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Google teams up with the NBA to host a ‘virtual’ Pixel Arena inside the NBA App | Aliya Chaudhry | 2,022 | 4 | 18 | Google and NBA have , a virtual space tied to the 2022 NBA Playoffs, inside the . The Google and NBA Pixel Area aims to give fans a virtual experience based on real-time information from the games. App users can access the Pixel Arena through the NBA app by selecting a specific game. Here, you can use your phone’s gyroscope to navigate through the 3D virtual space. The Pixel Arena also allows you to make and customize avatars — including outfitting them in a particular team’s clothing — then share them online. It provides 3D shot recaps of the game in the virtual space, based on live NBA data feeds, available during halftime and after the game. During halftime, the Pixel Arena also offers trivia based on that specific game. Users can climb the leaderboard and unlock levels and items for their avatars by using the arena during games. Google “The experience brings a whole new meaning to courtside,” Daryl Butler, vice president of U.S. Devices and Services Marketing at Google, said You don’t need a Google Pixel to access the arena — you just need the , which is available on a range of devices. This is the first time Google has on an immersive experience like this, Google says. The company is currently partnered with the sports organization in a range of initiatives, including as a sponsor for the NBA Playoffs, which are now “presented by Google Pixel,” and the NBA Finals, which are “presented by YouTube TV.” Last year, Google also announced the Google Pixel was the Official Fan phone of the NBA, NBA G League, and NBA 2K League, while Google was each league’s Official Search Engine and Search Trends and Fan Insights Partner. The deal between the companies is a multiyear commitment that also included developing immersive experiences, like this new one with the NBA app and others, designed to showcase 3D and AR technology. |
Taxfix, the Berlin-based mobile tax filing app, raises $220M at a $1B+ valuation | Ingrid Lunden | 2,022 | 4 | 27 | Ben Franklin once famously said that in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. But that doesn’t make dealing with either particularly natural and easy. Tech is rushing in to fill that gap, and today a Berlin-based startup called , which has built a popular mobile assistant to address the former of these, is announcing a big round of funding to fuel its growth. It has closed a Series D of $220 million at a valuation of over $1 billion, money that the startup will be using both to build in more products to extend its touch points with customers beyond annual use around tax time; and to expand to new markets beyond its current footprint of Germany, Spain and Italy. The funding is being led by Teachers’ Venture Growth, the rebranded venture fund the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board (a prolific investor for years in tech), with previous backers Index Ventures, Valar Ventures, Creandum and Redalpine also participating. (Index led its ; Valar led a round ). This is a major round for the startup: Taxfix has raised around $330 million since being founded in 2016. The company’s concept is very simple, played out mostly simply for people who do not have complicated tax profiles with different assets or other money sources in the balance. Using the app to check out your tax situation is free, and to do so you simply take a snapshot of a payslip and fill out another few details and Taxfix does the rest of the work for you. To then file your taxes through that as an individual . Taxfix isn’t a business process automation startup per se, but it takes something of the stance as one, in building its products for the consumer market: “We’ve hacked the brain of a tax accountant into codes,” CEO Martin Ott notes. The startup has had “millions” of downloads of its app across its three current markets of Germany, Spain and Italy up to now, working out to over $1 billion in taxes refunded for those who fill out their forms using its mobile assistant. Notably, however, Taxfix doesn’t disclose how many customers it has currently, although you can partly understand why: Metrics like monthly or daily active users (a classic metric for consumer-focused mobile apps, which this is) are hard to quantify for a product that realistically is only used en masse once a year — a concept that Ott, who joined last year from having been a VP and MD of Central Europe of none other than Facebook, will understand very well. That’s indeed one reason for raising this funding, and raising so much of it: building more products to extend that lifecycle. Ott would not be too specific about what will come first and when beyond saying “later this year,” but ideas he mentioned in an interview included tools for expense management throughout the year, which is useful for those who are self-employed and might want to track receipts more carefully ahead of filing; and options for people to take tax windfalls and invest them elsewhere. Taxfix as you might suspect prefers to talk about the good news stories around tax filing — it’s easy! and it’s often free money owed to you! — so Ott wasn’t keen to talk about how much money it calculated people owed to the state, but there is an opportunity there too to provide financing and longer-term managing of that financing as a different kind of product. The challenge that Taxfix was built to address — and those who first built it, its original founders, Mathis Büchi and Lino Teuteberg, are still with the company, respectively as chairman and CPO — was that, as TVG MD Avid Larizadeh Duggan described it, is that many people associate taxes with anxiety. “It’s complicated and people are afraid of the outcome,” she said. The solution was a simple one: Make an app “to make something complicated delightful.” I don’t know if I’d ever use that word to describe the process of dealing with taxes, but very few of us are unfamiliar with how a few simple mobile tricks can actually make mundane things into fun activities. And there is a big opportunity in the market to do that for something as deeply mundane, anxiety inducing and generally complicated as taxes. Turbotax, Intuit’s big product in the U.S. that is a competitor of sorts (alongside states’ own filing systems, a number of other accounting platforms and other startups like Taxscout), was started as far back as the 1980s, and it’s still growing at a rate of 5%-10%, Duggan pointed out. That’s a sign of how there is not just incumbent marketshare to take away, but new users popping up all the time. Turbotax is instructive for another reason, too: it’s really not expanded outside of the U.S., which says something about the complexity of building these products and perhaps points to one reason why Taxfix hasn’t expanded much itself. Ott would not be drawn out on which markets the company will tackle next, except to point out that it’s focusing on countries where the systems from the state are hard to use, and there are not many alternatives in those markets currently to address that issue. |
Oware is streamlining Pakistan’s supply chain | Catherine Shu | 2,022 | 4 | 27 | Oware co-founders Raza Kazmi and Adil Nisar. Oware Managing goods as they make their way through multiple warehouses and logistics providers is one of the biggest headaches that businesses in the supply chain face. After leaving his job at Careem, Adil Nisar founded a company that sources, manufacturers and distributes lights in Pakistan and experienced those challenges firsthand. So he teamed up with Raza Kazmi, the former group CFO of one of Pakistan’s largest distribution houses, to found , a network of connected warehouses that let businesses track and manage their shipments from a single portal. Today the company announced it has raised $3.3 million pre-seed funding from investors including Flexport Fund, Ratio Ventures, Seedstars International Ventures, Sketchnote Partners, The Osiris Group, Swiss Founders Fund, Reflect Ventures, +92 Ventures and Walled City Co. Nisar told TechCrunch that while starting novo, his biggest challenge as a small business owner was finding a reliable fulfillment partner and managing upfront capital costs related to warehousing. The Oware Eye Customer Portal. Oware Oware is meant to provide businesses with an affordable and scalable solution to traditional warehouse networks, while ensuring timely deliveries to end customers. Most of its customers are B2B market and retail companies that are looking for backend warehousing and transportation to their last distribution point or dark store. Oware currently has 18 warehouses in five cities in Pakistan, with a total space of 500,000 square feet. Part of Oware’s funding will be used to increase its coverage, which the company says can already provide same-day delivery to 75% of the population and next-day delivery to 85%. The company rents its warehouse space and works with third-party logistics providers. Oware’s clients can quickly start their operations from any of its locations, picking the ones that are closest to their end customers. Oware’s partners handles almost everything they need for deliveries, including picking, packing and shipping. Its online portal manage product inventory at their warehouses and track shipments in real time with digital proof of delivery. In a prepared statement, Seedstars partner and CIO Charlie Graham-Brown said, “Pakistan has a massive opportunity in logistics presented by the 2 million SMEs and the rise of e-commerce in the region. We believe that Oware has a solid position to be an integral layer to an ecosystem that’s becoming digitally enabled. We are proud to have been Adil’s and Raza’s early backers and thrilled for the journey ahead.” |
Post-pandemic, used car platforms are booming — the latest is Spotawheel with €100M | Mike Butcher | 2,022 | 4 | 27 | Used-car digital platforms have been proliferating across the world for a handful of significant reasons, but most of those are related to our recent pandemic (still ongoing, of course). Among those reasons is the rapid digitization of the used car industry, as startups have flooded the market with easier-to-use platforms that the older e-commerce-style ones lacked. The other is that — with the pandemic straining supply chains for microchips, essential in new cars — the premium on used cars has skyrocketed, as the supply of new cars has been constricted. Among the platforms to have arisen in the last couple of years is Autohero, which has jumped on the used car market. The “used car boom” is now spreading across Central and Eastern Europe with the news that , the CEE-focused used-car platform has raised a €100 million in equity and asset-backed debt. Athens-based VentureFriends led the equity round, with participation from Adevinta Ventures, UNIQA Ventures, Rockaway Ventures, Velocity Partners, FJ Labs, Collective Spark, Endeavour Catalyst and others. The debt side of the round was led by an unnamed U.K.-based credit fund together with some equally unnamed institutional investors. The credit fund subscribed to the equity round as well. Spotawheel estimates that the Central and Eastern Europe used car market is worth €100 billion and claims it has attained leading market positions in Poland and Greece; and it is now launching Romania. The company claims it is on track to reach a €200 million revenue run rate by the end of the year. Charis Arvanitis, founder and CEO of Spotawheel said it had also launched a used-car subscription offering. Asked what he thought Spotawheel’s competitive advantage was against competitors like Autohero in Poland, he told me: “Our major competitive advantage is our proprietary sourcing engine blending technologies like big data, machine learning with human ingenuity.” He said it also offers a written technical inspection of cars, five years warranty, 14 days money return policy, as well as countrywide vehicle delivery. “We are very excited to further support Spotawheel in its quest to expand internationally while upgrading its Europe-wide data-driven inventory sourcing,” said George Dimopoulos, partner at VentureFriends, in a statement. Spotawheel says it expects to add more staff and scale up Germany operations while establishing teams throughout Western Europe. |
Baidu, Pony.AI win first driverless robotaxi permits in China | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 4 | 27 | Chinese internet giant Baidu and autonomous vehicle company Pony.ai have received permits to provide driverless ride-hailing services to the public on open roads in Beijing, according to both companies. To date, numerous cities in China have allowed autonomous vehicle companies to test self-driving vehicles without a human safety operator in the driver’s seat, but this is the first time companies are allowed to run a fully driverless service. That said, the permit does require the companies to have a safety operator present in the front passenger seat, so the regulation is not quite as mature as, say, . Neither Pony nor Baidu will be charging a fee for driverless rides yet, although both companies with drivered robotaxis in Yizhuang, Beijing, otherwise referred to as Beijing High-level Automated Driving Demonstration Area (BJHAD), according to a Baidu spokesperson. This 60-square-kilometer stretch of Beijing, home to about 300,000 residents, is also where both Baidu’s and Pony’s driverless service will run. The news comes a couple of days after to operate and charge for autonomous ride-hail in Guangzhou, which requires a safety operator to be in the driver’s seat. China is home to many AV companies that are chasing commercialization, and it’s clear from both Baidu’s and Pony’s milestones that the country is moving forward with regulation to bring autonomous technology to market. The permits issued by the head office of BJHAD allow Baidu to deploy 10 driverless vehicles in Beijing, which will join Baidu’s existing Apollo Go fleet of about 100 cars in the capital city starting Thursday. The company said it plans to add 30 more driverless vehicles “at a later stage.” Pony’s service will also begin on Thursday with four driverless vehicles, but the company said it hopes to expand in the future. Apollo Go users can hail a ride using the app from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Pony customers can use the startup’s PonyPilot+ app to hail a ride from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. There will be hundreds of pickup and drop-off locations in the area including subway stations, parks, stadiums, central business districts and residential areas, according to Pony. |
Sumutasu secures $10M to digitize Japan’s real estate market | Kate Park | 2,022 | 4 | 27 | Sumutasu has adopted an iBuyer model — meaning it buys houses directly from homeowners, renovates them at scale, then resells them to buyers. While the U.S. and Europe have a more competitive iBuyer market with Opendoor, Zillow, Offerpad and Redfin, Japan has a nascent iBuyer industry, according to the company. |
Meta says Reels now makes up over 20% of the time users spend on Instagram | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 4 | 27 | Meta announced during its call that Reels, its short-form video feature and TikTok rival, now makes up more than 20% of the time that people spend on Instagram. The company also noted that video, overall, makes up 50% of the time that users spend on Facebook. Although Meta didn’t specify how much of that time is made up by Reels, it noted that Reels are performing well on Facebook as well. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the call that although its short-form video product doesn’t monetize as well as Stories currently do, the company is optimistic about improving this in the future. Zuckerberg pointed toward the company’s experience with Stories, which at first wasn’t monetizing as well as the main Instagram feed but had improved over time. Meta expects to see a similar experience with monetizing Reels over time, but notes that it’s going to be a multiyear journey and that the company is still in the early days of ads in Reels. Zuckerberg outlined that since starting Facebook 18 years ago, the company has seen multiple shifts in the media types that people use and that short-form video is only the latest iteration and is growing quickly. He outlined that while Meta is seeing an increase in short-form video, it’s also seeing a major shift in the advancement of AI recommendations driving more of its feeds, for both posts and Reels. He elaborated that feeds are going from being exclusively curated by users’ social circles to being recommended by AI. “Being able to accurately recommend content from the whole universe that you don’t follow directly unlocks a large amount of interesting and useful videos and posts that you might have otherwise missed,” Zuckerberg stated. “The AI that we’re building is not just a recommendation system for short-form video, but a discovery engine that can show you all of the most interesting content that people have shared across our systems.” TikTok’s powerful recommendation algorithm is one of the reasons behind its immense popularity, which is why it makes sense for Meta to focus on enhancing its own recommendation systems to get people to interact with Reels more, and in turn, be better aligned to compete with TikTok. Meta’s comments on Reels monetization come a day after Google revealed that it has in YouTube Shorts. Google CEO Sundar Pichai also announced that YouTube Shorts, the platform’s TikTok clone, is generating 30 billion views per day, which is four times more than last year. Meta and YouTube’s short-form video efforts are a direct response to the success of TikTok, which has proven to be one of the world’s fastest-growing social media platforms, according to . Meta has been looking to enhance Reels over the past few months and has largely adopted several of TikTok’s features over time, including a , to help it compete with the platform. As for Meta’s , Facebook boasts 1.96 billion DAUs, up from 1.92 billion last quarter. In addition, Meta’s Reality Labs operated at a loss of $2.96 billion in Q1 alone, and last year, Reality Labs lost . |
Daily Crunch: US dangles reward up to $10M for info on 6 elite Russian military hackers | Christine Hall | 2,022 | 4 | 27 | It’s April 27, 2022, and here’s a thing we didn’t see coming: May. What the hell happened to this month, this year? As the summer equinox draws closer, the weather warms up and the days get longer, we long drinks with tiny rainbow umbrellas in them. If you’re reading this in the Southern Hemisphere: Sorry for our summery optimism. Please enjoy some hot chocolate and fuzzy socks as we take a dip in the pool. – and It’s fundraising season for venture funds, apparently! . . , weighing in at $650 million. A little less aspiration, a little more traction, please: / Getty Images In a conversation with Editor Greg Kumparak at TechCrunch Early Stage, YC managing director and group partner Dalton Caldwell spoke about the application process founders must navigate before they’re accepted to one of the world’s top accelerators. “The first thing I look at when I read an application is the team. What I’m looking for is technical excellence on the team,” said Caldwell. “Our teams that rely on trying to hire outsourced engineers or consultants or whatever to build their product tend to move much slower than folks with a technical founder,” he added. “They tend to get ripped off.” just before the investing and trading service was poised to come out with its earnings. We’ll have to see what happens Thursday — and whether that sheds light on the situation. In earnings talk, : that the controversy around having a Joe Rogan podcast did little to sway subscriber numbers, which grew 15%. Yesterday, we prepared you for the , and today, we are able to share that and some serious cash to put behind it. . Meanwhile, — Google doing well, YouTube not so much, though the number of channels making $10,000 in revenue grew 40%. Not bad. , Salesforce Flow, which described as “a bold attempt to pull together all of the pieces in the Salesforce arsenal in a more coherent fashion, using a popular tool that has been around since 2019 to do the job.” Twitter news continues, from to to should the deal fizzle. , with Twitter saying the undulations were mostly organic. and came together to chat about all things Elon Musk and Twitter for the . We also have the skinny on regarding Tesla tweets. Here are some others we think you might like: |
Dat Bike is the creator of Vietnam’s first domestic electric motorbike | Catherine Shu | 2,022 | 4 | 27 | Dat Bike founder and CEO Son Nguyen. Dat Bike is on a journey to reduce the amount of gasoline used in Vietnam. The startup makes electric motorbikes with key components that it designs and produces domestically to reduce costs and improve performance. Today, Dat Bike announced it has raised a $5.3 million Series A led by Jungle Ventures, with participation from Wavemaker Partners. Both are returning investors. Jungle Ventures led Dat Bike’s seed round a year ago, when . The latest funding brings Dat Bike’s total to $10 million raised since it was founded in 2019 by Son Nguyen. Dat Bike is recognized by the Vietnam Ministry of Transportation as the first domestically made electric bike. Nguyen said that Dat Bike uses vertical integration instead of relying on third-party imported electric drivetrains and parts because that keeps costs down while improving quality. Most of the parts on Dat Bike’s vehicles are designed by the company and 80% of its suppliers are located in Vietnam. It also uses a direct-to-consumer distribution model, pushing prices down lower. Part of the funding will be invested in its technology. Nguyen explained that the three most important parts of an electric bike are its battery, motor and controller. Right now, Dat Bike owns technology for its battery packaging and controller. With its new capital, it will be able to invest in its engine technology. Nguyen added that the company will also upgrade its mobile app, adding new features and shortening the feedback loop on its error reporting feature. One major thing the company had to address was consumer concerns about the performance of e-bikes compared to their gasoline counterparts. The company says its first product line, the Weaver, displayed three times the performance (5 kW versus 1.5 kW) and two times the range of (100 km versus 50 km) of most competing electric bikes. Dat Bike’s second model, the Weaver 200, was launched last year with higher performance, or a range of 200 km and 6 kW power. It also reduced charging time from 1 hour for 100 km to 2.5 hours for its full 200 km charge. “We aim to develop a new product every year and research for faster charging,” Nguyen said. Dat Bike currently has two stores in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, and its bikes can be ordered online, too. Part of the funding will be used to expand its offline-to-online model into more large cities, including Thai Nguyen, Bac Ninh, Hai Phong, Hai Duong, Ha Long, Vinh, Quy Nhon, Nha Trang, Danang, Can Tho and Vung Tau. |
WhatsApp follows Google in giving cash-back rewards to win payments users in India | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 4 | 27 | WhatsApp, the , is employing one of the most popular strategies that has proven to drive users in the world’s second largest market to a service: cash-back. The Meta-owned instant messaging service is running a campaign as part of which it is giving away about 11 Indian rupees, or 14 cents, up to three times to users if they send money to three different people on the app, according to users and an official company support page. The reward comes at a time when WhatsApp is attempting to expand the reach of its mobile payments service in India. Even as WhatsApp began , regulatory pushback has prevented the popular app from aggressively expanding its payments service. WhatsApp got some relief earlier this month when the National Payments Corporation of India, the payments body that oversees the popular payments protocol UPI, which WhatsApp is using, permitted the messaging firm to , up from 40 million earlier. WhatsApp, which began testing the cash-back rewards in India as early as November of last year (if not earlier), is extending the perk to users who have been using the app for at least 30 days and have registered for payments on WhatsApp by adding their bank account details. WhatsApp Business users are not eligible. “We’re introducing a cashback promotion for selected WhatsApp users. If you become eligible for the promotion, you might see a banner within the app, or a gift icon when you’re sending money to an eligible receiver,” the company says on the . TechCrunch WhatsApp is not the first service to offer cash-back rewards in hopes of courting users. Google also offered users in India about 65 cents for making their first payments transaction when it (since rebranded to Google Pay) in 2017, and has since offered as much as $40 to $50 to users to drive engagement and retention. Local giants Paytm and MobiKwik have also delivered cash-back to users for years in the country, and continue to offer similar perks for certain features on the app. The cash-back should help WhatsApp accelerate its efforts to make inroads in India’s mobile payments market, which is currently dominated by Google and Walmart-backed PhonePe. WhatsApp says on the support page that it won’t be offering cash-back for QR code payments, or money sent on collect requests. Users sending payments to users with UPI ID on other apps will also not be eligible. In a statement, a WhatsApp spokesperson said: “We are running a campaign offering cashback incentives in a phased manner to our users as a way to unlock the potential of payments on WhatsApp. Offering safe, secure and easy-to-use digital payments is an important part of scaling India’s digital economy, and we’ll continue to drive awareness of payments on WhatsApp as part of our broader efforts to bring the next 500 million Indians onto the digital payments ecosystem.” |
Meta says its metaverse biz lost another $3B… but the 2030s will be ‘exciting’ | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 4 | 27 | Do you hear that? It’s the sound of every Meta executive breathing a deep sigh of relief, because , Facebook’s daily active users (DAUs) are up… a little. For the second time since its rebrand from Facebook, Meta has reported its . Last time, the Facebook platform reported its first decline in DAUs in its 18-year history, but now, Facebook boasts 1.96 billion DAUs, up from 1.92 billion last quarter. Of course, Meta’s family of apps — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger — isn’t the star of the show. As CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained, the revenue from these apps is helping to fund Meta’s projects in virtual reality, which he is betting will become the company’s crown jewel in the future. Was this worth for? In Q1 alone, Meta’s Reality Labs operated at a loss of $2.96 billion, and last year, Reality Labs lost . “It’s not going to be until those products really hit the market and scale in a meaningful way, and this market ends up being big, that this will be a big revenue or profit contributor to the business,” said Zuckerberg. “This is laying the groundwork for what I expect to be a very exciting 2030.” Horizon Worlds, Meta’s social VR app, started rolling out late in the quarter, but those in-app purchases won’t move the needle much if the platform doesn’t significantly woo more users. Soon, Meta will roll out a , welcoming people who don’t have $300 to drop on a VR headset. Zuckerberg said that Horizon is the “centerpiece” of the company’s strategy to develop the metaverse. “I recognize it’s expensive to build this. It’s something that’s never been built before,” Zuckerberg said. He conceded that because of these investments, Meta’s overall profitability won’t grow in 2022, especially since ad revenue hasn’t grown as fast as expected. Like its competitors at and , Meta also cited a downward trend in ad revenue due to the Russian war on Ukraine (Facebook is now in Russia). Overall, Meta’s quarterly revenue rose by 7%, missing analysts’ 7.8% expectation. The combination of increased DAUs and lower-than-expected ad revenue can be explained by the fact that Meta’s apps are growing in regions like the Asia-Pacific region, where ads cost less, rather than the U.S. and Europe. Meta’s most promising money-maker from Reality Labs are the headsets themselves. The Meta Quest 2 had a big during the holiday season, and the company is already looking toward releasing its newest headset later this year, codenamed “ .” Zuckerberg said that the new, premium headset will be “focused on work use cases and eventually replacing your laptop or work setup.” Meta is also building eye-tracking and face-tracking so that when you’re socializing in VR, people will be able to perceive your real-life facial expressions. He added that we can expect more news on the headset in the months ahead. Back on its family of apps, Meta faces competition from TikTok as it aims to overtake the platform as the leader in short-form video. But Zuckerberg reported that his company’s investment in its TikTok clone Reels is working, noting spend on Instagram. Plus, video accounts for 50% of the time that users spend on Facebook. “ |
Elon Musk wins $13B suit over SolarCity deal Tesla shareholders called a ‘bailout’ | Harri Weber | 2,022 | 4 | 27 | A Delaware judge has sided with Elon Musk in a brought by Tesla shareholders, which accused the executive of coercing the electric vehicle company’s board into buying SolarCity back in 2016. Seeking as much as $13 billion in damages, the shareholders alleged that Tesla’s $2.6 billion, all-stock SolarCity deal amounted to “a rescue from financial distress, a bailout, orchestrated by Elon Musk,” per a from the plaintiff’s attorney, Randy Baron. While the court found that Musk “was more involved in the process than a conflicted fiduciary should be,” it ultimately ruled in favor of the “technoking” on all counts. Shareholders still have the option to file an appeal. At the time of the deal, Musk’s connections to Solar City ran deep. The unprofitable solar energy firm was co-founded and co-led by Musk’s first cousins, Lyndon and Peter Rive, and Musk was Solar City’s and chairman. “[The] Tesla Board meaningfully vetted the Acquisition, and Elon did not stand in its way,” read the opinion by Vice Chancellor Joseph Slights. “Equally if not more important, the preponderance of the evidence reveals that Tesla paid a fair price — SolarCity was, at a minimum, worth what Tesla paid for it,” Slights added. The verdict is a clear win for Musk, but the court declined to force the shareholders to cover his legal fees. Slights concluded that the Tesla boss and “likely could have avoided” the case in the first place, “had he simply followed the ground rules of good corporate governance in conflict transactions.” |
Ford earnings weighed down by Rivian stake | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 4 | 27 | Ford reported Wednesday a multibillion-dollar loss in the first-quarter due to a massive write-off on the value of its stake in Rivian. Shares still rose in after-hours trading as investors focused more on Ford’s fundamentals — including beating analysts’ estimates on revenue and adjusted earnings — and not its Rivian holding. Ford generated $34.5 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2022. That beat analysts’ expectations of $31.2 billion worth of revenue, albeit falling from its year-ago result of $36.2 billion. That Ford managed to beat revenue expectations but still lost so much money might surprise you. Investors were not shocked, with Ford reporting adjusted profits within a penny per share . Still, the car company lost $3.1 billion in GAAP terms in Q1, largely due to a write-off of the value of its stake in Rivian, an electric car company that has had . Ford told investors that its quarterly net loss was “primarily attributable to a mark-to-market loss of $5.4 billion on the company’s investment in Rivian.” If the scale of the Rivian-induced hit to profitability surprises you, recall that the EV company’s stock crested at $179.47 per share according to Yahoo Finance data, before suffering from a decline to $31.22 today at the close of regular trading. In simpler terms, the value of Ford’s stake in Rivian fell by more than half from $10.6 billion at the end of 2021 to just $5.1 billion as of the quarter ended March 31. Rivian’s stock has shed another double-digit percentage of its worth since that date, indicating that Ford could take another paper loss in the second quarter. Ford would not comment on Rivian further when questioned by investors during Wednesday’s earnings call. Past the company’s accounting-induced net loss, Ford earned $2.3 billion worth of adjusted EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) according to its earnings report. While the supply chain issues spurred by the pandemic have created numerous headaches for nearly every industry attempting to reach production goals, in at least Ford’s case, it might have inspired a strategy of vertical integration that could weather future storms. During Wednesday’s earnings call, the automaker expressed a positive outlook for 2022 backed by its efforts the past few years to secure battery and EV manufacturing in-house and serious demand in its EV lineup. CEO Jim Farley even openly sent a message out to metal and mining industry that Ford is looking for good deals on lithium and nickel and will invest capital to move processes from overseas to North America. Positive outlook notwithstanding, Ford said it shipped 970,000 vehicles in the first quarter, down 9% from a year ago as a continuing global shortage of semiconductors held down the automaker’s January and February production and shipments. In fact, the automaker has about 53,000 vehicles completed and sitting around waiting for the installation of certain components affected by the semiconductor supply shortage, according to John Lawler, Ford’s chief financial officer. Ford did cite “significantly improved” manufacturing rates during March, signals that the second quarter and full year numbers could improve. The company also exceeded its previous record of electrified vehicle sales year to date with an increase of about 38%, according to its March U.S. sales report. The automaker attributed its recent manufacturing success as the result of hard work with suppliers at every level of the value chain to break constraints, as well as expediting freight to pull ahead of available supply. At the same time, the company says it has taken design actions over the past year to alleviate potential constraints which are coming online now and in the second half of the year, along with deals with wafer and chip suppliers that Ford expects to come online at the back end of the year. The company entered the second quarter with what Ford CEO Jim Farley called an “extremely healthy” order bank, and says it is on track to scale high-demand EVs to 600,000 units by the end of next year and expects production to go ahead as scheduled for E-Transit vans in the U.S. and Europe, as well as the F-150 Lightning pickup in the U.S. Ford’s EV ambitions are largely tied up in the success of the F-150 Lightning pickup truck, which went into production this week. The automaker said it has 200,000 reservations for the F-150, which has prompted the company to to 150,000 vehicles in 2023. Looking ahead, Ford reaffirmed its 2022 guidance of positive adjusted EBIT of $11.5 billion to $12.5 billion, alongside “adjusted free cash flow” of $5.5 billion to $6.5 billon; Ford closed the quarter with cash and equivalents worth $29 billion and reported $45 billion in total liquidity inclusive of its Rivian stake. While Ford’s unit volume dipped in Q1 compared to the year-ago period, the company expects “vehicle wholesale volumes [to increase] 10% to 15% from 2021” by the end of the year. That unit volume figure includes a stated assumption of there being more chips available in the market by the back half of 2022. The high demand for Ford’s new EVs might help the automaker achieve its goal for the year of significantly higher profits in North America and collective profitability worldwide, but Ford executives were realistic about inflationary pressures being unlikely to ease anytime soon. Ford is baking $4 billion worth of higher commodity costs in its estimates, along with what the company described as “inflationary effects on a range of other expenses.” , cost cutting and finding production efficiencies took center stage in the company’s strategy to reach production goals. That should help meet demand as the company gears up for the second half of the year, when Ford sees volumes improving based on better availability of supply, according to Doug Field, Ford’s chief officer of EVs and digital systems. “Our opportunity is really around our costs and our Blue business,” said Field. ( , which was established as a separate entity from Ford Model e, the automaker’s EV business, last quarter.) “In terms of investing we need to invest in a fully networked advanced electric architecture. We need to invest in Level 2 and Level 3 autonomy. We need to invest in a new portfolio and in changing our industrial system over to these electric digital products. We need to invest in our OS software that supports all of that. And we believe very strongly, we need to invest in Level 4 autonomy. Our Ford Plus plan is so specific about where to invest that at this point in time our real work that we need to do is to get after these inefficiencies and improve the productivity of our base business.” |
Dear Sophie: When should I sponsor engineers for green cards? | Sophie Alcorn | 2,022 | 4 | 27 | 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 Targeting, With the ongoing and intensifying competition for tech talent in the wake of the Great Resignation, I find myself like yours quite frequently. That’s no surprise: Turnover in tech last year was remarkably higher than in health care, according to the . Resignations within the tech industry increased 4.5% last year compared to the previous year, while in health care, resignations increased 3.6%. As you explore this process, consider looking at green cards and other immigration support not only as a way to recruit candidates and retain employees, but as an opportunity to shape your company culture. Now is the time to present your company as one that values innovation, diversity, creativity, inclusivity and the security and well-being of your employees. This will ultimately bring resilience to your company. Let’s get into it. Of all the employment-based green cards, the EB-1A extraordinary ability green card is the quickest option. This option requires significant proof of accomplishment in your field — which can be a challenge for some (more details below). The EB-1A is the fastest for two main reasons: It currently allows for Premium Processing, where you can pay $2,500 extra and the government will adjudicate the petition in 15 calendar days, and, for people subject to the India/China-green card backlogs, the EB-1 First Preference green card category always has the most movement and availability. Good news for green card processing: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services just announced that it will be adding premium processing to more categories. This fiscal year, it will be adding a Premium Processing option to both the EB-1C Multinational Manager and Executive green card category as well as the EB-2 National Interest Waiver green card category. In the coming months, USCIS will launch this option: You will be able to pay an additional $2,500, and USCIS will promise to adjudicate your I-140 petition in EB-1C or EB-2NIW in 45 (not 15!) days. Joanna Buniak / |
ChowNow founder on rethinking food delivery to serve local restaurants first | Maggie Stamets | 2,022 | 4 | 27 | Welcome back to , the TechCrunch podcasts that get the stories behind the startups. This week we’re joined by Chris Webb from Chow Now. |
OneWeb founder Greg Wyler’s new startup wants to launch a ‘sustainable’ satellite mega-constellation | Aria Alamalhodaei | 2,022 | 4 | 27 | The proliferation of space junk in low Earth orbit is a problem that isn’t going away. Instead, it’s getting worse — a fact that grabbed headlines last November when a Russian direct-ascent anti-satellite test produced enough new pieces of debris that astronauts aboard the International Space Station were forced to conduct immediate safety procedures in case of a collision. (The U.S. recently said it would ) It’s not just military action that could exacerbate the space junk problem: Satellite mega-constellations, like those planned by SpaceX, Amazon and Telesat, could also generate more debris, if only for the reason that more objects in LEO means more opportunities for those objects to collide. Does that mean mega-constellations are incompatible with cleaning up LEO? Greg Wyler doesn’t think so. His new venture, E-Space, is aiming to reconcile the two by sending up a mesh communications satellite network composed of spacecraft that will also capture small debris before deorbiting at the end of their useful life. The company is staying mum on how, exactly, the satellites will capture and deorbit small debris, citing the proprietary nature of the technology. For now, the company is focused on sending up three demonstration satellites as part of Rocket Lab’s next ride-share mission, currently slated to launch no earlier than April 28 from the launch company’s site on New Zealand’s Māhia Peninsula. While these demo satellites will not be testing the orbital debris capture mechanism, the company says the trio of spacecraft will validate other systems and technology. Beyond the ability to grab space junk, the satellites will also have smaller cross-sections and will automatically deorbit in the case of any malfunction — two features that will also boost the constellation’s sustainability, the company says. The satellites will use a “peer-to-peer” communication model and a “Zero Trust” topology to ensure secure communications for companies and governments. “When we talk about building 100,000 satellites or more [ … ] we are carefully monitoring to make sure that we are significantly, hundreds of times less impactful and basically in the noise from a probability of collision perspective,” Wyler said. “So while we have more satellites than anyone else we have a negligible increase in the probability of collision.” The exact number of satellites E-Space plans to eventually send up is also unclear, but as the above quote indicates, the company is bandying around vast numbers that far exceed any existing or planned satellite constellation. Wyler is no stranger to the space industry, having founded O3b Networks in 2007 and OneWeb in 2012. This newest venture raised $50 million in a seed funding round in February led by Prime Movers Lab. The company has grown to over 50 employees, and E-Space intends to commence mass production of its satellites next year. Wyler said the company could send up demo satellites with the orbital cleanup capability in 2023 or 2024. He likened the mega-constellation-orbital debris conundrum to oysters in a river. “How does putting up more [satellites], how is that better?” he said. “Well, how are more oysters in the river better? Oysters clean the river. You have a lot of oysters, you’ve got a really clean river.” |
HBO Max app just had one of its best quarters to date, but app performance still has room to improve | Lauren Forristal | 2,022 | 4 | 27 | Sensor Tower’s “ ” report saw HBO Max as a top contender for the most downloaded apps in the U.S. Not only did the app make the top five list, but it also had the second-best month overall in the month of January. In addition, HBO Max had the best quarter on the U.S. App Store for any SVOD (subscription video on demand) app since Disney+ launched in late 2019, passing Netflix for only the second time. In recent years, there has been a continuous rise in video streaming downloads as more consumers value watching content on the go. The top six apps had more than 10% U.S. download market share in Q1 2022, with HBO Max in the lead (21%), Disney+ (17%) and Netflix (15%). Meanwhile, Peacock, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video had at least 10%. Sensor Tower Additionally, HBO has had success adding new users since its launch in 2020. Its U.S. MAU (monthly active users) market share rose from 4.5% in Q2 2020 to 10% in Q1 2022. While Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video were the top three video streaming apps in the U.S. from Q1 2018 through Q3 2019, with 80% of combined downloads, by Q1 2022, the three streaming apps combined for only 37% of downloads. All in all, improved content offerings have resulted in a sustained upward trend in monthly users. In Q1 2022, events such as HBO Max’s season two of “Euphoria,” along with major U.S. sporting events such as the Super Bowl (Peacock TV) and March Madness (Paramount+) all contributed to a boost in adoption, giving these streaming services a competitive edge. Sensor Tower More and more consumers are turning to their mobile devices to stream their content, so it’s no surprise that HBO Max’s app got the attention of subscribers. However, users are frustrated with the platform and have complained for years about its performance. If the user interface is flawed, no amount of valuable content is worth dealing with outages and errors. On the , the app has a 2.8 rating, with many reviewers complaining that the app is “super buggy,” slow and poorly designed. users were a little nicer, giving the app a 3.7. However, most still complained about an “unfriendly” interface and constant buffering. HBO Max is notorious for having unstable app performance. Its platform overall has had many issues, and not only were there outages last year in and , but there have also been crashes like the finale of “ ,” and more recently, “ ” season two and “ ” were both down. Sarah Lyons, head of HBO Max’s Product Experience, told that at launch, the company willingly released an imperfect app because the team figured it could get a facelift once the app garnered more success. “We’ve been changing out the engine of the plane while we’re flying the plane,” she said. The original app was based on the old HBO Go and HBO Now mobile and TV apps. HBO Go was only meant for cable subscribers, so it lacked a strong discovery function like its competitors, Netflix and Disney+. Earlier this month, WarnerMedia finally got around to fixing its and promised it would be rolling out upgrades such as enhanced stability, a more simplified sign-in process and other new features. It previously improved the app experience for Roku, PlayStation, Android TV, LG and Vizio. The desktop version also got a in March. According to Lyons, crashes of the HBO Max Roku app have decreased by 90%, and load times on Android TV decreased by 50%. She also told Protocol that Fire TV and Xbox apps would also be improved after the relaunches of the mobile and web experience. The platform will get a decent makeover as the team plans to improve in-app discovery, among other changes. Warner Bros. Discovery now has plans to , HBO Max and Discovery+, into a single app. While Discovery+ has a lower U.S. download market share than HBO Max in Q1 2022, its app rankings on the and are significantly higher at 4.9 and 4.7, respectively. While this obviously isn’t an overall comparison, since reviews and rankings are only from a low number of users (less than one million), it is something to note. |
null | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 4 | 18 | null |
In leaked all-hands meeting, Twitter CEO fields questions about Elon Musk’s takeover | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 4 | 27 | If you wanted to be a fly on the wall during the first Twitter all-hands meeting after the platform accepted Elon Musk’s , you’re in luck. While Twitter declined to comment on the leak, the dialogue appears to be consistent with about the call. And while Twitter CMO Leslie Berland that an audio clip from the meeting has been “leaked, edited and misrepresented as [hers] (and the company’s) views,” it appears she may have been responding to that showed an edited clip of the audio leak, not the full version. In this short clip, it was not clear that Berland was reading questions from employees, as opposed to speaking on her own behalf. The full leak of the meeting audio makes it clear the questions are coming from employees. Over the 45-minute discussion, CEO Parag Agrawal and independent board chair Bret Taylor fielded the employees’ questions, which were relayed via Berland. Many of the answers, however, were some version of “we need to ask Elon about that.” Until the deal closes, which , Agrawal said, “[Twitter] will continue making decisions as we always have, guided by the principles we’ve had, which doesn’t mean things won’t change. Things have been changing. I’ve been in this role for four months,” Agrawal explained. “Once the deal closes, different decisions might be made. For us to gain insight into that, we’ll be finding a way to have Elon talk with all of you at the soonest possible opportunity,” he said. Still, the questions that employees asked indicated real concern about how the deal would affect their day-to-day work priorities, compensation and stock options, and job security. As , Agrawal told employees that there would be “no layoffs at this time,” which isn’t the most assuring possible response. When asked about a potential hiring freeze, Agrawal said that the company hadn’t yet thought through the answer to that question. Another concern among employees is how Elon Musk’s desire to cultivate “free speech” will affect the platform’s guidelines. Twitter currently hate speech, spam, targeted harassment, and attempts to . But Musk has indicated that he wants Twitter’s policies to match that of — a statement that for a private social network used in many different countries. An employee asked for more clarity on what Musk may have meant by “free speech.” Agrawal said everyone understood what free speech meant, as it’s a concept that’s existed for a while. “But I think I am going to try and read the question behind the question here, which is, where might Twitter’s product go as a private company in the future once the deal closes?” Agrawal continued. His answer indicated that Twitter wasn’t entirely clear on that point at this time. “To best gain perspective on this … we’ll find ways to bring Elon in for a Q&A with all of you,” he said, adding that the leadership team would also sit down with Musk to better understand “his vision for the future of Twitter might look like.” Hinting at possible differences of opinion with Twitter’s new owner, Agrawal also expressed the desire to have “a two-way dialogue” with Musk where Twitter’s leadership could “inform and educate him on the work we have done, and the things we have learned along the way.” Reading between the lines of the comment, even in its heavily massaged corporate-speech format, it seems that Twitter’s current leadership doesn’t believe Musk has a deep understanding of why Twitter has taken the actions it has with regard to moderation. Optimistically, Agrawal added Twitter’s leadership would be looking to understand Musk’s “ambitions and aspirations” in order to “see how we can best collaborate.” (Of course, there are already questions being raised as to whether Agrawal would be the one Musk will be “collaborating” with, given Musk’s statements about how he did not “have confidence in [Twitter’s] management.) An employee also asked if will be reinstated, but Agrawal didn’t give a direct answer here either. Although Trump himself has said he to Twitter, his mind could change. “I think we’ve been doing our work to learn about what’s happening out there. We constantly evolve our policies. We make decisions for the health of the public conversation every day,” he said. “Once the deal closes, we don’t know which direction the platform will go in.” It sounds like Musk will get to make that call, in other words. Another employee noted that Musk has said that part of why he bought the platform was because he disagreed with their content moderation policies. “This puts Twitter Service, and Trust and Safety, as well as anybody who cares about health on the platform in a very difficult position,” the question, relayed by Berland, said. The employee asked how these teams will be supported when Musk assumes power. Agrawal began his response by first touting the work Twitter had done to keep conversations safe, free from manipulation and from spam. The latter, however, is one of Musk’s , which has been unable to get a handle on the bots and spammers, including more recently, the crypto spammers who often flood Musk’s Twitter replies. Agrawal then complimented the teams that work to keep Twitter safe, but he added, “I believe there is a lot of work we have to do to continue making that better. Sometimes that means more thoughtful moderation, sometimes that means making things simpler, sometimes that means changing product incentives to be able to solve problems through products sometimes instead of policies.” For now, Musk’s takeover bid for Twitter remains subject to shareholder and regulatory approval. |
The corporate venture comeback: What startups considering CVC need to know | Luisa Rubio Arribas | 2,022 | 4 | 27 | investments (CVCs) now represent of global venture. The bigger slice of the funding pie comes as founders have to navigate a more . Amid the Ukrainian conflict and rising inflation — with many investors being more cautious with their dollars — startups are welcoming the longer-term stability that corporates can offer. Corporate knowledge, R&D resources, M&A opportunities and networks are invaluable for early-stage companies. But many traditional investors have strong opinions about corporate venture capital projects, that corporates’ role is to buy, not back, other companies. This approach, however, overlooks the benefits of corporate investment, especially in times of dwindling capital flows and more cautious investors. I’ve worked in corporate venture capital for seven years and teach a master’s class about CVC at the Madrid Bar Association. This is why corporate investment is making a comeback — and what startups should look for in the return. While few corporates used to offer startup investment (and the ones that did were primarily concerned with software, practically every corporate is involved in VC today and covers a range of niche sectors. That means there’s more corporate money and players for startups to explore. Corporations have also come to realize the potential of a more open innovation strategy, where they invest in external startup ideas rather than only experimenting internally. This shift is why many corporates have investment funds specifically dedicated to startups — just look at Mondelez International (formerly Kraft), Nike, Microsoft, American Express and PepsiCo. These branches not only assign funds and tools to startups’ growth — they supply startups with decades of investment experience. With the combination of capital and expertise, corporates can execute strong startup deals and deliver value to them faster. And, despite their size, corporations can be surprisingly agile. In the past decade, the majority have reacted to and mirrored changes in the startup space, helping to raise the bar for CVC investments. At Wayra, we’ve adapted our strategy a number of times to ensure that we evolve as the startup ecosystem does. In 2018, we moved away from being an accelerator to a CVC to better help more mature startups with joint-venture opportunities and scaling. Later, we also aimed at supporting startups’ transformation in Southern Europe and Latin America. |
PayPal shuttering its San Francisco office | Mary Ann Azevedo | 2,022 | 4 | 27 | Another fintech, Stripe, in 2020 in favor of South San Francisco. This is a developing story. |
Ex-Chime engineers raise $4M for B2B payments infrastructure startup Streamlined | Mary Ann Azevedo | 2,022 | 4 | 27 | While working as the head of treasury at Braintree, once discovered a $90 million payment that went “missing” for over two weeks because of poor payments infrastructure. “It was my first week on the job, and I received an email from a client saying ‘I think you shorted us $90 million,’” he recalls. “I looked into it, and they were right. I figured out there was a bug in the system, fixed it and wired the money. But it was incredible to me that it took them 2 ½ weeks to know they were missing $90 million.” For de Souza, who was also a founding engineer at digital bank Chime and a product manager at Slack, the whole business payments space “has not really evolved” over the past several decades. “Most business payments are still very much done in paper check and unintelligible ACH payments,” he said. To set about helping solve that problem, he left Braintree in 2019 and teamed up with fellow former Chime software engineer to found , an Oakland-based startup that is emerging from stealth today with a total of $4 million in funding. Streamlined raised $1 million in a pre-seed round led by SignalFire in 2020 and recently closed a $3 million seed financing co-led by Greycroft and SignalFire. Unusual Ventures and others put money in the latest round. A lot of B2B payments tech is built on top of B2C tech, such as Stripe, that was engineered to handle consumer card transactions, according to de Souza. But Streamlined is different, he claims, in that it has “custom built” transaction infrastructure for B2B “from the ground up.” Many businesses today still pay via paper checks and ACH, mainly for record-keeping and compliance reasons. Meanwhile, payment cycles remain “messy and prone to irregularities,” he says. As such, according to de Souza, a company’s accounting department can waste time manually searching for payments, and then even more time trying to reconcile individual invoices. Streamlined’s mission is straightforward: to give businesses the ability to accept payments from their business customers “how they want and when they want,” whether it be via paper check, ACH or credit card. “We are making it possible for us to accept payments, regardless of how the payment comes in,” de Souza told TechCrunch, “and then make it available to the recipient electronically and in the time that they decide.” This, he said, can also help merchants and their customers be compliant and up to date. The company also touts that its infrastructure is designed to allow for faster merchant payouts and to “dramatically simplify” reconciliation, which he believes is one of the company’s biggest differentiators. “Where Streamlined really anchors itself against anybody else,” he told TechCrunch, “is that we focus on this problem of reconciliation.” Initially, the startup is working with fast-growing e-commerce companies, which have grown significantly in number and size since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and currently handles “tens of thousands” of merchants’ payments daily. It’s targeting businesses with $10 million to $100 million in GMV, and “a strong desire to scale wholesale,” de Souza said. But the company’s long-term goal “is to make B2B payments of any size and complexity simple.” “Unlike retail transactions, B2B commerce is relationship-oriented, and every relationship is different,” de Souza added. “The method by which a buyer prefers to pay, or the timing for that payment, comes down to the way the relationship is defined between buyer and seller, and this is a major reason why B2B payments is so fragmented, so complex and is still so hands-on. We’re approaching this challenge with a deep understanding of both buyers and sellers.” Streamlined De Souza declined to share revenue growth metrics, saying only that some of its recent growth “ The company plans to use its new capital to beef up its 10-person staff, particularly its engineering team. It is open to hiring people who don’t have experience in the payments industry. “I think it’s important for people without a payments background to consider the space, and it’s exciting, because you’re bringing a new lens to a problem that people have stared at for years,” de Souza said. SignalFire founding partner and CTO Ilya Kirnos believes that the growth of B2B e-commerce has created a need for better payment and reconciliation tools. Brick-and-mortar retailers who had to shift their business online when COVID hit had plenty of options when setting up an e-commerce storefront, he points out. “There are tons of modern tools for B2C e-commerce payments, whether it’s Shopify, Stripe, etc.…,” Kirnos told TechCrunch. “…But B2B commerce is very different — more parties are involved in a transaction, you have to match the invoice to the payment, most payments are still made by check or ACH, and not credit card. There is no straightforward way to do this today as a merchant online, and this is the gap Streamlined is addressing.” Greycroft partner John Elton agrees that the “consumerization of B2B payments is here.” “It’s not just about the payment — it’s the whole experience a business has dealing with payments,” he said. “The status quo is often a manual, paper-driven process that is disconnected…With Streamlined, businesses don’t have to worry about payments and get paid faster, more accurately, in a process that is seamlessly tied into the existing finance and accounting applications.” |
Choco gets its horn amid mission to remove food waste from supply chain | Christine Hall | 2,022 | 4 | 11 | , a company aimed at building a more sustainable food system for restaurants and suppliers, brought in another big raise — this time $111 million in what it’s calling a Series B2 round — to boost its valuation to $1.2 billion. The new investment, an internal round led by G Squared alongside Insight Partners, comes just six months after Berlin-based , led by Left Lane Capital, to give the company a post-market valuation of $600 million. If you’ve been keeping up with us, we’ve covered a number of Choco’s funding rounds over the years, including a $63.7 million Series A that was raised at two different periods, a in 2019 and a in 2020 — at a $230 million valuation — to bring total funding to $282.5 million since the company was founded in 2018. The company is going after a that traditionally does business via spreadsheets or pen and paper. It developed software that digitizes ordering, supply chain and communications for suppliers and restaurants to give back some of that time. “We have been lucky with our growth and lucky in a very large space where we can grow fast without much blocking us,” Choco CEO Daniel Khachab told TechCrunch. “When our investors offered additional funds, we said, ‘let’s go for it’ to be able to speed up, invest in our product, customer service and training of the team.” Choco also collects data in real time so that suppliers can more accurately balance supply and demand so before it reaches the consumer. Its aim is to “completely digitize the food wholesale market across the globe by 2026 on behalf of zero food waste.” The company is not alone in going after food waste. For example, grocery app raised $12.3 million to tackle retail food waste, and raised $23 million to find endpoints for imperfect produce. Meanwhile, Choco is active in the U.S., Germany, France, Spain, Austria and Belgium, and experienced 350% growth in users over the past year. And as of February, the total value of goods traded through Choco exceeded $1.2 billion, and it is working with around 15,000 restaurant customers and 16,000 on the supply side. Khachab intends to use the new funding on product and technology development, support the company’s growth in the U.S. and Europe, and to expand into additional markets. He also plans to increase the company’s employee headcount from its current 400 to between 600 and 700 by the end of the year. Some of the new features in beta include financial services capabilities that will have Choco assuming the risk for suppliers by acting as the money collection agency for them so they get paid within 24 hours, while enabling restaurants to have more time to pay. “We want to cover the whole U.S. and European food system,” Khachab added. “The main focus for the next 36 months will be building value-based software for suppliers, who are dealing with margin and price pressures, and it is hard for them to collect money. They are going to become our main customer at this point.” |
Twitter rolls back change, restoring the text of deleted embedded tweets | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,022 | 4 | 11 | Twitter quietly reversed a the company implemented last week, restoring the text of since-deleted tweets embedded on external websites. The change was first spotted by Twitter user @ . IndieWeb developer Kevin Marks initially , criticizing Twitter for “tampering with the public record” by intentionally hiding the text of embedded deleted tweets with JavaScript. Previously, deleted embedded tweets would still display their text content. That behavior is now restored. At the time, Twitter senior product manager Eleanor Harding that by obscuring deleted tweets archived on the web, Twitter was trying to better respect the wishes of its users. But the company received widespread pushback from open web advocates and developers who believed Twitter went too far by altering embedded deleted tweets to hide their text. “After considering the feedback we heard, we’re rolling back this change for now while we explore different options,” a Twitter spokesperson told TechCrunch, confirming the change. “We appreciate those who shared their points of view — your feedback helps us make Twitter better.” |
Honda to launch 30 EV models by 2030 | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 4 | 11 | Honda Motor Co. will launch 30 EV models by 2030 with a production volume of more than 2 million vehicles a year, the company said during a live briefing on Monday evening. The Japanese automaker said it will spend $40 billion (5 trillion yen) on electrification over the next 10 years, which includes building its own electrification architecture and exploring new growth opportunities in space exploration, eVTOL, avatar robots and more. Over the next decade, Honda will also invest around $64 billion (8 trillion yen) in research and development, and an additional $80 million (10 billion yen) per year in startups that could help the automaker to expand its business and shift from selling products alone to offering combined solutions, according to Toshihiro Mibe, CEO of Honda, who noted that the company will also actively pursue inter-industry collaboration and alliances. Last month, . Honda will rely on external funding methods on an as-needed basis, said Kohei Takeuchi, SVP of Honda, at the briefing. Last month, Honda said it would issue USD-denominated Green Bonds totaling $2.75 billion, which will be allocated toward the development and production of zero-emission vehicles. In June 2021, Honda said it would phase out gas-powered cars completely by 2040. Honda covered a lot of ground on Monday, including plans to develop batteries, the commercialization of its mini EV and more, so let’s break down the automaker’s new electrification strategy. Honda plans to launch two new sports EVs in Japan by mid-decade. Honda is planning to introduce an insanely cheap mini-EV model for commercial use at the $8,000 (1 million yen) price range in Japan by 2024. After that, Honda will start to roll out personal use mini-EVs and EV SUVs, the company said. Honda is offering this car for commercial use first because Japan lacks the charging infrastructure needed to roll out wide-scale EV deployment, said Mibe. By the same year in North America, Honda also plans to introduce two mid-to-large size EV models – a Honda Prologue SUV and an Acura SUV – which are currently being developed with General Motors at prices that are cost-competitive with internal combustion engine vehicles. The automaker also says it will build a dedicated EV production line in North America. In addition, Mibe doubled down on Honda’s previous commitment to launch 10 new EV models in China under its e:N Series by 2027, with two models set to go on sale this year. Honda is planning to build a dedicated EV plant in Guangzhou and Wuhan to support production in one of its most important markets. Honda is also pursuing the launch of two electric sports models, a specialty and a flagship model, by mid-decade, according to Takeuchi, but it’s unclear whether these cars would be as affordable as others Honda is hoping to launch soon. While Honda will lean on its partnership with GM to utilize the Ultium architecture and EV platform, the automaker fully intends to build its own architecture by beefing out its software capabilities. The Honda e: Architecture, which the company plans to introduce in 2026, will be an EV platform that includes both a hardware and software layer and is cloud-connected. Like many other automakers, Honda sees the potential for the software-defined vehicle to help bring in recurrent revenue through third-party applications. That’s why it’s building an application layer on top of the vehicle operating system, which can be continuously updated over the air, according to Mibe. Honda said it is exploring the possibility of creating a North American joint venture for battery production outside its partnership with GM, but Mibe wouldn’t name names. The automaker’s goal is to ensure stable procurement of liquid lithium-ion batteries in the region, as well as in China and Japan, its other two main markets. To support this, Honda aims to strengthen its existing collaboration with CATL in China and to procure batteries for its mini EVs from Envision AESC in Japan. To accelerate its independent battery R&D for solid-state batteries, Honda is investing about $343 million (43 billion yen) into building a demonstration line. Honda hopes it will begin production by spring 2024 and adopt its next-gen batteries into models to be introduced after 2025. Honda is on track to achieve its 10% reduction target for global automobile production, compared to the cost recorded in 2018, Mibe said. Despite the pandemic and the semiconductor shortage, the company says it’s been able to tighten its business structure and hopes to achieve a return on sales of more than 7%. |
Aemi eases the challenges of social commerce in Vietnam | Catherine Shu | 2,022 | 4 | 11 | Aemi founders Hieu Nguyen and Kim Vu sellers can be as small as one person selling products to their followers on social media platforms like Instagram or Facebook. Many don’t have a web storefront and instead rely on private messages to take orders and payments. This might not seem like enough to move significant amounts of product, but in many Southeast Asian markets, social commerce sellers are making up an increasingly large portion of e-commerce. In fact, according to , social commerce accounted for 65% of Vietnam’s $22 billion online retail economy last year. Despite their combined retailing power, many social commerce sellers cannot buy in bulk directly from brands. Instead, they rely on wholesale aggregators, but that means they may not be able to trace the provenance of their products, said Aemi co-founder and CEO Kim Vu. Aemi was created with CTO Hieu Nguyen to help solve social commerce sellers’ supply chain issues. By working with hundreds of social commerce sellers, it is able to buy directly from brands. Because Aemi works with hundreds of sellers, it has the purchasing power to negotiate lower wholesale prices than individual sellers, while at the same time guaranteeing the provenance of products. Currently focused on beauty and wellness, the startup’s ultimate goal is to expand into more verticals and create a suite of backend software that will help sellers manage inventory, ordering and payment. The startup has raised $2 million in funding from Alpha JWC Ventures and January Capital, with participation from Venturra Discovery, FEBE Ventures and angel investors. The funding is being used for hiring, especially for product engineers to build software for Aemi’s micro-merchants. The social commerce sellers Aemi works with are typically micro-influencers, with follower counts of about 10,000 to 30,000. Vu told TechCrunch one of the reasons she wanted to start Aemi was because she’s a social commerce enthusiast. “I love buying on social commerce, Facebook stores, Instagram shops and the like, because I trust the person, so I trust that they have done a really good job at breaking down the products and reviews from a content perspective,” said Vu. At the same time, when she had questions about a product’s authenticity and source, she found that many sellers could not assure the products were genuine because they didn’t have the selling volume to develop a close relationship with brands and instead relied on wholesale aggregators. “I see a huge demand from a consumer standpoint, but also from a supply perspective,” said Vu. “Not too much effort has been put into growing supply chain support for this sector.” Before founding Aemi, Vu spent six years as a management consultant for Bain, where she specialized in retail. This included working with global brands to grow their distribution in emerging markets. She found that they approached branding and distribution in a very traditional way, missing the growing dominance of social commerce. “A lot of effort is being put into high visibility, like physical stores, but people have a growing affinity for buying social commerce, buying items online and getting it delivered to their house,” Vu said. “From a supply chain perspective, not too much has been built in.” As a result, many social commerce sellers not only have unreliable supply chains but also don’t have the software and marketing support they need to build their businesses. Aemi also offers marketing support, which means helping sellers create memorable content. Many have created a niche for themselves by recommending certain types of products, like skincare or beauty products, but don’t have the social networking clout to gain brand partnerships. Aemi helps by providing professional product photos, product descriptions and information to sellers. It is also planning to build software, like drag-and-drop storefronts, that will help sellers manage sales and inventory across multiple social media platforms. “The people that we are catering towards are what would be classified by brands as long tail distribution,” said Vu, “but they make up the majority of volume on social commerce” in Vietnam. |
SoftBank shifts LatAm plan with new early-stage spinout, Upload Ventures | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 4 | 11 | SoftBank Latin America Fund announced today that it is spinning out its early-stage Latin American investment arm into a new autonomous entity, dubbed Upload Ventures. The new fund will back early-stage companies in the region at a pace of about $100 million per year. Last September, TechCrunch exclusively reported on the hiring of Rodrigo Baer and Marco Camhaji as part of the fund’s strategy in the region. At that time, SoftBank said that the pair would be reporting to then-COO Marcelo Claure, who resigned earlier this year with SoftBank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son. The move was significant in that the hires represented an expansion of SoftBank LatAm Fund’s mandate and meant that the firm was now backing companies at all stages in the region. But now, according a source familiar with internal happenings at the fund who wishes to remain anonymous, SoftBank decided it wanted to stick to its core thesis of investing at the growth stage because early-stage investing became “distracting.” Baer and Camhaji and new venture partner Norberto Giangrande created, and are serving as managing partners of, Upload Ventures. The Latin America Fund remains intact, according to the source, who said it will continue to deploy funds. Originally, it had raised $5 billion and once that was deployed, it planned to invest another $3 billion in LatAm startups. That money will continue to be deployed and Upload Ventures will conduct its own raise with SoftBank Latin American Fund currently serving as “the largest limited partner” in the new fund. The early-stage companies that SoftBank Latin America Fund has invested in thus far will now migrate to Upload Ventures. Those startups include Abstra, Arch, Birdie, BotCity, Digibee, D-Uma, Indaband, Medway, Neivor, Nilo, Salu and Worc, among others. Also migrating is SoftBank Latin America Fund’s 12-person early-stage team. Giangrande, an angel investor who has backed Nubank and others, is joining Upload as a new venture partner. Paulo Passoni and Shu Nyatta, managing partners of the SoftBank Latin America Fund, said the move was inspired by the “huge success” of the original fund. “In just over six months of operation, we received more than 1,100 pitches and announced investments in twelve companies with great growth potential,” the pair said in a statement. Since 2019, the Japanese conglomerate has invested billions of dollars into the region. Claure that by 2023, SoftBank would invest close to $30 billion in the region per year. We don’t often see a dedicated fund turn into a standalone, separate venture firm, although we do have examples with GV-spinout Plexo Capital and NEA-spinout NewView Capital. It makes sense for ambitious investors to incubate funds inside of an institutional partner for a few years while the firm gets a good insight into fresh deals. In this case, the Latin American Fund still exists but its newly-formed early-stage team is what is being spun out. Now as a spinout, Upload Ventures can add money from new investors to its investing balance sheet and perhaps build out a brand separate from the sometimes-controversial conglomerate. Since SoftBank is still the largest limited partner in Upload, it gets to keep an eye on LatAm markets from the early-stage and later-stage perspective. It’s been a difficult 2022 so far for SoftBank. Besides Claure’s departure, Nvidia’s $40 billion was , the two companies and Arm owner SoftBank announced in February. Also in February, the Japanese investment conglomerate revealed that its quarterly earnings compared to the year prior although it did — at least — return to profitability. Last month, SoftBank shifted the structure of one of Claure’s most notable contributions — — into an evergreen investment vehicle. The latest move out of LatAm comes around six months after Claure clashed with SoftBank executives and reportedly pushed for the Latin American arm as a whole to be spun off. At the time, SoftBank Son told that there was “no discussion of spinning out SoftBank’s Latin American Fund.” SoftBank declined to comment beyond its press release, and Claure did not respond to a request for comment. |
PayMaya owner Voyager Innovations raises $210M at a valuation of $1.4B | Catherine Shu | 2,022 | 4 | 11 | , the owner of the Philippines’ payment and financial services app and neobank Maya Bank, announced today it has raised $210 million, bringing its valuation to $1.4 billion. The round was led by SIG Venture Capital and included participation from EDBI and First Pacific Company, as well as returning shareholders PLDT, KKR, Tencent, International Finance Corporation, IFC Emerging Asia Fund and IFC Financial Institutions Growth Fund. The funds will be used to launch Maya Bank services, including savings and credit products, through PayMaya, which has over 47 million registered users and is one of the most popular financial apps in the Philippines, along with GCash and Coins. Voyager also plans to add cryptocurrency, micro-investments and insurance products to PayMaya, which already includes a digital wallet, online remittances, bill payments, bank transfers, prepaid cards and an e-commerce feature called PayMaya Mall. Voyager’s last round of funding , when it raised $167 million in preparation for launching its neobank. At the time of that announcement, Voyager said it had applied for a digital bank license with Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), the Philippines’ central bank. According to the BSP, about half of the adult population in the country is unbanked, but it has set a goal of . Maya Bank secured one of six digital banking licenses from the BSP in September 2021 and started pilot testing Maya Bank in March 2022. |
Demo at TC Sessions: Mobility 2022, where tremendous value meets huge opportunities | Alexandra Ames | 2,022 | 4 | 11 | |
Daily Crunch: FDA clears Fitbit algorithm that passively scans for signs of AFib | Christine Hall | 2,022 | 4 | 11 | Welcome to the Daily Crunch for Monday, April 11, 2022! Today was the day that Elon Musk surprised us by saying he was , though at this point I think it is more of a “shame on me” as we should stop being surprised by anything he does. , luckily, . Spoiler alert: “Yes?” Completely unrelated in every way, made a guest appearance over the weekend, . Take a breath, go outside, you got this, we believe in you! Much love, and P.S. In case you were outside doing all that breathing this weekend, here are some of the things you might have missed: I spoke to the team at Mayht earlier this year, at CES, and I knew the speaker-tech upstart was going places – I just didn’t realize quite how fast. Less than three months later, smart speaker giant . I did an in-depth back in January, which is extra interesting in the context of this acquisition. Check ‘em both out! Feast thine eyes on these fine stories: Nigel Sussman Founded in 2018, Kindbody has raised $154.7 million to build a network of clinics providing fertility, gynecology, and wellness services. In a three-part series, reporter Rae Witte examined the company’s origins through interviews with founder Gina Bartasi, who explained why she felt called to pivot from fertility insurance to improving patients’ quality of care: “There were just too many complaints from patients that as a call center at an insurance company, you couldn’t help. So patients would call, and they would complain about the physician leaving them in the waiting room, or not returning their call, or taking a long time to answer the phone. But you cannot effectuate change; you couldn’t really do anything.” Part 1: How compassion and inclusivity are helping Kindbody change the fertility industry Part 2: Why focusing on holistic care helped Kindbody triple its revenue in 2021 Part 3: Chipping away at the problems of reproductive healthcare, one patient at a time |
Meta’s Horizon Worlds is testing in-app purchases and creator bonuses | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 4 | 11 | Horizon Worlds, Meta’s social virtual reality app, is testing a feature that will let creators sell virtual items and effects within their worlds. This is only rolling out to a small group of creators to start, but it’s an important next step in Meta’s long game of building the foundation of virtual reality social networking. “If you just sort of imagine some future metaverse at some point down the line, clearly the ability to sell virtual goods and to be able to take them with you from one world to another is going to be an important part of it,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in conversation with , where he announced the feature. “But first, there need to be things that people want to buy in order to get that economy going.” All users with access to Horizon Worlds — that’s people over 18 years old in the U.S. and Canada — will be able to make these in-world purchases. To start, these items might be fashion items or access to secret sections of a world. Meta Meta is also beginning to test a Horizon Worlds Creator Bonus program for participants in the U.S. Meta has previously launched these kinds of , where the company is avidly pushing its TikTok competitor Reels. This was described as an expansion of Meta’s , deployed in October, but the company did not immediately respond to questions about whether this bonus program is part of that $10 million investment, or if this marks a new round of creator funding. “Creator monetization is really important, because you all need to be able to support yourself and make a good living building these awesome experiences,” Zuckerberg added. The company formerly known as Facebook has gone to extreme lengths to promote its commitment to the metaverse. While sales for its flagship Quest headsets , the virtual reality business has accumulated over for Meta. Plus, as social platforms like Horizon Worlds grow, Meta will have to learn how to keep virtual reality communities safe, which is a tall order, especially when the company doesn’t have the greatest when it comes to content moderation. Already, many Horizon Worlds users have reported being in the metaverse; other users report that the app is who are too young for the platform. Zuckerberg spoke to a group of Horizon Worlds creators about these new monetization features in a panel discussion, which can be viewed below: |
Max Q: One small step for man | Aria Alamalhodaei | 2,022 | 4 | 11 | Hello and welcome back to Max Q. It was a big week for private spaceflight. As usual, send feedback, comments and tips to In this issue: Axiom Space’s inaugural fully private space mission is a go. The four-person crew took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon atop a Falcon 9 rocket on Friday, where they headed to the International Space Station for an eight-day stint. This is the first of many planned missions for Axiom, which aims to send its next batch of private citizens to the ISS in 2023. Axiom is not only in the business of private spaceflight — the company was also to install commercial modules on the ISS, with the first module going up in late 2024. The company’s eventual aim is to separate the modules and operate them as a new station upon the ISS’ retirement at the end of the decade. Rewatch the mission here: San Francisco-based startup Astranis has purchased a dedicated launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. That’s right: Instead of using a “rideshare” model, where multiple companies split the cost of launch, Astranis has booked out the entire rocket, in an exclusive mission that the company says will put its package of four communications satellites closer to their target orbit in a much faster amount of time. “We’re actually using substantially less than the max capability of a Falcon 9,” Astranis CEO and founder John Gedmark explained. “This is just four small satellites that [will be] on there. So we’re actually able to use all of that extra performance to put those four satellites much closer to GEO than you would normally be able to do with this kind of launch.” Astranis manufactures MicroGEO satellites, so named because they are much smaller and lighter than the typical geostationary communications satellites that are in orbit today, coming in at around 1/20th the size and cost. The four satellites that will launch next summer already have dedicated customers, including Latin American telco company Grupo Andesat and Anuvu, which provides internet connectivity on airplanes and cruises. Jordan Noone: My time is split between , the venture capital fund that Jenna Bryant and I founded together in 2020, and as CEO, which is a startup we spun out of the fund last year. Embedded invests in dual-use space startups beyond launch, riding the disruption wave of falling launch costs from the last two decades of commercial launcher development. KittyCAD brings code to hardware, providing code infrastructure for hardware design automation. They both branch out from my co-founding and as CTO for the first six years — Embedded: investing in the future applications of launch, next-generation additive manufacturing and next generation digital engineering tools for hardware design — and KittyCAD: solving the bottlenecks on the design floor of cutting-edge hardware companies, rather than what we solved through 3D printing on the factory floor at Relativity. My alma mater, USC, through a donation from the Embedded Ventures team, brought back : a program in which middle school-aged girls experience what it’s like to have a career in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) through the design of rockets, payloads and satellites, along with programming. These hands-on programs are instrumental in creating interest in STEM for individuals under-represented in those fields today. A portion of the donation from Embedded Ventures will be made in honor of Summer Medford, a 2019 Project Payload alumna, who passed shortly after graduation from the program. We first learned about the program when Relativity sent volunteers to support the project years ago, however after that year, the previous donor cut the support for the program. I’ve been fortunate to be on the entrepreneurial journey that I’ve had. The only goal that has ever resonated with me is to make the opportunity for that journey easier and more accessible for the next generation. That’s why we started Embedded, to support founders and tech areas overlooked by the mainstream venture community. That’s why we support programs like and our other education outreach work. KittyCAD provides the tools needed by innovators designing world-changing hardware, Relativity allows iteration and imagination to flow freely in some of the world’s most complex hardware projects. I look forward to next week, and all my weeks, because they are full of the work required to see that goal happen. I am surrounded by equally ambitious people and teams working towards either the same goal, or goals that I believe in seeing happen. The beat from KittyCAD’s new . My favorite photo of the week: A view of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket next to NASA’s Space Launch System, the first time two different types of rockets made to carry humans have been on launch pads at Kennedy Space Center at the same time. The photo was tweeted out on . |
A sign-stealing scandal rocked baseball, this hardware is here to help | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 4 | 11 | the glove around his ear in frustration. The Yankee Stadium two-strike Death Star siren was blaring over the PA. The pitcher signaled frustration with a new piece of technology that’s quickly been rolled out on baseball’s biggest stage. Manager Aaron Boone walked out to the mound, handing Severino a replacement piece. It was a brief, embarrassing moment for , a new piece of hardware that’s quickly made its way onto the uniforms of pitchers and catchers across MLB. After a season of testing in the Low-A West minor league, there was one major issue its creators haven’t addressed: user error. “I left it in the dugout,” Severino after the team’s 4-2 win over Boston. “We were worried about that,” says PitchCom co-founder, Craig Filicetti. “Honestly, it is so lightweight and so imperceptible. We’ve had people that just walk away with them, when they’re on their head in several situations.” It was a momentary — and understandable — moment of forgetfulness for a pitcher in the middle of his first starting game since 2019. It was funny enough in hindsight that even Severino had to laugh, and ultimately didn’t tarnish what has thus far been a wildly successful debut for a new technology in a sport that’s often been outwardly hostile to change. PitchCom won nearly universal acclaim in MLB this week, from traditionalist White Sox manager Tony La Russa to orthodoxy-busting starter Zack Greinke, who fried baseball fans’ collective brains by in a 2020 game against the Giants. Of course, for all of the feet dragging we’ve come to expect from MLB, there are certain aspects of the game the league is eager to change, from a ballooning pace of play (the average game ran 3 hours, 10 minutes during the 2021 regular season) to sign stealing. The latter came to a head in 2019, when former Houston Astros pitcher Mike Fiers revealed that the 2017 World Champion team had concocted a system of video cameras and trash-can beating to let their batters know what the opposing pitcher would be throwing. The scandal was the primary catalyst behind PitchCom’s founding. “I thought about it for a while, and figured there must be a way to provide signs covertly,” co-founder John Hankins tells TechCrunch. “Baseball has been trying to solve this issue for a while. They’ve had a number of people come in with a lot of different methods to prevent sign stealing. They had buzzers, but counting nine buzzes is going to slow the game down to a crawl, especially if someone shakes it off.” PitchCom Hankins, a lifelong baseball fan, found inspiration closer to home. Fellow self-described mentalist Filicetti had created a wrist-based system for sending cues onstage. An electrical engineering major in college, Filicetti says the Live Show Control device has been utilized by thousands across 60 countries. “Jumping off the technology that Craig had already done,” Hankins adds, “I thought, why don’t we use a push-button transmitter that we can put on the catcher’s wrist and have it play to the player’s hat, rather than an ear piece, so they don’t lose situational awareness.” The final product hues closely to the pair’s original vision. The catcher wears an input device on his inner-forearm that sports rows of buttons. The teams assign each a different pitch and can add location. When the combination is pressed, it’s transmitted to the earpiece, sending the pitcher instructions like, “Slider, high, inside.” On the outside of the wrist piece is a printed cheat sheet, though the pair say many teams are opting to do without it, as the catchers memorize combinations. In addition to customizing button combinations, teams and players can also input custom voices. “They can put in their grandmothers,” says Hankins. “They can put in their coach’s voice.” The product utilizes an encrypted wireless protocol to avoid high-tech sign stealing. If, say, a piece is lost, the team can re-encrypt the system to circumvent foul play. An early iteration of the earpiece relied on bone conduction, though ultimately PitchCom determined that the volume simply wouldn’t be loud enough to compete with the sounds of a full stadium. Beyond the early minor league testing and spring training, it’s been difficult to mimic a live game setting. In a sense, the players themselves are doing the testing in a high-leverage situation in front of a national audience. There are on-field limitations, as well. MLB has only authorized its use for defensive purposes, including pitching and picking off baserunners. That means batters and the baserunners themselves won’t be able to use it on-field. Questions remain; for example, whether the product will be able to compete with the noise levels of packed crowds during the playoffs. “It’s difficult to test for,” says Filicetti. “We’ve been trying to gather how many dBs of noise you’ve got on the mound. But I will say — and MLB agrees with this — that these opening nights are a pretty good representation about what they’re gonna get during finals. And we’ve seen very good success. We have headroom and things to play with. We have volume control and places we can go. We’re monitoring this closely.” The company was bootstrapped by Hankins and Filicetti and founded on a major gamble. It was a product developed for one customer: the biggest baseball league in the world. “It was very much a risk build,” says Hankins. “There was one customer only, and we had no feedback when we were initially building. Would players like it? We didn’t know any players. The league wasn’t in contact. I tried contacting reporters, I called MLB Radio and they quickly dismissed me. I tried to get local reporters who were reporting on the sign-stealing scandal. Eventually we got connected with someone who had a connection to the Players Union and Major League Baseball.” Roadblocks persisted. The timing of the first prototype — March 2020 — couldn’t have been worse. The league was scrambling to put on a season of baseball amid a global pandemic, ultimately reducing 162 regular season games down to 60. PitchCom “We did get [MLB’s] attention at the end of 2020,” Hankins adds, “during the playoffs. In San Diego, we met with their executives, put a prototype on their head and they loved it. From there, it’s been great. We met with them a few times virtually and they asked if we could send them some for spring training 2021 for them to test. We couldn’t go in there because of COVID protocols, so they had MLB people take it in to seven different spring training camps and show them. The response was very good.” This year’s season got off to its own rocky start, as negotiations between MLB and the Player’s Union threatened to post-postpone — or even cancel — the season. Ultimately, a compromise was reached. The delayed 2022 season kicked off last week, and with it, a number of teams hit the field sporting PitchCom devices. The public reaction was immediate. Some traditionalists still balk at the introduction of a new on-field technology, though most of the feedback has been positive — particularly with regard to speeding up the pace of play. PitchCom’s founders say they’ve been fielding requests from international and minor leagues, along with a spike in interest from women’s professional softball teams. Currently, the team is still focused on providing the best experience for MLB’s 30 teams. “Scaling is going to be a challenge,” says Filicetti. “We have to keep our number one customer happy.” |
Major space companies pledge to boost diversity and publicly share hard numbers | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 4 | 11 | The world of aerospace has come a long way from the boys’ club it once was, but there’s still a ways to go. Today 24 companies, including major ones old and new like ULA, SpaceX, JPL and Rocket Lab, , with regular check-ins to keep each other honest. The Space Workforce 2030 pledge is just that, a pledge, and not some set of shared concrete actions, but getting a couple dozen major space companies to agree on the exact steps that need to be taken would take years. So the companies have agreed to “significantly increase the number of women and employees from underrepresented groups in our collective technical workforce,” and in senior leaderships positions; to work with universities to improve the diversity of aerospace engineering programs; and to sponsor K-12 programs that reach at least 5 million kids annually. In order to reduce the chance that this is all just lip service, each company will aggregate its numbers on the employment goals and present them at the Space Symposium conference each year. They’ll also meet to share best practices, and will attempt to hustle others into the pledge. I’ve already witnessed the latter promise in action; I happened to be moderating a panel of interesting space industry people as this announcement was propagating, so I asked them for their thoughts on the pledge and what’s needed in the world of DEI. Here are their (lightly edited) comments: Melanie Stricklan, CEO of Slingshot Aerospace (signatory): It helps us build better teams, it helps us build better products, it helps us build a better industry, and this industry needs more diversity, . When we started Slingshot, my goal was to have 50/50, 50% men and 50% women, and we just hit that goal. It’s leader-led, we have to make sure that every single person we hire who’s a leader in this company buys into DEI. So that it’s not just a CEO saying hey we want this — it has to be cultivated on a regular basis. Peter Beck, CEO of Rocket Lab (signatory): I was hesitant to sign that pledge because I wanted to see what actual work was going on, because there’s a lot of virtue signaling in a lot of these things. I’m the father of an eight-year-old daughter and I see the stereotypings literally evolving in front of my eyes. So at Rocket Lab many years ago we said, ‘Right, we’re going to mandate that 50% of all our interns are going to be female.’ And that’s great, you can mandate something, but if you don’t do the work it’s a complete waste of time. So the team went out and we visited, I think, something like 200 schools… you have to get in super early, you’ve got to build the pipeline. Actually create the change, not just sort of sign onto change. From left, Peter Beck, Melanie Stricklan, Jessica Robinson and Meagan Crawford on a panel, moderated by Devin Coldewey. Space Foundation Jessica Robinson, co-founder of Assembly Ventures: For women in particular, if you can see it, you can be it. But I’m not sure this group really appreciates how strange it is that we’re three women on this panel… we do not get the chance to sit as female investors on panels together very much. At our fund, with the power of the purse what’s really critical to us is making sure we find the best companies that are going to change the world and how we move. And boy are we stupid if we don’t go look for great founders in great places that haven’t been looked at before! So we mentor in a program that supports LGBTQ founders, I do a of work to support women founder and investors, and in Detroit, my hometown, we do a lot of work with young students, students of color, to get them exposed to STEM. Meagan Crawford, managing partner at Spacefund: In my early career as a startup exec myself I was often the only woman in the room, whether it was a space meeting or a finance world, so both of those worlds have a little trouble with this. I had a misconception before I joined this industry that it was all rocket scientists and engineers, no offense. The reality is there’s so much more to this industry, it’s an industry like any other — we need accountants, we need marketing people, we need teachers, we need everything. So I like to interview women from all around the industry that have these different backgrounds, these different career choices. One of my favorite stories is Kelly Larson, CEO of Aquarian Space; she started out as a yoga instructor, now she’s the CEO of a space startup. That’s an amazing journey! And I want women all over the world to know that no matter what their career, no matter what their educational background is, that there’s a place for them in this industry. Thanks to the panel for their input and insight on this matter and others. Here’s the full list of signatories as of this writing: |
Start your day with a panic attack, courtesy of the Doomsday Alarm Clock | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 4 | 11 | There are two types of people in the world. There are the people who like waking up softly, perhaps with some gentle music and some stretching to slowly shake off the gentle slumber as they transition from a night’s rest. Maybe journal your dreams, do some gratitude practice and hum to yourself as you run the kettle to make a cup of tea. And then there are… other people. People who like to start their days with existential dread, heart palpitations and a hairline trigger for panic attacks. If you’re in the latter category, I have a recommendation and a request from you. is to download the , which lets you choose an apocalyptic scenario. You can choose fun stories like global warming or volcanic eruption, which will then play as your alarm clock, and wake you up with disturbing news and bone-chilling facts about how the world might end. The app is free, but the app’s makers encourage users to donate to , “to prevent our likeliest doomsday scenario, climate change). is to stay the ever-loving copulation away from me, and please never talk to me ever again, you raging sociopath. That’s an way to start the day in a world where there are plenty of chances to get trauma-triggered at every possible turn, from every tweet, every other news story and every third interaction I have with people. of the absolute clusterclunge we are facing with climate change, but I’m also of the opinion that the first 10 or 15 minutes of the day deserve to be soft and gentle, as our brains slowly reboot into the stark reality of the blazing disaster that’s facing us as we deign to open our eyes. You make your own best choices; you do you, boo, but seriously… try Enya and some yoga every once in a while? |
Stenn banks $50M on a $900M valuation for a platform to finance SMBs that trade internationally | Ingrid Lunden | 2,022 | 4 | 11 | Globalization has been one of the biggest trends in e-commerce in the last decade: internet rails facilitate a much wider marketplace of would-be consumers and a selection of items for them to buy; and to meet that demand manufacturing and logistics have also made great geographical leaps. Now, a startup that’s built a platform to help provide financing specifically to businesses working within that supply chain is announcing some financing of its own. — which applies big data analytics, taking a few datapoints about a business (the main two being what money it has coming in and going out based on invoices) and matching them up against an algorithm that takes some 1,000 other factors into account to determine its eligibility for a loan of up to $10 million; and on the other side taps a network of institutions and other big lenders to provide the capital for that financing — has raised $50 million in equity funding to expand its business after seeing accelerated growth. The funding is coming from a single investor, the U.S. private equity firm Centerbridge, and it values Stenn at $900 million, the company said. Stenn has been around since 2015 and has since then financed some $6 billion in loans from 74 countries, with $1 billion of that loaned out in 2022 alone, with an approach that brings technology to an area that had previously been largely untouched by lenders, said Stenn’s founder and CEO Greg Karpovsky in an interview. “Accenture estimates that the demand for finance in this business segment is $3.6 trillion and will grow to $6.1 trillion in the next four years,” he said. And yet, “the main source [of funding] for them right now is the traditional banking system. Banks in developed countries are focused on supply chain finance for large countries and banking systems in developing markets are still underdeveloped. So companies in this segment are just left unbanked. No one else is using technology to facilitate financing [for them].” In the world of fintech, there are a number of companies in the market that cater to the needs of small businesses that need capital, either to bridge them between invoices going out and getting paid; or to finance projects or activities outside of the normal schedule of business that will help them grow in the longer run; or for something else altogether. The loans platforms and neobanks catering to domestic SMBs include Kabbage (now a ), , , , , , , , (now rebranded as ), , , , , , and many others. However, the gap in the market that Stenn is addressing is not that of the typical SMB, but businesses that specifically are running operations that eventually feed into a bigger, cross-border operations. These could be international sellers on marketplaces, or a company that supplies those sellers with products or services. What they have in common with each other — and what differentiates them from typical SMBs served by your average fintech providing loans to SMBs — is that they tend to be significantly smaller than large multinationals, but much bigger than your typical SMB, with scope and capital needs to match. “Domestic SMEs are normally much smaller,” Karpovsky said. “They could be a barbershop.” He said the typical exposure — the amount borrowed — might be in the range of $30,000 to $50,000. For the SMBs that Stenn targets, it uses the World Bank’s definition, which works out to a business having up to $120 million in annual sales. Using what Karpovsky described as “very limited information” — a company’s name and location, plus details of invoices that are in the process of being paid — it loans up to $10 million, with a turnaround of no more than 48 hours between application and approval. Typically he said loans are more in the region of $500,000 to $1 million. The opportunity gap is simple: it’s bringing this segment of the market — and the larger sums that they are borrowing — the kind of approach that domestic SMBs have been getting for a while now. “The risk management here is very different,” he added. “We are professionals in KYC and anti-money laundering, so we do due diligence on all our partners,” he added. In terms of competitors, while those providing loans to SMBs in domestic markets may well potentially look to move into those working internationally — Amex for example has a big enough international profile to possibly consider this — the bigger competitive force might turn out to be some of the marketplaces where these SMBs do a lot of their business already. Indeed, Alibaba (via Ant Financial and Alipay) was very interested in doing more in international markets before regulators stepped in. Amazon has yet to make large moves here but it might well do so in partnership with other financiers, opening up a window of opportunity for a company like Stenn. Banks themselves seem happy for now to be partners, referring customers to Stenn and acting as lenders on its platform. Of would-be players in this space, Karpovsky noted that “They are very far, more than 10 years away, from focusing on solving the problem that we are solving now. Their existing clients have more immediate problems, and so right now we are not seeing much competition, and might not for many years.” It’s an opportunity that investors are also interested in backing. “We have been impressed with Stenn’s disruptive approach to addressing the challenges of global trade finance supply and believe that Stenn has a highly scalable proposition,” said Jed Hart, co-head of Centerbridge’s European business and senior MD, in a statement. “We are excited to be partnering and supporting Stenn’s growth at an important time in its evolution and during a period of uncertainty in the world.” |
Meta subpoenaed tiny rival Dispo to prove it isn’t a monopoly | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,022 | 4 | 11 | On a quest to show the FTC that it isn’t a monopoly, Meta flooded a wide swath of major tech companies . But the company is apparently demanding documents from much smaller “rivals” too. Photo-sharing app received its own subpoena from the company on March 23. In the subpoena, Meta makes 36 separate requests for Dispo’s internal documents, including user metrics on “an hourly and daily basis,” any documentation about who the small company views as its own competition and “all documents sufficient to identify your assessment of the primary reasons why your users use each of your products.” Some, like a request for any user privacy complaints, are even further afield. In a letter to Meta’s counsel early this month, Dispo pushed back, asking the company to withdraw the subpoena. The company argues that many of the demands Meta is making don’t even apply to Dispo, like asking for documentation of its acquisitions, and the requests that do are still “unduly burdensome, overbroad, vexatious and harassing.” “We have 25 employees and no lawyers on staff,” Dispo co-founder and CEO Daniel Liss said in an email to TechCrunch. “Demanding our most sensitive trade secrets is extraneous to the legal question being debated.” Liss, a vocal Meta critic who has authored a series here at TechCrunch , argues that Dispo was targeted intentionally to bury the small company in paperwork. “With under 30 employees, under $25 millionraised, and under 6 million downloads, Dispo is not a competitor,” Liss said, calling Meta’s subpoena “harassing and intimidating.” Dispo, a photo-sharing app co-founded by YouTube star David Dobrik, first took off in early 2021. Like many hot new photo apps, it was quickly hailed as the next Instagram, climbing the charts and drumming up investor buzz while still in beta. But a month later the company was embroiled in controversy when disturbing against a member of Dobrik’s inner circle. As many of Dobrik’s content sponsors backed away, , and the YouTube celebrity left the company in March. Dispo is just one of at least 90 non-party subpoenas Meta has sent out related to the , and it’s the smallest company known to receive one so far. On March 22, Snap, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Match Group, Reddit, Twitter and Oracle to limit the scope of Meta’s requests to their respective companies and to bar Meta’s in-house legal team from poring over sensitive documents that could further give it a competitive edge. “Meta is casting an extraordinarily wide net for extremely sensitive materials from non-parties,” the coalition of tech companies wrote. The group argued that Meta’s sweeping requests would require them to produce millions of documents — a heavy lift, even for a company with a dedicated legal team. “In addition to being highly burdensome, the subpoenas are also highly invasive. The types of information called for — including the Non-Parties’ pricing, user-acquisition, and competitive strategies — are among the most competitively sensitive documents that Non-Parties possess.” |
China’s game engine Cocos raises $50M, goes beyond games | Rita Liao | 2,022 | 4 | 11 | Cocos Technologies, a China-based game engine provider that has been around since 2010, just it has picked up $50 million in a Series B funding round in a bid to work on development and move beyond games. Investors include Cocos is best known for its cross-platform, open source engine for 2D mobile games, but many have argued it has fallen behind in the 3D era. To play catchup, the Beijing-based company to its engine last year. The Chinese company is not aiming to take on behemoths like Unreal or Unity though; rather, it sets its sight on an overlooked trend — the revival of HTML5 web games in China and elsewhere. It’s also making forays into non-game scenarios like online education and autonomous driving. Cocos is free to use, so over the years, it has generated capital from a mix of sources, including providing support and tutorials to third-party developers, getting funding from its Chinese parent and running gaming industry events. It to let global developers build games that run on the phone maker’s in-house chips and HarmonyOS, . The company also supports Chinese search giant Baidu’s metaverse platform Xirang, though it declined to share how exactly they work together. These revenue streams have been able to sustain Cocos, but the company is ready to accelerate growth, which is why it sought outside financing. Its team grew from about 100 employees 18 months ago to 300 as of this month, Luke Stapley, a marketing director at Cocos, told TechCrunch. Since launching on WeChat in 2017, HTML5 games, or what the Tencent-owned messenger calls “mini games,” have become a hit in China. For the past few years, Cocos has emerged as for building WeChat games. Most of these games are casual plays and monetize through ads rather than in-app purchases, which exempts them from acquiring the government-issued license that is . As a result, many Chinese indie game developers who lack the resource to apply for gaming permits are getting into HTML5, as that’s one of the few ways they can make money. “The progression of mini games is a revolution in China,” suggested Stapley. The boom caught the eye of hardware makers like Vivo, which partnered up with Cocos to make its equivalent of mini games. “A lot of phone companies saw what WeChat was doing this and they said, hey, we would like to also have these mini games in our stores.” Cocos powers about 60% of China’s mini games, Stapley claimed. The category is also taking off in Europe, where “people just love playing games,” and Southeast Asia, where many users “don’t have very good phones so H5 games are a lot easier to work with than high-end new games.” Cocos says its engine has served 1.4 million developers across 203 countries and regions worldwide. China is its largest market, followed by the U.S. and Russia. South America and India are among its fastest-growing regions. Just as Unity has diversified its use cases into areas like , Cocos’s simulation technology has also found new applications. Many large online education companies have been using Cocos’s engine to create interactive online curricula, according to Stapley. A Chinese tech company that Cocos cannot name due to a non-disclosure agreement is using its engine to work on advanced driving solutions and smart cockpits. |
null | Natasha Lomas | 2,022 | 4 | 27 | null |
A look at six new funds begs the question: Is a slowdown really coming? | Christine Hall | 2,022 | 4 | 11 | There’s been talk of a slowdown in venture funding recently, with TechCrunch looking at it from different angles, including the sector, a and even earlier on in case it happens. If that slowdown comes, however, it could happen slowly, given that our inboxes are filled with news about newly raised venture funds. In just the past two weeks, we reported that and continue to raise. For example, closed on nearly $2 billion for its sixth fund, brought in $460 million for its third fund, secured $5 billion for two funds, raised $130 million for its sixth fund and the list goes on and on. In addition, we saw , which will pump $100 million into climate technology startups in North America and Europe. We asked Beezer Clarkson, partner at Sapphire Ventures, and Josh Lerner, the Jacob H. Schiff Professor of Investment Banking at Harvard Business School, to weigh in on what we are seeing, and while they’re trying to make sense of things, too, they noted a couple of things that could impact the velocity of deal-making that we’ve been seeing. Lerner pointed, for example, to rising interest rates, saying that for some pensions in particular, a “high-rate environment may lead to a shift to bonds.” At the same time, he added, “high interest rates may also increase the demand for venture capital when bank lending is less attractive to entrepreneurs.” Indeed, some of his has found few consistent effects of interest rates. Clarkson meanwhile suggested that what goes up, must come down at some point, though she volunteered that the picture remains “cloudy.” “Venture groups have consistently come back to market faster than anticipated as they react to the market — faster raises, increased check sizes and quick follow-on rounds,” Clarkson noted. “Not only are these groups coming back to market faster, they are often raising bigger funds or additional vehicles, like opportunity funds.” (We’ll note here that , and all raised an opportunity fund this year.) In a series of tweets last month that highlight , Clarkson observed that “2021 hit a new high. We saw an average of 32% re: % of capital called in a fund’s first full calendar year. Assuming a fund reserves 50% for follow-on capital, this implied an initial investment period That’s new.” As for pacing throughout the rest of 2022, stay tuned, suggested both Lerner and Clarkson. Lerner said this point in time feels like the period between March and December 2000, “when public technology stock prices dropped dramatically and there was little apparent impact on venture capital fundraising. Whether we will see as dramatic a correction in the next few years as we did in 2001 to 2003, however, is anyone’s guess.” “If we have a prolonged correction,” said Beezer, “ I can see investors slowing down their pacing. Even if investors have dry powder, they may need to focus on the portfolio as some companies may need more support for fund raises than they have required in the past.” On the other side of new funds, we spoke to three fund managers who are in the midst of raising their new funds (and give a handful of others an honorable mention). Overlooked Ventures co-founders Janine Sickmeyer and Brandon Brooks. Overlooked Ventures Janine Sickmeyer co-founded Columbus, Ohio-based with Brandon Brooks to invest pre-seed capital into “overlooked founders.” They are proving that you don’t have to have the Ivy League background that so many fund managers have to start a company or be a fund manager. In fact, Sickmeyer’s approach to raising a fund was from her perspective of being a founder and CEO of a legal tech company that she ended up bootstrapping to an acquisition because she couldn’t get funding. “There were no Zoom interviews then, so I was flying back and forth to all of these places,” she said. “As a result, I had this idea about what venture was like and didn’t want to be a part of it, but after I sold the company, I started investing in immigrants and minority entrepreneurs who also were having a hard time raising capital. I realized that the only way to change this space and the metrics was to be the change.” With no connections, network or access to institutional limited partners, Sickmeyer and Brooks launched their first fund last May, and just celebrated Bank of America Corp. coming on as Overlooked’s first institutional investor. This is something Sickmeyer recalled people told her would take years to accomplish. The fund is targeting $50 million and has already brought in $11.5 million toward that goal. Its portfolio now has eight startups. The firm’s average check size is $100,000 to $500,000, “we like to make a big impact early-on,” she said, and some will be reserved for follow-on investments. “Our target is 45 to 48 investments out of fund one, and we are on a good track,” Sickmeyer added. “We know what it is like to be dragged along or ghosted, so our process is open and transparent: we make quick decisions within five days after meeting founders and answer every email. If we have to say ‘no,’ we say it is ‘not a no forever.’ We have come back and invested with founders we originally declined.” Portfolia’s Rising America Fund team, from left, Noramay Cadena, Lorine Pendleton, Juliana Garaizar and Karen Kerr. Portfolia Lorine Pendleton, a partner at , is currently raising for the Rising America Fund II with Noramay Cadena, Karen Kerr Juliana Garaizar and Daphne Dufresne. They started targeting a $10 million fund, which Pendleton said was too small for some institutional investors, and many of them asked the team to raise so they could invest. “We had our first close recently,” she said. “We have interest from a number of fund of funds, family offices and institutional investors because of the success of our first fund and are considering raising the larger fund like $50 million.” Portfolia was founded five years ago by Trish Costello to bring together a diverse group of women limited partners — there are 1,300 of them — and in that time have made 110 investments, 47 of them since November 2021, Costello said. She touts the first Rising America Fund, which launched in 2019, as “the first fund led by five women of color.” From the first fund, the team invested in 16 companies led by Black, Latinx and LGBTQ+ founders in both geographically dispersed areas and diverse stages. They often invest in entrepreneurs and companies that are often underfunded and overlooked by traditional venture capital firms, but are positioned for significant growth and profitability, Pendleton said. Some of their initial investments went into companies like , a children and family finance tool, MoCaFi, a mobile-first banking platform for financially underserved communities and rare sneaker collectible startup Rares. The team has invested seven companies so far from the second fund, and Pendleton expects to invest in another seven or eight. With people of color expected to be a minority majority by 2046, she sees trends coming together of women having more money and people of color activating their wealth and investing. “We look for founders where other VC firms said they aren’t the best founders, but really, they outperform and are high-performing founders and are resourceful when VCs didn’t give them money,” she added. “These founders have to make a dollar out of 50 cents, know the value of money, how hard it is to get it and they hit their benchmarks.” Emmeline Ventures’ general partners, from left, Azin Radsan van Alebeek, Naseem Sayani and La Keisha Landrum Pierre. Emmeline Ventures Last week, , a multi-cultural, multi-generational, all-female early-stage investment fund, launched with its first investment in Clutch Wallet, a web and mobile-based digital wallet enabling women to invest in crypto and web3. Prior to founding Emmeline, general partners La Keisha Landrum Pierre, Naseem Sayani and Azin Radsan van Alebeek were pre-seed and seed investors in the areas of healthcare, financial services, sustainability, content and cybersecurity. “With the first investment in Clutch, this is an asset class that not many women are in yet,” Sayani told TechCrunch. “We don’t have a play in the sexual wellness space or menopause, so need to add something there so that we can have the full spectrum of women’s experience.” The trio aim to raise $5 million to $8 million for its first fund that will invest average check sizes of $100,000, with half for follow-on, in up to 20 businesses led by female and female-identifying founders that focus on helping women. One of the unique opportunities Emmeline is doing is allowing smaller check sizes so that first-time investors can participate as limited partners. “We want to have as many LPs as we can,” Sayani added. “We see the acceleration of females building businesses, and a lot is going on in innovation, so we want to bring more capital into that.” Meanwhile, here are some other funds from my inbox: |
DeFi giant Uniswap launches venture arm to invest in other crypto companies | Anita Ramaswamy | 2,022 | 4 | 11 | Uniswap Labs, the company behind the popular decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, has launched a venture capital arm to invest in web3 projects. Uniswap Labs Ventures, the new division, will invest in companies across various stages and areas within web3, from infrastructure to developer tools and consumer-facing applications, according to the company. Investments will be made directly from the company’s balance sheet, , though the company did not share any details on how large these checks will be or how much balance sheet capital will be dedicated to the fund. The firm is tapping Matteo Leibowitz to head up the venture arm alongside Uniswap’s chief operating officer, Mary-Catherine Lader. Leibowitz previously worked at Uniswap as a strategy lead starting in August 2020, and prior to that, was a research analyst at The Block for nearly two years, . Before launching this dedicated venture arm, Uniswap invested in 11 companies and protocols across the web3 ecosystem, including , , , , and , the company says. The Ethereum-native exchange appears to have largely backed other companies that are also in the Ethereum ecosystem. Its new ventures team plans to play an active role in on and off-chain governance “when relevant,” it says. It has specifically announced plans to participate in the governance systems of MakerDAO, Aave, Compound and Ethereum Name Service (ENS) so far. The news comes about a week after against Uniswap Labs, as well as its founder and its own backers — Paradigm, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Union Square Ventures — for allegedly engaging in rampant fraud” on the exchange. A spokesperson for the company said in a statement to TechCrunch that the lawsuit was riddled with factual inaccuracies. Uniswap Labs most recently raised $11 million in a Series A round in August 2020, which a16z led. Uniswap joins a growing segment of crypto-native companies now formally dedicating resources to investing in other companies in the space, including and DeFi protocol Cake, which both recently launched venture funds. Companies like Uniswap, which already have experience building in web3, can apply their expertise and lessons learned to other areas of the crypto market through their early-stage investments, DeFi researcher Ryan Rasmussen of Bitwise Asset Management . The decentralized exchange is the fifth-largest in DeFi by , a metric that represents the size of the assets on the protocol, . It had $7.04 billion in TVL, around half that of the leading DeFi platform, Maker, as of April 11, DeFi Pulse shows. Lader told TechCrunch that the broader trend of web3 companies making venture investments represents their desire to collaborate rather than compete with one another. “Decentralized finance and web3 are inherently collaborative. This growth of strategic investing reflects the key values and ethos of building technology in web3,” she wrote in an email. |
Kickstarter will now hide reported comments pending review | Aliya Chaudhry | 2,022 | 4 | 11 | it will now automatically hide from public view comments reported by creators until its Trust and Safety team has reviewed them and made a decision as to whether the comment should remain or be deleted, in an effort to curb the number of abusive comments visible on the platform. Creators will also now have the option to select a reason for reporting a comment when flagging it for review, which Kickstarter hopes will allow its team to address abuse more quickly. When revoking commenting privileges, Kickstarter will provide backers with more specific information about when they can expect those privileges to be restored, it says. “With this work, we’re being careful to care for the health of the whole system—creators need to feel safe, and backers need to be able to raise questions and concerns,” Kickstarter said in outlining the changes. While there is value in hiding potentially abusive comments for further review, there’s also the possibility that such a system itself could be abused if the reviews don’t take place quickly enough. An unscrupulous creator using the platform could leverage the reporting feature to at least temporarily hide their negative comments, or those questioning the project’s viability or safety, while continuing to crowdfund, perhaps. In order to further improve security, Kickstarter said it will work with the , launching in May, which will be made up of creators who are knowledgeable about a range of fields. Applications, which closed on April 6, were open to creators who had run at least one campaign and had an account for at least a year (and were “in good standing”). Members must commit to serving at least a year on the council and attending all six of the year’s two-hour meetings. In exchange, members will receive a $5,000 honorarium for the year. Kickstarter has not yet announced the members of this council. The council will have “a special focus on helping us prioritize the development of new features that help ensure that the platform is as useful, welcoming, and inclusive as it can possibly be,” Kickstarter said. The council’s responsibilities will also include providing input as the , a plan which prompted backlash late last year, particularly when it came to concerns over the environmental impact of blockchain technology’s energy usage. |
Daily Crunch: Musk’s Twitter purchase plan calls for new CEO, monetization strategies, job cuts | Christine Hall | 2,022 | 4 | 29 | Friday, more like Fri-yay! It’s April 29, 2022, we’re here with the latest headlines, but honestly our brains are mostly focused on all the hardcore fun we’re going to have this weekend. Like doing laundry, napping, playing with our pets, reading a book for a while and sleeping in. I know, we’re old and boring, deal with it. — and Civilian drone manufacturer DJI and the Ukrainian and Russian governments continue their spat. Most recently, in an apparent attempt to appear more neutral. We were particularly enthralled this morning by ’s feature article about bidirectional charging. In other words: If the power goes out, ? : In his first TechCrunch+ article, Senior Climate Writer Tim De Chant examined nine startups optimizing EV battery technology that have collectively raised just over $4 billion in the last 18 months. Improving tech like solid-state batteries, replacing specific chemical components and using hybrid chemistries are just a few of the techniques startups are deploying to unlock benefits like reducing weight while increasing range and safety. “But cars and trucks won’t be the only thing touched by the battery revolution that’ll occur over the next few years,” he writes. “Like many advances, better, lighter and longer-lasting batteries will drive changes in our lives that are both unexpected and welcome.” We’re going on a bit of a roller coaster ride in terms of good news versus not, so keep your hands and legs inside the newsletter, and you’ll be good. |
USV quietly announces $625M in fresh funding for ‘both Web2 and Web3’ teams | Connie Loizos | 2,022 | 4 | 29 | (USV), the 19-year-old, New York-based venture firm, has raised $ for its eighth early-stage fund and $350 million for its fourth opportunity fund, the firm announced in a yesterday. In sharing news of the two new vehicles, firm partner Andy Weissman and the firm’s general counsel, Samson Mesele, wrote that USV plans to “invest our new funds around the same thesis as our previous funds: we are looking for opportunities in the market that align with our .” (USV has written previously that this updated thesis centers on “trusted brands that broaden access to knowledge, capital, and well-being by leveraging networks, platforms, and protocols.) Relatedly, USV will continue to invest in “both Web2 and Web3 companies and projects,” the post states. Early last year, when Weissman announced in a similar blog post that USV had raised $250 million for its , he wrote explicitly that as in USV’s “last several funds,” the firm planned to invest roughly 30% of the capital in crypto-related investments and that it intended to hold tokens, and equity, in early-stage blockchain-related projects. One of these newer, related bets is , a platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development. (USV, which waded into crypto ahead of most firms, was also an early investor in Coinbase and owned 8.2% of its Class B shares at the time of its direct offering last year.) Some of USV’s newer bets include , an API developer that enables retailers to offer buy-now-pay-later services; a two-year-old, Egyptian electric mobility startup called Shift EV that aims to convert fuel-run vehicles into EVs using batteries that it ; Alife, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that’s trying to of IVF procedures through AI; and Gumball, a two-year-old, L.A.-based podcast ad marketplace founded by the podcast company Headgum. USV, which also closed its first last year with $162 million in capital commitments, has seen its share of exits over the years. Just last month, the three-year-old stock trading platform Public Otis, a startup that allows individual investors to buy fractional ownership in alternative assets, including NFTs and sports memorabilia. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, though Crunchbase data shows Otis had raised $16.5 million from investors, including from USV and Maveron. In addition to Coinbase, others of USV’s higher-profile bets have included Etsy and Twitter, companies of which USV owned more than 15% and at least 5%, respectively, at the time of their public offerings, per their S-1 filings. Indeed, USV cofounder Fred Wilson remains highly active on Twitter and earlier this month his belief that Twitter is “too important to be owned and controlled by a single person. The opposite should be happening. Twitter should be decentralized as a protocol that powers an ecosystem of communication products and services.” After Elon Musk’s bid to buy the company was accepted by its board early this week, Wilson softened his stance slightly in his newsletter, writing, “I continue to believe that a single person owning one of the most important communications protocols of the internet is a bad idea, but maybe it can be a bridge to something better.” On SEC filings for the new funds, Wilson, Weissman, are listed as managing members, along with longtime managing director Albert Wenger, general partners Rebecca Kaden and Nick Grossman and both Mesele (who joined the outfit last year) and USV’s longtime finance manager, Kerri Rachlin, who has not been included in the firm’s SEC fund registrations previously. (USV says the two have “joined the USV partnership in connection with the 2022 Funds.”) John Buttrick, who joined USV in 2010 and was included in the SEC forms relating to the firm’s seventh flagship fund, is not listed. |
Jack Dorsey says he’s against permanent Twitter bans, with an asterisk | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 4 | 29 | On Friday afternoon, former Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey turned to the platform that he co-created to speak about its future, days after the company was bought for $44 billion by Elon Musk. , Dorsey said he doesn’t believe in permanent bans, with the exception of illegal activity. “As I’ve said before, I don’t believe any permanent ban (with the exception of illegal activity) is right, or should be possible. This is why we need a protocol that’s resilient to the layers above,” said Dorsey, who and currently works of Block. I have tried taking a break from Twitter recently, but I must say: the company has always tried to do its best given the information it had. Every decision we made was ultimately my responsibility*. In the cases we were wrong or went too far, we admitted it and worked to correct. — jack⚡️ (@jack) While Dorsey’s thread didn’t name names, there’s a possibility that he’s referring to some of Twitter’s most controversial moments that have resurfaced amid Musk’s purchase of Twitter — including the platform’s choice to ban former President Donald J. Trump from the platform and the temporary ban of The New York Post after it published an article related to U.S. President Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s laptop. The social media giant’s chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde has recently been under attack online from trolls after Musk posted a meme about her. This storm in mind, Dorsey’s words today shed a very soft, dim light on his stance about whether controversial figures, even those who spread misinformation, should be allowed on the platform. “Some things can be fixed immediately, and others require rethinking and reimplementing the entire system. It is important to me that we get critical feedback in all of its forms, but also important that we get the space and time to address it. All of that should be done publicly,” Dorsey said in the same Twitter thread. , Dorsey said that “Elon is the singular solution I trust…I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness.” But, there’s a tension there: If Dorsey believes in Musk, but Musk tweets memes at the cost of Twitter’s executive team, is Twitter really on the trajectory to get more transparent? As Dorsey said, the company needs “space and time to address” some of its most critical feedback. Morale plays a role in the rebuilding. “What matters is how the service works and acts, and how quickly it learns and improves,” Dorsey said in today’s tweet storm. “My biggest failing was that quickness part. I’m confident that part at least is being addressed, and will be fixed.” |
Pitch deck pro tips from a leading Silicon Valley venture capitalist | Matt Burns | 2,022 | 4 | 29 | at Emergence Capital, where she invests in early-stage enterprise software companies. During TechCrunch’s Early Stage event, she headlined a session dedicated to giving feedback on pitch decks. What follows is a small slice of Lotti’s input from the session. Constructing pitch decks is part art and part science. And they’re always a work in progress. Each week on , a founder and investor present an early pitch deck that won significant capital investment. The events are free to join, and after looking at the pitch deck, startup founders can practice their pitch with the investor and founder. “The first thing is: Know your audience. Do a little bit of research, and try to tweak the email to make it personal,” Lotti said, adding that cold emails are OK, but they’re better if they’re personalized. She gave this example, saying, “Hey, Lotti. I’m sending you this pitch deck. I’m the founder of company XYZ, and I’m sending it to you because I saw that you were on the board of this other company, which is somewhat similar, and I think there are some potential learnings in what you could bring to the table.” Conversely, Lotti explained that if she receives a deck from a company outside her area of focus, like consumer companies, she’s not even going to open the email. Pitch decks are a way to tell a startup’s story, and there are ways to make investors and customers better remember your pitch. According to Lotti, one of the best ways is to make an emotional appeal. “People remember feelings,” she said. “If you want someone to remember what you’re saying, find a way to associate a powerful feeling to it. Fear is a great one. Excitement is another, but the stronger the feeling, the stronger the memory.” |
Why a bipartisan embrace of crypto might never touch Bitcoin | Lucas Matney | 2,022 | 4 | 29 | Hey everyone, and welcome back to Last week was our inaugural newsletter and we chatted at length about the changes Twitter could make to expand its crypto business. At that point, I — like many others — was operating under the assumption that a Musk Twitter deal was ultimately doomed, but low and behold we’ve got a deal. Everything has been approved at this point, but I can’t shake a feeling that something is going to kill this deal in the eleventh hour. If that happens, Twitter’s board or Musk will be on the hook for a $1 billion penalty for walking away from the deal, but I suppose we’ll see … This week, I’m looking at a controversial Bitcoin mining ban working its way through New York regulators and what bills like it could mean for the political reputation of crypto’s #1 coin. To get this message in your inbox on Thursday mornings, you can subscribe on while you’re at it! Getty Images Crypto’s biggest skeptics see plenty of reasons to criticize the industry, but generally at the heart of most complaints is a belief that crypto is contributing very little to society while burning massive amounts of energy. While crypto’s believers could squabble over the former point until they’re blue in the face, the latter is a little harder to deny. Bitcoin uses an estimated 204.50 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity per year at current rates according to the oft-cited tracker built by , this number is equal to the power consumption of Thailand. Meanwhile Ethereum’s energy footprint is half the size but still comparable to the power consumption of Kazakhstan. In 2018 the United States reported its total consumption of electricity as 4,222.5 TWh. For some legislators, those numbers are hard to swallow. This week, the New York State Assembly that had team crypto up in arms. The bill blocks the formation of crypto mining firms in the state that rely on non-renewable power. It notably doesn’t apply to existing facilities. A corresponding bill is currently making its way through the Democrat-controlled state senate. This is fascinating for a whole bunch of reasons. For one, crypto is increasingly becoming a partisan topic. Republicans are typically wary of regulating unregulated industries and thus a number of major figures in the party have thrown their full support behind crypto with few concessions. This includes prospective future party leaders like the governors of Texas and Florida. Meanwhile, most of crypto’s most ardent critics appear to be Democrats, but that’s not to say it’s a party-line issue. President Biden’s recent cryptocurrency executive order was generally regarded as very friendly to the space by industry insiders. The energy usage seems to be the most salient sticking point for many regulators looking at sweeping bans. The other reason that this is interesting is that this bill really only impacts a handful of major crypto networks, but that includes the two biggest ones — Bitcoin and Ethereum. These networks use something called a proof-of-work mechanism to secure their networks. The work in this case is mining that involves computers working around the clock to essentially solve math problems that are protecting the integrity of the blockchain, making it extremely expensive and technically challenging for hackers to overwhelm the network to make unauthorized transactions and steal tokens. Crypto seems to be generally trending away from proof-of-work, most notably, Ethereum is deep in the process of transitioning its network toward a less energy-intensive consensus method. But Bitcoin seems unlikely to make its own transition, suggesting that regulatory maneuverings, like New York’s bills, are likely going to be increasingly antagonistic toward Bitcoin (and a few smaller networks) specifically. This could lead to an interesting scenario where the crypto industry increasingly finds mainstream tolerance among its current critics but Bitcoin finds itself growing more and more politically isolated. Bitcoin already broadcasts its libertarian bent a bit more prominently than other blockchains. At recent industry events, it’s becoming clearer that amid a burgeoning developer ecosystem for blockchains like Ethereum and Solana, the philosophy of the Bitcoin network’s infrastructure is increasingly its most harmonizing element. Bitcoin’s continuing resistance to criticism and calls for change may only embolden its supporters, but critiques around the power consumption of the network aren’t going anywhere and further adoption may only make this a more visible target for aggressive regulation. Some politicians may grow to love crypto but hate Bitcoin all the same. Hey y’all, it’s here. Our second episode of the weekly Chain Reaction podcast just dropped, and this week, we’ve been so immersed in the Elon Musk/Twitter news that we thought we’d tackle two other topics first to get our minds off the bird app for a second. I wrote earlier this week about how Fidelity, the largest retirement plan provider in the United States, it administers for 23,000 companies. It’s a bold move from this tradfi incumbent because it legitimizes crypto as a long-term investment just a month after regulators tried to discourage retirement plan providers from doing exactly this. We kicked off the podcast with some spirited back-and-forth about who will benefit from Fidelity’s move, especially if it takes off as a larger trend. Personally, I think the news is great for non-billionaires — you can read about why in . We also covered: Caught up with ’s for the second episode of and talked about progressive decentralization, why gamers are weary of NFTs and that Axie hack. — Lucas Matney (@lucasmtny) Our guest interview this week was with Shaun Maguire, an investor at Sequoia and, of course, a crypto Twitter personality. We chatted with him about Sequoia’s recent crypto moves, the possibility of a multichain future, and whether we’ll ever reach true decentralization at a mass scale or will end up stuck in “web 2.5” forever. Subscribe to Chain Reaction on , or your alternative podcast platform of choice to keep up with us every week. Follow . — Stablecoins’ total circulating supply has grown significantly over the past year, but the future of it is unclear. Kraken’s chief legal officer said the subasset is in a “Cambrian moment” as they gather their foothold in the market. But not everyone is a fan of stablecoins as they’re in nascent stages and have the potential to boom, in two very different ways. Web3 has attracted people from all walks of life, from traditional finance analysts to software developers. But a fairly new group has been entering the space over the last 12 months: artists. While there are financial incentives, some are saying that these creators are deep diving into web3 for more than just a new revenue stream. — Thanks for reading! And, again, to get this in your inbox Thursday mornings, you can subscribe on Have a great weekend, |
DoorDash extends gas rewards program for delivery people on its platform through August | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 4 | 29 | DoorDash today that it’s expanding its gas rewards program for delivery people on its platform. The program enables delivery people using their DasherDirect card to receive 10% cash back on their gas purchases, anywhere in the United States. The company announced the rewards program last month with the goal of offsetting rising gas prices. The program was originally supposed to last through April but has now been extended until the end of August. The company says that since the launch of the program, delivery people on the platform have saved an average of $0.42 per gallon on every visit. DoorDash also says that every hour, more than 8,600 delivery people are using their Dasher Direct cards to save with 10% cash back. In addition, DoorDash notes that delivery people have used the 10% cash back benefit through DasherDirect in over 8 million transactions across gas stations. DoorDash says it will continue to monitor gas prices through the summer months and listen to feedback from its community of delivery people about its programs. The company has been tweaking its platform and adding new options for consumers over the past few months. Most recently, DoorDash plan for college students called “DashPass for Students” that costs $4.99 per month, which is half the price of a standard monthly DashPass subscription. The company has also confirmed that it’s called “Return a Package” that allows customers to use the service to return packages to the nearest post office, UPS or FedEx location. |
Autonomous Cruise car encounter with police raises policy questions | Kyle Wiggers | 2,022 | 4 | 11 | No technology is perfect. Even self-driving cars trained to obey traffic laws are bound to run into issues that cause them to commit a citable offense. Such was the case with a Cruise-operated hatchback in San Francisco last weekend, which was pulled over by local law enforcement for failing to switch on its headlights. While the car came to a stop, as video of the incident shows, there’s policy to be established when it comes to interactions between autonomous vehicles and police. Originally published on Instagram, the video shows the car — one of Cruise’s Chevy Bolts — in the city’s Richmond District pulling over to the side of the road when signaled to do so by an officer, ahead of an intersection. The policeperson walks toward the car and attempts unsuccessfully to open the driver-side door, at which point the Cruise vehicle begins to drive down the road — only to pull over again and activate its hazards. Police approach the car a second time in a presumed effort to figure out how to turn on the headlights. Welcome to the future. Cop pulls over driverless car (because no lights?) Then Cruise goes on the lamb. (via ) — Seth Weintraub (@llsethj) Cruise, which a little over two months ago letting San Francisco residents hail rides in its driverless vehicles, asserts that the pulled-over vehicle acted as intended. The headlights indeed malfunctioned — and have been fixed, according to the company — but the car yielded to police and then pulled over to the “nearest safe location.” One of the officers contacted Cruise after the traffic stop, and no citation was issued. But the episode raises questions about procedure where self-driving vehicles are involved with the police. As it turns out, the vehicle in the video wasn’t entirely autonomous. Cruise in 2019 began computer vision and sound detection AI to help its cars respond to emergency vehicles. However, a spokesperson told TechCrunch that Cruise personnel directed the car to pull over at the second location — across the intersection — when it became clear that the car was the subject of a traffic stop and the officer was clear of the car. When asked, the spokesperson declined to reveal whether Cruise vehicles would behave differently if the stop happened on a highway versus a city street, for example, saying only that the company has a team of people to feed Cruise vehicles with information in instances where the vehicles experience problems. We work closely with the SFPD on how to interact with our vehicles, including a dedicated phone number for them to call in situations like this. — cruise (@Cruise) The most common contact people in the U.S. have with police takes the form of a traffic stop. But not all drivers are treated equally. Black drivers are almost twice as likely to be pulled over as white drivers, far too often with deadly consequences. experts argue that autonomous cars will de-escalate interactions with the police by, for instance, reducing investigations associated with hit-and-run offenses. But others, Elizabeth E. Joh, a law professor at UC Davis, expect that autonomous vehicles will increase police powers if police are allowed to seize cars remotely. “An autonomous car would be a programmable car. Perhaps speed enforcement will be a thing of the past, either because cars will be programmed to stay within the legal speed limit, or because such violations will be automatically enforced with a ticket sent to drivers’ electronic dashboards,” Joh writes in an essay on the subject. “But even in this version of the future, police will still seize cars. A person inside the autonomous car may have an outstanding arrest warrant. The police may suspect that the car contains contraband or evidence of a crime. By no longer requiring human control, autonomous cars may even encourage more types of crime to take place within them.” While no company developing autonomous vehicles has indicated that they’d provide law enforcement this sort of access, police might make the case for it, citing the confusion that can arise from incidents like the Cruise traffic stop. Cruise’s isn’t the first autonomous car to get pulled over — that distinction goes to a Google in 2015. But as autonomous vehicle developers increasingly deploy their fleets on public roads, the issue is more likely to come to the fore. “The police and the public will interact differently when there is little human involvement in driving,” Joh continues in the essay. “[B]ecause so much of the Fourth Amendment is premised upon human drivers and human police officers, that means that a future of automated car stops will pose novel and difficult questions of law and policy that we should begin to address now.” |
Airbnb will no longer offer COVID-19-related refunds beginning May 31 | Kyle Wiggers | 2,022 | 4 | 29 | Airbnb today announced that it will soon no longer offer refunds for COVID-19-related circumstances, including cases where a guest or host becomes sick with COVID-19 — reflecting an update to the company’s extenuating circumstances policy. Beginning May 31, Airbnb hosts’ cancellation terms will apply “as usual,” Airbnb said, although certain reservations made before May 31 may still be eligible for a refund if they qualify under the company’s policy. Airbnb — which just yesterday to a fully remote workplace — said that the change was made in consultation with its medical advisers. “Some in the travel industry stopped this type of policy months ago, while others didn’t provide one at all,” the company wrote in a . “[W]e feel the time is now right to take the same step.” Early in the pandemic, Airbnb its extenuating circumstances policy to cover risks pertaining to the novel coronavirus, allowing guests to cancel and receive a full refund as well as hosts to cancel upcoming reservations penalty-free. The company also $250 million to help cover cancellations due to COVID-19, paying hosts 25% of what they’d normally receive through their cancellation policy. The company’s IPO in November 2020 revealed the dramatic extent of the impact, including a 72% decline in revenue leading to 1,800 job cuts in May 2020. Cost cutting and a doubling down on “experiences” and long-term stays helped Airbnb inch toward recovery. The company beat Wall Street in Q4 2021, reporting $1.53 billion in revenue — up 78% from the $3.89 billion net loss it posted a year earlier. But nights and experiences bookings were down nearly 8% from the prior quarter, a figure which Airbnb is no doubt eager to turn around. “[A]lmost two-thirds of the world’s population have received at least one dose of a vaccination against COVID-19. And many countries have now implemented living with COVID-19 plans, as it becomes part of our world,” the company wrote in the post published today. Spurred by economic and political pressures, some companies and policymakers have called for a “return to normal.” But health experts against prematurely lifting mitigation measures. While and ended mask mandates in ride-shares and a federal judge in Florida struck down the U.S. Transportation Security Administration’s mask rules, in New York City and Washington, D.C. rose. Just this week, a Princess Cruise Lines ship in San Francisco with 143 cases of COVID-19. When contacted for clarification, an Airbnb spokesperson said that they didn’t have anything to share beyond the post. |
TechCrunch+ roundup: Finding product-market fit, pitch deck teardown, getting into YC | Walter Thompson | 2,022 | 4 | 29 | Earlier this month at TechCrunch Early Stage, . A standing-room-only crowd packed the venue as Dame spoke about her experience leading product and engineering efforts at Uber, Yahoo and Smugmug, sharing some of what she learned about gathering customer data, iterating quickly to validate ideas, and the challenges that come with scaling teams from a few dozen people to several thousand employees. Great day at Early Stage talking with about how founders can find product-market fit! — Frederique Dame (@fffabulous) We also discussed several specific tactics and strategies that can help move organizations towards PMF, including effective ways to capture and share user data, and developing customer personas that will help everyone understand the company’s mission and purpose. Distilling our 40-minute conversation into a single article was beyond my abilities, so I’ll share a follow-up next week with additional takeaways from our chat and the audience Q&A that followed. Dame shared one piece of advice that I’d never heard from an investor: more founders should learn to make themselves vulnerable. “Trust me with what you don’t know or what’s not working, because once we invest, we’re going to have to work on this stuff anyway,” she said. “I’d rather start working on this stuff early on.” Thanks very much for reading! I hope you have a fantastic weekend. Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch+
Power supply connect to electric vehicle for charge to the battery. Charging technology industry transport which are the futuristic of the Automobile. EV fuel Plug in hybrid car. In his first TechCrunch+ article, Senior Climate Writer Tim De Chant examined nine startups optimizing EV battery technology that have collectively raised just over $4 billion in the last 18 months. Improving tech like solid-state batteries, replacing specific chemical components and using hybrid chemistries are just a few of the techniques startups are deploying to unlock benefits like reducing weight while increasing range and safety. “But cars and trucks won’t be the only thing touched by the battery revolution that’ll occur over the next few years,” he writes. “Like many advances, better, lighter, and longer-lasting batteries will drive changes in our lives that are both unexpected and welcome.” / Getty Images In a conversation with Editor Greg Kumparak at TechCrunch Early Stage, YC managing director and group partner Dalton Caldwell spoke about the application process founders must navigate before they’re accepted to one of the world’s top accelerators. “The first thing I look at when I read an application is the team. What I’m looking for is technical excellence on the team,” said Caldwell. “Our teams that rely on trying to hire outsourced engineers or consultants or whatever to build their product tend to move much slower than folks with a technical founder,” he added. “They tend to get ripped off.” Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch / Getty Images Startup valuations swelled in recent years, but investors continue to favor “founders who are experienced, pedigreed, smooth or well-connected,” writes Leslie Feinzaig, CEO and founder of Graham & Walker, a fund/accelerator that promotes women in business. Founders on Planet Flush “live in a planet of big, buzzy, competitive early rounds,” but residents of Planet Scrappy inhabit a world “where fundraising is extremely difficult and unlikely,” she writes. Funding isn’t the only disparity, says Feinzaig: founders with strong networks are unlikely to face real scrutiny until seeking a Series B, but “meanwhile in Planet Scrappy, Series A level diligence happens at the pre-seed stage.” Minut, which manufactures wireless sensors for monitoring short-term rental properties, closed a $14 million Series B last month. Reporter Haje Jan Kamps deconstructed the 21-slide pitch deck to show how Minut used data visualizations and storytelling to give investors a clear vision of the market opportunity, the competitive landscape, and where the company is gaining traction. If you’d like to see your pitch deck featured on TechCrunch+, click through for details. |
Amazon stock plunges to two-year low following first-quarter loss | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 4 | 29 | Amazon stock plunged to a two-year low as shares slid as much as 12% on Friday morning after the company reported its yesterday. The company reported a loss of $3.84 billion, or $7.56 a share, for the first quarter. In the first quarter of last year, a profit of $8.1 billion, or $15.79 a share. The company said Thursday it projects revenue between $116 billion to $121 billion in the second quarter, which would miss analysts’ average estimate of $125.5 billion, as reported . Amazon also reported a $7.6 billion loss on its investment in electric vehicle maker Rivian. In a statement about the quarterly results, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company is focused on improving productivity and cost efficiencies, but that this will take time as Amazon continues to address inflationary and supply chain pressures. “The pandemic and subsequent war in Ukraine have brought unusual growth and challenges,” said Jassy. “Today, as we’re no longer chasing physical or staffing capacity, our teams are squarely focused on improving productivity and cost efficiencies throughout our fulfillment network. We know how to do this and have done it before. This may take some time, particularly as we work through ongoing inflationary and supply chain pressures, but we see encouraging progress on a number of customer experience dimensions, including delivery speed performance as we’re now approaching levels not seen since the months immediately preceding the pandemic in early 2020.” Subscription services, which include Amazon Prime memberships, took in $8.4 billion for the quarter. Last quarter, the company , as the monthly fee went up from $12.99 to $14.99 and the annual membership rose from $119 to $139, marking a 17% increase. The e-commerce giant had said the reason for the increase was due to the continued expansion of Prime member benefits and the rise in wages and transportation costs. Amazon’s results come at a time when the company is seeing a growing push toward unionization from its workforce. Earlier this month, workers at Amazon’s JFK8 fulfillment center , marking a historic day in a hard-fought battle. Following the news, Amazon had said it was “disappointed” and “evaluating [its] options.” Workers at Staten Island’s LDJ5 sort center are their own vote. As part of its quarterly earnings report, Amazon also announced that Prime Day will take place in July this year in more than 20 countries. The company’s annual deal event has shifted around over the past few years, as it was moved to October for 2020 and then moved back up to June in 2021. |
Anthropic’s quest for better, more explainable AI attracts $580M | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 4 | 29 | Less than a year ago, by former OpenAI VP of research Dario Amodei, intending to perform research in the public interest on making AI more reliable and explainable. Its $124 million in funding was surprising then, but nothing could have prepared us for the company less than a year later. “With this fundraise, we’re going to explore the predictable scaling properties of machine learning systems, while closely examining the unpredictable ways in which capabilities and safety issues can emerge at-scale,” said Amodei in the announcement. His sister Daniela, with whom he co-founded the public benefit corporation, said that having built out the company, “We’re focusing on ensuring Anthropic has the culture and governance to continue to responsibly explore and develop safe AI systems as we scale.” There’s that word again — scale. Because that’s the problem category Anthropic was formed to examine: how to better understand the AI models increasingly in use in every industry as they grow beyond our ability to explain their logic and outcomes. The company has already published several papers looking into, for example, reverse engineering the behavior of language models to understand why and how they produce the results they do. Something like GPT-3, probably the most well-known language model out there, is undeniably impressive, but there’s something worrying about the fact that its internal operations are essentially a mystery even to its creators. As the new funding announcement explains it: The purpose of this research is to develop the technical components necessary to build large-scale models which have better implicit safeguards and require less after-training interventions, as well as to develop the tools necessary to further look inside these models to be confident that the safeguards actually work. If you don’t understand how an AI system works, you can only react when it does something wrong — say, exhibits bias in recognizing faces, or tending to draw or describe men when asked about doctors and CEOs. That behavior is baked into the model, and the solution is to filter its outputs rather than prevent it from having those incorrect “notions” in the first place. It’s sort of a fundamental change to how AI is built and understood, and as such requires big brains and big computers — neither of which are particularly cheap. No doubt that $124 million was a good start, but apparently the early results were promising enough to make Sam Bankman-Fried lead this enormous new round, joined by Caroline Ellison, Jim McClave, Nishad Singh, Jaan Tallinn and the Center for Emerging Risk Research. Interesting to see none of the usual deep tech investors in that group — but of course Anthropic isn’t aiming to turn a profit, which is kind of a deal-breaker for VCs. . |
Vyoma is the latest player seeking to prevent satellite collisions with space junk | Stefanie Waldek | 2,022 | 4 | 29 | As you might’ve heard, it’s getting a little crowded in space, between thousand-satellite constellations à la SpaceX’s Starlink and the millions of pieces of space junk accumulated from decades of launches. But it’s also getting a little crowded in the space-monitoring space, with a number of companies competing to create observation systems to help satellite and launch operators protect their assets from orbiting debris. One of the newest entrants to the field is , a German company spun out of TUM, founded by Christoph Bamann, Luisa Buinhas and Stefan Frey. Vyoma’s goal is to track objects in low Earth orbit (LEO) using a constellation of observation satellites, then use machine learning to automate collision avoidance procedures for clients’ satellites. “Of the 1 million objects larger than one centimeter circling Earth today, estimated by ESA, less than 5% are tracked regularly. Hence, satellite operators are flying blindly, and the risk of accidental collision is high,” Frey tells TechCrunch. Right now, LEO monitoring is primarily limited to military operations that keep an eye on larger space debris, about 10 centimeters in diameter. And, naturally, given the military source, that data is not shared widely. As such, there’s demand for private companies like Vyoma to develop their own tracking programs, ones that are far more sensitive and can be shared internationally. While space-tracking competitors like primarily use ground-based observation methods, Vyoma intends to launch a proprietary space-based monitoring system — it wants to get up close and personal with space junk, monitoring debris from a small constellation of camera-toting satellites. It might seem counterintuitive to help monitor space junk by adding more satellites to orbit, but there’s an advantage to this system. “By being spaceborne, we can observe objects up to 30 times a day, covering nearly 100% of all dangerous objects one centimeter and above. The high frequency of observations allows us to do very accurate predictions of the trajectories of debris objects,” Buinhas tells TechCrunch. “Furthermore, from the images, we can also infer how the objects behave, for instance, if they are tumbling, if they have a uniform rotation, what properties they have, like dimensions, materials, et cetera.” The satellites will have two modes: surveillance and tasked-tracking. Surveillance mode will see each satellite continuously imaging the environment around it during its orbit — all objects it sees will be cataloged in Vyoma’s database. Then in tasked-tracking mode, one or more satellites will focus on a single object or event, providing real-time data. Vyoma will then use machine learning to synthesize that data to provide nearly instantaneous collision-avoidance commands to clients’ satellites. In that aspect, Vyoma is in competition with and , which are also vying to become a sort of international air traffic control for LEO. Kayhan and Slingshot Aerospace, however, are pulling their tracking data from multiple sources, whereas Vyoma’s data will be generated in-house (well, off-planet). Its approach is most similar to , which is also planning an optical debris-tracking satellite network. That said, Vyoma has not yet launched its satellites, so it’s currently using external data from ground-based partners to provide its services. But the company is progressing toward its launch goals. Just last year, Vyoma closed pre-seed and seed rounds (of undisclosed sizes), kicking off the production of its space cameras. It also won the German NewSpace Award and the Weconomy award, indicating its strength in the European market. (Most of the other major players are based in the United States.) Vyoma hopes to test its image-processing procedures in space later this year, with the goal of launching its pilot satellites by the end of 2023. “Launch costs have dramatically reduced over the past few years, leading to a remarkable increase in the number of launches,” says Frey. “The more satellites in space, the more dangerous situations will occur, the more pressing are space traffic management solutions such as ours. We want to make sure that space is safe also for future generations.” |
Charged with billions in capital, meet the 9 startups developing tomorrow’s batteries today | Tim De Chant | 2,022 | 4 | 29 | yesterday on its pickup truck, a do-or-die vehicle that takes the automaker’s — and the United States’ — best-selling vehicle and swaps its gas-guzzling engines for powerful electric motors juiced by more than 1,800 pounds of batteries. The mattress-sized pack can deliver over 300 miles of range, but if Ford wants to win over weekend warriors who tow 28-foot motor boats, it’s going to need better batteries. While today’s batteries can store more energy than ever — they’ve improved in energy density by 5% per year for the last several years — those steady, incremental increases probably won’t be enough to make EVs a no-brainer for many consumers. Today’s cells are better in every respect than those made five years ago, but they still leave much to be desired. What’s needed are some breakthroughs. EVs are a relatively small part of the overall market for cars and trucks, but they make up nearly 80% of the demand for lithium-ion batteries, far outpacing devices like laptops and phones. And demand is only going to increase. The world is expected to need 5,500 GWh of batteries by 2030, to Wood Mackenzie, a 5x increase over today, thanks to changing consumer tastes and looming phaseouts of fossil-fuel vehicles. Over the next five years, the battery world is poised to undergo a significant transformation. I’ve sifted through a long list of startups to find the nine most interesting ones that are developing technologies to make batteries weigh less, charge faster and last longer. In the last year and a half, they’ve collectively raised $4.1 billion — some of that through special purpose acquisition companies but the vast majority from late-stage venture and corporate rounds. The battery tech that’s been getting the most attention recently is solid-state, and for good reason. Automakers are salivating at the idea of EVs with a range of over 400 miles that can be recharged in 15 minutes, which solid-state batteries have the potential to deliver. Solid-state batteries earn their name by replacing the liquid electrolytes that shuttle ions from one side of the battery to another with solid versions. Solid electrolytes offer a few advantages. For one, they can prevent the growth of dendrites, stalactite-like spikes of lithium that can form on a battery’s electrodes. Dendrites can grow relatively easily in the liquid, so battery makers add an ion-permeable separator to prevent dendrites from bridging the gap between positive and negative electrodes. If the separator is damaged, as happened in defective Chevy Bolt battery packs, then dendrites can cause a short circuit that can start a fire. The other thing that solid electrolytes can enable is what’s known as a lithium-metal battery. In a typical lithium-ion battery, when lithium ions are on the anode side, they’re stored in graphite. Graphite anodes are inexpensive and stable, but they add weight to a battery. Eliminating them would help lighter batteries store more energy, but lithium-metal anodes are prone to forming dendrites. To prevent dendrites from growing long enough to short-circuit the battery, researchers are working on solid electrolytes that not only block the stalactites but also won’t create problems with the anode’s highly reactive lithium. Three companies in particular show promise in solid-state. One is Factorial, which has raised $253 million, including a $200 million Series D that closed in January and was , the automaker created by the merger of the Italian-American Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and France’s PSA Group. Factorial, based in the Boston suburb of Woburn, Massachusetts, had operated in stealth mode until last April. |
Aurora’s Sterling Anderson and FedEx’s Rebecca Yeung discuss the future of autonomous trucking at TC Sessions: Mobility 2022 | Kirsten Korosec | 2,022 | 4 | 29 | |
How Lydia wants to make payments more personal and social | Romain Dillet | 2,022 | 4 | 29 | unveiled a brand new design for its financial super app. And it’s an opinionated take on mobile payments — not just a fresh coat of paint. I sat down with the company’s founders to discuss the thinking and vision for the future of Lydia. In many ways, Lydia isn’t standing still and keeps reinventing itself. The company started as a peer-to-peer payment app for the French market. For the first time, people could send and receive money instantly from their smartphones. The app has evolved drastically over the past few years. The company recently and the team has been iterating with more services and features. In particular, you can now use your Lydia account as an alternative to a regular bank account. Users can order a debit card, and send and receive money through a unique IBAN. Users also can trade cryptocurrencies, stocks, precious metals and ETFs. With this new design, the company is streamlining its app with a clear separation between your activity, your accounts, your cards and your trading activity. More importantly, the company is positioning its mobile app as a social product — not a fintech product. Lydia When I met with Lydia’s co-founders Cyril Chiche and Antoine Porte, they both had read , another popular social app designed in Paris. And they found some similarities between the new Lydia and the new Zenly. “We just sent a newsletter to our user base that unveils a new chapter for Lydia, laying down the plan for the next 10 years — just like Zenly,” co-founder and Chief Product Officer Antoine Porte told me. This isn’t a random milestone. Lydia launched the first version of its app nine years ago. “If you count the gestation period, it’s been 10 years,” Porte said. The company has managed to attract 5.5 million users. And a fraction of them have now decided to use Lydia as their primary account. “The more we progress in financial and banking services, the more we try to intellectualize the reason why people dislike their bank,” co-founder and CEO Cyril Chiche told me. “When digging further, you realize how banks have been using technology. They built a beautiful system for interbank activities. You can move money from one end of the globe to the other. It works but it has never been designed for humans,” he added. This sums up Lydia’s design language pretty well. The team wants to build an app that is “designed for humans”. For instance, someone who has never used a bank app before shouldn’t have to learn about SEPA transfers and IBANs before sending money to a family member. When you open the updated version of Lydia, the main tab has been drastically cleaned up. It is now an activity feed with your latest transactions. There are two buttons at the top of the screen — receive and pay. At the bottom of the screen, there’s a new tab bar with buttons that are clearly labeled. You no longer have to guess which button does what. The second tab shows your accounts — your main Lydia account, your sub-accounts and your bank accounts that you have aggregated in the app. Personal accounts and shared accounts are now separated into two sections. The third tab lets you access your cards and control them from there. Trading now gets its own tab, separated from the rest of the app. If you rarely open Lydia, it is now much easier to understand where you should tap to access what you want to access. As French entrepreneurs who overthink everything a bit too much, Lydia’s founders keep going back to the definition of the terms they use. “We have forgotten the very reason why money exists because we view money as an accounting tool,” Porte said. “Money has a meaning. It is either a project or a memory,” Chiche added later in the conversation. And yet, when people open their bank app, it feels like opening an Excel spreadsheet. Worse, it often fosters a lot of negative thoughts. “Your account has only been credited once and everything else is negative operations. When you look at your account statement, you feel like you messed up,” Chiche said. According to the founders, there’s too much guilt involved with banking. That’s why you no longer see your account balance when you open Lydia. You have to tap on the second tab to view it. That’s also why you don’t see the € sign next to every transaction. The company doesn’t want to emphasize the accounting aspect of your transactions. “The worst thing is neobanks that show you a chart of your balance over time,” Chiche said. “We need a new definition for money. Money is no longer coins, bills or physical things. That could be the opportunity to go back to the origin — money is what you do with it,” Porte said. Each transaction in Lydia could be considered as an event. You can open the transaction card, change the name and add emojis so that it means something to you. For instance, you may want to put your baby’s name on the nursery bill. Today, the company is going one step further. Users can add a photo to each transaction. That seems a bit odd at first, but Lydia truly believes it has a shot at building the best social journaling app. Lydia You may think that journaling is a thing of the past. But a generation of smartphone users have been journaling every day without even realizing it. The journal itself has evolved. Instead of buying a fancy notebook and spending 15 minutes every day writing about the current day, people take photos with their phones. The camera roll has become a sort of ubiquitous, effortless journal. Lydia plans to take advantage of that by augmenting the camera roll. First, your past financial transactions represent a structure. Second, adding a photo makes a transaction much more personal. “If you don’t know what photo you should use, it probably means that it was an unnecessary expense,” Porte said. Third, it turns each transaction into a potential social post. You can swipe through your transactions just like you would swipe through photos in a photo album. If it’s a shared expense, other users will see the photo. It also creates a virality factor as people could start asking why you’re taking a photo. You could imagine a feature that lets you share a transaction in other apps as well. More importantly, it opens up a lot of possibilities. A card transaction also happens at a specific place and at a specific time. Lydia could populate the transaction screen with more data about the place you visited. As soon as Foursquare invented check-ins, people started talking about check-in fatigue. Maybe the most powerful check-ins are your card payments. It brings us to the main question. Is Lydia a fintech app or a social app? “Lydia is so simple and fast that it has always been considered as a utility app. But it has always been a social app,” Porte told me. I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Some users will still use Lydia a few times a month to send and receive money. But a small, highly engaged portion of the user base might see the social potential of Lydia. We don’t need to come up with a definitive answer right now, as the redesign is a clear improvement over the previous version of the app. “People tell us our competitors are Revolut, but they are bankers,” Porte said. “We want to create the WhatsApp of money instead,” he added. |
null | Natasha Lomas | 2,022 | 4 | 11 | null |
CEOs at AMP Robotics, Novoloop and Nth Cycle will discuss disrupting recycling at TC Sessions: Climate | Alexandra Ames | 2,022 | 4 | 29 | |
Elon Musk has reportedly lined up a new Twitter CEO, shared ideas for monetizing tweets | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 4 | 29 | Elon Musk has lined up a new CEO for Twitter and told banks that agreed to help fund his $44 billion acquisition offer about his plans to monetize tweets, according to a . A source told Reuters that Musk has decided on who he plans to appoint as the new chief executive of Twitter, but the source didn’t name the person. Twitter’s current CEO Parag Agrawal, who took the role after in November, is expected to remain as CEO until the deal is completed. Reuters reports that Musk told Twitter chairman Bret Taylor that he does not have confidence in the company’s management, which is a sentiment that he also stated in . Agrawal would be set for a significant if the deal closes and Musk brings in new management, as he would receive $38.7 million due to a clause in his contract, according to the company’s . Reuters reports that Musk told banks that he plans to develop more ways to make money from tweets. For example, he said that he plans to create a way to monetize tweets that go viral or include important information. He also suggested the idea of charging a fee when third-party websites quote or embed tweets from verified accounts. The that Musk also brought up the idea of paying influencers to create content for the platform, which is a business model that has proven to be successful for TikTok. Musk is also said to be interested in the idea of subscription services that the company could offer. In deleted tweets from earlier this month, Musk suggested significant changes to Twitter Blue, which is the social media giant’s subscription service that is currently priced at $2.99 per month. Musk suggested cutting the price, adding a way to pay in dogecoin and banning advertising. In another now-deleted tweet, Musk said he wants to move Twitter away from its dependence on advertising for much of its revenue. Musk had also told the banks he could crack down on executive and board pay at Twitter to slash costs. Reuters also reports that in his pitch to the banks, Musk said Twitter’s gross margin is much lower than other social media services, such as Facebook and Pinterest, and argued that there are ways to run the company in a more cost-effective way. reported this week that Musk spoke to bankers about job cuts as part of his pitch to the lenders. Musk reportedly won’t make decisions on job cuts until he receives ownership of the company. Twitter says the transaction, which was unanimously approved by the board, will likely close this year following shareholder and regulatory approval and “the satisfaction of other customary closing conditions.” Musk will have to if he doesn’t go through with his acquisition of the social network, per a . The filing, which details the terms of the agreement, indicates Twitter would have to pay the same fee under specific circumstances. |
Roku experiences slow growth with only 1.1 million accounts added in first quarter | Lauren Forristal | 2,022 | 4 | 29 | Roku’s first quarter of 2022 shows signs of slowdown, particularly with a slowing of total net revenue and subscriber growth, which was below what analysts estimated. There was a significant decrease in streaming unit player sales, as well, due to numerous challenges. With only 1.1 million incremental active accounts added, Roku’s subscriber total was 61.3 million in Q1. This was slightly less than analysts expectations of . For context, , Roku surpassed 60 million accounts, an increase of 3.7 million for Q4. Roku reported significantly decelerated total net revenue growth of 28% in Q1 to $737.7 million. In the first quarter of 2021, the company reported a revenue growth of 79%. For the second quarter, the company projects total net revenues to grow 25% year-over-year to $805 million, lower than the . In addition, Roku reported a 12% year-over-year decrease in streaming unit player sales. The company explained this was because COVID-19 distorted business patterns, as well as the ongoing supply chain crisis and inflation. “We have delivered solid performance in a challenging operating environment and expect that we will continue to navigate through macro headwinds, including inflationary pressures, geopolitical conflict, and supply chain disruptions,” CEO Anthony Wood and Chief Financial Officer Steve Louden wrote in a . The muted outlook, based on continuing macro headwinds, may lead to volatility like its rivals in the coming months. For instance, Netflix shares fell following its bleak . This drop is recognized as their worst day since 2004. Even though Roku has been the top streaming platform in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, its stock has dropped in the last week, 20% in the last month and more than 70% in a year. While these numbers aren’t as dramatic, the market has become unpredictable as newer streaming players see more significant growth than older ones. There’s a lot standing in Roku’s way, and may pose some heavy competition as a new media aggregator. Charter will contribute $900 million over several years to the effort. However, Roku isn’t scared off by the competition. During yesterday’s call, Wood pointed out that the expenses associated with streaming tech will create an obstacle. It’s very hard for — certainly for a new player. Like it’s hard for you to imagine how they’re going to be successful given the long number of years that we’ve invested in our platform and our competitors have as well. But also, just you have to amortize that cost across a larger and larger installed base to be competitive. Scale is super important. The company believes that it will continue to be the top-selling TV OS system in the country, no matter how many competitors it faces. Wood added that Roku has competed against strong companies for years like Google and Amazon, yet the reason Roku continues to win is that it remains successful in both streaming players and smart TVs as opposed to only one or the other. In March, the latest version of its streaming TV software, , launched. This focused on adding more personalization to the Roku platform, including the new feature Roku Photo Streams, among others. The Roku Channel had a successful quarter, for the most part. Streaming hours went up this quarter, with a total of 20.9 billion hours in the quarter, an increase of 1.4 billion from last quarter, up 14%. Last year, the company’s users consumed 73.2 billion hours of content through Roku’s services. Earlier this week, Lionsgate and the Roku Channel announced a in which the free platform will receive two separate windows in which they will be the exclusive home for upcoming theatrical titles through 2024. This marks a significant win for FASTs (free ad-supported streaming TV), advertisers and consumers as well who have access to more and more free content. Wood said: The secular shift to TV streaming continues, and we are investing in the significant opportunity ahead of us. Our unique assets, including the Roku OS, Roku TV, The Roku Channel and our sophisticated ad platform continue to position us to extend our leadership in the years ahead. We remain excited about executing against this opportunity as more content, viewers, and advertisers move to TV streaming. The company continues to expand The Roku Channel’s content library. Roku wrote in its shareholder letter that it previously reached a licensing agreement with A+E Networks as well as launched Discovery+ via premium subscriptions on The Roku Channel, bringing more than 70,000 episodes to viewers. The letter added that on May 3, Roku will present new content coming to the service along with ad product offerings to advertisers at Roku’s first in-person Upfront event. The new and upcoming titles include “Honest Renovations,” a home renovation series hosted by Jessica Alba and Lizzy Mathis; “To Paris for Love: A Rom-Com,” and “WEIRD: The ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic Story,” starring Daniel Radcliffe. |
Robinhood’s sinking value is proof that ‘free’ can often be very costly | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 4 | 29 | about fintech is the promise of unlocking more tools for more people. In a broad sense, the current era of fintech has done just that — people around the world now have access to financial services that were earlier either completely out of reach before, or, at a minimum, prohibitively expensive. , , , , , and, of course, have improved how the average person can use, store and interact with money. It pretty much rules. The tech has proved darn neat, but there are some issues on the business model side of things. As it turns out, not charging for what was once a paid service is a great way to accrete customers, but it’s also an at-times tricky way of making money. This is a lesson that Robinhood is in the process of learning — and as a public company, sharing with the rest of the world. This week, Robinhood that were far under street expectations. that the company’s per share loss of $0.45 was $0.09 worse than analysts’ expectations, and that the company’s revenue result of $299 million was off by around $57 million. Shares of Robinhood are trading sharply lower this morning. Parsing the Robinhood earnings presentation this morning, it’s clear that the equities trading boom that powered its hypergrowth has passed. And, of all the company’s products, the most durable remains its most controversial — yes, Robinhood’s once again accounts for the majority of its transaction income, following declines in the value of stock trades and crypto trading activity. |
Amazon still undisputed king of public cloud, but Microsoft is creeping closer | Ron Miller | 2,022 | 4 | 29 | It’s not exactly shocking news at this point that the cloud infrastructure market had another standout quarter. After the big three vendors — Amazon, Microsoft and Google — reported earnings this week, we were once again provided a big result with that the market reached $53 billion for the quarter, up 34% from the prior year. Perhaps the most surprising thing about these numbers is that Microsoft is creeping ever closer to Amazon, the long-time market leader. Amazon has steadily controlled a third of this market for years. Of course, it’s important to understand that the Seattle-based e-commerce giant has maintained a steady percentage of a pie that is dramatically expanding. Microsoft, on the other hand, has been growing slowly but surely over time. This quarter the company accounted for 22% of public cloud revenue, according to Synergy, up from around 20% in the year ago period. Amazon in 2006 and was out there all alone for years before Microsoft began competing in earnest, especially after , and has pushed closer to Amazon in recent years. The last of the big three, Google is working hard as well, and has now cornered around 10% of the market. In fact, the research firm reports that the three companies account for 65% of the entire cloud market. Synergy Research Yet even with Microsoft’s hard push into the market and impressive growth, when you add up Microsoft and Google’s growing market share percentages, Amazon still controls a tick more than the other two combined. It shows the amazing staying power of first-to-market advantage, even when you have well-capitalized giants competing with one another. And it also speaks to Amazon’s ability to fend off the growing competition to this point. Numbers from Canalys were right in line with Synergy’s, with the total coming in a tad higher at just under $56 billion. The differences are due to the models and formulas each firm uses, but are close enough that the divergence barely matters. As for market share percentages, Canalys had Amazon at 33%, Microsoft at 21% and Google at 8%, again with very slight differences from Synergy. These companies are looking at revenue from infrastructure, platform and hosted private cloud services. Neither is counting software as a service (SaaS) in these numbers, which could account for differences in reported numbers. In terms of the numbers, for Synergy, it breaks down this way: $17.67 billion for Amazon, $11.66 billion for Microsoft and $5.3 billion for Google. For Canalys, it’s Amazon with $18.45 billion, Microsoft with $11.74 billion and Google with $4.47 billion. The numbers here are so large that it’s easy to forget just how big the public cloud market really is. The category is on an astonishing $212 billion run rate (using Synergy’s number) and continues to grow at a surprisingly rapid rate as more companies push more workloads to the cloud. Consider that was $178 billion. Growth has accelerated since the pandemic hit in March 2020, and if you believe the numbers out there, cloud adoption still has a long way to go, especially when you consider many companies are adopting a multi-cloud strategy. The growth can’t go on forever, but considering that the need for cloud services isn’t a finite amount, it’s likely it will continue to experience substantial growth for quite some time. |
Does it smell like teen spirit, or teen bankruptcy? | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 4 | 29 | Hello and welcome back to , a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This was a live week! Which meant that was on the mic with , and our ever-trusty producer, helped us power through. A big shout-out to Dennis, Julio and Yashad for getting all the tech working well. Right, what did we dive into during our live taping? A lot! Equity is back Monday! Chat then! a |
Metaverses grapple with Meta versus Apple | Lucas Matney | 2,022 | 4 | 16 | Hello readers, and welcome back to ! Last week, I talked about Apple and crypto. This week, we’re talking about Apple clashing with Meta over their metaverse taxes. After sending out hundreds of these newsletters, next week will sadly be my last time sending out but more excitingly it will also be my first time sending out my new crypto newsletter so if you like my ramblings, please and !!! Incredibly psyched to officially announce Chain Reaction ( ), TechCrunch's dedicated crypto podcast (and companion newsletter) where and I will discuss and unpack web3 happenings with crypto VCs, founders and skeptics. — Lucas Matney (@lucasmtny) Meta If any of my ramblings in this newsletter have taught you one thing about the metaverse, it’s that a coherent view of it doesn’t really exist. The purest form of it is probably best seen in the undying jealousy Facebook holds for Roblox and Meta’s desire to recreate that tweenage empire and bring billions of users to it. This week, we got a taste of how exactly Facebook hopes to monetize its looming metaverse dreams. We learned that Meta will begin allowing goods to be sold in Horizon Worlds, its latest social VR app which it hopes to grow into a multitrillion-dollar empire. The controversial note will be that Facebook will take a 25% cut of goods sold on the platform, which doesn’t sound all that problematic until you learn those goods will also separately be taxed by a 30% cut taken from the Oculus Store. Taken together, it means that virtual goods sold on the Horizon platform in VR will come with a whopping attached to them. If you were hopeful that the virtual economy meant an escape from the bothersome features of your daily life, like taxes, you will be disappointed that Uncle Zuck will be taking a bigger cut than Uncle Sam ever did (though he’ll of course be taking his in addition). Nevertheless, as expected, there was a fair bit of blowback on Facebook for this outsized figure, the most biting of which actually came from Apple: “Meta has repeatedly taken aim at Apple for charging developers a 30% commission for in-app purchases in the App Store — and have used small businesses and creators as a scapegoat at every turn,” Apple spokesman Fred Sainz stated in an email to MarketWatch. “Now — Meta seeks to charge those same creators significantly more than any other platform. [Meta’s] announcement lays bare Meta’s hypocrisy. It goes to show that while they seek to use Apple’s platform for free, they happily take from the creators and small businesses that use their own.” These are harsh — and obviously self-serving — words from Apple’s team, but there’s clearly some truth in there. Meta’s CTO to the quote with some fairly lukewarm commentary on how Apple makes significant margins on hardware and software while Meta subsidizes its VR hardware and thus should charge more on software. It’s not exactly a bulletproof defense, largely because Facebook tried to sell VR hardware at a higher premium, but no one wanted to buy it — so selling discounted headsets isn’t some nicety on their part, but a means of VR survival. This all plays into a fairly consistent problem for Facebook though. Every year for the last six or seven years, it’s just always been an awful time for them to start monetizing their virtual reality play. Their audience has seemed to resist monetization shifts every step of the way, and bonafide consumer traction has been so hard to come by over the years that the goal has always defaulted to moving headsets and worrying about paying the bill later. Fast-forward a few billion dollars and the company is beginning to move more headsets by selling them at a loss, but that doesn’t mean that Horizons or VR is in any safer of a position than it was years ago. A 47.5% cut isn’t terribly different from what content creators on Roblox are used to paying, though that money is generally being paid to account for multiple platform stakeholders rather than one company. I can’t see it being a terribly convincing recipe for bringing desperately needed creators to an emerging platform, but Meta/Facebook’s balance sheet subsidization of the metaverse will have to find revenues somewhere, especially when Meta is, after all — — a metaverse company.
There’s no if, and or but about it — the biggest news of the week was that Tesla CEO and richest-man-on-the-planet Elon Musk offered $43 billion to buy social networking site Twitter this week in an unsolicited deal that had Twitter’s board scrambling and everyone in Silicon Valley chattering. It seems to be an uphill road for Musk, but knowing him, even if this bid gets scuttled, he’s probably not going to give up on shaking things up at Twitter. A couple of weeks ago, we talked about the $625 million hack of crypto gaming title Axie Infinity. Well, this week things got a bit more serious when U.S. officials disclosed that they had linked the hack to North Korea state-sponsored hacking group Lazarus. The NFT game courted billions of investments, and analysts fear the nine-figure heist could go to financing some scary things like… uhh… nukes. Few sagas have betrayed the ruthlessness of The Mouse more than Disney’s undying efforts to obliterate any fan remakes of their popular children’s social network Club Penguin. This week, one of the most popular clones — Club Penguin Rewritten — was taken down in a saga that feels a bit dramatic as London police arrested three individuals connected to the project and took down the site. Joshua Lott / Getty Images
“…What I want to know, and somewhat quickly, is whether the price being offered makes any damn sense. So let’s find out. We’ll need to know how quickly Twitter is growing, the strength of its user base expansion and how it has recently traded. We’ll also factor in Twitter’s current efforts to bolster shareholder value. Musk is offering $54.20 per share for 100% of Twitter, a deal worth $43.4 billion. Too low? Let’s find out…”
“…African startups had a very solid Q1 2022 in terms of VC investment, both in dollars and in deal volume. This is news in itself, but even more so when venture funding was simultaneously declining in the U.S., Asia and Latin America….
“…With some creative math and, I hope, fair extrapolation, we can derive valuation calculations for Stripe that should help us better understand how well the payments juggernaut busy masquerading as a private company priced its last equity round…” Thanks for reading and have a great weekend! Lucas Matney |
We’re still in founder-friendly market, kind of | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 4 | 16 | I’ve been thinking a lot about silos, or the lack thereof, within startupland. There’s sometimes an artificial wall that is put up between companies at different stages of growth, when in reality, everyone is in the same room, clinking glasses and tripping over the same rug. Let me be more precise. As the late-stage market has cooled down for tech companies, many early-stage investors say their portfolio companies aren’t too impacted because they’re years away from an exit and have enough capital to weather uncertainty. The same energy was on display this week at TechCrunch Early Stage. Stellation Capital’s Peter Boyce II coyly told me that, based on the term sheet he wrote yesterday, we’re still definitely in a founder-friendly market, while a pair of entrepreneurs not-so-subtly reminded me that experimental bets are still I believe in optimism, and think of this time in early-stage startups as a , not a reckoning. But, does show that dollars are changing across the board. For my full take, read my TechCrunch+ column: “ ” In the rest of this newsletter we’ll talk about social fintech, a new TC-1 on Kindbody and some history about hostile takeovers. As always, you can support me by forwarding this newsletter to a friend, or I covered Braid, that wants to make shared wallets with friends more mainstream. The startup recently launched a new twist on consumer payment links: People can set up a Braid Pool around any effort — a fund for this summer’s Italy trip, shared car gasoline expenses, or a kitty to put toward monthly book club snacks — and then send a link to friends who want to put cash in. The money then goes directly into the wallet and the creator can either manage it solo or together with participants. Fintech can’t just build for the smartest, most pro-active person in the room, so I like that Braid is the middle ground between the friend that is always on top of splitting the bill at the end of dinner and the one who gets overwhelmed at calculating and dividing up the tip. Ahem, me. Sharing something as emotional as money definitely brings challenges — — but it also starts a fascinating conversation. / Getty Images dug into the story of , a fertility startup that has raised $154.7 million in known venture capital to date with a revolutionary take: it’s important to make patients feel heard, and comfortable. Here’s why it’s important: We know that companies, so there’s natural questions around if Kindbody’s take on fertility support is actually impactful. This, , gives me hope: Fertility patients have diverse needs, and their experience on the portal reflects that. An LGBTQ+ patient won’t be asked the same questions or be given the same information as a heterosexual couple because their fertility journey is biologically different. When patients sign up, they include how they identify and the services they’re leveraging. This personalization continues throughout patients’ journeys, both during visits and through the portal. Nigel Sussman Elon Musk made news, yet again, this week with his fixation on Twitter. This time the billionaire offered to buy Twitter, which sent share prices soaring and Put simply, a hostile takeover happens when a company or person tries to take over another company against the wishes of the company’s management. It’s spicy. I mean, for anyone who is following the Twitter and Musk saga, it’s important to understand how realistic it is for a takeover to actually happen. As Kyle Wiggers taught me in his piece, , thanks to poison pills, and power balances. HANNIBAL HANSCHKE/POOL/AFP / Getty Images Until next time, |
What’s the real argument in favor of Musk buying Twitter? | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 4 | 16 | The move by Elon Musk to has proved polarizing. Not that we should be surprised; mega-deals are always clarifying moments. But the Musk-Twitter saga has also brought with it enough external that the discussion on the proposed transaction can be a little hard to parse. Perhaps no commentary has been more humorous than Marc Andreessen’s recent barrage of tweets on the matter, inclusive of visual and written memes. It appears that Andreessen has decided that Twitter is too censorious, and that if Musk bought the company, it would become a land of freer speech. That’s a concept. We don’t have time to wade through all of Andreessen’s elliptical political meanderings. Perhaps another time. A sample of the more plainly worded missives: There does seem to be a sort of collection of venture players congregating in Florida with a certain philosophical bent that’s worth examining. What I am starting to view as the Thiel-Musk-Andreessen viewpoint is somewhat simple: Anything that impedes the ability of a select group of billionaires to do whatever they want is tyranny. This means that Twitter — which has a long history of making mistakes but is working toward a platform that is at once pretty open and not so toxic as to become unusable — is in their sights. How free Twitter is or isn’t in your view will depend somewhat on your priors; mostly I think that the service has done a pretty good job balancing things out over time. So, whither the criticism? I figured I would take a look. Some notes from the field: How can the Miami venture cohort find such annoyance with Twitter when they are backing or helping run services with similar or stricter terms of service? Apart from the fact that they may not give a shit about being hypocritical, I think instead they are merely worried about something that becoming censored. Musk tweets incessantly, and to apparently no censorship. (Is this all about bringing Trump back to Twitter? Recall that the former president is also banned from Facebook, where Andreessen currently works part time.) Part of me wants Musk to buy Twitter so that he can struggle to handle the complex social dynamics of moderating content. It’s not easy or simple. And it’s not something you can get right all of the time — all you can hope for is a balance of open conversation and the minimum regulations needed to keep the commons clear of most forms of abuse. This means that you can’t threaten to kill people on Twitter, but you can TERF it up all you’d like. I don’t think that what the collection of mega-wealthy techies wants really free speech. I think, instead, they want to be able to express their views without any public pushback. I am reading between the lines, but after tracking the folks in question through myriad news cycles and reading their missives, I keep wondering if to them simply means not being forced to absorb feedback about their provincial ideas. None of the folks in question need any more money. And they also don’t lack conviction in their beliefs. So why not just say all the things? That would be using their own right to free speech — the government can’t say a damn thing about their perspectives, so pop off, yeah? See what happens. I doubt their views would get them booted off Twitter. They might engender some disgust from folks who disagree, but, well, so what? Remember and then had to eat crow publicly? I doubt he would backtrack now. So if everyone’s so worried about being censored, let’s put some speech cards on the table. Let it rip! |
Deep Science: AI cuts, flows and goes green | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 4 | 16 | Research in the field of machine learning and AI, now a key technology in practically every industry and company, is far too voluminous for anyone to read it all. This column aims to collect some of the most relevant recent discoveries and papers — particularly in, but not limited to, artificial intelligence — and explain why they matter. This week AI applications have been found in several unexpected niches due to its ability to sort through large amounts of data, or alternatively make sensible predictions based on limited evidence. We’ve seen machine learning models taking on big datasets in biotech and finance, but researchers at ETH Zurich and LMU Munich are applying similar techniques to such as disaster relief and housing. The team trained its model on millions of projects (amounting to $2.8 trillion in funding) from the last 20 years, an enormous dataset that is too complex to be manually analyzed in detail. “You can think of the process as an attempt to read an entire library and sort similar books into topic-specific shelves. Our algorithm takes into account 200 different dimensions to determine how similar these 3.2 million projects are to each other — an impossible workload for a human being,” said study author Malte Toetzke. Very top-level trends suggest that spending on inclusion and diversity has increased, while climate spending has, surprisingly, decreased in the last few years. Another area few people think about is the large number of machine parts and components that are produced by various industries at an enormous clip. Some can be reused, some recycled, others must be disposed of responsibly — but there are too many for human specialists to go through. German R&D outfit Fraunhofer has so they can be put to use instead of heading to the scrap yard. Fraunhofer The system relies on more than ordinary camera views, since parts may look similar but be very different, or be identical mechanically but differ visually due to rust or wear. So each part is also weighed and scanned by 3D cameras, and metadata like origin is also included. The model then suggests what it thinks the part is so the human inspecting it doesn’t have to start from scratch. It’s hoped that tens of thousands of parts will soon be saved, and the processing of millions accelerated, by using this AI-assisted identification method. Physicists have found an interesting way to bring ML’s qualities to bear on a centuries-old problem. Essentially researchers are always looking for ways to show that the equations that govern fluid dynamics (some of which, like Euler’s, date to the 18th century) are incomplete — that they break at certain extreme values. Using traditional computational techniques this is difficult to do, though not impossible. But researchers at CIT and Hang Seng University in Hong Kong propose a new deep learning method to isolate likely instances of fluid dynamics singularities, while others are applying the technique in other ways to the field. . Another centuries-old concept getting an ML layer is kirigami, the art of paper-cutting that many will be familiar with in the context of creating paper snowflakes. The technique goes back centuries in Japan and China in particular, and can produce remarkably complex and flexible structures. Researchers at Argonne National Labs took inspiration from the concept to that can retain electronics at microscopic scale but also flex easily. The team had been doing tens of thousands of experiments with one-six cuts manually, and used that data to train the model. They then used a Department of Energy supercomputer to perform simulations down to the molecular level. In seconds it produced a 10-cut variation with 40% stretchability, far beyond what the team had expected or even tried on their own. Argonne National Labs “It has figured out things we never told it to figure out. It learned something the way a human learns and used its knowledge to do something different,” said project lead Pankaj Rajak. The success has spurred them to increase the complexity and scope of the simulation. Another interesting extrapolation done by a specially trained AI has a computer vision model reconstructing color data from infrared inputs. Normally a camera capturing IR wouldn’t know anything about what color an object was in the visible spectrum. But this experiment found correlations between certain IR bands and visible ones, and to convert images of human faces captured in IR into ones that approximate the visible spectrum. It’s still just a proof of concept, but such spectrum flexibility could be a useful tool in science and photography. — “The whole reason we’re having this conversation to begin with is that companies like Google and OpenAI had effectively infinite funding, and chose to leverage it to build models like GPT-3 and BERT at any cost, because they knew it gave them an advantage,” The last topic for this week isn’t actually about machine learning exactly, but rather what might be a way forward in simulating the brain in a more direct way. created a mathematical model for creating tons of unique but accurate simulated neurons that could eventually be used to build digital twins of neuroanatomy. “The findings are already enabling Blue Brain to build biologically detailed reconstructions and simulations of the mouse brain, by computationally reconstructing brain regions for simulations which replicate the anatomical properties of neuronal morphologies and include region specific anatomy,” said researcher Lida Kanari. Don’t expect sim-brains to make for better AIs — this is very much in pursuit of advances in neuroscience — but perhaps the insights from simulated neuronal networks may lead to fundamental improvements to the understanding of the processes AI seeks to imitate digitally. |
Meet the Zoox robotaxi alongside co-founder Jesse Levinson at TC Sessions: Mobility 2022 | Kirsten Korosec | 2,022 | 4 | 16 | In the 18 months since the Zoox robotaxi made its virtual debut, the custom-built vehicle has been largely under wraps. That is, until , a two-day in-person event scheduled for May 18 and May 19 in San Mateo. Co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson will introduce the Zoox robotaxi for its first IRL public appearance on our main stage. The debut, which will include an interview with Levinson, will finally give the audience an up close view at what the company built — and maybe reveal what its future holds. Zoox has been working since 2014 to develop a self-driving system, fleet management software, on-demand ride-hailing app as well as a vehicle in an aim to launch a commercial robotaxi service. The company, which was acquired by Amazon two years ago, has showing the cube-shaped, four-seater, sensor-laden vehicle in action. Now, it’s time to see it in person. We’ll also sit down with Levinson to get an update on the company, a progress report on how production of the Zoox robotaxi is scaling, where it might be testing next and his insights on the industry. In his role at Zoox, Levinson is responsible for overseeing the company’s software, artificial intelligence, computing and sensing platforms. Prior to Zoox, Levinson graduated summa cum laude from Princeton and then completed a computer science Ph.D. and postdoc under Sebastian Thrun at Stanford. While at Stanford, he developed algorithms for the in the , and he went on to lead the self-driving car team’s research efforts. Levinson also co-created Pro HDR, a popular mobile photography app purchased by more than a million people. Don’t miss out on what promises to be an illuminating conversation! breaks through the hype and goes beyond the headlines to discover how merging technology and transportation will affect a broad swath of industries, cities and the people who work and live in them. !
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This Week in Apps: Elon bids for Twitter, WhatsApp adds Communities, Spotify goes ‘Live’ | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 4 | 16 | Welcome back to This Week in Apps, that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the year-end . Global spending across iOS, Google Play and third-party Android app stores in China to reach $170 billion. Downloads of apps also grew by 5%, reaching 230 billion in 2021, and mobile ad spend grew 23% year over year to reach $295 billion. Today’s consumers now spend more time in apps than ever before — even topping the time they spend watching TV, in some cases. The average American watches 3.1 hours of TV per day, for example, but in 2021, they spent 4.1 hours on their mobile device. And they’re not even the world’s heaviest mobile users. In markets like Brazil, Indonesia and South Korea, users surpassed five hours per day in mobile apps in 2021. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours, either. They can grow to become huge businesses. In 2021, 233 apps and games in consumer spend, and 13 topped $1 billion in revenue. This was up 20% from 2020, when 193 apps and games topped $100 million in annual consumer spend, and just eight apps topped $1 billion. This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place, with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and suggestions about new apps to try, too. TechCrunch Last , Elon Musk bought a huge stake in Twitter ( ) and was joining Twitter’s board. And then . Now . Or maybe not. In his offer letter, he said Twitter has to be “transformed as a private company.” If Twitter refuses his bid — which — Musk warned he would “need to reconsider” his position as a Twitter shareholder. Who knows, maybe that was the plan all along?! He then went onstage at a TED event to tell the audience that, “I am not sure that I will actually be able to acquire it.” No, way, really? Musk’s $54.20 per share offer — get it? 420? WEED! — was a joke? Who could have guessed it? Ugh, billionaires. Musk is playing with Twitter as if it’s a toy, either as a for a little cash (the dump part’s pending…as of the time of writing on Friday), or to give himself a few minutes of attention like: Or because he liked to briefly envision himself as Twitter’s new king. Or because he got bored. Or all of the above. Okay, sure, whatever. It’s all been a ridiculous circus and one that’s not helping a company that’s in terms of product development efforts, amid a transitional period where it was going to be able to redefine itself under a new CEO following Jack Dorsey’s departure. Musk wouldn’t have much time to devote to actually running Twitter, if he bought it, given his leadership positions as the chief exec at both SpaceX and Telsa. Mostly, he seems to want to throw his money around so that Twitter has to listen to his ideas: how about ad-free Twitter Blue?, instant verification for Blue subscribers? and, of course, how about turning down those pesky content moderation dials? Like way, down? If successful on the latter point, Twitter wouldn’t be improved — it would be chaos. Or worse, Parler. But in the wake of Musk’s , Twitter’s future — regardless of whether he himself buys it — is no certain. Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks at IAPP (International Association of Privacy Professionals) Global Summit 2022 in Washington, DC. Apple Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage this week at IAPP’s Global Privacy Summit to once again call out companies whose business model is built on mining users’ data — a not-so-subtle reference to Facebook, whose ability to serve personalized ads was impacted by Apple’s App Store privacy changes . The exec also reiterated Apple’s position against sideloading — the practice of loading apps onto mobile devices from outside the App Store. Although Google has long allowed its users to install Android apps outside the Play Store, Apple has staunchly resisted the idea, saying it puts users’ privacy and security at risk from bad actors. The company a 31-page explaining why it believes sideloading apps could lead to an increase in malware and scams, which would outweigh the consumer benefits of alternative app stores where fees may be reduced as developers could avoid paying Apple’s commissions. Apple critics, of course, believe the company’s position is more about its desire to maintain its tight grip on the mobile app ecosystem and its accompanying App Store revenues. Fortnite maker Epic Games, for instance, is appealing a lower court’s ruling over the App Store business model’s anti-competitive nature. The gaming company wants to serve its mobile games to users outside the App Store to avoid paying Apple commissions, but Apple insists that opening up the iPhone to third-party stores or web downloads is a slippery slope. Apple proponents often agree that there are risks involved with sideloading, as Apple states. For instance, Apple’s documentation pointed out that Android devices were found to have 15-47x more malware infections than iPhones over the past four years, citing data from Nokia’s prior Threat Intelligence Reports. But bills that would permit sideloading in the U.S., which Cook specifically spoke about today, saying they “could put our privacy and security at risk,” and were of deep concern to Apple. Notably, he didn’t only focus on how sideloading could increase the risks of malware, but also on how companies could use the feature to route around Apple’s existing privacy protection to once again track users’ data. “To be clear, Apple is in favor of privacy regulation. We have long been supporters of the GDPR and we applaud the many countries that have enacted privacy laws of their own. We also continue to call for a strong comprehensive privacy law in the United States. And we are grateful to all the global leaders who are working to advance privacy rights, including the rights of children in particular,” Cook said. “But we are deeply concerned about regulations that would undermine privacy and security in service of some other aim. Here in Washington and elsewhere, policymakers are taking steps, in the name of competition, that would force Apple to let apps onto iPhone that circumvent the App Store through a process called sideloading. That means data-hungry companies would be able to avoid our privacy rules, and once again track our users against their will,” he added. Cook also pointed to how sideloading enabled users to be infected with ransomware during the pandemic after being tricked into installing illegitimate COVID-tracing apps. The scheme, he said, “directly targeted those who could install apps from websites that lack the App Store’s defenses.” Given how many scammy apps slip through the cracks of the “App Store’s defenses” these days, a world where there’s no moderation at all could, in fact, be worse. The real question is whether or not individuals should have the right to take on that risk for themselves. Elsewhere in the speech, Cook raised concerns about companies that data-mine users for profit. Though tech rivals like Google and Facebook were not mentioned by name in the speech, they were clearly the intended targets of some of Cook’s remarks. At one point, he alluded to companies tracking user data as an “emergency.” “At this very moment, companies are mining data about the details of our lives. The shops and restaurants we frequent. The causes we support. The websites we choose to read. These companies defend their actions as pure of intention, as the work of better serving us with more targeted experiences,” said Cook. “But they don’t believe we should have a real choice in the matter. They don’t believe that they should need our permission to peer so deeply into our personal lives.” To illustrate the problem, Cook painted a dramatic picture of what this would look like if it took place in the physical world, calling it an “emergency.” “Imagine a stranger following you as you take your child to school, holding a camera outside the driver’s side window, recording everything you do. Imagine you open your computer and the stranger is suddenly watching your every keystroke. You wouldn’t call that a service. You would call it an emergency. In the digital world, it is one too,” he said. TikTok Snap WhatsApp Tinder Spotify . The deal values the company at $31.5 billion. Epic said the funding will go toward its plans to build out a kid-friendly metaverse in addition to supporting its further growth. , two years after raising its $2 million seed. The app offers free bank accounts, interbank transfers, peer-to-peer transfers and bill payments. led by Smash Capital, along with $115 million in debt. The app targets front-line workers and others paid in hourly wages. . The deal will help Twitter to enhance its push notifications via on-device data processing, unlike conventional push notification SDKs. from CCB Trust, a subsidiary of China Construction Bank, GGV Capital and real-time communication solution provider Agora. Cocos is best known for its cross-platform, open source engine for 2D mobile games. . The round was led by SIG Venture Capital, bringing its valuation to $1.4 billion. , bringing its funding to $282.5 million. The company offers apps for iOS and Android focused on streamlining ordering for the food industry. bringing its total funding to $53 million. The app offers subscriptions from $13 per month, allowing users to access therapists, therapist-created mental health programs and resources, events and more. . The company had previously raised $200,000 in its first seed round from angel investors last year after its July launch. The startup claims nearly ~50,000 downloads after launching in India. Pokémon GO maker Niantic the upcoming launch of its latest augmented reality mobile game Peridot. Unlike prior efforts, this game is not based on other companies’ intellectual property, but will instead allow users to care for virtual, magical animals called Peridots. The Dots, as they’re called for short, will be able to distinguish between different types of terrain when viewed in AR and will acquire different types of items based on their surroundings, as well. Players will also be able to breed Dots when they reach adulthood to unlock new types of virtual pets. The new game will soft-launch this month in select test markets on iOS and Android. You can read more about what the game will bring . And lastly, because Apple won't cede an inch in the in-app purchase space, you also have to pop a modal before the link saying HERE BE DRAGONS: — Jens-Fabian Goetzmann (@MrJefago) I've now been asked multiple times for my take on Elon's offer for Twitter. So fine, this is what I think about that. I will assume the takeover succeeds, and he takes Twitter private. (I have little knowledge/insight into how actual takeover battles work or play out) (long 🧵) — Yishan (@yishan) |
Neobank Fi finalizing funding at $700 million valuation | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 4 | 16 | Indian neobank Fi is in advanced stages of talks to raise about $100 million at a $700 million valuation, according to three sources familiar with the matter. Alpha Wave Global, formerly known as Falcon Edge Capital, is leading the round, sources said. Singapore’s Temasek is also in talks to invest in the new round, one of the sources said. Fi, a two-year-old startup consisting of payments and other consumer tech executives from Google, Netflix and PayPal, declined to comment on Saturday. The deal hasn’t closed yet, so the terms may change, sources cautioned. The new round deliberation comes just five months after the Bengaluru-headquartered startup raised about $50 million in a round led by B Capital Group, also in November. That round valued Fi, formerly known as EpiFi, at $315 million. The startup, which competes with Tiger Global-backed Jupiter, has on-boarded about 1.2 million users to date, another source familiar with the matter said. |
null | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 4 | 29 | null |
Let’s stop pretending there are silos in startupland | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 4 | 16 | thinking a lot about silos, or the lack thereof, within startupland. There’s sometimes an artificial wall that is put up between companies at different stages of growth, when in reality, everyone is in the same room, clinking glasses and tripping over the same rug. Let me be more precise. As the late-stage market has cooled down for tech companies, many early-stage investors say their portfolio companies aren’t too impacted because they’re years away from an exit and have enough capital to weather uncertainty. The same energy was on display this week at TechCrunch Early Stage. Stellation Capital’s Peter Boyce II coyly told me that, based on the term sheet he wrote yesterday, we’re still definitely in a founder-friendly market, while a pair of entrepreneurs not so subtly reminded me that experimental bets are still I believe in optimism and think of this time in early-stage startups as a , not a reckoning. But, does show that dollars are changing across the board. The latest report says that venture-backed companies attracted nearly $71 billion during Q1, behind in pace from every quarter in 2021 but still ahead of pre-pandemic totals. Digging more deeper into the seed stage, the research team reports that seed deal sizes are starting to look more toward historical norms than outsized absurdities (OK, OK I made that last part up). At the same time, valuations continue to grow with the median pre-money valuation at $12 million. A fun dichotomy investors have to pay a pretty penny for. |
Musk sells $8.5 billion worth of Tesla shares | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 4 | 28 | Elon Musk sold around 9.6 million shares of Tesla stock this week, worth about $8.5 billion, according to regulatory filings. Musk still holds about 16% of the automaker. The value of the sales in the filings disclosed were initially around $4 billion, per TechCrunch calculations. Later filings showed sales more than double that initial amount. The executive said in a tweet on Thursday: “No further TSLA sales planned after today.” The filings don’t reveal why Musk sold his shares, The money could possibly go toward his recent controversial plans to purchase social media platform Twitter; however, $9.6 billion makes just a dent in the . If Musk backs out of the deal, , per the termination fee of the deal with Twitter, so at least that amount would be covered by these sales. No further TSLA sales planned after today — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) |
Glorang scores $10M Series A to expand its edtech marketplace across Asia | Kate Park | 2,022 | 4 | 28 | The coronavirus pandemic has forced students in many parts of the globe to become online learners; t |
Airbnb commits to fully remote workplace: ‘Live and work anywhere’ | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 4 | 28 | Airbnb is going all in on the “live anywhere, work anywhere” philosophy that much of the business world has been forced to adopt, committing to full-time remote work for most employees as well as a handful of perks, like 90 days of international work/travel. It’s a strong, simple policy that so few large companies have had the guts to match. In an email to employees (or was it a blog post emailed to employees?), and in a Twitter thread for those who can’t be bothered, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky outlined the new policy, summing it up in five points: They’re pretty self-explanatory, obviously, but just to be clear, let’s run them down. Apart from “a small number of roles” for whom presence in an office or location is required (and who probably already know this), all employees can work from wherever they want. If you want to move, as long as you stay within the country, your pay won’t change. Wherever you go in the U.S., for instance, you’ll get the same pay, and one hopes it’ll be enough whether you live in a small town in Colorado or midtown Manhattan. Sadly, if you decide you want to move permanently to London or Seoul, this is “much more complex, so we won’t be able to support those this year.” Though workers will need a permanent address, they’ll have dozens of companies and locations to work from for up to 90 days a year — so stay over in Lisbon for a bit and work from that villa for a week or two after your vacation. Why not? Well, possibly because remote work visas may not be available for those areas, but that’s all a work in progress. (They’re adding partners to a big list over .) Chesky says they’ll all “meet up regularly,” even though Airbnb probably has about 15,000 employees at this point. That’s even more than TechCrunch! They’ll have “limited off-sites” in 2022, which is probably smart, but next year you can “expect to gather in person every quarter for about a week at a time.” I really don’t understand how they can possibly get any work done over there. The last point seems kind of superfluous and self-congratulatory, but it is probably good to officially note that the general shape of working at the company, or how people are managed and so on, won’t change due to this new policy. Many companies have announced tentative policies with the understanding that they would be revisited in a few months. There’s a lot of talk about the “hybrid” or “flex” model where employees work from the office a few days, then from home the rest of the time. Depending on where and how you work, this could be the best or worst of both worlds. But it does suggest a certain lack of decisiveness in leadership. (Among the early adopters of full time remote work , which may soon be under .) And then there’s the safety and liability question. Activision Blizzard, already kind of fubar, mandated a return to the office, . As someone , “do not die for this company,” or any company for that matter. Perhaps Airbnb will be the guinea pig for this particular type of “fully remote workplace” and all the other companies will be watching and waiting for the company to stub its toe on some huge new tax burden or productivity issue. But the simplicity and flexibility of the policy, international legal restrictions notwithstanding, may outweigh any new troubles it creates. |
Revise raises $3.5 million to build rails for programming NFTs | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 4 | 28 | A popular criticism of NFTs is that they are just static JPEG files. Technically, they are not, of course. They are pieces of code on a blockchain, which means they can be programmed to have various qualities. The NFTs that go on sale on marketplaces such as OpenSea are already programmed with instructions on the royalties to be provided to the owner, for instance. But what if they could be programmed to do much more? That’s a trend we have seen in recent quarters. Pearpop introduced dynamic NFTs earlier this year that The NFTs on Axie Infinity change their properties as a user makes inroads in the game. A new startup, called , is attempting to productize this ability. It offers developers the ability to make their own NFTs interact with data feeds of their choice, which could be a web3 platform such as Chainlink or a Web 2.0 outlet like Weather.com. The goal, as the startup explains it, is to make the NFTs change their properties based on events. For instance, a soccer NFT could hypothetically interact with data from FIFA and change its property or media content based on the real-world performance on the field. “What programmable NFT allows you to do is also leverage the user’s interaction or skill to make the properties rarer,” said , co-founder and chief executive of Revise, in an interview with TechCrunch. By programming NFTs based on users’ interactions, developers can incentivize them to participate more in their projects, said Vaisoha, who co-founded Revise with . Revise is also adding a layer of governance for the storage through its data structure to help developers handle disputes in a trustable manner. “Currently, an issue with dynamic NFTs is that your data has to be off-chain. Imagine you’re playing a game and you have to wait for the block time for your gaming character to update. Most people end up storing the NFT on an AWS S3 or a different web2 layer,” he said. “That’s what our data structure is built to solve.” Revise is initially launching with the Polygon blockchain, but plans to expand to other blockchains in the future. Its SDK is live in private beta on NPM, and the startup has amassed some customers already, including Ludo Labs. The startup said on Friday it has raised $3.5 million in its seed round. Alpha Wave Global and 8i co-led the round. Bharat Founders Fund and a number of entrepreneurs, including Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal, DeFi Pulse founder Scott Lewis, AngelList India head Utsav Somani, The Graph’s Pranav Maheshwari, and Treebo founder Rahul Chaudhary also participated in the round. “The entire NFT space has seen a massive narrative shift as people have discovered that NFTs can be more than just digital collectables or static assets. We see this shift happen in Gaming most prominently, but the abstract concept is broadly applicable to any real-world asset that can be tokenized. Further, as more complex utilities are built on NFTs, the aspect of traceability and transparency in governance will become front and centre,” said Tushar Behl of Alpha Wave Global, in a statement. “We loved Revise and the founders for their deep product insight and a forward-looking vision of the space. What the team at Revise is building can become the most fundamental layer for NFT provenance and programming, much like Chainlink did for Defi!” |
Apple’s services revenue hits a record $19.8B in Q2, reaches 825M paid subscriptions | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 4 | 28 | Amid , Apple also delivered record-breaking services revenue up 17% year over year to reach $19.8 billion. The category — which includes businesses like the App Store, Apple TV+, Apple Music, cloud services and others — also grew to reach 825 million paid subscriptions on Apple’s platform. This figure is up more than 165 million in the last 12 months alone, Apple said. The company highlighted a few of its recent achievements in the services category, including Apple TV+ becoming the first streaming service to win an Academy Award for Best Picture, for its movie “Coda.” Apple also noted its Apple TV+ shows had earned over 240 awards and more than 960 nominations to date. The streaming service recently added live sports content with the addition of Friday Night Baseball, which launched earlier this month, along with other new titles. In addition to setting an all-time revenue record in the services category, Apple set all-time records for the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Care and cloud services, it said. Meanwhile, its video advertising and payment services set March quarter records. During the last 12 months, Apple said it had generated $75 billion in services revenue. “These impressive results reflect the impact of our continued investment in improving and expanding our services portfolio and the positive momentum that we’re seeing on many fronts,” noted Luca Maestri, Apple’s CFO. He attributed the growth to other factors as well, including Apple’s growing device install base, which also reached an all-time high across each geographic segment and major product category. Plus, Apple customers are increasingly engaging with the services Apple offers. “We have more transacting accounts, more paying accounts, more accounts with subscriptions — the absolute amount of paid subscriptions on our platform is pretty impressive: 825 million. It’s an increase of 165 million in the last 12 months alone. So you can even tell that this is great growth,” said Maestri. The company has also been adding new services over the last few years and plans to “add new services and new features,” he hinted. While the majority of today’s Apple services are aimed at consumers, Apple said that it sees enterprise as a great opportunity going forward, following its recent launch of Apple Business Essentials, which was aimed more at the SMB market. “But we know that enterprise, in general, as a market is a very interesting market for us, and we’re putting a lot of effort and focus on it. And we believe we have really good opportunities to grow,” said Maestri. However, Apple did warn that while it expects services to continue to grow in double digits in the coming year, it does anticipate services growth to decelerate from its March quarter’s performance due to various factors including the supply chain constraints impacting Apple’s ability to ship enough products to meet customer demand, foreign exchange rates and the pausing of all sales in Russia, which took place in March. The company said the growth rate for the June quarter is expected to be less than the 17% that it reported in In March, as a result. |
Daily Crunch: In latest earnings release, Twitter admits to miscounting users for the second time | Christine Hall | 2,022 | 4 | 28 | It’s Thursday, April 28, 2022, and Haje’s blood pressure is slowly returning to what passes for normal after . Look, it’s hard to get used to the quirks and foibles of a new country, OK? Nobody tell him about how healthcare works in this country, please; we’d never hear the end of it. In other news, TechCrunch has a shiny new fintech newsletter launching on Sunday. ! The third ep of our crypto and blockchain podcast, “Chain Reaction,” is out today, so . Friday tomorrow, woohoo! – and One of our favorite things about putting the Daily Crunch together is that we get to cheer on our colleagues and read their fantastic work. Today, it’s a -o-rama. He wrote about how to create synthetic data to improve computer vision and how payroll provider to make employee payouts smoother. to continue creating a search-and-browse plugin for web apps, and to help companies build natural-language processing apps. Kyle, your fingers must be exhausted — go treat yourself to a cup of coffee and a round of baseball or something. We love Christine’s story of Lemon Perfect’s investor journey with the queen bee: . Also! We a series of pitch deck teardowns, and we are . Get involved! More news than you can shake a cap table at: / Getty Images In a fireside chat at TechCrunch Early Stage, Frederique Dame, an investing partner at GV who previously led product and engineering teams at Uber, Yahoo and Smugmug, shared her thoughts about product-market fit. Dame addressed several issues, including the need to collect customer data as early as possible, strategies for iterating and testing without tapping engineering resources, and, notably, why founders should make themselves vulnerable when pitching investors: “Trust me with what you don’t know or what’s not working” she said, “because once we invest, we’re going to have to work on this stuff anyway.” : We already talked about Google and Facebook in the Top 3, so let’s start off this section with a little bit of Amazon. The company launched its movie rental service in India, with over 40 original and co-produced shows and movies that will enable customers to get early access to both Indian and foreign movies. : Today’s earnings are brought to you by the letter “T,” which rhymes with “P,” and that spells . Meta’s , but Facebook gained users. : It looks like Microsoft will be adding another company to its family. . Meanwhile, , a YC-backed company that will give the bug bounty company some code-review skills. : He is probably going to win with the Twitter deal, but he can definitely put a checkmark in the “win” category here. A Delaware judge ruled in his favor following a brought by Tesla shareholders that accused Musk of coercing Tesla’s board into buying SolarCity back in 2016. : Our reporters were busy covering Snap today in assorted stories we will bullet below. We would like to highlight that it created a new gadget that will have you forgetting what a selfie stick is. Pixy, Snap’s mini drone, is your camera when you don’t have anyone else to hold your phone. Also: |
Apple sold a lot of iPhones last quarter. And Macs. And also Watches. And other stuff, too. | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 4 | 28 | Apple earnings today found the company busting all sorts of records for hardware sales. In a release, the firm notes that it hit March quarter revenue records for iPhone, Mac and the combined Wearables, Home and Accessories category, which includes all sorts of products like Apple Watch and Airpods. iPhones sales jumped 5% year over year for the quarter, to $50.6 billion. That news comes as the company has bolstered its supply chain relationships while a number of fellow hardware makers have struggled to keep on top of component shortages. The figures stand in stark contrast to the ongoing struggles of other phone makers. Macs, meanwhile, saw the biggest overall relative jump among hardware offerings, up 15% year over year to $10.4 billion. The category has been seeing strong quarters of late, courtesy of Apple silicon-fueled reinvigoration. Refreshed stalwarts like the iMac and Mac Pro, coupled with new entries like the Mac Studio have fueled a renewed interest in the space. Add to that the overall bump in the PC market, as work setups continue to evolve during the pandemic. The Wearables, Home and Accessories category rose 12% to $8.8 billion. The one dim spot is, once again, iPad. Sales for the tablet dropped 2% from the same quarter last year. All of that, coupled with 17% growth for Services add up to a truly stellar quarter for the company — an impressive feat amid widespread global uncertainty. “This quarter’s record results are a testament to Apple’s relentless focus on innovation and our ability to create the best products and services in the world,” Tim Cook said in tied to the financials. |
Bitcoin miners say energy efficiency and regulatory certainty are crucial for the industry’s success | Jacquelyn Melinek | 2,022 | 4 | 28 | criticized as an imperfect process due to its energy expenditure, but major firms in the industry are trying to maximize efficiency and sustainability while seeking regulatory clarity. In a dimly lit room at the FTX and SALT’s Crypto Bahamas event, some of the largest crypto miners in the world took the stage to discuss the future of the nascent but growing industry in the “Crypto Mining: Maximizing Efficiency and Sustainability” panel. are looking to improve their market through efforts ranging from improving hashrate efficiency, which is the amount of power that a machine requires to produce a bitcoin, to data mining centers becoming more specialized and optimized for lower energy consumption, Marco Streng, CEO and co-founder of Genesis Digital Assets, said at the event. Computers that mine bitcoin are than they were eight years ago, according to a report by the Bitcoin Mining Council. In addition to machines becoming more efficient, the engineering of the facilities and the sources of power have become much more efficient, which improves the productivity of an individual bitcoin mining computer, Mike Levitt, co-chairman, co-founder and CEO of Core Scientific, said. Some miners are even using excess heat and converting it into close to 100% heat-generated energy, which would otherwise be wasted but instead is being channeled into energy, Streng said. “It’s clear now that miners are converging toward renewable sources,” Streng said. Out of all the energy that gets generated and used in the U.S., about 65% was wasted in 2021, according to a by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a research facility funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and UC Berkeley. Miners can be a solution to the problem of unconsumed energy, Streng said. Jaime Leverton, CEO of Hut 8, agreed. “By working together with a local power grid, we actually are a stabilizer,” Leverton said. The amount of energy that it takes for Bitcoin to produce $1 billion worth of value is significantly less than the amount of energy it takes for something like an airline to produce $1 billion worth of value, Brian Brooks, CEO of Bitfury, said. A key point that’s hurting the crypto mining industry right now is the lack of regulatory clarity, all the panelists said. “Once we get [regulation], we think the pace of innovation should pick up because we’ll know the rules of the game,” Levitt said. “The efficiency of the hardware has improved tremendously, the efficiency of power provision and the free markets have directed us to be cognizant of how we bring power the right way. “ |
DJI suspends sales in Ukraine and Russia | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 4 | 28 | The Russia-Ukraine war is far from the first time DJI has has . But the Shenzhen-based drone giant is trying its best to stay away from any implication that it might be taking sides in the on-going conflict. Following calls to halt sales in Russian, the firm issued a statement titled “DJI Reassesses Sales Compliance Efforts In Light Of Current Hostilities,” which announces a suspension of business in both countries, “pending [ … ] review.” The full statement is as follows, DJI is internally reassessing compliance requirements in various jurisdictions. Pending the current review, DJI will temporarily suspend all business activities in Russia and Ukraine. We are engaging with customers, partners and other stakeholders regarding the temporary suspension of business operations in the affected territories. The company, which became a favorite target of the Trump administration, has been working to avoid accusations that it’s been favoring any one side in the conflict. Ukraine officials have, however, that the company might have intentionally sabotaged its products. For its part, DJI has insisted that its products are not sold for military purposes. Earlier this month, the company reiterating the message, noting in part, “Our distributors, resellers, and other business partners have committed to following it when they sell and use our products. They agree not to sell DJI products to customers who clearly plan to use them for military purposes, or help modify our products for military use, and they understand we will terminate our business relationship with them if they cannot adhere to this commitment.” — DJI (@DJIGlobal) In March, the company responded to a statement from Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, on Twitter, noting that it would set up geofencing upon request. The company was also quick to point out that a determined drone pilot could easily circumvent such restrictions. “Please be aware that geofencing is not foolproof,” the company wrote, “and if the user does not connect to the internet to update the geofence data, the new geofence will not take effect for the drone.” Such a statement does highlight some bigger issues with current drone safety systems, military use or no. |
MIT develops a speaker thinner than sheet music | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 4 | 28 | If you’re into cars, you may have heard of vinyl wrapping, which can change the appearance of a car. Engineers from MIT have taken a similarly thin material and created a skinny film that can turn pretty much any surface into a speaker. According to its inventors, it can create high-quality audio with minimal power consumption. To achieve these properties, the researchers created a fabrication technique. They claim it can be scaled up to produce ultra-thin loudspeakers large enough to cover the inside of an automobile or to wallpaper a room, whispering a promise of immersive sound without an obvious source. The audio nerd in me is definitely feeling a cochlear hard-on coming on. (Yes, that’s a dick joke, but if your cochlear fuzzies were to stiffen you’d be deaf, so anatomically it makes absolutely no sense. The lengths I’m willing to go to for an infantile joke are legendary.) The loudspeaker could be used in active noise cancellation, for example — combine the speaker tech with some electronics and microphones, and it could cancel out sound. The inventors also envision immersive sound experiences, and other low-energy use cases such as smart devices, etc. “It feels remarkable to take what looks like a slender sheet of paper, attach two clips to it, plug it into the headphone port of your computer and start hearing sounds emanating from it. It can be used anywhere. One just needs a smidgeon of electrical power to run it,” says Vladimir Bulović, the Fariborz Maseeh Chair in Emerging Technology, leader of the Organic and Nanostructured Electronics Laboratory (ONE Lab), director of MIT.nano and senior author of the paper. Bulović wrote the paper with lead author Jinchi Han, a ONE Lab postdoc, and co-senior author Jeffrey Lang, the Vitesse professor of Electrical Engineering. The research is published today in IEEE Transactions of Industrial Electronics. Most thin-film loudspeakers are designed to be freestanding because the film must bend freely to produce sound. Mounting these loudspeakers onto a surface would impede the vibration and hamper their ability to generate sound. To overcome this problem, the MIT team rethought the design of a thin-film loudspeaker. Rather than having the entire material vibrate, their design relies on tiny domes on a thin layer of piezoelectric material that each vibrate individually. These domes, each only a few hair widths across, are surrounded by spacer layers on the top and bottom of the film that protect them from the mounting surface while still enabling them to vibrate freely. The same spacer layers protect the domes from abrasion and impact during day-to-day handling, enhancing the loudspeaker’s durability. “We have the ability to precisely generate mechanical motion of air by activating a physical surface that is scalable. The options of how to use this technology are limitless,” Bulović says. There’s no word on if or when the tech will see the light of day in consumer or commercial applications, but I’d wallpaper my living room in speakers in a heartbeat just to get rid of the wires and the speakers bolted to the wall. |
Why Latin America’s freight-forwarding opportunity is still attracting capital | Anna Heim | 2,022 | 4 | 28 | money into Latin America’s logistics and shipping businesses,” our former colleague Jon Shieber . But a pandemic later, amid unrest over gasoline prices across the globe, it’s time for a revisit. (YC W19) is a good starting point for comparison. In February 2019, the Mexican startup was just graduating from Y Combinator, and in Shieber’s words, “sett[ing] itself up to be the Flexport of Latin America.” Fast-forward to today, and Nowports has raised $92.6 million in funding, including a . Examples like this abound as investors have shown bullishness for freight forwarding all over the world. The pandemic played a role in boosting logistics startups, shining a light on how essential supply chains are. But venture capital keeps on flowing even as COVID-19 wanes, recent news shows. Just this month, TechCrunch reported on three fundraising events in the freight-forwarding world. Seattle-based Convoy is valued at up to $3.8 billion following . Nigeria’s OnePort that will help it expand to three major African hubs by the end of the year. And in Latin America, DeltaX has its eyes set on the Andean region . Digitizing freight forwarding is a global challenge because the sector still lacks transparency and efficiency. Latin American startups have a steeper hill to climb, but this also drives them to innovate and help each other in interesting ways. In Latin America, the problem isn’t just that freight forwarding is still very much analog — it is also suboptimized. In the region, “trucking demand outpaces capacity, yet 40% of the time trucks roll empty,” according to Mexican startup (YC W20). According to , whose fund Investo backed BeGo and Nowports, the two startups represent the sector’s main models: marketplaces and freight forwarders. Other examples would be Brazil’s on the marketplace side and on the freight-forwarding side. However, business models in Latin America are often blended, and Nuvocargo is a good example of this. |
Netflix layoffs hit Tudum, its editorial arm, just five months after launch | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 4 | 28 | Netflix laid off a contingent of its editorial staff just after launching its in-house publication Tudum. Netflix declined to share further details, but said that the Tudum is not being shut down. Over ten writers have tweeted that they were laid off, including an editorial manager. The layoffs reportedly total across Netflix’s marketing department. “Our fan website Tudum is an important priority for the company,” a Netflix spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch. Given the precariousness (and often low salaries) in traditional journalism jobs, Netflix managed to court a number of talented journalists from the top publications in online media, including many people of color, according to tweets by former employees. While it’s good to know that Netflix is considering DEI when hiring — something that newsrooms severely lack — the quick layoffs put historically overlooked writers back in a position of vulnerability. Media businesses take time to grow, and in this case, it appears that people were let go before they really had a chance to develop a new publication from the ground up. As competitor services like Disney+ and HBO Max grow, Netflix is struggling to keep up. The streaming service last week that in the first quarter of 2022, it lost 200,000 subscribers — its first subscriber loss in . These losses are expected to continue, as Netflix forecasts a global paid subscriber loss of 2 million for the second quarter. Netflix has tried to squeeze more money out of customers by and that would charge extra for account sharing. But on the heels of last week’s bad earnings, it seems that Netflix decided to scale back its new content marketing business. Netflix told TechCrunch that these layoffs affected a combination of both contract workers and full-time employees, but declined to share if any other departments at Netflix were affected. |
Are bidirectional EV chargers ready for the home market? | Jim Motavalli | 2,022 | 4 | 28 | vehicle chargers are adept at taking power off the grid and delivering it to your car, but what if the vehicle could also automatically keep the lights on during blackouts and offset electricity costs by returning power to its source during high-demand times? A growing number of companies, including automakers GM and Ford, are touting the benefits of bidirectional charging for consumers. But research suggests advantages reach further than the individual EV owner. For instance, a from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory said that in California, which has the largest electric vehicle deployment in the U.S., “substantial capital investment, as much as several billion dollars, can be avoided if EVs are used in lieu of stationary storage.” Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and vehicle-to-home (V2H) charging — also called bidirectional charging — have long been the stuff of demonstration programs. Only recently has the technology emerged as a possible useful addendum to the more than 80% to 85% of EV charging that takes place at home. And with a stream of EVs coming on the market, the race to introduce bidirectional charging is heating up. Emporia At least two aftermarket suppliers say they will have bidirectional home products on the U.S. market soon, one later this year and the other in 2023. But because some automakers are developing proprietary bidirectional charging systems, the question becomes whether the supplier solutions will be able to plug into them — at least initially. It’s not a certainty at this point, but it does appear that the automakers want that to happen, and discussions about compatibility are underway. Shawn McLaughlin, CEO of Colorado-based , said in an interview it will have a 240-volt bidirectional home charger on sale in the U.S., priced at less than $1,500, in the second half of 2023. Emporia is working with a pioneer in the development of silicon carbide (SiC) transistors, on the inverter for its bidirectional charger. The company currently sells a $399 and a , among other products. McLaughlin said acquiring certification from global electric safety leader UL is the biggest hurdle to get the product on the market. As offered, it will integrate with the energy management system for such features as paused charging when air conditioning cycles on. “We’re super excited,” McLaughlin said. “It’s still early, but this is a natural evolution of the technology — it’s been mostly pilot programs. Most of the major car manufacturers have announced that they will support bidirectional EV charging in some form or fashion, including Volkswagen, Ford, Chevrolet, Kia and Rivian. It is evolving as we speak, and the key will be in what fashion each manufacturer supports it.” He said Tesla has been “quiet” about V2H and V2G, but he projects that the tech will eventually be integrated into the company’s charging. McLaughlin said that Emporia is building its bidirectional technology around the ISO 15118-20 communications protocol, which “is in final review.” A shows it in the approval stage. McLaughlin said his charger will be able to receive and return 240 volts back to the home with 11.5 kilowatts of power. Wallbox North America, an arm of a Spanish company, said that its forthcoming will be “fully compatible with EVs sold in North America.” The company said Quasar 2 will automatically take over in a power outage and power a home for more than three days. Wallbox recently launched its $699 (capable of responding to Alexa and Google Home voice commands) on the U.S. market. Wallbox One just needs to look at the number of products on the market to see that bidirectional charging industry is in its very early stages. Wallbox has sold the $3,600 Quasar 1 in Europe, but spokeswoman Elyce Behrsin declined to give an actual sales number. She said Quasar 1 is compatible with CHAdeMO bidirectional-enabled vehicles, including the Nissan Leaf and ENV-200, the Mitsubishi Outlander plug-in hybrid and the Kia Soul. She said that the 11.5-kilowatt Quasar 2, which will use the dominant Combined Charging System (CCS) protocol, will be on the U.S. market “during Q4 this year.” The list of EVs on the U.S. market is long and growing and Wallbox said it will be ready to sync up with them. “We are working with North American utilities, auto manufacturers and other partners to test and validate Quasar and our bidirectional charging technology to ensure compatibility with regional electrical standards and with EV makes and models sold in North America,” the company said. “Indeed, part of the future success of Quasar and bidirectional charging depends on more EVs being bidirectional-capable.” Other companies are working on bidirectional EV charging, including Rectifier Technologies, Delta and Nuuve. Jeff Wandell, manager of EV communications at Nissan Motor Corporation, confirmed the company is working with aftermarket suppliers. “At this time, there is not a Nissan-certified commercially available product on the market,” he said. “However, there are companies that are in the process of developing and certifying their equipment — such as Wallbox — and hope to be in the market soon. We actively work with a number of these companies to move this technology forward and make it available to Leaf owners.” Chris Martin, a spokesman for American Honda, said that the company has no U.S. news to share about bidirectional charging, but it’s being explored for the future. There are developments in Europe, particularly with automakers. Ford Motor Company Honda that it is partnering with the V2X Suisse consortium in a plan that will place 50 Honda electric vehicles with Switzerland’s Mobility car-sharing fleet at 40 sites. Equipped with Honda Power Manager units, the cars will “deliver V2G energy recovery capability for Mobility, at various urban and suburban sites across Switzerland.” The Honda e-cars will be able to feed 20 kilowatts of power back into the grid when plugged into the bidirectional station. Late last year, bidirectional charging “a ground-breaking technology” that will be on all ID. models with 77-kilowatt-hour batteries in the future. The company said its plan includes special DC BiDi wall boxes and that over-the-air updates can be used to retrofit the system to already delivered vehicles. And, according to a Rivian spokesperson, “All R1T and R1S vehicles have vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-home (V2H) capabilities. While bidirectional charging capabilities exist in Rivian vehicles, regulatory and other regional variables are a significant factor for potential future V2G applications.” Other automakers are working on proprietary charging systems, though they may not be plug and play. Startup EV maker Lucid said in 2020 that it was working with a for bidirectional V2G capability in the Air. And Ford will offer what it calls Intelligent Backup Power on the forthcoming F-150 Lightning electric truck. Ford will also partner with leading photovoltaic provider Sunrun on the use of energy storage and solar to power homes. The 80-amp will be required. “For the Lightning, it’s not going to work with a regular Level II charger,” said Sam Abuelsamid, principal analyst for e-mobility at Guidehouse Insights in Detroit. “It only outputs backup power over the DC pins. It’s designed to work specifically with a smart inverter system that includes a transfer switch to cut power from the grid and take it from the truck when power goes out, so that power isn’t flowing back to the grid. Right now, SunRun is the only company offering a compatible kit to enable this.” Marc Tarpenning, a co-founder of Tesla with Martin Eberhard, emphasizes that powering a house from a car requires critical safety protocols — it’s not a simple matter. Without protections in place, “the voltage you put into your house would flow to the power pole on your street and for a moment light up the high-voltage wires to 12,000 volts,” he said. “If a lineman happened to be working on those wires, like during a power outage, you would kill them pretty much instantly.” He added that “the house must totally disconnect from the grid before any power is applied internally. So, your EV could certainly power your house, but the power companies are very serious about generator setups, making sure that they have proper isolation ‘transfer’ switches in place.” Another challenge, according to Tarpenning, involves the smart inverter system Abuelsamid referenced. “The inverter in your car will have to be able to deal with the ‘inrush’ when you power up a house,” Tarpenning said. “For a moment, the house will draw a huge amount of current as everything comes to life. This isn’t a problem if the inverter is designed to handle that, but that will be a design change for most EV inverters.” Abuelsamid said that AC electricity can be taken off the Lightning through the ProPower onboard system with the optional 9.6-kilowatt output, “but I’m pretty sure that’s not going to work with the Quasar.” Hyundai models, limited to 1.9 kilowatts through an adapter that plugs into the J1772 connector, “might be capable of functioning with the Quasar with a suitable software update,” he said. “I’ve yet to see any details on how Lucid is implementing its bidirectional capability.” Ryan O’Gorman, Ford’s lead strategist for energy services, said in an email, “At this time, the F-150 Lightning isn’t compatible with other options. As we understand it, the ISO 15118-20 is not released yet. And as with the ISO and SAE charging standards in market today, when that 15118-20 standard is released — including bidirectional power transfer — one could expect manufacturers (like Ford) who have implemented accepted standards in the past to support those future standards. So, for now, the Ford Charge Station Pro would need to be installed with the Home Integration System that is available for purchase from Sunrun in 2022.” Abuelsamid’s colleague Scott Shepard, principal research analyst for energy at Guidehouse, said that Lucid’s bidirectional system is AC-based, with Lucid also providing the AC bidirectional charging unit. He added that Wallbox has “supported at least one V2G trial in Europe — Powerloop in the U.K., operated by Octopus Energy.” That trial, backed by the National Grid, involves more than 130 households in Great Britain. |
Google’s new user controls let you limit ads about weight loss, parenting and more | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 4 | 28 | Google is introducing new users controls to allow people to limit the number of ads they see about pregnancy, parenting, dating and weight loss. The company first announced in the United States and enabled users to choose to see fewer gambling and alcohol ads. Since the initial launch, these controls have rolled out to users globally for ads on YouTube. The company announced today that it’s expanding these controls with new ad categories for both YouTube and Gmail. The controls will also apply to third-party sites where Google serves ads. Google told TechCrunch in an email the controls currently don’t apply to Search ads, but the company is working to bring the feature to Search ads in the future. Google says it’s rolling out the new controls following feedback from users asking for more ads-level control, particularly about sensitive topics that they may want to avoid. “People want more control over their ads experience, including blocking ads or categories they prefer not to see,” Karin Hennessy, the group product manager for ads privacy at Google, said in a statement. “Providing transparency and control has always been a priority for us so we’re expanding our tools, enabling the choice to see fewer pregnancy and parenting, dating, and weight loss ads. We’ll continue to listen to user feedback and study which categories to expand this feature to in the future.” Google The user controls can be accessed in the Ad Settings section under the Google Account dashboard. From there, you can scroll down to the “Sensitive ad categories” section that will allow you to limit specific types of ads in the five available topics: alcohol, dating, gambling, pregnancy and parenting, and weight loss. You can then click on the “see fewer button,” after which Google will notify you that you should see fewer ads for this category when you are signed into your Google Account. It’s worth noting that this won’t change the total number of ads you see. In addition, Google notes that you may still see ads that refer to these categories when searching or viewing related content. The new controls are a welcome addition that should help address instances when specific online advertising can be disturbing for some users. For example, it can be harmful for someone suffering from an eating disorder to see ads about weight loss and someone struggling to get pregnant likely doesn’t want to see ads related to parenting. |
Techstars debuts new fund for companies too early for its own accelerator | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 4 | 28 | accelerator born in Boulder, Colorado, has always been comfortable carving out niches. Unlike perhaps its closest competitor, Y Combinator, Techstars has gone the divide and conquer route of early-stage startups support: Instead of one massive batch, it has dozens of dedicated programs all over the world, ranging from Tel Aviv to Lagos to Oak-Ridge Knoxville. While the geographic expansion has been aggressive, Techstars today announced another way it’s Rising Stars is a new pre-seed, pre-accelerator fund led by , head of Techstars startup pipeline, and , managing director of Techstars Chicago. Sticking with the Techstars ethos of building accelerators for overlooked geographies, in the United States. Per SEC filings, the Rising Stars fund has already closed $5 million in financing from limited partners, although sources familiar with the matter say that the team has closed $8 million and is targeting a final fund size of $10 million. Backers of the fund include Twitter, Amazon and Sandhill Angels. Rising Stars will cut $100,000 checks, in exchange for around a 7% to 10% ownership bite, compared to Techstars’ standard accelerator deal, in which it offers up to $120,000 in exchange for 6% of a business. Rising Stars is a pricier check for founders, but an earlier one too. said that this is Techstars’ first pre-seed fund, but may not be the last. The future iterations of this program could focus on international founders, he said via e-mail to TechCrunch. It’s wild that the world of early-stage startup investing has gotten so broad, and full of money, that even accelerators — programs literally launched to help startups get off the ground — have want to fund entrepreneurs even earlier. In other words, the earliest are going earlier. I’d argue this change is because of the , otherwise known as the trend of late-stage investors writing earlier and smaller checks to get target ownership. As a result of more money heading into seed and Series A rounds, accelerators and traditional early-stage investors may find it easier to get returns if they go earlier and find startups before they are ready for a Tiger term sheet. A focus on inclusion is a differentiator in and of itself — so it’s smart that Techstars is opting for its first pre-seed fund to be targeted toward those who need it most. “Friends and family funding is a critical early-capital source for many startup founders … while great ideas can come from anywhere and anyone, not everyone has a built-in network they can tap into to bring their company to life,” the company wrote in a landing page about Rising Stars. But, let’s be real: Backing founders before they’re even ready to call themselves that may be a new-ish skillset for Techstars, which has historically backed companies that are a tad more developed. can very reasonably scale backward and hopefully to redefine what investment criteria Techstars says that “selection for Rising Stars puts these founders on the best footing for future consideration to join one of our 50+ accelerator programs located throughout the U.S., and around the world.” Relatedly, Techstars teamed up with JP Morgan to back founders who identify as Black, Hispanic and Latino, Indigenous American and/or Pacific Islander. |
DeltaX wants to digitize the Andean region’s trucking sector | Anna Heim | 2,022 | 4 | 28 | Transportation startup is accelerating its plans to digitize the trucking industry in its native Bolivia and beyond thanks to a recent $1 million seed round. DeltaX operates in the same space as , and – freight forwarding (plainly, helping companies move goods from point A to point B). But the startup focuses on a region of Latin America where trucking is still in dire need of a digital transformation, unlike other countries where this transition has already begun and accelerated amid the pandemic. “We are working to solve a huge logistics problem in the Andean region,” DeltaX CEO Luis Fernando Ortiz said. “Over-the-road transportation in this economic zone is inefficient and expensive, which has enormous implications for the competitiveness of our countries and the well-being of our truck drivers.” Millions of tons of cargo are transported each year via the and its branches across Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Bolivia and Paraguay. The cargo includes commodities, such as minerals from the and beyond; grain, fruit and vegetables, as well as containerized imports. But the process is deficient, and it is drivers who pay the toll. There are around 1 million truck drivers in the region, most of them independent, Ortiz said. In its current form, this fragmentation has many downsides, which DeltaX is hoping to address through technology. There are several layers to DeltaX’s activities: It facilitates communication between parties, automates cargo tracking and reporting, and adds visibility to shipment documentation, with upcoming elements of fintech and machine learning. “Everyone in our sector follows this model, but we are going to be the first ones to apply it to our region,” Ortiz said. Digitization is undeniably a shared need around the world for logistics, a sector that until recently largely operated on phone calls, printouts and faxes. But while this has started to change in many countries, Bolivia still lagged behind. Ortiz knew this problem firsthand: He used to work for the Chilean port of Arica, a major hub for the region. There, he co-founded a , most of whom came from neighboring countries and needed more support. This is how he knows that they typically spend 25 days in a row on the road away from their families — and the harm that a lack of work predictability causes to their quality of life. Thanks to a Fulbright scholarship, Ortiz went on to study in the U.S., obtaining a master’s degree in Business Administration from Babson and an M.A. of Public Administration from Harvard. Now that he has moved back to Bolivia, both are proving relevant to his new endeavor, where business acumen matters perhaps just as much as an understanding of regulation and of the social context of the drivers. Understanding the needs of drivers has deeply shaped DeltaX’s technology. When it first launched in February 2020, it was a . Mobile still plays a key role in its strategy, as does WhatsApp, with bots providing answers to frequent questions on the go. Better serving the 1,300 drivers affiliated with DeltaX is also why the startup is planning to add an embedded fintech element to its platform, as is now common among Latin American startups. It would take the form of a microcredit lending program for working capital – providing advances on upcoming revenue. “Truck drivers are underbanked because their income isn’t stable; that’s why the fintech side is important to us,” Ortiz said. DeltaX also hopes that algorithms will be able to improve its prediction abilities, and therefore the working conditions of drivers. Instead of having to pay intermediaries and not being sure they’ll secure work, Ortiz explained, “A driver can say: I’m staying home this weekend because I know I have a journey planned for Monday.” Hiring the data scientists who can make this happen is one of the ways DeltaX plans to use the proceeds of its seed round. With a current team of 23, it also plans to add UX experts, software engineers and product managers to keep on improving its platform. DeltaX’s seed round was backed by several funds from the U.S. and Latin America: , out of Chile, which led the round; , from California; , from Mexico; and , from Paraguay. Bolivian angel network , which Ortiz co-founded, also participated. While these names carry quite a bit of weight, as does the fact that DeltaX participated in the , the profile of some of its individual backers is also worth noting. Indeed, several of them have high-level roles in Latin America’s transportation sector, including two startup founders: CEO Alfonso de los Rios and CEO Deepak Chhugani. Ortiz said that DeltaX is complementary to these startups because of its geographic focus and the subverticals it is concentrating on. A key aspect is its exclusive focus on over-the-ground transportation, which is tied to a sore point in Bolivia’s history: The country is landlocked, having lost access to the sea . DeltaX’s fundraising event is an important milestone for Bolivia’s startup scene: It is one of the country’s largest venture capital rounds to date. This shows that the ecosystem is still nascent, but also confirms the progress it has been making over the last few years. Recent exits include and . But Bolivia isn’t just fodder for expansion-oriented M&As: It also has startups with regional ambitions, such as TuGerente and Ultra. DeltaX is one of these; in the coming months, it plans to open offices in neighboring countries to expand its operations, starting with Peru. In the longer term, DeltaX hopes to further expand to Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Paraguay, Ortiz told TechCrunch. Will there be more consolidation in Latin America’s transportation sector in the meantime? It will be interesting to watch. |
Sealed will eat the cost of decarbonizing your home if it can’t cut your energy waste | Harri Weber | 2,022 | 4 | 28 | If you own a home, Sealed has a heat pump to sell you. The Manhattan-based startup, which helps homeowners replace their oil- and gas-gulping heating systems via an unusual financing model, has secured an additional $29.5 million in a new deal led by property-tech investor . Other investors, including Robert Downey Jr.’s FootPrint Coalition and CityRock, also chipped in. Heat pumps work by moving heat around, directing it inside or outside your home depending on whether you’re trying to cool down or stay warm. They’re more efficient than their fossil-fueled counterparts, but costly to install, which is where Sealed’s model kicks in. The firm covers The startup’s big bet is on its machine learning algorithms, which “really accurately predict a home’s future energy usage,” CEO Lauren Salz claimed in a call with TechCrunch. Sealed’s predictions aren’t flawless; sometimes the startup loses money on a contract, sometimes it profits, “but we can balance it out by holding a portfolio of homes,” Salz said. To handle the actual installation, Sealed relies on existing heat pump hardware and connects its customers to a network of contractors, who reduce energy waste via upgrades such as air sealing, insulation and LED bulbs in addition to heat pumps. It’s all “very tried-and-true technology that’s been around for decades,” Salz added. While to the climate crisis — such as sucking carbon out of the sky at scale — seem to hog the spotlight, the tech that’s needed to tackle climate change is already here, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change . At the utility level, this means replacing fossil fuel-burning power plants with renewables. Yet this won’t rid homes of fossil fuels unless individual homeowners also ditch oil and gas heating. Nine-year-old Sealed aims to accelerate that switch in the U.S., using its new funds to expand outside the Northeast for the first time, starting with Chicago. The firm also intends to double the size of its team to around 200 staffers by the end of the year. The $29.5 million deal elevates Sealed’s preexisting $16 million series B to a total of $45.5 million, and it is “definitely a big, big up round,” per Salz. The startup’s valuation now sits in the nine figures, the CEO added, declining to share more. |
Pinterest addresses the TikTok threat in its first quarter earnings | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 4 | 28 | Pinterest may have in the first quarter, but the company is not out of the woods yet when it comes to carving out a place for its service in today’s competitive landscape. In particular, Pinterest is up against a credible threat with the rise of TikTok when it comes to social commerce. The idea that you could be inspired to shop by browsing media shared by others is an experience that Pinterest, in a way, helped pioneer, with its pinboard-style website where users often saved ideas of things they were considering buying or trying. But these days, the more common refrain among influenced and inspired shoppers is “TikTok made me buy it,” not “I found it on Pinterest.” That’s a challenge the company understands it must overcome in order to establish its site as a destination for the next generation of online shoppers. The company on Wednesday fairly solid earnings, in $575 million in revenue versus $573 million expected and delivering earnings per share of 10 cents instead of the 4 cents expected. But one troubling area was its decline in users. The company reported its global monthly active users decreased 9% from the same period last year to 433 million in the quarter, below expectations of 437.9 million. Investors drilled into the user decline on the subsequent call with a focus on better understanding how Pinterest was standing up to the TikTok threat. Pinterest explained it’s been investing over the past year and a half in its new video-powered features, like — a sort of video-first mashup of both TikTok-stye short-form video content and tappable Stories. These Pins are aimed at attracting creators to Pinterest’s site, allowing them to record and edit creative videos with common tools like voiceover recording, background music, transitions and other interactive elements. But the Pins can also include pages of content where creators can add instructions, like the steps to perform a DIY project or the ingredient lists for a recipe. This makes the Pins more purpose-driven and actionable compared with some of the content on primarily entertainment-focused destinations, like TikTok or Instagram Reels. Pinterest acknowledged it had to do a significant amount of work to catch up to where the market was headed with video but believed it’s now starting to see some traction. The company said its shift in focus to video had come at the expense of some monthly active users in the short term, but it’s taking the risk in order to get the new video-focused ecosystem off the ground. As a result, it’s seen the number of video Idea Pinners increase 15x year over year and noted the feature was attracting a more engaged audience. Pinterest also said it’s seen over 25% growth in the save rate of Idea Pins quarter over quarter. And Pinterest users who follow multiple video creators on the site tend to visit Pinterest more often than those who do not, the company shared. “This is also strategically important because we think video as a format is just fundamental to the way people get inspired and take action in the future,” noted Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann. Pinterest is also planning to further develop new publishing features for video, including by leveraging which will help creators make better videos that are more likely to inspire action. It’s said it’s planning to expand its creator rewards, had a Pinterest API for shopping and began beta testing , which offers a personalized experience to users by connecting them with products they may like. But Pinterest also said it felt the impacts from lower search traffic and from “time spent by people on competitive platforms.” While the former was attributed to a Google search algorithm adjustment in the quarter, the latter was more of a veiled reference to TikTok, in addition to other social apps. The company pointed out that the U.S. is its most mature market and one where a number of social media, entertainment and news apps are competing for users’ time spent on mobile devices. “We called out [the] competition just because there is a tremendous amount of options for consumers on the phone at any given time,” said Silbermann, without specifically saying the word “TikTok.” “That said … what we’ve heard from Pinners and what we see is that we have a pretty differentiated use case … that’s the use case of actually using Pinterest to plan, get ready for major events, and then, eventually, to make considered purchases. And that’s quite different from an entertainment and news use case,” he added. But investors were clearly interested in understanding how TikTok, specifically, was impacting Pinterest’s business, prompting a direct question about the growing threat of the short-form video giant whose mobile in the quarter. “We don’t have exact fidelity into where people are spending their time,” Silbermann responded. “But obviously the story of the last couple of years in terms of time shift has been the rise of TikTok as a major place that people are spending their time,” he admitted, before reiterating that Pinterest’s focus is on content that inspires action — not just entertainment. “That’s going to have to be reflected in the way that we provide incentives for creators, but also the way that we rank content on Pinterest,” he said, before laying out the vision for how Pinterest will compete with TikTok. “The reason that a feed on Pinterest feels different than a feed on a social network, or a feed on a pure entertainment network, is that the content is ranked taking into account how useful that idea will be to getting something done in the future,” the CEO continued. “As we think about things like creator rewards and roll out new ad formats, like Idea Pins that are sponsored, that’s the sort of central thesis behind it. And it’s in line with the central thesis of Pinterest overall, where this isn’t a platform to talk to your friends. It’s not a platform to keep up with the news. It’s a platform for you to articulate things that you want to do in your life [and] for us to help you visualize what that end state looks like,” he said. Pinterest also said it will work to improve its home fee recommendation and search result quality, while making Pinterest easier to access and use even for logged-out visitors. But the company stopped short of admitting its monthly active user [MAU] loss was due to TikTok or other competitive threats. Instead, it largely blamed the global decline in users on the Russia-Ukraine war and lower engagement from other regions across Europe — an impact of about 5 million MAUs. Excluding that situation, Pinterest believed its MAU count would have been modestly up from earlier estimates. |
Optimus Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time? | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 4 | 28 | off another installment of the newsletter by talking a bit about our upcoming robotics event. Honestly, though. It’s one I’d been thinking about before I even knew if we’d be returning to an in-person event this year. Daniela Rus and Matthew Johnson-Roberson have both appeared on TC stages and in this newsletter over the years. Both are leading robotics voices at their respective world-class universities (MIT and CMU, respectively) who bring a lot of deep insight to the subject. And there really is a lot of ground to cover here, from the latest groundbreaking research their respective institutions are currently working on to the role universities can and should play in helping graduates develop startups. It’s going to be a good one. I also led with that topic because, well, I’m putting off the inevitable a bit here. But yes, we need to talk about Elon — but no, not . Tesla Bot or Optimus or whatever we’re calling it this week isn’t something I’ve written much about on these pages because I’ve frankly not had a lot of good reason to do it, beyond the standard justification that everything the world’s richest person says is news. I spoke with Rebecca a bit about the subject when that the humanoid robot will arrive never year. What really struck me was his comment that, “I was surprised that people did not realize the magnitude of the Optimus robot program. The importance of Optimus will become apparent in the coming years. Those who are insightful or looking, listening carefully, will understand that Optimus will ultimately be worth more than the car business, worth more than FSD.” Thing is, I don’t think there’s any question how enormous robotics are going to be in the coming decades among anyone who pays attention to such things. We’re already seeing that impact in a real way, especially as the pandemic has dramatically sped up adoption. I think it’s more that people need something tangible than a person dancing around in a spandex morphsuit as proof of concept here. Anyone who follows the space also understands how profoundly difficult this all is. A few years back, I was asked to speak at a media panel. When the conversation ended, a hand shot up in the front row. A woman was extremely eager to ask me a question about robots — which is to say, she wanted to tell me her idea for a robot. It’s like a Roomba, she explained, only it’s a drone that can fly from surface to surface, cleaning every part of your home. Great, I said, when someone develops that, I’d be happy to buy it. Point being, the reason Roombas don’t do that isn’t because no one has had the idea before. It’s because the number of points of failure for a product like that would make your head spin. With all of the money and resources iRobot has pumped into their robot vacuum over the years, it still gets stuck, sucks up something it shouldn’t or otherwise breaks down. Meanwhile, it’s taken Boston Dynamics around 25 or so years to arrive at Atlas. Tesla Add to all of that the fact that a high-end Roomba currently costs around $900, and you can start to understand why roboticists are, at the very least, skeptical about the promise of a robot that will not only help build cars but fold your laundry and do your grocery shopping. Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot currently runs $74,500, which I recognize is chump change for Musk, but I just canceled my Netflix subscription because I didn’t want to pay $15 a month to watch There are other questions, as well. For starters, is a humanoid really the best form factor for a robot like this? Don’t get me wrong, it works fine for us, but I’ve lost track of the roboticists I’ve spoken to who began developing a system designed to mimic human features, only to find reasons there were much more efficient designs for the tasks they were working to address. Anyway, this is part of the reason I haven’t been writing much about this — I planned to write two paragraphs on the subject and here we are. Meantime, I don’t expect to be writing much more on the matter until we get something more concrete than Daft Punk cosplay. I’m excited to see more about this robot at some point — and thankfully, Musk and Tesla have never missed a deadline (unfortunately there is no way to verify this information, so you’re just going to have to take my word for it). But more important, I’m willing to wait until I actually do, before devoting more column space to the subject. Mercifully, there was plenty of other interesting news this week that doesn’t require me to pen another Twitter think piece. Vicarious There’s a decent chance you missed this first one, since . Alphabet owned Intrinsic announced that it’s acquiring Vicarious, a well-funded robotic software firm that’s been backed by Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Samsung. Details are scarce at the moment, though the company says CEO Scott Phoenix is joining Intrinsic as CCO, while CTO Dileep George will actually be joining the DeepMind research team. From the sound of it, the deal was at least, in part, a bit of an acqui-hire designed to grow the two Alphabet teams. “For more than a decade, Vicarious has been pushing the boundaries of intelligent robotics and AI across multiple industries with visionary customers, building an interdisciplinary team and unique culture in the process,” Intrinsic CEO Wendy Tan-White said in a post. “We believe that combining our efforts will help us solve industry problems faster and accelerate our shared mission.” More info on the deal is promised in the coming months. The biggest news from a purely financial perspective, meanwhile, is . That follows the announcement that the Oregon-based startup is a , which is included in the round. DCVC and Playground Global led the raise, which finds the company working to scale its Digit robot for more warehouse jobs. Screenshot/Agility Robotics “Agility is set to make a powerful impact, developing and shipping robots that are built to co-exist seamlessly in our lives,” Playgound’s Bruce Leak said in a release. “Since Agility’s earliest days, we’ve believed their unique technical approach stands alone in being able to deliver on the promise of practical everyday robots.” Joining Agility on the Amazon side of things is Israeli robotics firm BionicHIVE, which makes an extremely clever warehouse robot that rides up the side of shelves. San Francisco-based Mantis Robotics is also on the list. The company is building robotic arms designed for close human-robot interaction. Zippedi We also broke some , an inventory robot designed to help stores compete with Amazon through last-mile delivery. The startup raised a $12.5 million Series A, led by Transpose Platform. That joins a $6.9 million seed announced last year. “A good example is when Uber was coming out, if there was a company to help the taxis,” founder Luis Vera tells TechCrunch. “Brick and mortar stores are here to stay. There’s going to be a big swath of people buying in the store, so I think the best way to approach this is to digitize the store and do all of these things that will make your customers happy. Whether it’s last-mile delivery, whether it’s shopping in the store — once you have the digital twin, you can do a whole bunch of stuff. ” Miso Robotics And, another week, another . This time it’s the king of the midnight hamburger/taco combo, Jack in the Box. They’ll be testing Flippy and Sippy at one of their San Diego locations. Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch |
Swiggy and Zomato, food delivery rivals in India, back UrbanPiper in $24 million funding | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 4 | 17 | UrbanPiper, a restaurant management platform that processes 18% of all online food orders in India, has raised $24 million in a new financing round from a number of investors including Swiggy and Zomato, the three firms said Monday. The six-year-old startup’s Series B funding was led by existing investors Sequoia Capital India and Tiger Global. Pankaj Chaddah, a founder of Zomato, Ankit Nagori of Curefoods and Khadim Batti and Vara Kumar are among some angels who have also invested in the new round. The vast majority of restaurants that sell online tend to maintain businesses with multiple food delivery startups. This typically means that the staff at those restaurants have to manage management apps from multiple firms and painstakingly track order flows and inventory on all services. operates a one-shop app that syncs inventory and commerce flows with multiple services at once. “For many restaurants, it’s not feasible for food delivery firms to offer them the system, dashboard, detailed analysis on billing and invoicing. We are able to deliver on that. When we all come together, we can all probably do a better job and move the industry forward,” Saurabh Gupta, co-founder and chief executive of UrbanPiper, told TechCrunch in an interview. “These chains, their volumes were too high and at that scale, they could not operate multiple dashboards.” The startup processes 14 million orders a month, up from 2 million it processed in 2019, when it raised a $7.5 million Series A funding, he said. “We have also grown the number of restaurants we serve by 10 times,” he added. “Plenty of times as a restaurant owner, you want to change your pricing, add different items, run special campaigns on new brands in certain locations, we offer all these flexibilities,” he said. UrbanPiper has also expanded to seven nations outside of India, including some in MENA and EU regions. With the proliferation of food delivery firms, restaurants across the globe are facing similar challenges, he said. “The restaurant ecosystem is evolving rapidly with changing consumer needs,” said Shraeyansh Thakur, principal at Sequoia India, in a statement. “Due to pandemic-led disruptions, merchants now increasingly want to adopt digital channels and upgrade their operations. UrbanPiper is at the forefront of this digital transformation and is strategically positioned to build infrastructure connecting digital players to merchants in the F&B ecosystem. Sequoia Capital India is excited to deepen the partnership with the UrbanPiper team as they build further on their mission to empower restaurants globally, and welcome Zomato and Swiggy to this partnership.” The startup, which manages more than 27,000 restaurant locations across eight countries, plans to deploy the fresh funds to launch in more regions across India, MENA and EU and aims to onboard over 200,000 restaurant locations in the next two years, it said. “UrbanPiper is one of our key partners enabling us to seamlessly engage with restaurants and scale faster through their point-of-sale solutions. Addressing specific needs, the team has always found ways to bridge gaps by creating a win-win for both restaurants and Swiggy. We are excited about the market potential and look forward to scaling our partner network with their continued support,” said Sriharsha Majety, chief executive of Swiggy, in a statement. The investment in UrbanPiper is the latest strategic backing from Swiggy and Zomato. Bengaluru-headquartered Swiggy last week said it . Zomato, which recently , has backed a number of other firms, including . |
January Ventures’ new fund will help young startups navigate this ‘Darwinian moment’ | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 4 | 28 | When and first launched their venture capital firm, Jane VC, The goal was to back female founders who weren’t based in Silicon Valley, didn’t have rapport with top investors from their Stanford days and were largely being left out from venture capital as an asset class. Fast forward to today, the firm has certainly delivered on its promise, backing 50 startups to date — 90% of which have a female founder. In 2020, to to be more inclusive of women from diverse backgrounds. To get more of the above into the tech ecosystem, investors including The Kapor Foundation, Bain Capital Ventures, Marc Andreessen, Arlan Hamilton, Chris Dixon and many other investors have poured fresh millions behind the duo, who were previously entrepreneurs and Stanford business school classmates. Announced today, January Ventures has closed $21 million in a new fund, the firm’s second investment vehicle to date and largest so far. Jennifer Neundorfer and Maren Bannon, the co-founders of January Ventures. January Ventures The fund will write $250,000 to $750,000 checks into software businesses working on everything from future of work to fintech and digital health. The pitch process is as straight up as it gets: , with no revenue, pitch deck or warm intro required. January Ventures also has an optional survey that gathers demographic information about founder gender, age and ethnicity. It also asks for feedback on how to improve the entrepreneurial ecosystem and current founder sentiment on the market. This portion of the survey does not have an impact on investment interest, the form states. What stands out the most is that a few years in, January Ventures isn’t trying to replace the network, it’s aiming to rewrite it altogether. About 18% of investments have been sourced from a cold email, a metric firms rarely share and likely a space where January leads the pack. More tellingly, though, is that 36% of investments from January Ventures’ operator network. The over includes top tech talent, such as an engineering manager at Square or head of growth at Compass. “It’s almost naive to say, let’s take the network out of venture,” Neundorfer told TechCrunch. “What we’re trying to do is sort of open the top of the funnel, and then really help those founders in our portfolio get the network that they need to navigate throughout the venture ecosystem.” Beyond serving as a deal engine, the operator network can be used by January portfolio companies for introductions to customers, other investors or advice. January Ventures isn’t too worried. One reason why late-stage investors are crowding into the early-stage scene is because of tech stock re-correction in the public markets. Neundorfer thinks that even young companies are being impacted and tested right now. She believes their focus on backing diverse entrepreneurs means that they’re already looking for folks who are used to navigating bearish sentiment. “We’re in a Darwinian moment,” she said. “In general, our founders are more capital efficient and they know how to stretch dollars, build in an ambitious a way. We are bullish on our thesis in this market, a market that feels very different than it did six or 12 months ago.” Bannon added, “th |
Fintech Roundup: The gloves are off in the spend management space | Mary Ann Azevedo | 2,022 | 4 | 17 | Welcome to my weekly fintech-focused column. I’ll be publishing this every Sunday, so in between posts, be sure to listen to the Brex co-founders Henrique Dubugras (L) and Pedro Franceschi (R)/Brex So now, TripActions — which was once more focused on enterprises — is going after SMBs and growth-stage companies. Like Emburse. His statement is an obvious slam against some of its competitors that have expanded — or plan to expand — into travel and an implication that since that’s what TripActions started out doing, it must be able to do it better. So, let’s add one more to the list. Or shall I say, ring. Since we’ve been on the topic of spend management… Founder and CEO Daniel Sathyanesan / Winden In India, Manish Singh reports that neobank is in advanced stages of talks to raise about $100 million at a $700 million valuation, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. The deal hasn’t closed yet, so the terms may change, those sources cautioned. Entrepreneur Amanda Peyton has always been “the friend that’s good with money,” whether as the treasurer of her high school at age 16 or today as the founder of . reports on how the group-financing platform Braid is trying to make transactions work for various entities, from shared households to side hustles to creative projects. Is cheap at $95 billion? Happily, Stripe put out a mostly data-free 2021 update letter this month that includes enough information for us to get dangerous with. With some creative math and,,,fair extrapolation, we can derive valuation calculations for Stripe that should help us better understand how well the payments juggernaut busy masquerading as a private company priced its last equity round. Alex examines . Lawrence Murata and Alice Deng, co-founders of Slope / Slope . Well, that’s it for this week. I think that was my longest edition ever. Once again, thanks for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful holiday weekend. |
Sequoia Capital India pledges to take proactive steps amid fraud allegations at some startups | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 4 | 17 | Sequoia Capital India, one of the most prolific and successful investors in India and Southeast Asia, addressed the fraudulent practices allegations levelled against some of its portfolio startups and pledged to take proactive steps to do more to drive increased compliance. In a blog post , the storied venture fund said it’s still a “work-in-progress” and that all players collectively have to “drive better accountability, along with improving performance, for us to unlock the full potential this region has to offer.” The post — serving as Sequoia’s first official word on the matter — comes at a time when at least three of its portfolio startups have undertaken investigations: Sequoia Capital India, which didn’t identify any startup by name, said it will work on a wide range of things, including: The post, written by the Sequoia team, said that it may often appear that investors don’t do enough due diligence, but reminded that when investments are made at seed or during a later time within the early stage, “there is hardly a business to diligence. Even later stage investors can face negative surprises, post investment, if there is willful fraud and intent.” The post adds: As an investor representative, one serves on the board, and boards can only work with the information shared with them – the less transparency there is to the board the lesser their ability to truly unearth errant behaviors. The board is there to govern and help make decisions in the best interest of the shareholders. The board is not responsible to investigate on an ongoing basis unless something formally is brought up with them, which is often through a whistleblower. Better corporate governance is a shared responsibility between founders, management and the board. And to get there the ecosystem needs to come together and commit to some changes. At Sequoia India & SEA, we always have held ourselves to a high bar on integrity because we are in this for the long term. We will take a set of proactive steps as a responsible participant of this ecosystem and do more than our fair share to drive increased compliance across our portfolio companies including, but not limited to, governance trainings for founders and senior management, implementation of whistleblower policies, more independent board representation, asking for more disclosures and more rigorous adoption of internal audits and controls. We will continue to respond strongly when we encounter willful misconduct or fraud. When whistleblowers call us to report on issues, we always take them seriously. We know in some cases they may turn out to be baseless – but we still have to look into them as it is a board member’s fiduciary duty. We will continue to have zero tolerance towards proven wrongdoing. We won’t hesitate to act to protect the interest of the company and employees, even if it costs us financially. We will take tough calls where needed in the interest of doing what is right. We hope more people in the ecosystem join us on this pledge to greater governance. […] |
In major reversal, Elon Musk is not joining Twitter’s board | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 4 | 10 | Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man and the largest shareholder of Twitter, will no longer be joining the social media firm’s board, CEO Parag Agrawal said late Sunday, in a surprising reversal following last week’s announcement that the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive had been . The Sunday disclosure from Agrawal, who said last week that he had been engaging with Musk for “a few weeks” before announcing his appointment to the board, follows a series of unusual tweets from the SpaceX executive over the weekend in which he wondered aloud to his over 80 million followers if Twitter was dying, citing low frequency of tweets from some of the most popular personalities on the social network. Musk also asked his followers if Twitter should convert its San Francisco headquarters into a homeless shelter, prompting a discussion that saw participation from a wide range of industry figures, including Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos. The weekend tweets from Musk — who identified his investment in Twitter as “passive,” and, according to the timeline shared by Agrawal, had already decided to not join Twitter’s board — however, seemed to suggest that he is actively thinking about Twitter and leading conversations about the major steps the firm should undertake. “We announced on Tuesday that Elon would be appointed to the Board contingent on a background check and formal acceptance. Elon’s appointment to the board was to become officially effective 4/9, but Elon shared that same morning that he will no longer be joining the board,” Agrawal . “We have and will always value input from our shareholders whether they are on our Board or not. Elon is our biggest shareholder and we will remain open to his input.” In what appears to be his official comment on the development, Musk offered a statement in a since-deleted tweet, “🤭,” an emoji whose popular interpretations include “surprised,” “shocked,” and “yikes,” according to Urban Dictionary. Joining Twitter’s board would have required Musk to cap his overall ownership of the social network at a maximum of 14.9% while he remained on the board and 90 days after the departure, according to terms of the agreement Twitter disclosed. In , Twitter said it planned to appoint Musk to its board for a term that ends in 2024. “I’m really happy Elon is joining the Twitter board! He cares deeply about our world and Twitter’s role in it,” Jack Dorsey, co-founder and former chief executive of Twitter, said on the news of Musk joining the Twitter board. “Parag and Elon both lead with their hearts, and they will be an incredible team.” Dorsey has yet to comment on the new development. Musk has , according to a filing he made earlier this month. Twitter shares soared as much as 30% on the news of Musk buying shares, and another 10% when his appointment to the board was announced the following day. “The Board and I had many discussions about Elon joining the board, and with Elon directly,” Agrawal said in a tweet Sunday night. “We were excited to collaborate and clear about the risks. We also believed that having Elon as a fiduciary of the company where he, like all board members, has to act in the best interests of the company and all our shareholders, was the best path forward.” The Twitter board previously believed it was for the best if Elon joined. Now they believe it's for the best that he withdrew. So it's the Twitter board that changed their minds, not Elon? Is this why they mention the background check (which would normally be a trivial detail)? — François Chollet (@fchollet) Twitter has 11 board members, including Dorsey, Agrawal, Salesforce co-chief executive Bret Taylor, and Silver Lake co-chief executive Egon Durban. Musk did not say why he was investing in the company, but the timing of the revelation followed him expressing concern about free speech and censorship on Twitter. Analysts at Bernstein, however, believed that Musk’s interest in Twitter was mainly personal. “He joins 15+ other billionaires in media ownership, including Bezos with WaPo. We view the interest as a potential distraction for Musk and TSLA shareholders, given that Musk is arguably already over-committed, and his fervor for the topic of censorship/free speech is high,” they wrote in a note. Over the weekend, Musk also suggested that Twitter should consider giving an authentication checkmark to anyone who subscribes to the company’s $3 monthly subscription service, Twitter Blue. “And no ads,” Musk said, outlining the features of Twitter Blue. “The power of corporations to dictate policy is greatly enhanced if Twitter depends on advertising money to survive.” Some employees were concerned about Musk getting involved with the company, reports said. To calm their concerns, Agrawal had that Musk had agreed to a question-and-answer session with them. |
Deep Science: Combining vision and language could be the key to more capable AI | Kyle Wiggers | 2,022 | 4 | 10 | Depending on the theory of intelligence to which you subscribe, achieving “human-level” AI will require a system that can leverage multiple modalities — e.g., sound, vision and text — to reason about the world. For example, when shown an image of a toppled truck and a police cruiser on a snowy freeway, a human-level AI might infer that dangerous road conditions caused an accident. Or, running on a robot, when asked to grab a can of soda from the refrigerator, they’d navigate around people, furniture and pets to retrieve the can and place it within reach of the requester. Today’s AI falls short. But new research shows signs of encouraging progress, from robots that can figure out steps to satisfy basic commands (e.g., “get a water bottle”) to text-producing systems that learn from explanations. In this revived edition of Deep Science, our weekly series about the latest developments in AI and the broader scientific field, we’re covering work out of DeepMind, Google and OpenAI that makes strides toward systems that can — if not perfectly understand the world — solve narrow tasks like generating images with impressive robustness. AI research lab OpenAI’s improved DALL-E, DALL-E 2, is easily the most impressive project to emerge from the depths of an AI research lab. As my colleague Devin Coldewey writes, while the original DALL-E demonstrated a remarkable prowess for creating images to match virtually any prompt (for example, “a dog wearing a beret”), DALL-E 2 takes this further. The images it produces are much more detailed, and DALL-E 2 can intelligently replace a given area in an image — for example inserting a table into a photo of a marbled floor replete with the appropriate reflections. An example of the types of images DALL-E 2 can generate. DALL-E 2 received most of the attention this week. But on Thursday, researchers at Google detailed an equally impressive visual understanding system called Visually-Driven Prosody for Text-to-Speech — — in a post published to Google’s AI blog. VDTTS can generate realistic-sounding, lip-synced speech given nothing more than text and video frames of the person talking. VDTTS’ generated speech, while not a perfect stand-in for recorded dialogue, is still quite good, with convincingly human-like expressiveness and timing. Google sees it one day being used in a studio to replace original audio that might’ve been recorded in noisy conditions. Of course, visual understanding is just one step on the path to more capable AI. Another component is language understanding, which lags behind in many aspects — even setting aside AI’s . In a stark example, a cutting-edge system from Google, Pathways Language Model (PaLM), memorized 40% of the data that was used to “train” it, according to a paper, resulting in PaLM plagiarizing text down to copyright notices in code snippets. Fortunately, DeepMind, the AI lab backed by Alphabet, is among those exploring techniques to address this. In a new , DeepMind researchers investigate whether AI language systems — which learn to generate text from many examples of existing text (think books and social media) — could benefit from being given of those texts. After annotating dozens of language tasks (e.g., “Answer these questions by identifying whether the second sentence is an appropriate paraphrase of the first, metaphorical sentence”) with explanations (e.g., “David’s eyes were not literally daggers, it is a metaphor used to imply that David was glaring fiercely at Paul.”) and evaluating different systems’ performance on them, the DeepMind team found that examples indeed improve the performance of the systems. DeepMind’s approach, if it passes muster within the academic community, could one day be applied in robotics, forming the building blocks of a robot that can understand vague requests (e.g., “throw out the garbage”) without step-by-step instructions. Google’s new “ ” project gives a glimpse into this future — albeit with significant limitations. A collaboration between Robotics at Google and the Everyday Robots team at Alphabet, Do As I Can, Not As I Say seeks to condition an AI language system to propose actions “feasible” and “contextually appropriate” for a robot, given an arbitrary task. The robot acts as the language system’s “hands and eyes” while the system supplies high-level semantic knowledge about the task — the theory being that the language system encodes a wealth of knowledge useful to the robot. Robotics at Google A system called SayCan selects which skill the robot should perform in response to a command, factoring in (1) the probability a given skill is useful and (2) the possibility of successfully executing said skill. For example, in response to someone saying “I spilled my Coke, can you bring me something to clean it up?,” SayCan can direct the robot to find a sponge, pick up the sponge, and bring it to the person who asked for it. SayCan is limited by robotics hardware — on more than one occasion, the research team observed the robot that they chose to conduct experiments accidentally dropping objects. Still, it, along with DALL-E 2 and DeepMind’s work in contextual understanding, is an illustration of how AI systems when combined can inch us that much closer to a “Jetsons”-type future. |
Arrival’s Avinash Rugoobur to reveal EV built with Uber at TC Sessions: Mobility 2022 | Kirsten Korosec | 2,022 | 4 | 10 | Arrival, a U.K.-based electric vehicle company that went public last year, has set itself a lofty goal. The company aims to produce electric vehicles that cost less than other EVs competes with pricing on fossil fuel-powered vehicles. A lofty goal requires a bold plan. For Arrival, that means bypassing the traditional large-scale or even “giga-sized” factory used by major automakers and instead turning to a much smaller and decentralized approach. Arrival plans to build 31 microfactories by 2024, including one in Charlotte, N.C. These microfactories allow the company to serve specific markets while keeping costs low, Arrival argues. One such market is ride-hailing. Arrival announced last year plans to design and build an affordable, purpose-built electric vehicle for ride-hailing in partnership with Uber. Drivers were even invited to join the design process of the vehicle, which is expected to enter production in Q3 2023. Now, a year later, Arrival is ready to show off its progress — and in person. We’re excited to announce that Avinash Rugoobur, president of Arrival, will sit down with us for a fireside chat alongside a prototype of the vehicle designed for Uber drivers at in San Mateo, California May 18-19. While the upcoming vehicle will be a focal point of the discussion, expect a wide range of other topics to be covered from Arrival’s interest in the commercial vehicle market and its microfactory plans to its future products and whether it can ramp up vehicle production fast enough to turn its many non-binding orders and letters of intent (LOI) into actual sales. Those pending agreements represent 59,000 vehicles, including an order from UPS for 10,000 vehicles with an option to buy another 10,000. All told, the deal could be worth more than $1 billion. We’re also curious about what steps remain before we see Arrival buses and vans on roadways, and you can bet we’ll ask when the EV that Arrival designed for Uber’s ride-hail drivers will hit the streets. We have so many questions, and Rugoobur is just the person to provide the answers. Responsible for the company’s business and product strategy and international expansion, Rugoobur oversaw Arrival’s public listing in March 2021 — the U.K.’s biggest IPO with a $13 billion float on Nasdaq. He also led the closing of more than $300 million in investments from blue-chip investors including Hyundai, Kia, UPS and funds managed by BlackRock. Before joining Arrival, Rugoobur guided GM’s $1 billion acquisition of Cruise, and he was part of the team that witnessed its subsequent valuation increase to $14 billion. This work was pivotal in accelerating the delivery of AVs and in creating the OEM/startup ecosystem. Don’t miss what promises to be a fascinating conversation with Rugoobur and an in-depth look at Arrival, a company that’s trying to reinvent the auto manufacturing industry and lower the cost of EVs. breaks through the hype and goes beyond the headlines to discover how merging technology and transportation will affect a broad swath of industries, cities and the people who work and live in them. !
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null | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 4 | 28 | null |
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