| TechCrunch Posted: 16 Jul 2022 03:01 PM PDT
| Apply to the Startup Battlefield 200 and be a Disrupt VIP Posted: 13 Jul 2022 11:30 AM PDT Early-stage startup founders, listen up! If you want to be considered for the Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt on October 18-20 in San Francisco, time is running out. Apply here before July 31. What is the SBF 200? It's a curated cohort of 200 early-stage startups selected by our highly discerning editorial team. Why should you throw your hat into the ring? For starters, applying to and participating in the SBF 200 is 100% free — from start to finish. If you make the cut, you'll receive a full VIP experience at Disrupt that includes: - Access to all the presentations, breakouts and roundtables at the show
- Exhibition space for all three days of Disrupt. Note: The SBF 200 are the only startups allowed to exhibit at the conference.
- SBF 200-only workshops and pitch training with TC staff
- The opportunity to flash-pitch investors and TechCrunch editors
- Media and investor exposure
- A shot at competing in Startup Battlefield. Our world-class pitch competition has turned startups — like Dropbox, Mint and many more — into household names
TechCrunch editors will choose 20 of the SBF 200 startups to compete in the iconic Startup Battlefield. Those founders will receive private pitch coaching and pitch live to our panel of judges in front of the entire Disrupt audience. Only one will walk away with the title, the glory and the $100,000 equity-free prize. Are you ready to join the Startup Battlefield 200? To be considered, your company should: - Be an early-stage startup
- Have a minimally viable product
- Represent any vertical
- Represent any geography
- Have step-function innovation in your vertical
- Be bootstrapped or have pre-scale funding (variable by industry)
We're accepting applications on a rolling basis, so submit your application here ASAP. The deadline is July 31, and we've been sending out acceptance notices since July 1. TechCrunch Disrupt 2022 takes place in San Francisco on October 18-20 with an online day on October 21. Don't miss your chance for a VIP experience, to showcase your startup for three full days and to have a shot at $100,000. Beat the July 31 deadline, and apply to TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200. Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TechCrunch Disrupt 2022? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form. | | Match expands Tinder’s free background checks to two more dating apps Posted: 13 Jul 2022 10:46 AM PDT Match Group is expanding a partnership with background check service Garbo, a nonprofit female-and survivor-founded organization, bringing the free safety feature to its namesake app, Match, and the single parent dating app, Stir after initially launching on Tinder. The new feature allows dating app users to easily access public information about arrests, convictions, and sex offender registry records. If a user finds out their would-be date has a history of violence, they can report the account for removal and block the user. The demand for increased protections follows numerous reports over the years that highlighted the potential safety issues associated with online dating, including the risk of sexual assaults, stalking, and violence. And while everyone should take safety precautions when dating online, it is even more necessary for people with children to weigh the risks of bringing a stranger they met online into their lives. This new function on Stir may help ease single parents’ minds on that front. Match and Stir will start surfacing a prompt with a link to the Garbo website within the app's chat function. If you are messaging someone and arranging to meet up with them, a box will pop up asking if you want to run a background check. The option is available in the apps' safety centers as well. Premium users will receive four free searches, whereas free subscribers will get two background searches. Members can then purchase search credits directly from Garbo for $2.50 plus a small processing fee of $0.75. Tracey Breeden, Head of Safety and Social Advocacy for Match Group, wrote in an announcement, "The goal is to democratize access to information by providing low-cost background checks, which historically have been difficult to access and cost-prohibitive." According to Match Group, more of its U.S. brands will see the background check function added, as well. The company has yet to say when and where these updates will be made. To run a search on a potential date, users need to supply the full name of the person and phone number. If Garbo is still unable to pull up any relevant public records, the user may have to provide age, location, and other details. This could be hard for some people to do as it’s difficult to ask a date for their address because you're suspicious of them. The dating app maker notes the person will not be notified that you’re running a background check on them. Due to the dating app's privacy requirements, Match cannot provide any information that you don't already know based on the person's profile or what they have told you personally. Garbo and Match are separate entities, so no information about searches is shared between the companies. Match Group has been accused of overlooking screening measures for its services in the past. In 2019, a report by ProPublica and Columbia Journalism Investigations addressed the issue of sexual predators on Match-owned dating apps. In January 2020, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, launched an investigation into some of the largest dating platforms following reports that underage users were on the apps, companies were selling or sharing personal data, and free dating apps permit registered sex offenders to use them. "Our concern about the underage use of dating apps is heightened by reports that many popular free dating apps permit registered sex offenders to use them, while the paid versions of these same apps screen out registered sex offenders. Protection from sexual predators should not be a luxury confined to paying customers," wrote Chairman Krishnamoorthi. In an effort to help combat issues around sexual violence, Match Group invested seven figures in 2021 ahead of Garbo's public launch. Then earlier this year, the company introduced Garbo-powered background checks to Tinder, its flagship dating app. Match Group funds the two to four searches that are free to users, according to Tinder’s site. | | Booz Allen Hamilton launches $100M corporate venture arm focused on early-stage startups Posted: 13 Jul 2022 10:10 AM PDT Booz Allen Hamilton, the Virginia-based, defense-focused IT consulting firm, today announced the launch of a corporate venture capital arm, Booz Allen Ventures, that will initially put $100 million toward “strategic” defensive and offensive technologies. The move signals Booz Allen’s desire to shape startups in areas it considers aligned with its core business, mainly AI and machine learning, defense, and cybersecurity. Brian MacCarthy, Booz Allen’s VP of ventures, said that the new fund will invest primarily in early-stage (seed, Series A, and Series B) companies and build on Booz Allen’s existing Tech Scouting program, which connects with entrepreneurs to vet emerging security technologies. Through Tech Scouting, Booz Allen has recently backed firms including Latent AI, whose technology compresses AI models; Synthetaic, a data-generating platform; and Reveal Technology, which performs analytics on aerial data. In addition to capital, Booz Allen Ventures-backed companies will gain access to Booz Allen’s executive and engineering teams as well as client teams, McCarthy elaborated. Participants will also be provided “strategic” support in the form of potential contracts with Booz Allen customers. “Our Tech Scouting program gives us unique insight about where opportunities for hyper-growth exist. But anticipating opportunity isn't sufficient – we need to deploy capital to move at digital speed,” said Brian MacCarthy, vice president of tech scouting and ventures at Booz Allen. “Booz Allen Ventures allows us to actively bridge the gap between opportunity and capability and accelerate the services-to-solutions transformation.” Outside of funds like Shield Capital, which has Defense Department connections, traditional venture firms are often reluctant to invest in defense-oriented startups given both the ethical implications and long pathway to profitability. (In the U.S., it typically takes at least 18 months of planning before a government contractor wins its first contract.) Corporated-backed programs provide an alternative — Booz Allen Ventures joins Lockheed Martin’s Lockheed Martin Ventures and HorizonX, which spun off from Boeing in August 2021. Defense-focused startups angling for government contracts need all the help they can get. Excepting breakouts like Anduril and Palantir, most contracts are awarded to incumbents — more than 95% of Booz Allen’s nearly $8 billion in revenue comes from government contracting — and any startup that gets a foot in the door has to bridge the gap between the R&D phase and the contract award. But even founders willing to ingratiate themselves with the defense industry are sometimes reluctant to accepting funding from corporate arms. They point to onerous terms and conditions and commercial arrangements that try to protect exclusivity or future options to buy their startup’s technology outright. Perhaps as a result of those misgivings, defense-focused corporate funds have invested relatively little capital over the years. For example, Lockheed Martin Ventures has pledged only around $200 million toward startups since 2007. As of 2020, HorizonX, which was founded in 2017, had made just 25 investments — all less than $10 million. It’ll be incumbent on Booz Allen Ventures to show that it’s not looking to snuff out or absorb startups for the benefit of its corporate parent. | | Dear Sophie: Questions about green cards and EB-2 priority dates Posted: 13 Jul 2022 10:00 AM PDT Sophie Alcorn Contributor Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards' "Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services." She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives. More posts by this contributor Here’s another edition of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies. “Your questions are vital to the spread of knowledge that allows people all over the world to rise above borders and pursue their dreams,” says Sophie Alcorn, a Silicon Valley immigration attorney. “Whether you’re in people ops, a founder or seeking a job in Silicon Valley, I would love to answer your questions in my next column.” TechCrunch+ members receive access to weekly “Dear Sophie” columns; use promo code ALCORN to purchase a one- or two-year subscription for 50% off.
Dear Sophie, I’ve been on an H-1B since 2011. I have an EB-2 I-140 approved with a priority date in April 2015. I’m Indian by birth, so I know I'm going to be waiting a long time to get a green card. As an experienced cybersecurity professional, I think I could qualify to apply for an EB-2 NIW. Will there be any benefit from applying for an EB-2 NIW now? — Idealistic from India Dear Idealistic, Thanks for reaching out and for your patience with the U.S. immigration system! The green card line for the EB-2 green card category for individuals born in India has made significant advancements in the past few months. In addition, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has stated that it will likely use all of the available employment-based green cards for the fiscal year 2022, which ends on September 30, 2022. That could mean continued advancements in the EB-2 category! The latest Visa Bulletin shows that individuals born in India can file their immigrant visa applications for an EB-2 green card at a U.S. Consulate abroad if their priority date is on or before January 1, 2015. For domestically-filed green cards, USCIS announced that for employment-based filings, I-485s can be filed based on the same priority date listed in the "Final Action Dates Chart" in the Visa Bulletin, so it's the same: January 1, 2015 as well. You're so close! However, since you already have the EB-2 NIW priority date, assuming the I-140 got approved or an offer that is still valid (likely at your current employer), you would not gain any advantage by applying for an EB-2 NIW at this point. Here's why: - You're nearing the front of the green card line anyway.
- The EB-2 and EB-2 NIW (National Interest Waiver) green cards are in the same second preference category, and have the same cut-off date.
| | Vertical farming founder is reimagining agriculture from the ground up Posted: 13 Jul 2022 10:00 AM PDT Welcome back to Found, the TechCrunch podcast that brings you the stories behind the startups. This week’s guest, Bowery Farming founder and CEO Irving Fain wants you to taste the best strawberry you've ever had, grown only a few miles from your urban home. As the leading and largest vertical farming company in the U.S, their goal is to make agriculture possible in urban spaces while also making it possible to grow a wide array of crops from anywhere in the world. Darrell and Jordan talk to him about how agtech companies all have a space in the fight against climate change, what led him to start Bowery, and how they are innovating and scaling thoughtfully. Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each week. Connect with us: - On Twitter
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| | Meet the all-electric RV startup steered by Tesla alumni Posted: 13 Jul 2022 10:00 AM PDT What started as a pet project to electrify food trucks in the San Francisco Bay area — an enterprise inspired by the cacophony of generators that greeted Ben Parker every day during his lunch break at Tesla — has evolved into a much larger, complex and potentially more lucrative undertaking. Parker and partner Toby Kraus have set their sights well beyond food trucks and are aiming instead to build an all-electric RV company that will upend the industry. “Every time that I would tell people about the food truck project, RVs would come up in conversation because these (vehicles) have similar needs for onboard power,” said Parker, a Tesla veteran who worked on the battery for the Model 3. He soon discovered that the RV market, and specifically the towable travel trailer sector, was much larger than he realized. It was also badly in need of a switch to electric. A three-month, 6,000-mile RV road trip designed to give Parker firsthand experience as well as an understanding of the customer and market provided the final proof points. Lightship Energy, the startup the pair co-founded in May 2021, was soon charging forward with a high-flying goal. Lightship is not only trying to design and produce an electric travel trailer that ditches the propane tanks and generators that creates a “bummer RV camping experience” as Parker describes it, the company is also trying to remove a barrier for owners of all-electric SUVs and trucks who want to haul a travel trailer on long road trips. An EV truck with a 300-mile range traveling at 65 miles an hour with a traditional travel trailer in tow becomes a 100-mile truck, explained Parker, who is CEO. The team at Lightship, which now numbers 20 people, experienced the range loss first hand. “We pulled the most aerodynamic trailer we could rent behind a Tesla Model X and we actually had to drop the trailer in the middle of an off ramp on an interstate because we couldn’t pull it to the next Supercharger,” said Kraus, who is chief operating officer at Lightship. “It was miserable.” The effort promises to be complex, but the pair contend the market size and opportunity are simply too large to ignore. In 2021, 600,240 recreational vehicles were sold in North America, up from 430,412 units the year before, according to Thor Industries, the RV giant that owns brands Airstream, CrossRoads, Cruiser RV, Dutchmen, Jayco, Keystone, Tiffin and Erwin Hymer Group. “Ninety percent of the market is towable travel trailers,” Kraus said, who is an alum of Tesla and Proterra. “The market is huge.” Lightship is still creeping out of stealth and not yet ready to show its electric travel trailer to the world. But the company’s idea and its progress has attracted investors and fresh capital. Lightship, which previously raised $1 million in pre-seed and $3 million in seed funding, recently closed a $23 million Series A round led by Victoria Beasley of Prelude Ventures. Existing and new investors include Obvious Ventures, Congruent Ventures, My Climate Journey, HyperGuap and Alumni Ventures. Beasley, who has also joined the board, said the combination of market opportunity, the team, which includes former Tesla, Proterra, Apple and Rivian employees, along with Lightship’s aim to create a delightful customer experience led her to invest in the startup. The funds will be used to double the team by the end of the year and develop an alpha prototype of Lightship. “Our goal is definitely to create a super satisfying long-range, EV roadtripping experience,” Parker said. “As any good Tesla alum would work, we started with going back to the fundamentals and asking, ‘what should a travel trailer be?'” The team identified that efficiency was an absolute necessity for it to exist in the future. But the project extends beyond designing a sleek-looking, aerodynamic trailer. Lightship is also developing the underlying EV skateboard architecture. The final ingredient to Lightship’s secret sauce is the powertrain, which includes a battery pack comparable to one in a Tesla Model 3, that will propel the trailer as it is being towed. Lightship is also exploring the integration of solar cells on the roof for passive charging. “I think the gravity of the problem around towing and towing range is just starting to hit home with people as more EV trucks are hitting the market,” Parker said. “With an EV powertrain on board you can use that additional energy for the trailer to propel itself, reduce all of the load on the tow vehicle and get back to a range loss zero experience — now you have a 300-mile trailer and a 300-mile truck.” | | How to use grants and partnerships to fund early stage robotic startups Posted: 13 Jul 2022 09:36 AM PDT Attabotics provides warehouses with a novel robotic solution that is reinventing supply chain management. The company has attracted investment from a wide range of investors, including Gordon Food Service, the Ontario Teachers' Pension fund, and traditional firms like Coatue Management and Forerunner Ventures. Hear from Scott Gravelle, founder and CEO at Attabotics, about how the company used grants to fund its development, and what Eurie Kim, general partner at Forerunner Ventures, saw in the company that led to an early VC investment round. This TechCrunch Live event opens on July 13 at 11:30 a.m. PDT/2:30 p.m. EDT with networking. The interview begins at 12 p.m. PDT followed by the TCL Pitch Practice at 12:30 p.m. PDT. Apply for TCL Pitch Practice by completing this application. TechCrunch Live records weekly on Wednesdays at 11:30 a.m. PDT/2:30 p.m. EDT. Join us! Click here to register for free and gain access to all TechCrunch Live events — including TechCrunch Live, City Spotlight, Startup Pitch Practice, Networking and other TechCrunch community events — with just one registration. | | US-based Here lets you make fractional vacation rental investments starting at $100 Posted: 13 Jul 2022 09:06 AM PDT Airbnb got its start as a place for homeowners casually to rent out rooms and more from their own private residences to make a bit of extra income, but it quickly evolved into something a little more specialized: a platform where a large part of the inventory became listings from those who owned property primarily as an investment vehicle. Now a startup out of the U.S. called Here is announcing some funding to build out a democratizing twist on the supplier side of that equation: a platform that lets people become fractional investors in those vacation rentals, starting with stakes as low as $100. Here has secured a $5 million seed round led by Fiat Ventures, with participation from Joe Montana's Liquid 2 Ventures, Mucker Capital, Basecamp Ventures, and Cooley, bringing the total raised to date to $7 million including a first seed round earlier this year. Here is using this latest capital injection to invest in market growth, user growth, and product. It will be making property acquisitions for the platform using debt raised separately from this equity. Corey Ashton Walters, founder and CEO of the Miami, Florida-based startup, said when Airbnb was preparing to go public in 2020, he was searching for new ideas for a venture in the real estate sector. He took inspiration from the property investment portal Roofstock and art investment platform Masterworks to create a new startup that lets retail investors to “own shares” of a vacation rental home with even a $100 investment.  Image Credits: Here.co “Vacation rentals are an investment opportunity that historically has only been available to the wealthy. Here has created a seamless and simple way for everyday investors to participate in this market, and supporting their mission to open up this opportunity to everyone was an easy decision” said Adam Nash, CEO & co-founder of Daffy and former CEO of Wealthfront, in a statement, who is an angel investor in the company. To be completely clear, Here is not a timeshare: you don’t get to book some free time to stay in the property as an investor; this is just about investing in the property to make dividends from other renters, and from potential property sales. Nor is partial investing in homes alongside others a completely unique idea. There are other startups, like U.S.-based Pacaso — which has raised over $1.5 billion to date according to Crunchbase — and Mexico-based Kocomo that allow you to have partial ownership of a vacation house. And in the U.S. and other markets, there are REITs, trusts where investors are backing real estate plays. The twist here is the low barrier to entry, $100, versus potentially thousands of dollars on the other platforms. Fractional investing has been a very strong theme in the world of fintech, where it’s used by neobanks and others to give users a way of buying fractions of shares in premium stocks that might otherwise be too cost-prohibitive. Others like Rally have taken the idea and applied it to the world of collectibles. Here’s model works like this: the company acquires a property and makes it “vacation rental ready” through its own investments. Then it lists it in an IPO to investors at a price inclusive of all those expenses. All properties adhere to the rule of $1 = 1 stock of the property. Once all shares are sold out, Here puts it on different vacation rental portals like Airbnb, Homeaway, and Booking.com for stays. It then pays out quarterly dividends to investors from the profits earned by that property in the period. The aim is to keep a vacation rental property for five to seven years and then sell it on the market. Shareholders will get payouts based on their respective stakes in the property. The company deducts maintenance costs from dividends and final appreciation before the money is handed out to investors. So how does Here make money? Ashton Walters said that the company collects 1% to 10% sourcing fees based on the acquisition price — similar to a real estate agent’s fees — when a house is listed for investment. The firm also charges a 1% annual asset management fee on the property. It also holds a minimum of 1% of the property to have some “skin in the game,” so other investors can put money with confidence.  Image Credits: Here.co Here formally opened its portal to the public earlier, and it has listed three properties across Bear, California, Clearwater, Florida, and Gatlinburg, Tennessee, with a fourth going live shortly. Currently, it has more than 30,000 registered on the site, with 1,000 of them active investors. Ashton Walters said a listing has usually 400-500 seats for investments, so it’s hard to accommodate all users. To meet regulatory compliance, the company mentions all investment variables in its SEC circular. Before launching the property for investment on Here, the company acquires it and submits the offering to SEC for approval. Each property is held under an LLC, which protects investors from personal liability in case of loan defaults or bank repossession. There are some things that investors need to consider while investing on Here. The company says it uses a mixed model of equity and debt financing to acquire homes. While it buys some properties outright, it has a mortgage component in others. Here claims that all this info is disclosed on the offering page and the official offering circular. There’s a question of returns on investments when the housing market is crashing. Here said it intends to hold indefinitely through a downturn. “The idea isn’t just to survive a downturn, but to thrive through it,” it said. The firm also noted that often when home prices go down, rentals go up, so it hopes that properties generate more cash flow for the investors during the downturn. The company ambitiously aims to expand its offering range to launch 70-100 properties across 20 vacation destinations like Hudson Valley in New York and Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania over the next year. It also plans to launch its own Airbnb competitor where it’ll list the properties it owns for members and the general public in the future. “We have stopped ad spend for last 60 days because we don’t have enough supply to meet the demand. Our last listing was sold out in five hours. Short-term rentals are having their defining moment of being recognized as an asset class. So our goal is to capture the market and become a reliable brand in this space,” Ashton Walters said. | | Google Cloud launches its first Arm-based VMs Posted: 13 Jul 2022 09:00 AM PDT It’s been a long time coming, but Google Cloud today announced its first Arm-based VMs, following AWS, with its Graviton instances, and Azure, which also recently launched Arm VMs. But while AWS built its own custom chips, Google Cloud is following Azure’s lead here by using chips from Ampere. These new VMs, which are now in preview, will join Google Cloud’s line of Tau VMs under the ‘Tau T2A’ moniker. This line launched almost exactly a year ago, using AMD Milan processors, to offer a better price/performance ratio. “We are excited to extend the rich choices we already offer with Intel and AMD and enter the Arm ecosystem to provide our customers with even more choice and flexibility. We have support for a broad ecosystem of operating systems, databases, programming languages and other tools,” Sachin Gupta, Google Cloud’s VP and GM for infrastructure, said in a press briefing ahead of today’s announcement. The new chips will come in pre-defined SKUs with up to 48 vCPUs, each with up to 4GB of memory. The VMs will offer up to 32 Gbps of networking bandwidth and support the usual range of storage options available in the Google Cloud ecosystem. Google says these CPU specs will make these machines useable for a wide range of workloads, including as web servers and for running containerized microservices, data-logging applications and more. Like the AMD-powered Tau chips, Google sees these as its price-performance optimized solutions. A 32-core Tau T2A VM in Google Cloud’s us-central1 region will cost $1.232 per hour, for example. Users will be able to use the likes of RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu and Rocky Linux on these machines, in addition to Google’s own Container-Optimized OS for running containerized applications. At this point, Arm support has become table stakes for most OS and software vendors, which in turn also greatly enhances the usefulness of these VMs (and those of Google’s competitors). The new VMs are now available in a small number of regions, including us-central (Iowa – Zone A, B, F), europe-west4 (Netherlands – Zone A, B, C) and asia-southeast1 (Singapore – Zone B, C), but will come to other data centers over time. “Ampere Altra Cloud Native Processors were designed from the ground up to meet the demands of modern cloud applications,” said Jeff Wittich, Chief Product Officer, Ampere Computing. “Our close collaboration with Google Cloud has resulted in the launch of the new price-performance optimized Tau T2A instances, which enable demanding scale-out applications to be deployed rapidly and efficiently.” In addition to using these VMs as part of Google Cloud’s Compute Engine, Google also now supports them as part of its Kubernetes Engine, the Dataflow stream and batch processing service and Batch, a new fully managed job scheduler for batch job Google is also launching today. “This new capability will benefit major use cases for throughput-oriented computing such as weather forecasting and electronic design automation,” said Gupta. “The primary purpose of this new service is to offer unprecedented flexibility in time, location and cost of cloud capacity for batch jobs.” | | XFuel hopes to sail past biofuels’ troubled past with modular reactor design Posted: 13 Jul 2022 09:00 AM PDT Biofuels are the sirens of renewable energy, luring startups with enchanting promises of enormous markets, from aviation to trucking and shipping. Companies just can't help throwing themselves at the problem, and more than a few have been dashed to pieces in the process. One new startup, though, hopes it's Ulysses in this tale, able to sail past the rocky shores that have sunk more than a few of its predecessors. XFuel is pinning its hopes on a modular refinery design that it says can produce replacement fuels for marine shipping and diesel vehicles with a carbon footprint that's up to 85% lower now and possibly carbon-neutral in the future. Today, the Dublin-based startup announced an €8.2 million investment round led by AENU, a new German VC firm, and joined by Union Square Ventures and HAX/SOSV. XFuel is currently making marine- and diesel-grade fuels and developing aviation fuels. "It is a direct replacement for the fossil counterparts," co-founder and CEO Nicholas Ball said. "The focus here was to develop a technology to be able to produce fuel at a comparable or lower price point than fossil fuels. We went down this R&D path for a number of years, a lot of trial- and-error-type work." The result, he said, is a demonstration plant in Spain that "proves out the technology that we have and the modularity that we're trying to encompass here." The heart of XFuel's work revolves around what the company calls mechanical catalytic conversion, which takes plant material and uses heat, chemical reactants and friction to help break it down. (Ball, when pressed, wouldn't be more specific than that.) | | Autonomous flight startup Merlin Labs nabs $105M and US Air Force partnership Posted: 13 Jul 2022 09:00 AM PDT Autonomous flight is a grand challenge in aviation — and a gold mine. The first company to crack it at scale stands to reap handsome profits from transportation and logistics alone. In 2020, the size of the global cargo airline industry was $110.8 billion, according to Statista, and one source estimates that it’ll generate hundreds of billions in revenue by 2027. Xwing is one of the startups chasing after self-flying planes, as is Reliable Robotics, Pyka and the unicorn Volocopter. They’re not the only ones. Roughly a year ago, Boston-based Merlin Labs emerged from stealth with an autonomous flight system designed to be installed in existing aircraft. While Merlin told TechCrunch at the time that it had “hundreds” of test flights under its belt, the company’s system lacked certification from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to provide commercial service. That changed recently. In September, Merlin achieved approval from the FAA and New Zealand’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) for its “certification basis” for autonomy system as part of a joint project between the FAA and CAA. Post-certification, Merlin landed partnerships with air fleet operators Dynamic Aviation and Ameriflight and branched into defense, revealing that it would supply its system to the U.S. Air Force to retrofit the service’s C-130J Super Hercules cargo planes.  Image Credits: Merlin Labs Evidently pleased with the progress, investors have poured significant capital into Merlin, driving the size of its Series B round to $105 million. The round, announced today, was co-led by Snowpoint and Baillie Gifford with participation from GV (formerly Google Ventures) and brings Merlin’s total raised to $130 million. “Merlin was founded to define what's possible in the next 100 years of aviation,” CEO Matt George told TechCrunch in an email interview. “A core part of my interest in founding Merlin is to increase pilot safety and operational flexibility by adding autonomous systems to existing aircraft.” George is a two-time founder, having previously launched Bridj, a platform that supports on-demand public transportation providers. Bridj gained modest traction in Boston, Washington, D.C., and Austin before it ran out of runway, selling its assets, including the brand, to Australian company Transit Systems. With Merlin, George — drawing on his experience as a pilot — hopes to make a softer landing. “We're going to continue to achieve our certification milestones … [W]e want to build on that record of trust and safety with the new funding,” George said. “The business case is relatively simple: in a world of increasing transportation costs and a global shortage of pilots, autonomy can help to ease the burden of cost on companies, and at the same time can increase safety for pilots themselves, who now have an always-on, alert, and intelligent robotic co-pilot within the airframe they're already familiar with.” Merlin’s avionics system uses GPS, inertial navigation systems, air data, and altitude and heading reference systems to establish an aircraft’s current position and altitude. The system performs actions using actuators connected to the plane, which are directed by the onboard flight computer. Flight is complex; fatal crashes like Lion Air Flight 610 in 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in 2019 are sobering reminders of this. But George argues that autonomy in the air is easier than, say, the road because ground-based radar offers “complete vision” of nearly everything in the sky — at least in the U.S. He sees Merlin’s technology merely building on the autopilot systems that are ubiquitous in large commercial aircraft today, which often handle in-flight procedures as well as landing. As a fallback, pilots fly alongside Merlin’s system within equipped aircraft, George says, and their data is used to improve the system’s efficiency and safety.  Image Credits: Merlin Labs One particularly unique aspect of Merlin’s product is its use of speech recognition to interface with air traffic controllers. As George explains, Merlin’s system is designed to receive verbal instructions from control towers, recognize and interpret the instructions and adjust flight instructions accordingly. George says that the system had to be trained on a range of accents and voice types to ensure it was “genuinely robust and useful.” Speech recognition being fallible, the human pilot takes over in instances where it fails. Even with over $100 million in funding, Merlin isn’t as well-financed as some of its competitors. But George claims that the startup is already generating “8+ figures of revenue,” which he sees as a major milestone in the nascent market. Defense is likely to be a lucrative new line of business for Merlin in light of recent geopolitical developments. One rival, Shield AI, recently raised $165 million at a $2.3 billion valuation to fuel development of its military autonomous flying systems. Fast Company previously reported that Merlin was working with the Air Force under an “other transaction authority” (OTA), a procurement contract in which the government funds the development of a technology until it's mature enough to fulfill the terms of a defense contract. Merlin described the amount as “much larger” than the traditional million or so dollars at which OTAs usually top out. “The autonomous flight industry, in addition to the technical challenges inherent to getting planes to fly on their own, faces challenges from regulatory and public perception … We're facing these challenges by working alongside key stakeholders to ensure a safe, measured approach to autonomous flight,” George said. “The challenge the pandemic presented also serves as a demonstration of the value of what we're enabling in aviation: the pandemic fundamentally shifted ways people shop, which in turn put enormous pressure on retailers, carriers, and logistics companies to transport and deliver goods in a timely manner, and strained the aviation system in general.” George says that Merlin will put the money from the latest funding toward expanding testing, building a New Zealand–based Part 135 freight capability, and growing its 70-person headcount across the U.S. and New Zealand. (Merlin Labs has offices in Los Angeles, Denver and New Zealand, as well as a dedicated flight facility in the Mojave Desert.) In New Zealand, Part 135 rules prescribe the operating requirements for aircraft with fewer than nine seats and helicopters. Merlin has previously said that it expects to see autonomous flights that can take off, navigate, land and converse with air traffic control as soon as 2023. | | Roe’s reversal will shake up how startups are built Posted: 13 Jul 2022 08:36 AM PDT Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha asked: How does Roe's reversal impact the ways that companies are built? The question was inspired by a recent TechCrunch+ column, “Roe reversal weighs heavily on emerging tech cities in red states.” The reporters behind the piece, Dominic-Madori Davis and Becca Szkutak, joined Equity to talk about the story and help us get more of the nuance behind this huge setback. We chatted about the reappearance of geographic boundaries, selective silence from the money behind the money, and how founders need to rethink their growth strategy if they’re coming from red states. We also chatted about how some founders have already started to react to the overturn of Roe vs. Wade and their sentiments revolving the legality of what happens next. Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. | | Despite an ‘unprecedented correction’, Atomico’s newest partner wants to help European founders thrive Posted: 13 Jul 2022 08:23 AM PDT It has been a busy few months for Atomico, the European venture capital (VC) juggernaut founded by Skype co-creator Niklas Zennström some 16 years ago. After promoting three investors to partner back in April, it then brought in former Revolut and Uber executive Don Hoang as partner a month later. To cap off this frenzy, Atomico today announced that former Balderton Principal Laura Connell has joined as its latest partner to work on Atomico’s growth-stage investments. The appointment comes a little more than two years after Atomico closed its fifth fund at $820 million, and with a reported two new funds in the works totalling more than $1.3 billion, it’s clear that the company is preparing to scale despite a broader economic downturn. An ‘unprecedented correction’ There’s no escaping the elephant in the room here. Mass layoffs are affecting companies of all sizes and industry, while a giant reset has hit valuations for public and private companies alike. Just this week, Atomico’s portfolio company Klarna confirmed a fresh round of funding at a whopping 85% lower valuation than the corresponding period last year. While all this upheaval undoubtedly hurts those inside the companies themselves, it’s not necessarily the worst time to be an investor, with valuations being brought crashing back to reality after a pandemic-driven period that birthed an insane amount of unicorns. And the experiment of force-feeding late-stage startups infinite money is apparently over. “We’ve all had a front row seat for what’s been really an unprecedented correction,” Connell said. “I think that’s a product of normalization after the exuberance of 2020 and H1 (first half) 2021, and an era of cheap money, right? So in some ways, talking purely on a macro basis, the world [today] looks in some ways more normalized. And that correction, while painful, is also an opportunity for us as investors, and for the best founders to really show their true colours and get ahead of the pack.” Atomico has already made somewhere in the region of a dozen investments this year, and there’s already evidence of new funds in the works across the venture and growth spectrum (Connell wasn’t at liberty to discuss any details). So it feels like there is going to be a lot of money still floating around for the right kinds of startups. For growth-stage companies, like the ones that Connell will be focused on across the consumer and enterprises spaces, the same research and due diligence will be required as before to build what Connell calls a “high level of conviction.” “I think for us as investors, the best investments come from really deep insights,” Connell said. “So we have an opportunity here to kind of keep building unique and differentiated insights and high conviction. And keep the threshold high for the kinds of founders we want to work with.” Public affairs It’s worth noting that Connell was already well-acquainted with Atomico before quietly joining last month, given that both Balderton and Atomico have invested in a number of the same companies through the years such as Truecaller and Graphcore. More recently, however, Connell was an investor at Marcho Partners, a global tech hedge fund focused on backing publicly listed companies. This was very much a strategic move, according to Connell, who was seeking to diversify her experience. “It’s fairly well accepted that lots of funds are looking at ways to expand their capital base from private to the public markets,” Connell told TechCrunch. “I was asking myself how best I could serve a lot of growth-stage founders that I worked with, and it seemed a good time to get some experience building a fund out on the public side. But my heart has always been on the private side — my ambition, in the end, was always to come back full-time to do private, albeit with that public market experience.” By dipping into the public investment sphere for a year, Connell said that this experience could ultimately benefit all the venture- and growth-stage companies that perhaps have one eye on the public markets. “First and foremost, it’s helping founders navigate what are quite choppy capital markets, be it on the later-stage private side or if they think about going to market for an IPO or a direct listing — and how to approach the public investor mindset, which is a different animal,” Connell explained. And then there is the regional verus global aspect to consider. Balderton is a very Europe-focused fund, as is Atomico, whereas her time at Marcho took Connell into the U.S., Southeast Asia and Latin America (as well as Europe). This could prove beneficial for current and future portfolio companies looking to expand their horizons. “I’ve spent a lot of time looking at some of the more nascent emerging ecosystems in places like Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia — all that additional knowledge is hopefully something that is useful to founders in Europe as they think about going global,” Connell said. | | Indian fintech OneCard tops $1.4 billion valuation in fresh $100 million funding Posted: 13 Jul 2022 08:20 AM PDT FPL Technologies, an Indian startup that offers credit cards to customers under the brand name OneCard, is the latest in the South Asian market to join the unicorn club following a new round of funding. Singapore's Temasek, one of the world's largest investors, led the Pune-headquartered startup’s Series D round of over $100 million, OneCard disclosed in a filing to the local regulator. The new round values OneCard at over $1.4 billion (post-money), up from about $750 million in January this year, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. Existing backers QED, Sequoia Capital India and Hummingbird Ventures were among those who participated in the new round, which brings OneCard’s to-date raise to over $225 million. OneCard declined to comment Wednesday evening. TechCrunch reported in February that Temasek was in talks to lead a round of over $100 million in OneCard at a valuation of about $1.5 billion. Indian news outlet Entrackr first reported about the filing. Fewer than 30 million Indians have a credit card today, which has created a huge whitespace for startups in the country to innovate on tech and reach more consumers. Banks in the country, and beyond, are increasingly attempting to expand their own credit card customers bases, but their stringent and archaic eligibility criteria make most Indians unworthy of credit cards. And that’s a factor that OneCard founders understand very deeply. Founded by banking veterans in 2019, OneCard operates a mobile-first credit card. Its cards, for which the startup partners with banks, come without any joining or annual fee and give customers more control and flexibility over how and where they transact. It also offers a range of personalised rewards and loans to customers. The startup also operates an app called OneScore, which helps users understand and learn their credit score. The app is one of the largest customer acquisition drivers for OneCard, it has said previously. OneCard said earlier this year that it had amassed over 250,000 customers who were spending about $60 million with its cards each month. Anurag Sinha, the startup's co-founder and chief executive, said in January that he estimated that about 80 million to 90 million Indians were eligible to have a credit card. That’s not to say that credit card companies are not facing some of their own challenges. UPI, a five-year-old payments rail developed by retail banks, has quickly gained adoption and is the most popular way Indians transact today. The fast inroads of UPI has eroded some usage of debit cards, though it appears credit cards are so far largely immune from it.  Data: NPCI, RBI, Bernstein analysis. Image: Bernstein. “UPI P2M transaction value exceeded total credit and debit card spending for the fourth month running. The share of P2M transactions was up from 16.6% to 18% YoY in value. Wallets are picking up traction again (+35% YoY, by value). We think the bounce-back comes from Paylater fintechs disbursing credit through the wallet/PPI route,” wrote a Bernstein analyst in a note to clients last month. “We think this will continue to impact debit cards and credit cards (albeit to a lesser extent). Credit card spending growth was +78% YoY, with debit card spending growth at +16% YoY. We think the mobile over cards, and credit over debit theme poses a big threat to debit cards (spend growth), and to credit cards (albeit to a lesser extent — spend growth, pricing pressures),” it added. Moreover, the central bank’s recent directive that the role of co-branding partner for credit cards should be limited to marketing and distribution of cards and providing acess to the cardholder for the goods and services that are offered is expected to hurt many credit card startups. The central bank’s another recent move of integrating credit cards with UPI is expected to drive higher spending on credit cards but it poses a threat to their business model as “there is limited clarity on the merchant discount rate (MDR) for such payments,” the analyst wrote. | | Selfie scraping Clearview AI hit with another €20M ban order in Europe Posted: 13 Jul 2022 08:03 AM PDT Clearview AI has been hit with another sanction for breaching European privacy rules. The Athens-based Hellenic data protection authority has fined the controversial facial recognition firm €20 million and banned it from collecting and processing the personal data of people living in Greece. It has also ordered it to delete any data on Greek citizens that it has already collected. Since late last year, national DPAs in the U.K., Italy and France have also issued similar decisions sanctioning Clearview — effectively freezing its ability to sell its services in their markets since any local customers would be putting themselves at risk of being fined. The U.S.-based company gained notoriety for scraping selfies off the internet to build an algorithmic identity-matching commercial service aimed at law enforcement agencies and others, including private sector entities. Last year, privacy regulators in Canada and Australia also concluded Clearview’s activities fall foul of local laws — in earlier blows to its ability to scale internationally. More recently, in May, Clearview agreed to major restrictions on its services domestically, inside the U.S., in exchange for settling a 2020 lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which had accused it of breaking state law in Illinois that bans the use of individuals' biometric data without consent. The European Union’s data protection framework, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), sets a similarly high bar for legal use of biometric data to identify individuals — a standard that extends across the bloc, as well as to some non-member states (including the U.K.); so around 30 countries in all. Under the GDPR, such a sensitive purpose for personal data (i.e., facial recognition for an ID-matching service) would — at a minimum — require explicit consent from the data subjects to process their biometric data. Yet it’s clear that Clearview did not obtain consent from the billions of people (and likely millions of Europeans) whose selfies it surreptitiously took from social media platforms and other online sources to train facial recognition AIs, repurposing people’s data for a privacy-hostile purpose. So the growing string of GDPR sanctions stacking up against it in Europe is hardly surprising. And more penalties may follow. In its 23-page decision, the Hellenic DPA said Clearview had breached the legality and transparency principles of the GDPR, finding violations of articles 5 (1)a, 6 and 9; as well as breaches of obligations under articles 12, 14, 15 and 27. The Greek DPA’s decision follows a May 2021 complaint made by local human rights advocacy group, Homo Digitalis, which has trumpeted the win in a press release — saying the €20 million penalty sends a “strong signal against intrusive business models of companies that seek to make money through the illegal processing of personal data.” The advocacy organization also suggested the fine sends “a clear message to law enforcement authorities working with companies of this kind that such practices are illegal and grossly violate the rights of data subjects.” (In an even clearer message last year, Sweden’s DPA fined the local police authority €250,000 for unlawful use of Clearview it said breached the country’s Criminal Data Act.) Clearview was contacted for comment on the Hellenic DPA’s sanction. Update: In a statement attributed to its founder and CEO, Hoan Ton-That, Clearview said: “Clearview AI does not have a place of business in Greece or the EU, it does not have any customers in Greece or the EU, and does not undertake any activities that would otherwise mean it is subject to the GDPR.”
At current count, the company been fined — on paper — close to €50 million by regulators in Europe. Albeit, it’s less clear whether it has paid any of the fines yet, given potential appeals and the overarching challenge for international regulators of enforcing local laws against a U.S.-based entity if it decides not to cooperate. The U.K.’s DPA told us Clearview is appealing its sanction in that market. “We have received notification that Clearview AI has appealed. Clearview AI are not required to comply with the Enforcement Notice or pay the Penalty Notice until the appeal is determined. We will not be commenting further on this case whilst the legal process is ongoing,” the ICO’s spokesperson said. Clearview’s responses to earlier GDPR penalties have suggested it is not currently doing business in the affected markets. But it remains to be seen whether the enforcements will work to permanently shut it out of the region — or whether it might seek to circumvent sanctions by adapting its product in some way. In the U.S., it spun its settlement with the ACLU as a "huge win" for its business — claiming it would not be impacted because it would still be able to sell its algorithm (rather than access to its database) to private companies in the U.S. The U.S. lawsuit settlement also included an exception for government contractors — suggesting Clearview can continue to work with federal government agencies in the U.S., such as Homeland Security and the FBI — while applying a five-year ban on it providing its software to any government contractors or state or local government entities in Illinois itself. It is certainly notable that European DPAs have not — so far — ordered the destruction of Clearview’s algorithm, despite multiple regulators concluding it was trained on unlawfully obtained personal data. As we’ve reported before, legal experts have suggested there is a grey area over whether the GDPR empowers oversight bodies to be able to order the deletion of AI models trained on improperly obtained data — not just order deletion of the data itself, as appears to have happened so far in this Clearview saga. But incoming EU AI legislation could be set to empower regulators to go further: The (still draft) Artificial Intelligence Act contains powers for market surveillance authorities to 'take all appropriate corrective actions’ to bring an AI system into compliance — including withdrawing it from the market (which essentially amounts to commercial destruction) — depending on the nature of the risk it poses. If the AI Act that’s finally adopted by EU co-legislators retains this provision, it suggests any wiggle room for commercial entities to operate unlawfully trained AI models inside the bloc could be headed for some hard-edged legal clarity soon. In the meanwhile, if Clearview obeys all these international orders to delete and stop processing citizens’ data it will be unable to keep its AI models updated with fresh biometric data on people from countries where it’s banned from processing people’s biometric data — implying that the utility of its product will gradually degrade with each fully enforced ban order. | | Founders Fund backs Pulley as it helps companies make better decisions about equity Posted: 13 Jul 2022 08:02 AM PDT When Yin Wu started Pulley, a cap table and equity management startup, back in 2019, she was out to compete with the likes of Carta. My colleague Connie Loizos spoke to Wu in 2020 when the company raised $10 million. The company provides tools and insights to founders and employees who are looking to make more informed decisions about their equity ownership as it relates to hiring and fundraising, while also staying compliant with aspects like taxes and accounting. "Equity is something that we’re continuing to increasingly to see," Wu told TechCrunch. "For us, it’s not so much how we take market share from partners, but rather we think this market is continuing to grow, and how can we be a large part of that? We are very much building for equity insights. It’s not just about how you record how much equity someone has on a cap table, but how do you help someone make the decisions around this?" Fast-forward 2 years and Pulley, also co-founded by Mark Erdmann, continues to hold its own. The company now works with over 1,700 companies, and revenue tripled in the last year. In addition, Pulley today announced it picked up another $40 million in Series B dollars earlier this year. The round was led by Keith Rabois at Founders Fund and included existing investors, such as Stripe and Elad Gil. It also launched its free plan, called Pulley Seed, for new customers that have fewer than 25 stakeholders. They can model and compare different funding scenarios, raise capital and set up equity grants for employees, all at no cost. Pulley is also helping companies weather this economic downturn, and though most of the companies Pulley works with are at an earlier stage and aren't seeing the kinds of layoffs occurring in later stages, I asked Wu what kinds of questions Pulley was getting from customers. "Companies are often asking what if they have to raise a down round, or what happens when people go," she said. "That is really a question for lawyers and accountants. However, we also get questions about specific situations around equity, including if you leave a company. Remember that you have a time period to go and exercise the options, so make sure that you have the capital if you want to exercise options." The new investment gives Pulley about $50 million in total funding raised to date. Though Wu didn't disclose a specific valuation, she did say it was "a significant increase" over the company's valuation in the last round. Wu plans to use the new funds to add to Pulley's workforce of 40 and to expand on product engineering and marketing, which is a new focus for the company, she added. In addition, the company now has a board of directors, and as part of the investment, Rabois will join the board. Wu explained that Founders Fund shared in Pulley's core belief of helping founders, and she and Erdmann liked that Rabois had the kind of operational experience that has him working with companies at all different stages. "Companies are in a tough spot," said Rabois in a written statement. "Equity decisions are harder than ever before, but the tools to manage them have not kept pace. Pulley helps users understand and make the most out of their ownership. There’s never been a more urgent time than now to get a handle on your equity." | | A ransomware attack on a debt collection firm could be one of 2022’s biggest health data breaches Posted: 13 Jul 2022 07:57 AM PDT A ransomware attack on a little-known debt collection firm that serves hundreds of hospitals and medical facilities across the U.S. could be one of the biggest data breaches of personal and health information this year. The Colorado-based Professional Finance Company, known as PFC, which contracts with “thousands” of organizations to process customer and patient unpaid bills and outstanding balances, disclosed on July 1 that it had been hit by ransomware months earlier in February. PFC said in its data breach notice that more than 650 healthcare providers are affected by its ransomware attack, adding that the attackers took patient names, addresses, their outstanding balance and information relating to their account. PFC said that in “some cases” dates of birth, Social Security numbers and health insurance and medical treatment information were also taken by the attackers. In a separate filing with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, PFC confirmed that more than 1.91 million patients are affected by the cyberattack. At least two healthcare organizations listed as affected by PFC have issued their own data breach notifications. Bayhealth Medical Center in Delaware said 17,481 patients were affected by the PFC breach, while Coleman County Medical Center in Texas disclosed the breach to 1,159 patients. The attack on PFC is second only in size to a March 2022 data breach at Shields Health Care Group, a medical imaging company with facilities across New England, affecting an estimated two million patients. PFC chief executive Michael Shoop did not respond to our email asking for information about its ransomware attack. Instead, the company’s general counsel Nick Prola reiterated its boilerplate statement in an email but declined to answer our specific questions, including why it took the company four months to notify affected healthcare providers and whether the stolen data was encrypted. It’s not the first time a debt collection firm has been targeted by cybercriminals and resulted in a massive theft of personal information. At least 20 million patients had data stolen when AMCA, a medical debt collector contracted with laboratory testing giants LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics, was hit by a data breach. AMCA subsequently filed for bankruptcy following the breach.
You can contact this reporter on Signal and WhatsApp at +1 646-755-8849 or zack.whittaker@techcrunch.com by email. | | Meta’s Ray-Ban Stories now let users make calls and send messages with WhatsApp Posted: 13 Jul 2022 07:41 AM PDT Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today that the company is launching more hands-free features for its Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses. Starting today, Ray-Ban Stories users can make calls, hear message readouts and send end-to-end encrypted messages with WhatsApp. Meta added similar functionality for Facebook Messenger last year. Zuckerberg also announced that users will soon be able to directly reply to Messenger or WhatsApp messages with voice commands. With this new update, users can make calls and send messages on WhatsApp hands-free by saying "Hey Facebook, send a message to…" or "Hey Facebook, call…" You can also listen to new messages you receive on WhatsApp. Once you get a new message, the glasses will say: "New message on WhatsApp from <name>: Is now a good time to talk?" In a future update, Meta plans to add the ability to directly reply to incoming messages on Messenger and WhatsApp, hands-free by saying: "Hey Facebook, reply" after the glasses read out a new message. The company notes that your personal messages and calls are automatically secured with end-to-end encryption, which means WhatsApp, Meta and third parties can’t read or listen to them. After the voice assistant identifies a voice command related to WhatsApp calling or messaging, the voice transcript and audio is not stored on any server. Meta also say it plans to expand WhatsApp and Messenger support for French and Italian speaking Ray-Ban Stories users this year. Today’s update is rolling out to both the Facebook View iOS and Android app in phases and will be available to everyone in the coming days. Meta says users should make sure they have the latest app update and firmware on their glasses. Meta debuted its Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses in September 2021 in partnership with eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica. The glasses allow users to snap photos and videos with the two onboard 5 MP cameras, listen to music with in-frame speakers and take phone calls. The glasses need to be connected to an iOS or Android device for full functionality, though users can take and store hundreds of photos or dozens of videos on the glasses before transferring media to their phones via Facebook's new View app. The twin cameras allow users to add 3D effects to their photos and videos once they upload them to the app. The smart sunglasses come in three classic Ray-Ban styles, with a number of color and lens combinations. The Ray-Ban Stories are fully compatible with prescription lenses. The glasses start at $299, with polarized and transition lens options available at a higher price point. At the time of the launch, Meta indicated that the device was a stepping stone for its AR ambitions and an effort to get users acquainted with the idea of high-tech glasses. The launch of the new features comes as Meta is said to be scaling back its plans for its AR glasses, according to a recent report from The Information. The company reportedly had originally planned to launch the first version of its AR glasses, which are codenamed Project Nazare, in 2024. However, employees have been notified that Meta no longer plans to commercially release the AR glasses due to efforts to cut back on heavy investments in its Reality Labs and AR/VR division. The company plans to instead use the first version of the AR glasses as a demonstration product, as opposed to a commercial one. Meta is now planning to prioritize the release of the second version of the AR glasses, codenamed Artemis. | | Polestar on track to sell 50,000 EVs in 2022 Posted: 13 Jul 2022 07:36 AM PDT Polestar, the electric vehicle maker that made its Nasdaq debut in June, said Wednesday it is on track to meet its annual sales target. For the first half of 2022, Polestar delivered approximately 21,200 cars, more than twice as many as the 9,510 cars it posted for the same period in 2021. The company said it expects to deliver 50,000 cars this year. That's a positive sign for the EV company, which spun out from Volvo and Geely by merging with Gorges Guggenheim, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAc), at a $20 billion valuation. Most EV manufacturers that have gone public through a SPAC instead of an IPO during the last two years have struggled shortly after launching on the stock exchange, missing their sales targets and sending share prices into freefall. Polestar’s share price has also declined since its debut, but the company still plans to scale its operations worldwide, boost production by adding a second shift at its factory in China and begin making a second model at Volvo's factory in South Carolina. The automaker, which raised $890 million through its SPAC deal to fund its three-year growth plan, also benefits from access to Volvo and Geely's manufacturing expertise, facilities and connections. Those advantages set it apart from Faraday Future, Electric Last Mile Solutions, Lordstown Motors and others that have struggled to raise enough money to build their own EVs from scratch. Currently, the Polestar 2 battery-electric sedan is the only model the automaker sells. The lineup will expand with the arrival of the Polestar 3 SUV in October and later include the Polestar 4 midsize crossover and Polestar 5 flagship sedan. Analysts expect the Polestar 3 to generate significant sales as one of the automotive industry's fastest-growing and highest-margin segments. Overall, the company plans to grow its presence to 30 countries by the end of 2023 and sell 290,000 cars annually by 2025 — about 10 times Polestar's 2021 sales. Polestar said it has begun delivering the first vehicles to Hertz under a $3 billion deal to sell the rental car company 65,000 EVs over the next five years. | | Fabric lays off 40% of staff as it shifts strategy from service to platform Posted: 13 Jul 2022 07:10 AM PDT Fabric, a New York–based micro-fulfillment company focused on robotics technology for last-mile operations, has cut staff and named a new chief executive. The startup confirmed the changes to TechCrunch, essentially saying that it has seen the writing on the customer wall and is making some strategic changes. Today, the company officially announced its intentions to move in the direction of being a platform rather than a service. As a result, not everything with the new plan is positive: founding CEO Elram Goren was replaced by COO Avi (Jack) Jacoby 2 weeks ago, and the outfit told its 300-person staff Wednesday that 40% of them would be laid off. Fabric builds hardware and software for customer warehouses to automate the processes of selecting, moving around and packing items. We last covered the company in 2021 when it raised $200 million in Series C funding with some top investors behind it, including Temasek, which led both the C and Series B rounds. The company raised over $330 million in total and its valuation was over $1 billion. In the past year, however, the company's customers began asking for different offerings than Fabric was currently providing, namely they wanted more of a platform offering than a service offering. Fabric's current service is providing the real estate, deployment, commission, label and all of the services to maintain it. Shifting to a platform offering puts more in the hands of the customer, Jacoby told TechCrunch. He joined the company in 2018 as chief of staff and rose to the ranks of CEO of the Israel market. In 2020, he became Fabric's chief operating officer. "Most of our customers told us they prefer to operate our system on their premises and with their own teams," he said. "They would like to retain direct relations with the end customers and do not want anyone between the retailer and customer." Over the past 6 months, the company's board of directors and leadership began looking at what that platform offering could look like. Jacoby explained that since starting the company 7 years ago, Goren had a "vision about building a network and providing a service to retailers." "Once the board decided it didn't see a demand for that in the market, that led to Elram's decision to step down," he added. "I think after seven years, he was pushing in that one direction." Though Fabric's customers were asking for something else, the company's original network vision might not entirely be losing steam, according to Chris Domby, chief supply chain officer of Ware2Go, a UPS spinoff fulfillment startup for small businesses. "While large retailers are creating their own micro-fulfillment networks based on their specific needs, as an emerging technology, this method is costly," Domby said via email. "Because of this, outsourcing micro-fulfillment is still the most beneficial for small and mid-sized businesses. As a result, we're seeing the emergence of micro-fulfillment-as-a-service offerings, which are allowing small businesses to access micro-fulfillment networks they otherwise wouldn't be able to afford." Regarding the layoffs, Jacoby explained that as a service company, Fabric was providing the real estate, deployment, commissioning and once operational, the label and services. Now that it won't be doing all of that, the employees who were let go fall into those categories, which include its R&D teams and are mainly based in Israel, but the layoffs were across the organization, he added. The commercial teams were not impacted by the workforce reduction because the U.S. is still Fabric's main market. Site operations, sales and marketing, product and finance were also not impacted. "We are going to expand in the U.S., but it doesn’t make sense to shift R&D to the U.S.," he added. Impacted employees will be provided with a cash severance, extended benefits and job outplacement services, Jacoby said. Though Jacoby says he is seeing the trend of a slowdown in e-commerce, it did not have an impact on the decision regarding the shift to a platform business. It was instead listening to customers and their need to shift to automation, owning their micro-fulfillment system and operating it themselves. However, e-commerce has indeed been slowing down since the start of 2022. Forbes reported that Americans spent some $5.28 billion less online in April with part of the blame being placed on higher travel and gas prices that are cutting into people's budgets for spending on goods. Jacoby reiterated that Fabric has "years of runway, is in a very good situation" and was not under pressure to make the decision. "We are just doing what we believe will position us better in the market," he added. "What is happening to the market has nothing to do with it, and the company’s financial situation is very good. This decision needed to be taken now because we need the runway to position ourselves better as a platform player." | |
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