Christina Macpherson posted: " The Interpreter. PURNENDRA JAIN, 14 Mar 22,In a new and volatile strategic environment, a decades-old commitment on non-proliferation is up for discussion. In the wake of the Ukraine conflict, Shinzo Abe, Japan's former prime minister and now h"
In a new and volatile strategic environment, a decades- old commitment on non-proliferation is up for discussion.
In the wake of the Ukraine conflict, Shinzo Abe, Japan's former prime minister and now head of the largest faction of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), has suggested that Japan consider hosting US nuclear weapons facilities on Japanese soil, similar to some European nations, such as Germany, which have nuclear sharing arrangements with the United States.
Abe's suggestion was made in the context of Ukraine having renounced nuclear weapons in 1994, leaving itself vulnerable today. The announcement also comes on top of deepening concerns about China's growing military assertiveness around Japan's maritime space and beyond, and the dangerous situation on the Korean peninsula with threats from the nuclear-capable rocket-launching North Korea.
Debates over whether Japan should host nuclear weapons or even go fully nuclear are not new.............. Discussion has since continued among political and scholarly communities as to whether Japan should go nuclear, opt for a nuclear sharing arrangement with the United States by hosting nuclear weapons, or maintain its current non-nuclear weapons status.
This latest eruption though is in a different context. This time, chairman of the General Council of the LDP Tatsuo Fukuda, who like his father Yasuo Fukuda before him holds an influential ruling party post and is touted as a future prime minister, has suggested that "we must not shy away from any debate whatsoever". Last year's LDP party presidential candidate and current LDP policy chief Sanae Takaichi also favours a debate. Some smaller conservative opposition parties want to include nuclear options in policy discussions while considering Japan's strategic objectives. The main opposition parties have, however, strongly resisted any such prospects, arguing in favour of Japan's non-nuclear status.
Abe's suggestion was promptly and solidly rejected by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, as well as by the leader of the Komeito, the junior coalition partner of the ruling LDP. Even Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi, Abe's younger brother, adopted into the Kishi family, also dismissed the idea of hosting nuclear weapons on Japanese shores. Kishi may have expressed this view in order to align with his boss, Prime Minister Kishida, rather than reflecting his true thinking on the matter, given his political pedigree.
Kishida quickly confirmed that Japan firmly adheres to the three non-nuclear principles adopted in 1967, to not possess, produce or permit the introduction of nuclear weapons into Japan's territory. These principles remain sacrosanct, even though Japan has made substantial departures in defence and security matters in the past decade................
Not only has the Kishida government announced an intended update to the NSS, first issued in 2013, it has also promised to revise the National Defence Program Guidelines and Mid-Term Defence Program issued in 2013 and 2018. All these updates and revisions are undertaken in view of a rapid transformation in the strategic environment...................
Japan, along with Germany, has often been recognised as an example of a "civilian state". Germany currently hosts US nuclear weapons facilities and, in view of the Ukraine conflict, has announced a significant increase to its defence budget. Calls are now being made to urge Japan to follow suit.
The postwar US-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security has ensured that Japan has lived happily under US extended deterrence, including the nuclear umbrella. This arrangement is unlikely to change, barring an existential threat to Japan's territory and sovereignty. But what seemed to be taboo in terms of Japan's strategic policy – that is, breaching one per cent of GDP on defence spending and developing strike capabilities – is now being discussed seriously. No policy in international relations is eternal, it must change as a nation's interests change. https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/ukraine-war-triggers-debate-japan-s-nuclear-option
WTX News posted: "Jussie Smollett's legal team asks for emergency release from jail as family shares threatening call The Independent says Jussie Smollett's legal counsel has asked for the actor's immediate release from jail, claiming that every second he remains behind b"
The Independent says Jussie Smollett's legal counsel has asked for the actor's immediate release from jail, claiming that every second he remains behind bars, he risks being harmed.
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The world of showbiz has inadvertently become a stepping stone for several celebrities into the realm of politics. It also prompted those already in the political arena to create change, albeit [not necessarily] for good.
They say art imitates life. It's when movies, TV shows, novels, and other forms of literary work, depict what happens in real life. Zero-to-hero and rags-to-riches stories are the common features, although profound human stories that explore the depths of human suffering and victories are great impetuses for creative works.
There's a barrio girl who was given a sentient white stone that allows her to transform into someone else with superman’s strengths and abilities. There's an ordinary cop who spent his life in the force, preserving justice for the oppressed, only to become a vigilante who pursued his purpose even in the shadows.
Through the years, familiar but tangible storylines have moved audiences, readers, and spectators. Lasting imprints are left embedded in the heart and mind of people, whose next decisions in life, are partly due to the characters they watched, heard, or read. Art imitates life, and because that's true, we also find truth in the other way around.
Let's talk about the overlapping worlds of showbiz and politics. As Filipinos, seeing celebrities take their star power into the political arena, is no longer a foreign scene. It has become commonplace in our setting, in fact. Action stars, box office, and television royalties become mayors, lawmakers, sometimes even presidents. This does not necessarily mean a bad thing, but in our case, popularity does not often equate to political astuteness. Interestingly, as much movies and TV shows affect regular viewers, there are some in the world of public offices who actually take cues from fictional characters in films and other forms of media.
When Senator and now presidentiable Ping Lacson withdrew his support for the Death Penalty, he credited the Kevin Spacey-starred film The Life of David Gale for changing his mind.
Lacson, a former national police chief, previously advocated the death penalty. He authored a bill that seeks to punish capital crimes with the death penalty. The film somehow, according to him, made him care more about saving lives, as not all those who find themselves on death row turn out to be guilty.
The Life of David Gale follows the story of its main character, who was on death row after being falsely accused of murdering an officemate.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appears on the poster of the satire TV series, ‘Servant of the People’, where he played as a school teacher who became the President of Ukraine
For a regular listener or voter for that kind of reasoning–it sounds funny or even problematic to some. That said, it's a testament to how compelling stories impact lives and decisions. When Ferdinand 'Bongbong' Marcos Jr.'s wife revealed he decided to run for the presidency after seeing the 2015 Marvel film, Ant-Man, most of us did not have a hard time believing she was telling the truth.
Although we are yet to find out exactly which part of Scott Lang's messy but colorful life story prompted the defeated 2016 vice-presidentiable to try his luck at winning the highest government post in the land, we somewhat understand why.
Scott Lang is a convicted thief and later became an Avengers member. Meanwhile, Marcos is a convicted tax evader, and his family is yet to return a hundred billion peso-worth of stolen fortune from the public coffers.
American Actor Paul Rudd plays ‘Scott Lang’, the thief-turned-Avenger, Ant-Man, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe
But perhaps, the biggest and most timely reference we can draw from the notion that says life imitates art is the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who previously played a teacher-turned-Ukrainian-President in the television satire 'Servant of the People'.
Zelenskky got his chance to prove his commitment to his duty when Russia invaded his country. Initially believed to be just an overnight sensation, the former comedian but also a law graduate, inadvertently inked his name on history books.
That said, Zelenskyy, or even Scott Lang, remain cautionary tales, that should remind everyone to delve deeper into characters and scrutinize motives and personalities. Moving narratives are very often created by powerful minds, and they are not solely made to impart positive changes. The demon l wears an angelic charm, and the devil comes in sheep's clothing. Politics remain a platform for false prophets, and if history is accurate, Filipinos certainly find struggle in discerning who is genuine and who is not.
It turned out to be one big musical extravangaza as a powerhouse ensemble of entertainers, led by Sharon Cuneta, Rivermaya, Kyla and Kuh Ledesma serenaded some 70,000 supporters of Vice President Leni Robredo on Friday at Paglaum Stadium in Bacolod City.
Curtismith, Mayonnaise, Gracenote, Tippy Dos Santos, Gab Valenciano, Janina Vela, The Company, DJ Joey, and Kay Leni Tayo singers Jeli Mateo, Justine Pena, and Nica del Rosario also provided entertainment during the biggest gathering of Robredo supporters since the campaign started.
Topnotch actors Edu Manzano, Joel Torre, Ronnie Lazaro, Nikki Valdez and Agot Isidro, and showbiz personality Ogie Diaz, with his YT channel co-hosts Mama Loi and Dyosa Pockoh, also went onstage to express support for Vice President Leni and running mate Kiko Pangilinan, and the rest of their slate.
Negros Occidental provincial administrator Rayfrando Diaz reported that the crowd inside the Paglaum Stadium and surrounding areas was estimated at 70,000. It eclipsed the previous mark of almost 50,000 attendees set in General Trias, Cavite.
Robredo's stops in Iloilo and Tandag gathered around 40,000, and 20,000 supporters, respectively, while thousands of supporters also attended her sorties in Mindoro and Romblon.
More than 100,000 people attended Robredo's various gatherings in Negros Occidental on Friday, attracting a crowd of 20,000 supporters in Sagay City.
The Vice President also made stops in San Carlos City, Kabankalan City, La Carlota City, Binalbagan and Hinigaran, where she drew a total of 20,000 supporters.
The hashtag #BacolodIsPink trended as No. 1 both locally and worldwide on Twitter while #MASSKARApatDapatLeniKiko and #NegOccIsPink landed in No. 3 and No. 4, respectively.
The overwhelming crowd support for Robredo in Bacolod came after she topped both Google Trends and Facebook Analytics.
From Feb. 5 to March 2, 2022, Robredo led Google Trends with an aggregate score of 107 from searches using the keywords "Leni" and Robredo" and from positive engagements, way ahead of her rival Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr.
Google Trends has been successful in predicting the outcomes of latest elections in the United States, Greece, Spain, Germany and Brazil.
Robredo also took a five-point lead over Marcos this month when it comes to Facebook engagement score, which helps measure potential for people becoming voters of a certain candidate. Robredo currently has 8 million engagements over her rival's 7.5 million.
The Vice President is running on the platform of "Oplan Angat Agad", which is focused on employment, health and education.
She also wants to assure that at least one family member is receiving a monthly salary while those who lost their jobs will get a three-month financial assistance while looking for employment.
When it comes to health, Robredo has committed to provide each and every family with a free doctor and to make health care affordable for all Filipinos. She also aims to provide quality education to students that would help them secure their dream jobs in the future.
Presidential candidate Isko Moreno disagrees with a rival’s description of the indigent in the country.
Speaking to a group of calamansi farmers on March 11, he said politicians who refer to the poor as "laylayan ng lipunan" could possibly be too egocentric. The only candidate who usually uses the characterization is Vice President Leni Robredo. She first came up with it during her vice-presidential campaign in 2016.
"'Yan yung pinapaliwanag ko sa taongbayan. 'Yung gagawa ng mga salita. Ano 'yung tawag sa ating mahihirap, laylayan ng lipunan? Hindi kami laylayan, mahirap po kami," said Moreno, who hails from an unfortunate background before finding success in politics.
In his name belongs a mansion and millions of pesos.
"Kaya ang tawag 'nyo sa amin laylayan kasi mababa yung tingin niyo sa amin. Alam 'nyo kung bakit? Ganyan 'nyo kami tingnan. Ibig sabihin mataas ang tingin 'nyo sa sarili niyo,
"Ang normal na tawag sa isang naghihikahos na pamilya ay mahirap. Why change the words? To please the ears? Can we cure, maso-solusyonan ba natin 'yung tao 'pag tinawag mo silang laylayan ng lipunan?" he furthered.
People don’t buy Moreno’s self-proclaimed “man of the masses” title after he admitted to pocketing some P50 million of his campaign funds in 2016. Voters also didn’t like how he tried empathizing with the poor.
Moreno lost more respect when he initially called Robredo a “fake leader.” Also this week, he called Robredo out for allegedly campaigning inside a church, a claim having already been proven false.
Ang mga mahihirap na basurero ,marangal na tao yan.
According to their SALNs, Moreno has way more money in the bank than the Naga native.
Bakit ka nakiki kami? Sa exclusive village ka nakatira. High end kotse mo. Binulsa mo ang excess 50M campaign donation. 70M mahigit ang net worth mo. Di ka mahirap. Hindi ka marginalized. Wala ka sa laylayan. Sit down. https://t.co/9YO0Aafz7y
Apparently, Moreno didn’t comprehend properly what laylayan means.
Isko is either twisting words deliberately or is embarrassingly misinformed for someone of his stature. "Laylayan" means "at the margins"/"marginalized". "Laylayan" recognises the power relations that underpin poverty and ultimately a call to dismantle them. https://t.co/WhW7RPQLMR
laylayan ng lipunan means "fringes of the society" di naman yan inimbento to downgrade.. yun talaga translation nya.. lol.. also you keep on calling yourself mahirap.. but you have a house in Ayala Alabang.. and your SALN is 7x higher than vp Leni.. https://t.co/7hxRna47mI
Vice President Leni Robredo’s supporters are on a mission to show that the ‘Solid North’ is merely a myth that has long fooled the rest of the country. Robredo’s recent rallies in Cagayan and Isabela may have proven just that.
Both provinces are considered former senator’s Bongbong Marcos’ backyards which only made the Naga native’s visit all the more special. In the 2016 vice-presidential race, Robredo only accumulated 50,000 votes in Cagayan, while Marcos easily got over 370,000.
Come May, she might just surpass her previous high. Photos show a sea of pink greeting Robredo in Tuguegarao City, leaving her overwhelmed.
Surprised and overwhelmed by the warm welcome we received in Tuguegarao City and Alcala!! Thank you to everyone who showed up for us today in Cagayan On the way now to Isabela. pic.twitter.com/wtyBAum0XW
She emphasized how her team never felt discouraged to provide help to the province despite the resentment from the locals.
"Noong nakaupo na po akong vice president, kahit po talong-talo ako dito sa inyo, bawat sakuna, isa ako sa mga pinakaunang andito," she told the crowd.
"Hindi ko po tiningnan, hindi po ako tumingin sa kulay ng politika. Basta po tinatamaan 'yung Cagayan ng bagyo, nandito po ako,” she added.
She admitted that the thought of visiting the areas made her feel uneasy.
"Alam ninyo, bago kami pumunta dito ni Senator Kiko, medyo kinakabahan ako… Yung tanong ko, gaano kaya kadami yung sasalubong sa amin? Kaya nakakagulat na nandito kayo ngayong lahat kahit napakaaga pa kaya maraming maraming salamat,”
Supporters kept chanting "Awan Solid North!” which translates to “There is no Solid North.”
The Robredo-Pangilinan tandem also visited Isabela over the weekend. This time, there were more supporters, cementing the Pink movement as a real threat to the so-called Solid North.
Kakampinks at the Isabela People’s Rally also convinced the candidates that Solid North doesn’t exist.
Our hearts are full. Dios ti agngina ti ayat yo ti, Isabela Taralets, Norte, ipanalo na natin ito!! pic.twitter.com/jgpfK0Ux6R
Despite Vice President Leni Robredo's fears that nobody would show up here, thousands of Kakampinks turned up at her Grand Rally here in Isabela province.
Certainly smaller than her previous ones, but could signal cracks in the Solid North vote. pic.twitter.com/0Zaudxek6x
Grabe yung mga #kakampinks natin sa Isabela. Nung dinumog na yung stage, lahat ng gamit naming mga hosts nawala in the sea of ppl. Camera x3, tumbler, powerbank. Then in the sea of ppl may mga nag taas ng gamit namin. Walang hakot, walang nakaw, tapat at mapagmahal thats us! pic.twitter.com/yg11YnjZ5N
— △lexander The Great ♚ (@alexandermcdizz) March 12, 2022
Celebrities who support the Leni Robredo-Kiko Pangilinan tandem have admitted that they can feel a huge “change” is coming after the incredible turnout of over 70,000 kakampinks at the Pink Grand Rally in Bacolod City.
The event just surpassed the 47,000-attendee rally in Cavite. Locals compared it to the city’s annual MassKara Festival, held every October.
Robredo was surprised at how the crowd waited even after a tiring day.
"Hindi pa ba kayo pagod? Umulan na, uminit na, napakataas pa rin ng energy n'yo. Lagi n'yo kaming ginugulat kapag bumibisita kami dito,” she said, greeting the thousands wearing pink.
Artists and actors such as Joel Torre, Ronnie Lazaro, Edu Manzano, Ogie Diaz, Agot Isidro, and Nikki Valdez were present. Local bands Mayonnaise and Rivermaya also performed for the supporters.
Celebrities who back the tandem couldn’t hide how proud they were of the Pink army.
Janine Gutierrez only had a few words, but everyone knew what she meant.
Robredo, during her speech, promised that the Negros Guimaras-Iloilo Bridge shall be completed should she win the presidency. She plans on reviving the Negros Island Region and the sugar industry roadmap as well.
Robredo won Negros Occidential in 2016 with over 590,000 votes.
Isang Pilipinas, a group supporting mayors Isko Moreno and Sara Duterte’s presidential and vice-presidential candidacies, laid out in detail why they think the two would be best to run the country.
Lead convenor Vivian Velez believes that the tandem can only benefit the country because they are both mayors with tremendous executive experience.
“Both of them are mayors. I believe in the theory that the pragmatic approach to deal with crisis and uncertainty, it would be mayors. That I think would be the best solution para sa problema natin,” she said in a press conference.
Because they are mayors, Moreno and Duterte have the capability of solving problems much quicker, she added.
“The mayors are the best people to run this country. Kailangan direct solving. Nakita namin yan kay Isko [at] Sara,”
As a die-hard Duterte supporter, Velez thinks Sara has the best chances of continuing her father’s policies.
“Si Sara Duterte assurance [yung] continuity. The best person who can continue the legacy [of Pres. Rodrigo Duterte] would be Sara Duterte. Siya yung ating continuity.“
Filmmaker Edith Fider admitted that Moreno’s vice-presidential candidate Dr. Willie Ong is a decent pick but he lacks the right attributes to be second in command. She sees the Isko-Sara tandem as the better team to deal with issues bigger than the pandemic.
“Kahit mahal namin si Doc Willie Ong, alam namin may kalalagyan siya. Kailangan ng Isko-Sara tandem kasi ang haharapin natin ay mas mabigat na problema kaysa sa pandemya. Among the presidentiables, tanging si Isko at Sara lamang ang may mga resibo sa pagiging mayor nila sa kanilang mga bayan,”
On top of that, Moreno and Duterte are much younger and more “energetic” compared to their rivals.
“Sila ay bata, energetic, makabago ang pag-iisip, at mabilis kumilos,” she added.
For the old, enthusiastic, and heavyset convenor, Moreno already won him over when he saw how his leadership positively impacted the city of Manila.
“Nakita namin ang performance niya sa Manila. Kaya yun ang naging resulta ng botohan ng ‘Ikaw Muna Pilipinas’ upang suportahan si Isko,” Head of the group Parents Enabling Parents Phillip Piccio meanwhile praised Moreno and Duterte’s advocacy for coveted equality in the country.
“Ang nagustuhan ko [sa tandem] yung pagkapantaypantay ng bawat tao. Regardless of what religion you believe in, no barriers. Yun ang tunay na pagkakaisa,” he said.
“Sinabi niya [Isko Moreno] sa akin na he will support the modernization of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Kung magiging modernized ang ating kapulisan, kahit ang West Philippine Sea, kayang protektohan,” he continued.
Fr. Nathaniel Mariano finished the event by highlighting Moreno’s ability to work with anyone, even the opposition.
“Si Yorme, kung sino man ang bise presidente, kaya niyang pakisamahan. He can work with anyone,” he said.
After a turnout of 47,000 at the Kakampink rally in Cavite on March 4, Google Trends had Vice President Leni Robredo as the most searched presidential candidate for the May 9 elections.
43 percent of the searches were about Robredo, around 26 percent were about former senator Bongbong Marcos, Sen. Manny Pacquiao, and Manila Mayor Isko Moreno were tied at 13%; while Sen. Panfilo Lacson only got 5 percent share of the searches.
The number one related search to Robredo was Gov. Jonvic Remulla of Cavite, a known Marcos supporter who promised the dictator’s son he’d secure him at least 800,000 votes from the province.
Cavite Rep. Crispin Remulla, the brother of Jonvic accused the attendees of the Pink General Trias rally of being paid and recruited.
Meanwhile, the top search in the vice presidential race was Sara Duterte with 46 percent, trailed by Kiko Pangilinan with 30%, Tito Sotto with 14%, Walden Bello with 7%, and Lito Atienza with 3%.
Results were based on search queries from the previous week.
The top searches when it came to issues were education, drugs, economy, tourism, poverty, and justice, in that order.
The news only made the Kakampinks more confident in Robredo’s chances of becoming the next and the third woman commander-in-chief.
There's a lot to unpack on what data scientists are now saying, but here's the gist: Len Robredo has already overtaken BBM in net social media sentiment and Google trends kaya posibleng naungusan na ni Robredo si BBM sa next survey. Let's keep working hard! Ipanalo natin to!
Robredo could possibly mirror what Barack Obama has achieved when he ran for the presidency as an unknown senator.
Robredo's lead in Google trends mirrors Obama's in 2008. Americans wanted to know him. It's easy to use this as proof that Google trends predetermine election winners, but no. Like Obama who was somewhat unknown then, Robredo is still not as familiar as Marcos in some provinces. pic.twitter.com/gyVPPnxom6
Ayon sa prediction ng GOOGLE trends it'a ROBREDO WIN sila ang nagpredict ng panalo ng maraming naupo na kandidato maging ke du30 nong 2016 kaya wag lang MADAYA panalo na si ROBREDO
Like a full-blown storm that keeps its strength even after landfall, BGYO continues charging forward to the global stage as it accomplishes outstanding feats; not too many newbie groups can achieve.
The P-POP phenomenon continues to go ablaze this year. That it won't be surprised if half a dozen or more new groups join the craze. At the forefront of this trend is BGYO, who, after a little over a year since their debut, has victoriously emerged as among the most successful local idol groups today. Launched on January 29, last year, the five-piece boy group composed of Gelo, Akira, JL, Nate, and Mikki, has pulled off a staggering level of success, with numerous recognitions and milestones now under their belt.
BGYO debuted with their song 'He's Into Her' at no. 2 on Billboard's now-defunct Next Big Sound chart in May 2021, making the group one of only a few local groups to penetrate the social media-driven chart. Three months later, they did again, and this time they even captured the top spot, setting an exceptionally rare feat for a local group.
Since the start of their foray into the P-POP scene, BGYO has so far released at least seven singles, five of which are included on their debut studio album 'The Light'. Their first single, The Light, served as their launching song, which pretty introduced the goals they are trying to fulfill. “The Light” is a powerful genre-bending OPM track infused with R&B, progressive hip hop, and electronic music elements. The track talked about reaching for your dreams, which the group can accomplish in barely a year. More than half a dozen singles and a powerful debut album later, BGYO is a completely realized dream, but it's destined to get bigger.
In November last year, the group staged its first major concert. One month later, they pulled off their first international performance at the 1MX Dubai concert, marking the first time they performed in front of an international crowd.
This year, BGYO members got introduced as H&M campaign new faces. It has affirmed the group's power to inspire and move people towards choosing the ‘right’ personal styles.
There’s no doubt that Mikki, Nate, JL, Akira, and Gelo as five of the country’s prettiest local idol group members. They get selected as endorsers of a known global brand, which speaks volumes of their incredible star power.
As one of the country's fastest-emerging recording superstars, BGYO is poised to take its claim to the PPOP domination. They're like a full-blown storm that continues to gather strength and sustain its forward momentum. They're unstoppable. In their first year alone, the group's songs have been streamed more than 10 million times on Spotify, and their music videos have amassed more than 12 million views on YouTube.
Their first music video, The Light, alone has 4.5 million views now.
BGYO's titanic accomplishments felt inescapable, really–and perhaps, in some way, already behind schedule. The amount of success they have so far earned is a screaming testament to their overwhelming hard work in the past four years since its five members started as Star Hunt trainees. In its second year and the years to come, BGYO's continued surge won't come as a surprise, given the dedication and commitment they always give to reach their dreams. Success is the fruit they will continue to harvest in their sustained quest to stardom.
Back End News posted: " Following successive product launches and the introduction of technological innovations, technology brand Infinix plans to offer more diverse value-for-money products this year. The company is specifically looking at the 5G market as more smartphones are"
Following successive product launches and the introduction of technological innovations, technology brand Infinix plans to offer more diverse value-for-money products this year. The company is specifically looking at the 5G market as more smartphones are now equipped with the technology. "5G is an exciting technology set to revolutionize many areas of our lives," said Cooper […]
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Cannabis News World posted: "CANNANNEW REPORT That's a mouthful!!! VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Feb. 09, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Core One Labs Inc. (CSE: COOL), (OTC: CLABF), (Frankfurt: LD6, WKN: A3CSSU) (the "Company" or "Core One") is pleased to announce that follow"
CANNANNEW REPORT That's a mouthful!!! VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Feb. 09, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Core One Labs Inc. (CSE: COOL), (OTC: CLABF), (Frankfurt: LD6, WKN: A3CSSU) (the "Company" or "Core One") is pleased to announce that following its milestone announcement that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Vocan Biotechnologies Inc. (Vocan), has successfully engineered a novel recombinant production system for biologically synthesized (biosynthesized) psilocybin, and has filed for patent protection of its groundbreaking intellectual property (see Core One's press release dated January 21, 2022), its team of scientist continue to make progress and are in the process of optimizing at scale production capacity. Scaled up production of the Company's groundbreaking biosynthetic psilocybin, and an approval of the Company's patent application will further Core One and Vocan's journey to becoming a significant player in the provision of cost effective psilocybin and has the potential to significantly change the face of psychedelic-based mental health care and patient access to alternative treatments around the globe. Psilocybin is a psychedelic compound that is showing enormous promise in treating addiction and many mental health disorders; and the success of this game-changing patent propels Core One to the forefront of the rapidly expanding psychedelics industry, eliminating barriers for psychedelic treatments and research such as exorbitant costs and lack of availability and supply. Currently, most companies use chemically synthesized psilocybin as the only available cGMP compliant product that is available in large volumes. The chemical process carries significant costs and is less efficient when compared to a biologically derived psilocybin. Under the leadership of Dr. Jan Burian, Vocan's Chief Scientist, and Dr. Robert EW Hancock, Vocan's CEO, the team's ground-breaking psilocybin production method utilizes the well-established industrial process of fermentation and therefore can be scaled up while consistently producing a high-quality cGMP product. The process turns bacteria into a biological factory to produce synthesized psilocybin, cutting cost…
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Christina Macpherson posted: " US to help Philippines develop nuclear power program; groups push renewable energy instead Angelica Y. Yang - Philstar.com March 14, 2022 MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines and the United States signed a memorandum of understanding las"
March 14, 2022 MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines and the United States signed a memorandum of understanding last week to work together to develop the Philippines' nuclear power program.
The MOU was signed by Energy Undersecretary Gerardo Erguiza and US Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Bonnie Jenkins.............
The EO, which was signed on February 28, instructs the DOE to develop and implement the nuclear energy program under the Philippine Energy Plan, a comprehensive energy blueprint which details the energy sector's goals in achieving a clean energy future.
Duterte said in the EO that nuclear power is a "viable alternative source" of baseload power that can bridge the gap between rising demand and supply.
The EO also instructed an interagency body — the Nuclear Energy Program Inter-Agency Committee —to study the possible use of the $2.2-billion Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, which was mothballed and never refueled.
Public policy think tank InfraWatch PH earlier told Philstar.com that Duterte's EO comes a little too late as he has only a few months left in his term. This leaves the fate of his nuclear push to his successor who may choose to adopt or reverse the new energy policy.
'Nuclear will not solve climate crisis'
Manila-based climate and energy policy group Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities said that, contrary to the government's claims, nuclear is no better than coal.
"Nuclear is even worse than coal for energy security and self-sufficiency. It has always been plagued with protracted construction timelines and gargantuan costs that require constant massive subsidies," ICSC Executive Director Red Constantino told Philstar.com over email on Monday.
"[Nuclear] can only operate on a single level and cannot be ramped up or down. It is extremely rigid and completely unfit to respond to the country's load profile," he said.
Constantino said the DOE should take its power sector modernization goals more seriously and prioritize flexible generation by ramping up support for renewable energy.
Last week, activists from environmental group Greenpeace Philippines marched to the DOE and called the push for nuclear power a "questionable energy policy which is the last thing the country needs."
The protest took place on March 11 during the commemoration of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011, which killed at least 20,000 people, contaminated 240,000 square kilometers of land and caused $235 billion (around P12 trillion) of damage.
"Greenpeace...maintains that nuclear power will not solve the climate crisis. The entire nuclear power plant life cycle contributes significantly to climate change, and these facilities take an average of 10 years to build," the group said in a statement.
Citing findings by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Greenpeace said humanity only has until 2030 to keep the global temperature rise within 1.5 degrees Celsius.
"Setting up the country's nuclear program and building a plant will take decades. Meanwhile, Filipinos will continue to suffer from climate impacts," it said.
WTX News posted: "China to send economic aid to Russia in Ukraine conflict, US officials fear The Guardian says China has already decided to provide Russia with economic and financial support during its war on Ukraine and is contemplating sending military supplies such as"
The Guardian says China has already decided to provide Russia with economic and financial support during its war on Ukraine and is contemplating sending military supplies such as armed drones, US officials fear.
Cannabis News World posted: "CANNANNEW REPORT LOS ANGELES, Feb. 09, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Irwin Naturals Inc. (CSE: IWIN) (OTC: IWINF) (FRA: 97X) ("Irwin" or the "Company") announced today it has taken the first step in the execution of its ketamine clinic rollup strategy – a mo"
CANNANNEW REPORT LOS ANGELES, Feb. 09, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Irwin Naturals Inc. (CSE: IWIN) (OTC: IWINF) (FRA: 97X) ("Irwin" or the "Company") announced today it has taken the first step in the execution of its ketamine clinic rollup strategy – a move the Company says is motivated by an intention to become the world's largest chain of psychedelic mental health clinics. This first acquisition target is Midwest Ketafusion ("Ketafusion") in Iowa City, Iowa. Irwin Naturals Emergence ("Irwin Emergence"), a wholly owned subsidiary of Irwin, and the shareholders of Midwest Ketafusion, LLC have entered into a definitive agreement ("Agreement") dated February 7, 2022, pursuant to which Irwin Emergence will acquire all of the issued and outstanding securities of Ketafusion. Irwin's CEO, Klee Irwin, said, "The leadership showed by Ketafusion in this space, and the access to care they are providing their fellow Iowans make this first upcoming acquisition in our national roll-up all the more exciting. Additionally, with a large proportion of the consideration being back-end loaded and earn-out based, the sellers, who will remain with the business, are aligned with our shareholders' interests. With each acquired clinic to be renamed Irwin Naturals Emergence, we are the world's first household name to enter the space and are executing towards becoming the largest clinic chain in the world." Irwin continued, "We see ourselves as gaining the national brand first mover advantage and will be leveraging our brand equity and status as a cult brand to expand rapidly as society embraces the psychedelic mental health revolution. This is important because, as a psychedelic, ketamine is a stunningly effective treatment for many mental health disorders. However, some Americans are not clear on its legality, safety and effectiveness. With nearly 80% of US households familiar with the trusted Irwin brand, it will be the welcome face of a…
Christina Macpherson posted: " US Republican senators say they will not back Iran nuclear deal, Aljazeera, 14 Mar 22,Republican lawmakers oppose, but lack power to block, an agreement with Tehran sought by US President Joe Biden. Forty-nine of the 50 Republicans in the US Senate have "
US Republican senators say they will not back Iran nuclear deal, Aljazeera, 14 Mar 22,
Republican lawmakers oppose, but lack power to block, an agreement with Tehran sought by US President Joe Biden. Forty-nine of the 50 Republicans in the US Senate have announced they will not back a new nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, underscoring their party's opposition to attempts to revive a 2015 accord amid fears multilateral nuclear talks might collapse.
In a statement on Monday, the Republican senators pledged to do everything in their power to reverse an agreement that does not "completely block" Iran's ability to develop a nuclear weapon, constrain its ballistic missile programme and "confront Iran's support for terrorism"
............................ US lawmaker Rand Paul was the only Senate Republican who did not sign Monday's statement. In an emailed statement, he said, "Condemning a deal that is not yet formulated is akin to condemning diplomacy itself, not a very thoughtful position."
No congressional Republicans supported the 2015 nuclear agreement between Tehran and the so-called "P5+1" countries, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the US, UK, Russia, China and France – plus Germany. A handful of Democrats also objected.
US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said during the weekend that Biden administration officials believe an agreement is near and "we would like all of the parties – including Russia, which has indicated it's got some concerns – to bring this to close."..............................
The 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act gives Congress the right to review an agreement, but lawmakers are unlikely to be able to kill a deal outright after failing to do so in 2015 when Republicans controlled Congress.
Democrats now hold slim majorities in both the House of Representatives and Senate and are unlikely to turn against Biden in sufficient numbers to stop a major initiative like an Iran deal.
Nevertheless, the Republican opposition ensures Congress cannot adopt any nuclear agreement with Iran as a permanent treaty, which requires a two-thirds vote in favour, rendering it vulnerable to abandonment by a future Republican president.
WTX News posted: "'They're lying to you': Russian TV employee interrupts news broadcast The Guardian says an employee on Russia's state Channel One television has interrupted the channel's main news programme with an extraordinary protest against Vladimir Putin's invasion"
The Guardian says an employee on Russia's state Channel One television has interrupted the channel's main news programme with an extraordinary protest against Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
Christina Macpherson posted: " 11 years on, Fukushima morass still poses dangerBy KARL WILSON in Sydney | CHINA DAILY 2022-03-14 ''............................... Little progress has been made on the most pivotal and hardest work of decommissioning the Fukushima Daiichi pow"
11 years on, Fukushima morass still poses danger By KARL WILSON in Sydney | CHINA DAILY 2022-03-14 ''............................... Little progress has been made on the most pivotal and hardest work of decommissioning the Fukushima Daiichi power plant－how to remove the nuclear residue from the meltdown. The plant owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co, has said it could take another 30 years to retrieve undamaged fuel, remove resolidified melted fuel debris, disassemble the reactors and dispose of contaminated cooling water.The International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning of Japan estimated that the nuclear waste mix from melted fuel rods and other materials in pressure vessels that melted during the accident could weigh as much as 880 metric tons.
Hiroaki Koide, a retired researcher at Kyoto University, said the Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Co's 30-40 year plan for decommissioning the reactors could not be achieved because it would be "impossible even in 100 years" to remove the large amount of scattered nuclear debris, which would have to be sealed in a "sarcophagus".
Moreover, 11 years after the disaster, the reactors at Fukushima are still being cooled down, said associate professor Nigel Marks of the physics and astronomy department at Curtin University, Western Australia.
"And this will continue for many years to come. A vast number of large storage tanks have been built on the site, but space is rapidly running out."
Despite resistance from locals and neighboring countries, the Japanese government is sticking with its decision in April last year to discharge the nuclear contaminated water into the sea starting in spring next year. About 1 million tons of radioactive wastewater, now stored in 1,000 tanks on the site, was used to cool the reactors and contains radioactive cesium, strontium, tritium and other radioactive substances................ http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202203/14/WS622e7e15a310cdd39bc8c4ef.html
WTX News posted: "Teen accused of Logan Mwangi murder had a 'desire for violence', jury told The Guardian says a teenager who is among three people accused of murdering a five-year-old boy had a "desire for violence" and threatened to kill the child and members of his fos"
The Guardian says a teenager who is among three people accused of murdering a five-year-old boy had a "desire for violence" and threatened to kill the child.
Moon Syouri posted: " Ukraine war LIVE: Putin's troops 'walk into ambush' as Russians sitting ducks against Kyiv The Daily Express: RUSSIAN troops have been met with strong resistance as they "walked into an ambush" on their advances to Ukraine's capital, Kyiv. Drone f"
WTX News posted: "India court in Karnataka upholds ban on hijabs in colleges The Guardian says a court in India has ruled that wearing a hijab is not an essential principle of Islam, in a setback to Muslim students who were demanding the right to wear the headscarf in col"
The Guardian says a court in India has ruled that wearing a hijab is not an essential principle of Islam, in a setback to Muslim students who were demanding the right to wear the headscarf.
Meta is facing prosecution in South Africa, after the country's competition regulator, the Competition Commission, found as uncompetitive its intention to block the government's startup GovChat and #LetsTalk from using its WhatsApp Business API.
The watchdog, which has been investigating claims of unfair conduct against the startup since March 2021, referred Meta (formerly Facebook) for prosecution to the Competition Tribunal, which adjudicates complaints of restrictive practices and abuse of dominance.
In its referral, the regulator recommends that Meta is made to pay the “maximum penalty” – a fine of 10% of the US company's local turnover.
The commission alleges that Meta threatened to block GovChat and #LetsTalk from using its WhatsApp Business API "in or about" July 2020. It adds that Meta imposed unfair restrictions on data usage by the startup, limiting its ability to innovate and develop new products and services that could potentially compete with Meta's products.
"…the terms and conditions governing access to WhatsApp Business API are designed to shield and insulate Facebook from potential competition, such as the potential competition presented by GovChat and enormous data it has been able to harvest which enables it to develop new services and products," said the regulator in a statement.
GovChat was launched in 2018 by the South African government as a citizen engagement platform that uses the WhatsApp Business API to facilitate real-time communication. It now has 8.7 million active users and has processed over 582 million messages, as per government data.
In addition to the platform being a source of alerts and complaints on civic issues — like potholes on roads — GovChat has been used by the government to process social security applications, including for distress support during the Covid pandemic. Over 13.3 million applications have been submitted through the GovChat platform.
The referral for prosecution comes days after competition supervisory bodies from five African countries, including South Africa, signed a memorandum of understanding that would, among other agenda, foster collaborative action against the obstacles that limit the emergence and expansion of African digital platforms. The other parties to the agreement were Egypt, Kenya, Mauritius and Nigeria.
Globally, Meta has been subjected to various kinds of scrutiny for possible anticompetitive behavior. Just last week, the European Commission opened a formal antitrust investigation to assess whether an agreement between Meta and Google, code-name "Jedi-Blue", for online display advertising services may have breached EU competition rules.
The September 2018 Jedi-Blue agreement sought the participation of Meta’s Audience Network in Google’s Open Bidding programme, a move that could potentially exclude other ad tech service providers to "distort competition in markets for online display advertising, to the detriment of publishers, and ultimately consumers," noted the European Commission.
Meanwhile, the US Federal Trade Commission is suing Meta for illegal monopolization, alleging that the social media giant is illegally maintaining its social networking monopoly through anticompetitive actions, including the acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp nearly one decade ago.
When Forerunner Ventures was founded in 2012, traditional brands still reigned supreme, and most of us shopped in physical spaces. Firm founder Kirsten Green, who was earlier an equity research analyst at Banc of America Securities, was maybe more aware than most that this picture was about to dramatically change; over the years, Forerunner invested in a company that delivered cheap razors to people’s doorsteps, a beauty company built atop a devoted community, and a marketplace that matches bewildered shoppers with people who are "expert" in their fields.
Forerunner’s bets have been so prescient in some cases that the young outfit is now managing roughly $2 billion in assets after quietly closing its sixth fund with a whopping $1 billion in capital commitments last month.
Given the team’s success in funding what’s up and coming, we talked with Green last week for a podcast interview about the trends Forerunner is tracking closely right now. Some of what we discussed follows, edited for length and clarity. You can also listen to that chat in its entirety here.
TC: In recent years, per a post you authored recently, Forerunner has become more focused on this trend of creators on Instagram and Substack and other platforms who are reaching audiences directly. Where do you think we are in terms of that trend?
KG: A lot of that thinking, if not most of it, still feels very relevant and active for us today. Thinking about powering the one-to-one opportunity and what it takes to make that viable is multilayered. You start with this idea that anyone who’s got something to say can now be a publisher and put [out content] and charge for it. But the difference between that idea and its execution is a lot, because it’s a lot to do and it’s hard to do. So we try thinking: what are the tools and services and software and community that needs to support the person who is becoming the single entrepreneur, the ‘solopreneur’? There’s a whole ecosystem of efforts that need to be built and trialed and tested and moved forward. I think we’re still early on in the innings of organizing all of that and [producing] the really big, breakout companies.
A number of live-streaming commerce companies have raised significant funding over the last year to sell a wide variety of items. You’ve bet on one, Loupe Tech, a live e-commerce streaming platform built for sports card collectors. Why?
When it comes to discretionary spending, sometimes it’s about the item, but a lot of times it’s about the journey. We had malls that brought lots of stores together to create a dynamic environment . . You [separately see] people on social networks following people and engaging in content. It’s sort of natural kind to think, okay, there’s a shopping component somewhere in here, too. It’s part of the mix of the entertainment and the engagement and the camaraderie that happens. And certainly we’ve seen this in other places in the world, most predominantly in China, where [live-streamed shopping] it’s a huge business.
[Layer into the mix other] this collectibles trend, which is also not new, and the sports memorabilia market [which is] a huge, significant market [the majority of which is still offline] and the founder of Loupe, Eric [Doty]. He comes from Xbox. He has a lot of experience around gamification and game-oriented experiences. He is passionate about the category and really articulated a vision for how to create a great intersection of entertainment and exchange — which is commerce in this case — and maybe even be a third screen for people who are engaging in watching sports or sports activities.
Are you giving much thought these days to the so-called metaverse? Do brands need a metaverse strategy?
The whole metaverse, web3, crypto [universe] of opportunity or conversation is really interesting and really promising. Like most new things, it’s unknown how long it takes to play out or when the mass adoption [reaches] a tipping point. But I definitely believe in it, and I think most companies do [because of the] contributing trends driving it, so with that in mind, I think it’s, ‘Get in there and start experimenting. Get comfortable. Start building muscle in it. Think about what’s right for your business and brand and identify where there are opportunities, [be it for] customer acquisition or customer retention or even to sell new things, because quite frankly, all of those things are probably in play in that universe. It’s not going to come out of the gate as a make-or-break-it [moment] for anyone’s business in 2022. But a few years out, or maybe even closer, it could.
What, if any, related bets have you made on web3-type companies?
We’ve invested in a handful of B2B companies over the last 18 months because of the stage of development of that whole ecosystem. A bunch of them have not been announced. But we think with this web3 evolution, companies can use it to have a future-leading stance on community, on empowerment, maybe even a future product strategy.
I’m imagining a whole new protocol being developed for digital connections. On the infrastructure side, there’s a tremendous amount of opportunity, and that’s not historically where Forerunner has really showed up. We’ve been more on the front line as it relates to the consumer. So I think [our focus is on] what is it going to take to include web2 companies in web3. [To date, much of the activity has] lived in specific corners of the universe [including] NFTs, which, when they hit the radar, may have confused people [regarding] how they worked or why [consumers] should value them. But the idea that there was a good or a service that you could pay money for [by using NFTs] resonated . . . [Now] to make [them] more mainstream, I imagine there needs to be real use cases — something beyond a novelty — and there needs to be much lower friction in how you engage. So the effort to make that happen is essential to getting [web3] mainstream and ubiquitous and valuable, and I think there are a lot of opportunities [in creating] that bridge.
Licious, a Bengaluru-based startup that sells fresh meat, seafood and other fresh animal protein online and which became the nation’s first direct-to-consumer brand to become a unicorn last year, said on Tuesday it has raised an additional $150 million from a set of late-stage investors in a move that appears to be a precursor to startup’s initial public offering.
The round was led by Singapore based Amansa Capital, Kotak PE and Axis Growth Avenues AIF – I. A number of existing investors as well as new set of angel investors including Nithin Kamath and Nikhil Kamath of Zerodha, BoAt's Aman Gupta and Haresh Chawla of True North also participated in the new round.
The new funding — which is an extension to the $52 million Series F disclosed last year — brings Licious’ all-time raise to $488 million, according to insight platform Tracxn.
Licious, which counts Temasek, 3One4 Capital and IIFL among its backers, operates an eponymous e-commerce platform where it sells meat and seafood in over a dozen Indian cities. The startup has built a supply chain network across several Indian cities to be able to procure meat and seafood, keep them fresh and deliver within hours of the order.
It’s among a group of growing startups that is disrupting the meat and seafood category, an area that has largely been unorganized and underserved. Analysts at Bernstein estimate that the meat and seafood market is a $40 billion opportunity.
Captain Fresh, which operates a business-to-business marketplace, earlier this month announced a $50 million fundraise that more than doubled the startup’s valuation in just three months.
“Today, Licious is the highest valued D2C start-up in India. This valuation is a direct outcome of the value that we have created for our stakeholders- investments made towards building the category have borne us rich dividends and have propelled growth for the company and its people,” said Vivek Gupta and Abhay Hanjura, co-founders of Licious, in a joint statement.
“The growing interest of investors- from India and abroad alike is an added assurance that obsession with customers, quality and service standards are the pillars of the best businesses.”
The startup did not disclose any metrics today, but it has been a beneficiary of the surge in direct-to-consumer brands’ popularity amid the pandemic. In October, it said its business had grown by over 500% year-on-year.
Sharp scale up in operations of digital brands in FY21, partly pushed by COVID. (Image and analysis: Bernstein)
"We are excited to partner with Licious, India's #1 D2C brand,” said S Sriniwasan, MD of Kotak Investment Advisors, in a statement.
“Due to Licious' focus on quality and strong execution, its successfully creating a habituated and loyal customer base. We believe under the leadership of Abhay and Vivek, Licious is best positioned to serve the fresh meat and seafood need of India.”
The two investors are leading Bazaar's $70 million Series B funding. Existing backers including Indus Valley Capital, Defy Partners, Acrew Capital, Wavemaker Partners, B&Y Venture Partners and Zayn Capital also participated in the new round, which brings one-and-a-half year old startup's all-time raise to over $100 million.
Bazaar is attempting to build what it calls an "operating system for traditional retail" in Pakistan. It's a $170 billion market that comprises 5 million small, medium-sized and enterprises across the country.
But these merchants are largely unbanked and offline today. Banks and other formal financial institutions don't extend credit to these merchants because they don't have a credit score. This gap has forced many of these shop operators to take loans from shark loan providers.
For those following the South Asia coverage, this challenge will sound very familiar.
Business-to-business e-commerce Udaan, logistics startup ElasticRun, and Dukaan, a startup that is helping shops go online, as well as scores of startups and giants including Reliance and Amazon are solving a similar problem in India.
Bazaar is combining many of these offerings.
The startup's B2B e-commerce marketplace, thanks to its network of a dozen fulfillment facilities, is helping merchants in 21 towns and cities across Pakistan procure items to sell.
These merchants also use the startup's Easy Khata app, which helps them maintain bookkeeping. Bazaar’s financial arm, called Bazaar Credit, is offering these merchants, many of whom operate neighborhood stores, with short-term working capital financing.
Bazaar’s suite of commerce, fintech and supply chain products
Piecing together many of its services makes sense for a startup like Bazaar in Pakistan as it enables the startup to offer a more comprehensive set of values to a merchant and Easy Khata is helping the firm win customers, said Saad Jangda, co-founder of Bazaar, in an interview with TechCrunch.
In August, "we had just started piloting our credit product and at the time we had partnered with a third-party," he said. "Now, our credit product is developed completely in-house and is digitally-enabled that connects to our last mile network. Everything from order generation to credit disbursement to cash collection is done completely by Bazaar," he said.
"We acquire customers through Easy Khata, funnel them through commerce, and once we have enough data on the merchants, we start building a credit product atop of it," he said, adding that the startup has issued thousands of loans in recent months.
Easy Khata has amassed over 2.4 million registered businesses across 500 cities in Pakistan. "But more importantly, Easy Khata is serving as both a core system of records and also helping us launch in new cities," he said.
Merchants have recorded over $10 billion in annualized bookkeeping transaction value on Easy Khata, the startup said. "Our expansion within Pakistan in the last few months is a testament to how crucial Easy Khata is for us," he said.
The startup's last mile network, which was operational in just two cities in August of last year, is now adding three to four cities each month.
"The goal is to keep building for Pakistan. We want to cover more than 100 urban and rural centres across the country and build the largest network in the country so that we can move any category of goods from point A to B whenever and wherever is needed."
The startup plans to deploy the fresh capital to expand to more cities across Pakistan and launch new marketplace categories. It is also working to scale its lending offerings and explore new product lines.
Childhood friends Saad and Hamza reconnected in Dubai a few years ago. At the time, Jawaid was at McKinsey & Company while Jangda was working with Careem as a product manager for ride-hailing and food delivery products. The opportunities they saw in their home nation drove them back to the country to build Bazaar.
"We are thrilled to support Bazaar's vision of building an end-to-end commerce and fintech platform for millions of unbanked and offline merchants in Pakistan," said Christian Jensen, Partner at Dragoneer Investment Group. "Bazaar's pace of geographic expansion and new product development is a testament to the rare talent and culture Hamza and Saad have cultivated at Bazaar."
Meet Motto, a new French startup that plans to offer electric bikes in Paris. Instead of buying those bikes, Motto customers will be able to rent them for a fixed price of €75 per month (around $82 at today's exchange rate).
Customers get Motto-branded electric bikes with a motor in the rear wheel that helps you pedal up to a speed of 25km/h. It has integrated lights, a GPS tracker and an anti-theft system. It features a carbon belt and the battery is removable.
The battery is integrated in the seat tube, meaning that you can access the battery by removing the saddle and taking it with you. There are two different models, a step-over model and a low-step model. The frame is slightly different but everything else is identical.
But Motto doesn't want to stop at hardware. Users aren't just renting a bike, they're subscribing to a service. The monthly subscription fee includes damage and theft insurance, as well as on-demand maintenance and repairs.
When there's something wrong with your Motto bike, you can open the app and request a repair within 48 hours. In the near future, Motto plans to offer a baby carrier and a front rack as subscription add-ons.
Image Credits: Motto
The startup has raised a $4.4 million seed round led by Cassius Family and Founders Future (€4 million). Several business angels are also participating. Before rebranding to Motto, the startup was originally called Bloom — 200 users tested the service in Paris already.
More importantly, the startup competes with public transportation, bike-sharing schemes and buying your own electric bike. The bike-as-a-service model provides many advantages.
First, you don't have to pay a large sum of money upfront. Second, many bike owners don't want to get an electric bike because of thefts. Third, many people want to make sure they can actually use a bike to commute before buying one.
For all these reasons, it's good to see that bike-as-a-service represents another interesting option to get started with bikes. I still believe that we're at the very start of the urban mobility revolution and people will end up using different transportation methods to get from point A to point B — especially in European cities. And many people should consider services like Motto to add an electric bike to their personal transportation mix.
Amazon’s two-year effort to halt a $3.4 billion deal between its estranged partner Future Group and Reliance Retail took a new turn on Tuesday as tens of millions of Indians woke up to find the American e-commerce giant airing its grievances in several newspapers.
Amazon has accused Future Group (which runs the nation’s second largest retail chain), and Reliance Industries (India’s most valuable firm by market cap) of indulging in fraudulent practices, saying the Indian firms did not comply with court orders and recently attempted to “remove the substratum of the dispute.”
As Amazon and Future continue to fight in courts, Reliance last month began taking over several of Future stores after brokering deals with landowners in a move that stunningly blindsided and outwitted the American firm, which has invested over $6.5 billion in its India operations. Cash-strapped Future said in a filing earlier this month that it could not pay rent at many outlets.
“Future Retail, and its partners have consistently acted in violation of the order passed by the emergency arbitrator and reaffirmed by the Arbital Tribunal,” Amazon said in the ad Tuesday titled “Public Notice.”
“It has now come to light that FRL, and its promoters have been attempting to remove the substratum of the dispute by purportedly transferring and alienating FRL’s retail assets comprising the retail stores in favour of the MDA Group.”
The ad adds: “Amazon hereby puts all persons concerned to notice that any attempt by FRL, and its prompters to transfer/dispose/alienate any of its retail assets is in violation of binding orders of the Arbitral Tribunal, which operate as orders of an Indian Court and any party assisting or cooperating in such fraudulent and contumacious actions will be liable for civil and criminal consequences under law.”
Renting cloud infrastructure typically gets cheaper over time, but Google Cloud is bucking this trend today with significant price increases across a number of core services. These increases, which Google announced under the guise of wanting to provide “more flexible pricing models and options,” will go into effect on October 1, 2022. Most developers are not amused.
It’s not all bad news, with some archive storage at rest in Google’s U.S., Europe and Asia regions decreasing in price and there’s a new lower-cost Persistent Disk archive snapshot option, too. The company is also raising its “Always Free Internet” egress from 1GB per month to 100GB per month.
But a number of core storage features, like multi-region Nearline storage, will see increases of 50 percent. Operations pricing for Google Cloud’s Coldline Storage Class A will double from $0.10 per 10,000 operations to $0.20. And while reading data in a Cloud Storage bucket located in a multi-region from a service in a region on the same continent was previously free, it’ll now be priced just like any other data movement between Google Cloud locations on the same continent.
Load balancing, too, will see a price increase now that Google applies an “outbound data processing charge” of $0.008 to $0.012 depending on the region. Ticketmaster would be proud, but Google says this will align its pricing with other leading cloud providers.
“Google Cloud offers innovative solutions to transform businesses, priced in a customer-focused and consistent way. With our pay-as-you-go pricing structure, customers have the ability to better match costs to the services they use. Customers can also more easily compare services between leading cloud providers,” the company writes in an FAQ today.
The marketing teams of the other leading cloud providers are probably having a field day with this announcement, but moving large amounts of data is hard. There’s a reason people talk about data gravity. That’s one area where you can maybe raise prices without having to fear an exodus of customers.
Despite the flowery language in the announcement, Google is clearly aware of the impact these changes will have. Why else would its FAQ note that its customers should “adapt their current usage to better align their applications to these new business models and help mitigate some of the price changes,” after all?
Google — and Google Cloud especially — already suffers from the perception that it will shut down services almost randomly, even though its customers depend on them. Now add to that the perception that it will randomly hike its prices and its sales teams will likely have to work overtime to fulfill the ambitious growth goals the company has surely set for itself.
Hello readers: Welcome to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B.
It was a busy week of “future of transportation” news, and lucky for us, we have a new reporter here at TechCrunch ready to dig into the beat. Reporter Jaclyn Trop has had a long career writing about automotive and other ways we move around this world. She’ll be focused on EVs and in-car tech, so expect more stories like her coverage of Rivian’s earnings, Google’s push into transportation and VR entertainment systems coming to cars.
Some fun Jaclyn Trop facts: she has driven vehicles in more than 50 countries. In her view, the worst traffic she encountered was in China, the scariest roads were in Montenegro and the best roads she has driven on were in Bahrain.
Finally, I am in Austin for a few days to attend SXSW. If you’re in the city, please come meet me at one of two panels I will be moderating. The first one, called “The Sustainable Approach to Mobility for Everyone, Everywhere,” will begin at 2:30 p.m. CT March 14 at The Line Hotel. Speakers will be Ashwin Dias, global head of electrification at Uber, Avinash Rugoobur, president at Arrival and Selika Talbott, founder and CEO of Autonomous Vehicle Consulting.
I will also be moderating a panel at 11:30 a.m. March 16 at the Hilton Austin Downtown. This panel, called “Catalyzing Zero Transportation for All,” will feature Carlos Gonzalez, senior director of global business development at Enel X North America and Adam Gromis, public policy manager of sustainability and environmental impact at Uber.
As always, you can email me at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com to share thoughts, criticisms, opinions or tips. You also can send a direct message to Kirsten at Twitter — @kirstenkorosec.
Micromobbin’
Move over, Gogoro, there’s a new micromobility battery swapping startup in town. Berlin-based Swobbee just raised $6.5 million to expand its battery swapping network, which focuses more on e-bikes and e-scooters than e-mopeds like Gogoro, across Germany and into two new European markets.
Speaking of Gogoro, the company just unveiled a solid state swappable battery prototype, which it hopes will lead to higher capacity and range and lower chance of catching fire.
Baltic e-bike company Ampler has added two new pedal-assist bikes to its five-strong lineup. Each of Ampler’s bikes try to offer something for everyone with variations on size, taste and design. The company is also opening two new showrooms in Amsterdam and Zurich.
Bird is launching a bikeshare integration with Lisbon’s public bike service, Gira. As part of Bird’s Smart Bikeshare integration, now Gira’s e-bikes will be visible on the Bird app.
Joco, the docked electric bike service that launched in New York City last April to rival Citi Bike, is pivoting its business away from consumer rides and toward last-mile delivery. The move comes after Joco was sued by the city for operating a bike share without prior authorization from the NYC Department of Transportation.
Future Motion, makers of the fun-looking Onewheel electric boards, sent their first shipments of the new flagship Onewheel GT units to customers from its San Jose facility.
Lime has partnered with sustainable fintech platformAspiration to offer Lime riders the chance to fund the planting of a tree for each ride. Aspiration members will be incentivized to choose a greener mode of transport with free access to LimePrime for up to 12 months.
Rad Power Bikes has updated its RadMini to be the RadExpand5, the fourth model the company has released in the last six months and a light-weight foldable e-bike. Priced at $1,299, the bike has a rear rack included and new 4-inch wide tires.
The American motorcycle company Indian Motorcycle and the lifestyle adventure brand Super73 have teamed up to create the eFTR Hooligan 1.2, an electric moto-inspired bike at $3,999.99.
Japanese motorcycle manufacturer Yamaha plans to bring its first three e-bikes to market by the end of 2022.
— Rebecca Bellan
Deal of the week
We are watching and waiting with anticipation for this one. I’m talking about Mobileye and its plan to go public.
Mobilieye, which was acquired by Intel for about $15 billion in 2017, filed confidentially for an initial public offering this week. We’re still waiting on lots of information, including the number of shares that will be offered and the price.
What we do know is that Mobileye has a multi-billion-dollar business supplying automakers with computer vision technology that powers advanced driver assistance systems and is taking aim at the robotaxi market as well.
We’ve known about Intel’s plan to free Mobileye for months now. But in this market, the company’s IPO will likely get more attention. Why? Well, as TechCrunch’s Alex Wilhelm and Anna Heim write in their analysis: “with today’s IPO market frozen like a glacier, any and all exit data is welcome. If Mobileye manages a smooth IPO at an attractive price, the company could help shake loose the exit market for tech companies. No single IPO will fix a bear market, but it would help.
In contrast, if Mobileye struggles when it debuts, or its IPO is pushed back due to market conditions, we'll know that the public markets remain pretty darn closed for unicorns and other late-stage startups.”
Other deals that got my attention this week …
Autobrains, the Israeli startup that believes it has figured out how to fix the 1% margin of error typical in self-driving with a "self-learning" approach, raised $19 million. The funding rounds out its Series C at $120 million. The first tranche of this investment was made public in November 2021, and altogether the investor list includes Temasek, previous strategic backers Continental and BMW i Ventures, and new backers Knorr-Bremse AG and VinFast.
AutoFi, the San Francisco-based auto financing startup, raised $85 million with a post-funding valuation of $700 million from Santander Holdings USA, SVB Financial Group, the parent of Silicon Valley Bank, and Crosslink Capital.
Fetch, that built a self-service truck rental app, has raised $3.5 million to help expand their team and operations. The round was led by NextView Ventures, and backed by Knoll Ventures, Zeno Ventures, Nassau Street Ventures and a number of angels.
Forto, the Berlin-based freight forwarding and logistics company, raised $250 million in a round led by technology investment firm Disruptive and including SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2. The funding nearly doubled the Forto’s valuation to $2.1 billion in eight months, Reuters reported.
Nvidia made its first investment in the sidewalk delivery bot sector. The chipmaker and AI company invested $10 million in Uber spinout Serve Robotics. The startup led by Ali Kashani said it will use capital to further expand its sidewalk delivery robot service outside Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Tiger Global Management, one of the most active startup investors, including in the transportation sector, is focusing on early stage. Apparently, partners at the firm have committed $1 billion of their own cash to invest in seed funds that focus on backing the youngest startups, The Information reported, citing unnamed sources.
A chat with Kyle Vogt
A couple of weeks ago, Cruise co-founder Kyle Vogt took back the CEO spot. If you recall, Vogt had vacated the top seat at GM’s self-driving car subsidiary in January 2019 when Dan Ammann took over. Vogt moved into the CTO spot.
At the time, the move seemed to make sense. Cruise had grown from a small startup with 40 employees to more than 1,000 by the time Ammann took over. But in late December 2021, Ammann departed in what insiders told me was a surprising and sudden development.
I caught up with Vogt and thought I would share some of his sentiments and other insights with you. Here are the highlights.
I asked Vogt about why he gave up the CEO spot only to take it back a few years later. He said:
The first few years of Cruise was when it was at a very different stage for the company. It was about building something from scratch and getting it up and running.
When Dan came in and took over as CEO, I thought that was a great move at the time because it helped us get through some of the scaling challenges of going from a few 100 people up to a couple 1,000.
And now, as we’re on the verge of commercialization, and the company is in a very good position and much larger scale, I wanted to reflect on that and make sure that this is the right time for me to take over and that we had the best person possible running Cruise.
I asked him why he wasn’t the right person before and when a founder should and should not step back from the CEO job.
I think a good leader knows when they’ve reached their limits, and the best thing for the company is to bring in someone to augment their skills. I felt like I was over my skis a little bit at the time Dan came on, so it was perfect.
Since then, I’ve been surrounded by really great leaders, both at Cruise and GM, and had a chance to basically catch up to where I think we need to be and perhaps get ahead of the curve a bit.
And so it’s a different situation, but I think the challenging thing for any founder is to step aside when it’s the right thing for the company. And, you see time and time again when people do that, it works out well. And when they don’t, and they wait too long, that works out not so well. So I’m glad I did. I think it was the right move for the company at that stage. And I’m also happy with today’s move.
I asked Vogt what he learned after giving up the CEO position a few years ago.
It’s not rocket science, just experience, you know, like managing teams of a few 1,000 people — the job of a CEO shifts to be more about attracting and retaining world-class leaders. These are VPs or senior VPs and the way you manage VPs and senior VPs is very different than a first line engineering manager.
And so for me, it was just getting experience, learning how to attract and work with really great leaders that expect a high degree of autonomy, a high degree of responsibility, but when given the right environment, will knock it out of the park.
Vogt told me that to go from nothing to “something that can have meaningful change” founders should be thinking on a decade-long timescale. Cruise is approaching that decade mark. So, what does achievement or “building something” mean to Vogt and what can we expect over the next couple of years? His answer:
This is something that we’ve run into a number of times in the AV industry, which is that when things are improving or scaling exponentially, it’s really hard to predict exactly what the Y axis is going to be in two years out.
But what I will say is, what we’re seeing today is really the tip of the iceberg. The amount of development and energy going into just this first commercial deployment that we have in San Francisco was enormous.
And now that the initial deployment has happened, I think you’re going to continue to see a massive rate of progress that was kind of hidden behind the veil before because we hadn’t done our first product launch. That rate of improvement, that increase in scale is going to start happening pretty rapidly now that we’ve crossed that initial threshold and we’ve decided we’re ready for early customers.
Notable news and other tidbits
Autonomous vehicles
The big AV news this week wasn’t a funding round or partnership. Nope, it was a first-of-its-kind final rule from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA) that finally gives autonomous vehicles and vehicles with automated driving functions heir own set of motor vehicle safety standards. The ruling begins to provide clarity on how passenger safety should be defined in vehicles that are designed without features like driver’s seats and steering wheels.
Taking a closer read of this 155-page document, you find all sorts of insights in to companies and what they’re angling for. Ford, GM, Nuro, Tesla, Uber, Waymo and Zoox all made comments in the document (check it out!). Tesla, which currently does not have an autonomous vehicle but sells an advanced driver assistance product for $12,000 that is called “Full Self-Driving” had some of the more interesting arguments.
In one example, Tesla argued that driving controls should include instances where manual controls may be removable, or “locked” or where the vehicle may be operated remotely by portable steering controls within the vehicle, such as cell phones or tablet.”
NHTSA disagreed “stating the new definition is meant to encompass traditional driving controls, not future controls that have not yet been developed.”
Kodiak Robotics, the autonomous trucking startup, partnered with Ceva Logistics to deliver freight autonomously between Dallas-Forth Worth and Austin and Dallas-Fort Worth and Oklahoma City.
Finally, I recommend reading this well-reported story from Wired about Rafaela Vasquez, one of the central figures in the Uber self-driving crash that occurred in Tempe, Arizona in March 2018.
Electric vehicles
I have resisted giving Elon Musk his own category in this newsletter, but with so much news coming from him and his companies, perhaps I should. This week, the big Elon news (besides that he apparently has another child with former partner Grimes) is his efforts to back out of a 2018 settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The settlement is tied to his infamous tweet in 2018 that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private. Musk’s lawyer Alex Spiro made two filings this week. One asked a federal judge to terminate the consent decree, an agreement with the SEC that among other things required some of his tweets be pre-approved by a lawyer. The filing argues that the SEC’s oversight borders on micromanagement and continues to infringe on Musk’s freedom of expression.
The second and separate filing disputed SEC’s initial claims that Musk defrauded investors with the tweet. Musk claims he was forced to settle with the SEC because it threatened the viability of Tesla as well as his numerous other companies, including The Boring Company, Neuralink and SpaceX.
ok, moving on to other EV news …
EVs could get a lot more expensive thanks to surging nickel prices, according to a recent Morgan Stanley research note.
Electric Last Mile Solutionshas problems. Lots of problems, including that the SEC has opened an investigation into the company and an impending cash crunch.
Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) are collaborating with Ford Motor and GM (in separate pilots) to test how the automakers’ EVs can provide backup power for customers’ homes in the California utility’s service area.
People
May Mobility, the AV technology startup, named Manik Dhar as its first chief commercial officer. Dhar previously served as chief revenue officer at data-annotation firm CloudFactory. He also had stints at ZÅ«m, Google and Orace.
The company also added Seiji Miyasaka, president of SPARX Capital Investments, and Yosuke Tsuruta, vice president of dealer experience and mobility at Toyota Motor North America, to its board. Masaru Kusutani of Tokio Marine Holdings Inc., and Takamichi Kono of Toyota Tsusho Corporation are also joining as board observers.
Scale AI appointed Plaid co-founder, William Hockey, to the company’s board of directors. Hockey, the co-founder of Plaid, is joining to will help the Scale team expand products to meet growing customer demand and support more data types and use cases across industries, including finance, e-commerce, transportation and logistics and government, according to the company.
Waze appointed Yannis Simaiakis as its new chief strategy and insights officer. He was previously at Via and McKinsey and Co.
TC Sessions: Mobility 2022
Join us on May 18-20 for TC Sessions: Mobility. Whether you're an early or even late-stage founder, an investor, engineer or builder, or you're focused on the policies and ethics of new mobility technologies, this event is for you. Plus, you’ll get hands-on with the latest autonomous, electric and flying vehicles!
Employee sentiment can be hard to gauge, even at smaller businesses. This can lead to burnout and attrition, when managers least expect it. inFeedo wants to solve that problem by acting as a bridge between workers and their managers, with surveys performed through a chatbot called Amber, which inFeedo refers to as a "Chief Listening Officer." The company announced today it has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Jungle Ventures, with participation from Tiger Global and returning investors like Bling Capital.
This brings inFeedo's total raised since the U.S.-headquartered company was founded in 2016 to $16 million. Part of the funding will be used for the company's second ESOP buyback for all employees. Other investors in the round included Zeta founder Bhavin Turakhia; Gainsight co-founder Sreedhar Peddineni; Freshworks chief human resources officer Suman Gopalan; and Ankur Warikoo.
Amber, inFeedo’s chatbot
inFeedo's chatbot Amber is available in more than 100 languages and customers include a wide range of companies in terms of sizes and sector: Samsung, Xiaomi, Lenovo, TATA, Godrej, Bharti, Unacademy, Paytm, OYO, Lenovo, JD.ID., Tiket.com, Mediacom, Sunlife, BukuWarung and Aboitiz. In total, Amber is used by 30,000 employees in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. inFeedo has 175 enterprise clients in 60 countries, especially Southeast Asia, India and the U.S., and it plans to speed up its go-to-market plans in North America with its new funding.
Tanmaya Jain, who founded inFeedo with Varun Puri, told TechCrunch the idea for the platform was planted when the two were still at school. "Both Varun and I came from liberal schools and the general concept of a university was a big culture shock. People were encouraged to follow a template rather than think, and new ideas were often ignored, shot down or lost." They found that this continued at workplaces, and that employees often felt "neglected, under-appreciated and were afraid to open up and share honest feedback with managers, which led to disengagement and attrition."
After doing research, the two realized that companies do care about employee sentiment, but struggle to stay on top of it. "When you have an HR:employee ratio of 1:300, 40% of their time is spent manually tracking, collecting and analyzing feedback and it becomes humanly impossible to give employees the voice they need," Jain said. While many organizations use annual or pulse surveys, inFeedo was created to standardize surveys across domains and cultures, he added.
Amber also builds connections with employees by remembering context from previous chats. Employees can engage with the chatbot as often as they like, but Jain said they typically have three to four chats with Amber in year, and each conversation is about 8 questions long and takes no more than two and a half minutes to answer.
The new funding will be used to ship new products over the next two years, with the "vision of an all-in-one employee experience platform with predictive people analytics that involve 0 effort HR/IT," said Jain. inFeedo also plans to quadruple its revenue and double its team, and is currently hiring for 140 remote roles, especially marketing, product, engineering and sales in Southeast Asia, India and the United States.
Ireland’s evasive response to a major security complaint filed against Google’s adtech the year the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into application is the target of a new lawsuit — which accuses the Data Protection Commission (DPC) of years of inaction over what the complainants assert is “the largest data breach ever”.
Today local press in Ireland reported that the Irish High Court has agreed to hear the suit.
The litigation has been prepared by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) whose senior fellow, Johnny Ryan, is named as the plaintiff.
At issue is the DPC’s response to a long-running complaint about Google’s role in the high velocity trading of web users’ personal data to determine which ads get served — and, more specifically, the lack of attention the data-trading systems of the tracking-based ad targeted advertising industry pay to security. (Security, of course, being a key principal of the EU’s flagship data protection regime.)
The ICCL’s suit thus accuses the DPC of a failure to act on what it couches as a “massive Google data breach”.
Conservative estimate: Google does this billions of times, every day.
Ryan will be familiar to anyone who’s been following adtech’s mounting legal woes in the Europe — as the driving force behind a series of complaints and lawsuits, since 2018, which have targeted the high velocity trading of people’s data for real-time ad auctions (aka, real-time bidding; or RTB).
A former adtech insider turned whistleblower, Ryan has amped up pressure on the industry for reform through a series of strategic GDPR complaints. But, more recently, his complaints have increasingly targeted the DPC itself.
In September 2020, for example, he published a dossier of evidence highlighting how the online ad-targeting industry profiles internet users' intimate characteristics without their knowledge or consent — calling out the DPC for ongoing inaction over the RTB security complaint.
He has also lodged a complaint with the European Commission that’s led to an ombudsperson stepping in to look into the EU’s own high level monitoring of the (decentralized) application of the GDPR, which relies upon agencies in each Member State to do the graft of investigating and enforcing violations of the law.
On the 2018 Google adtech complaint, the DPC has — so far — announced some procedural steps.
Following Ryan’s original September 2018 complaint, which named both Google and the online ad industry body the IAB Europe (as two key players in the RTB system), Ireland opened a formal inquiry into Google’s adtech in May 2019 — as the regulator is the lead EU watchdog for Google.
However Ireland did not open an inquiry based on the substance of Ryan’s complaint; rather it opened what’s known as a own volition inquiry — saying it would seek to “establish whether processing of personal data carried out at each stage of an advertising transaction is in compliance with the relevant provisions of the GDPR, including the lawful basis for processing, the principles of transparency and data minimisation, as well as Google's retention practices”, as it put it at the time.
Notably, the DPC did not say its inquiry would interrogate Google’s role in RTB through a security lens — despite the core of Ryan’s complaint being that a system that ‘functions’ by broadcasting what can be highly sensitive data about people (browsing habits, device IDs, location etc), right across the Internet in order that it can be passed to scores of intermediaries, with no way for the users who are being tracked and profiled to control who receives their information or what gets done with it once it’s been fired out there, is literally the opposite of secure.
So that’s what Ryan, via the ICCL, is now pressing for: The lawsuit aims to force Ireland to investigate the security of RTB; an issue the regulator has so far seemed keen to avoid.
While RTB has faced a number of other GDPR complaints, in relation to issues like the legal basis for processing people’s data in the first place, Ryan’s complaint intentionally zeroed in on security — as it seemed to offer the clearest route to demonstrating that something was very rotten in the state of adtech, as he explained to TechCrunch back in 2018.
“I’m trying to be as efficient as possible with every bit of litigation that we launch,” Ryan tells us now. “For 3.5 years I have asked the Irish Data Protection Commission to investigate and act on the biggest data breach ever recorded. And it has not done so and as a result of that every European has been exposed to this.”
“The DPC is really good at muddying things,” he adds. “This is a really nice, crisp, clear example of the DPC having Europe-wide responsibility for a really big issue that affects everybody — everyone — and it’s not some small thing. And they haven’t done anything. So there isn’t really any thing that I could do — we have to sue them.”
“If they don’t act on this, they may as well not exist,” he concludes.
Commenting on the suit in a statement, Liam Herrick, executive director of ICCL, added: "We are concerned that the rights of individuals across the EU are in jeopardy, because the DPC has failed to investigate Google's RTB system over three and half years since first notified by Johnny Ryan in 2018. The issue at stake here affects the rights of every European and we are going to court to see that digital rights are protected. Repeated attempts to get the DPC to take up this rights violation have failed."
Last month, a flagship ad industry framework that was also targeted in complaints attached to RTB, aka the IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) — which is routinely served to web users in the form of a ‘privacy choices’ pop-up, asking people to consent to their data to be used for ad-targeting in real-time ad auctions — was found by Belgium’s data protection authority to be in breach of the GDPR. (As was the IAB itself.)
The IAB has been given a few months to find a fix for a very long list of violations — and some privacy experts argue this is likely an impossible task, given the systemic violations the TCF plugs into (and for which RTB is the core aim).
The Belgian authority was acting on other, similar RTB complaints to Ryan’s — which had been filed locally. (The IAB is overseen by Belgian’s regulator so Ireland would not be expected to lead on that branch of his complaint. Albeit, Ryan also accuses Ireland of failing to pass on his original complaint to Belgium as the GDPR’s one-stop-shop mechanism would surely intend.)
The laundry list of failures identified by the Belgian DPA with regards to the IAB’s TCF very much features security — with breaches of the security of processing; integrity of personal data; data protection by design and default among those listed in its final decision earlier this year.
Yet, despite security being clearly identified as a problem with a flagship industry framework that plugs into RTB (and, more than that, is intended to feed the system as a key strategic piece of adtech apparatus), the DPC’s still ongoing investigation of Google’s adtech — using its own terms of reference — does not mention the ‘S’ word.
In a timeline chronicling what the ICCL’s press release couches as “3 ½ years of inaction”, the civil liberties organization writes that on January 12 of this year the regulator finally said it had written a "statement of issues" of what it will investigate, vis-a-vis the Google complaint, but that statement “excludes data security — the critical issue of the complaint”.
It’s not clear why the DPC has chosen to carve out security from its probe of Google’s adtech.
Its plentiful critics would surely have thoughts on that. (Albeit Ryan says he has “no idea about their motives” when asked for a view — suggesting “many people see conspiracy where there is merely cock-up” and “we do not know why there is this persistent inertia” — hence “that’s why we need an independent review”.)
Reached for comment on the ICCL’s lawsuit, deputy commissioner Graham Doyle declined wider remarks — saying only that there’s “not much to say at this stage beyond the fact that our investigation is progressing”.
Ireland’s data protection regulator continues to attract trenchant criticism over its circuitous (some might say labyrinthine) approach to GDPR enforcement — especially in regards to cross-border complaints against major tech giants like Google and Facebook.
Civil society, consumer protection and digital and privacy rights groups and individual experts have all blasted the regulator for years for dragging its feet — or simply avoiding — properly investigating a string of major complaints and concerns, from systemic privacy and consent abuses to location tracking violations or indeed RTB’s massive security question; so basically the sorts of systemic issues which — if confirmed by investigation — implicate equally massive consumer harms that scale right across the bloc.
That also means these are the sorts of complaints that, were they to actually be enforced, could force wholesale reform of certain types of privacy-hostile data-mining business models.
It’s notable that the handful of final decisions the DPC has issued against tech giants to date, since the GDPR begun being applied in May 2018, have had to go through an objection resolution process baked into the regulation — after other EU data protection agencies rejected Ireland’s preference for lesser penalties (see its 2020 security breach decision against Twitter; and its 2021 transparency decision against WhatsApp).
A draft DPC decision against Facebook which was made public by the complainant (against the DPC’s wishes) last fall also looks laughably lenient. (That complainant also filed a criminal complaint against the regulator in November — accusing the DPC of using "procedural blackmail" to try to gag it.)
It’s not clear how quickly the ICCL lawsuit against the DPC might progress and potentially accelerate Ireland’s GDPR enforcement of adtech. That may depend upon which of Ireland’s courts chooses to hear it.
The regulator has faced a number of other legal challenges to its processes in recent years — including a couple in relation to a very long running complaint against Facebook’s EU-US data transfers, one component of which it settled in January 2021 by agreeing to swiftly resolve the complaint. (Albeit, a final decision on that issue is still pending.)
The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office, meanwhile, has also faced criticism over adtech inaction and litigation over RTB complaints (starting in late 2020) — after it closed a similar complaint without taking any enforcement action against the adtech industry (despite publicly acknowledging systemic lawlessness).
However in that case the legal action only went to a tribunal which ultimately decided it lacked the jurisdiction to assess the validity of the outcome the ICO had claimed (but which the plaintiffs had sought to challenge).
A suit against the DPC that’s heard in court should not face such powers-based uncertainties — so if the ICCL and Ryan prevail in their arguments the Irish regulator could face an order to investigate the security of Google’s adtech that it can’t simply ignore; and, essentially, be forced to enforce a security-minded clean up of adtech. Which is quite a thought.
Google was contacted for comment on the ICCL lawsuit.
Vira Health, a U.K. startup that offers personalized digital therapeutics for women going through menopause, has closed a second round of funding — taking $12 million from lead investor Octopus Ventures, along with participation from U.S.-based VC firm Optum Ventures, as it gears up to hop over the pond.
Existing investors in the April 2020-founded business also joined in the latest round of financing. Vira’s £1.5 million seed — announced last summer — included backing from LocalGlobe, MMC Ventures, Amino Collective and other angels. (The startup is reluctant to label this “second raise” using standard fundraising terminology but, when pressed, pegs it as equivalent to a Series A.)
Vira’s app — Stella — which launched in the U.K. last August, delivers information and targeted support for women who are experiencing menopausal symptoms, supporting them to make lifestyle and behavior changes aimed at tackling whatever blend of physical and/or psychosocial issues they’re experiencing.
This means the app may be serving up exercise programs alongside diet advice or a course of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to combat insomnia or mood-related issues, or indeed another combination of customized support programs.
It also takes a community approach to further expand the support, with opportunities for users to be brought together for Q&As/Zoom chats around discussion topics so they can quiz experts and/or share related experiences with each other.
This sort of digital therapeutics formula looks very familiar now — given the decade-plus we’ve seen a variety of established therapeutics being digitized to scale and reach more people in need of targeted support via their mobile device, whether for problems with sleep, mindfulness and mental health, diet, addiction, sex, musculoskeletal conditions and even aging, to name a few.
Menopause has had relatively less love than some other areas where digital therapeutics startups have been busy for years. Although there is a growing number of players in this space too now — such as the likes of Elektra Health, Gennev, Peppy and Lisa Health.
Over what has generally been a boom decade for digital health, we’ve also seen the rise of femtech as a distinct category — and raised awareness has increased the volume of funding to female-led startups that are tackling issues which exclusively affect women. So it follows that the attention-value calculus is continuing to shift. Hence now a U.K. startup that’s addressing an issue which “only” affects a subset of woman (middle-aged females) can close a double digit second round just a couple of years after being founded.
Not that raising Vira’s latest tranche of funding was a cake-walk, says co-founder and CEO Andrea Berchowitz.
“We were speaking to one investor in the U.S. — who I’m sure would be not thrilled if I said who it was — and she said she’d seen 30 menopause startups and had not done an investment yet,” she recounts, saying one of the hurdles for that particularly reluctant (unnamed) investor was a question mark over whether women in the U.S. are actively seeking this sort of care, being as the conversation around menopause over the pond is not as advanced as it is in the U.K. (where Berchowitz emphasizes the topic gets a lot of mainstream media coverage).
“Fundraising is so hard,” she adds. “I think it’s really important to keep saying that — sometimes you can almost forget how hard it was when the money hits the bank account but it’s really hard.
“We know it’s hard for women to raise money… every data points shows that. Let’s not pretend it’s not. And then when you’re raising for a product that no one in the room has experience with — because they’re either young or male — the fact is we need someone to basically be over 45, probably over 50 — there’s not a tonne of that and then to be female so yes we have to do a lot more education.
“However I think it’s an interesting litmus test because… people who are unwilling to learn about new things probably aren’t right for us as investors. And so our approach was to really target funds that had either invested in women’s health before or digital therapies before. So we knew we could have a conversation with them about what we were building.”
Commenting on Vira’s funding in a statement, Kamran Adle, health investor at Octopus Ventures, said: "Menopause is an enormous yet underserved and underfunded market. One billion women, or approximately 12% of the global population, are expected to experience menopause by 2025, and we're excited to work with the Vira Health team."
"We are pleased to invest in Vira Health,” added Julia Hawkins, general partner at LocalGlobe and Latitude, in another supporting statement. “There is a strong interest in menopause care right now and this is a phenomenal team committed to building what women want and need."
Image Credits: Vira Health
Berchowitz says the second raise will go on building out the app’s care pathway — including launching a telehealth component so that users will be able to book a virtual consultation with a physician and get prescribed pharmaceuticals (such as hormone treatment) if appropriate, rather than needing to step away and go see their regulator doctor.
It is also gearing up for a U.S. launch of the app — which it’s penciling in for the second half of this year, according to Berchowitz.
Menopause is a multifaceted challenge to tackle. It can trigger years of disruptive symptoms for women — ranging from mood changes, sleep disruption and brain fog, through changes to menstruation (i.e. before periods eventually stop), low libido and painful sex, hot flushes and night sweats, and other physical shifts such as weight gain and incontinence — which means Vira’s app is necessarily designed to tackle a spectrum of issues women may suffer as they go through this life change.
To ensure the app is targeting relevant support, it personalizes the package of therapeutics based on what the user tells it they’re most concerned about.
“The way it works is a woman comes on the app and she tells us what symptoms are bothering her the most,” explains Berchowitz. “That was based on the fact that menopause is going to be an entirely different experience for everyone — no two women have the same symptoms and the same health background and the same preferences and the same way they want to be talked to and all that.
“So we say you tell us what’s bothering you the most — and if that’s sleep and incontinence then we’re going to help you with that. If it’s weight gain and feelings of low mood or anxiety then we’re going to help you with that. And then we take those symptoms and we design a 12-week program to help get relief for those symptoms.”
“Each program is based on the best available science for that given symptom,” she adds. “So if that’s sleep it’s built on cognitive behavioral therapy and sleep scheduling. If those are pelvic floor issues — so incontinence or painful sex — that’s built on pelvic floor activation.”
The science behind these app-based interventions draws on current best practice per symptom, according to Berchowitz, although she confirms the app itself is not currently a regulated medical device (rather it’s offered as an information service).
That said, as the product evolves — notably as Stella expands from dishing out purely information-based support into becoming a telehealth platform which may be involved in issuing prescriptions for pharmaceuticals or being able to provide a service like fitting a Mirena coil — the nature of the interventions are set to change. And Berchowitz further confirms its regulated status may therefore end up changing too, suggesting an application for regulatory clearance could be a future step for the business.
As noted above, Vira is by no means the first to digitize existing therapeutic approaches like CBT either, so — as regards the meat of a digital support service — it’s far from starting from scratch here.
Rather it can draw on plenty of existing success in the digital health category — gleaning inspiration and ideas from the growing body of implementations of digital therapeutics, pioneered by the likes of Sleepio, to name one of the early startups in the space (which recently raised a $75 million Series C from SoftBank’s Vision Fund).
This (now) rich field of digital therapeutic startups has provided passive support to Vira on the fundraising front, per Berchowitz.
“Our investors in this round are Octopus which has in its stable Quit Genius and Sleepio, among others, which are two digital therapies that did kind of go U.K. to U.S. — so I think there’s a lot to learn there,” she notes, adding of Optum: “They’re in Kaia Health, they’re in Equip which is a digital therapy for eating disorders.
“And that allowed us to have a really great conversation, like, you know how Kaia works, how it’s been sold, what their challenges and opportunities are — so using that frame let’s chat about menopause. And how it fits into that frame.”
“We weren’t convincing people that the digital delivery of lifestyle and behavior change was a totally new idea,” she continues. “We were saying maybe you don’t know but a lot of the things that you need to do to manage symptoms at menopause are lifestyle and behavior change — there’s specific exercises, there’s change to diet or it’s cognitive behavioral therapy — and these are all things that have been proven for digital delivery in other ways so what we’re doing is [what investors refer to as] a ‘horizontal roll-up’. So it’s unreasonable that a woman is going to have Sleepio and NHS Squeezy for pelvic floor plus an Elvie Trainer plus, plus, plus, and do that all!
“So the explosion of digital therapies allowed us to just say — yeah, that’s us. You’ve heard of that, you believe in that, this is how that applies to our area.”
“Optum is [also] very U.S.-health focused so I think we’ve tried to surround ourselves with as much of that experience as we can while continuing to build here in the U.K. because we do just get that feedback loop faster because menopause is on the [public/media] agenda,” she adds, fleshing out the strategy for the second raise — and noting that Octopus’ “stated interest in taboo topics” also made it “easier to go to them”.
What about product efficacy? Some of the new funding is being pegged for clinical trials of its approach. And Berchowitz also flags a feasibility study they undertook from December to February — which suggested 75% of women who completed their Stella treatment plans experienced improved symptoms. (Plus she notes they are polling users on an ongoing weekly basis to get a less formal “well being score”.)
Image Credits: Vira Health
“Having both measurements is really important because on the one hand the point of this is are we helping you find relief from your symptoms,” she suggests. “But the thing about menopause is it is this sort bio-psycho-social huge thing and women are more than their symptoms and so it is possible that your symptoms are out of control but you might be feeling a bit better because in fact there’s loads of other stuff going on in your life and you’re kind of on a path to managing it — and so we also just try to trust our users and if they say they’re feeling better that’s great. And if they say they’re not feeling better then we need to do something.”
So while she says the startup is not in a position to quantify exactly how much of the benefit users report from engaging with its app-based programs is — or could be — linked to a placebo effect, ultimately if women are finding the targeted support helps them to navigate a challenging period of life change does it really matter how or why it’s working for them?
“Sometimes what’s happening in menopause is your oestrogen is fluctuating all the time and so even if you are on hormone replacement therapy and doing your pelvic floor activation it could still be incredibly tough,” Berchowitz adds. “There is no silver bullet that just fixes it all for every woman and so I think placebo is one way of saying it — but I also think there is something about awareness and information that does remove some of the fear and the unknown.”
Placebo question aside, one thing at least looks relatively clear: An oft-reported lack of support for women raising menopausal concerns via traditional healthcare services is creating a sizeable opportunity for startups to step in, unbundle the use-case and offer specialized care to middle aged women for a fee. (Including, evidently, in the U.K. where healthcare is available free-at-the-point-of-use.)
“Not everyone gets high quality menopause care from their GP [doctor] — we hear that time and again,” says Berchowitz, expanding on the rational for bolting on a telehealth component. “We’re not trying to be a GP service, we are trying to be a specialized service for women seeking out care at menopause.”
Vira isn’t disclosing how many users its app has at this stage but Berchowitz is upfront that they expect the U.S. to be a relatively challenging market to grow the business — given how discussion around menopause is less developed there than in the U.K.
The U.S. also of course has a very different healthcare model. And she further notes that there can be a lot of variation states-by-state — adding that Vira will thus be spending time adapting and localizing content to ensure that the language and tone used strike an appropriately familiar note.
Vira’s business model for Stella is two-fold: Direct to consumer paid subscriptions and a B2B2C approach which targets employers to fund the service, making it available as a free benefit to their staff. And Berchowitz confirms it plans to use broadly the same approach in the U.S.
“The model will be similar in the U.S. because I think the workplace angle for us is the priority — we have lots of conversations with workplaces that are really making a shift in how they think about benefits. And the focus on women, especially senior women, is increasing — not enough but it is increasing. And so the conversation of ‘if you provide better support for women at menopause you can keep them longer, you can support them to make that next promotion, which also means you have more role models.’
“It’s much louder in this country than it is in the U.S. — but it has started in the U.S. So I think the workplace benefits is one we’re going to stick with.”
The workplace focus is also where it all started for Berchowitz.
Winding back to the beginning of Vira’s journey, she says the idea for the business began with a personal urge to do something to address the lack of women in senior leadership positions — having seen little progress on this very visible problem over a long career at McKinsey and also working for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“I’d been in senior positions and the lack of women at the top was something that was talked about a lot and just didn’t change in that whole time I was there and so I knew I wanted to do something that helped women jump over that last promotion or help them in the workplace,” she tells TechCrunch. “I wasn’t totally sure what the issue I was going to tackle was but I knew it was something about getting women into senior positions.”
The idea crystalized into tackling menopause as she explored the topic, hearing stories about women abandoning their careers or struggling to cope with professional demands as they experienced years of what can be deeply disruptive changes.
Meeting the right co-founder was also key to launching Stella, per Berchowitz. Her co-founder, Dr. Rebecca Love, is a chronic disease epidemiologist and an expert in behavior change — bringing the dedicated medical expertise needed to credibly underpin a recasting of lifestyle change-based therapeutics in digital form.
“I was really lucky to meet Rebecca,” recalls Berchowitz. “At that point she was looking at obesity and diabetes and we hit it off as friends — and the kind of entry point for her is that menopause is this amazing entry point into later life health for women where the things that need to happen to manage symptoms around exercise or nutrition or pelvic floor activation or strength training. That sort of lifestyle and behavior change affects immediate symptoms — so it gives relief in the short term — but also really changes the long term health trajectory for a woman.
“So we kind of met over this idea that menopause could be a really interesting and untapped way to really change the lives of women over time — and so Vira Health was born.”
Twelve years after it was first announced, NASA's massive Space Launch System will finally make its public debut. The super heavy-lift rocket and Orion spacecraft will begin the rollout to the launch pad at Florida's Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, a much-anticipated development for a launch system that's been beset by delays and a mounting price tag.
Following the rollout Thursday, which is expected to take 11 hours, NASA will conduct a slew of tests to determine launch readiness, like validating the software systems and servicing the boosters. After that, NASA will commence a "wet dress rehearsal," a series of additional prelaunch tests, during which the system will be loaded with its propellant tanks. Artemis launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson told reporters during a media call Monday that the wet dress could take place on April 3, should the rollout go as expected.
It's been a long time coming. Congress directed NASA to develop SLS to replace the Space Shuttle, the agency's original spaceflight workhorse, back in 2010. SLS is envisioned as a vehicle to return humans to the moon as part of NASA's Artemis program, and possibly even further into the solar system.
But ever since, the project has faced repeated setbacks and technical issues. A year ago, NASA's Inspector General's office issued a damning report on the costs and contracts associated with the SLS program, finding that "rising costs and delays" have pushed the overall budget for the project far beyond the original scope. Arguably, the biggest winners out of this snafu have been the aerospace primes — notably Boeing, which is heading SLS development, Northrop Grumman and Aerojet, whose contracts made up 71% of the total funding spent in 2019 on all SLS contracts, according to the Inspector General.
All of this has added up to an extremely costly project. At the beginning of March, a NASA auditor reported that the operational expenses for the first four Artemis missions will total $4.1 billion — each. The cost of constructing a single SLS accounts for around half of that, or $2.2 billion. NASA's associate administrator for exploration systems development, Tom Whitmeyer, seemed to tacitly comment on the price tag, telling reporters that the project is a "national investment."
"From my perspective, it’s a strong national investment [and] international engagement in our economy," he said.
SLS's high price tag is partly due to the fact that neither stage of SLS is reusable, so each mission will need its own rocket. As opposed to SLS, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk estimated last month that his company's super-heavy, fully reusable rocket, Starship, would cost less than $10 million per launch within the next few years. SpaceX is developing a version of the rocket for NASA as part of the Artemis program, after winning a $2.9 billion contract for the task last year.
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Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Monday, March 14, 2022! This week I am writing to you from New Orleans, where I am busy – when not writing – eating everything in sight. I bring that up as getting around is something that many of us are now doing a bit more of. Which means we're mobile once again. And that's a great segue to remind you that you can still save some money with early-bird tickets to our upcoming Sessions: Mobility event.
The TechCrunch transport team is full of brilliant humans, so do not miss out on this one. – Alex
The TechCrunch Top 3
Moove proves that startups can still raise twice in one year: African startup Moove is back in the news today, raising a huge $105 million Series A2 round of funding. In the last year, the company previously raised a $23 million Series A and $10 million in debt. Moove helps finance vehicles for ride-hailing drivers, which appears to be a growth market. The company's latest round included $40 million in debt.
That said, some startups are busy digesting: In 2021, a startup raising twice in a single year was very common. The result of that market was a lot of startups valued at high prices with long periods of growth ahead of them to live up to their price. Since then, the value of technology companies has fallen. The result? A widening mismatch between valuations and value, and a compression of the startup growth premium.
And speaking of pitching, we have a great piece up looking at how Snorkel.AI raised $135 million. One theme I noticed between the two articles is the importance of storytelling. As a journalist, I am piss-poor at storytelling, but do respect the craft. For founders, it appears to be a central pillar of commanding investor attention.
Forget funds; the new hotness is funds of funds: Perhaps it was inevitable that as more late-stage funds look to invest earlier, they are turning to putting capital into not just early-stage startups, but also other money managers with an early-stage focus. It's one way to disburse lots of capital at once, but without the operational hassle of managing it. (More here, from the weekend.)
Do you want less of an accent? TechCrunch's Haje Jan Kamps has an accent, he writes. So he's somewhat torn about what Sayso is building, namely an API that may be able to reduce how much accent one speaks with. While I simply adore the way that he speaks and do not want any changes thereof, he does note that "people do choose to use Zoom backgrounds and TikTok filters, and if handled well, it's pretty easy to see how someone could opt-in to reduce the presence of a heavy accent."
Say hello to the quantum mini-fridge: Now that Microsoft has a VP of quantum, I think it's fair to say that the industry is on its way to becoming part and parcel of the larger technology landscape. So it's not a surprise to see startups in the mix. Today TechCrunch covered Maybell Quantum, a "cryogenic platform to cool quantum processors down to the very low temperatures it takes to run a stable quantum system." It's called Icebox. Why? Not merely the temperatures involved, but because if you saw it in the wild you might try to open it to see if there is beer inside.
Data science in a box? I love a startup that I don't fully grok. Pareto is one such company. It appears to offer a hybrid of data collection and analysis as a service to customers. This means the combination of automated tooling and humans-in-the-loop. Pareto is perhaps something of a response to the market dearth of data scientists for hire.
Byju's founder Byju Raveendran borrowed money to invest in his own company: I am leery of borrowing money to invest it in high-priced startups. But that's because I am fundamentally a financial coward. Anyway, I bring all that up as the news that Byju Raveendran was putting $400 million into his edtech company begged the question, Where did that money come from? The answer is, apparently, someone else.
Laptops as a service: Join a new company, get handed a laptop. It's a tale as old as time. But what if the laptop you were given at a new gig was leased? That's the idea behind Fleet, which essentially turns employee hardware purchases from capex to opex. Even more fun, Fleet is bootstrapped!
Regardless of whether you’ve liquidated your crypto assets or plan to hodl until the heat death of the universe, if you made any profits last year while trading, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service would like to have a chat.
But some digging may be required to identify those taxable proceeds.
Because cryptocurrency exchanges aren’t SEC-regulated, “they're not legally required to offer the same level of tax reporting that discount brokerages and custodians must provide to stock, bond and mutual fund investors.”
(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)
Meta to allow folks to turn off their personal space: Facebook's parent company is really still in the "figuring it out" stage of the metaverse, its online game/world where folks can wander around and chat. After some folks were harassed, the company instituted personal space bubbles. Now for the folks who don't want them, they can be disabled.
Instagram now really blocked in Russia: After promising to cut off Instagram from its territory, Russia has made good on the threat. Russia's internet is becoming increasingly similar to China's, with foreign companies either banned or skipping jumping through the hoops required for inclusion.
Ford talks EV goals for Europe: 2026 is a long way off, but TechCrunch did sit up and take note of the fact that Ford wants to sell "more than 600,000 EVs annually in Europe" by that year as part of its larger push to carbon neutrality.
SoftBank, a Japanese conglomerate, announced today that it has an uncapped, evergreen fund made explicitly to back Black, Latinx and Native American entrepreneurs within the United States. The commitment is a continuation of SoftBank's $100 million Opportunity Growth Fund for underrepresented founders, which first launched in June 2020 in the "wake of increased racial justice."
The effort, which the firm says took 24 hours to spin up, has now been invested in its entirety across 70 companies. About 55% of the initial portfolio companies are Black-founded, 40% Latinx-founded and 5% Black and Latinx-founded. Still, the portfolio weighs heavily toward men: only 13% of companies in the SoftBank Opportunity portfolio are founded by women of color, which is higher than national rates but still far from equal.
The Opportunity fund has also had four companies valued over $1 billion, as well as two exits; half the portfolio has raised or is raising another round of funding post-initial investment. The momentum could be part of the reason why SoftBank is continuing its efforts. In other (unsurprising) words, it's working.
The question remains as to why SoftBank is turning its commitment into an evergreen fund, versus dedicating a clear bucket of money, and ergo heavy signal, to back historically overlooked entrepreneurs. It doesn't have a fear of numbers: just four months ago, SoftBank committed $3 billion more in capital to Latin American companies.
Evergreen funds have an open-ended structure with no termination date. The strategy can allow firms to recycle capital from realized returns without constraints, and invest cross-stage and perhaps even different ownership stakes. In this case, SoftBank is planning to recommit to the early-stage startup scene, similar to Tiger Global in recent weeks.
There's no fixed amount of capital that SoftBank has committed to the cohort, which makes it tougher to understand how much of an impact the commitment will have. SoftBank told Forbes that the team plans to deploy more capital than it did in the debut fund. In an e-mail to TechCrunch, the firm said that it will make 20 to 30 investments per year with check sizes between $300,000 to $700,000, and follow-on funding between $1 million and $5 million.
Marcelo Claure, former COO of SoftBank, was the person who originally conceptualized and launched the Opportunity fund — alongside managing partner Shu Nyatta, with Paul Judge, the founder of TechSquare and chairman of Pindrop, and Stacy Brown-Philpot, CEO of TaskRabbit. Claure left SoftBank early this year over a tense dispute with the company over his compensation. Nyatta now leads the Opportunity fund's efforts, and appointed managing partners Catherine Lenson and Brett Rochkind to join the investment committee as well.
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Lyft and Uber are adding temporary fuel surcharges to fares for ride-hail and deliveries as fuel prices around the country rise.
The rising prices are due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has resulted in a mountain of economic sanctions from the west against Russia, including the U.S.’s ban last week of Russian oil imports and the U.K.’s promise to ease its dependency on Russian fuel by the end of the year.
Russia is one of the world’s biggest oil exporters, mainly supplying Europe and Asia, which have not formally banned Russian oil supplies yet. However, the sanctions have made oil importers nervous about touching anything Russian, so there’s been a de facto ban since the invasion started, leading to a decreased global supply of natural gas and oil.
In the U.S., the price of a barrel of oil exceed $80 dollars in the last few weeks, with the average driver paying about $4.325 per gallon as of Monday, according to data from the American Automobile Association. A year ago, the average was $2.859. In states like California, which has the highest taxes in the country, drivers are seeing an average price of $5.744.
Uber said on Friday that riders would now be charged a fee of $0.45 to $0.55 per trip, and Uber Eats deliveries will include a $0.35 to $0.45 surcharge. The fees, which are happening in the U.S., Canada, New Zealand and Australia, will last for at least two months and may be adjusted based on driver, courier and consumer feedback, the company said.
In the U.S., the surcharges apply nationwide except for New York City, where on March 1, drivers received a 5.3% increase based on the city’s mandated minimum earnings standard, which Uber says accounts for the increase in operating costs. In addition, the vast majority of delivery workers in NYC use bicycles, not cars, said Uber. It’s not clear which other markets will be affected by the surcharges, but Uber told TechCrunch it’s considering a number of different countries.
On Monday, Lyft joined Uber in adding surcharges to rides, reports The Verge. Like Uber, Lyft says it will give the entirety of its surcharge to drivers, which is meant to soften the burden of higher prices, not cover all of the cost of gas, according to Uber.
Uber’s surcharge will apply for electric vehicle rides, as well. Lyft has not confirmed to TechCrunch whether it will have the same policy, how much its surcharge will cost or which markets will be affected.
“We've been closely monitoring rising gas prices and their impact on our driver community,” Lyft said in a statement. “Driver earnings overall remain elevated compared to last year, but given the rapid rise in gas prices we'll be asking riders to pay a temporary fuel surcharge, all of which will go to drivers. We'll share more details shortly.”
Among the challenges of growing up with a visual impairment is learning and participating in the social and conversational body language used by sighted people. PeopleLens is a research project at Microsoft that helps the user stay aware of the locations and identities of the people around them, promoting richer and more spontaneous interactions.
A sighted person looking around a room can quickly tell who is where, who’s talking to whom and other basic information useful for lots of social cues and behaviors. A blind person, however, may not know who has just entered a room, or whether someone has just looked at them to prompt them to speak. This can lead to isolation and antisocial behaviors, like avoiding groups.
Researchers at Microsoft wanted to look into how technology could help a child blind since birth access that information and use it in a way that made sense for them. What they built was PeopleLens, a clever set of software tools that run on a set of AR glasses.
Using the glasses’ built-in sensors, the software can identify known faces and indicate their distance and position by providing audio cues like clicks, chimes and spoken names. For instance, a small bump noise will sound whenever the user’s head points in anyone’s direction, and if that person is within 10 feet or so, it will be followed by their name. Then a set of ascending tones helps the user direct their attention toward the person’s face. Another notification will sound if someone nearby looks at the user, and so on.
The PeopleLens software and its 3D view of the environment. Image Credits: Microsoft Research
The idea isn’t that someone would wear a device like this for life, but use it as a learning aid to improve their awareness of other cues and how to respond to them in a prosocial way. This helps a kid build the same kinds of non-verbal skills that others learn with the benefit of sight.
Right now PeopleLens is very much an experiment, though the team has been working on it for quite a while. The next step is to assemble a cohort of learners in the U.K. between the ages of 5 and 11 who can test out the device over a longer period. If you think your kid might be a good match, consider signing up at Microsoft Partner the University of Bristol’s study page.
This week, Max Q again puts the focus on the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and the resulting halo effects that’s having on the international space industry. Neither private companies, like OneWeb, nor national space programs have been spared from ongoing shockwaves from the conflict. Perhaps most significantly for the space sector, the Russian invasion is undoing decades of collaboration, with no indication that things are going to turn around any time soon.
Russia is uttering threats and taking action in response to mounting global sanctions, and last month we talked about Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin issuing vague and ominous warnings about operation of the ISS without Russian participation. This week, Rogozin came up with another memorable phrase while ending Russian supply of rocket engines to companies in the States.
It may come as a surprise to more casual space fans that Russian engines actually do still power American rockets — including ULA’s Atlas V, and Northrop Grumman’s Antares. But ULA obviously saw this eventuality coming at some point, and contracted Blue Origin to supply rocket engines for its next-generation Vulcan launch vehicle. Notably, the market for launch and engines has so radically transformed that the withholding of Russian space assets is not quite the blow that it might’ve been even a decade ago — though BryceTech analyst Phil Smith told SpaceNews it does "[put] some customers in a lurch."
Image Credits: Aubrey Gemignani/NASA
The fallout goes further. French space company Arianespacesaid it would suspend Soyuz rocket launches in accordance with “the sanctions decided by the international community.” Meanwhile, OneWeb, a British manufacturer and operator of satellites, said it would no longer use the Soyuz after it refused to capitulate to Russian demands that it guarantee its satellites would not be used for military purposes.
One reason the U.S. and NASA aren’t nearly as reliant on Russian rockets and rocket tech is the Commercial Crew program, which saw NASA seek two new sources for ferrying astronauts to and from the ISS. SpaceX successfully completed NASA’s rigorous test program for human flight and is now offering said service (while other contract winner Boeing is in progress, but with a few bumps in the road).
Last week NASA announced that it has officially re-upped its Commercial Crew contract with SpaceX, adding to its existing deal three more missions worth a combined total of $900 million.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon on the launch pad for the Crew-3 mission. Image Credits: SpaceX
In policy news, NASA will receive $24 billion in funding for the 2022 fiscal year, after Congress passed a sweeping $1.5 trillion spending bill. (Check out this closer look into the funding from the The Planetary Society.) Most notably, that includes $1.19 billion for the agency’s Human Landing System (HLS) program, which aims to land astronauts on the moon for the first time since the Apollo era. HLS made lots of headlines earlier this year, after NASA awarded to SpaceX a single contract to develop the lander. The competitors, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and defense contractor Dynetics, filed with a government watchdog a complaint over the sole award; after that was rejected, Blue even went as far as to sue NASA in federal court.
But there may be hope yet for these competitors — legislators go out of their way to require NASA to lay out a plan of how it will “ensure safety, redundancy, sustainability, and competition” (emphasis mine) in the program.
Another postmortem from Astra
Astra Space released a preliminary postmortem on the company’s February rocket launch that resulted in a complete loss of payload. It was Astra’s first mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida (thus far, all launches have been conducted from the company’s spaceport in Kodiak, Alaska), and the first time its rocket was carrying a customer payload. Things didn’t go as planned.
The botched launch was due to two things, the company said in its preliminary findings: an issue with the fairing separation mechanisms, which led to an off-nominal stage separation, and a software issue with the upper-stage engine, according to Astra’s senior director of mission management and assurance, Andrew Griggs. The company has already introduced new controls to ensure these errors don’t happen again, he said. “Through constant iteration and extensive testing, we have been able to demonstrate that the changes eliminate the failure mode we saw on LV0008, while making the software suite much more robust.”
“With the root causes identified and corrective measures in place, we're preparing to return to the launch pad with LV0009 soon — stay tuned!” he added.
In other news…
China is opening its space station to commercial customers, a government official said. The country is aiming to complete the construction of the Tiangong space station this year.
Hermeus, a startup developing hypersonic aircraft that can fly at Mach 5 speeds, raised a $100 million Series B led by Sam Altman, and with participation by Founders Fund and In-Q-Tel. According to its website, Hermeus aims to develop a passenger aircraft by 2029.
Satellogic, a startup-turned-public company via SPAC, has partnered with Astraea to provide observational data to the Ukrainian government and its allies.
SatixFy is going to go public via a merger with blank-check firm Endurance Acquisition Corp. The deal will give the Israeli satellite communications equipment company a value of $813 million.
Slingshot Aerospace raised $25 million in a part-two Series A led by Draper Associates and ATX Venture Partners. The startup aims to create a real-time digital landscape of space and use situational awareness to decrease the chance of in-orbit collisions and other risks.
Tomorrow.io has called off its merger with special purpose acquisition company Pine Technology Acquisition Corp. Tomorrow CEO Shimon Elkabetz said, “it became apparent through both our strategic initiatives and overall market conditions, that the best choice for the company and its expansive growth is to remain private for now.” Tomorrow, a weather intelligence platform, was due to net up to $450 million in gross proceeds and a $1.2 billion valuation.
Spaceship Soyuz on Baikonur spaceport ready for launch. Image Credits:Vladimir Zapletin/Getty Images.
This week’s Max Q was brought to you by me, Aria Alamalhodaei. I’m back at the helm after an extended break. Thoughts, comments and tips can be sent to aria.techcrunch@gmail.com. You can also catch me on Twitter at @breadfrom. See you next week.
Ukrainian hackers and security researchers say bug bounty platform HackerOne is withholding their bug bounty rewards, in some cases thousands of dollars, and refusing to let hackers withdraw their earnings.
Several hackers and researchers with affected HackerOne accounts said in tweets that HackerOne is blocking payouts, citing economic sanctions and export controls following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February, but that the sanctions don’t apply to them.
“If you are based in Ukraine, Russia, or Belarus all communications and transactions (including swag shipping) have been paused for the time being,” according to an email from a HackerOne support representative to security researcher Vladimir Metnew, which he tweeted out. Metnew, who is Ukrainian but currently in the European Union, told TechCrunch that his account is frozen. “I think they blocked payments for everyone who registered from Ukraine,” Metnew said.
Bug bounty company HackerOne acts as an intermediary between the hackers and security researchers who find and report security bugs and the companies that ask for help fixing their products and services. In 2020, HackerOne paid out more than $107 million in bug bounty rewards to researchers, many of whom rely on their earnings as a source of income.
Other hackers and researchers who are still in Ukraine are reporting similar circumstances, that their accounts are frozen or that they cannot withdraw funds. Bob Diachenko, a Ukrainian security researcher whose findings have been periodically reported on TechCrunch, said in a tweet that he had $3,000 in earnings since February currently withheld from his account.
The move to block payouts across Ukraine has been met with anger and confusion, and without any apparent official communication from the bug bounty company. It’s not clear what sanctions or export controls HackerOne is referring to. The U.S., the European Union and several other allied nations have imposed stiff economic sanctions against Russia and Belarus, as well as an embargo on territory in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine currently held by separatist groups and Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014. But Ukraine is not subject to those sanctions.
One affected Ukrainian hacker who goes by the handle kazan71p said in a tweet that they are “not from Crimea or Donbas … you just suspended all Ukrainian accounts, you just put the whole country under sanctions,” referring to HackerOne.
HackerOne has not said why it blocked payouts to Ukrainian hackers and researchers or cited the specific sanctions it believes apply. When reached before publication, a HackerOne spokesperson was unable to comment or answer our questions, including what sanctions it believes apply.
Provided after publication, HackerOne chief technology officer Alex Rice told TechCrunch that bounty payouts are to resume shortly.
“We actively support Ukraine’s fight for freedom and have no intention of restricting bounty payments to Ukrainian hackers. I’m truly sorry for the stress caused here, and am committed to getting things back up and running as quickly as possible,” said Rice. “When the Biden administration announced financial sanctions against the two occupied regions of Ukraine, we immediately began work to ensure that no bounties were inappropriately issued to those sanctioned regions. This has created a delay in the processing of payments for some hackers in this region that the team is actively working to resolve. This delay pains me and I am personally committed to seeing all bounty processing resume within the week.”
The account freezes appeared came into effect around the time that HackerOne chief executive Marten Mickos said in a since-deleted tweet thread that HackerOne would “re-route” earnings for hackers living in sanctioned countries — notably Russia and Belarus — to charity since sanctions prevent the company from transacting with those residents.
One hacker, who goes by the handle xnwup, said HackerOne is taking $25,000 in earnings “because I am a Belarusian citizen.” The hacker, who expressed their support for Ukraine but feared for their safety due to speaking out against the Belarusian regime, said their earnings were the “result of years of hard work.”
Mickos recanted his comments about re-routing funds in a new tweet thread, now offering to donate hackers’ rewards only with their permission.
Pam Krueger is the founder and CEO of Wealthramp.com, a free online service that matches consumers with qualified, fee-only financial advisers, and the creator and host of the investor-education television series "MoneyTrack."
Jeffrey George is a fee-only financial adviser and founder of TAO Financial, a registered investment adviser offering advisory services in Florida, Texas, and other jurisdictions where registered or exempted. He is an advisor on the Wealthramp network.
Maybe you're one of the millions of Americans who jumped on the Bitcoin bandwagon in 2021. Or perhaps you've become an active crypto trader. Or maybe digital currency bonuses have become part of your compensation package at work. You might have even used some of it to buy something or pay someone else for their services.
Perhaps you've been thinking, cryptocurrencies aren't physical currencies; they aren't even regulated by the U.S. government. That means I don't have to pay taxes on profits I make from trading crypto, right?
For calculating taxable gains and losses, crypto transactions are treated exactly the same as those involving stocks, bonds or mutual funds.
If you sell crypto for more than you paid for it, the profit will be taxed as a short-term capital gain if you held the currency for less than a year. Generally, people try to avoid short-term capital gains because they're taxed as ordinary income.
If you make a profit selling crypto you've owned for more than a year, it will be taxed as a more preferable long-term capital gain. The tax rate will either be zero, 15% or 20%, depending on your income.
If you sell crypto for less than what you paid for it, you can take a capital loss, which can reduce your taxable income or offset capital gains from the sale of other assets.
If you're going to trade crypto frequently, your options for using capital losses to offset capital gains may be limited.
Seems relatively simple, right? But what if you’ve traded Bitcoin, Ethereum, or other cryptocurrencies throughout the year, profiting from some transactions and losing money on others?
Will your crypto exchange help you accurately calculate how much you'll owe Uncle Sam?
The answer is: It depends.
Fuzzy tax support
Since crypto exchanges aren't regulated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, they're not legally required to offer the same level of tax reporting that discount brokerages and custodians must provide to stock, bond and mutual fund investors.
While some U.S.-based crypto exchanges offer basic summaries of taxable proceeds from crypto-related trading activities, many do not.
And, to the best of our knowledge, none currently generate IRS Forms 1099-B and 8949, which brokerage companies and custodians deliver to consumers to help them report income and capital gains and losses from the sales of investable assets.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This week, Natasha is running the show, which means we’re returning to our private market focus and, for the fun of it, reminding you all that Pete Davidson is getting high soon.
This is going to be a busy week for the team, so expect our sassiness to only increase as the days roll forward. Here’s what I got into today:
Markets have mixed feelings, thanks to the war in Ukraine, COVID-19, supply chain delays, inflation and all-around high tensions. This includes crypto, mind you.
Instead of big tech, I talked about a big idea: Everyone is launching a fund to fund other funds, which is a reminder just how much relationships in VC have changed (and how much the appetite for emerging fund managers is growing). Experiments aren’t just fun, they could bring big returns.
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:00 a.m. PST, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts.
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