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Welcome to The TechCrunch Podcast! | Darrell Etherington | 2,022 | 5 | 21 | Welcome to the very first episode of The TechCrunch Podcast! Every week, the new TC podcast will dive into the biggest stories in tech, as told by the writers who penned them. We’ve been developing and iterating on the concept for many months now, so we’re thrilled to finally be able to deliver our first ever full episode, which you can get by subscribing or . Our first show is typical for TechCrunch, since it was recorded mostly on the road at one of our fantastic yearly events — ! If there’s one thing TC is great at, it’s rolling with the punches and improvising on the fly, and we did that with on-location and remote recording, bringing you highlights from the biggest news of the week alongside in-depth interviews with TC’s own Kirsten Korosec and Taylor Hatmaker. Be sure to subscribe, and leave us a 5-star review with your feedback. We’ll be delivering the TechCrunch Podcast weekly, with fresh interviews from the writers closest to the biggest stories of the week, as well as a roundup of what you need to know for what went down in the wide world of tech. |
This Week in Apps: Snapchat policy checkup, more Twitter deal drama, TikTok games | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 5 | 21 | 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 . App Annie says global spending across iOS and Google Play is up to $135 billion in 2021, and that figure will likely be higher when its annual report, including third-party app stores in China, is released next year. Consumers also downloaded 10 billion more apps in 2021 than in 2020, reaching nearly 140 billion in new installs, it found. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re also a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus. In 2020, investors $73 billion in capital into mobile companies — a figure that was up 27% year-over-year. 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 much more. This past Thursday, May 19, 2022, marked the 11th Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), which is a day focused on raising awareness about digital access and inclusion for the more than 1 billion people who live with disabilities or impairments. A number of app makers and tech companies took part in GAAD this year to either highlight or announce new features designed to better meet the needs of those with vision impairment, hearing loss and other disabilities. Instagram’s shared information with its community about how and why to use accessibility features, like alt-text and auto-generated captions to create a better experience for your audience. The company it had rolled out, like dark mode, screen reader improvements, improved automatic and custom alternative text options for people with vision impairments, caption stickers for Reels and Stories, and more. The company also said it has started rolling out closed caption features to improve the Instagram experience for the deaf and hard of hearing communities. These changes help to improve the experience for everyone, however, as Instagram said one-third of video plays on Instagram are with the sound off. In March, Instagram made for creators, which are supported globally across iOS and Android. Google shared its approach to both hiring people with disabilities and building products to meet their needs. For example, it highlighted projects like , a communication tool for people with speech impairments; the update to , Android’s built-in screen reader; and the Chromebook tool; a multi-pin feature for Google Meet, which allows users to pin multiple tiles, like a presenter’s screen and interpreter’s screen. The company also noted all its English-language YouTube Originals content from the past year — and moving forward — will now have English audio descriptions available globally. Apple, meanwhile, participated in GAAD with a number of about for iPhone, Apple Watch and Mac. These included a universal Live Captions feature, improved visual and auditory detection modes and iOS access to WatchOS apps. Live Captions will be able to transcribe any audio content, like FaceTime calls, video conferencing apps and streaming video, as well as in-person conversations, all in English to start. Apple Apple’s Sound Recognition feature will be able to be programmed to recognize sounds unique to a person’s own home, like their doorbell or appliances. The Magnifier app will add a new ML and lidar-powered Door Detection feature within a new Detection Mode section. This will help users locate a door, understand how far they are from it and describe door attributes. Apple Maps will offer sound and haptics feedback for VoiceOver users. And Apple Watch will help users control Apple Watch remotely from their paired iPhone with Apple Watch Mirroring. It also gains new Quick Action like a double-pinch gesture to answer or end a phone call, dismiss a notification, take a photo, play or pause media in the Now Playing app, and start, pause or resume a workout. TechCrunch A handful of Snap Kit platform developers with the new guidelines around anonymous messaging and friend-finding apps . The Snapchat maker revamped its developer platform policies on March 17, 2022, to ban anonymous apps and require developers to build friend-finding apps to limit access to users 18 or older. The policy changes were effective immediately and existing developers were given 30 days to come into compliance — a date that would have passed last month. It is now mid-May and some developers of the newly banned and restricted apps are not yet meeting Snap’s new requirements. Snap confirmed to TechCrunch a small number of apps were given extensions, including anonymous apps LMK and Send It. But others seemed to be working around Snap’s ban with their friend-finding apps marketed to users ages 12+, instead of the now required 18+. They got away with this by not actually using the SDK — something impossible to tell from their App Store marketing and screenshots which imply they’re directly integrated with Snap’s features. Another app had flown under the radar, continuing to operate in violation of the rules unless TechCrunch pointed it out, resulting in a belated ban. This lack of clarity on which apps are platform apps, and which are only pretending to be, could complicate things for Snap, which is engaged in litigation over bullying-related suicides. And like all social media, the company could be under new U.S. regulation related to child safety matters in the future, as well. First, that the Twitter deal was “temporarily on hold” until Twitter could prove the percentage of spambots on its platform was actually less than 5%, as it reports. This Tuesday, he the deal would not move forward until Twitter would show him proof of this <5% figure. Twitter was having none of it, though. The company filed a , saying it’s committed to the deal as agreed and is ready to close “as promptly as possible.” If Musk’s move was an , it didn’t seem to be working. Twitter’s top lawyer and head of policy, Vijaya Gadde, told staff at an all-hands meeting there’s “no such thing as a deal being on hold,” reported . Twitter execs also suggested that it could try to enforce the deal terms in court, if need be, but said that would be “pretty rare” for such a thing to occur. (Not that this Twitter deal is proceeding normally though!) There’s still some speculation that Musk is looking to fully back out and will find a way to do so, billion-dollar breakup fee notwithstanding. In the meantime, the bankers are and execs are . This week, it was Twitter Service VP Katrina Lane, head of data science Max Schmeiser and VP of product management Ilya Brown — all of whom chose to leave on their own. TechCrunch Alongside the launch of the iOS 15.5 update, Apple introduced a new set of rules to govern auto-renewing subscriptions on the App Store. Now, instead of asking users to agree to any subscription price increases, developers will be able to roll out a price increase with the user’s explicit consent. The feature allows developers to simply inform customers they’ll be charged more, but not require the customer to opt-in to the higher pricing. last month, when it appeared Disney+ subscription customers had simply been told their price was increasing but weren’t asked for their consent. Apple then confirmed this was the result of a “new commerce feature” it planned to launch soon, which it said would be “great for both developers and users.” Apple’s position is that this could save customers the hassle of having their subscriptions automatically canceled just because they didn’t see the notification or email that asked them to opt in to the price increase. “This has led to some services being unintentionally interrupted for users and they must take steps to resubscribe within the app, from Settings on iPhone and iPad, or in the App Store on Mac,” the company explained in its announcement on Monday. However, the flip side of this argument is that those same customers who would have missed the consent notification will likely be the same ones who would now miss the notification informing them their subscription will be increasing in price. There’s also an argument here that this change could enable unscrupulous developers and scammers to better profit from their victims if Apple doesn’t carefully enforce the program rules. Currently, those state that developers can’t increase prices more than once per year. The increase also can’t exceed 50% of the subscription price, and the difference in price can’t exceed $5 USD per period for non-annual subscriptions or $50 USD for annual subscriptions. TikTok Zenly led by Sequoia Capital India and General Catalyst. The funding includes a $100,000 grant from Sequoia Spark, a program for women founders. The app offers verified job postings and financial services, like loans, for blue-collar workers. The company wouldn’t say if the investment was coming as a separate investment, or as part of a $1 billion round (in debt and equity) that the company is in the process of closing. The company said its ARR doubled in 2021 and the number of enterprise customers grew 10x, as it added new clients like DoorDash, Verizon, Qualtrics, Porsche and Gojek. Last year, its software sat within 2.7 billion mobile devices, processed 110 billion mobile sessions (up at least 20x from 2020) and helped customers resolve 4.2 billion issues, it said. Unit said its transaction volume grew 7x over the past six months and has crossed an annualized transaction volume of $2.6 billion. It’s also issued over 430,000 cards to over 330,000 customers and saw a 10x increase in deposit volumes. |
Everyone is drafting their own startup Black Swan memo | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 5 | 21 | “You can often pick up significant market share in an economic downturn by just staying alive,” top startup accelerator Y Combinator The advice was one of ten bullet points in a memo meant to help companies navigate the economic Other stand-out quotes include “plan for the worst” and “no one can predict how bad the economy will get, but things don’t look good.” The email is a vibe shift from , when hundreds of Y Combinator startups — many of which already raised venture funding — presented themselves to the public on Demo Day. The startups were the first to receive Y Combinator’s new $500,000 standard check and were aggressively focused on international opportunity. Now, YC is saying that “this slow down will have a disproportionate impact on international companies,” among others. While Y Combinator’s memo wasn’t meant to be public, it isn’t the only one publishing a Black Swan Memo in preparation for what’s to come. TechCrunch obtained a series of memos that venture capitalist firms sent to portfolio companies about the market downturn. Some were hopeful, some were simple, and others were a vibe check as straightforward as, Can you tell us your ARR and cash-burn in writing? Pretty please? I explored this topic in my most recent TechCrunch+ column, Subscribe to for a podcast version of this conversation next week as well! In the rest of this newsletter, we’ll address more layoffs at tech companies, ghosts showing up to $44 billion dates, and Swyft startups. As always, you can support me by forwarding this newsletter to a friend or or May’s mad month of layoffs continues. Amanda and I wrote up a that rippled across all industries and stages. Employees from Section4, Carvana, DataRobot, Mural, Robinhood, On Deck, Thrasio, MainStreet and Netflix have been impacted by the workforce reductions. Some bigger companies are instituting hiring freezes, such as Twitter and Meta, or announcing a shift in strategy, such as Uber. At time of publication, employees from Picsart, Netflix, Cars24 and Skillz were impacted by this week’s wave of reductions. It tells us who is vulnerable from a business model perspective — such as subscription-based businesses and marketplaces — and that companies may start to conduct more than one round of layoffs in the same month (cough, cough, Netflix). / Getty Images , your favorite podcast trio spoke about unicorn vibes, property ownership tech plays and, as you can tell by the headline, the latest in the Elon Musk Twitter story. At this point, we’re deciding if it’s even worth trying to keep track of the timeline. Our weekly digest of tech news is a good way to track the big news items that shape this wonky landscape, and stay aware of deals that may have flown under your radar. In this case, we spent the biggest chunk of time deciding that he made with Twitter. The answer, not so complicatedly, seems because he’s more interested in chasing than cuffing. After we recorded our episode, more news about Elon Musk emerged from an investigation Allegedly, Elon Musk exposed himself to a SpaceX flight attendant and propositioned her for sex. The company paid $250,000 for her silence, Business Insider reports. Musk has since the harassment claims. Westend61 / Getty Images The Mountain View–based company, built by Google alums, wants to improve transportation and offer a lower-cost-per-mile vehicle with a smaller carbon emission footprint. The solution looks like an autonomous, lightweight, fixed-cable vehicle. The startup is the winner of the TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility 2022 pitch-off, with Beyond Aero as the runner-up. Swyft has checked off a lot of ‘we’re not flailing” boxes. Alongside a MVP and debut customer agreement, the company set up a R&D center in Christchurch, New Zealand. It also works with Remarkables Park in Queenstown, a large office, retail and residential space, to develop a network of autonomous gondolas, It plans to be up and running by August 2024. Until next time, |
Europe’s deep tech depends on university spinouts | Anna Heim | 2,022 | 5 | 21 | TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the Deep tech has become a hot topic in Europe, with hopes that the region can have an edge over the rest of the world for innovation rooted in fundamental research. One of the key arguments: European countries have great universities and talent. But how can academic talent translate into startups? Let’s dive in. — “From startups to universities, we join forces to make Europe a world leader in the new wave of deep tech innovation!” European commissioner Mariya Gabriel earlier this week after her talk at the Tech.eu Summit in Brussels. As I noticed while attending the event, she was far from the only one to mention this topic enthusiastically. That deep tech raises high hopes in Europe wasn’t exactly a surprise. and I already wrote about and earlier this year. But the role that educational institutions are expected to play piqued my interest. “There is no doubt that the future of innovation in Europe will emerge from its world-leading universities,” Riam Kanso wrote in a ahead of the event. Kanso is the founder of , which I had coincidentally heard about for the first time . The U.K.-based nonprofit aims to transform Ph.D. researchers into venture scientists. “It’s a simple but well-proven recipe,” Kanso said. “You have a Ph.D. team working on cutting-edge research with key real-world applications. They know their innovation could help discover effective treatments for now-incurable diseases, power up carbon-negative cities or tackle the future of automation. Through a combination of entrepreneurship training, access to pro-bono legal advice, funding opportunities and expert connections, we help them figure out how to turn their research into a viable deep tech startup.” It isn’t a new thing for universities to more or less willingly give birth to spinoffs or spinouts (we will use the terms interchangeably here.) MIT, for instance, is famous for counting among its alumni, and quite a few of these ventures are based on intellectual property developed during their studies or research. But in Europe, intellectual property can be a thorny issue. The “potential for meaningful innovation brewing across Europe’s research labs,” Kanso said, “largely remains untapped due to varying — and at times — IP ownership rules that can make spinout companies uninvestable and hard to scale.” Increasingly though, both European universities and venture capital firms are making efforts to make sure the most promising seeds turn into successful companies. Despite the hurdles, VCs looking for innovation know that spinouts are very much worth their attention. “As an investor in early-stage businesses, many with a deeply technical nature, we see universities as foundational to the companies we invest in,” said Simon King, himself a VC with a Ph.D. |
Lightspeed’s Mercedes Bent on why the metaverse isn’t overhyped | Anita Ramaswamy | 2,022 | 5 | 21 | On the podcast this week, we dove into a topic that tends to stir up strong emotions, even from those outside the crypto space — the metaverse. Mercedes Bent, an investor at Lightspeed Venture Partners who focuses on consumer investments in crypto, joined us to unpack this loaded term and explain why she sees its potential. “It’s become like a punching bag,” Bent told TechCrunch. “If you think about the potential of it, and why maybe a geek like me gets excited about it, it’s because there are things you can do [in the metaverse] that you could not do in the real world.” The prospect of attending an event with tens of thousands of other attendees across the world in the metaverse, for example, excites Bent. But even more than entertainment, Bent is enthusiastic about the potential for the metaverse to have an impact through education. She shared the hypothetical example of public school students being able to learn from the best instructors in the world in a metaverse similar to the movie “Ready Player One” — though without the dystopian elements, she qualified. Bent’s vision squares up with some of her non-crypto consumer investments at Lightspeed, such as small-group live education platform . But what will the metaverse actually look like? When we asked Bent, who once worked for virtual reality technology company Upload, she said she used to think the metaverse had to be tied to VR technology, specifically the head-mounted display screen. She’s since realized that what the metaverse has to offer has less to do with how users access it physically and more to do with the sense of community it can foster. “I think what this era — the 2021 and 2022 era of the metaverse terminology — has shown is that it’s not about the headset, it’s not about what physical apparatus you use, it’s about the sense of [a] collective being together, and presence,” she added. While VR tech itself has been around for decades, Bent posits that the metaverse gained traction as a concept last year because it offered one thing classic VR games like Second Life did not — the ability to transfer in-game currency to fiat currency. Cryptocurrency, she believes, made that switch possible. “There was obviously in-game currency and there were obviously virtual goods you could buy before, but the ability to be able to transfer that to fiat and then go use it in the real world to pay your rent bill is just something entirely different that we didn’t have in such a mass quantity before,” Bent said. That technological development coupled with the onset of the pandemic, which gave people the opportunity to spend more time online, gave the metaverse new life, she continued. Skeptics think the metaverse gets a lot of hype and isn’t backed by substantial technology or user adoption. Bent said that in her experience, skepticism is to be expected for any early-stage consumer products. “These hyped areas look really non-obvious. I mean, they don’t have traction; they’re just an idea. They’re often from a founder who hasn’t necessarily had the most pedigree, so you have to kind of take a leap of faith,” Bent said. Bent’s mission as an investor is to back “early-stage consumer companies that are unlocking wealth creation for underserved individuals and regions,” according to her website — a thesis that might help explain where she finds some of that faith. As an early-stage consumer investor, Bent pushes back on the idea that it’s too early to fund consumer-facing crypto companies that haven’t yet honed their user experience. “There are not very many companies [in web3] that I would say have scaled to what I would call a mass audience yet. We have Metamask, which is pretty far along, but I think all of these companies are up for grabs in terms of [whether] somebody else could come along to replace them,” Bent said. “I think we’re going to see the next WhatsApp, AOL and Google founded in short order.” |
Premium streaming subscriptions continue to increase despite Netflix’s downfall | Lauren Forristal | 2,022 | 5 | 21 | If you’ve been following Netflix lately, then you’d know the streamer is on shaky ground at the moment. data reveals that Netflix saw 3.6 million subscription cancellations in the first quarter of 2022, over one million more than the company experienced in Q1 2021 and Q4 2021. This is a significant indicator that Netflix is inching closer to losing its top spot in the streaming battle. While Netflix’s downfall has raised speculations about if the SVOD (subscription video on demand) industry has peaked and is beginning a downward trend, new Antenna data supports the contrary. Antenna discovered that U.S. Subscriptions in the Premium SVOD category grew +4.0% quarter over quarter and by +24.7% year over year. The research also shows that there were 37.4 million new gross SVOD customers and a loss of 29.8 million subscribers, leaving a gross of just 7.7 million new subscribers in the first quarter of 2022. Antenna Antenna The 37.4 number is consistent with the past two quarters yet significantly higher than 2019 (before COVID-19). The growth was largely driven by fledgling services Peacock and Paramount+, which added a combined 6.1 million or more U.S. Subscribers. In comparison, in 2019, when the market was dominated by Netflix and Hulu (services like Disney+, Peacock and HBO Max didn’t exist yet), there were a total of 10.3 million subscriptions in the year’s first quarter. The massive increase depicts a three-year compound annual growth rate of 54%. While subscriber growth may be high right now, so are cancellations. There were just under 30 million cancellations in Q1 2022, which is 12% higher than any quarter in history, or 4.5 times the cancel volume seen three years prior, Antenna finds. The cancellations may not be anything to worry about since the new subscriber additions indicate consumers are bouncing around — also known as churn and return. Paramount+, Peacock and Disney+ accounted for 51% of all new sign-ups in the quarter. Plus, the three mentioned services made up a large portion of new sign-ups for the churned Q1 2022 Netflix users. Antenna Peter Fondulas, principal at Hub, , “Netflix’s subscriber loss in Q1 of 2022, and its anticipated losses in the following quarters, represent a tiny proportion of its global subscriber base. And in fact, at some point, a service as widely penetrated as Netflix has only so much room left to grow. In our view, it would be a grave mistake to take the Netflix experience as a sign that streaming TV services are on the verge of decline, as some analysts have suggested. The lure of buzzworthy exclusive content, and the sheer convenience of on-demand viewing, are two powerful forces that should keep these services growing at least for the near term.” In Q1 2022, Netflix reported a , making its first subscriber loss in more than 10 years. The decline brought Netflix’s subscriber base to 221.6 million, down from 221.8 million in the previous quarter. The losses will only continue, according to Netflix forecasts, and the streamer is expected to lose 2 million in the second quarter. Since Netflix raised prices on all its plan tiers domestically in , there has been a major jump in subscription cancellations. The Netflix U.S. active monthly churn rate was a little over 2% in , after it raised subscription prices. Further, data shows that Netflix’s active monthly churn rate increased +0.95 pts month over month in January 2022, where a price jump led to an active monthly churn rate of 3%. By the end of March, Netflix’s active monthly churn rate was 3.3%. This suggests that Netflix’s upcoming is the company’s plan to minimize churn. Antenna All this data goes to show how volatile the streaming market is. It’s hard to predict which service will be on top next, but established streamers like Netflix need to be on their toes and come up with new strategies to attract new subscribers. |
A weaker economy won’t solve the tech talent crunch overnight | Ron Miller | 2,022 | 5 | 21 | news piles up seemingly , we don’t know what except that change is on the way. Although we are seeing layoffs and at some companies, it doesn’t necessarily mean the talent crunch will immediately abate. There will likely be some lag before we start to see we’ve experienced for the last couple of years begin to loosen. Even then, there are certain fields like engineering, data science and , where tech companies large and small could still struggle to find talent no matter what the macroeconomic conditions look like. Over the last month, we have seen an increase in the number of at companies like Cameo, On Deck and Robinhood. Meanwhile, big companies like Netflix, Meta and Uber have announced hiring freezes, with the consumer streaming service throwing into the mix as well. Despite this onslaught of bad news, for now, most startup founders, investors and HR pros don’t see the job market magically improving for hiring departments, at least in the near term. That means the folks in charge of hiring are still going to have to shake the bushes for talent. Matt Hoffman, partner and head of talent at VC firm M13 and a former HR pro, said for a lot of people, the desire to be a part of something and help it grow is in some ways a stronger motivator than perks and pay. That’s good news for startups looking for talent. “I’ve always believed that people don’t join a company just for the economic benefits. They join for the opportunity to have an impact and to grow. And so in a lot of cases, it may be a more opportune time to take a chance in an early-stage company because you can focus on that long-term horizon, and you can get that opportunity to grow and have an impact,” Hoffman told me. For employees, he said there will still be opportunities at good companies in any economic conditions, but attracting talent always comes down to creating a good place to work. “Even in the tightest of economic environments — and we’re not there yet — there’s always going to be high demand for the best talent. Always. So the things that you need to do to attract, engage and retain these employees does not change,” he said.
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It’s not business as usual (and investors are admitting it) | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 5 | 21 | “You can often pick up significant market share in an economic downturn by just staying alive,” top startup accelerator Y Combinator wrote in an internal email to its founders this week. The advice was one of 10 bullet points in a memo meant to help its companies navigate the economic . Other standout quotes include “plan for the worst” and “no one can predict how bad the economy will get, but things don’t look good.” The email is a vibe shift from , when hundreds of Y Combinator startups — many of which already raised venture funding — presented themselves to the public on Demo Day. The startups were the first to receive Y Combinator’s new $500,000 standard deal and were aggressively focused on international opportunity. Now, after that bonanza, YC is saying that “this slowdown will have a disproportionate impact on international companies” among others. Y Combinator isn’t the only one publishing a “black swan” memo in preparation for what’s to come. TechCrunch obtained a series of memos that venture capitalist firms sent to portfolio companies about the market downturn. Some were hopeful, some were simple, and others were a vibe check as straightforward as: Can you tell us your ARR and cash burn in writing? Reach Capital, a venture firm focused on education and access, sent a market overview to founders to help with allocating resources and priorities. |
Fundraise on confidence, Front CEO Mathilde Collin says | Matt Burns | 2,022 | 5 | 7 | and often fundraise from investors. This requires pitching, numbers, stats and a story. And the time has to be correct. The key to timing is easy, according to this CEO: Fundraise when your confidence is high. Each week on , investors and entrepreneurs share lessons learned from personal experiences. And Front CEO and co-founder Mathilde Collin knows about fundraising. She raised $138 million from venture capital over several fundraising rounds, including from Frederic Kerrest, COO of Okta and venture capitalist. They spoke on several topics, and the entire TechCrunch Live event is available on or through a . Timing can make or break a fundraise, and Collin advises to look for outside investment when you feel great — like you, the founder, feel great. Unfortunately, sometimes this doesn’t correlate with your company’s numbers. “It could be you hired someone amazing,” she said. “You just signed a very big customer — whatever makes you super confident in the future of this company.” Why? According to Collin, investors are very good at assessing if a founder is genuine in their motivations, which revolves around confidence and excitement for the company. This means she always starts presentations with why she’s doing something, even if it gets more complicated as it scales. Frederic Kerrest agrees, noting as an investor, he wants to spend his time with people who care and are motivated and interested. Collin says each time when raising, she evaluated investors based on the needs of the company. Then, when it came to Front’s later-stage Series C, she turned to several operators who could provide capital and an insider’s take on the industry and corporate guidance. |
Boeing’s Starliner finally makes it all the way to the ISS | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 5 | 21 | Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft has had a rough couple years, but this afternoon it successfully docked with the International Space Station, its first successful mission to orbit. Despite a few hiccups, this launch went more or less as planned, and if the craft can return to Earth safely that will make this a huge accomplishment for the beleaguered aerospace company. Without recapping all the the Starliner has had, let it suffice to say that upon led some to question whether this capsule would ever make it to orbit, to say nothing of making regular trips with crew aboard. But naysayers may have to hold their tongues, at least for a week or two, after the Starliner’s . and what appeared to be a textbook docking procedure this afternoon. Check out this great shot of the capsule during its “inbound flyaround”: The fires its engines to begin its flyaround of the station for a 7:10pm ET docking today. — International Space Station (@Space_Station) That’s not to say there were no problems whatsoever. Two orbital maneuvering and attitude control (OMAC) thrusters, which are exactly as important as they sound, due to “a chamber drop in pressure.” There is also “off-nominal behavior of a thermal cooling loop.” Naturally there are redundancies and tolerances in place for these kinds of things, and the Starliner continued on its merry way. But a multiple thruster failure isn’t something you can shrug off as “space is hard.” This was neither the first time the craft has been in space, nor its first time having thrust problems. You better believe NASA, which has paid Boeing handsomely to develop this equipment, is going to be looking at this event through an electron microscope before committing another dime to the program. Nevertheless, the spacecraft did complete its official orbital mission — a first for the Starliner — and a huge amount of things have to go right for that to happen. That’s definitely a win for Boeing, and they really needed one of those. Plus they got this really awesome view, which looks fake but is definitely real: NASA |
All the tech that got our attention at F1 Miami Grand Prix | Jaclyn Trop | 2,022 | 5 | 7 | All eyes are on Miami this weekend as the international glitterati arrives for the city’s inaugural Formula One Grand Prix. The European racing event has attracted American fans in droves, thanks to the of “Formula 1: Drive to Survive” — the successful franchise that’s spurred some of the most captivating rivalries in modern streaming and just been renewed for seasons 5 and 6. That in turn has attracted a new class of tech sponsors, including Google, Amazon, Dell and Oracle, that can use their computing power to analyze the 100,000 data points these $20 million machines generate per second. That means the 2022 FIA Formula One World Championship calendar is not only a celebration of speed, but the triumph of math, science and data each weekend from February through November. Plus, the technology tested on the track — continually evolving due to the governing body’s ever-changing regulations — tends to trickle down into passenger cars, so what’s showcased today . Here is the best tech we spotted at the Miami International Autodrome around Hard Rock Stadium this weekend. team benefits from partnerships with Google and Dell this year. Google put its mark on the MCL36 driven by Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo with , whose primary colors spin around its wheel covers, which have returned to F1 cars for the first time since 2009 due to new regulations this season. But the multiyear partnership goes deeper. “This collaboration has the potential to solve big and complex engineering challenges — from improving the team’s telemetry and design capabilities through AI, to speeding up decision-making and safeguarding team communications using Android 5G,” Nicholas Drake, Google’s VP of marketing, . The McLaren team also uses Android connected phones, tablets and earbuds to monitor performance from the pit, as well as Dell’s prototyping and simulation software. “We’re in a constant state of rapid prototyping of our cars to make them go faster with data-driven engineering changes, on average about every 20 minutes,” Edward Green, principal digital architect at McLaren Racing, said in a statement. Among the top five cars on the circuit, the margin between the fastest and slowest cars can be a razor-thin 0.15%, making the simulation power Dell provides integral to the team’s performance. car may have the cure that will allow the team and driver Max Verstappen to defend the world title: Oracle Cloud software from its title sponsor that uses machine learning to analyze race-day variables, from when to make a pit stop to which kind of tires to use. The software will analyze data points from Friday and Saturday’s practice laps at Hard Rock Stadium to simulate runs and decide the best course for Sunday. That’s especially important at new race tracks such as Hard Rock Stadium’s temporary, 19-turn F1 circuit where historical data doesn’t exist. Red Bull driver Sergio Perez said that surface conditions in Miami Gardens were challenging. “There isn’t much grip off the racing line on this track,” Perez said after trailing in Friday’s practice sessions, “and it feels very gravely out there, too.” The computing expertise also may help Red Bull solve a challenge facing most teams so far this season: a phenomenon called “porpoising” for the bouncing effect it produces as the cars travel at top speed on long straightaways. It’s an effect of the FIA rule changes for the 2022 season that give teams greater reign over underfloor dynamics to generate downforce. Red Bull’s solution is a metal strip that adds stiffness and rigidity to the floor of the team’s RB18 race car. This “ice skate” design also acts as a skid that reduces flexion once the underfloor has touched the track. After a disappointing start to the 2022 season, the is debuting updates to its front and rear wings for the race in Miami. FIA regulations that changed the design of the front and rear wings for 2022 and reintroduced a beam wing after a nine-year hiatus forced teams to reengineer their aerodynamic systems, especially for the front wing, which serves as the crucial first point of contact that directs air flow across the body. Mercedes’ upgrades intend to improve efficiency and reduce drag on the W13 race car driven by George Russell and Lewis Hamilton. Russell led Friday afternoon’s second practice round, giving the team and its fans hope that Mercedes has worked out the kinks. Meanwhile, seven-time world champion Hamilton received a temporary exemption for the weekend to wear jewelry that he can’t remove easily, including a platinum nose ring, so the team can proceed full speed ahead. |
A brutal week of layoffs | Greg Kumparak | 2,022 | 5 | 7 | Hi friends. In case you missed it last week: I’m , and I’m handling Week in Review now that is off with building their new crypto-focused podcast/newsletter, . I’m supposed to be on vacation today, but I figured it was probably not cool to throw the newsletter to someone else ONE WEEK after taking over, so I popped back in for this one. I normally have very good work/life balance, I promise! Sure, I have way-too-many coworkers’ numbers set to automatically bypass my phone’s “Do Not Disturb” toggle and, yeah, sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night to a phantom Slack ding that didn’t actually ding, but… hm. Perhaps I take back that promise. If there’s a “big thing” this week, it’s unfortunately not one that’s fun to write about at all: Employees in the startup world are getting hit hard with layoffs right now, seemingly with a new set of cuts every other day. First was Robinhood, announcing Then Netflix, cutting (but not shutting down!) Then came , , and . And I’m sure there are some I missed or we haven’t heard about yet. Why now? The short version: A lot of these companies saw massive positive shifts in their user base (in terms of size, usage or both) with the pandemic and adjusted accordingly. Now that we’re arguably on the other side of the pandemic (or as close as we’ll get to some “other side”) and things are shifting in another direction… Natasha Mascarenhas and Amanda Silberling have a deeper dive on the layoffs of late, and some of the reasoning behind each. . Tony Fadell, the man behind such iconic devices as the iPod, iPhone, and Nest Thermostat, is writing a book on building things — and as part of the process, he dusted off his collection of once oh-so-secret prototypes and concept art. He shared some great ones with us, including an absolutely bizarro iPod Mini/phone hybrid with a swiveling head. With more space rocket parts becoming reusable, companies are still working out the best/safest/most efficient way to actually… you know, get those parts back. This past weekend Rocket Lab set out to use a HELICOPTER to catch a reusable booster as it fell from the sky… and succeeded! At least, at first. I won’t even fly most helicopters because they’re always too dang hard, so this whole thing breaks my brain. It’s not every day you see Apple, Google Microsoft working together on something… but this week the trio announced that they’re teaming up to tackle a beast that causes all of them all sorts of trouble: passwords. If all goes to plan, over the next year they’ll implement a passwordless standard that lets you use your smartphone’s fingerprint reader or face scanner to sign into things across macOS/Safari, Android/Chrome, and Windows/Edge. Why? It’s pretty damned hard to answer that without using the word “TikTok.” Ever been poking around Google and found your home address or phone number on a sketchy website that refuses to remove it? Google is — after many, many years of complaints — rolling out a process for getting those search results zapped. Zack has a step-by-step for how to submit a request… but as for how long it might take to actually go through? TBD. UiPath’s valuation has absolutely plummeted over the past year. Why? Ron and Alex have some thoughts. You’ve built something cool and it seems to be finding an audience, and now you’re ready to raise some money… or are you? Bill Petty of the investment firm Tercera outlines six things that every investor is going to look for in the due diligence process. Financial projections don’t exist just to make potential investors happy. In this post, Jose Cayasso, co-founder of founder prep platform Slidebean, breaks down some of the most common mistakes he sees among the founders they work with. |
This week in TechCrunch podcasts: The new TC Pod, Chain Reaction, Found, Equity and The TechCrunch Live Podcast | Matt Burns | 2,022 | 5 | 21 | TechCrunch is more than just a site with words. We’re also building a growing stable of podcasts focused on the most critical topics relating to the startup and venture capital worlds. To help you find the right show for your interests, we’ve compiled our audio output from the week. And if you are more into the written over the spoken word, well on the above topics as well. Welcome to the very first episode of The TechCrunch Podcast! Every week, the new TC podcast will dive into the biggest stories in tech, as told by the writers who penned them. We’ve been developing and iterating on the concept for many months now, so we’re thrilled to finally be able to deliver our first ever full episode, which you can get by subscribing or . Our first ever show is typical for TechCrunch, since it was recorded mostly on the road at one of our fantastic yearly events – ! If there’s one thing TC is great at, it’s rolling with the punches and improvising on the fly, and we did that with on-location and remote recording, bringing you highlights from the biggest news of the week alongside in-depth interviews with TC’s own Kirsten Korosec and Taylor Hatmaker. Be sure to subscribe, and leave us a 5-star review with your feedback. We’ll be delivering the TechCrunch Podcast weekly, with fresh interviews from the writers closest to the biggest stories of the week, as well as a roundup of what you need to know for what went down in the wide world of tech. Welcome back, this week Lucas and Anita discuss the continued fallout from the broader market crash and how life is going for crypto giants on the public markets. We chat about FTX’s 30-year-old billionaire CEO buying up a big chunk of Robinhood, which is pumping the gas on crypto even as the market cools. We also discuss trouble at Coinbase and the continued fallout from the collapse of Terra. In their interview this week, Lucas and Anita chat with Mercedes Bent. Bent is a venture capitalist at Lightspeed Venture Partners where she places bets on consumer products in cryptoland. Before joining Lightspeed, Bent spent some time in the VR world, so we picked her brain on where crypto fits into this metaverse future everyone is clamoring about. Subscribe to the Chain Reaction newsletter to dive deeper: Justin Intal from Forage joined the Found crew live. He talks about how profound struggles in her personal life motivated him to create a way for online grocers to accept EBT and SNAP benefits. He also talked about the importance of vulnerability and transparency as a CEO. Each failure is learning, so he is not about hiding his past failed companies or ideas–in fact he has them written out on his Linkedin. and let us know a bit about yourself and what you think of FOUND. Connect with us: The whole team was back together this week, which was pretty darn good as there was a lot to get through. and were on the mic, with handling production. What did we get into? A better question might be what did we get into: Hugs from us to you, and we will talk to you Monday! This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, asked: The question comes after Natasha’s recent Startups Weekly column, The piece explores the ripple effects of the looming Roe v. Wade overturn, specifically in how it impacts startups. But, let’s not hypothesize. We brought on , the CEO and co-founder of , to answer our big questions about building, raising, and existing when so much regulatory scrutiny is weighing on your business. A direct-to-consumer health company that specializes in the delivery of abortion pills, Hey Jane about to kick off its fundraising process which makes for an interesting tension. The startup – especially today – really sits in the middle of two intense moments: an overturn to Roe v. Wade would threaten all of its work, and a toughening, risk-averse VC market could be a hurdle toward next financing. Enjoy the show, and let us know if you like this interview format. Also, that we referenced during the show as well! Hello and welcome back to , a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Every Monday, and scour the news and record notes on what’s going on to kick off the week. What was on our minds this morning? The following: It was an awful weekend in America, which leaked into the show somewhat. Take care of one another. A few housekeeping notes before we go: This is not a live-show week, so Equity will simply come out on Wednesday and Friday mornings. And this week is our TC Sessions: Mobility event, which you can learn more about |
This Week in Apps: Fortnite’s back on iOS, TikTok’s new ad product, apps hit NewFronts | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 5 | 7 | 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 . Data.ai (formerly App Annie) says global spending across iOS and Google Play is up to $135 billion in 2021, and that figure will likely be higher when its annual report, including third-party app stores in China, is released next year. Consumers also downloaded 10 billion more apps this year than in 2020, reaching nearly 140 billion in new installs, it found. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re also a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus. In 2020, investors $73 billion in capital into mobile companies — a figure that was up 27% year-over-year. 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 much more. Epic Games’ battle with Apple has seen its mobile gaming title Fortnite banned from the App Store ever since Epic broke Apple’s rules around in-app purchases, then used its ban to wage a legal fight over antitrust issues. But this week, Epic Games found a way to return to the iPhone, and with the help of a notable partner, too. The company teamed up with Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming service which runs games on the iPhone and iPad within the browser. Now Fortnite has joined the Xbox Cloud Gaming lineup, meaning customers on iOS will once again be able to play the popular game. The move follows Nvidia’s announcement earlier this year that Fortnite would become playable through its own GeForce Now service. Of note, Microsoft said Fortnite is the first free-to-play title to join its cloud gaming service, and says users won’t need a GamePass subscription in order to play it. All users need to do is go to Xbox.com/play on their device’s web browser, then sign-in with their Microsoft Account to get started. “It’s an important step to add a Free-to-Play title to the cloud gaming catalog as we continue our cloud journey,” said Catherine Gluckstein, vice president and head of Product, Xbox Cloud Gaming, in . “We’re starting with Fortnite and will look to bring more Free-to-Play games people love in the future.” This week, IAB’s held its hybrid event where companies pitched their upcoming offerings to ad buyers. While a number of streamers were there to promote their lineups and new ad products, including an interesting set of new digital ad insertion features, several app makers, including Meta, Twitter, Snap and TikTok, were also in the mix, as they’re no longer just social networks but entertainment platforms in their own right. and the various announcements, which included the following: How an old Tweet edit looks like on Twitter Web App: — Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) Telegram Spotify Newzoo Microsoft led by Canadian Teachers Venture Growth. The round values the business at €2.7 billion. after surpassing 1 million customers. The company offers a variety of products to its customers, including cash-back rewards, savings and investing, and is planning a mortgage offering for later this year. The company says it will use this to enhance SoundCloud’s own music discovery experience. Terms were not disclosed. led by Square Peg Capital. LottieFiles is used by animation and motion designers at 150,000 companies, including Google, TikTok, Disney, Uber, Airbnb and Netflix. led by Insight Partners. The company now has 32,000 customers and says it’s seen “triple-digit” revenue growth since 2020. . Neither AppLovin nor developer Steven Cravotta were able to comment on the acquisition, but the game is now run by AppLovin’s studio Lion Studios Plus per its App Store listing. An Android version has also become available. , which can then be used within their own platforms. The company plans to launch a 3D creator’s app next year. and services. The company aims to have more than 40 medical-grade digital therapeutics by 2026. . Existing backer Y Combinator Continuity led the round. The app currently operates across 11 cities in India and sees hundreds of thousands of orders daily. |
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The Great Resignation, meet the Great Reset | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 5 | 7 | The Great Resignation, the economic trend of people quitting their jobs in pursuit of other opportunities, has been greeted by a harsh reality: the Great Reset. This week, a spate of tech companies – largely those valued above $1 billion from their venture capital investors – announced reductions in their workforce. I wrote three layoff stories in fewer than 24 hours, a cadence I haven’t experienced since the beginning of the pandemic. These stories may have the same ledes, but they feel dramatically different. already is — natasha (@nmasc_) Unlike before, when startups had to lay off employees in response to the sudden shock of the pandemic, today’s tech companies are making cuts due to – more or less – their own lack of discipline. I have more empathy for a founder who was caught off guard by a pandemic than one who overspent despite knowing that the boom wouldn’t exist forever, and is now cutting the same employees that helped them soar. Whiplash, I’m hearing from some now former employees, is an understatement. Growth is tricky, and a part of a founder’s job is to moonshot their way to scale, but we also need to remember that change was inevitable. Especially for startups that hit product market fit during a once-in-a-lifetime event. The biggest difference between layoffs in 2020 versus layoffs in 2022 is cash, potentially a lifeline. Startups raised massive amounts of capital thanks to larger average deal sizes over the past two years; meaning that some of the capital that was once used to sweeten benefits or candidates’ offers may be pivoting to runway. Jason Lemkin, head of SaaStr, : “Many startups also lucked out and have years in the bank due to covid rounds… capital that they wouldn’t have had otherwise.” If you’re a founder, now is the time to unlearn some of that lavish spending and focus on conserving what you do have. For employees, let me know which spreadsheets I need to retweet. For more thoughts, read , and then head to TechCrunch+ for some . In the rest of the newsletter, we’re talking about spicy venture firm pivots, fintech drama and a duo of inclusive play in exclusive worlds. As always, you can support me by forwarding this newsletter to a friend or or A number of venture firms made news this week, either to announce new funding or new strategies. In Afore’s case, it’s both. The pre-seed firm tells TechCrunch that they closed a $150 million fund and introduced an in-house accelerator of sorts with a standard deal. Going forward, any accepted company will receive $1 million at a $10 million post-money valuation. It’s a not-so-subtle dig at Y Combinator and a way for Afore to stand out during a changing market. Afore isn’t the only firm to change its mind. Backstage Capital told me this week that, after investing in 200 companies, For now, that means no net new Backstage companies, even though the firm is growing assets under management. Also, we’re hearing that comes with an impressive promise of full-time help. Early-stage founders, it’s definitely a stressful time to be in your seat – but also clearly a pivotal one. / Getty Images In Equity this week, your favorite trio chatted about Stripe and Plaid drama. For background, that would give customers a way to connect directly to their customers’ bank accounts, access financial data and manage transactions. AKA, exactly what Plaid does. Plaid CEO and co-founder Zach Perret threw shade at Stripe in a tweet, suggesting that the company may have used its We’ve talked about fintech all overlapping, and competing with each other for months on the podcast, but this felt like the most clear example of a tension. Listen to the podcast for our entire take – and filo / Getty Images For the deal of the week that may have flown under your radar, I have two! Walnut and Line are two startups that are bringing inclusive plays to exclusive industries. Walnut, which announced a $110 million Series A this week, has , and Line, which landed a $25 million round of majority debt financing, These startups, if they pull it off, will underscore the promise of tech breaking down barriers for those disenfranchised from our institutions. It’s why I’m taking on fintech, with an angle on wealth, access and education, as my new beat. Digital generated image of abstract multi colored curve chart on white background. Until next time, |
A changing of the guard | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 5 | 7 | When you start a project, it’s easy to get caught up in it. Then time passes and suddenly it’s been a half decade. Equity, a podcast I got to help start when I was wasn’t even working here, is one such project. So, too, is The Exchange. I started writing a daily markets column , back in 2016. The project, then called the “Editor’s morning note” evolved over time. When I joined Crunchbase, founding Crunchbase News, it was . Then when I was lucky enough to come back to TechCrunch, it re-launched without a name. , a TechCrunch name you don’t see much but you appreciate implicitly thanks to his extensive behind-the-scenes work, helped get the series a new name. That’s how The Exchange came to be back in late 2019. We later added a newsletter once weekly, the very missive that you are reading now. This is by no means TechCrunch’s biggest newsletter — Daily Crunch is vastly larger. But The Exchange email has long been a place for me to put bits of reporting I had laying around, and pursue topics and questions in a more relaxed manner than usual. It’s been, really, a weekly joy. This is also the last time that I am going to write it for at least some time. , who you likely know by now for her regular and vital contributions to The Exchange, is going to take over starting next week. She may ask me to kick in a few words here and there, or not. It will be up to her. What I can promise is that Anna and I are very much aligned in how we approach covering startups, venture capital, and the business climate of each. She’s been an incredible co-writer, pushing me to do more planning. I am more than thankful for her past contributions, and stoked for what she has coming up. Why the change? Since I took over as Editor in Chief of TechCrunch+ I have had less time for certain tasks. I gave up writing most of Daily Crunch and pulled back 99% on news writing (startup funding rounds, and the like) so that I could double-down on hiring, and working to get our work out more quickly, and with more bang. We’ll see how well I do there, . But I am increasingly underwater when it comes to time, and that means that this newsletter with its 40,000 or 50,000 readers has fallen down my priority list to the point when it no longer makes sense for me to selfishly hold onto it. It needs someone who can give it — give you — the proper attention. So, in Anna hands I leave you. The change will be an upgrade, and I hope you have a blast with Anna. . I will still write the daily column, often with Anna as before. But from here on out, Saturdays are Anna’s domain. Hugs, thank you, and onward! — Alex |
Crypto VC Jill Gunter on what it will take to beat Ethereum | Anita Ramaswamy | 2,022 | 5 | 7 | Jill Gunter is no stranger to crypto — she’s seen the market through its ups and downs, conducting research on blockchain protocols, working at multiple crypto startups and , and investing as a crypto VC at Slow Ventures. Gunter first started following the crypto space in 2011, when she was working in the traditional finance world as a derivatives trader at Goldman Sachs and when Bitcoin was the only major layer-one blockchain. Since then, , she’s been able to witness three distinct phases of development within the industry that have led it to this moment of heated competition between multiple established blockchains, and even more new protocols entering the fray. The first phase is what Gunter called the era of altcoins. Protocols like Litecoin, Dogecoin and ZCash were born in this era, when developers sought to tweak the Bitcoin protocol in specific ways, such as changing the block size to change the throughput of the system, she explained. “What you came out with was a lot of blockchains and a lot of tokens that had a lot of the same properties as Bitcoin, but changed the feature set,” Gunter said. The next phase of the development of new blockchains came with the creation of Ethereum in 2015, according to Gunter. Ethereum brought a “sea change” in terms of what one could do with a blockchain by introducing the concept of programmability. The modern era of layer-one blockchains, she continued, can be understood as a period of developers trying to tweak the feature sets of programmable blockchains to address some of the issues with Ethereum that exist today. Developers are trying to lower fees, boost usability and add privacy features to applications on the blockchain that the layer-one Ethereum chain itself doesn’t have. Ethereum’s high transaction costs and low throughput have continued to plague the network with issues, frustrating users. Yuga Labs’ recent metaverse land sale grabbed headlines last week when people trying to buy NFTs were faced with exorbitant gas fees and failed transactions because of the popularity of the drop. While alternative blockchains such as Solana and Avalanche offer lower costs and can process transactions much faster than Ethereum, Gunter said these other chains have not been “fully put to the test that Ethereum has been” because they haven’t had to process as many users at once. What’s more, these newer chains have all “centralized something in some way,” Gunter continued. “For the most part, these things have on their roadmap ways of continuing to decentralize over time, but again, we have yet to see those put to the test. We also have yet to see in what ways decentralization really matters to users in terms of the architecture of these things,” Gunter said. These different blockchains are increasingly having to compete to attract developers to their ecosystems. As co-founder of privacy-focused layer-one blockchain , Gunter knows firsthand how challenging it can be to get engineers to invest time in developing projects on a specific chain when there’s so much competition. “Personally, I don’t think it’s good enough anymore to just wave around a white paper that says, oh, we’re actually going to be more scalable and more decentralized than anything else, Gunter said. “I think that you need to have truly differentiated features from what already exists. And I think that neither is good enough without the other — I think you do need to make a case for why your system is going to be the most popular and the most sound going forward over time.” Admittedly, she added, all the layer-one projects out there are “making the right noises,” but have yet to be put to the test by users. Especially if crypto continues to experience a market downturn, the winners and losers in the fight between layer-one blockchains may be separated faster than the industry had expected. |
ESPN+ debuts ‘McEnroe vs. McEnroe’ the first-ever tennis match between a real person and their virtual avatar | Lauren Forristal | 2,022 | 5 | 7 | Premiering on ESPN+, Michelob Ultra, in collaboration with tech and production company , presents “McEnroe vs. McEnroe,” the world’s first tennis match to feature a real person versus a virtual player — both being a version of the entertaining, confrontational tennis player, John McEnroe. In the match, the real McEnroe will face off against his ultimate opponent—his younger self. In this case, a virtual player powered by A.I. While the original premiere date was set for Saturday, May 7, this has been retracted. The new release date is yet to be determined. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCCbAjc9Vh0 The 45-minute film will showcase how the match was created using a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, plus five virtual avatars of John McEnroe from pivotal points of his career. Machine learning is a subcategory of AI that allows a machine to automatically learn from past data without the need for manual programming or correcting. The team at Unit 9 spent a day with John in order to bring the vision to life via full-body scanning, motion capture, and technology (a cloud-based app that creates photorealistic digital humans). The avatar game system will be projected on a hologram particle screen and will be a simulation of gameplay with a system of ball launchers and ball return robots. When McEnroe sends the ball over the net, the avatar responds to the direction of the real ball. As the avatar swings, a new ball is fired from the ball cannon and then flies through a smokescreen at a precise point in space to make it appear from the avatar’s racket position. From what is shown in the trailer, the hologram particle screen makes the virtual John McEnroe look blurry and distorted. So we will have to see how this actually looks on the big screen when the film airs. Unit 9’s team analyzed hours of footage from John’s matches throughout his entire career and recorded hundreds of shots, strokes, and movements. In total, they recorded 308 shots with over 259 loops and blends to really capture his footwork and well-known shot-making and volleying skills. The best part about this is the team recorded numerous key phrases and statements so McEnroe could talk smack to his virtual self (and maybe even smash a couple of rackets). Michelob Ultra Michelob Ultra also enlisted John’s younger brother Patrick, who will emcee the match and provide real-time insights into John as a person over the years. Sports commentator Ashley Brewer and former professional tennis player James Blake will call the action and give fans a behind-the-scenes look at this one-of-a-kind match. “McEnroe vs. McEnroe” is the latest spectacle in the Michelob brand’s campaign “Joy is the Ultimate Trophy.” The virtual match is a significant shift in the company’s strategy and follows its 2020 virtual fan experience titled “ ,” a partnership with the NBA and Microsoft that led to a in sales. Ricardo Marques, VP Marketing, Michelob Ultra US and Global, told TechCrunch how they chose pivotal moments years of McEnroe’s career. “He’s going to play his 1979 avatar – -that’s when he came into the tennis circuit. Then we have ‘81, when he reached the top for the first time in his career. 1982 was not a great year for John as he was struggling a bit. Then he comes back in full force in 1984 before retiring in 1992,” Marques said. In , McEnroe won his first career Grand Slam men’s singles title. While he was at the top of his game in 1981, he remained a controversial player, swearing at referees and yelling at umpires. Despite this, he was to win three consecutive U.S. Open singles titles, inching closer to becoming No. 1 in the sport. The tennis player would lose in the and had an early exit during the . The next year, he would be suspended for three weeks because his behavior was so bad and . He was also from the Wembley Indoor tournament as a result of his racquet slamming and harsh words. While 1984 had its dark areas, McEnroe did have his best season yet and had an 82-3 match record, the highest single-season rate of the Open Era. His last year on tour was in 1992. John McEnroe is now 63 years old and will be the first athlete to participate in this type of tech-based competition, according to Michelob. The company approached John with this opportunity because they knew that he was a fiery, intense competitor and would be up for this sort of challenge. “Who wouldn’t want an opportunity to literally be able to look back at where you started and celebrate how much you’ve grown and learned along the way?” said McEnroe. “I’ve had highs and lows just like everybody else, and what I’ve learned over time is to appreciate the journey. No matter what happens, you have to find time to savor the experience and remember it’s only worth it if you enjoy it.” Along with the virtual tennis match, the film will also allow John to reflect on his career and share stories and lessons he’s learned over the years. “This is exactly why John McEnroe makes so much sense for this project. Aside from the fact that he’s, of course, a Hall of Famer [and] tennis legend, he is evolved as a human … His outlook on life beautifully aligns with what we stand for,” Marques said. “So it is indeed a journey looking back at those moments when he was a very intense player on the court to where he sits today.” The idea of such a well-known and hot-tempered tennis player playing an AR version of himself will definitely turn some heads, and he could be a risky partner for the brewing company. For instance, McEnroe Serena Williams (who has partnered with the brand) would be ranked number 700 if she played on the men’s circuit. Michelob Ultra The extreme contrast between Michelob Ultra’s happy-go-lucky slogan “It’s Only Worth It If You Enjoy It” and John’s combative attitude will be an interesting pairing, to say the least. The result will certainly be unique as “one of the most colorful personalities in sports learned to find joy later in his career,” the company said. The film will allow audiences to witness how a competitive player has evolved over time. “At the end of the day, this is a message about joy and fun. Reminding people to make the most out of every single day and enjoy the ride,” added Marques. |
As interest rates rise, startups and VCs are playing a new game | Kyle Wiggers | 2,022 | 5 | 7 | money is now officially behind us: The United States Federal Reserve a key interest rate benchmark by 0.50%, or 50 basis points, this week. Startups have long basked in the sun of effectively zero-cost money. As a result of a historic period of low rates, the comparative attractiveness of investing in bonds and other safer, if lower-yielding, assets was reduced, meaning investors around the world were looking for a place to park funds and have a shot at material incomes. Technology did well during the period, with tech startups receiving an even larger shot in the arm. The mechanism is simple to understand: Low rates led to capital flowing into more exotic investments, like venture capital funds. Those funds then grew in size and number. The result of that influx of cash to investors was a burst of funds for startups. More capital pools with more funds led to competitions for deal access, putting founders in the driver’s seat when it came to valuations and terms. Another factor at play was the COVID-19 pandemic bolstering the value of public tech companies while many other concerns took a gut punch due to travel restrictions and other related economic changes. Crossover funds piled into tech companies public and private, the latter case leading to a wave of funding events that stretched valuation multiples to the moon. Now we are seeing the rubber band snap back. As interest rates rise, available funding to venture capitalists recedes and crossover capital has already left the scene to lick its wounds. Meantime, other investments — think bonds — are simply more lucrative than they were. Even more, the pandemic-era tech trade has , leaving public comps for startups far from their peak valuations. This creates a uniquely shit moment in which startups are fighting what must feel like a capital drought at the same time that investors are becoming more conservative exits are constrained due to depressed public-market prices. It’s a mess out there for startups that have only known summer. Winter is not coming; it’s here. Venture capitalists are talking about the changing climate publicly, a shift from earlier in the year, when such commentary felt scarce. Whether it’s due to more near-term pain in the market or VCs simply finding their voice, the commentary is now strident and regular. |
Fertility startup Hannah Life Technologies gets $5.15M Pre-Series A | Catherine Shu | 2,022 | 5 | 9 | , a startup for couples trying to conceive, announced today it has raised $5.15 million in pre-Series A funding led by Monk’s Hill Ventures. Other investors include Golden Gate Ventures, Anthro Ventures and medical technology entrepreneur Dr. Jack Wang. The funding comes about 18 months after the company raised seed funding from Y Combinator. Benjamin Tee, who co-founded Hannah Life with Prusothman Raja, told TechCrunch that he and his wife experienced unexplained fertility, a physically and emotionally stressful time. “Although my wife and I finally conceived through IVF, I felt that there could be non-invasive home based technologies to help couples conceive earlier.” Tee, who met Raja through the Stanford Biodesign program, also found that the “often the burden of pregnancy falls on the female gender’s shoulders, across many cultures. As males, we wanted also to help balance the perception that infertility is often caused by female factors. Roughly half of fertility issues come from males, such as low sperm count and quality.” The company offers three main direct-to-consumer products, created to give couples home-based non-invasive services as a complement to clinic-based procedures like intra-uterine insemination (IUI). The twoplus Sperm Guide is a patented device made out of medical-grade silicone that concentrates sperm near the cervical opening to increase chances of fertilization. The twoplus Applicator was created for couples trying to conceive without penetrative sex and deposits sperm directly onto the cervical opening. The twoplus Hormone Test provides detailed reports on hormones, helping couples determine their levels of fertility and potentially spotting health issues. The company says that since it launched in August 2021, it has provided products to over a thousand households in Singapore and the United Kingdom, with revenue growth of over 300% quarter over quarter. |
BharatPe to claw back founder’s shares, terminate ‘several’ employees | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 5 | 9 | BharatPe says it has initiated actions to claw back co-founder Ashneer Grover’s restricted shares and terminate services of several employees who engaged with sketchy vendors as the Tiger Global-backed fintech startup looks to recover from a strange and tremulous episode early this year. The Noida-headquartered startup, last and which helps merchants accept money online and also provides them with working capital, earlier this year launched an investigation into its own co-founder Grover following complaints. It concluded that Grover and people close to him had “ ” and engaged in “extensive misappropriation of company funds.” BharatPe said on Tuesday that based on the report by Alvarez & Marsal, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas and PwC, the startup’s board has recommended several measures, including clawing back Grover’s restricted shares. The firm did not share how much of Grover’s restricted shares it plans to take away, but a source familiar with the matter said that shares of Grover, who starred in India’s version of “Shark Tank” as a “shark,” will be diluted down to 7.1%, from 8.5%. The firm has also enforced a new code of conduct, which is applicable to both senior management and employees, which deals with conflict of interest and other issues, BharatPe said. It has also introduced a new vendor procurement policy to oversee and vet the vendors with whom the startup engages, as well as hired a full-time CHRO and an interim CFO. Earlier this year, an alleged audio clip surfaced on Twitter of a man — presumed to be Ashneer — hurling abusive and life-threatening statements over a phone call to a Kotak Bank representative over not getting financing to buy shares in fashion e-commerce Nykaa’s IPO. The clip, which went viral on social media, triggered a chain of events that prompted the board to conduct an investigation. Grover has denied any wrongdoing and in an early televised interview threatened to make public “dirt” on investors and board members if the startup continues to hurt his reputation. He said his investors are “removed from the reality” and treat founders as “slaves.” BharatPe termed his allegations as “baseless lies.” Grover . The startup said it is also removing services of “several employees” in departments who were directly involved with blocked vendors. “If required, the company will be filing criminal cases against some of these employees for the misconduct and act of cheating committed by them against the company,” it said. Meanwhile, Grover is working on a new startup, he said at a recent conference. One thing that he is very clear about for the new startup is that he won’t raise money from VCs, he has said. |
Bonobos co-founder Andy Dunn is taking public his secret battle with bipolar disorder | Connie Loizos | 2,022 | 5 | 9 | Andy Dunn, the co-founder and former CEO of the men’s clothing company , has something new to sell: his life story. It might just save another life. In “ ,” hitting bookshelves tomorrow, Dunn goes public with a secret he managed to hide from the public for decades despite being a high-profile founder for much of the time, and despite several trips to the hospital tied to psychic breaks, one of which saw him turn violent enough that he was charged with misdemeanor assault and felony assault of a senior citizen. Dunn, like an estimated of U.S. adults — and an even of entrepreneurs — has bipolar disorder. Specifically, he has Bipolar 1 Disorder, by the National Institute of Mental Health as featuring “manic episodes that last at least 7 days,” or “manic symptoms that are so severe that the person needs immediate hospital care” and that also include depressive episodes lasting at least two weeks. Dunn writes in his gripping new book that he was first diagnosed as a 20-year-old Northwestern University student after experiencing a psychotic event (he was talking to birds and thought he was the Messiah, among other things). But the doctor offering the diagnosis also said that if Dunn didn’t have another episode for five years, it could prove a “one-off psychotic event.” The term “one-off” became a “life raft our family clung to for years,” he writes. In the ensuing years, Dunn would establish Bonobos as one of the first breakthrough indie men’s brands; with his co-founder, Brian Spaly; and bring in a new CEO, then replace her with himself again . His sister Monica worriedly kept tabs on him. Yet no one, Dunn included, foresaw what would happen in early 2016, when he became so fully unglued that a manic episode — his first since college, he says — ended with him howling at the moon in his apartment, naked, and subsequently striking his then-girlfriend and her mother, who were trying to calm him. A weeklong stay at Bellevue Hospital in New York followed, followed by a 12-hour jail stint, and finally, the help he needed in the form of therapy and medication. Penguin Random House At the time of that most extreme episode, Dunn writes, he was consumed with shame and terrified that he would become fodder for Business Insider. But nearly two years after Bonobos was acquired by Walmart for $310 million in the summer of 2017, Dunn himself began putting pen to paper to tell the world his own version of events. In a earlier today about the book, we talked about its impetus; how he lives now without the hypomania that drove him for so long; and what’s next. Excerpts below have been edited lightly for length and clarity. AD: I think that the moment of highest intrigue would have been right after it happened, when I was in and out of the courtrooms in New York, or the “Tombs” [a detention complex below the courtrooms in Manhattan]. There are court reporters; there are people who like to break scoops. I remember this moment where there was a police blotter that came out … and somehow it didn’t get picked up. I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to tell the story in my own words, because as you know, once something comes out, the headline is the story. I don’t think there was much danger that someone else was going to tell it at this point, because, you know, whatever. I sold pants for 12 or 13 years and had more or less moved into more of a private life with a baby and kind of stepped back from social media and from writing online essays. So I don’t think it would have come out. And I think that’s typically how we treat mental illness, which is: If we can get away with not talking about it, then let’s definitely not talk about it. [But] the only reason to hold back is if something is unspeakable, and so by telling in precise detail a lot of things that most people probably wouldn’t write about, it was a way of saying, “I can write this because there was nothing wrong that I did.” The only thing that would be wrong would be to not deal with it, and I want to help people [with their own] acceptance because until you accept it, you can’t deal with it and we don’t have the luxury of people waiting 20 years to accept their diagnosis. I did talk to people throughout. I tried to approach it a little bit like a historian; I had some awareness that it’s very hard to get that right [because] one’s perspective is so biased. So wherever there was an opportunity to lay blame at my own feet rather than someone else’s, I felt like it was important to bias toward that because the only reason not to do that would be a matter of some kind of ego accounting. As you can tell in the book, I didn’t start off that way. I was externalizing a lot of blame … unpacking that dynamic between me and Brian is a big piece of the second part of the book, which is why I thought that vignette was important. The Messianic delusion I remember so clearly. Imagine there was a day or a few days where you thought you were a deity. It’s very exciting. If you actually have that thought, and you think it’s true, it’s like being a superhero in a movie or something. That said, there are other things that I didn’t remember at all, including that story about talking to birds. I didn’t know that until I interviewed my friend Eric — who’s now running for Congress, incidentally. We sat down on a park bench in Chicago about a year ago or so and I said, “Hey, I’m writing a book. Here’s what it’s about.” And he goes, “Andy, you know, we’ve never talked about this in 20 years.” It was profoundly memorable in different ways for both of us and it was so interesting to plumb the depths of that and discover that the reason we never talked about it was he felt like he tried a couple times and I pushed him away, which sounds very much like someone in denial of a recent diagnosis. It’s so vivid because in retrospect, I was making a bid to bring this up [and] it was a hard thing for me to do. And the way that he received it was like, “Let’s not go back there,” which, by the way, is like a very Gothic, Midwestern approach. The flip side of it would be like, “Well shoot, let’s go back there. This is the good stuff, this is where growth happens.” And I felt so shut down by that. Andy Dunn That micro episode, as my doctor calls it, is one of the more unusual things he’s ever seen. Normally someone who is having psychotic thoughts can’t recover the same day; it requires hospitalization. But let’s be clear. I had to be handcuffed that day. I was taken to Mount Sinai. So no, I don’t think you can self-police. Once you’ve crossed the threshold of having irrational thoughts and you’re no longer discarding them, you’re in trouble. For me, the goal is, between the medication and sleep, to not get to the place where I can’t distinguish between a rational and irrational thought. I’ve never discarded an irrational thought when I had a good night’s sleep and I’m on my medication. That’s why we’re so vigilant about sleep as a family. Today I had a conversation with a friend’s brother, who’s going through some episodes and was recently diagnosed with Bipolar 2 … with the same kinds of potential for depression and for hypomania, and he was saying something that felt really familiar to me, which is that the changes that he’s made lifestyle wise — taking out drinking [owing to medications like] lithium, he feels totally numbed. The journey for someone who has gotten a bipolar diagnosis and is trying to figure out how to deal with it [is] like almost a pharmacological journey to see if there is a safe way to be hypomanic again. My doctor has a beautiful saying, which is, “Might we all be controllably hypomanic every day.” Hypomania is a mood state where you’re feeling very energized, you’re having creative vision, you’re in a state of flow, you’re feeling very optimistic, you’ve got pep in your step. And if we’re fortunate, we all have some days like that, right? If we’re fortunate, we may have, I don’t know, 10 or 20 days a year like that. I’m not sure what the number is. It depends on the person. My manic episodes were set apart by 15 years between 2000 and 2015, but in the intervening years, I was probably hypomanic like 50% of the time, depressed 30% and was in kind of a normal middle mood state the other 20% of the time. I did. I had a year of experimentation to get to the right mixture of medications. I went so deep into it in the book that my nanny recently asked me if I had an advertising deal with Pfizer. [Laughs.] It’s in the same zone around mental health. The mission of the company is to eliminate loneliness and it started as a lot of startups do; it was one product idea that we had, and we were excited about that, and in the process of working on that, it didn’t work but we discovered something else that was working and that was around friendship discovery. There’s a whole contrarian thought that you can actually build a friendship discovery platform, the historical, non-contrarian [take] being that people would find it to be like adverse selection to go to a website to make friends or to go to an app to make friends. So we’re testing that assumption now. It’s called . We’re pre-product-market fit. So we’re still jamming and iterating and learning behind the velvet rope, so to speak. Hopefully, we’ll find something that’s clicking and then we’ll talk a lot more about it at that point. |
Eureka Robotics, the team behind the ‘IkeaBot’, picks up $4.25M | Catherine Shu | 2,022 | 5 | 9 | Remember the ? The robot went viral for its ability to build Ikea furniture as well (or better) than humans can. The team behind the project went on to found Eureka Robotics, which announced today that it has raised a pre-Series A round of $4.25 million, led by The University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners (UTEC), , with participation from Vietnam’s Touchstone Partners and returning investor ATEQ. Eureka Robotics’ products are based on research from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and MIT. It focuses on robotic software and systems to automate tasks that require High Accuracy and High Agility (HAHA). Its robots are used for precision handling, assembly, inspection, drilling and other tasks. The Eureka Controller’s High-Accuracy calibration synchronizes the reference frames of the robot and camera with high accuracy, enabling submillimeter accuracy on vision-guided tasks, while Force Control gives the robot the ability to perform tight assembly and insertion, with clearance down to 50 micron. Meanwhile, its High Agility involves computer vision that allows robots to recognize and locate randomly placed objects. Once the robot finds the position of an object, real-time motion planning helps it move toward it. An example of how the Eureka Controller can be used is the , which deployed technologies originally developed for the Ikea Robot to a shop floor for the first time. It is capable of handling multiple-sized lenses and mirrors and loading those delicate objects onto a tray in order to be coated. Eureka co-founder Dr. Pham Quang Cuong told TechCrunch that the Archimedes is currently operating in a factory in Singapore, serving a U.S. laser lens manufacturer, and that the company has received multiple follow-up orders of the robot. The funding will be used on accelerating development of Eureka Controller, the company’s flagship product, which allows factories to deploy HAHA tasks in System Integrators and factories. Eureka co-founder Dr. Pham said that “while the core technologies are mature and have already been deployed in production, we want to make those technologies really easy to use by System Integrators. Making advanced technologies easy to use by non-programmer engineers is actually difficult.” Part of the funding will be used to grow Eureka Robotics’ software engineering team and product teams to work on the Eureka Controller. Eureka Robotics also plans to expand its commercialization in Singapore and China, and new markets like Japan and Vietnam, with the help of UTEC and Touchstone, respectively. It currently has offices in Singapore and France and distribution partners in China, Japan and the U.S. |
China’s internet users are paying close attention to the crypto crash | Rita Liao | 2,022 | 5 | 9 | While China , its people remain interested in the ups and downs of the crypto market, not least because many of them have found workarounds and continue to buy and sell all sorts of tokens. Bitcoin’s price continued to crater on Monday after a rough weekend, down more than 50% from its peak of $69,000 in November 2021 and nearing the $30,000 mark. As my colleague Jacquelyn , the crash is happening in tandem with the depegging of algorithmic stablecoin terraUSD (UST). A stablecoin is a digital currency that is pegged to a more stable reserve asset like the U.S. dollar or gold and is designed to reduce volatility while offering the benefits of a digital currency, like speedy transactions. An algorithmic stablecoin is one that relies on algorithms to maintain a price similar to a central bank rather than holding actual cash in a reserve to back it. UST is created by “burning” its sister token Luna using smart contracts, or lines of code written into a blockchain to automatically execute decisions. Terraform Labs, the organization behind UST, cryptocurrency Luna and Luna Foundation Guard, emptied its treasury wallet of , about 42,530 bitcoin, or $1.3 billion, on Monday. The price of UST slid to about $0.95. On the same day, the hashtag #luna shot up to the top 10 keywords on Weibo, which is China’s equivalent of Twitter used by 570 million people monthly and is widely regarded as a bellwether for public discussion in the country. Posts hashtagged #luna had generated nearly 15 million views as of Monday evening. “LFG [Luna Foundation Guard] announced lending $1.5 billion to rejuvenate UST, but from my perspective, Luna has seen its day. Even if it’s rescued, it might go on to suffer from Parkinson’s disease, trembling and left half-alive. No one would dare get involved following such a trust crisis,” one user with over 200,000 followers on Weibo. Others shared screenshots of their losses incurred by Luna’s crash, of which price has dropped more than 50% within 24 hours. While it’s hard to measure how many people in China are trading crypto, nearly 10% of web traffic to OKX, which consistently sits atop the 15 exchanges worldwide, comes from China, according to web analytics company (h/t Wu Blockchain). |
Arianee raises $21 million to deliver ownership NFTs with physical luxury goods | Romain Dillet | 2,022 | 5 | 9 | has raised a $21 million Series A round (€20 million) in a round led by Tiger Global. The company issues digital ownership and authenticity certificates on behalf of partner brands. For instance, a luxury and fashion brand can replace the authenticity card that you get with your new watch or handbag with a digital certificate. As those certificates are non-fungible tokens, you can know for sure that there’s only one NFT for this specific good with this serial number and activation date. And, of course, if you want to sell your good, you can also prove the authenticity to the buyer and transfer the certificate to another owner. A certificate isn’t tied to your name or email address. Customers get a wallet address and stores their certificates in their wallet. Arianee customers can then leverage these certificates for other purposes. When people download the Arianee app and add the digital passport to their smartphone, brands get a new channel to reach their customers. You may have noticed that NFTs have become quite trendy over the past year. Arianee plans to take advantage of that as well with support for airdrops, metaverse deployments and cool in-app visualizations. It integrates with their CRM and gives more information about secondhand customers. Brands can also have their own white-label app or integrate Arianee’s features in their own apps to control the experience. Customers include Printemps, Breitling, Groupe Casino, Vacheron Constantin, Paris Fashion Week, Panerai and IWC. In addition to Tiger Global, existing investors Bpifrance, ISAI, Noia Capital and Cygni Labs are also participating in today’s round. Commerce Ventures and Motier Ventures are also investing in Arianee as first-time investors. Interestingly, this isn’t a traditional equity round. Investors are buying shares in the startups, but also $ARIA20 tokens. Those tokens power the open source protocol behind Arianee’s NFTs. Behind the scenes, Arianee on the main Ethereum blockchain and a sidechain called the POAnetwork. “We are thrilled to welcome one of the most influential global investors to our journey and to see our historical partners continue to back us,” co-founder and CEO Pierre-Nicolas Hurstel said in a statement. “The structure of the investment in both equity and $ARIA20 token shows how a diverse global range of investors, from Bpifrance to Tiger Global, is willing to invest on open source and SaaS web3 solutions. Web3 is eating the world and we believe brands can leverage this revolution to regain control of their digital presence.” |
Seadronix aims to reduce marine accidents at port and sea with AI | Kate Park | 2,022 | 5 | 9 | South Korean startup wants to reduce the issue of marine accidents, 75% of which are caused by human error, according to a . The company just secured a $5.8 million Series A extension to scale its AI-based ship berthing monitoring and navigation systems to help cargo ships navigate safely and assist port operators anchoring their vehicles at harbor. The fresh funds, led by , bring Seadronix’s the total round up to $8.3 million. Seadronix will use the capital to grow its team beyond the current headcount of 30 employees and enter global markets, including Singapore and Europe, where its “smart ports” are located, Byeolteo Park, CEO and co-founder, said in an interview with TechCrunch. A smart port uses technologies including AI, big data, Internet of Things and 5G to provide more security and save energy by digitalizing the way huge ships enter docks and handle logistics at the ports. Seadronix says some smart ports across the globe have ; for example, Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Port of Hamburg in Germany and Port of Singapore, but that generally, the traditional shipping industry is conservative and resistant to change, meaning it’s therefore ripe for disruption. “Our mission is to be an AI platform that ensures the safety and environmental protection of the ocean,” said Park. “With this funding, we hope to recruit more staff for the AI, sensor fusion and navigation business and accelerate our global market penetration plan.” The startup was founded in December 2015 by three founders: Park, Donghun Kim (co-CTO) and Hankeun Kim (co-CTO). All of the founders previously worked as autonomous cargo ship researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and decided to turn their studies into a business, according to Park. Seadronix’s AI-based berthing monitoring system (AVISS) uses vision sensors and lidar to help large vessels berth. Its AI-based around-view monitoring system (NAVISS), which can be retrofitted to cargo ships, supports ships in navigating situations. Seadronix Seadronix’s AVISS customers include four ports in South Korea (Incheon, Busan, Ulsan and Yeosu), the South Korean Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries and , said Park. In addition, South Korea’s shipbuilding company uses Seadronix’s NAVISS for its intelligent berthing assistant system (HiBAS), he added, noting that it also works with telco companies because its services need a 5G or 6G connection. The startup’s target market are global shipbuilders, ship operators, smart port operators or harbor operators that want to digitize their operation process, according to the company. |
Match Group sues Google over ‘monopoly power’ in Android app payments | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,022 | 5 | 9 | The parent company of dating apps Tinder, Match and OkCupid is suing Google, alleging that the company exerts too much control over payments through its Google Play app marketplace. The , filed Monday in California’s Northern District, accuses the company of deploying “anticompetitive tactics” to maintain a monopoly on the Android mobile ecosystem: Ten years ago, Match Group was Google’s partner. We are now its hostage. Google lured app developers to its platform with assurances that we could offer users a choice over how to pay for the services they want. But once it monopolized the market for Android app distribution with Google Play by riding the coattails of the most popular app developers, Google sought to ban alternative in-app payment processing services so it could take a cut of nearly every in-app transaction on Android. Match’s lawsuit is the latest instance of app developers demanding relief from Google and Apple over the 30 percent standard cut — now, — that those tech giants extract from in-app payments. Longstanding tensions around the issue boiled over in 2020 when Epic Games sued Apple for antitrust violations, a case that didn’t result in a clear-cut victor but did force Apple to allow developers to . Facing pressure over its restrictive payment choices, Google recently launched a pilot program that would allow apps to offer an alternative payment option along with Google Play’s own system within apps. Spotify was the only company named as a participant in the pilot program, and Match claims that the company has rebuffed its own efforts to sign up. At the same time, Google announced plans to crack down on apps that circumvent its billing systems, setting a deadline of June 1. In light of the deadline, Match Group CEO Shar Dubey called the lawsuit a “measure of last resort” for the dating app company. “They control app distribution on Android devices, and pretend that developers could successfully reach consumers on Android elsewhere,” Dubey said. “It’s like saying ‘you don’t have to take the elevator to get to the 60th floor of a building, you can always scale the outside wall.’ It’s not legitimate.” In a statement to TechCrunch, Google dismissed the new Match lawsuit as a “self-interested campaign” to avoid paying its fair share. “… Even if they don’t want to comply with Google Play’s policies, Android’s openness still provides them multiple ways of distributing their apps to Android users, including through other Android app stores, directly to users via their website or as consumption-only apps,” a Google spokesperson said. Match Group is a member of the , a developer advocacy group that calls attention to the ways that Apple and Google’s dominance over the mobile software market negatively affects app developers. Epic Games, Spotify and Tile are others prominent members of the group, which was formed in 2020 around the time that Epic . Developers tired of paying such a hefty cut of their in-app earnings to Apple and Google are stepping up the pressure on those companies, but governments around the world are increasingly taking an interest in the issue too. In the U.S., the bipartisan would crack open both the iOS and Android app store, upending Apple and Google’s shared stranglehold on the mobile software world in the process. That bill moved out of a Senate committee earlier this year and appears poised to continue the slow crawl toward becoming law. Last week, a competition complaint in the Netherlands against Google’s Play Store from Match Group prompted a into the company’s potential anticompetitive practices. That country’s is also sparring with Apple over its own app payment processes, and the regulatory group has ordered the company to allow dating apps to offer alternative payment options. |
Paddle, the company that wants to take on Apple in IAP, raises $200M at a $1.4B valuation to supercharge SaaS payments | Ingrid Lunden | 2,022 | 5 | 9 | Software as a service has become the default for how organizations adopt and use apps these days, thanks to advances in cloud computing and networking, and the flexibility of pay-as-you-use models that adapt to the evolving needs of a business. Today, a company called , which has built a large business out of providing the billing backend for those SaaS products, is announcing a large funding round of $200 million as it gears up for its own next stage of growth. The Series D investment — led by KKR with participation from previous backers FTV Capital, 83North, Notion Capital, Kindred Capital, with debt from Silicon Valley Bank — values London-based Paddle at $1.4 billion. With this round, the startup has raised $293 million. Paddle today works with more than 3,000 software customers in 200 markets, where it provides a platform for them to set up and sell their SaaS products in those regions, primarily in a B2B model. But with so many consumer services also sold these days in SaaS models, its ambitions include a significant expansion of that to areas like in-app payments. “We’re been growing a lot in the last couple of years. We thought it would tail off [after the COVID-19 peak] but it didn’t,” said Christian Owens, the CEO and co-founder. Indeed that includes more videoconferencing use by everyday people, arranging “Zoom dinner,” but also the explosion of streamed media and other virtual consumer services. “B2C software has over the years blurred with what is thought of as B2B. Suddenly everyone needed our B2B tools.” Payments has long been a complicated and fragmented business in the digital world: banking practices, preferred payment methods and regulations differ depending on the market in question, and each stage of taking and clearing payments typically involves piecing together a chain of providers. Paddle positions itself as a merchant of record that has built a set of services around the specific needs of businesses that sell software online, covering checkout, payment, subscription management, invoicing, international taxes and financial compliance processes. Sold as a SaaS itself — is 5% + 50 cents per transaction — Paddle’s premise follows the basic principle of so many other business tools: payments is typically not a core competency of, say, a video conferencing or security company (one of its customers is BlueJeans, now owned by Verizon, which used to own TechCrunch; another is Fortinet). To be fair, there are dozens (maybe hundreds) of “merchants of record” in the market for payments services from PayPal and Stripe through to Amazon and many more — no surprise since it is complicated and just about any businesses selling online will turn to these at some point to handle that flow. However, Paddle believes (and has proven) that there is a business to be made in bringing together the many complicated parts of providing a billing and payments service into a single product specifically tailored to software businesses. It does not disclose actual revenues or specific usage numbers, but notes that Paddle as a company name doesn’t have a specific meaning. “It’s not a reference to anything, just a name we liked,” Owens — who himself is a Thiel Fellow — said. And that impulse to make decisions on a hunch that it could be catchy is something that seems to have followed him and the company for a while. Paddle He came to the idea of Paddle with Harrison Rose (currently chief strategy officer and credited with building its sales ethos), after the two tried their hands at a previous software business they founded when they were just 18, an experience that gave them a taste of one of the big challenges for startups of that kind. “You make your first $1 million-$2 million in revenue with a handful of employees, but gradually those businesses become $2-20 million in sales, and then $300 million, but the basic problems of running them don’t go away,” he said. Billing and payments present a particularly thorny problem because of the different regulations and compliance requirements, and practices, that scaling software companies face across different jurisdictions. Paddle itself works with some half dozen major payment companies to enable localized transactions, and many more partners, to provide that as a seamless service for its customers (which are payment companies themselves). You may recognize the name Paddle for having been in the news last autumn, when it took its observations on the challenges of payments to a new frontier: apps, and specifically in-app payments. It announced last October that it was building an alternative to Apple’s in-app payments service. This was arrived at through much of the observational logic that started Paddle itself, as Owens describes it. Apple, as is well known, has been locked in a protracted dispute with a number of companies that sell apps through the app store, which have wanted to have more control over their billing (and to give Apple less of a cut of those proceeds). Owens said Paddle felt “encouraged” to in the heat of that dispute, before it has even been resolved, based on the response from the market (and specifically developers and app publishers) to that public dispute and governments’ stance. Its approach is not unlike Apple’s itself, ironically: “There is one thing Apple has done right, which is to build a full set of tools around commerce for these businesses,” he said. But, he added, its failing has been in not giving customers a choice of when to use it, and how much to charge for it. “There has to be an alternative to cover all that as well.” ( plans to charge 10% for transactions under $10, and just 5% on transactions over $10, compared to Apple’s 30%, a spokesperson later told me.) “The product is built and ready to go,” Owens said, adding that there are already 2,000 developers signed up, representing $2 billion in app store volume, ready to try it out. Due to launch in December, Paddle has held off as Apple’s case with Epic (one of the most outspoken critics of IAP) has dragged on. And he said, found Paddle’s name included, and not in a good way, in an update to Apple’s complaint. That bold attitude may indeed keep Paddle in Apple’s bad books, but has made it a hero to third-party developers. “Paddle is solving a significant pain point for thousands of SaaS companies by reducing the friction and costs associated with managing payments infrastructure and tax compliance,” said Patrick Devine, a director at KKR, in a statement. By simplifying the payments stack, Paddle enables faster, more sustainable growth for SaaS businesses. Christian and the team have done a phenomenal job building a category-defining business in this space, and we are excited to be supporting them as they embark on the next phase of growth.” |
Yapily to acquire finAPI in open banking consolidation move | Romain Dillet | 2,022 | 5 | 9 | Fintech startup is announcing that it plans to acquire — the transaction is subject to regulatory approvals before it closes. Both companies offer open banking solutions in Europe. With this move, Yapily is consolidating its position in Europe and growing its business in Germany, more specifically. The terms of the deal are undisclosed, but the company says it is a “multimillion-euro” transaction. Based in the U.K., Yapily offers a single, unified open banking API to interact with bank accounts. Unlike or , Yapily offers a low-level solution without any front-end interface. Developers have to code their own bank connection flow. The result is more control and no Yapily logo. Due to European PSD2 regulation, banks have to offer programming interfaces (APIs) so that they can work better with third-party services. Yapily has focused specifically on official API integrations and covers thousands of banks. It doesn’t rely on screen scraping and private APIs. Companies can leverage open banking to check the balance on a bank account, fetch the most recent transactions, but also initiate payments directly from a bank account. FinAPI is also an open banking provider. Originally from Munich, Germany, the company has been around since 2008 — in 2019. It offers an API with coverage in Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia. Like Yapily, finAPI clients can obtain account information and initiate payments using an API. In addition to those pure open banking products, finAPI also offers the ability to verify the age and identity of a customer. This can be useful to comply with KYC (“Know Your Customer”) regulation. Yapily currently covers 16 European markets and the company says it is the leader in the U.K. But the startup isn’t currently active in Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. With today’s acquisition, the company is expanding to these three new markets and becoming the leader in Germany. As you can see, there’s some product feature overlap between Yapily and finAPI. And the acquisition makes sense as the two companies didn’t start in the same market. Yapily works with companies like American Express, Intuit QuickBooks, Moneyfarm, Volt, Vivid and BUX. FinAPI’s clients include ING, Datev, Swiss Life, ImmobilienScout24 and Finanzguru. “This is a hugely exciting milestone for Yapily on our journey from disruptive startup to ambitious scale-up. Within three years from launch, we have commercialized our platform, grown our customer base, and now have the largest open banking payments volumes in Europe. Working with finAPI, we can gain more speed, agility, and depth to accelerate innovation and shape the future of open finance in Europe and beyond,” Yapily founder and CEO Stefano Vaccino said in a statement. When it comes to payments in particular, Yapily and finAPI have processed a combined total of $39.5 billion in payment volumes over the last 12 months. Essentially, Yapily will double its customer base with this acquisition. |
Daily Crunch: PayPal Ventures leads $50M Series B for Egyptian fintech Paymob | Christine Hall | 2,022 | 5 | 9 | Monday, May 9, is upon us, and today is a day of browser-cache-powered drama in the form of a Wordle word The New York Times decided was too controversial, but still existed for people who hadn’t refreshed their browser in a while. , in ’s piece. Incidentally, DRAMA would be a great word, so there’s that. – and If you’re a startup founder, money – specifically, your own wages – can be a sticky point. You need permission from your board to give yourself a wage bump, but ? We got a hold of a 250-company dataset that sheds some light on that question. Over on TC+, described the current stock market spiral as “ ,” which we are all for. Meanwhile, talked with Sequoia’s Jess Lee to get a deeper understanding of . Feed your brain with these tasty morsels: / Getty Images How fluent are you when it comes to your key metrics? Round sizes are shrinking, but investors are raising their expectations. Blair Silverberg, CEO and co-founder of Hum Capital, says founders need to get a firm handle on LTV (lifetime value) and customer acquisition cost (CAC) before they start sending out pitch decks. “While founders with an eye on high valuations may hesitate to follow a conservative approach, doing so can be pivotal for building trust with investors,” writes Silverberg. This post identifies several factors that will help calculate LTV/CAC accurately while increasing transparency for potential investors. “As a former venture capitalist, I always tell founders that the most powerful tool they can employ while fundraising is a data-driven pitch.” : Let’s begin with , which reported a $90 million loss (the electric truck maker has yet to produce a vehicle) and offered no word yet on whether a proposed facility acquisition deal with Foxconn will meet the May 14 deadline. Next, , another public EV truck maker, saw its shares drop on news that Ford was selling some of its shares in the company. Then we have a pair of Uber stories — the first has the rideshare giant to settle a dispute it has with drivers in Kenya over a reduction of commuter fares. The second is that . It’s a proposal the Teamsters tried to put forth last year, but didn’t have the votes. Like all this car talk? lays it all out nicely for you in her newsletter, . No, not the show, the place where you work. spoke to a bunch of tech companies to gauge their feelings on what a Some shuttered offices early in the pandemic and then brought them back. Others gave up office leases permanently. Others realized you don’t need to be in a cubicle every day. What’s evident is that most companies will have to figure out what the future looks like for them. Here’s what else happened today: |
Modern Fertility co-founder leaves Ro a year after acquisition | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 5 | 9 | is leaving healthcare unicorn Ro about a year after her company, built alongside co-founder Carly Leahy, According to an internal e-mail from Ro’s executive team, obtained by TechCrunch, Vechery is leaving her role as president of women’s health of Modern Fertility to pursue her next venture. Effective May 18, she will become an advisor to Ro’s fertility services. “While this is bittersweet news, fertility and women’s health remain among our key growth opportunities and areas where we will continue to invest heavily,” the email, sent to Ro’s staff, continued. It noted that Ro general manager Hannah Ma will now be a general manager of fertility and women’s health. Vechery sent an e-mail to staff as well, addressing that her departure “may be a surprise” to people at the company. In the note, obtained by TechCrunch, Vechery said “I am and always will be an entrepreneur at heart and this is how I can personally be the most effective in impacting global women’s health, a field in which I am deeply passionate.” “Taking a moment to reflect, I remember when we started Modern Fertility, we did not know how the market and people would react,” she wrote in the e-mail. “How could we make something as complicated and taboo as fertility easy to understand and even something women actively wanted to understand? But we did it, and we not only struck a chord, we created an entirely new category that hadn’t existed before.” She added that “joining Ro was the best thing for Modern Fertility, and the path you have ahead is such an exciting one. You have an incredible amount of runway and resources to continue to empower women to own the decisions that impact their bodies and futures.” Vechery’s departure — first sparked by an employee exodus that peaked last year. At that time, former and current employees said that Ro’s acquisition of Modern Fertility, a reproductive health company, felt like an acquisition “for optics” than for actual change, given the fact that Rory, Ro’s previous vertical for women’s healthcare, had been given little to no investment. Rory was led by entrepreneur Rachel Blank, but she too left Ro The women’s health practice was eventually refreshed by the Modern Fertility acquisition — yet given this precedent, former and current employees worried that Modern Fertility would also face turnover. In the same e-mail announcing Vechery’s departure, leadership said that they will put “more energy and resources toward fewer initiatives” for the remainder of Q2 and H2. “Narrowing the focus does not mean we will launch any fewer products or services for patients. In fact, we believe it will have the opposite effect. We will increase the speed of innovation for patients,” the memo continues, also noting that it will build “new products for existing patients.” Like many richly valued startups navigating new markets, Ro’s somewhat mixed messages do have one clear statement: the startup is going through change. It is certainly growing its fertility focus, Then, i the coming months. Yet, as leadership notes in the internal e-mail, the “mantra for the remainder of the year (and potentially beyond) will be growth with discipline.” Quite a different feel than just last year when the company raced to be the “Amazon of healthcare.” |
TikTok rolls out new ‘Friends’ tab to more users, replacing the current ‘Discover’ tab | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 5 | 9 | TikTok is a new “Friends” tab that replaces the “Discover” tab in the bottom menu of the app. The company says the new tab is going to roll out to more people over the coming weeks and that it will allow users on the platform to find content from people they’ve connected with. TikTok did not elaborate on the rollout or say whether it will be coming to all users in the future. “As we continue to celebrate community and creativity, we’re bringing a Friends Tab to more people over the coming weeks, which will allow you to easily find and enjoy content from people you’re connected with, so you can choose even more ways to be entertained on TikTok,” the company said in a tweet. As we continue to celebrate community and creativity, we're bringing a Friends Tab to more people over the coming weeks, which will allow you to easily find and enjoy content from people you're connected with, so you can choose even more ways to be entertained on TikTok. — TikTokComms (@TikTokComms) A screenshot that TikTok posted alongside the tweet shows that users will see a banner that says “watch your friends’ videos” once they click on the Friends tab. If you have connected with your friends on the app, you’ll see their content on the page. If you haven’t, TikTok will suggest that you connect with friends through your contacts or that you connect with your Facebook friends. The page also suggests accounts from people that you may know and displays a follow button next to each name. Social media consultant first spotted the new tab last month, noting that it would replace the Discover tab. It’s an interesting move for TikTok to replace its Discover tab, which shows users a variety of content, including trending hashtags and videos. The Discover tab also includes a search bar that lets you search for specific content. It’s worth noting that there’s also a search icon on the top right side of the homepage that can be used to search for particular videos and also suggests specific searches based on your activity and previous searches. TikTok’s decision to move away from a Discover tab is interesting and indicates that it’s looking to offer a new way to recommend content based on your actual friendships. It does seem like a peculiar move in some ways, especially since TikTok already has a “Following” tab that displays all of the content from people you follow on the app, which could include your friends. The new tab is a way for TikTok to go beyond the Following tab and present itself as a more interpersonal app, as opposed to a place that simply highlights viral and popular videos. The company looks to be prioritizing this new personal content discovery over trending videos viewed through the Discover tab that may have appeared in your “For You” page rotation anyway. TikTok has been making some changes to its app over the past few months and most recently for users to see who viewed their profile. The feature is only available to users who are above the age of 16 and have fewer than 5,000 followers. If you have the feature, you’ll see an eye icon in the top-right corner when you look at your own profile. If you click on it, you’ll see who viewed your profile in the last 30 days. |
Use data from Q5 to boost mobile app growth for the entire year | Vladyslav Strykun | 2,022 | 5 | 9 | Wondering how to improve the marketing performance of your mobile app in the spring without experimenting and extra costs? Take advantage of results from the high winter season, also known as Q5. The tremendous amount of data received during the winter holidays can improve your marketing strategy and boost your app growth. Here’s how to extract insights that will make this approach work, enhance your ad creative strategy, transform hypotheses into proven facts, personalize your product and increase lifetime value. Q5 is a high season for marketing in the mobile app field. Though it takes place only during the winter holidays, its results equal the whole quarter in revenue. But it is not only a winter story. Q5 can be of use in the spring and summer seasons as well. Why is Q5 data so valuable? All these reasons help mobile apps grow in profit. For instance, the revenue of the Headway app increased 200% compared to other periods. Headway app data from Sensor Tower. Headway During Q5, you can estimate your hourly traffic more effectively to build a daily trend. Because you get much more traffic than usual, trends begin to appear. After building your daily trend, you can extrapolate it for the following periods. For example, we noticed that our ads performed better in the morning and evening — right at commute times. We couldn’t discern this trend clearly during normal times, but a significant amount of traffic during Q5 made it crystal clear for us. So, based on this discovery, we’ve changed our creatives. Now, we tell people that they can effectively spend their downtime with our app. Estimating traffic on an hourly basis can help identify top-performing ad creatives much faster. You will incur fewer ineffective costs when you notice them and start scaling in different variations. And as a result, you get more revenue from top performers. When our team notices a top-performing ad, we scale it in a variety of ways. For example, changing the placement or using an image with a different ad copy. Once, we decided to experiment more and randomly rotated a bed on an ad about procrastination. The creative continued performing with the bed in a new position and was even more successful than the previous version. From that time on, we haven’t hesitated to change such tiny details, because even minor tweaks can be significant for Facebook ads on a large amount of traffic. Headway During Q5, marketers usually try new creatives and ad placements that they hesitated to use at other times of the year. It’s a great strategy to follow because you can check your hypothesis on a much broader audience and draw some conclusions. But don’t limit this approach only to the Q5 period. Use verified ad techniques to boost your upcoming year’s marketing strategy. But how do you apply it in practice? Earlier, we thought that our Instagram feed was the best ad placement for us and didn’t believe that Reels would work as well. We tested this ad placement a couple of times, but it didn’t appear efficient enough. Therefore, we put it aside and decided to give it a try on a massive audience during Q5. Eventually, it worked well. With a great amount of cheaper traffic, we not only validated Reels as a successful ad placement but also created a strategy for our regular ads on Instagram Reels. Subscription model apps can increase their LTV (customer lifetime value) by getting new audiences that weren’t accessible before. How does it work? Let’s say you usually reach users with a $15 CPM (cost per thousand). You would like to get users with a $25 CPM, but they are expensive for you. Since prices drop during Q5, these “expensive” users become “affordable.” But why do you need more expensive users instead of reaching your good old $15 CPM users at a much lower price? Because the higher the CPM, the greater the users’ purchasing power. Therefore, users with a $25 CPM are more likely to convert to purchase than those with a $15 CPM. So, a more expensive audience has a higher potential to buy a subscription on your app after the trial and a better chance of renewing it after a month or a year. As you get more users with greater purchasing power in your app, the LTV increases. This approach also helps you accumulate a margin of safety for subsequent less favorable periods for your app. A huge amount of data from new creatives, new users and new ad techniques gives you many insights to use throughout the year after Q5. So don’t miss your chance to maximize these insights. First, analyze and draw conclusions by observing users’ behavior during this period. How did they behave in your store, during onboarding, on the payment wall and during the trial? Is there a correlation between the creative that users came from and their behavior in the app? Second, turn these insights into an action plan to improve your product and personalize more. This method enhanced our work: During Q5, we noticed that our ad creative about decision fatigue became one of the top performers, and many users converted to purchasers because of it. Therefore, we had two hypotheses: First, this topic is highly relevant to our users, and we have to create more content about it. Second, users like the layout of the ad creative, so we can use its visual element for the onboarding screen. We tried both hypotheses, tested them and got positive results. As a result, we use both approaches in our app. Using these methods, you can come back to insights from Q5 throughout the year to improve your marketing strategy and your product. |
Max Q: Rocket booster, meet helicopter | Aria Alamalhodaei | 2,022 | 5 | 9 | Hello and welcome back to Max Q. In this issue: Rocket Lab achieved a landmark victory in its quest toward full reusability by briefly catching the Electron first stage in mid-air via a helicopter. While the recovery was not without its issues — the helicopter dropped the booster into the ocean shortly after attaching to it — it’s a successful step forward for company. The “There and Back Again” mission also successfully deployed 34 payloads to space for customers, including Aurora Propulsion Technologies, Spaceflight Inc. and E-Space. “After the catch the helicopter pilot noticed different load characteristics than we’ve experienced in testing,” Rocket Lab’s senior communications advisor Murielle Baker said. “At his discretion, the pilot offloaded” the booster, where it was recovered via a waiting ship, she added. The company has been working toward this first full test of its recovery plan for months, including that stationed a helicopter near the booster’s ocean splashdown point. Rocket Lab You can rewatch the launch on Rocket Lab’s YouTube channel . Hundreds of rocket engines manufactured by startup will be going to space company over the next few years, part of a massive order that reflects Phantom’s bullish stance on the small launch market. “We placed the order based on how far out we could see the demand, and we see the demand as pretty strong and growing,” Phantom co-founder Jim Cantrell told TechCrunch in a recent interview. “We’re putting our money on the small mass manufacture of mass-produced launchers as being both the more cost effective and ultimately, the more efficient way to get small satellites into orbit.” Both Phantom and Ursa represent a different approach to the launch market, one that relies more on stable supply chains, mass manufacturing and a horizontal ecosystem rather than the vertical integration typically found in the aerospace industry. Joe Laurienti, who founded Ursa in 2015, previously worked on propulsion at both SpaceX and Blue Origin — two strong “New Space” examples of the kind of vertical integration Ursa and Phantom eschew. Phantom has put in an order for more than 200 engines from Colorado-based Ursa, the startup’s largest single order to date. Ursa has developed two engines: the Hadley, which has 5,000 pounds of thrust, and the larger Ripley, which can generate 50,000 pounds of thrust. Phantom has purchased both types of engines for its two rocket types under development, dubbed Daytona and Laguna. If all goes to plan, Phantom anticipates the first batch of these engines taking flight as early as next year, with the inaugural test flight of the small-lift, two-stage Daytona. Ursa Major Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft being hoisted atop Vulcan rocket. |
Bitcoin’s value nears $30,000 mark as Luna Foundation Guard liquidates wallet | Jacquelyn Melinek | 2,022 | 5 | 9 | Bitcoin’s price is down more than 50% from its November 2021 peak and has fallen over 11% today, nearing the $30,000 mark, leaving many investors scrambling to figure out what’s going on. There are two main factors driving pressure on bitcoin prices right now, , senior market analyst at , said to TechCrunch. “As liquidity gets pulled out of the financial system, risk assets are getting repriced,” Franzen said. The rising rate environment, paired with weakening economic activity, is creating a risk-off environment, Franzen added. “This is largely why both bitcoin and stocks are falling together. With bonds providing no safe haven, investor sentiment is overwhelmingly negative.” Again, this adds a recursive element to the market, wherein negative performance leads to negative sentiment, which leads to more negative performance, Franzen noted. “Historically negative performance, historically negative sentiment, and an historical acceleration of yields are the primary driver of the continued selloff.” A number of market sources are also saying the huge selloff is occurring right now in tandem with the depegging of algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) over the past several days. Terraform Labs (TFL) — the organization behind UST, cryptocurrency LUNA, and Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) — emptied its treasury wallet of , about 42,530 bitcoin, or $1.3 billion, today. “That [action could] add meaningful sell pressure on bitcoin and could drag down markets with it,” Corey Miller, growth lead at dYdX, said to TechCrunch. The UST stablecoin has lost its 1:1 dollar peg ratio for the second time in the past three days and dropped as much as 5.3% to 95 cents on Monday, when it should be always held extremely close to $1. The depegging of UST is forcing LFG to liquidate reserves from both LUNA and bitcoin in order to correct the pegging of UST to $1, Franzen said. But UST is designed to withstand shocks because it’s an algorithmic stablecoin, Twitter user stablechen, a Terra developer, . “Compare if $UST goes to $0.90 or $1.1 vs $USDT — the peg bends in one and breaks in the other,” stablechen said. “I blame TFL for creating the wrong expectation with prior posts implying instantaneous peg stability.” Terraform Labs, which is led by its founder, Do Kwon, announced earlier this year that it planned to obtain $10 billion in bitcoin for reserves to “open a new monetary era of the Bitcoin standard.” The funds were supposed to be held in a treasury to back UST in a decentralized foreign exchange reserve to keep the value of the stablecoin at a fixed rate. Kwon earlier today that it was “deploying more capital,” but provided no further details. He also that “LFG is not trying to exit its bitcoin position,” adding that “the goal is to have this capital in the hands of a professional market maker” so it significantly strengthens the liquidity around the UST peg. If Terraform Labs is selling its bitcoin en masse into a market that’s already selling aggressively, it wouldn’t offer peg support, , a token researcher at The TIE, said to TechCrunch. “They’re just going to crush prices and keep bleeding,” Melnick said. “Then if they support the price it’s going to let everyone else derisk UST and leave them with no money in the treasury to keep the peg.” LUNA, the token which backs UST, gets “burned” when its stablecoin deviates from its peg, Melnick said, so it’s trying to keep the price at $1 to protect LUNA from getting burned more, but in turn, it’s causing prices to fall further, what Melnick dubbed a “dubious call.” “UST failing will have a significant impact on the crypto ecosystem,” Simon Furlong, co-founder and COO of , said in an email to TechCrunch. “There is over $18 billion (UST’s market cap) in UST-related liquidity within the wider DeFi space — where UST is being used as collateral and in LP positions — that could be wiped out and cause a ripple effect of negative outcomes throughout DeFi markets.” As the market is broadly derisking and Anchor rates drop, people care less about the higher yield and more about safety, Melnick noted. (Anchor is a decentralized savings protocol offering low-volatile yields on Terra stablecoin deposits.) “So they began swapping out of UST to USDC, USDT, which are cash or cash-equivalent backed,” Melnick said. UST de-pegging will likely weaken the demand for marginal or less popular stablecoins, but it would not spell the end for stablecoins in general, Furlong said. Similar to Melnick’s sentiments, if the UST peg can’t be trusted, “we’ll see a flight to safety, as users will sell UST for more trusted stable coins like DAI, USDC, etc., which stand to benefit from a scenario in which UST loses its peg,” Furlong added. UST is currently priced at , according to CoinMarketCap at the time of publication. “With the LFG essentially forced to liquidate BTC to stabilize the stablecoin, we have a major institution dumping thousands of BTC into the market,” Franzen said. “This is essentially an algorithmic margin call.” |
Holoride will give us a look at the in-car VR future arriving now at TC Sessions: Mobility 2022 | Darrell Etherington | 2,022 | 5 | 9 | This year at , we’ll be chatting with Holoride co-founder and CEO Nils Wollny. The company is set to start and Wollny will be able to provide us with more details about that pending launch. Wollny will also be offering more insight into , and developing its own utility token for its virtual experiences. The company has put a lot of thought into its business model, and has been very explicit about its intent to not pursue an ad-supported revenue plan. Wollny will talk about how the crypto plans for Holoride work relative to that core commitment and the business overall. We’ll also talk on the changing environment for VR in general, including the advent of “The Metaverse,” as well as rules that could pave the way for people in self-driving cars to legally be able to , even with no driver at the wheel. Virtual reality has come a long way even in just the few short years since . Now, on the verge of its production vehicle debut, Wollny will give us a glimpse into what kind of future the startup is about to deliver. 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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Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary talks crypto and why he’s pro stablecoins | Jacquelyn Melinek | 2,022 | 5 | 9 | less than two weeks since began, but we’re still bringing out content from the conference, because, seriously, there was so much good alpha we couldn’t share it. During the conference, I sat down with Kevin O’Leary from “Shark Tank”, who was dressed in a , to discuss the current regulatory situation surrounding the crypto ecosystem, institutional firms entering the space and the kind of crypto-focused company he would create if he decided to do so, among other things. Read on for the full interview. : : There’s a lot of excitement about the bipartisan bills that are going through the Hill right now. Let’s just take inventory — we’ve got the [Senator] Cynthia Lummis bill that’s the granddaddy bill, it’s over 600 pages and contemplates all aspects of crypto. Then we have [Senator Pat] Toomey and [Senator Bill] Haggerty’s bill that just focused on stablecoins, and so they’re much shorter bills more likely to pass first, which is why there’s so much excitement at this conference, because represent a payment system that could make the U.S. dollar the digital currency globally. People would probably do that before they took on any other currency; the problem is, there’s no policy, and although there are so many institutions showing up here, none of them own any bitcoin. None of them own any stablecoins. They own no crypto whatsoever, because it’s not a regulated security yet. So think about this: At the end of the day, if policy comes through, there is going to be a huge number of index products within institutions, and that [could] get bitcoin moving again. That would get a lot of different aspects of the blockchain incorporated into sovereign pension plans. That’s the buzz of this conference right now. Well, there’s no question the “granddaddy” asset is Bitcoin. I mean, that is, you know, 40% of the market capitalization of all the tokens. So they’re choosing that first, for obvious reasons. However, [Fidelity] also , the company that issues USDC — that was unprecedented. So a $400 million [total investment], at a $9 billion valuation from the most conservative money managers on earth. I think that gives you an indication of where we’re going with crypto. So Fidelity offering it at the consumer level and investing in the issuer is a big deal. More of that buzz, you know, it’s just a matter of when one of these bills becomes law. We’re close, but we’re not there yet. They realize that 80 million Americans have started investing in crypto. The genie is out of the bottle, so to speak, so what’s missing is policy. And yet, the reason I think you’re starting to see some motivation to get something done in Congress is, they’re seeing countries like Canada, United Arab Emirates, Switzerland, Germany, France, England, advancing policy way ahead of the U.S. So do they want to get a hold of this or not? Because if you think about what Bitcoin really is, it’s not a coin; it’s software. It’s software development, and the developers are not in the U.S. because the regulator doesn’t want them here yet. It seems that’s the feeling they have. If they make [a nationwide] policy, they’ll start to get this talent back in the country. So I think, you know, Toomey, Lummis, all of these senators and congressmen and women realize we’ve got to be part of this industry. I actually think that crypto, in 10 years, will be the 12th sector of the S&P, and so we need to prepare for that. We want to own it and set policy for it. And we’re nowhere, so we’ve got to catch up, and that’s basically why there’s some kind of urgency to this now. |
The half-billion-dollar profit swing that led to Better.com’s myriad layoffs | Mary Ann Azevedo | 2,022 | 5 | 9 | from Aurora Acquisition Corp., digital mortgage provider intended to merge with, provides stark details about the latter company’s financial performance. The filing — dated April 24, 2022 — reveals that Better.com swung to a loss of more than $300 million last year, a sharp turnaround from its profitable 2020. The rapid-fire decline in Better.com’s business, brought on by several factors, is notable, as the company is hardly the only concern working in the consumer mortgage space; other companies are taking similar fire. Aurora’s filing says that Better’s financial performance “deteriorated” as a result of numerous factors, including fluctuating and increasing interest rates, the continued impact of the reorganization of its sales and operations teams in the third quarter of 2021, continued investments in its business (including investments to expand its product offerings) and the effects of “negative media coverage” following, and severance costs associated with, a series of mass layoffs that began on December 1, 2021. The — which affected about 900 people — as well as subsequent workforce reductions, have led to a host of issues for the company, Aurora notes in the filing. Aurora attributes the malaise to widespread employee dissatisfaction, which it says has “detrimentally affected” the company’s productivity, financial results and third-party relationships. It also noted that the layoffs and subsequent media attention resulted in “increased attrition” throughout the company, including on its senior leadership team. TechCrunch in February reported that Sarah Pierce, who served as executive vice president of customer experience, sales and operations, and Emanuel Santa-Donato, who was senior vice president of capital markets and growth, . Pierce had been with Better.com since August 2016, when she started as a “growth associate.” Santa-Donato joined the company in January 2016 as a “capital markets associate.” Their departures followed those of three other executives in December in the wake of the layoffs: Patrick Lenihan, the company’s VP of communications; Tanya Gillogley, head of public relations; and Melanie Hahn, head of marketing. The company’s CTO, Diane Yu, in April . Meanwhile, that same week, Better.com conducted its second mass layoff, which resulted in more than 3,000 workers . Then just a couple of weeks later, the company conducted . The company is believed to have effectively reduced its headcount from about 10,000 in December to less than 5,000 in less than five months. It’s not hard to see why Better.com , looking at its 2020 results. The company’s $875.6 million in revenue — up nearly 10x on the year prior — led to net income of $172.1 million, meaning that Better.com during the boom times was just that — booming. Then the year changed and the season turned from summer to winter as the market for mortgages worsened. Last year Better.com’s revenue grew to some $1.23 billion, or 41%. That pace of growth, while slower, is still more than respectable for a company on its way to going public. |
Clearview AI banned from selling its facial recognition software to most US companies | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,022 | 5 | 9 | A company that gained notoriety for selling access to billions of facial photos, many culled from social media without the knowledge of the individuals depicted, faces major new restrictions to its controversial business model. On Monday, agreed to settle a 2020 lawsuit from the ACLU that accused the company of running afoul of an Illinois law banning the use of individuals’ biometric data without consent. That law, the , protects the privacy of Illinois residents, but the Clearview settlement is a clear blueprint for how the law can be leveraged to bolster consumer protections on the national stage. “By requiring Clearview to comply with Illinois’ pathbreaking biometric privacy law not just in the state, but across the country, this settlement demonstrates that strong privacy laws can provide real protections against abuse,” Deputy Director of ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project Nathan Freed Wessler said. “Clearview can no longer treat people’s unique biometric identifiers as an unrestricted source of profit. Other companies would be wise to take note, and other states should follow Illinois’ lead in enacting strong biometric privacy laws.” Clearview isn’t the only company to get tangled up in the trailblazing Illinois privacy law. Last year, Facebook was for violating BIPA by automatically tagging people in photos with the use of facial recognition tech. According to the terms of the Clearview settlement, which is still in the process of being finalized by the court, the company will be nationally banned from selling or giving away access to its facial recognition database to private companies and individuals. While there is an exception made for government contractors — Clearview works with government agencies, including and the — the company can’t provide its software to any government contractors or state or local government entities in Illinois for five years. Clearview will also be forced to maintain an opt-out system to allow any Illinois residents to block their likeness from the company’s facial search results, a mechanism it must spend $50,000 to publicize online. The company must also end its controversial practice of providing free trials to police officers if those individuals don’t get approval through their departments to test the software. The sweeping restrictions may dampen Clearview’s ability to sell access to its software in the U.S, but the company is also facing privacy headwinds in its business abroad. Last November, Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office hit for failing to obtain consent from British residents before sweeping their photos into its massive database. Clearview has also run afoul of privacy laws in , and , with some countries ordering the company to delete all data that was obtained without their residents’ consent. In a statement, Clearview’s legal team spun the settlement as a “huge win” for the company, claiming that its business will not be impacted and that Clearview is happy to end its legal battle with the ACLU. Clearview CEO Hoan Ton-That stated that the company plans to comply with BIPA by selling its algorithm — and not access to its database — to private companies in the U.S. |
France’s Alven VC launches 6th fund with a hard cap of €350M | Mike Butcher | 2,022 | 5 | 31 | With a heritage that goes back to the fabled times of the year 2000 (since then it has backed 160 European teams) Paris-based early-stage fund has something of a reputation to keep up. After investing in unicorns such as Qonto, Dataiku, Algolia, Stripe and Ankorstore, it now has €2 billion in assets under management. But that was yesterday. And today it’s coming out with its sixth fund, having hit a hard cap of €350 million after exceeding the initial target of €300 million, making it one of the largest early-stage funds operating out of France. The fund will write cheques from €100,000 to €15 million and has plenty of reserves for follow on investments. After more than 70 exits, those recent ones include the sale of Sqreen to Datadog, Cardiologs to Philips and Frichti to Gorillas. While Alven is known mainly as being a Francophile fund, it also now has a London office that it plans to expand. Part of the fund will be deployed across Europe, as well as to back European founders in the U.S. in relevant sectors. Charles Letourneur, co-founder of Alven, said: We pride ourselves in building long-term relationships with entrepreneurs, and this also applies to investors in Alven. Not only [have] our existing LPs continually invested in us, but we’ve also welcomed a number of new investors that want to be part of the French Tech success story. Alven recently launched Operation3, a talent program aimed at web3 entrepreneurs. The fund will also now put an emphasis on new growth areas in crypto (it has invested in Kaiko, a market data provider for digital assets), developer and data tooling (it invested in Mindee, a document parsing tool for developers), climate tech, MyTraffic (physical location data analytics), Carbonfact (a carbon footprint API) and Stoik (data-driven cyber insurance). Over a call, partner François Meteyer told me: We’ve been consistently hiring what we think is the next generation of successful VCs, first in France, and then in Europe. So our LPs trust us and every backer from our previous fund invested again in this new fund. And then we decided to extend the LP bases and bring more global institutions in as LPs. I asked him, given they exited Frichti to Gorillas, and given the potential recession looming, if just-in-time groceries have a future. He said: “We have seen many M&A in the past and we’ll seen more and more. We think just-in-time groceries is going to continue to matter — it will be about price.” |
Upway lands $25 million to sell more refurbished electric bikes | Romain Dillet | 2,022 | 5 | 31 | French startup has raised a $25 million Series A round led by Exor Seeds and Sequoia Capital. The company sells secondhand electric bikes that have been refurbished and are ready to roll. In many ways, Upway reminds me of online marketplaces for cars. The startup provides a seamless experience for buyers who want to buy an electric bike but don’t want to pay the full price of a new electric bike. Behind the scenes, Upway buys electric bikes from both consumers and companies. The team brings those bikes to its warehouse, checks them, repairs them in some cases and lists them on their website. Of course, Upway tries to generate a small margin on every sale. In addition to Exor Seeds and Sequoia Capital, Origins is also participating in today’s round. Origins is the VC firm backed by many professional soccer players, such as Blaise Matuidi, Olivier Giroud, N’golog Kanté, as well as Antoine Dupont (a rugbyman). Existing investor Global Founders Capital is investing once again in the startup. Henri Moissinac, the co-founder and CEO of micromobility startup , is joining the round as well. Right now, the startup operates in its home country France and Belgium. Bikes are shipped directly to customers from the same warehouse in Gennevilliers near Paris. But the company is already thinking about its next moves. Upway will soon launch its marketplace in Germany, the Netherlands and the U.S. By the end of 2022, the company will have three different warehouses. Sales of electric bikes have been growing rapidly in Europe. Manufacturers are benefiting from this boom, including some startups that have raised massive rounds, such as and . But they remain expensive goods and they also suffer from supply chain constraints. Bikes (electric or not) will play an important role in the future of urban mobility in major European cities. That’s why it’s important to provide new ways to access bikes. Electric bikes more specifically can even replace many car rides outside of major hubs. Some cities have invested heavily in subsidized bike-sharing services, such as Vélib’ in Paris. Some companies, like Dott, are buying thousands of electric bikes for their free-floating bike rental services. Companies like and are also important when it comes to democratizing electric bikes. These startups let you rent a bike for a flat monthly subscription fee. When you cancel your subscription, you hand out the bike. Coming back to Upway, people who want to use an electric bike to go to work or ride to school may consider getting their own bike. In addition to new bikes, it’s important to provide different offerings. Upway makes electric bikes more affordable. All bikes come with a one-year warranty and there’s no stock issue as the company only lists electric bikes that it can sell right way. Some customers can also take advantage of to buy now and pay later in multiple installments without any interest. The startup also provides accessories, such as helmets, lights, bike locks and child seats. Eventually, you could also imagine adding some insurance product to your basket before checking out. Overall, Upway sells 400 different models from brands like Moustache, O2feel, Keola, Veloci, Arcade, Cowboy and VanMoof. There are currently 20 million electric bikes on the European and American roads. Those millions of bikes could all end up on a secondhand marketplace like Upway. And I’m not surprised that the startup managed to raise another $25 million. Upway |
Egyptian q-commerce platform Appetito bags Lamma for over $10M | Tage Kene-Okafor | 2,022 | 5 | 31 | null |
South Africa’s Talk360 raises $4M to build single payment platform for Africa | Annie Njanja | 2,022 | 5 | 31 | Many businesses looking to set up pan-African operations are often met with the challenge of establishing payment services that are appropriate for each country they go to. Most of the payment services merchants working in the continent have solutions that are limited to specific regions, meaning that businesses have to sign deals with multiple providers to cater for the unique preferences of their users in different countries. This is a gap that is looking to bridge as it creates a new payment platform that will integrate all available payment options across Africa. This product, it says, will open up businesses to the largest pool of localized payment options in Africa. Meanwhile, the startup is also looking to expand its international calling operations across Africa after closing a $4 million seed funding round, led by HAVAÍC. The 4Di Capital and a number of angel investors that include Gaston Aussems (ex-Mollie), Robert Kraal (ex-Adyen), Gabriel de Montessuss (President WorldPay International) and Marnix van der Ploeg (ex-Booking.com and EQT), also participated in the round. While saying that the calling business will continue to grow in Africa, Talk360 co-founder and managing director for Africa told TechCrunch he anticipates great growth for its payment platform, which he says will also make it easy for international merchants to sell to users in Africa. He added that the startup decided to build its own payment platform informed by the need to make payment and checkout easy for its users in Africa. Currently, the startup works through integrations with older payment service providers, which are majorly limited by region-specificity. Hiine says his new platform will bring all the “scattered payment methods” across Africa on a common platform, which he believes will positively impact Talk360’s bottom line and that of other merchants that will use its platform. Talk360, a leading Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) player in Africa, enables people to make international calls through its app for a fee, and it is built in such a way that only the initiator needs the app and internet — a smartphone — to make calls. “In our calling business we identified some unique problems around digital payment in Africa. The payment methods are scattered and payment processes are lengthy … And we could see that this problem had a serious impact on our bottom line in terms of [the] conversion rate we were seeing in Africa … It is a problem we experienced and we are trying to solve for other merchants with a presence in the continent too by making the process fast and easy,” said Hiine. “We are building the platform to actually increase our conversion rate by giving the user experience one single checkout, and to some level, offer predictive analysis — to tell the preferred methods of payment for that region and offer them as top options for the user,” said Hiine, also Brooklyn Ventures Africa co-founder, a VC firm that has invested in startups in technology, media, and oil and gas sectors. The Talk360 calling app connected 2 million people last year and has paying users in 170 countries so far, and this number is set to grow as the startup begins ramping up its marketing efforts and expansion plans, which include setting up a hub in Kenya. Talk360 was co-founded by Hiine, and in 2016 as a traveling app (used to avoid roaming charges). However, the co-founders were forced to rethink their strategy after social media apps like WhatsApp introduced internet calls. They rebuilt to accommodate the digitally marginalized individuals by removing the requirement for the person at the end of the call to have an internet connection or the app. Talk360’s partnerships with agents like PesaPoint in Kenya and Flash in South Africa, also enables users to purchase airtime vouchers from a network of over 750,000 physical points of sale. South Africa, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh are some of the markets where the calling app is widely used. |
The death knell for SPACs? | Connie Loizos | 2,022 | 5 | 31 | It was a tough day for special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, which had already fallen out of favor after roughly 18 months in the limelight. First, Senator Elizabeth Warren announced today that she’s planning a bill that targets the SPAC industry. Called the “ ,” the bill would expand the legal liability of parties involved in SPAC transactions, close loopholes that SPACs have “long exploited to make overblown projections,” and lock in longer the investors sponsoring a deal. Even if the bill never passes, SPACs look to be starting a new chapter, given that the SEC is today concluding a 60-day public comment period on a number of its own , specifically around disclosures, marketing practices and third-party oversight. As TechCrunch noted in a at numerous electric vehicle SPACs to flounder, if the SEC’s rules are approved, the barrier of entry to going public via a SPAC will rise to the same level as companies choosing the more traditional IPO listing process, including to hold liable banks associated with SPACs for misstatements related to the merger. (To protect itself, Goldman Sachs has already said it’s working with most SPACs that it took public and pausing work with new SPAC issuance.) It’s not as if either initiative will abruptly stop SPACs in their tracks. They began losing momentum when the SEC warned in March 2021 that SPACs weren’t accounting correctly for investor incentives called warrants. Indeed, while 247 SPACs were closed in 2020, the majority of the SPACs closed in 2021 (a stunning 613 of them) came together in the first half of the year, before the SEC made it quite so plain that it planned to do more on the regulatory front. Now those many blank-check companies need to find suitable targets in a market turned bearish, and the clock is ticking. Given that blank-check companies are typically expected to merge with a target company within 24 months of investors funding the SPAC, if those hundreds of SPACs can’t complete mergers with candidate companies within the first half of next year, they’ll either have to wind down (which can mean millions of lost dollars for SPAC sponsors) or else seek out shareholder approval for extensions. It’s even worse than it sounds. With the time between when a deal is announced to when the SEC has time to review it taking up to five months, according to founder Kristi Marvin, even SPACs that strike a deal tomorrow couldn’t ask their shareholders to vote on it until roughly November. In fact, while lawmakers and regulators seem late to the party, they’re not too late to watch for unnatural acts as SPAC sponsors do everything in their power to get their deals completed. Already, a number of SPAC sponsors has already begun to ask their shareholders for more time to get a deal done, some of them apparently hoping investors might warm again to the once-obscure financial vehicles. Magnum Opus, the SPAC that last August announced plans to take Forbes public, filed two deadline extensions this year. It would have needed to obtain its shareholders’ approval for an extension yet again to keep the deal alive; instead, reports the New York Times, Forbes today . Also bound to happen more: More redemptions that leave SPACs with far less cash on hand for their mergers, and more SPACs that announce target companies outside of their area of expertise. Surf Air Mobility is a perfect example of both. A nearly 11-year-old electric aviation and air travel company in Los Angeles that operates via a membership model, it recently it would be going public via a merger with the SPAC Tuscan Holdings Corporation II. Given that Tuscan was a little long in the tooth as SPACs go — it went public in 2019 — it had to ask shareholders to . Many backers instead redeemed their shares, shrinking the size of the capital pool Tuscan had to work with. Still, enough shareholders said yes to an extension that things are moving forward for now. Other SPACs might not be so lucky. “A lot of SPACs will liquidate over the next two years,” says Matthew Kennedy, a senior IPO strategist at Renaissance Capital. “I think shareholders are just looking at [the performance of companies taken public via SPACs] and saying, ‘Why would I hold this if I have a four out of five chance of losing money?'” Tuscan was also originally targeting — but not limited to — a company in the cannabis industry — not a travel company. There’s nothing legally wrong with that, underscores Marvin, noting that SPACs always feature boilerplate language about their efforts not being limited to a particular industry or geographic region. She also observes that it isn’t the first SPAC to shop far outside its stated sector of interest. Still, unexpected curveballs could further give investors pause when it comes to SPAC tie-ups. Consider an earlier SPAC, Hunter Maritime, which came together in 2016 with the help of Morgan Stanley to acquire one or more operating businesses in the international maritime shipping industry, per its . Three years later, it acquired a China-based instead and rebranded. Today that combined company, NCF Wealth Holdings, is no longer a company. |
Rimac raises more than $500M from Porsche, Softbank and Goldman Sachs | Jaclyn Trop | 2,022 | 5 | 31 | Rimac Group said Tuesday it has raised 500 million euro ($536 million), funds that will help the Croatian startup expand beyond its electric hypercar roots and grow into a global EV components supplier — and eventually a publicly traded company. Softbank Vision Fund 2 and Goldman Sachs led the Series D investment round in a deal that valued the manufacturer at 2 billion euro ($2.2 billion). The round includes an “eight-figure sum” from Porsche, which now owns 20% of the company. Founder and CEO Mate Rimac will remain the largest shareholder of Rimac Group, the majority shareholder of the recently merged Bugatti Rimac and the sole shareholder of Rimac Technology. “SoftBank is the biggest tech investor in the world, and Goldman is a very big financial investor,” said Tuesday on a call with media. He added that, while the company’s hypercar business is sustainable, the investment is crucial to both the development of the company’s Rimac Technology subsidiary and Rimac’s prospects for going public in the future. The funding will be used to hire talent, build a $200 million campus for Rimac’s Zagreb, Croatia headquarters and to develop and produce batteries, software and other components for electric cars. Above all, the money will also help Rimac stay independent from larger automakers, the CEO said. “It’s very good for us to have Porsche and Hyundai onboard as shareholders, but we don’t want to be fully dependent on them.” Rimac merged its hypercar division with French supercar maker Bugatti in November. The resulting company, called , is developing the $2.5 million Rimac Nevera hypercar, a 1,914-horsepower EV that it claims can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 1.85 seconds, faster than any other production car. That car, which made its debut last year, will come to market this summer. Developing and building the Nevera in house has helped the company develop a range of technologies that it can supply to other automakers. In addition to and Hyundai, the company has also partnered with Automobili Pininfarina, Koenigsegg and Aston Martin to design, engineer and manufacture batteries and other parts for high-performance EVs. Construction on the nearly 25-acre campus in Zagreb began in August. Rimac said Tuesday that the project is on schedule to open in 2023. “Despite all the material shortages and all the challenges that are now in the supply chain, we are progressing with that quite well,” Rimac said. The headquarters will house research and development for Rimac and Bugatti, as well as the production for electric cars — including the Nevera — and a variety of components including battery systems and chassis. The company said that the site will be able to produce tens of thousands of components annually once it ramps up to full capacity. The new funding will also help Rimac hire 700 employees in 2022, nearly doubling its current workforce, and open new offices and factories across Europe, including in Germany and England, and possibly Italy, according to the company. “Croatia has two unicorns, us and another company,” Rimac said, referring to Infobip, an IT and telecommunications business. “Italy, as far as I know, doesn’t have a single one, despite being like 12 times bigger than Croatia. So [this investment] is a big, big thing for the region, showing that you can attract the best international investors in a really competitive industry and make a significant company.” |
Chick-fil-A taps Refraction AI for autonomous delivery pilot | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 5 | 31 | When , its goal was to use robotics to bring down the cost of last-mile delivery. Over the past couple of years, the startup has worked directly with restaurants in its hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, to offer its bike-lane bound robots as a logistics layer for customers, rather than trying to be another DoorDash or UberEats. A little less than a year ago, Refraction moved its commercial operations down to Austin, Texas, where it continued cultivating individual relationships with restaurants. Along the way, the company learned that was still a priority, Refraction’s real unique selling point is its ability to deliver a higher quality and scalable service. “You can maybe negotiate great prices with DoorDash, but you can’t make DoorDash give you the A1 quality drivers that do a really good job and are always on time and never make you wait and the food always shows up hot,” Refraction chief technology officer and co-founder Matthew Johnson-Roberson told TechCrunch. “Because you control very little of that, even if you’re a restaurant chain as powerful as Chick-fil-A.” Chick-fil-A, the fast food restaurant chain specializing in chicken sandwiches with a side of god, said on Tuesday that it enlisted Refraction AI to deploy a fleet of the startup’s self-driving vehicles to two of its restaurants in downtown Austin — at 6th & Congress, where the companies held initial testing, and on Martin Luther King boulevard. The commercial pilot will begin in late June, Refraction said in a statement. “I don’t speak for [Chick-fil-A], but I get a sense that these experimentations are around trying to fill some gaps that still exist in the current offerings out there on the market that aren’t delivering the level of service they were looking for,” said Johnson-Roberson. Refraction wouldn’t say exactly how many vehicles it would be delivering for Chick-fil-A, but it’s “an order of 10,” according to Johnson-Roberson. The deal with Chick-fil-A is part of a larger set of tests Refraction is running to understand how it could serve quick service restaurants by maximizing the profitability and effectiveness of robotic delivery, said Johnson-Roberson. Working with a large chain, rather than individual restaurants, could easily fill up the startup’s fleet capacity for all the robots it has now “and probably other robots we could potentially build in the near to mid-term.” The company is currently in the process of developing similar partnerships with retail and grocery delivery clients, a spokesperson told TechCrunch. Refraction AI delivery robot in front of 6th and Congress Chick-fil-A in Austin, Texas. Refraction AI Refraction’s REV-1 robot is affectionately referred to as the “Goldilocks of robotic delivery” because it’s not too small to only operate on sidewalks and not too big to only operate on streets. The robot was built on a bicycle foundation and as such operates in the bike lane (where they exist, in shoulders where they don’t), traveling at speeds of around 15 miles per hour. This, Johnson-Roberson says, allows the company to increase delivery time while keeping tech costs down — slower speeds than a full-sized autonomous vehicle mean less risk and no need of expensive lidar to see far away. The robots are largely self-driving with very little human oversight, said Johnson-Roberson. Refraction achieves this by attempting to stick to routes that are easier to drive autonomously. The robots will switch to teleoperated mode, where a remote operator is monitoring and at times controlling the vehicle, only for infrequently used routes or situations that are difficult to address with autonomy, like certain intersections with high risk, unprotected left turns. “We’re aiming for a very low delivery time,” said Johnson-Roberson, noting that quick delivery is also essential to ensuring food arrives at a reasonable temperature — “10 to 12 minutes.” The REV-1s have a compartment that is insulated to protect the temperature of the food, but the air from the vehicle’s electronics also vents into the main compartment, which increases the ambient temperature. “One of the things I didn’t anticipate is the critical nature of the quality of the food delivery experience for big brands,” said Johnson-Roberson. “They live or die by the fact that people think their food shows up and it’s always good and tasty, and it’s repeatable.” Being repeatable is what will help Refraction keep, and ultimately expand, its relationship with Chick-fil-A, and potentially other larger chains. After all, that’s the MO of restaurant chains everywhere: make it the same, make it good and make it scalable. |
Precursor Ventures’ first hire just spun out to start her own venture firm | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 5 | 31 | , who was the first hire at , a seed and early-stage focused fund that backs first-time founders, is starting her own venture firm. The investor is going from at the firm she joined 6 years ago to the solo-partner behind a new, unnamed firm. The job move may feel like a leap in this environment — as institutionally backed investors warn that emerging fund managers will struggle to raise debut funds given LP freeze-ups — but Thomas doesn’t quite agree. “I think it’s crazy to start a fund in any environment,” Thomas told TechCrunch. “I haven’t paid a lot of attention to a lot of the discussions because I learned recently that early-stage markets have zero correlation to the stock market more generally; and the over-indexing, or over-correction that is happening in the stock market is not actually reasonable for early-stage investors.” Thomas declined to share what type of fund she’s raising — if it’s a 506(c) or a 506(b) — or what her average check size could look like. Her firm doesn’t yet have a website or a name, but she’ll spend the next few months heading into builder mode before opening up the inbox for investments. I'm so excited to share that I'm jumping into the deep end and building a VC fund! 🥳 My focus will be on the same thesis I've cultivated over the past 5 years – investing in + doubling down on Pre-Seed companies building technologies that make life better for real people. — Sydney (@sydneypaige10) While her new gig is clearly still very early stage, Thomas will focus on addressing a gap she noticed during her 6 years — and 250 companies’ worth of experience — at Precursor. She wants to build a fund that backs founders at the pre-seed stage and then doubles down on them in the seed stage. “It sounds very normalized, but it actually isn’t,” she said. “A lot of other firms and multi-stage firms outsource the pre-seed bucket to a Scout program, and so the partners that actually have the funds aren’t as intricately involved in a founder’s everyday.” This reality means that many of the startups that may turn to a multistage firm for their first checks will get lost in the sea as senior partners don’t really connect with them for follow-on funding. The investor thinks that founders are looking for a high-conviction, pre-seed partner who is interested in leading the next deal. “And given what I’ve seen in the landscape…that is novel,” she added. As for whether Thomas’s firm is competitive with her former employer, it’s too soon to tell. A lot of the specifics are still being figured out, but, similar to Precursor, she is focusing on first-check funding and early-stage entrepreneurs. The future firm could clearly differ by picking a specific vertical, geography or founder background as an initial focus. For what it’s worth, she’s been about companies that give real people more agency over their lives. (Real People would be a good name for a VC firm, just saying.) Thomas was hired by , the founder of Precursor Ventures, in 2016 after graduating from the Haas School of Business at Berkeley. Hudson declined to comment but previously told TechCrunch about Thomas’s interest in the operational work of streamlining solo-GP funds, even when the firm was handling less than $5 million in committed capital. Today, Precursor has raised tens of millions in venture financing to back other startups, and Thomas, who started as an intern, is scaling the playbook elsewhere. “It feels like getting the avengers back together,” she said, referring to limited partners that she spoke to when first at Precursor. “I’m calling up the same people that I was working with six years ago and I’ve just been completely floored by the support that I’ve gotten and the good will.” The investor says she always wanted to start a fund, but it wasn’t until 2020 that she saw barriers to entry in venture actually fall in a meaningful way. The “radical shift” in the venture, as Thomas , was underscored by big news items — like the first $1 billion Black-owned fund and the largest women-founded firm — as well as a software push from companies such as “Carta, AngelList, Flow, Allocate, Recast, Raise, Bridge, Coolwater, Strut and others.” Thomas’s move means even more given the lack of diversity in partner ranks across the broader venture ecosystem. Despite progress, roles within venture have grown increasingly, and often intentionally, vague over time. At any given fund, there can be principals, investors, partners, investing principal partners and senior associate investors. Depending on the fund, each person could just go under the guise of “partner” and call it a day. Thomas was set to join the partner track at Precursor — she’s been leading deals there for 2 years — but she’s jumping ahead to start a career with her own investment autonomy and decision-making authority. Thomas will transition to a venture partner role at Precursor. She said that the role means she can stick to her recurring meetings with founders but declined to comment if she will be staying on Precursor’s payroll or what her financial relationship with the firm will look like. “Once I started [investing], in very much Virgo energy, I could not stop thinking about it,” Thomas said during the interview. “So, I decided to jump into it.” |
Student social good startups collect $100K in T-Mobile competition | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 5 | 31 | A diverse collection of students with big ideas will split about a hundred grand in prize money after competing in . Now, $5,000-10,000 may not sound like a lot to companies pulling in tens of millions, but for a kid just starting out, it could be the difference between pursuing and abandoning a passion project. The contest is nationwide, asking young folks age 13-18 to submit their project, company, or however they like to define it, and five each in three categories are awarded $5,000. A winner from each category gets an additional $5,000 plus a pitch-off with T-Mo brass, and a chance for a final $5,000 check. You’d think they would throw another five large out there to hit $100,000 even… maybe next year. (Update: The original total was $95,000, but T-Mobile noted that an additional $5,000 prize wasn’t mentioned in the release, and there are some other ones as well. So the total is a little more than originally stated and I’ve adjusted the above.) There are plenty such competitions out there (last week was ) and the ideas that surface in them are always refreshingly human in scale and intention. Take the finalist , for instance. Sounds like middleware for hospitals, but it’s two teenage cousins in Louisville who have now helped more than 2,000 senior citizens make vaccination and other healthcare appointments by walking them through the digital processes that might otherwise have puzzled them. “Telehealth access is a basic human right. Solutions must be found, as telehealth will explode in the future… vulnerable people cannot be left behind,” they write. And they’re helping in a very hands-on way — volunteer work for the digital era, perhaps, but also just plain a good idea: a general “tech support for telehealth” for people who don’t have a savvy niece or nephew to consult on such things. Just because folks like Jacqueline and Amelie aren’t yet quite at the doesn’t mean we can’t applaud their initiative and insight. They do have one thing in common with many larger startups, however: a total lack of any plan for monetization. In this case however, that is probably a good thing. Here’s the full list of finalists, by category with winners listed first (descriptions from T-Mo and the applicants themselves, links to their sweet little applications): “Digital empowerment”: “Equity in Action”: “Thriving Planet”: Some of these are pretty legit. Feel free to look me up when that pre-seed round hits, all. |
Ultima Genomics claims $100 full genome sequencing after stealth $600M raise | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 5 | 31 | The appetite for genomic data continues to rise in the field of biotech and pharmaceutical research, but cost is still a factor — even sequencing a full genome now costs as little as $1,000. But with claims of reducing that cost by another order of magnitude to $100, may even further accelerate this economy. Ultima says that its sequencing machine and software platform, the UG 100, can perform a complete sequencing of a human genome in about 20 hours, with precision comparable to existing options, but does so at a far lower cost per “gigabase,” which is to say per million base pairs of DNA analyzed. The technical advances may not be entirely intelligible to people who are not already familiar with how DNA is sequenced, and not being an expert myself I won’t attempt a full explanation. But it helps to understand that essentially the DNA, amplified in a reagent (so basically a lot of the same DNA in a solution), is passed through small channels where fragments bind to certain microscopic mechanisms, which prepare it to be imaged by a lot of base detectors operating in parallel. These sequences are then reassembled into the whole genome by matching their ends together. Ultima’s claimed advance is threefold. First, rather than having the reagent travel down fluidic channels that must be flushed afterwards in preparation for the next step, the micromachinery (“a dense array of electrostatic landing pads”) is etched onto a 200mm silicon wafer. This well-known process uses cheap, readily available stock and can be mass manufactured. But more importantly, it enables the reagent to be simply deposited in the center of the wafer, which spins to distribute it evenly across its entire surface using centrifugal force. This is efficient, mechanically simple and allows the resulting sequences to be read “during rotation of the wafer in a continuous process, analogous to reading a compact disc.” Diagram of the UG 100’s open water process, with an image of the wafer’s micropatterned surface. Ultima Genomics The second advance is a little more arcane, having to do with the process of preparing and directly reading the DNA — rather than replacing the bases with more machine-readable ones or relying on dicey particle-level imagery, a clever combination of the two is struck. It’s less destructive to the original strands but also doesn’t require error-prone measurements like individual photon counts. The third advance involves machine learning to accelerate the process of turning optical data (the CD-style scanning signal) into usable data. A deep convolutional neural network trained on multiple genomes and fragments is tuned based on a sample from the genome being sequenced, then set to work verifying and assembling all the tiny pieces of data into the whole genome. This process speeds things up and eliminates error. There is considerable margin for improvement on the process, primarily in the size and density of the wafer and its surface, leading to improved throughput. This could push the price lower, but for now a 90% reduction is more than enough to go to market with. Founder and CEO Gilad Almogy (also the first author of many on the ), said that the company is currently working with early access partners to put out some early proof of concept studies showing the capabilities of the sequencing technique. The first of these, collaborations with the Broad Institute, Whitehead Institute, the Baylor College of Medicine and more are being presented soon or currently . Broader commercial deployment is expected in 2023 (final pricing is undetermined but will likely reflect the advantage conferred by this method over others). I asked Almogy what he felt were the areas of the biotech and medical industry that will benefit most from this new capability. “We believe genomics will be the first line diagnostic across diseases,” he said, pointing out that it is complementary to many existing techniques and only improves understanding of them. But the far lower cost could lead to genomic population studies, improving our general understanding of systematic variance in the genome across different groups and over time. “We’re already talking with partners who are interested to do more genomes, but also RNA expression and proteomics at a population scale, said Almogy. This is also key to epigenetic studies that look at methylation and other ways our DNA changes as we age. “Deep oncology,” or using genetic profiling to characterize and fight cancers, may be one of the earliest clinical applications — and in fact is way ahead of him on that one. The company’s quick turnaround whole-genome tumor sequencing could be made even quicker. Similarly, single cell sequencing (e.g. a blood cell or neuron) could help in both clinical and research environments, but “the cost of sequencing also prevents us from routinely using single cell sequencing for applications like immune profiling,” Almogy said. Reducing the cost so considerably could change that equation. With sequencing reduced from a billion-dollar process to one you could get done monthly if you wanted to and have it covered by insurance, the biotech industry seems to be on the precipice of yet another data explosion, beyond the scale of the unprecedented one we are already in the midst of. With companies like Ultima multiplying data volumes, the next opportunity is likely to be not in production but management and utilization of this newly deepened sea of information. |
Daily Crunch: Amazon will sunset Cloud Cam service in December, offers customers free Blink Mini | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 5 | 31 | null |
Report calls out Apple’s membership in trade groups ‘stalling’ climate efforts | Harri Weber | 2,022 | 5 | 31 | While going to great lengths to promote itself as an environmentally conscious tech firm, Apple joined several industry associations that are “fighting efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” according to a new report from the . As recently as 2020, the company was an active member of several “business groups that seek to thwart action on global warming,” per the report, which cites with Business Roundtable, BusinessEurope and the Texas Association of Business, among other associations with soot on their hands, so to speak. Apple did not respond to a request for comment on the report. Business Roundtable was among the to oppose the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget resolution last year, which featured a to boost the development of electric cars and generate more renewable energy. Predictably, the trade group — which also counts Alphabet, Walt Disney and Salesforce as members — fought the legislation over corporate . Another group supported by Apple as recently as 2020, the Texas Association of Business (TAB) came out against the “use of environmental regulatory controls that have the specific effect of promoting an alternative energy policy” in a statement. The same document laid out the group’s opposition to stricter ozone and regulations. “It’s not clear how Apple, which calls climate change ‘the defining issue of our time,’ is able to square its association with TAB with its environmental positions,” the Tech Transparency Project said. The advocacy group also called out Apple’s history of fighting back right-to-repair laws, which aim to curb e-waste. |
Is data observability recession-proof? | Anna Heim | 2,022 | 5 | 31 | million Series D last week, became in a fast-rising category: data observability, which the startup as “an end-to-end approach to enable teams to deliver more reliable and trustworthy data.” If you are wondering how serious data quality issues are, Monte Carlo CEO Barr Moses has an answer: “Data quality issues still plague even the most data-driven companies. Just a few weeks ago, Unity, the popular gaming software company, ’ for a $110 million impact on their ads business.” Moses’ startup isn’t the only one to go after the data observability market opportunity. On the same day that Monte Carlo disclosed its newly minted $1.6 billion valuation, competitor confirmed its unicorn status with a new round of funding. “While smaller than Cribl’s Series C, which came close to eclipsing $200 million, the Series D values the company at $2.5 billion post-money, according to a source. That’s up from $1.5 billion as of August 2021,” TechCrunch’s Kyle Wiggers . Any three-digit deal would be noteworthy in isolation. Two of them in the same space, even more so. But what really caught our attention is that Monte Carlo’s and Cribl’s deals were announced now, right in the middle of a broad startup . We know that large rounds can take time to get both closed and disclosed, meaning that Monte Carlo’s and Cribl’s Series D rounds might reflect the state of the market a few weeks ago. But there’s a more recent data point to take into account: hiring, which is still happening. On one side of the table, companies are still filling the kind of positions that create demand for data quality solutions. “Despite the volatility, data engineers and analytics jobs are increasing and companies are continuing to hire at for these roles,” Moses told TechCrunch. On the other, data observability startups themselves are hiring. Not just unicorns like Cribl and Monte Carlo, but also competitors like seed-funded startup . Could data observability be recession-proof? To find out, we talked to Moses, as well as Sifflet CEO . To complete their firsthand knowledge, we collected notes from two investors familiar with the space: partner and general partner . The picture that emerged from our conversations is that tailwinds for the data observability category as a whole might not translate into wins for each and every startup in the space. Why? Let’s explore. When we mention tailwinds for data observability, it’s because demand is driven by a broader trend. TL;DR: More and more companies are becoming data-driven, and therefore facing the kind of data quality issues that data observability startups are made to address. Sizing a growing opportunity is never easy, but in our conversations, we heard that data obs could soon be a universal problem for large companies. “I’m a big believer that every company, both tech and non-tech, is going to need to become not just a software company, but a data company,” Turck said. “That’s why people are excited about the opportunity — it’s a very large market and a huge trend.” That the addressable market for data observability is large is one thing. But it would be meaningless if target companies themselves weren’t seeing reliable data as a need. According to Moses, that’s increasingly the case in all kinds of sectors. |
4 ways to make your engineering team more productive | Ammar Bandukwala | 2,022 | 5 | 31 | of your software engineering team has many advantages, prime among them being the ability to make up for problems in other areas. Whether you’re facing budget constraints, having problems sourcing and retaining talent or simply wanting to boost product iteration, focusing on increasing your engineering efficiencies will yield strong results for a long time to come. Here are four ways to start optimizing your engineering resources: CI/CD pipelines are generally slow and break often, leaving developers frustrated and looking for problems. A recent found that 47% of surveyed companies took days to deploy CI/CD pipelines, and only 10% could do it within minutes, which is what time-efficient pipelines should be able to do.
Why is that important? Puppet that high-performing IT teams — which could deploy and push code to production faster than their peers — experienced 60 times fewer failures and recovered from them 168 times faster. It’s paramount to have tools in place that can help you analyze and fix your development workflow. The first step is to map out all the steps of your CI/CD pipeline. Pipelines today are becoming increasingly complicated: unit tests, integration tests, security tests, compliance checks, load tests and so on. There are countless ways things can slow down or break. The second step is to put in place tools to monitor and analyze these pipelines. Datadog, Splunk, Athenian and open source are some tools that can help get you there. The third step is to spot what is broken and improve what is slow. What’s the PR cycle time? How often do you release? Are there specific parts of the pipeline that are problematic? These are the questions to ask, answer and act on to increase your shipping pipeline velocity. Reproducible development environments are slowly becoming an industry standard, but it can be difficult to make an existing environment replicable. Whether it’s to allow a new hire to push their first commit on day one or enable your engineering organization to have an identical development environment — replicability is critical. Containers — democratized by Docker in the last decade — offer one way to reach reproducibility. But because their focus is on application portability, some argue that it’s not always the best approach for making development environments reproducible. |
Supreme Court pauses controversial Texas social media law | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,022 | 5 | 31 | Tech companies got their way in Texas on Tuesday. The Supreme Court just a controversial law that allows Texas residents and the attorney general to over their content-moderation decisions. The law, HB 20, prohibits tech platforms from removing or restricting content based on “the viewpoint represented in the user’s expression” and was designed with conservative claims of tech’s liberal ideological bias in mind. HB 20 passed in September but has had a rocky ride through the courts in the months that followed. It was swiftly blocked by an injunction after passing, but a trio of federal appeals court judges paused the temporary injunction earlier this month in a surprise win for the law’s proponents. The Supreme Court ruling isn’t the final word on HB 20, which still faces a lawsuit from two tech industry groups, the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and NetChoice, challenging its constitutionality. After the surprise decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals unblocked the law earlier in May, the tech trade groups asked the Supreme Court to intervene with an emergency stay. Justice Samuel Alito reviewed the request and ultimately brought the case to the broader Supreme Court for the interim decision. Justices John Roberts, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett voted to overturn the Fifth Circuit’s ruling. Justice Alito and Clarence Thomas, Elena Kagan and Neil Gorsuch voted against vacating the ruling. “While I can understand the Court’s apparent desire to delay enforcement of HB20 while the appeal is pending, the preliminary injunction entered by the District Court was itself a significant intrusion on state sovereignty,” Alito wrote in his dissent. In a statement following the Supreme Court ruling, NetChoice celebrated the win while acknowledging that it is only “halfway there” as the case makes its way to district court. “Texas’s HB 20 is a constitutional trainwreck,” NetChoice Counsel Chris Marchese said. “We are relieved that the First Amendment, open internet, and the users who rely on it remain protected from Texas’s unconstitutional overreach.” |
null | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 5 | 9 | null |
Cydia’s antitrust case against Apple is allowed to proceed, judge rules | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 5 | 31 | A federal antitrust lawsuit over the alternative app store called Cydia has now been given the green light to proceed, after its initial complaint was dismissed. The Cydia app store, which once featured apps and other tweaks that weren’t permitted by Apple’s official App Store policies, is suing Apple over its alleged unlawful monopoly over iOS app distribution — a monopoly that contributed to the end of Cydia’s business, it says. The plaintiff, SaurikIT LLC, maker of the rival app store, originally filed its legal challenge back in 2020, but U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers — the same judge who recently issued the Apple-Epic now under appeal — granted Apple’s motion to on the grounds that its claims were outside the statute of limitations. But the judge allowed Cydia to amend its complaint, which was filed in January 2022. That new complaint is now moving forward, as Judge Gonzalez Rogers has rejected Apple’s motion to dismiss it. Apple had again argued Cydia’s allegations fell outside the four-year window allowed under federal antitrust law, reported , which first noted the lawsuit’s update this past Friday. In Cydia’s amended complaint, it says Apple more recently implemented design changes that prevented iOS app distributors from being able to provide apps that were usable on iOS devices. These changes were rolled out from 2018 to 2021, the complaint states, which brings the legal challenge into the permitted time frame for an antitrust argument. More specifically, the complaint cites 2018 and 2019 technical restrictions like runtime code modification prevention, pointer authentication, physical map codesigning, memory tagging extensions and other control mechanisms designed to target Cydia and other alternative app stores from delivering functional apps. It also references Apple’s contractual restrictions, which prevent developers from using alternative payment mechanisms. And it points out that Apple’s numerous restrictions have impacts on other app stores besides itself, like the newer AltStore. “…[the] plaintiff has plausibly alleged that Apple engaged in changes in its technological updates, which occurred within the four years preceding the filing of the lawsuit,” Gonzalez Rogers wrote in the new filing. “Accordingly, to the extent plaintiff’s claims rely on Apple’s technological updates to exclude Cydia from being able to operate altogether, those claims are timely,” the decision read. Cydia is ultimately looking to recoup damages and injunctive relief and wants to move toward a trial by jury. Apple has been given 21 days to respond to the amended complaint. While Apple continues to battle with iOS developers on other fronts, including with the the Cydia lawsuit is particularly interesting because it’s focused on whether third-party app stores have a legal right to exist and do business. Cydia is arguing they do, pointing to the made by the U.S. Copyright Office which Because Apple lost the case to make jailbreaking illegal, it instead moved to make jailbreaking an impossibility through both technical and contractual means, Cydia is arguing. It’s a creative tactic to reference the jailbreaking decision and one that allows Cydia to point to all sorts of other changes Apple has made in the years since that ruling. For example, the complaint contrasts how Apple has moved against some rival app stores like AltStore and Cydia as well as against cloud gaming services, but then permitted certain apps to distribute apps, as with WeChat and its distribution of “mini-programs.” Arguably, these are all very different types of experiences, but the case being made is that Apple is making choices designed to restrict certain rivals and not others. While the complaint itself reads a bit like a grab-bag of antitrust concerns — some of which really have nothing to do with Cydia’s right to operate. At one point, Cydia complains about the $99 per year Apple developer fee; at another, it pleads Spotify’s case for pages — which almost makes you wonder who’s paying Cydia’s legal fees! Still, it’s interesting to have Cydia in the fight, given the outsized role it’s played in iOS innovation over the years. As longtime iPhone jailbreakers likely recall, Cydia was once a popular and sizable marketplace filled with apps and tweaks that skirted Apple’s official rules. To use Cydia, consumers would first have to jailbreak their iPhones to circumvent Apple’s security protections — a process that required jailbreaking teams to constantly search for new ways to unlock consumer devices to permit sideloading apps. At one point in 2013, Cydia was used by , to figures from its creator, Jay Freeman. Though jailbreaking was sometimes associated with giving users a way to , Cydia also contributed to the development of iOS itself. Dozens upon dozens of iOS features were being marketed on Cydia, in fact. Long before users were customizing their iPhones with widgets and custom icons, for instance, Cydia users were downloading theme managers like to overhaul their iOS look and feel with custom themes. A popular Cydia tweak was iPhone’s first Control Center, before there Cydia users were also first to have access to things like custom keyboards, private web browsing, dynamic wallpapers, native QR code scanning, screenshot previews, dark modes, auto-updating apps, a card-based app switcher, the ability to delete stock apps, screen recording tools and so much . However, Cydia’s ability to actually win this case could be more of a longshot, given that Gonzalez Rogers already declared last year in the Epic ruling . |
Lionsgate plans to officially announce a Starz spinoff this summer | Lauren Forristal | 2,022 | 5 | 31 | Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer revealed details during an investor call on Thursday, May 26, about the company’s plans to spin off its Starz streaming unit by the end of the summer. He also alluded that there could be more M&A (mergers and acquisitions) for both Lionsgate and Starz if the two were separated. Feltheimer , “We are targeting an announcement of our plan by the end of the summer and expect a transaction could close as early as our fiscal fourth quarter.” He added that the company is engaged in conversations with bankers and “a number of potential strategic partners.” Although he did not disclose who these possible partners were, the confirmation follows earlier reports. In an earnings call back in the fall of 2021, the company announced it was exploring strategic options for the cable network and streamer as it failed to provide a boost for Lionsgate. One solution was to sell all or a part of the asset. Michael Burns, Lionsgate’s COO , “While we continue to realize substantial synergies from bringing Lionsgate and Starz together, we also see the opportunity to potentially unlock significant shareholder value under a scenario where investors had the ability to value our studio assets and Starz separately.” Feltheimer noted last week that the expectation right now is that Lionsgate will retain some ownership stake in Starz, but “anything can happen,” he said. DirecTV is among many media companies looking to purchase a stake, along with , which have teamed up on a bid. Another potential suitor is , a division of French conglomerate Vivendi. and over time, has steadily grown its customer base, which grew by for the quarter, reaching a total of 35.8 million. The CEO boasted during last week’s call that they predict Starz to hit 50 million to 60 million global subscribers (TV and streaming) by the end of fiscal 2025. The healthy numbers are another reason why Lionsgate is choosing this moment to send Starz out on its own. Feltheimer emphasized that Starz is not aiming to compete with bigger streaming rivals, but is keeping it as a niche, ad-free service to be “layered” on top of them. While Starz has strong content, the new company will certainly require support from other partners to succeed. We will have to wait to see which company believes that Starz has enough value to cough up the necessary costs. |
Artiphon’s delightful Orba handheld synthesizer gets a sequel | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 5 | 31 | I would love to see more companies like Artiphon in the world. Hardware startups with clever ideas and a knack for bringing them to market. Back in November 2020, with the company’s handheld synth/sampler/instrument. It didn’t turn me into Wendy Carlos, but it helped pass a few dark pandemic hours by firing up some music-making neurons. The device’s strength lies in its extraordinarily low barrier of entry. No lessons or musical aptitude are required — just a free hand or two and the desire to noodle around with sound. Today the device is getting a sequel, in the form of the fittingly named Orba 2. The product looks identical to its predecessor, with a round base and eight touch-sensitive pads arranged in triangles like pizza slices. Artiphon The device largely functions the same as the Orba 1, as well, but features a revamped sound engine with new built-in audio samples. Those are augmented by built-in sensors, which let you modify the sound through talking, shaking and spinning the device. There are nine gestures in all. Users also can sample and loop directly on the device or with the connected Orba app. “We want people to express themselves musically in their everyday lives,” CEO Mike Butera says in a release. “We’ve dreamed of allowing anyone to play any sound they can imagine, anywhere they go, without worrying about historical instrument skills or abstract music theory. Orba 2 finally makes that possible.” All told, the sampler can record up to five minutes/128 bars on device, coupled with a new feature that helps snap playing to a beat. Clearly the end game is making the system as dummy proof as humanly possible. Though, for more advanced users, it also doubles as a MIDI controller (via USB-C or Bluetooth) for apps including GarageBand, Ableton Live, Logic Pro and Pro Tools. Artiphon’s Orba handheld synthesizer. Artiphon / mockups-design.com The Orba 2 runs $150 — notably a $50 premium over its very accessible predecessor. Artiphon has also added a number of new features since the release of the first Orba, including the ability to utilize the device as a video editor. |
The Jonas Brothers help launch Scriber, a creator subscription company | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 5 | 31 | The creator economy is “ ,” and the Jonas Brothers are cashing in. Launching with the help of these former teen heartthrobs, is a creator subscription company geared toward more established figures in entertainment (… like the Jonas Brothers). Joe, Kevin and Nick aren’t just Scriber’s first creators — they also have equity in the company. Besides catering to more established artists, Scriber differentiates itself from other creator subscription products by functioning solely via SMS. The creator will post a phone number on their social media platforms for fans to text, and after messaging that number, fans can pay a subscription fee via Apple Pay or Stripe to get exclusive content sent to their phone. For this launch with the JoBros, fans will pay $4.99 a month, but the service is only available in the U.S. right now. Team Jonas is now on Scriber 😎 Text GO to 1-844-228-4544 You’ll want to be a part of this 👀 *US Users Only — Jonas Brothers (@jonasbrothers) Since Scriber is not an app on the App Store, the platform doesn’t have to pay fees to Apple or Google Play. Instead, creators pay Scriber $1 per month for each subscriber (so if they have 10,000 subscribers, they pay $10,000). The creator also covers Stripe’s 2.9% processing fee. App Store fees have been a major pain point for creator-focused startups. , for example, instituted a coin system to circumvent Apple’s 30% cut — fans buy coins on the web, then use them in the app to subscribe to creators (they can also pay via the app, but they’ll be charged extra to cover the fees). Scriber creators retain rights to the content that they upload, and the platform tries to protect the exclusive material from leaking by giving each subscriber a unique link to view uploads. So, if they share that link online, Scriber can easily figure out the source of the leak. This may not help in the case of screen recording and re-uploading videos, though. Scriber comes courtesy of journalist-turned-entrepreneur , who is serving as CEO and providing most of the startup capital. According to a report from , Goldsmith says he hopes that the already wealthy celebrities he partners with will use the platform to raise money for philanthropy. The Jonas Brothers are planning to donate about half of their earnings to causes they care about. This isn’t the Jonas Brothers’ first rodeo when it comes to startups and investments. The three musicians invested in , a social food app, and , a celebrity-backed sparkling tonic company. Kevin Jonas is a founder himself — he launched , a now-defunct food app, and , an influencer marketing company. |
This book made me fall in love with electronics all over again | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 5 | 31 | It’s no secret that I’m a sucker for photography — I’ve been known to take a photo or two in my time — and I have a hell of a weak spot for electronics, to boot. In the upcoming from No Starch Press, authors Windell Oskay, co-founder of , and Eric Schlaepfer, creator of the popular collection of vintage competing Twitter account , talk about the creative beauty (and beautiful creativity) of electronics. Part history book, part coffee-table photo book and part journey into the inner lives of the electronics, Open Circuits is a fascinating journey through the history of electronics. The authors explore the visual landscape of electronics, including tearing apart a bunch of the components to take a look at what’s inside, and adding a description of how it all works. In a spread about thick film resistor arrays, the authors explore the inner and outer beauty of the components, and call out details that I otherwise would never have noticed — such as the trimming laser scorch marks. Eric Schlaepfer and Windell H. Oskay. Electronics nerds will have seen resistor arrays — these little colorful blocks on printed circuit boards (PCBs), but even though I must have soldered hundreds, if not thousands, of these in my time, I never stopped to think what’s happening on the inside. I found myself enraptured with intrigue to further explore the components. The authors took some of them apart to show off the simple, understated, elegant beauty of the components. For a brief moment, I was reminded that art is everywhere, even inside the electronics that surround us. LED filaments contain hundreds of little LEDs in microscopic strip lights. The phosphor is agitated into glowing, which gives the individual strands the look of “filaments.” Eric Schlaepfer and Windell H. Oskay. I love how the authors explore the components visually (and they are ), and take the time to explain why the components look the way they look. Take the humble LED filament light bulb, for example — I’ve never paused to think how they are made or why they look the way they look. Now, I’ll never be able to see them the same way again. Cheramic caps are probably among the simplest components there are. I never paused to think that they might actually be pretty, too. Eric Schlaepfer and Windell H. Oskay. Orange Ceramic Disc Capacitors are a dime a dozen — — and they are ubiquitous in electronics labs. So simple, and yet almost poetic in their beauty, this was the spread of the early access copy of the book the publisher sent me that made me decide to share its weird wonderment with you. The book is now for $40, and the final version is expected to be a 300-odd page hard-cover book shipping in September or so. Perhaps it’s a good holiday present for the visually oriented electronics nerds in your life. |
Zinc heads toward new $41M tech-for-good fund to back pre-team talent solving big problems | Mike Butcher | 2,022 | 5 | 30 | So-called “tech for good” accelerators addressing such worthy sounding subjects as ESGs and SDGs have appeared in the last few years. Some observers have dismissed these efforts as scalable only to a point. However, the evidence is mounting that they are increasingly attracting some of the world’s best talent, because the world’s best talent does actually want to solve some of the planet’s biggest problems. And where the talent goes, the money and backing will follow. In Europe, Entrepreneur First (EF) and Antler have tried to scale their models as “talent investors,” while the Bethnal Green Ventures fund was even acquired and by its new owners. Clearly this approach is on something of a roll. is an accelerator that appeared back in 2017 when it was founded by , Paul Kirby and Saul Klein (LocalGlobe founder) and backed by its early investors, including the London School of Economics. It went on to back over 220 diverse founders who built more than 60 ventures, such as Vira Health (menopause support), Tandem (transportation for workers), Pexxi (personalized contraception pills) and Untangle (grief support). As you can see, it is indeed possible to create businesses that address what, to some, might seem like intractable problems. Zinc has now hit the first £28 million ($34 million) close of a new fund and is aiming for a final close of £33 million ($41 million) to invest in startups building commercial solutions to some of society’s biggest challenges. Zinc will invest up to £250,000 in each of the companies created. Zinc 2 Fund will back talent that (similar to EF) is pre-team and pre-idea to build these startups. The cohort draws in talent focused on four missions: mental health, the environment, improving the quality of later life and helping people impacted by automation and globalization. Zinc and the entrepreneurs share a conviction that each of these missions is a big opportunity for both social impact and commercial success. Goldner, co-founder of Zinc, said in a statement: Rather than waiting for good companies to appear, Zinc helps individuals (before they have a business idea or a team) to build from scratch a new commercially ambitious company to solve the social challenge that they are most passionate about. “Typically,” she says “those individuals are 10 to 20 years into their career but are frustrated that they are not having the social impact they want … Zinc brings these groups together to combine social impact and commercial skills.” The individuals chosen by Zinc join a cohort of up to 70 people who all share the same mission and access a 12-month program of support and investment. Each of our programs has 100 Visiting Fellows and a network of partners. Givent the “Great Resignation” post-pandemic, Zinc thinks it will attract those reevaluating their careers. Paul Kirby, co-founder of Zinc, says “Our missions are a call to arms: ‘Who wants to quit their jobs and spend the next decade or more solving this problem?’” Some of the examples of the founders who have built a venture with Zinc include Dr. Rebecca Love, the co-founder of Vira Health, which has raised $14 million of VC funding, and Alex Shapland Howes of Tandem, which has raised £2 million. Other investors in Zinc’s new fund include Big Society Capital, Molten Ventures, Isomer, Dunhill Medical Trust, Atomico, Anthemis Group, Taavet Hinrikus from Taaven+Sten, Ilkka Paananen (Supercell), Basecamp, Sarah Wood and Stuart Roden. The founders Zinc backed in its most recent venture builder program are over 50% women, 15% Black, with an average age of 38. |
HitPay is a one-stop solution for SMEs | Catherine Shu | 2,022 | 5 | 30 | has almost everything SMEs need to run their businesses. In addition to being an online payment gateway, it also offers tools like point-of-sale software with card readers, plugins, payment links and no-code online stores. The Y Combinator alum announced today that it has raised $15.75 million in Series A funding led by Tiger Global, with participation from returning investors Global Founders Capital and HOF Capital. It is currently used by more than 10,000 merchants in Singapore and Malaysia, with plans to expand into more Southeast Asian markets, including Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. Co-founder and CEO Aditya Haripurkar told TechCrunch HitPay started in 2016 as an e-wallet but then pivoted toward being an SME-facing platform in 2018 as a virtual POS product. As its team began to understand the needs of SMEs more, it started to develop the other tools on the platform. HitPay’s Series A funding will be used for building a payments infrastructure from the ground up, with the intention of saving SMEs money and helping them expand their business. This will include business tools and payments infrastructure (including all commonly used payment rails in each market, including bank transfers, cards, e-wallets and BNPL services.) “SMEs have very specific requirements, so we wanted to build a one-stop no-code platform,” said Haripurkar. “That entails all our plugins, point of sale software, business software, online stores and recurring payments. We’ll be focusing on building these free SaaS tools in addition to building up payment rails, which are focused currently on Singaporean and Malaysian merchants. But in each country we launch in, that will look very different, so we will look at local payment methods in every country. That’s the biggest challenge for our team and where most of our investment and time is going as well.” The first step HitPay will take as it expands into new countries is to get regulated in each market it operates in, to allow it to build payment infrastructure for SMEs from the ground up. Then it will integrate the most popular payment methods. For example, in Singapore, HitPay currently works with about 10 to 15 payment methods. HitPay’s no-code platform allows SMEs to unify their online and offline payment stacks. It is typically used by medium-sized businesses, with annual revenue between $500,000 to $2 million. Most are in the retail segment, but Haripurkar expects that to evolve as well. |
Max Q: Mines and metals | Aria Alamalhodaei | 2,022 | 5 | 30 | Hello and welcome back to Max Q. There is SO much news this week, so let’s dive in. In this issue: Although we’ve long understood that asteroids are not simply the rubble of the universe, but potentially profitable stores of precious minerals, humanity has never been able to unlock this value. Y Combinator startup wants to succeed where other companies have failed, by becoming the first to mine an asteroid and bring the material back to Earth — and it’s aiming to do so as early as the end of the decade. (Yes, that is not a typo — end of the decade!) To start, Astroforge will be conducting a tech demonstration mission sometime next year. The company’s already booked a spot on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission, and it has also contracted a deal with OrbAstro to manufacture the satellite. But for now, the startup is staying mum on the actual details of the payload, and how they will solve the myriad technical challenges for which asteroid mining is so notorious. “We now need to build a world-class team to go after this, as it’s a really hard problem to solve,” co-founder Matt Gialich said. Later in the conversation, he added, “That’s the fun part of startups, right? It’s a big risk until you go do it.” Near-Earth asteroid, computer artwork. Science Photo Library – ANDRZEJ WOJCICKI / Getty Images Welcome back, Starliner! The spacecraft touched down in New Mexico on Wednesday, successfully concluding a six-day mission and the craft’s first successful test flight. As TC’s Devin Coldewey writes, even though not everything went exactly as planned, “this success may establish Boeing as a much-needed second provider of commercial ISS launch capabilities.” During a post-launch briefing, NASA commercial crew program manager Steve Stich called the landing “picture perfect.” Next up is a Crew Flight Test (CFT), which will carry astronauts and, for that reason, will be much higher stakes. The date of that launch will likely not be set for several months. Boeing / NASA / YouTube I loved this photo, , of Terran 1’s second stage crossing state lines. If all goes to plan, Terran 1 will make its first orbital launch attempt by the end of this year. |
Perceptron: Risky teleoperation, Rocket League simulation and zoologist multiplication | Kyle Wiggers | 2,022 | 5 | 30 | 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, Perceptron (previously ), 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 in AI, researchers a method that could allow adversaries to track the movements of remotely controlled robots even when the robots’ communications are encrypted end to end. The co-authors, who hail from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, said that their study shows adopting the best cybersecurity practices isn’t enough to stop attacks on autonomous systems. Remote control, or teleoperation, promises to enable operators to guide one or several robots from afar in a range of environments. Startups including , and have demonstrated the usefulness of teleoperated robots in grocery stores, hospitals and offices. Other companies develop remotely controlled robots for tasks like bomb disposal or surveying sites with heavy radiation. But the new research shows that teleoperation, even when supposedly “secure,” is risky in its susceptibility to surveillance. The Strathclyde co-authors describe in a paper using a neural network to infer information about what operations a remotely controlled robot is carrying out. After collecting samples of -protected traffic between the robot and controller and conducting an analysis, they found that the neural network could identify movements about 60% of the time and also reconstruct “warehousing workflows” (e.g., picking up packages) with “high accuracy.” Shah et al. Alarming in a less immediate way is a new from researchers at Google and the University of Michigan that explored peoples’ relationships with AI-powered systems in countries with weak legislation and “nationwide optimism” for AI. The work surveyed India-based, “financially stressed” users of instant-loan platforms that target borrowers with credit determined by risk-modeling AI. According to the co-authors, the users experienced feelings of indebtedness for the “boon” of instant loans and an obligation to accept harsh terms, overshare sensitive data and pay high fees. The researchers argue that the findings illustrate the need for greater “algorithmic accountability,” particularly where it concerns AI in financial services. “We argue that accountability is shaped by platform-user power relations and urge caution to policymakers in adopting a purely technical approach to fostering algorithmic accountability,” they wrote. “Instead, we call for situated interventions that enhance agency of users, enable meaningful transparency, reconfigure designer-user relations and prompt a critical reflection in practitioners toward wider accountability.” In less dour , a team of scientists at TU Dortmund University, Rhine-Waal University and LIACS Universiteit Leiden in the Netherlands developed an algorithm that they claim can “solve” the game Rocket League. Motivated to find a less computationally intensive way to create game-playing AI, the team leveraged what they call a “sim-to-sim” transfer technique, which trained the AI system to perform in-game tasks like goalkeeping and striking within a stripped-down, simplified version of Rocket League. (Rocket League basically resembles indoor soccer, except with cars instead of human players in teams of three.) Pleines et al. It wasn’t perfect, but the researchers’ Rocket League-playing system, managed to save nearly all shots fired its way when goalkeeping. When on the offensive, the system successfully scored 75% of shots — a respectable record. Simulators for human movements are also advancing at pace. Meta’s work on tracking and simulating human limbs has obvious applications in its AR and VR products, but it could also be used more broadly in robotics and embodied AI. Research that came out this week got a tip of the cap from . Simulated skeleton and muscle groups in Myosuite. Meta simulates muscles and skeletons in 3D as they interact with objects and themselves — this is important for agents to learn how to properly hold and manipulate things without crushing or dropping them, and also in a virtual world provide realistic grips and interactions. It supposedly runs thousands of times faster on certain tasks, which lets simulated learning processes happen much quicker. “We’re going to open source these models so researchers can use them to advance the field further,” Zuck says. Lots of these simulations are agent- or object-based, but looks at simulating an overall system of independent agents: self-driving cars. The idea is that if you have a good amount of cars on the road, you can have them work together not just to avoid collisions but to prevent idling and unnecessary stops at lights. If you look closely, only the front cars ever really stop. MIT As you can see in the animation above, a set of autonomous vehicles communicating using V2V protocols can basically prevent all but the very front cars from stopping at all by progressively slowing down behind one another but not so much that they actually come to a halt. This sort of hypermiling behavior may seem like it doesn’t save much gas or battery, but when you scale it up to thousands or millions of cars it does make a difference — and it might be a more comfortable ride, too. Good luck getting everyone to approach the intersection perfectly spaced like that, though. Switzerland is taking a good, long look at itself — using 3D scanning tech. The country is making a huge map using UAVs equipped with lidar and other tools, but there’s a catch: The movement of the drone (deliberate and accidental) introduces error into the point map that needs to be manually corrected. Not a problem if you’re just scanning a single building but an entire country? Fortunately, a team out of EPFL is integrating an ML model directly into the lidar capture stack that can determine when an object has been scanned multiple times from different angles and use that info to line up the point map into a single cohesive mesh. isn’t particularly illuminating, but . An example of the resulting map is visible in the video above. Lastly, in unexpected but highly pleasant AI news, a team from the University of Zurich has so zoologists don’t have to scrub through weeks of footage to find the two examples of courting dances. It’s a collaboration with the Zurich Zoo, which makes sense when you consider the following: “Our method can recognize even subtle or rare behavioral changes in research animals, such as signs of stress, anxiety or discomfort,” said lab head Mehmet Fatih Yanik. So the tool could be used both for learning and tracking behaviors in captivity, for the well-being of captive animals in zoos and for other forms of animal studies as well. They could use fewer subject animals and get more information in a shorter time, with less work by grad students poring over video files late into the night. Sounds like a win-win-win-win situation to me. Ella Marushenko / ETH Zurich Also, love the illustration. |
Partner sessions at TC Sessions: Climate offer knowledge and insight | Lauren Simonds | 2,022 | 5 | 30 | We’re just about two weeks away from our first foray into climate tech at on June 14 in Berkeley, California — with an online day to follow on June 16. It’s going to be an epic day all around for many reasons — did you know that is one of the featured speakers? Don’t miss this opportunity to hear from and engage with the new wave of climate-tech entrepreneurs, early-stage founders, CEOs, scientists, researchers, engineers and the VCs who fund them. You know what else you can’t afford to miss? Our 2-for-1 pass Memorial Day sale — . and save! Yes, TechCrunch editors will interview the leading voices in the fight against climate-change ( ), but we’d be doing you a disservice if we didn’t remind you about our partner breakout sessions. These expert-led, topic-specific partner sessions give you time to lean in, get more answers, discover new opportunities and connect with companies that support early-stage climate-tech startups. Take a look at this impressive group of partners and what they’ll discuss. They’re ready with knowledge and resources to help you build a successful startup. This panel jumps into the breakthrough tech innovations that are transforming industries to build a radically better world. How can business, government, philanthropy and the startup community come together to create a better tomorrow? Hear from these seasoned investors and industry veterans about how technology can not only shape the future, but also where the biggest opportunities lie.
Jamey Butcher (CEO and president, Chemonics International), Philipp Gruener (global head of Due Diligence, Decisive Capital Management SA), Victoria Slivkoff (executive managing director, Extreme Tech Challenge) and Bill Tai (angel investor; partner emeritus CRV; co-founder, Extreme Tech Challenge) Making the choice to deploy to the cloud is clearly the better choice for the climate, but you can further reduce your emissions by taking a couple of key steps. You are invited to attend this session to learn more about how the tech community is helping to mitigate climate change and a simple strategy to reduce your carbon footprint in the cloud.
Fred Plais (co-founder and CEO, Platform.sh) takes place on June 14 in Berkeley, California (with an online day June 16). Be sure to soak up the knowledge waiting for you in our partner breakout sessions. And don’t wait another second to — the Memorial Day 2-for-1 sale . Go forth and save! .
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For remittances, crypto is still a problem looking for a solution | Anna Heim | 2,022 | 5 | 30 | that Andreessen Horowitz is bullish about crypto: Not only does the firm boast that it started to invest in the space , but it also debuted a last week. To understand a16z’s bullishness despite what others have described as a “ ,” its is a good start. Per its disclaimers, the document is not directed to any investors or potential investors — yada, yada, yada. But it does read like an argument for crypto, DeFi, NFTs and all things web3. The problem, in my view, is that the report’s authors, all of whom are part of a16z’s team, are overstating the current opportunity for crypto. By doing so, they are making it sound bigger than it is — and it may take years to get to that point. That the report takes an optimistic view of crypto is understandable. After all, if you are about to deploy billions in funding into a market, and you are not even , the TAM needs to be up to par. But the report is also meant to be an overview of trends, which is why it seems questionable to allude to opportunities that aren’t real yet. The point that bothered me the most has to do with remittances — money sent cross-border by individuals, typically from a richer country to a poorer one. The World Bank expects that such annual inflows will . And yes, there are inefficiencies and fees along the way. For the authors of the a16z report, that’s more than enough to list remittances as an argument for DeFi. But are remittance payments and money transfers really ripe for crypto disruption? And is DeFi really the right solution to help what the report describes as the “huge part of the world [ … ] underserved by existing financial institutions”? That’s definitely not what I am hearing from the ground — as also confirmed by two founders I reached out to from and from . Just earlier this month, I sat in the audience of the Tech.eu Summit as Wise CEO Kristo Käärmann was interviewed on stage. “Currently, Wise doesn’t accept cryptocurrencies. Do you think,” Bloomberg’s Ivan Levingston asked him, “that this might change at some point?” This is a for the fintech company, so Käärmann made sure not to sound dismissive. “I am very excited about the technology,” he said, while also adding that “there are interesting experiments going on all around the world.” But the gist of his answer was still a nail in the crypto coffin. “We are just looking for a use case,” he said. “We’re looking for the problem that we can solve with it.” |
Strong Compute raises $7.8M seed round to speed up ML training pipelines | Frederic Lardinois | 2,022 | 5 | 30 | , a Sydney, Australia-based startup that helps developers remove the bottlenecks in their machine learning training pipelines, today announced that it has raised a $7.8 million seed round. The round includes a total of 30 funds and angels, including the likes of Sequoia Capital India, Blackbird, Folklore and Skip Capital, as well as Y Combinator, Starburst Ventures and founders and engineers from companies like Cruise, Waymo, Open AI, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic. The company, which was part of , promises that its optimizations can speed up the training process by 10x to 1,000x, depending on the model, pipeline and framework. As Strong Compute founder Ben Sand, who previously also co-founded AR company , told me, the team has recently made some breakthroughs where it was able to make Nvidia’s reference implementation, which its customer used, run 20 times faster. Strong Compute “That was a big win,” Sand said. “It really gave us the sense that there is nothing that can’t be improved.” He didn’t quite want to reveal all of the details of how the team’s optimizations worked, but he noted that the company is now hiring mathematicians and is building tools that give it a more detailed view of how their user’s code interacts with the CPUs and GPUs at a much deeper level than was previously possible. As Sand stressed, the current focus for the company is to start automating a lot of the current work to optimize the training process — and that’s something the company can now tackle, thanks to this funding round. “Our goal now is to have serious development partners in self-driving, medical and aerial, in order to be looking at what is actually going to generalize really well,” he explained. “We’ve now got the resources to have an R&D team that doesn’t have to deliver something in a two-week sprint but that can actually look at what’s some real core tech that could take a year to actually get a win out of but that can really help with that automated analysis of the problem.” The company currently has six full-time engineers but Sands plans to double that over the next few months. In part, that’s also because the company is now getting inbound interest from large companies that often spend $50 million or more on their compute resources (and Sands noted that the market is basically bimodal, with customers either spending less than $1 million or $10 million to $100 million, with only a few players in the middle). Strong Compute Every company that is trying to build ML models, though, suffers from the same problem: training models and running experiments to improve them still takes a lot of time. That means the well-paid data scientists working on these problems spend a lot of time in a holding pattern, waiting for results to come in. “ is solving the basketball court problem,” said SteadyMD CFO Nikhil Abraham. “Long training times had our best devs shooting hoops all day, waiting on machines.” And while some of that inbound interest is coming from the financial industry and companies that want to optimize their natural language processing models, Strong Compute’s focus remains on computer vision for the time being. “We’ve only just scratched the surface of what machine learning and AI can do.” said Folklore partner Tanisha Banaszczyk. “We love working with founders who have long-range ambition and visions that will endure across generations. Having invested in autonomous driving, we know how important speed to market is — and see the impact Strong Compute can have on this market with its purpose-built platform, deep understanding of the $500 billion market and world-class team.” |
null | Jaclyn Trop | 2,022 | 5 | 31 | null |
SWVL plans to lay off 32% of its team two months after going public | Tage Kene-Okafor | 2,022 | 5 | 30 | Egypt-born and Dubai-headquartered mobility startup is planning to lay off 32% of its workforce it said in a statement today. The company’s LinkedIn profile shows it has over 1,330 employees. Letting go of over 30% of its workforce means that around 400 people will lose their jobs at the mobility company. Tech companies, private and public, have faced a reckoning in the past few months with their valuations taking a beating. The effect of an economic downturn has also affected their finances leading them to cut costs; the top of the list is letting go of employees. This downsizing from the Dubai-based startup adds to the long list of global cross-stage layoffs in what has been a rough month for tech employees. Over 15,000 tech workers have lost their jobs in the U.S. alone . Companies such as , , and (the payments company) have dismissed portions of their workforce while the likes of Snap, Twitter and Instacart have slowed down hiring entirely. It’s been a very busy 18 months for SWVL leading up to this news. This March, the company with U.S. women-led blank check company Queen’s Gambit Growth Capital. It listed at $10 per share and targeted a $1.5 billion valuation but has traded between $4 and $8 for the most part. Its current valuation hovers around $500-$600 million. The layoffs are coming just a month after SWVL for $100 million according to sources. It’s one of five acquisitions SWVL has made within the past year; others include Germany’s door2door, Turkey’s (for ~$40 million), Spain’s Shotl and Argentina’s Viapool. SWVL said that though these acquisitions have contributed to its overall growth, it will need to make reductions on roles automated by investments in its engineering and product and support functions teams. “The planned layoffs will impact teams responsible for functions that have been automated following investment in engineering, product and support functions,” SWVL said in a statement. SWVL said it plans to attain profitability next year. Dismissing hundreds of employees is one way to get there. SWVL is present in 13 markets globally: the UAE, Egypt, Kenya, Germany, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Turkey, Japan, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Pakistan. According to a source, the majority of the layoffs will come from the company’s Dubai and Pakistan offices. Whether SWVL will continue its expansion into new markets such as Colombia, Mexico and South Africa, and the U.S. — announced during its SPAC merger — is uncertain “As a result of the portfolio optimization program, Swvl’s management currently expects that the company will be cash-flow positive in 2023.” CEO Mostafa Kandil to his employees addressing the layoffs. Here’s a part of it: – Swvl is implementing a portfolio optimization program to focus on its highest profitability operations, enhance efficiency and reduce central costs – Capitalizes on the highest profitability operations TaaS and SaaS which currently have > 500 contracts in > 10 countries generating > $5m revenue per month – B2C business is also expected to be contribution margin positive before the end of 2022 – Builds on recent acquisitions of TaaS and SaaS businesses Viapool, Volt Lines, Shotl and pending acquisition of door2door which improve profitability margins – Benefits from a world class engineering and product team and technology stack which allows for scalability and sustainable growth No matter how big, resources are not infinite; cash is meant to be responsibly utilized. We need to be as disciplined as ever, which is why today, May 30, 2022, we announced that our portfolio optimization program to turn cash flow positive in 2023. As part of that program, we have considered various scenarios that will allow us to demonstrate how much we value our workforce. We believe that Swvl has reached such a level of success only because of the team, and we are also sure that Swvl will continue to get stronger. – Voluntary salary deductions from the top management team – Reduction of current office spaces – Freezing our current hiring program – Freezing travel and accommodation expenses – Tying expenditures to essential business requirements Effective today, May 30, 2022, we are optimizing our operations in some of our markets while reducing our workforce. The reduction follows an extensive evaluation of team redundancy and how this complements our strategy. We have arranged for one-to-one communications with all of the impacted teammates. Each member of the reduced workforce will receive an invitation to have a conversation with a relevant senior leader to receive clarity on the next steps based on each market’s local laws, severance rules, and best practices. To those who will leave, I would like to say I am sorry. And more importantly, this is not your fault. You will forever be part of Swvl, and our door will always be open to you in the future. We are incredibly lucky and grateful to have worked with such remarkable talent that many companies would be fortunate to have. Besides your work, what will stay with us is knowing that we genuinely did hire people better than us. I am sure you will continue to have a significant impact wherever you go, as you have done day in and day out at Swvl. – Severance: All impacted employees to receive severance based on gross salary and complete cash payout – Provident Fund, Gratuity & Leave encashment other legal payments – All RSU to be considered vested – Expense claims/OPD claims to be cleared – All Final Settlements to be taxed as per local requirement – Payout Transfer to be complete in the next 21 days Medical Insurance: to be extended for all entitled employees Stock Options: all unvested stocks for impacted employees to continue to vest as per schedule Alumni Directory: an alumni network directory to support our impacted workforce No interview policy for Rejoiners Laptops to be retained by employees subject to data security requirements . |
Mintlify taps AI to automatically generate documentation from code | Kyle Wiggers | 2,022 | 5 | 30 | , a startup developing software to automate software documentation tasks, today announced that it raised $2.8 million in a seed round led by by Bain Capital Ventures with participation from TwentyTwo Ventures and Quinn Slack, Sourcegraph’s co-founder. CEO Han Wang says that the proceeds will be put toward product development and doubling Mintlify’s core three-person team by the end of the year. Ithaca, New York-based Mintlify was co-founded in 2021 by Han Wang and Hahnbee Lee — both software engineers by trade. Wang previously co-launched Foodful, a startup that developed a cloud-based monitoring system for cows, and Pe•ple, an online customer community platform that was acquired by Tribe in early 2021. Lee was a co-founder at Pe•ple before briefly joining Duolingo as an engineer. Wang said the idea for Mintlify came from his and Lee’s experiences in software development, which involved working with documentation that wasn’t always complete or of the highest quality. Their observations agree with a 2017 GitHub survey, which found that 93% of developers consider incomplete or outdated documentation to be a pervasive problem. “We’ve worked as software engineers at companies in all stages ranging from startups to Big Tech and found that they all suffer from bad documentation, if it even existed at all,” Wang told TechCrunch in an email interview. “Documentation is the lifeline for junior engineers and those jumping into new codebases. It helps senior devs save time from explaining their code to others in the future. For public-facing and open source products, documentation has a direct impact on user adoption.” Mintlify Mintlify aims to address the challenges around documentation with automation, specifically auto-generating documentation. The company’s platform reads code and creates docs to explain it, leveraging technologies including natural language processing and web scraping. Wang declined to reveal more about Mintlify’s technical underpinnings, but generating documentation from code is well within the realm of possibility with today’s AI techniques. That’s evidenced by the fact that Mintlify has several competitors taking similar approaches, including Documatic, whose AI system automatically generates change logs and explanations from code in addition to documentation. Wang asserts that Mintlify provides “significantly” higher quality results than its rivals, and — unlike some — doesn’t force developers to host documentation on a cloud service. Beyond generating documentation, Mintlify routinely scans for “stale” documentation and detects how users engage with the documentation to improve its readability. (Wang emphasized that the platform doesn’t store code and encrypts all user data at rest and in transit.) Mintlify, which is free for individual developers, also integrates with existing systems including Slack, Dropbox and GitHub for automating task management and development workflows. According to Wang, adoption of Mintlify’s free plan has been growing 20% every week since its January launch. With the user base now eclipsing 6,000 active accounts, the company plans to shift its focus to a premium offering oriented toward enterprise customers. “The pandemic standardized a decentralized and asynchronous work environment. This made high-quality documentation critical to achieving efficient communication, onboarding and product development,” Wang said. “Our expansion into workflow automations is addressing the challenge by targeting the engineering managers with our existing fanbase serving as champions.” |
One AI raises $8M to curate business-specific NLP models | Kyle Wiggers | 2,022 | 5 | 30 | Whether to power translation to document summarization, enterprises are increasing their investments in natural language processing (NLP) technologies. According to a 2021 from John Snow Labs and Gradient Flow, 60% of tech leaders indicated that their NLP budgets grew by at least 10% compared to 2020, while a third said that spending climbed by more than 30%. It’s a fiercely competitive market. Beyond well-resourced startups like , , AI21 Labs and and tech giants including Google, Microsoft and Amazon, there’s a of vendors building NLP services on top of open source AI models. But Yochai Levi isn’t discouraged. He’s one of the co-founders of , an NLP platform that today emerged from stealth with $8 million led by “While the market is growing fast, advanced NLP is still used mainly by expert researchers, Big Tech and governments,” Levi told TechCrunch via email. “We believe that the technology is nearing its maturity point, and after building NLP from scratch several times in the past, we decided it was time to productize it and make it available for every developer.” One AI Levi lays out what he believes are the major challenges plaguing NLP development. It’s often difficult to curate open source models, he argues, because they have to be matched both to the right domain and task. For example, a text-generating model trained to classify medical records would be a poor fit for an app designed to create advertisements. Moreover, models need to be constantly retrained with new data — lest they become “stale.” Case in point, OpenAI’s responds to the question “Who’s the president of the U.S.?” with the answer “Donald Trump” because it was trained on data from before the 2020 election. Levi believes the solution is a package of NLP models trained for particular business use cases — in other words, One AI’s product. He teamed up with CEO Amit Ben, CPO Aviv Dror and CSO Asi Sheffer in 2021 to pursue the idea. Ben previously was the head of AI at LogMeIn after the company acquired his second startup, Nanorep, an AI and chatbot vendor. Dror helped to co-found Nanorep and served as a platform product manager at Wix. Sheffer, a former data scientist at Nanorep, was the principal data scientist at LogMeIn. As for Levi, he was the VP of online marketing at LivePerson and the head of marketing at WeWork. One AI offers a set of models that can be mixed and matched in a pipeline to process text via a single API call. Each model is selected and trained for its applicability to the enterprise, Levi said, and automatically matched by the platform to a customer’s task and domain (e.g., conversation summarization, sales insights, topic detection and proofreading). One AI’s models can also be combined with open source and proprietary models to extend One AI’s capabilities. The platform’s API accepts text, voice and video inputs of various formats. With One AI’s language studio, users can experiment with the APIs and generate calls to use in code. “With the maturation of Language AI technologies, it is finally time for machines to start adapting to us,” Ben told TechCrunch via email. “The adoption of language comprehension tools by the broader developer community is the way to get there.” One AI One AI prices its NLP service across several tiers, including a free tier that includes processing for up to one million words a month. The stackable “growth tier” adds 100,000 words for $1. The hurdle One AI will have to overcome is convincing customers that its services are more attractive than what’s already out there. In April, OpenAI said that tens of thousands of developers were using GPT-3 via its API to generate words for over 300 apps. But, with Fortune Business Insights the NLP market at $16.53 billion in 2020, it could be argued that there’s a large enough slice of the pie for newcomers. Added TehAviv founder and managing partner One AI says that a portion of the seed round proceeds will be put toward expanding its 22-person team, which includes 10 NLP data scientists. |
The Station: EV SPACs face new regulatory speed bump, more on Rivian’s reorg and VW weighs direct sales for Scout brand | Kirsten Korosec | 2,022 | 5 | 30 | Welcome back to The Station, your weekly guide to everything going on in the world of transportation. Many readers of this weekly newsletter are likely enjoying a three-day weekend thanks to the Memorial Day holiday. So, this week I will keep it a wee bit shorter. Before we get started, check out the latest transportation Q&A, this time with co-founder and CEO . He predicts within the year. Why? Lewis said: “The industry is going to contract differently. Brokers are going to think about digital capacity and how they get access to that; they’re going to be comfortable using a platform like Convoy for that.” As always, you can email or to share thoughts, criticisms, opinions or tips. You also can send a direct message to Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch Maybe isn’t such a bad idea after all. A new report from the revealed that the after being hit by e-scooters was nearly four times higher in 2021, at 223 people, than in 2020 when 57 people were injured. Seeing as how it’s still illegal in the U.K. for people to ride private e-scooters, most of these injuries occurred with vehicles from shared micromobility schemes. The report doesn’t say where these accidents occurred — were scooter riders on the sidewalk, and if so, are there protected bike lanes on the street where the accidents occurred? , in partnership with , celebrating the milestones of certain U.S. cities that have systematically increased bike mobility by following the organization’s grassroots effort strategy. Here are some of the highlights:
: Completed 115 miles of new bike lanes in 24 months and secured another $460 million to complete the network by 2025.
: Completed 50 new network miles and plans to build another 15 miles in 2022.
: Constructed 43 miles of new bikeways under the Great Streets Initiative, with another 22 miles planned for this year.
: Constructed 27 miles of new “high comfort” bikeways in underserved areas. Offered highest concentration of new protected bike lanes of any other city in the program.
: Constructed 100 miles of new bikeways with another 50 miles of community-based networks scheduled for 2022. A will be the fastest-growing area of micromobility this decade. micromobility vehicles are . has released its new , a single-speed, small-batch production bike where minimalism meets off-road adventure. launched preorders for its , a two-seater compact city car that charges itself, in part, on solar energy. The car will be available in 2023 from €6,250. See ya next week! Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch Perhaps you saw coverage of a leaked internal email, first viewed by Bloomberg, from Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe that detailed at the company. Initial reports, including ours, focused on Rivian hiring Frank Klein as its new chief operating officer. Klein will join the company June 1 to oversee the automaker’s production, manufacturing engineering and supply chain. The automaker also said its head of manufacturing engineering, Charly Mwangi, is leaving the company. I finally got my hands on the complete internal email and there are a few other changes worth noting. Rivian is dividing its commercial business with one group focused on its B2B vertical and the other on its B2C vertical. Chief Growth Officer Jiten Behl will focus on the B2B business, which includes commercial vans, Rivian’s fleet management software FleetOS, charging and importantly, its relationship with Amazon. (And that makes sense considering Behl is largely responsible for Rivian’s relationship with Amazon.) Behl, who will report directly to Scaringe, will also oversee strategy and corporate development, which includes strategic partnerships, business development activities and launching in international markets. Rivian has launched a job search for a chief commercial officer to lead its B2C business. Rivian is also changing up its marketing, brands and comms team a bit. The brand team led by Forest Young and the communications team, led by Nick Mulholland, will now report directly to Scaringe. The marketing team, led by Lindsey Pearl, will be join the communications team. Then over in manufacturing and operations is the new COO I noted above. Under Klein will be several executives including Tim Fallon, who heads up manufacturing operations; Michael Smith, who is VP of quality; and Steve Gawronski, who is VP of supply chain. The manufacturing engineering spot, which Mwangi previously held until resigning, will also move under the COO. Finally, Jimmy Knauf, the executive VP of facilities, and Rivian’s entire facilities team will join the CFO organization and report directly to Claire McDonough. Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch Just a roundup this week, folks! is exploring a potential sale, , citing unnamed people familiar with the matter. The Detroit-based auto-parts supplier has already hired an adviser to help with the process and a leveraged buyout through a private equity firm is a likely option. , the U.S. private equity firm, made a A$657.6 million ($466.76 million) preliminary buyout offer for Australia-based automotive software provider Infomedia, . The A$1.75 in cash per Infomedia share bid is five Australian cents more than the rival proposal from a consortium led by U.S. private equity firm TA Associates. , the on-demand direct-to-fuels delivery startup, raised in Series D funding led by Rose Park Advisors with participation from new investors Chaac Ventures, Equinor Ventures, Mitsubishi Corporation and Thayer Ventures. Renewable Energy Group, a producer of low-carbon renewable fuels, also increased its strategic investment. Existing investors Cercano Management, Conversion Capital, Enterprise Holding Ventures, Invus Opportunities, Madrona Venture Group, Maveron Ventures, Perot Jain LP and Version One Ventures also participated. led an undisclosed investment in the Series A-1 financing round of Mangrove Lithium. BMW i Ventures was joined by existing investor Breakthrough Energy Ventures in the round. , the auto financing and insurance platform, raised $115 million in Series C funding led by Goldman Sachs. The funding has pushed the fintech company’s valuation past the $1 billion mark. Other investors in the round included Innovius Capital, Harmonic, Accomplice, CMFG Ventures, Curql Collective, Firebolt Ventures, Gaingels, Moderne Ventures and Motley Fool Ventures. , the car subscription startup, in a Series B round led by Korelya Capital along with Keen Venture Partners, Climb Ventures, Greentrail Capital and Waterfall Asset Management. Existing investors such as White Star Capital, HV Capital, Heartcore Capital, UVC Partners and Picus Capital also participated in the round. The funds will be used to help Finn expand in the U.S. and Europe and reach 30,000 subscriptions by the end of the year. agreed to most of its battery material unit to Australia’s EV Metals Group for £50 million ($63.15 million), . Meanwhile, Johnson Matthey sold its battery materials unit in Canada to for announced last week (I missed this one) that it 200-person Commercial Vehicles business for approximately €190 million ($203.9 million) in cash. , the fleet management software startup that formerly known as KeepTruckin, in series F funding round co-led by Insight Partners and Kleiner Perkins. Motive’s post-funding valuation is now $2.85 billion, according to the company. , a solid-state battery technology startup founded in 2019, raised $2 million in seed funding ed by Chicago-based TechNexus Venture Collaborative with participation from Tamarack Global, Mark Cuban, Illinois Ventures and other private investors. , an automated digital freight forwarder in Latin America, in a Series C funding round led by SoftBank Latin America Fund. The raise, which pushes its post-funding valuation to $1.1 billion, comes just six months after the Monterey, Mexico-based startup announced it had secured $60 million in a Series B funding round led by Tiger Global Management. , a Dutch e-bike maker, has from from Veth Investments and entrepreneurs Pim Claassen and Alexander van Citters. , the Cairo-based online used car startu, — the largest of its kind in MENA and sub-Saharan Africa. Saudi-based early-stage venture capital firm RAED Ventures led the round. VC firms Algebra Ventures, Nuwa Capital, 1984 Ventures and Global Founders Capital participated, with several regional and global angel investors taking part as well. , a maker of high-precision gears for EVs and other industries, has with special purpose acquisition company Aesther Healthcare Acquisition Corp. United Gear, a subsidiary of United Star Holdings, designs and makes high-precision gears for multiple large-end markets and its customers include Allison Transmission, Caterpillar, GM, Ingersol Rand, John Deere, Lucid Group, Toyota and Volvo. Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch The , which focuses on autonomous vehicle (AV) safety, released a new standard called IEEE 2846-2022 Standard for Assumptions for Models in Safety-Related Automated Vehicle Behavior. The association says this is a technology-neutral safety standard that scholars, engineers, automakers, industry representatives and regulatory bodies can align around as a universally accepted basis for AV safety. permit to test its autonomous vehicle technology with a driver by the California Department of Motor Vehicles. The agency, which regulates AV testing in the state, pulled the permit because Pony.ai failed to monitor the driving records of the safety drivers on its testing permit. Pony confirmed the revocation of its permit to TechCrunch, saying the DMV took issue with the driving records of three of its safety operators. — and actually all SPACs — are facing a new regulatory speed bump, . plans to invest toward accelerating electrification and autonomous vehicle technology in the U.S. by 2025. and will team up to build a in Indiana. The project, which will create 1,400 new jobs and could surpass the $3 billion mark once it’s complete, is Stellantis’ first battery plant in the U.S. and its fifth worldwide. lost an effort to keep a sexual harassment suit within closed-door arbitration. A judge rejected Tesla’s motion and ruled it . CEO made an interesting comment to me about the sales model of the new Scout EV brand during my interview with him for TC Sessions: Mobility 2022. You can . It wasn’t so much what he said but what he didn’t. When I asked if the Scout brand would use a direct-to-consumer sales model or sell its EVs through dealerships, Diess played coy. That’s interesting because generally legacy automakers are lightning quick to stick to the we-will-always-use-dealerships line. Diess told me that “the company will need to reconsider what is the right franchise for it or is there a franchise for it?” That line has . received the from the to begin on-demand commercial air taxi operations. The committee approved the Advanced Aviation Infrastructure Modernization Act ( ) in the Senate. is with DroneUp to include 34 sites across six states. The planned rollout is set to be completed by the end of the year, at which point it will — theoretically — cover up to 4 million U.S. households. have had a tough go. Perhaps this was poor choice from a unit-economics perspective, . is the first in Saudi Arabia. has from Apple, Nvidia and Tesla in the continuing talent war in automated driving and autonomous vehicle technology. , director of autonomous systems at Apple and former director of Tesla’s Autopilot software, has joined Luminar as VP of software. , founder of Nvidia’s Automotive Business, has become executive vice president and general manager responsible for research and development and Luminar’s semiconductor subsidiaries, among other areas. Tesla’s chief IP Counsel, , is now head of intellectual property. |
Ayoken raises $1.4M to grow its NFT marketplace for creatives | Annie Njanja | 2,022 | 5 | 30 | Ayoken, an NFT marketplace for creatives, has raised $1.4 million pre-seed funding to enable users grow their revenue streams through digital collectibles. The startup’s marketplace, , will feature digital collectibles from musicians, sports brands and influencers from all over the world. Ayoken founder and CEO, , told TechCrunch that the marketplace is a bridge between fans and artists, and gives supporters a sense of ownership in the success of their idols. Through the NFT marketplace, he said, fans will have access to tokens such as behind-the-scenes videos and album art. NFT holders will also get other perks like access to unreleased music and exclusive live events by the creatives. “Through VIP passes, fans will get the ability to actually livestream music by these artists before it arrives on Spotify, YouTube or Apple Music. Fans will get discounts for future events too,” said King, who has 14 years’ experience in strategy, growth and innovation consultancy, and entrepreneurship. His career includes helping scale AZA (Bitpesa), a Nairobi-based platform that leverages bitcoin to facilitate cross-border remittances and where he first got introduced to crypto and blockchain technology. King said Ayoken will over the next few months release NFTs of some major African artists and others across the world. The London-headquartered startup has already partnered with Ghanaian afrobeats artist KiDi (Dennis Nana Dwamena) for his first NFT drop on the first day of June. King said the cross-chain marketplace (although currently built on Avalanche blockchain) allows crypto and card payments but plans to add mobile money as the startup makes it easier for people in emerging markets like Africa to trade with ease. King said they are negotiating partnerships with a number of telcos in the continent to make this a reality. “We are reducing friction points for the users by letting people use their cards instead of having to use crypto to buy; we are working on partnerships with telcos that will allow people to use mobile money to make the payment in future too. Nothing comes close to what we are doing and that is why we are able to sign some of the biggest names in the creative industry,” he said. Users will get token (Ayo) rewards when they buy the NFTs or refer people, which they can redeem later for an NFT. King said, unlike other NFT marketplaces, they have distribution partners including YouTubers, influencers, newsletters, crypto exchanges and telecoms to promote NFT drops — allowing the creatives to tap a wider audience and not just their fanbase. “What this means is that celebrities do not have to rely on their social media following to drive transactions. They get instant access to millions of people all around the world at the touch of a button. And our approach is so different to any other NFC marketplace on the planet. We also have a marketing agency to help these creatives succeed in their first NFT drops,” said King. “They (distribution partners) will get a revenue share based on any transactions generated on their social media promotions.” Using the funds raised from the investors, among them Founders Factory Africa, Texas-based Kon Ventures, Europe-based venture capital collective Crypto League, Ghana-based R9C Ventures and Maximus Ventures, Ayoken plans to sign a number of exclusive deals with artists and partnerships with telcos, besides growing its team and secondary marketplaces. “A majority of the funding will go into buying exclusive licenses and into building our tech team; that is the developers and engineers by fourfold,” he said. |
South Korea’s OHouse lands $182M to add AR to home improvement app | Kate Park | 2,022 | 5 | 8 | During the worst days of the pandemic, when people were stuck at home and starving for some form of entertainment beyond streaming yet another TV series, many turned to DIY home improvement projects. With the home now a place for work, school and leisure all at once, the DIY home improvement market has grown so significantly that globally, it’s expected to reach , up from $333.7 billion in 2021. South Korean startup , which operates a home decorating and interior app is looking to continue capitalizing on that trend with its most recent $182 million Series D round, the startup’s co-founder and CEO Jay Lee said on Monday in an interview with TechCrunch. As a later-stage company, Bucketplace will use the new injection of funding to accelerate its growth in South Korea and enter into new markets, such as Japan, Southeast Asia and the U.S., Lee told TechCrunch. Bucketplace also intends to hire more tech specialists to help develop an augmented reality (AR) feature to its platform to help consumers visualize products like furniture or décor in their own homes, Bucketplace says. The funding comes just a few months after Bucketplace acquired Singapore-based online furniture platform , and Lee said that the company will continue to seek acquisition opportunities and strategic partnerships both in Korea and overseas markets. OHouse app “Eight years ago, OHouse was simply a community of people sharing interior design content,” Lee said. When the app launched in 2016, interior designers and home improvement hobbyists could post photos of their homes to share their remodeling experiences. Users would then peruse a wide selection of posts and purchase items they liked directly from the app. Its business model is similar to which also have a slew of online showrooms. Now the startup aims to offer a variety of services that encompass almost everything involved in the residential space, ranging from home improvement, home repairs and maintenance to furniture delivery, moving services and even a garbage can pickup service, Lee told TechCrunch. Last June, OHouse launched a next-day furniture delivery service, enabling users to choose the date and time they want to receive the furniture. Additionally, it provides services that help users to connect with more than 5,000 home remodeling firms. Lee didn’t say when he hopes to release OHouse’s AR feature, but it will involve users uploading photos of their homes to see how a piece of furniture would look within the space. If users want to buy the furniture, then they will be able to just click on it, which will bring them to the sellers’ website, said Lee. The startup appears to be growing rapidly, with 10 million users visiting the platform each month across the app and website, the company says. Bucketplace also claims that OHouse has been downloaded more than 20 million times in South Korea. Lee declined to comment on Bucketplace’s valuation, but according to sources familiar with the situation, Bucketplace raised the Series D round at a post-money valuation of around $1.4 billion (2 trillion KRW). The latest round, which brings its total raised to about $261 million, nearly doubled the eight-year-old company’s valuation. Bucketplace last in November 2020, at a valuation of approximately $890 million, as reported. Investors in the Series D round include SoftBank Ventures Asia, Singapore’s Vertex Growth, a VC backed by sovereign wealth fund Temasek, Bond Capital, BRV Capital Management, Korea Development Bank, IMM Investment and Mirae Asset Capital. |
Betastore gets $2.5M to solve stockouts, financing challenges for informal retailers in West and Central Africa | Annie Njanja | 2,022 | 5 | 30 | About of household retail in sub-Saharan Africa is delivered through informal channels, which perennially face several challenges like stockouts, leading to an instability in earnings and a lack of attractiveness to financiers. These challenges befall millions of microretailers across the continent, and , a B2B retail marketplace for informal retailers, is working to resolve in Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Senegal. The Betastore marketplace enables informal traders to source fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs) directly from manufacturers or distributors — which keeps the prices of the products competitive by eliminating interactions with sales agents. It also works with logistics partners to ensure the delivery of goods within 24 hours. The Nigeria-based startup plans to provide these services beyond its current three markets by expanding to Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon by the end of this year, after closing $2.5 million in pre-series A funding from 500 Global, VestedWorld and Loyal VC. Betastore has to date raised $3 million in funding. “What is really important for us is to be able to continue to scale by leveraging our asset-light model. We plan to enter new markets before the end of the year and to expand to 100 cities across Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Senegal. We are also planning to reinforce our technology and leadership teams and to bring in new products and to improve existing ones,” said Betastore CEO, , who co-founded the startup with mid 2020. The asset-light model means Betastore does not have any capital and labor intensive assets like warehouses or its own fleet of vehicles for delivery. Dakayi-Kamga said that this has helped the startup to optimize its technology to ensure that retailers source goods from the closest distributors. On average, a retailer using Betastore makes 4.4 orders per month. “Our technology enables retailers to order on demand, access a variety of products and solves logistics headaches for them too. With Betastore, they don’t have to close their shops to go get goods from distributors stores or the market, and do not have to lose close to half of the margins in in the logistics,” said Dakayi-Kamga, who previously worked for Jumia, The B2B e-commerce platform is set to introduce financing in July, a launch that follows a pilot program involving 200 retailers that the startup carried out last year. The BNPL financing strategy, Tchoudjang says, will be based on retailers’ sales and will go a long way in helping them to grow the value of their shopping baskets and ultimately their businesses. The startup plans to charge an interest based on product margins. Betastore is currently integrating its technology into a network of financing partners including fintechs and banks. “The mandate of some of the partners we have on board is to support the economy by financing small businesses but are not able to lend to them because they do not have the data to inform decisions. We have the visibility of what is happening in this sector and have data they can use to extend financing,” said Tchoudjang, who previously held executive and leadership roles within the IFC-backed AccessHolding AG network in Africa. He has also helped multinationals rollout fintech and microfinance products for emerging markets in the past. Retailers use the Betastore wallet to repay loans, deposit money for their operations and to send, receive and save money. “The wallet helps them separate their business money from their own money, and it is directly connected to the whole banking system, meaning that retailers can receive and send money to any bank and load cash with any agency banking platform,” said Tchoudjang. Since launch, the startup claims to have grown its customer base and revenues by 10 and 12 times, respectively. The startup anticipates greater growth especially after entering more countries and rolling out its buy now, pay later (BNPL) product as it taps the retail market in sub-Saharan Africa, which was valued at $380 billion in 2021, contributing 20%-50% of the region’s GDP on average. “We want to simplify access to goods and services for the retailers and for the end consumer because we see the merchant as an agent able to make access to goods and services easier. We started out in Nigeria, and we are expanding within Francophone Africa on our way to being a pan-African player,” said Dakayi-Kamga. Amit Bhatti, the principal at 500 Global while commenting on the latest funding round said, “We believe Betastore’s talented team is creating market efficiencies that have the potential to boost the growth of Africa’s retailers. With Betastore, merchants can get greater transparency into wholesaler inventories and price points.” |
Atma wants to make job hunting in Indonesia easier | Catherine Shu | 2,022 | 5 | 8 | , an Indonesian startup that wants to make job hunting less painful, announced today it has raised $5 million in pre-seed funding led by AC Ventures, with participation from Global Founders Capital. Strategic investors in the round included founders and executives from GoTo Group, Advance Intelligence Group, Ula, Lummo, Kopi Kenangan, Sampoerna Strategic, MMS Group and Xiami. The funding will be used for hiring, with plans to expand Atma’s headcount from about 30 employees to 100, product development and its go-to-market strategy. The platform targets the lower and middle-income segment of the working-age population in Indonesia, or people earning less than 10 million IDR a month (or about $700 USD). Atma says up to over 100 million people in Indonesia fit into this category. Edy Tan, co-founder and CEO of Atma, formerly worked as vice president of driver income at Gojek. Tan told TechCrunch that part of his responsibilities at GoJek included improving drivers’ livelihoods in a sustainable way. During the peak of the pandemic, driver income dropped by 80% on average. As a result, Tan began looking for other way for drivers to make revenue. During that time, he said, “I discovered that drivers generally wanted income stability more so than higher income.” Intrigued, he began to look at the economic opportunity landscape for the lower and middle income segment. “It soon became apparent to me that the job market for the lower and middle income segment is fundamentally broken and ripe for innovation when most job seekers described their job search experience as emotionally traumatizing and companies often described their candidate search experience as a random walk,” he said. For job seekers, Atma is building a mobile app. When they start applying for jobs, job seekers will go through a screening process, including their qualifications, skills and cultural fit. Atma’s app will also provide them with real-time job application updates, so job seekers don’t suffer being ghosted after submitting an application. For employers, Atma makes the hiring process easier by using data to screen, assess and sort candidates so they know the best people to interview. Atma will also include community features, like career development programs, peer-to-peer learning and the chance to meet with other job seekers. |
Perceptron: AI bias can arise from annotation instructions | Kyle Wiggers | 2,022 | 5 | 8 | 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, Perceptron (previously ), 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 in AI, a new study reveals how bias, a common problem in AI systems, can start with the instructions given to the people recruited to annotate data from which AI systems learn to make predictions. The co-authors find that annotators pick up on patterns in the instructions, which condition them to contribute annotations that then become over-represented in the data, biasing the AI system toward these annotations. Many AI systems today “learn” to make sense of images, videos, text and audio from examples that have been labeled by annotators. The labels enable the systems to extrapolate the relationships between the examples (e.g., the link between the caption “kitchen sink” and a photo of a kitchen sink) to data the systems haven’t seen before (e.g., photos of kitchen sinks that weren’t included in the data used to “teach” the model). This works remarkably well. But annotation is an imperfect approach — annotators bring biases to the table that can bleed into the trained system. For example, studies have shown that the is more likely to label phrases in African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), the informal grammar used by some Black Americans, as toxic, leading AI toxicity detectors trained on the labels to see AAVE as disproportionately toxic. As it turns out, annotators’ predispositions might not be solely to blame for the presence of bias in training labels. In a preprint out of Arizona State University and the Allen Institute for AI, researchers investigated whether a source of bias might lie in the instructions written by dataset creators to serve as guides for annotators. Such instructions typically include a short description of the task (e.g., “Label all birds in these photos”) along with several examples. Parmar et al. The researchers looked at 14 different “benchmark” datasets used to measure the performance of natural language processing systems, or AI systems that can classify, summarize, translate and otherwise analyze or manipulate text. In studying the task instructions provided to annotators that worked on the datasets, they found evidence that the instructions influenced the annotators to follow specific patterns, which then propagated to the datasets. For example, over half of the annotations in Quoref, a dataset designed to test the ability of AI systems to understand when two or more expressions refer to the same person (or thing), start with the phrase “What is the name,” a phrase present in a third of the instructions for the dataset. The phenomenon, which the researchers call “instruction bias,” is particularly troubling because it suggests that systems trained on biased instruction/annotation data might not perform as well as initially thought. Indeed, the co-authors found that instruction bias overestimates the performance of systems and that these systems often fail to generalize beyond instruction patterns. The silver lining is that large systems, like OpenAI’s GPT-3, were found to be generally less sensitive to instruction bias. But the research serves as a reminder that AI systems, like people, are susceptible to developing biases from sources that aren’t always obvious. The intractable challenge is discovering these sources and mitigating the downstream impact. In a less sobering paper, scientists hailing from Switzerland that facial recognition systems aren’t easily fooled by realistic AI-edited faces. “Morphing attacks,” as they’re called, involve the use of AI to modify the photo on an ID, passport or other form of identity document for the purposes of bypassing security systems. The co-authors created “morphs” using AI (Nvidia’s StyleGAN 2) and tested them against four state-of-the art facial recognition systems. The morphs didn’t post a significant threat, they claimed, despite their true-to-life appearance. Elsewhere in the computer vision domain, researchers at Meta developed an AI “assistant” that can remember the characteristics of a room, including the location and context of objects, to answer questions. Detailed in a preprint paper, the work is likely a part of Meta’s initiative to develop augmented reality glasses that leverage AI to analyze their surroundings. Meta The researchers’ system, which is designed to be used on any body-worn device equipped with a camera, analyzes footage to construct “semantically rich and efficient scene memories” that “encode spatio-temporal information about objects.” The system remembers where objects are and when the appeared in the video footage, and moreover grounds answers to questions a user might ask about the objects into its memory. For example, when asked “Where did you last see my keys?,” the system can indicate that the keys were on a side table in the living room that morning. Meta, which plans to release fully featured AR glasses in 2024, telegraphed its plans for “egocentric” AI last October with the launch of Ego4D, a long-term “egocentric perception” AI research project. The company said at the time that the goal was to teach AI systems to — among other tasks — understand social cues, how an AR device wearer’s actions might affect their surroundings and how hands interact with objects. From language and augmented reality to physical phenomena: An AI model has been useful in an MIT study of waves — how they break and when. While it seems a little arcane, the truth is wave models are needed both for building structures in and near the water, and for modeling how the ocean interacts with the atmosphere in climate models. MIT Normally waves are roughly simulated by a set of equations, but the researchers on hundreds of wave instances in a 40-foot tank of water filled with sensors. By observing the waves and making predictions based on empirical evidence, then comparing that to the theoretical models, the AI aided in showing where the models fell short. A startup is being born out of research at EPFL, where Thibault Asselborn’s Ph.D. thesis on handwriting analysis has . Using algorithms he designed, the app (called School Rebound) can identify habits and corrective measures with just 30 seconds of a kid writing on an iPad with a stylus. These are presented to the kid in the form of games that help them write more clearly by reinforcing good habits. “Our scientific model and rigor are important, and are what set us apart from other existing applications,” said Asselborn in a news release. “We’ve gotten letters from teachers who’ve seen their students improve leaps and bounds. Some students even come before class to practice.” Duke University Another new finding in elementary schools has to do with identifying hearing problems during routine screenings. These screenings, which some readers may remember, often use a device called a tympanometer, which must be operated by trained audiologists. If one is not available, say in an isolated school district, kids with hearing problems may never get the help they need in time. Samantha Robler and Susan Emmett at Duke decided to build , sending data to a smartphone app where it is interpreted by an AI model. Anything worrying will be flagged and the child can receive further screening. It’s not a replacement for an expert, but it’s a lot better than nothing and may help identify hearing problems much earlier in places without the proper resources. |
How will tech companies cope with an office-free future? | Ron Miller | 2,022 | 5 | 8 | of , and how do companies function without the structure that working together in the same building has traditionally provided us? That’s a monumental question facing tech companies today as they struggle to define their approach to work in a post-pandemic world. Sure, there have been for some time now, but the conventional wisdom prior to the pandemic was that you mostly needed to be in the same place to get serious work done. This was certainly true for larger tech companies. Salesforce, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon and Apple didn’t build sprawling campuses or skyscrapers across the world just to abandon them for no reason. They built them to house their workers and show off their sheer economic power. But when the pandemic hit in March 2020, it changed , possibly forever. Suddenly, with everyone working from home, and while there are certainly some problems, depending on your business, your job, and, frankly, your living situation, it showed that whole categories of workers didn’t need to be sitting in a cubby farm inside a big building to get their jobs done — certainly not five days a week. I spoke to a variety of people in the tech world, from consultants and investors to startup founders, to try and get a grip on exactly what the next phase of work is going to look like, and without a doubt, tech companies have at least become a lot more flexible when it comes to face time at the office. There is no one-size-fits-all answer here, but there are enough examples to suggest some shift away from the traditional office setup, even for well-established companies. |
The stock market is down, but these 4 tech companies prove there’s still good news out there | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 5 | 8 | week. After the , way the and a general feeling that the economy is going , it’s easy to think everything sucks. But we’re here to lift your spirits a little, at least to tell you that it’s not bad news. There are companies that are still doing quite well, and we wanted to spotlight four that had strong earnings reports this week. While it’s easy to think everyone is suddenly on a train to nowhere, recent earnings reports from several software companies are proof that we still have tech shops growing at a high rate. How high? Some were above 50%, and 60% growth was not unheard of. What’s more, the companies we’re looking at today largely shared positive guidance. And yet, even with positive earnings and a favorable outlook, the companies received treatment from investors ranging from noncommittal to downright hostile. There’s an argument to be made that some tech companies could fare a little better in a recession or similar macroeconomic slowdown than some seem to anticipate today; the may need to be relearned, in other words. Let’s look at results from Cloudflare and Confluent to gauge how the market is treating even results that seem pretty darn solid. We’ll also look at Amplitude, a company that took huge lumps after its and was therefore doing a little bit of makeup work in its latest financial report, and close with Appian. Cloudflare’s is a good marker for the state of play. How so? The company bested revenue expectations in the recent period, posting a top line worth $212.2 million, far ahead of expectations of around $205 million. That’s the sort of growth result that would have been electric last year. For those of you keeping score at home, Cloudflare’s Q1 revenue rose 54% over the previous year. There was other good news, too, like adding 14,000 new customers in the period. What’s more, customers spending at least $500,000 grew 68% and those spending $1 million or more grew 72%. As CEO and co-founder Matthew Prince put it, Cloudflare’s best customers continued to grow, bringing in more revenue. Furthermore, the company’s guidance doesn’t indicate signs of slowing. |
Google-backed neobank Open becomes unicorn with new funding | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 5 | 1 | India has 100 unicorns now. The Bengaluru-headquartered neobank Open entered the coveted club on Monday with a new funding round, it said. The five-year-old startup did not disclose the size of its Series D funding, but a source familiar with the matter said it’s $50 million. The new round, which valued Open at $1 billion, was led by Mumbai-headquartered investment firm IIFL, the two said. Existing backers Tiger Global, Temasek and 3one4 Capital also participated in the round, which comes just seven months after Open at $500 million valuation. Open has raised about $187 million to date. operates a neobank that offers small and medium-sized businesses as well as enterprises nearly all the features of the bank with additional tools to better serve the customers’ needs. Millions of small and medium sized businesses in India struggle with maintaining multiple bank accounts, bookkeeping of their daily spending, and bandying out payments to employees. The startup, which has partnerships with over a dozen top banks in India, is used by more than 2.3 million businesses, it said. Open processes over $30 billion worth transactions each year, it said. In recent years, the startup has expanded its offerings to provide its neobanking technology stack to banks in a white-label licensing arrangement, who then sell it to their own customers. The startup said it is looking to launch three new products — revenue-based financing Flo, early settlement card offering Settl and working capital lending Capital — in the coming months to further broaden its offerings. It is targeting to disburse $1 billion in lending through its new products within the next 12 months, it said. “We are excited to partner with IIFL and existing investors Tiger Global, Temasek and 3one4 Capital for our series D round. We see a lot of synergies with IIFL especially on leveraging the lending book, as we are getting ready to launch innovative products like revenue-based financing, early settlement, working capital loan and business credit cards to SMEs on our platform,” said Anish Achuthan, co-founder and chief executive of Open, in a statement. Key offerings of neobanks. Data: RBI, Jefferies. Image credits: Jefferies The growth of Open in recent years, which has led to several other startups expand to and innovate in this category, has dramatically changed the relationship between banks and fintechs. Just a few years ago, most banks in India were skeptical of neobanks and it was very difficult to persuade any of them for a partnership, fintech founders have told TechCrunch. “Neobanks are gaining prominence as platforms to digitise banking or bank-like services for millennials and SMEs. Top-4 global neobanks are worth $100 billion and Indian fintechs have made a start through likes of Open, RazorpayX, Fi, and Jupiter,” wrote analysts at Jefferies in a report last year. “In fact, many Indian fintechs plan to expand from 1-2 platforms now to neobank over 3-5 years. Incumbent banks/NBFCs are partnering with them. Monetisation is some time away,” they added. Today’s announcement marks a major milestone for the Indian ecosystem, home to a tenth of the world’s unicorns. It was more than a decade ago when India found its first unicorn, a startup with $1 billion or higher valuation, in adtech startup InMobi in 2012, when startups were rare and funding was hard to come by. Things have changed dramatically in the past decade with an increasingly growing number of entrepreneurs finding the conviction to build something of their own. More than 60 Indian startups have entered the unicorn club since last year. |
The Interchange: Stripe takes a swing at Plaid | Mary Ann Azevedo | 2,022 | 5 | 8 | I joked earlier this week that when I started covering fintech, I expected it to be a fairly dry and low-key beat. Now I laugh at my naïveté. Perhaps the biggest news this week in the fintech world was Stripe’s launch of its new Financial Connections product, which TC’s Ingrid Lunden covered . The product launch in and of itself was newsworthy, yes. But what elevated it in the world of newsworthiness was that it , as it is pretty much exactly what Plaid, a one-time partner of Stripe’s, does. And that’s that it gives Stripe’s customers a way to connect directly to their customer’s bank accounts, to access financial data to speed up or run certain kinds of transactions. Again, which is what Plaid does. In a since-deleted tweet, Plaid CEO and co-founder Zach Perret replied to a tweet from Stripe PM Jay Shah, essentially questioning the “methods” in which Stripe may have gathered information on building the product. Shah responded to that tweet with one of his own in defense of his and his company’s actions. Hours later, Perret that he had deleted his tweet, noting: “Deleted tweet. Misunderstanding or different styles perhaps. Presuming positive intent.” Meanwhile, internally at Stripe, the executives addressed the brouhaha with an internal memo. Specifically, Patrick Collison said his “enthusiasm” over Stripe’s new product was “tempered” by Perret’s “accusations.” Apparently he was wounded that Plaid might be a tad bit upset that Stripe had revealed this competing product, even after the two companies had previously worked together on integrations. Hmmm. He ends his internal note with an admission that Stripe should “certainly be open to the possibility” that it could have handled things better. Great that he admitted this but also, it’s very hard to believe that these execs had that the move would result in the tension that it did. Patrick even goes on to say that maybe Stripe should have given Plaid a heads up “so that they could privately express any concerns that they had.” He added that while Stripe was not necessarily obligated to do so, it probably could have avoided the public debate that ensued if it had just told Plaid sooner. Meanwhile, Patrick’s brother and co-founder, John, that it was “gracious” of Perret to delete his original tweet. He added: “We understand that his perspective on the whole thing may still differ. Either way, we still do lots with Plaid. They’re a great company and we look forward to finding more ways to work together.” I reached out to both companies to get their respective takes and both declined to be interviewed. True that we may never know what truly went down in this particular instance. But what I do know is that the controversy set off a whole other conversation, including claims that this was not the first time Stripe had been accused of less-than-scrupulous behavior. These included (unproven) that the company had previously feigned interest in buying other companies or hiring people in an attempt to milk them for information. It also resurfaced talk of when Stripe reportedly pressured investor Sequoia to . I’m not here to make any judgment calls as this story might still be playing out, and we don’t know yet what’s true. That said, my humble opinion is that no matter how big or rich you are, or how small or not rich you are, it is not worth it to act unethically. I’d rather be not as rich and know I did right by the people I had dealings with than rich and have my integrity repeatedly questioned. But that’s just me. If you want to hear the Equity team’s take on the subject, listen . On the topic of fintech drama, recently made headlines for a number of reasons that I outlined , including a lawsuit filed by a major customer and reports that it is seeing a slowdown in revenue and customer growth. Well, this past week, the company came out with an indirect response to the latter in the form of a blog post written by its CEO Maju Kuruvilla. You can read all about it . I wrote a story about how , the sixth-largest bank in the U.S. with $488 billion in assets, called in an effort to attract more GenZ and millennial customers. Led by Lindsay Holden, the startup had raised more than $20 million in funding and had built a gamified finance mobile app that aims to help people “save, learn and engage” with their finances. The buy is further evidence that fintechs and banks can work together. Also proof that many financial institutions realize the value of acquiring technology rather than building it out themselves. In other words, incumbents in some cases fintechs even as they compete with them. Long Game CEO and co-founder Lindsay Holden As mentioned above, there were also layoffs in the world of fintech as – a startup that helps other startups uncover tax credits – . We don’t really know why, or exactly how many people were impacted but it’s not great news for a company that was valued at $500 million in January of 2021 and especially not good news for the affected employees. The company did not return a request for comment about the layoffs but in a , CEO Doug Ludlow acknowledged “an incredibly rough market.” He also hinted that this may be just the beginning, saying “there is a very strong chance that today’s incredibly rough market is only going to get worse, and potentially remain so for months, if not years.” Speaking of layoffs, recently about 9% of its staff, and it’s clearly not done trying to boost its cash flow. Anita Ramaswamy wrote about how the trading platform rolled out a feature that will allow its users to in hopes of earning passive, recurring income from borrowers. The company already makes money by lending out shares to customers who buy them “on margin,” and this new stock lending program is expected to bring in one-to-two times the revenue of the existing margin lending offering, its CFO Jason Warnick said on . On a more positive note, Tage Kene-Okafor wrote about how , an early-stage venture capital firm focused on investing in fintech in emerging markets, . Last month, the firm, formerly known as Rally Cap Ventures, reached its first close of $20 million (its initial target) before increasing the fund size, signaling a strong LP appetite. The two-year-old VC fund invests in B2B and API-first fintechs across Africa, Latin America and South Asia at pre-seed and seed stages. It expects to achieve a second close by the end of June Early-stage technology investment firm and tapped Gerry Giacomán Colyer, co-founder and CEO of Mexican corporate spend management startup Clara, as its first partner. Colyer, according to Picus, will “support founders in the Latin American tech ecosystem to accelerate their growth journeys and will serve as an expert in fintech-related topics to founders globally.” Fintech-as-a-service startup , a product aimed at giving businesses a way to expand globally while supporting local payments. In its words, “This new offering allows organizations anywhere in the world to securely and reliably accept local bank transfers across over 40 countries in more than 25 currencies, including the US, UK, EU, and APAC regions.” – the startup raised $10 million in equity and $100 million in debt financing, as told by Natasha Mascarenhas, who I am SO pleased to share, as it relates to inclusion and access! Case in point, she also wrote this nicely done piece on $7 million equity and $25 million debt raise: – Christine Hall , as it raises a $111 million Series B – Christine Hall – Manish Singh – Kyle Wiggers – Annie Njanja – Ingrid Lunden – Tage Kene-Okafor and achieves unicorn status – Founders Fund and Ramp co-led the startup’s $2.6 million seed raise – Andreessen Horowitz GP Alex Rampell co-founded the company, and is now an investor in it Another company in that same space, for its own home equity product , operator of an automated, web-based marketplace for the secondary trading of illiquid real estate and alternative securities, in a round led by Firebrand Ventures. Dallas-based for local real estate investment financing , which says it is developing an approach to venture capital fund investing that provides a way for investors of any size to participate, . Christine Hall covered the company’s last July. That was of fundings considering we’re supposed to be experiencing a market correction! Maybe they closed a while back and are just now being announced. Either way, that’s it for this week. Thanks for reading, and if you’re a mom like me, I hope you have a wonderful Mother’s Day! |
Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire on competition and conviction in crypto venture — ‘A lot of VCs… are going to pull back’ | Lucas Matney | 2,022 | 5 | 1 | As crypto continues its wild rise, storied venture firm Sequoia is not just competing with the a16z’s of the world but with a rising crop of crypto native venture funds that are seeing their assets balloon and their influence upend the traditional venture hierarchies. In a conversation on TechCrunch’s new web3 podcast , Sequoia crypto partner Shaun Maguire talked about the firm’s commitment to the sector, regulatory challenges and what plenty of crypto investors still don’t understand. Earlier this year, Sequoia announced a $500 to $600 million sub-fund dedicated exclusively to buying up cryptocurrencies. The firm has made a number of equity investments in crypto startups over the years including Fireblocks and FTX, but while Andreessen Horowitz was early to commit to a dedicated crypto fund in 2018, Sequoia has continued made its equity investments through its general funds. While the crypto industry continues to mint new unicorn startups, the rapid cooling of public market tech stocks has threatened to stall growth in the emerging category, which has still proven awfully susceptible to macro conditions. In our conversation, Maguire emphasized his belief that plenty of other funds dipping their toes into crypto “are going to pull back” when the market grows less frothy, but he believes that Sequoia has already committed to a lengthy relationship with the sector — “we have permanent intentions.” “Sequoia is very deliberate with everything we do and we spend huge amounts of time debating every strategy change, everything, we debate every seed investment to sometimes excruciating detail, but it helps us make really good decisions and make decisions as a team rather than as individuals,” Maguire tells us. “When we make a decision to do something, it doesn’t happen unless the whole team is behind the decision. So that’s what you’ve seen get unleashed with crypto over the last 18 months, we went from it being some people with really, strong positive views, to the whole firm being completely behind it.” The crypto category has dealt with plenty of skeptics, some in the venture capital community, who believe that the sector’s benefits are being oversold and that the web3 promise of decentralization is just smoke and mirrors. “I am an absolute crypto maxi, but I think there are a lot of things that are misunderstood by the masses today,” Maguire said. “Decentralization is not a silver bullet that just solves all problems and is better for everything. You know for the vast majority of compute, you want it to be centralized. For a lot of decision making, centralization can be better for certain types of decisions.” Maguire said that more important than decentralization for its own sake, is the ability of users to “be able to leave with their identity and data,” an effort which should protect consumers from platform overreach. While decentralization allows for a certain type of consumer protections, Maguire still contends that the rulebook of traditional investor protections shouldn’t be thrown out. |
Coinbase taps former Snap India head in emerging markets push | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 5 | 1 | Coinbase has hired Durgesh Kaushik, the former head of Snap India, as the global cryptocurrency exchange looks to expand its reach in emerging markets including India, TechCrunch has learned and confirmed. is joining Coinbase as Senior Director for Market Expansion and is tasked with helping the company with its launch in India and several other markets in the Asia Pacific region, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. Reached for comment over the weekend, the company confirmed the development and said Kaushik will be joining the firm on May 9. “We’re excited to confirm that Durgesh Kaushik will be joining Coinbase on May 9 as our Senior Director for Market Expansion,” said Nana Murugesan, VP of International, Business Development and Partnerships at Coinbase, in a statement provided to TechCrunch by a company spokesperson. Murugesan added: “[Kaushik’s] appointment to this global leadership role is an important step toward our entry in India, as well as our mission to increase economic freedom around the world. Beyond his initial focus on our India launch, Durgesh will draw from his extensive experience to also support our entry into other markets in APAC, EMEA, and the Americas as laid out in our on our global expansion strategy.” Kaushik — who has previously worked at firms including Facebook and hyperlocal delivery service Dunzo and also co-founded a social-video platform — is widely credited in helping Snap turn around its position in India. Under his leadership, the company grew its India’s monthly active user base to about 130 million, according to mobile insight firm Data.ai (formerly known as App Annie), up from about 30 million when Kaushik joined the firm in April of 2019. He was tasked to help the social media platform grow to 100 million users by Q1 or Q2 2021, according to an executive who has engaged with Snap officials. Kaushik announced his departure from Snap last month. The appointment of Kaushik comes at a time when Coinbase is scrambling to, and in many ways feeling a tad helpless in, making its eponymous cryptocurrency exchange service operational in India. The publicly listed firm to much fanfare last month. Coinbase last month launched in India with support for UPI, a payments railroad built by a coalition of retail banks that has become the most popular way Indians transact online today. But the same day the National Payments Corporation of India, the payments body that oversees UPI, threw a curveball at the firm by asserting that it was . Three days later, Coinbase from the app and currently its users in the country have no means to top their fiat currency. The NPCI, which is a special unit of India’s central bank (the Reserve Bank of India), and the RBI continue to informally put pressure on banks into creating friction with crypto-related transactions despite India’s Supreme Court trading three years ago, according to an executive at a cryptocurrency exchange. Indian newspaper the Economic Times that several banks have approached and questioned the NPCI on its “shadow banning” of cryptocurrency-related transactions and are seeking a formal directive. Reacting to the news piece, Brian Armstrong, co-founder and chief executive, : “Tough questions, and good questions, for NPCI and RBI in India. Is their “shadow ban” a violation of the supreme court ruling?” Murugesan said the company is also looking to hire a new regional managing director for India and South Asia. |
Building a better mobility fintech startup on TechCrunch Live | Matt Burns | 2,022 | 5 | 1 | QED incubated this auto financing company in 2016 and Kevin Bennett became CEO in 2018 and soon after raised its first seed round. It started as MotoRefi, and rebranded in November 2021 to Caribou. But the mission remains: Transforming consumers’ financial relationship with their cars. Since the founding, Bennett has raised $74 million for the company, including early angel funding from Rachel Holt. At the time, she was a rising executive in Uber — a post she left in 2020 when she co-founded Construct Capital. Hear how Bennett pitched early investors, and what investors like Holt can provide to mobility companies. This event opens on with networking and pitch practice submissions. The interview begins at 12 pm PT followed by the TCL Pitch Practice at 12:30 pm PT. TechCrunch Live records weekly on Wednesday at 11:30 am PT / 2:30 pm ET. Join us! and gain access to Caribou’s pitch deck, enter the pitch practice session and access the livestream where you can ask the speakers questions. |
Getting to the bottom of UiPath’s plunging valuation | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 5 | 1 | ago, was among the in the world. Last February the company raised a massive at a staggering $35 billion valuation. The robotic process automation, or RPA company, was firing on all cylinders. By the time that UiPath of last year, its final private price looked a bit, well, pricey. The company’s early IPO price range was , but after raising that range and pricing above it, the unicorn was still valued at a modest deficit to that $35 billion figure. During its first day’s trading however, the company managed to crest the price set by its round worth three-quarters of a billion dollars. TechCrunch about its method of going public at that time, and the timing of its debut for more context; the executive praised the ability to attract new investors in a traditional offering, instead of the more trendy direct listing option. UiPath’s value shot to as much as $90 per share, pushing its valuation to around $43 billion per YCharts data. Since then, however, things have gone poorly for UiPath, at least in valuation terms. The company was down over 3% at $18.29 per share on Friday afternoon, bringing its valuation under $10 billion. From red-hot unicorn to uneven IPO, to strong early trading, to a painful descent — what went wrong with UiPath? TechCrunch has two hypotheses: The first being that the company simply of technology revenues by public-market investors; , and if it explains the UiPath valuation declines would put the technology concern in good company. However, there could also be a technology-related explanation at play, as well. And, of course, both factors could be at play at once. To understand what may have happened with UiPath’s disappearing valuation, let’s first talk numbers and then riff on the tech side of the coin! UiPath remains a company on the move. In the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2022 — in English, the three months ending January 31, 2022 — the RPA market leader reported revenues of $289.7 million in total revenue and a quarter-ending annual recurring revenue (ARR) figure of $925.3 million. From those data points you can see how the public markets have changed their mind about the value of software revenue. |
Researchers fear what a Musk acquisition might mean for Twitter research data | Kyle Wiggers | 2,022 | 5 | 1 | written about Elon Musk’s , an effort which, despite substantial backing from Morgan Stanley and the approval of Twitter’s board, stands on . Reporting and punditry have focused on the of the proposed acquisition, as well as Musk’s potential approaches to and, on a related subject, his understanding of the concept of “ .” But another consequential aspect of the deal has received considerably less attention: how Twitter’s data access policy for research might change under a Musk regime. Twitter hasn’t had a cozy relationship with researchers. However, in recent years, the social network has made strides in providing access to its archives at a time when rivals have taken the . In January 2021, Twitter claimed that academic researchers were one of the largest groups using its API. Some researchers are concerned that Musk doesn’t share the same commitment to open data access, particularly considering the vitriol he’s shown in the past toward reporting that paints his ventures (including Tesla) in an unflattering light. In 2018, Musk pledged to — but didn’t ultimately — build a to rate the “core truth” of articles and journalists in response to reports on crashes involving Tesla cars, Tesla labor issues and his relationship with Wall Street. Mor Naaman, a professor of information science at Cornell Tech, envisions a future in which Musk becomes hostile toward researchers exposing Twitter’s “challenges and deficiencies.” “I am pessimistic that Twitter will continue to strive for accountability as a privately held company under Musk,” Naaman, who’s worked with Twitter data since 2009, told TechCrunch via email. “I do not believe research on [former President Donald Trump’s] Stop the Steal campaign — and the data we collected from Twitter and made available to other researchers, used in 12 different papers since last year — would be allowed to happen under Musk. Second, I cannot imagine internal teams that scrutinize the ethics and bias of the company’s systems will continue to function well, let alone publish their findings publicly. “If they do continue to publish, these publications will have a much harder time overcoming the already existing suspicion around the corporate-friendly bias nature of platforms putting out their own research papers.” Among other promises, Musk has said that he plans to “defeat spam bots” on Twitter — seemingly alluding to the that parrot misinformation and perpetuate scams. But not all bots are harmful, Orestis Papakyriakopoulos, a a postodoctoral researcher at Princeton, pointed out to TechCrunch via email. |
The Interchange: What’s the deal with the one-click checkout space? | Mary Ann Azevedo | 2,022 | 5 | 1 | Bolt , (TechCrunch+ subscription required) (TechCrunch+ subscription required) Affirm Minka Meanwhile, Meanwhile, the biggest retirement (TechCrunch+ subscription required) |
James Murdoch firm invests $600 million in India’s Allen Career Institute | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 5 | 1 | Bodhi Tree is taking a $600 million stake in Allen Career Institute as James Murdoch and former Disney executive Uday Shankar’s investment platform expands its bet on India’s growing edtech market, they said Sunday. The duo said their investment in the 33-year-old education brand, which operates 138 classroom centers in 46 cities in India and Middle East, is strategic in nature. Allen — which helps prepare students looking to crack prestigious exams such as IIT JEE Mains & Advanced, NEET-UG, KVPY and the Olympiads — said it will work with Bodhi Tree to broaden its test-prep offering and “deliver at-scale positive impact for millions of students in test-prep and K12 segments, using technology as the core driver of value.” The deal values Kota-headquartered Allen at over $1 billion, a person familiar with the matter said, but TechCrunch could not determine the precise valuation. Allen runs one of the largest coaching institutes in India. The firm competes with Aakash, which Indian edtech giant for nearly $1 billion. Indian online platform Unacademy, last valued at $3.4 billion, explored acquiring Allen earlier, according to two people familiar with the matter. “Since its inception, Allen has focused on providing high quality education to students to help them achieve their highest potential and fulfil their career aspirations,” said Rajesh Maheshwari, founder of Allen, in a statement. “In the process, we have helped create hundreds of thousands of doctors and engineers, who contribute to building India and the society of today. Our partnership with Bodhi Tree is an essential ingredient in furthering our mission to significantly increase Allen’s reach and impact.” The investment in Allen is the second backing Bodhi Tree has announced this week. On Wednesday, the firm said it was . “Education is a critical consumer need, driven by its deeply transformative impact on lives and livelihoods of consumers,” Murdoch and Shankar said in a joint statement. “We believe that education is on the cusp of a technology led renaissance that will fundamentally alter how education is imparted and will increase its efficacy. Allen’s unrivaled success and scale provide the right foundation to build the digital education company of the future. We are excited to work with the Maheshwari family to build an outcomes-focused digital education company that delivers on the aspirations of millions of learners and parents in India and beyond.” The duo — who through Lupa have invested in a number of Indian startups including short-video platform and news aggregator DailyHunt and edtech DoubtNut — announced Bodhi Tree, a $1.5 billion investment firm, in February this year. The firm, backed by the Gulf State’s sovereign wealth fund Qatar Investment Authority, seeks to focus on investing in India and the broader Southeast Asia region. |
Judge tosses Trump’s lawsuit over his lifetime Twitter ban | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,022 | 5 | 6 | A federal judge in California dismissed Friday, dimming at least one avenue the former president and prolific tweeter might have used to get back to his platform of choice. Trump’s argument that the social media company and its then-chief executive Jack Dorsey violated his right to free speech failed to convince Judge James Donato of the Northern District of California, to put it lightly. “Plaintiffs’ main claim is that defendants have ‘censor[ed]” plaintiffs’ Twitter accounts in violation of their right to free speech under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution,'” Donato wrote. “Plaintiffs are not starting from a position of strength.” In tossing the suit as it stands, Donato pointed out the obvious: Twitter is a private company and is not bound by the First Amendment, which protects Americans from efforts to limit speech. Essentially, Twitter can do whatever it wants when it comes to content moderation, just like any other online platform. Donato shot down the connection Trump’s legal team tried to make between the U.S. government and Twitter, rejecting the assertion that the company was somehow acting on behalf of the federal government because Democratic lawmakers wanted Trump kicked off the platform. “The amended complaint merely offers a grab bag of allegations to the effect that some Democratic members of Congress wanted Mr. Trump, and ‘the views he espoused,’ to be banned from Twitter,” Donato wrote. In spite of the lawsuit, Trump has claimed that he wouldn’t return to Twitter . And with the company under the erratic leadership of misguided free speech absolutist Elon Musk, he indeed might be given that opportunity. In the mean time, Trump continues to promote his own app, Truth Social, which currently sits in the eleventh place on the App Store’s social networking chart. Trump and the other plaintiffs on the suit — organizations and individuals who were similarly booted from Twitter — will have a shot at revising their argument, but Donato points out that the bar is high because keeping private industry and the public sphere separate is “a matter of great importance.” “Plaintiffs’ only hope of stating a First Amendment claim is to plausibly allege that Twitter was in effect operating as the government,” Donato wrote. “This is not an easy claim to make, for good reasons.” [scribd id=573117275 key=key-pVIYq9EYY0y4jVoxUTC2 mode=scroll] |
Crypto’s cops get ready for an uneven war | Lucas Matney | 2,022 | 5 | 6 | Hey everyone, and welcome back to Last week, we chatted a bit about the political isolation of Bitcoin that’s happening as a result of its energy footprint. In the podcast this week, we talked about how the Wikimedia Foundation outlawed crypto donations after accepting them for eight years just because of the energy footprint of Bitcoin and Ethereum. More than a decade in, this saga is only getting started. This week, we talked about how the crypto cops are trying to keep up with the web3 explosion. You can subscribe on and get this in your inbox Thursday afternoon. while you’re at it so you can get important info like some crucial NFT etiquette. Lol I’m sorry but you gotta at least temporarily change the bored ape avatar when you tweet out that your startup is making layoffs — Lucas Matney (@lucasmtny) This week, the government’s top crypto cops got some new funding to build out their team and they issued a nice little press release to tell the crypto industry that they’re coming for them. The SEC is expanding the team from 30 to 50 and renaming the previously titled “Cyber Unit” to the “Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit.” Hiring up to 20 additional enforcement officers is a big deal for the SEC, though in cryptoland that kind of headcount is what comes to most startups after a seed fundraise. It’s always been an uphill battle for the SEC, but 10 years ago the threat of someone spinning up securities willy nilly from their basement wasn’t quite what it is today. The crypto faucet has released thousands upon thousands of suspect projects that I’m sure the regulatory body would like to touch, but for the time being they’re left with the nearly impossible task of moderating an industry that’s exploding and expanding its ambitions with at-most modest regard for the spirit of securities law. As we touched on a bit in , the news of the SEC crypto unit’s expansion wasn’t welcomed warmly by folks in the industry, who say what they want is more guidance before there’s more enforcement. This isn’t entirely surprising, of course. It’s always been a nice little talking point for crypto companies on the topic of regulation — they can say that they actually want more regulation, because they know how far out most of that regulation is. Then, when action is eventually taken against them by the government they can complain that the under-resourced agency has it out for them because they’re singling them out over others who are doing the same thing. This has been the case for a while now. This isn’t to say the SEC has done nothing; I’m sure they’re much more focused on big-ticket cases at this point. The agency says they’ve brought more than 80 “enforcement actions” against fraudulent and unregistered offerings “resulting in monetary relief totaling more than $2 billion.” That’s a nice chunk of change but still a drop in the bucket. Now, for the SEC’s part, they say that they are focused on using their beefed up team to crack down on fraudulent or illicit activity in the following areas: Crypto asset offerings, Crypto asset exchanges, Crypto asset lending and staking products, Decentralized finance (“DeFi”) platforms, Non-fungible tokens (“NFTs”), and Stablecoins. That’s… pretty much everything there is, though they didn’t specifically say anything about the metaverse I suppose… For folks warning of an imminent regulatory crackdown on crypto, I think it’s important to set expectations and take stock of who exactly is on the other side of the equation. Hello Chain Reaction friends! It’s here again with an update on our . Yuga Labs’ chaotic NFT land sale stole the show in the crypto world this week, temporarily clogging the entire Ethereum network and leaving some users to pay thousands of dollars in gas fees for NFTs they never actually got. Yuga has pledged to refund gas fees on the failed transactions, but the crypto community has been abuzz with all sorts of hot takes and even conspiracy theories about why and how we got here, which Lucas and I unpacked on the show. Our guest this week was Jill Gunter, venture partner at Slow Ventures and co-founder of a new, privacy-focused layer-one blockchain, Espresso Systems. I already after its Series A round last month, so for this week’s pod, Lucas and I asked her some bigger questions we’ve been mulling over, like why there are so many different blockchains in the first place and what it will take for tradfi to get comfortable with crypto. Subscribe to Chain Reaction on , or your alternative podcast platform of choice to keep up with us every week.
The popular play-to-earn crypto game Axie Infinity hit huge strides in 2021 from a massive spike in users to its total revenue rising over 50,000% from the same time last year. But as we’re almost halfway through 2022, a question stands: Is Axie holding up to its hype? Data is saying not quite, but Axie’s co-founder Jeff “Jiho” Zirlin is unfazed. “You can’t have exponential growth all the time; there is a refractory period,” he said, but the game has more plans in the pipeline for the next growth cycle.
I may be recovering from a sunburn, but don’t feel bad for me. I was down in the Caribbean at Crypto Bahamas, a conference co-hosted by crypto exchange FTX and investor forum SALT, where over 2,000 invite-only attendees discussed the nature of crypto as it grows in the traditional finance market and what’s needed for the future of this nascent digital asset industry to succeed. The event also was significant because this was both FTX and SALT’s first crypto-focused conference and seems to be the beginning of a bridge being built between the two worlds of traditional finance and decentralized finance.
Speaking of Crypto Bahamas…some of the biggest names in bitcoin mining at the event took the stage and talked about what they think is needed first and foremost for this industry to succeed: efficiency and regulatory clarity. Once there is regulation in pace, the pace of innovation could pick up for miners across the U.S., the panelists said. But what does this mean for the energy industry as a whole? Have a great weekend! And remember, you can subscribe on and get this in your inbox Thursday afternoon. |
Daily Crunch: Fairly stagnant since April launch, Coinbase NFT sales volume is under $700K | Christine Hall | 2,022 | 5 | 6 | Friday, May 6, is here. The only thing important about that is the “Friday” part – and we are eager and curious to see what this weekend has in store for us, because this week had many of our colleagues using expletives in their reporting, case in point by and describing all of the tech layoffs we’ve seen this week. Meanwhile, in the TechCrunch Slack today, , after some pushback with , asked: “ , are you implying that Britney Spears didn’t single-handedly create more American jobs?” We will have more national job market analyses coming soon. – and In what has to be one of our favorite articles on TechCrunch in recent memories, joins – the man behind the iPod, iPhone and Nest Thermostat – in his garage to see what prototypes and curiosities the longtime product maestro has kicking around. It’s and a must-read for any gadget aficionados out there. We also loved this piece from discussing if Roe v. Wade turns out to be a thing of the past, pointing out that many of the app developers are already sharing details with third parties. “It’s unlikely the sensitive data you share with your period-tracking app is going to end up in the hands of those seeking to outlaw abortion,” she writes. “That’s not to say these tools don’t have extensive privacy problems.” A smattering of tenuous musical puns and great stories: / Getty Images According to Bill Petty, a partner with Tercera, these are the six questions investors are most likely to ask while conducting due diligence: If you can’t answer these off the top of your head, you’re probably not ready to fundraise. Investors have higher expectations than the friends and family who may have helped you get this far. “It’s the difference between inviting a friend over for dinner and preparing for an open house,” says Petty. “With a friend, you might tidy up and shove a few things in the closet. If you have buyers coming to look around, they’re going to open that closet.” : China electric vehicle company . The company was said to be seeking a secondary listing of its Class A ordinary shares to match one in Hong Kong as the company awaits news on whether its shares will be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. Meanwhile, Lucid, the maker of the luxury Air sedan, said that it will be raising prices on its line of vehicles. : The U.K. is cracking down on what it perceives as , and has read all the long documents about some new regulations so you don’t have to. The tl;dr — the government is laying down some rules for Big Tech companies that it says will be necessary to boost competition and let consumers more easily and safely do things like swap between Android and iOS, switch social media accounts without losing data (ouch!) and have more control over who has access to their data. Meanwhile: |
Chingona Ventures lands $52M to fund overlooked founders in massive markets | Connie Loizos | 2,022 | 5 | 6 | , a three-year-old, Chicago-based venture outfit that invests in pre-seed startups, primarily in the Midwest and primarily founded by overlooked individuals who are focused on massive markets, has closed a new fund with $52 million in capital commitments. Limited partners in the new fund include PayPal Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Melinda Gates’s Pivotal Ventures, Foundry Group and the Office of the Illinois State Treasurer’s Illinois Growth and Innovation Fund, among others. It’s a huge step up from the outfit’s $6 million debut fund and a sign of confidence in Samara Hernandez, an engineer who spent six years at Goldman Sachs before joining the venture firm Math Venture Partners in 2015 as an investor and then striking out on her own in 2019 with Chingona, where she remains the firm’s sole general partner. While it’s a little too early to judge the success of her portfolio, Hernandez has been active, managing to work checks of between $100,000 and $250,000 into 27 companies with that first fund, and investing in eight more with her second effort. Among these portfolio companies is , a four-year-old startup that matches employees and contractors to job training programs (and which raised in January) and , a financial wellness platform for the Latino community that has raised $6.6 million to date, per Crunchbase data. Both startups underscore Chingona’s areas of interest, which include fintech startups, as well as startups focused on health and wellness, food tech and the future of learning. They also play to Hernandez’s strengths, including an understanding of the massive and growing Latino market in the case of Suma Wealth. (Hernandez, who was born in Mexico and raised in the U.S., notes that one of every four kids being born today in the U.S. is Latino, yet that Latinx companies still attract less than 1% of venture capital funding in this country.) She is also willing to back founders who’ve heard no from other backers, as with Ruben Harris, the co-founder of Career Karma. Though Harris and his co-founders had passed through Y Combinator, he had a network, and he lived, at the time, in Silicon Valley, he reached out to Hernandez cold over Twitter after countless other meetings where he was passed over. “They didn’t believe his strategy but I believed in him so I ended up investing,” says Hernandez. (Career Karma earlier this year expanded on its initial strategy, which was to help aspiring students and working professionals navigate their way to the right bootcamp. Harris also recently moved to Miami from the Bay Area.) Indeed, with far more capital at her disposal, Hernandez says the plan is to do more of the same, with slightly larger checks, ranging from $250,000 to $1 million. Chingona — a Spanish word for a woman who is fearless and gets things done, says Hernandez — wants to “be the first and largest check into a round,” she says. “What I realized with fund one is that a lot of these founders really need someone to lead and to write the biggest check and help catalyze the round.” With investors like PayPal and Insight now looking to her for some of their deal flow, she’s more than happy to lead the way. |
Need advice on navigating a tough startup market? Start here | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 5 | 6 | The market for startup investment has changed. From the hottest year in startup venture capital history to a period of pessimism, how did we get to where we are today? The following digest of TechCrunch coverage looks to answer that question. We start with a historical run of stories beginning last December, threading through the start of the year until we reach the latest data from the VC ecosystem. Then we close with stories that have a few tips. Sound good? Let’s go. The change in the market started last year, with falling stock market prices leading TechCrunch to begin to wonder if the ground was shifting under startups’ feet. After 2021’s venture capital goat rodeo — companies were raising two and even three times per year — it came as something of a surprise when the public markets started to get bearish while the private market was still in full bull mode. Our question wound up being answered with a resounding yes as time went along. By January, it was clear that something had changed. Now our question was how quickly and where the damage would land. Startups can operate outside of the bounds of public-market sentiment, but the greater the gap, the less chance that such differing centers of gravity can hold. Alex Wilhelm took a look at Kruze Consulting’s data to understand how startup growth rates were changing and how much venture investors were expecting in terms of revenue performance before they raised any particular round. The gist? Things in January were still plenty warm. We include this particular entry to remind ourselves that even though hindsight is clear, even during the market correction, there were signals pointing in the other direction. TechCrunch got to work to figure out how much the startup fundraising market was changing. Data for Q1 2022 wound up being somewhat but with the damage stacking up more as the quarter wore on. In January, things were still pretty hot, even if the rumblings of were starting to add up. By February, our own Natasha Mascarenhas was already starting to name the market change, leaning on the phrase “recorrection.” This was a witty way of noting that we were going through a correction of a correction. First, startups hit the brakes when COVID landed and the economy froze; then, as 2020 and 2021 rolled on, they corrected their stance toward max burn and max growth. By the second month of the year, it was clear that a new behavioral adjustment was ramming its way through the market We have a lot on this topic, so we’ve picked and chosen somewhat. The following should provide a good look at our recent work to understand just where on the map startups and their backers are today. Layoffs may be one of the clearest signals that a startup is under duress, but it’s not the only one. In this piece, Natasha talks about how early-stage startups are pivoting — ahead of cuts — to be more cash efficient, revenue focused and risk averse. Natasha wrote about the mixed messages in startup land right now: Early-stage investors are getting more disciplined and cash rich, but at the same time, the earliest investors are going earlier. Investors are pushing founders to be lean, but at the same time, offering them $10,000 to take PTO for a week and try their hand at entrepreneurship. The piece looks at how changing priorities could force emerging fund managers to change strategy (or fragment their way to failure). The market’s changing pace is no joke — so TechCrunch has been busy at work trying to sort out the data from the commentary, looking to draw a more accurate picture of the new normal. The gist is that late-stage deal-making is going through a seismic shift, while other startup series levels are a bit more stable, if not entirely healthy. Part of the market change regarding the value of startups and their recently public brethren is the fact that many concerns were given revenue multiples that did not fit their actual revenue profile. By that we mean that some software companies were valued like SaaS businesses, even though they weren’t. Watching those companies unwind billions in valuation was a lesson that during hot times, many companies will land a valuation that is actually a poor fit. It’s just noticing that that is the hard part of the investing game. We’ve seen new highs being reached over the past few years and now valuations are falling. Alex Wilhelm looked at Carta data to see where. Seed rounds have declined around 5%from Q4 2021 to Q1 2022. Series A and B have declined about 25% and 8%, respectively, from Q3 2021 to Q1 2022. To close out, some notes regarding what to do in this changed world. If it came down to it, would you pay to play? Now they’re back as the economy is beginning to change and investors are faced with this question once again. Steve Blank explains the rationale behind why a founder would agree to a cram down — and advice on what they could do instead. If you’re not good at budgeting, it’s time to learn for the sake of your startup. Marjorie Radlo-Zandi explains the significance of ensuring you have enough money to fund your startup. Your runway will vary depending on the industry you’re in, but Radlo-Zandi walks you through how to calculate this number and what to do if you get off track. Walter Thompson pens up a timely, honest look at what investors care about in the current market. As he notes, Carta claims that the number of seed deals funded between Q4 2021 and Q1 2022 fell 41%. Dollar volume also fell, dropping from $2.62 billion to $1.81 billion, representing a 31% decline. The survey brings together insights from investors, including 500 Global CEO Christine Tao and Maveron partner Anarghya Vardhana, to understand what they’re looking for when dollar slices get smaller. It’s probably the question atop everyone’s mind right now. As public market values get slashed, how does that trickle down to the startup community, and more importantly, you? This piece includes an applicable valuation framework and other factors that may be impacting your price. Depending on where you’re at, today’s moment could be a refresh, a reset or an entire reckoning. |
Daniel Ek pumps $50 million into Spotify: ‘I believe our best days are ahead’ | Harri Weber | 2,022 | 5 | 6 | Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek said on Friday that he’s pouring $50 million into the music streaming service, driving its stock price up by more than 3% to a high of $108.98 per share during regular trading hours. The momentary rise, however, is a blip on the radar for Spotify, which has taken a beating this year — in part over its recent, (just like plenty of other and firms). As for the reasoning behind Ek’s purchase, the Spotify CEO wants you to know he believes. “I’ve always been vocal about my strong belief in Spotify and what we are building. So I am putting that belief into action this week by investing $50M in $SPOT. I believe our best days are ahead…,” he said, adding that he , but wanted to. Should Ek’s vote of confidence be measured by his other recent equity deals, then perhaps the CEO’s faith in Spotify is surpassed by his support for the military industrial complex. In November, Ek when his investment firm, Prima Materia, put roughly (€100 million) into Helsing. While the artificial intelligence company’s website is sparse, reported at the time that Helsing aims to “produce live maps of battlefields.” Along with the nine-figure deal, Ek joined the board of the one-year-old firm, whose customers include the British, French and German militaries. In any event(!), it seems nobody believes in Spotify quite like Spotify itself does. In August, the streaming giant said it would spend rebuying its shares over the next several years, outshining both of Ek’s recent deals. |
TechCrunch+ roundup: Psychedelic investor survey, 6 issues VCs look for, hiring on a budget | Walter Thompson | 2,022 | 5 | 6 | Since the pandemic began, the percentage of American workers who have quit their jobs has reached a 20-year high. A Pew Research poll gathered their top three reasons: Companies no longer compete on the basis of salary and benefits. Prospective hires are explicitly looking for environments where they can expand their skills while contributing to (and participating in) the company’s success. Last month at TechCrunch Early Stage, Glen Evans, a partner on Greylock’s core talent team, joined me to talk about , source talent, and uncover some best practices for closing candidates. “The state of the job market is more competitive than I’ve ever seen it,” said Evans, who has two decades of experience overseeing recruiting and team-building at fast-growing companies including Slack, Facebook and Google. “There’s a very limited supply of talent and probably the largest demand I’ve ever seen, so it’s really important for people to think about how to differentiate and build the foundations and the habits to get talent right in the early days,” he said. Founders should always be in recruiting mode, says Evans, since small teams can move quickly to shorten time to hire and customize their outreach to meet candidates’ individual economic and emotional requirements. Also important: don’t guess if they’re considering other offers — just ask them. “Most candidates will tell you, and some won’t,” said Evans. “But if you’re a Series A or a seed startup, and they’re also interviewing at Google and Netflix and Facebook, there’s something off there.” Thanks very much for reading TC+ this week! Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch+
/ Getty Images For years, consumers have used substances like cannabis and microdoses of LSD and psilocybin mushrooms to elevate their mood and sharpen mental focus. Now that regulators and clinicians are re-evaluating these drugs, investors are exploring what this mind-expanding market has to offer. In the U.S, more than 400 clinics offer ketamine therapy, and MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, is on track for FDA approval in 2023. In Oakland and Denver, “magic mushrooms” have already been decriminalized for adult use. To learn more about the applications attracting VCs to psychedelics, reporter Anna Heim interviewed five who are active in the sector: / Getty Images If you can envision a solution that solves a customer’s problem, it helps to have technical skills if you want to bring it to market. But that’s not a requirement. As long as entrepreneurs “understand how design, technology and development interact,” building a digital product is an attainable goal, writes Charles Fry, CEO of CODE Exits. In a post that includes a matrix for estimating the costs of building everything from bootstrapped slideware to a large-scale project, Fry explains how non-technical founders should approach budgeting, planning and which priorities first-timers should bear in mind while building. According to data from Carta, which makes software that helps startups manage their cap tables, the average valuation of seed rounds in Q1 2022 fell 5%, while Series A rounds declined 28%, Series B rounds shrank by 8%, and Series C rounds plummeted 42%, Alex Wilhelm wrote in The Exchange. “This is the natural comedown from a multiyear period of frantic deal-making and a turn away from business fundamentals. The pendulum always swings back.” Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch In a market where valuations are on the decline, corporate venture capital is well-positioned to pounce on opportunities. The IPO window may be closed, but investors are still nudging founders toward an exit. As a result, Alex Wilhelm and Anna Heim speculated in The Exchange that we may see a spurt of M&A led by CVC firms in the second half of the year. “For earlier-stage startups looking for buyers, it will only be natural to look at their own cap table and give a ring to corporate investors that show up on the list,” they wrote. “But many times, it will also happen the other way around, with CVCs turning into lead generators for corporate M&A departments.” TechCrunch Momentum, a B2B company that makes sales process automation software, accidentally convinced an early investor to lead its seed round before the founders had even created a pitch deck. “We showed up on a Friday board meeting. On Monday, they were like, ‘hey, do you have five minutes? We want to sit down with you,’” said CEO and co-founder Santiago Suarez Ordoñez. “They literally put a term sheet on the table with the exact terms we wanted.” / Getty Images According to Bill Petty, a partner with Tercera, these are the six questions investors are most likely to ask while conducting due diligence: If you can’t answer these off the top of your head, you’re probably not ready to fundraise. Investors have higher expectations than the friends and family who may have helped you get this far. “It’s the difference between inviting a friend over for dinner and preparing for an open house,” says Petty. “With a friend, you might tidy up and shove a few things in the closet. If you have buyers coming to look around, they’re going to open that closet.” |
Post-pandemic reset leads to wave of layoffs in tech | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 5 | 6 | OK, maybe it is . Over the past week, we’ve witnessed an alarming amount of layoffs across the startup ecosystem, from buzzy, big names like Cameo, On Deck and Robinhood, to B2B platforms like Workrise and Thrasio. The common thread between most of these layoffs, according to founders, is that there’s been a shift in the market and a serious pivot in business is required. A pivot, that is, that hurts the employees that built your product up after high demand. A pullback has been in the cards for months. It first impacted public tech companies and then slowly trickled down to late-stage deals and even their well funded early-stage counterparts. In February, , while April included Now feels like an inflection point, in which tech unicorns are realizing that they may have overpromised a growth trajectory, over-hired or overestimated their ability to raise that next round. They aren’t alluding to the market changing, they’re blaming it. The irony here is tough: The same workforces that helped companies meet a boom in pandemic demand are the same workforces on the chopping block when trends change. Below, we’ve listed which companies announced layoffs this week to underscore the unfortunate, albeit growing, trend. Software-as-a-service startups often get the reputation of being predictable, and therefore perfect for the risk-adverse investor. from the venture slowdown for quite some time, TechCrunch is hearing that digital collaboration startup platform Mural just cut dozens of staff. Per sources and LinkedIn posts from laid-off employees, the layoffs came after a corporate restructuring at the SaaS company. Sales and customer success folks were impacted. Also notably, the reduction comes less than a year after Getting laid off sucks. Getting laid off sucks even more when your Bored Ape-owning CEO tweets that he made the “painful decision to let go of 87 beloved members of the Cameo Fameo.” Damn, at least spare them from the corporate nicknaming in your farewell tweet. These layoffs included teams across all organizations, including several C-suite members. In a statement to TechCrunch, CEO Steven Galanis said that Cameo’s headcount “exploded” from 100 to 400 during pandemic lockdowns, but that now the company “right-sized the business to best reflect the new realities.” Employees who spoke to TechCrunch on the condition of anonymity said that they will receive severance packages that include eight weeks of base salary. The gamified consumer investing app Robinhood cut about 300 employees at the end of April, and like Cameo, the company cited an inability to keep up with early-pandemic acceleration. CEO Vlad Tenev wrote in a that the company’s headcount grew from 700 to nearly 3,800 from 2019 to 2021. “After carefully considering all these factors, we determined that making these reductions to Robinhood’s staff is the right decision to improve efficiency, increase our velocity, and ensure that we are responsive to the changing needs of our customers,” he added. Days later, Robinhood announced its Q1 2022 earnings, which expectations. On Deck, a tech company that connects founders, laid off about 72 people this week, which amounts to about 25% of staff. In an email obtained by TechCrunch, co-founders Erik Torenberg and David Booth explained to staff that the market has “shifted dramatically” since 2021, when On Deck launched its ODX accelerator program. This program gives early-stage startups $125,000 in exchange for 7% of the company, backing over 150 companies to date, bringing the total investment to almost $19 million. But sources close to the company said that ODX will likely be scaled back or even shut down. TechCrunch’s sources also alleged that the company was attempting to raise a fund between $100 and $150 million, but in reality, they landed a fund closer to $40 million, leaving them with just nine months of runway. Hence, layoffs, mostly in operations and investing roles. On Deck’s severance packages include eight weeks of paid base salary and 12 weeks of healthcare. Thrasio’s business model is to buy up and consolidate third-party Amazon sellers, but apparently, that strategy is rife with ups and downs. After being rumored to go public, Thrasio raised $1 billion in funding last year, valuing the company at $10 billion. In a memo to employees, the company implied it was growing too big, too quickly. “Now, as we assess our strategy for the road ahead, we need to take the time to properly absorb and grow the businesses we have acquired, make sure we have rigorous processes and controls, and then look to re-scale our team in the optimal areas for growth,” the note said. Thrasio’s internal shake-up doesn’t end with layoffs, though — the aggregator is also installing Greg Greeley as its new CEO. Greeley formerly was president of Airbnb and a longtime Amazon executive. Last year on “journalism Twitter,” it seemed like every day, a great culture reporter was leaving sites like BuzzFeed and Vice to work for Tudum, a burgeoning editorial project at Netflix. It makes sense why. One staffer told BuzzFeed that they were making at Netflix than at their previous job. Media workers are no stranger to layoffs, and perhaps a job at a massive tech company seemed more stable than working somewhere that recently laid off employees in a Zoom meeting with the password .” But sometimes, the tech industry can be equally as cruel. The project was championed by chief marketing officer Bozoma Saint John, who left Netflix last month after less than two years. That departure left Tudum on shaky footing. Plus, Netflix reported that in the of 2022, it lost 200,000 subscribers — its first subscriber loss in more than a decade. These losses are expected to continue, as Netflix forecasts a global paid subscriber loss of 2 million for the second quarter. The layoffs reportedly affected 25 people total across Netflix’s marketing department. According to a tweet from a laid-off writer, the staff was only offered two weeks of severance pay. , a startup that helps other startups uncover tax credits that was last year, has laid off about 30% of its staff, according to a from CEO Doug Ludlow. The chief executive said that “today’s incredibly rough market” is going to get worse and could remain for months, if not years. Like many fintechs, MainStreet is a startup that depend on other startups growing — making it especially vulnerable to any sort of pull back. |
Partner breakout sessions will drop serious knowledge at TC Sessions: Mobility 2022 | Alexandra Ames | 2,022 | 5 | 6 | Brought to you by At Pony.ai, we aim to deliver autonomous mobility everywhere by building safe and reliable autonomous driving technology. Since our founding in 2016 in Fremont, California, we have been pioneering autonomous mobility services that benefit global users in five cities across the U.S. and China. With 6.2 million autonomous miles driven, Pony.ai’s core autonomous driving technology enables the “virtual driver” to navigate diverse traffic scenarios and inclement weather smoothly and safely. Brought to you by Next year top automakers will sell luxury consumer vehicles that include safe, hands-free driving features. Lidar will take these automated driving systems to the next level, and re-establish trust with consumers who stand to benefit from these life-saving technologies. Innoviz Technologies CEO and co-founder Omer Keilaf will discuss the long road to making automotive-grade Lidar in order to help car makers like BMW achieve Level 3 automation for the first time. What’s next? The tech is ready. Now it’s time to integrate it into cars around the world and properly educate consumers so they love, not loathe, automated driving again. Brought to you by Appen is the Data for AI Lifecycle leader. This session will explore use cases and challenges that our clients see from data sourcing, data preparation and model evaluation by humans. Our experts will discuss and demo the technologies and processes that were used to enable success for both in-cabin experiences and out-of-car data with ADAS systems and autonomous vehicles. Brought to you by Automakers and AV companies use GPR’s subterranean mapping and localization platform to deliver a safe automated driving experience without relying on clear lane markings, cooperative weather and lighting, or stable visual landmarks. GPR is expanding where and when consumer vehicles with automated features and AVs can operate, opening new markets and bringing a level of autonomy that can earn the public’s trust. GPR CEO Tarik Bolat will detail how GPR’s product works, how automakers and AV companies are using it today and what it means for the future of high-volume passenger vehicle autonomy, robotaxis and automated freight. Brought to you by Dr. Jun Pei founded Cepton in 2016 with the vision of enabling safe, autonomous transportation for everyone. Hands-free, driveway to driveway — lidar promises to make this vision a reality, but only through scale. Focused on making safety the standard for all levels of autonomy, Cepton is dedicated to commercializing lidar for every consumer vehicle, not just the luxury class. By supporting General Motors’ Ultra Cruise program, Cepton is aimed at bringing all the benefits of lidar technology to every American household in less than two years. We’ll hear from Dr. Pei on Cepton’s journey to the industry’s largest ADAS lidar series production award, and what it means for the future of mobility. We’ll also hear from Dr. Pei on lidar’s unique capabilities of adding certainty to perception, key considerations behind scaling lidar for everyday passenger cars and the timeless principles underlying Cepton’s elegant invention. Brought to you by The future of mobility starts with the next generation of transportation solutions and the infrastructure that keeps them running safely and efficiently. Attendees will hear from some of the most innovative names about opportunities that await when the traditional auto industry collides with high-tech innovations to revolutionize the way we think about our roads. The session will illustrate the need for future-proofing our roads and how a connected and automated vehicle corridor in Michigan is paving the way for a nationwide deployment of tech-enabled roadways. The discussion will feature: Trevor Pawl, State of Michigan Chief Mobility Officer and Shelby Winkler, Senior Vice President of Programs and Operations at Cavnue.
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Ava sets the example for universal live captioning and raises $10M to keep building | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 5 | 6 | When we last checked in with AI-powered captioning service , they had just and it was six months into a pandemic that would reshape how we all work together. Eighteen months later they have investors banging on their door following huge growth, and aim to keep showing the tech industry how deaf and hard of hearing people ought to be included in the hybrid workplace. The company’s tools provide instant captions for any voice the user hears, whether that’s in a video call, on a Tiktok video or out with friends. (There are different apps and capabilities for each platform, naturally, but they all work together.) “In the last year and a half since our interview, we’ve grown revenue and client base by roughly 10x, largely as our empowerment products rolled out to users in search for better solutions,” Ava CEO Thibault Duchemin told TechCrunch. is certainly the operative word there, as we’ve seen accessibility options pop up here and there in the productivity tools we often use. But the truth is things like automatic transcription of calls, as useful as they are, amount to only the barest minimum of inclusion, and people with impaired hearing or vision are otherwise almost entirely left out. (And that’s if there are accessible options at all, which is not true of many popular online platforms.) Ava’s approach is to provide a richer and independently configurable captioning tool that works on all content, from podcasts to all-hands meetings to in-person chats, and in such a way that the person can actually make use of it. What’s the point of captioning if you can’t tell who’s talking? Why listen if you can’t respond? Whose job is it to provide transcriptions of content shared on the internal network? Ava at least provides ways forward in all of these situations, and while a lot of this responsibility is put on the person using the tool, its capabilities mean the workplace can adapt to them more seamlessly. Duchemin noted that the company has deaf and hard-of-hearing people in leadership positions across the team that bring real hands-on experience to the topic. “With the funding, we’re doubling down on product and engineering, enabling new experiences that integrate Ava in the day-to-day needs of our deaf and hard-of-hearing users, keeping our signature around self-empowerment and accessibility done right,” said Duchemin. The funding, a $10 million A round, was led by Khosla Ventures, which participated in the seed but came to Ava wanting to lead this one. Duchemin also noted a new strategic investor in Jim Sorenson, founder of a deaf and hard-of-hearing telecom, hinting at mobile industry integration to come. Initialized Capital, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, LeFonds VC and Ring Capital all participated in the round. In addition to the expected improvements on the product and engineering side, and some new partnerships coming down the road, Duchemin said they’re working to “massively expand” the network of “Scribes,” professional human captioners, so that content can be transcribed by a pro nearly instantly. Ava These people aren’t full-on transcribers but rather work with the AI tools to correct and augment the process live. While automatic transcripts are very useful, they are not nearly accurate enough to be considered a final output, for example to be published without editing in an article like this one. Human transcription is necessarily slower and more expensive, but Ava thinks it can get the delay down to the point where you can have a nearly perfect transcript within a minute of something taking place. Incidentally, the matters of deafness and being a child of deaf adults were recently top of mind as the film CODA took home a couple Oscars for its depiction thereof. And Ava was on set, being used by the cast and crew when interpreters weren’t around and sign language wasn’t an option. “This was unprompted, we discovered this while reading Apple TV’s feature promoting the apps on the set,” said Duchemin. “I think deaf and hard-of-hearing users ultimately choose the tools that serve them, and their entourage benefits from them. This is a virtuous circle!” |
Consumers and data are driving changes in the insurance sector: Where are we headed? | Jason Paau | 2,022 | 5 | 6 | more and enhanced automated experiences in our daily lives is growing, and the insurance sector is no exception. In recent years, a new crop of insurtech startups has embraced this approach to improve efficiency and experience for the customer while better calculating risk for the business. But it has not been an easy process, and digital transformation in this sector is far from complete. Consumers are constantly looking for better options with more efficient and easy-to-use services. In fact, a recent Publicis Sapient found that 100% of consumers who have switched providers over the last year cited a reason pertaining to customer experience. That is greater than the 70% that cited pricing as a driver for switching. This points to a changing market where consumers have higher and different expectations for insurance experiences, based partly on the ease with which they now do other tasks digitally, like shopping and banking. But at the same time, they are hesitant to rely too much on automated processes, given both the emotional nature of the events that lead consumers to file insurance claims and growing concerns about ethics and privacy when it comes to data. There is no question that on many levels, consumers are moving toward digital insurance experiences, and this is poised to increase. According to our survey, people would prefer a mobile app instead of phone or in-person conversations for receiving updates on claims. Consumers are also looking for what they perceive as better digital services. In fact, 15% said they switched providers in search of better digital experiences. Among the tasks that could be improved with technology were filling out forms and providing information, and understanding policies and the coverage provided. Insurance companies are finally responding. Investment in insurtech soared to reach in 2021, nearly double the amount raised in 2020. And the money was not just from a few large investors, but from a variety of sources and aimed into a variety of insurance providers, indicating the increased role of technology throughout the sector. This clearly shows that the sector is on a path of change. This also comes at a time of other changes impacting and challenging the insurance sector, like the COVID-19 pandemic, increased severe weather events and the rise of self-driving cars. Smooth digital experiences alone are not the only change happening. The way that insurance companies, and consumers, are using data is also rapidly evolving. New products such as usage-based insurance (UBI) For example, in the auto insurance sector, drivers with safer habits behind the wheel or who drive less than the national average can receive discounts on their insurance plans. Such approaches may become common in more insurance products. |
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