wednesday, Okta’s chief security officer David Bradbury confirmed the subprocessor is a company called Sykes, which last year was acquired by Miami-based contact center giant Sitel. Customer support companies like Sykes and Sitel often have wide access to the organizations that they support for facilitating customer requests. Malicious hackers have previously targeted customer support companies, which often have weaker cybersecurity defenses than some of the highly-secured companies that they support. and have both experienced similar targeted compromises of customer support agents’ accounts that led to access of their internal systems. In Okta’s case, the were in Sitel’s network for five days over January 16-21, 2022 until the hackers were detected and booted from its network, according to Bradbury. Okta faced considerable criticism from the wider security industry for its handling of the compromise and the months-long delay in notifying customers, which found out at the same time when . According to Bradbury, Sitel engaged an unnamed forensics firm to investigate, which concluded on March 10. Only a week later was the report turned over to Okta on March 17. Bradbury said he is “greatly disappointed by the long period of time that transpired between our notification to Sitel and the issuance of the complete investigation report,” and admitted that Okta “should have moved more swiftly” to understand the report’s implications. But an email from a Sitel representative disputed how Okta characterized the report, saying that the security breach “did not impact legacy Sitel Group systems or networks; only legacy Sykes’ network was affected.” (The Sitel representative declared their email “off the record,” which requires both parties to agree to the terms in advance. We are printing the responses since we were given no opportunity to decline.) The email added: “We have not found evidence of a security breach of client’s systems or networks on legacy Sykes or Sitel Group side.” The email also said that the Sitel has no evidence of a data breach, but the company declined to say if it has the means, such as logs, to determine what, if any, data was accessed or exfiltrated by the attackers. Sitel would not name the forensics firm that investigated the breach. An earlier statement attributed to Sitel spokesperson Rebecca Sanders said: “As a result of the investigation, along with our ongoing assessment of external threats, we are confident there is no longer a security risk. We are unable to comment on our relationship with any specific brands or the nature of the services we provide for our clients.” Okta has not yet responded to TechCrunch’s questions regarding the breach. |
Skyline scores $6.5M to wash windows with robot arms | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 3 | 23 | I would put window washing fairly high (so to speak) on the list of jobs it makes sense to automate. Certainly the gig qualifies as both dirty and dangerous — and surprisingly, doesn’t come with all that much in the way of hazard pay. That’s something you would think might come standard with a job that requires you to dangle hundreds of feet in the air. Skyline made some news last year with the delivery of , a robotic system designed to clean those hard to reach spots on the sides of skyscrapers — façade maintenance, as it’s known. At its base, the system is a pair of Kuka industrial robotic arms mounted on a suspended platform. It uses lidar to determine the proximity of the glass it intends to clear, while relying on force sensors to insure it doesn’t break anything in the process. Baked-in algorithms ensure a steady robotic hand under extremely windy conditions, while the company says it’s capable of recalculating an optimal cleaning path hundreds of times per minute. Today the New York-based startup announced $6.5 million in what it’s deemed “pre-Series A” funding (honestly, these funding round labels are beginning to lose any meaning they may have had). Skyline Standard Holdings led the round. The round brings the firm’s total funding up to $9 million. “This successful funding round and first Ozmo deployment shows that the demand for our product and services are not just tangible and felt by investors, but that there’s a major business opportunity ahead of Skyline,” says CEO Michael Brown. “The conviction of our team is being matched by the investment community.” Certainly there’s plenty of opportunity there with tens of millions of windows that need cleaning in New York City, alone. |
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