Tuesday, November 2, 2021

TechCrunch

TechCrunch

137 Ventures, which buys equity from private company shareholders, just raised a new fund

Posted: 02 Nov 2021 04:00 AM PDT

137 Ventures, a 10-year-old, San Francisco-based investment firm that mostly buys private company shares of founders, executives, early employees, and other large shareholders of private, high-growth tech companies, has closed its fifth fund with $350 million. It's the largest fund the outfit has raised to date (its fourth fund initially closed with $210 million in 2019 and later ballooned to $250 million).

It’s certainly no surprise that 137 Ventures —  which also makes small investments in primary rounds on occasion — is chugging along. Of the roughly 75 companies it has acquired stakes in over the years, it says that 13 have gone public and that seven of the 13 have gone public over the last 14 months, including Airbnb, Wish, and Palantir.

It has some valuable equity in its portfolio, too, including SpaceX, Gusto, Flexport, Workrise, and Curology.

The five largest investments by dollars invested since the launch of the firm’s fourth fund in 2019 are Workrise, Wonolo, Thirty Madison, Anduril, and Lattice, it says.

We had a quick chat with firm cofounder Justin Fishner-Wolfson yesterday to talk about the go-go market and how it’s impacting his firm. Unsurprisingly, he said that “everything is shockingly faster,” which has accelerated 137 Ventures’s work, too. There are more companies to meet with than ever before, for example, which has meant that that the firm has had to beef up a bit and that it continues to hire.

“There are a lot of conversations to be had,” he said.

With private market valuations soaring so fast, his firm is also facing unprecedented competition, he conceded. He says it helps that 137 Ventures has managed to establish a brand already. There’s a benefit to having done this for a decade. Still, while one can “win deals if people think you’re helpful and smart and you’re going to be there when times are more challenging than they are today,” market participants “do have to pay market prices,” he said, and you have to “have more coverage and to make sure people know who you are. You have to work to stay in front of everybody.”

Asked if employees are more or less eager to sell their shares, given that so many startups are seeing their valuations triple and even quadruple so quickly right now, he suggested they haven’t changed all that much in this market. He says there are just more of them because there are more companies that are faring well, as well as continuing to wait on an “exit” event.

He also says that companies are, in some cases, allowing employees and other insiders to sell earlier in the startup’s life cycle.

Not last, and not surprisingly, 137 Ventures is seeing more startups put processes in place far earlier when it comes to letting insiders sell a portion of their shares. Likely they need to do this in order to retain talent but also, as Fishner-Wolfson, noted, they’ve probably learned from watching earlier companies. He pointed, for example, to Palantir, which had no real restrictions on trading. “That had some positive and some negatives,” he observed.

As for 137 Ventures, Fishner-Wolfson insisted it isn’t playing the market buy trading its shares as they rise — and sometimes fall — in value.

He estimated that its average holding period is “six or seven years” and said that the firm typically waits until a company has gone public to begin exiting 137 Ventures’s investment in it. Even then it might hold the shares a while, depending on the life cycle of the fund. Said Fishner-Wolfson: “We’re trying to invest in companies that are among the most successful in their categories, so we’re trying to invest in them for a really long time.”

Elon Musk says Hertz hasn’t actually ordered 100,000 Tesla EVs yet

Posted: 02 Nov 2021 04:00 AM PDT

Steve Dent Contributor
Steve Dent is an associate editor at Engadget.
More posts by this contributor

Last week, a press release from Hertz indicated that the rental company had placed an order for 100,000 Tesla Model 3s for its rental fleet. Late yesterday, however, Elon Musk tweeted that the order is far from firm, saying that “no contract has been signed yet,” Gizmodo has reported.

Hertz’s announcement stated that it made “a significant investment to offer the largest EV rental fleet in North America… [which] includes an initial order of 100,000 Tesla’s by the end of 2022.” That release and a report from Bloomberg, combined with other good news about sales in Europe, may have motivated investors to push Tesla’s value over the $1 trillion mark.

Hertz only left bankruptcy four months ago after being purchased by distressed-debt firm Knighthead Capital Management and other firms for $6 billion. As such, announcing a purchase of 100,000 EVs valued at around $4.2 billion obviously raised eyebrows.

As Gizmodo pointed out, though, Hertz technically never said it signed a contract or purchase order for the vehicles. The phrase “an initial order of 100,000 Tesla’s by the end of 2022” could be taken to mean that the order itself and not the vehicle deliveries will happen at the end of 2022. Tesla itself never responded to the initial news.

Musk’s tweet came in reply to Twitter user “Tesla Silicon Valley Club,” which was thanking him for Tesla’s recent stock price rise. He appeared to want to dampen down some of that hype, however, stating that any Hertz deal would have no impact on the company’s sales and bottom line.

"Tesla has far more demand than production, therefore we will only sell cars to Hertz for the same margin as to consumers. Hertz deal has zero effect on our economics.”

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on Engadget.

LightForce Orthodontics wolfs down $50M to straighten out that crooked smile of yours

Posted: 02 Nov 2021 03:01 AM PDT

Everyone’s set of teeth are different enough that orthodontics has traditionally been part artistry, part medical witchcraft. In the late 1990s, Invisalign changed the industry with customizable aligners, but it turns out that aligners only serve 30% of orthodontics patients. For the rest, there hasn’t been much in the way of innovation — until LightForce came along and shook things up. With the snappy slogan “one size fits one”, LightForce Orthodontics creates custom, 3D-printed brackets and placement trays for braces. In this case, more custom means better: Patients enjoy shorter treatment times, and orthodontists are able to offer tooth movement treatment plans with incredible precision — down to a thousandth of a millimeter.

LightForce Orthodontics has seen stratospheric growth over the past year — 500% revenue growth, while the team grew by 300%. Investors paid attention, and one investor, in particular, wanted to get its fangs into the company and place itself on the cap table. Kleiner Perkins cut its teeth in the business of orthodontics 25 years ago, making a boatload of money from its investment in Invisalign. They are back for another bite of the apple, leading the $50 million Series C round into LightForce, with participation from the company’s past investors, including Matrix Partners, Tyche Partners and AM Ventures.

“One thing we talk about all the time here at this company is that we put patients first in every decision we make. Everything we do always goes to the lens of ‘is it the best thing for the patient’. Even our all-hands start with a patient: how did we help somebody? The market we are really unlocking is the teen and adolescent market, which represents 75% of all cases in the U.S. Think about adolescent psychology: that’s when kids are forming their sense of self,” explains CEO and co-founder of LightForce, Dr. Alfred Griffin III, DMD, PhD, MMSc, who still practices as an orthodontist four days per month. “I can’t tell you how many cases I’ve seen personally as an orthodontist, where mom will come in and say ‘my son gets teased’ for this or for that. With LightForce, we can help that patient faster and reduce the number of appointments and reduce the amount of time they have to be out of school. We get them to a better result by leveraging technology.”

The company previously raised a $14 million Series B round just over a year ago, and wasn’t in the market for more money just yet, but when Kleiner Perkins came knocking, LightForce decided to take the call and see if there was a deal to be made.

LightForce’s custom bracket (left) can be placed and aligned with sub-millimeter precision, in addition to being the right shape for the tooth. A traditional bracket is shown on the right. Image Credits: LightForce Orthodontics

“We raised a little bit earlier than we had planned. There were some very well-known VCs that were keeping tabs on us that had seen us in the past, but we were a bit too early for them. Kleiner Perkins was always one that was on my mind, as one that I would love to work with — especially with Wen Hsieh himself. He has a deep background in 3D printing and hard tech. He’s done a lot of the best hard-tech deals,” explains Griffin. “Kleiner Perkins is one of the only venture capital groups that has done anything significant in orthodontics. It was 20 years ago, but Align Technology changed orthodontics, for the better in my opinion. Two value props came out of Align Technology. One was the aesthetic benefits, which unlocked the adult segment. The second thing is the digital nature of what they do.”

“A lot of these innovations come from people who are not from the industry,” says Wen Hsieh, the partner at Kleiner Perkins who led the investment. “Alfred is an orthodontist himself, and it has made a world of difference. Because he’s a doctor himself, he already knows where to insert into their workflow. What part of their normal workflow is eliminated, what part is enhanced, how they can spend more or less time, how it impacts the dental tech, how it impacts the footprint of the office, how it impacts how often the patient has to come in, and so on. Meanwhile, Alfred is taking in the knowledge from other areas, such as from simulation and from 3D printing.”

If you’re sitting here scratching your head about why people can’t just use Invisalign and be done with it… I had a very similar question. It turns out that aligners can only push, not pull. Pulling teeth down to align with other teeth is something braces are great for, but aligners aren’t able to accomplish. The other aspect is compliance: Aligners have to be worn 22 hours per day, and, well, people just aren’t very good at that. As Griffin points out: “Mom isn’t going to get mad at their teenager if the treatment is going too slowly. They’ll both blame the orthodontist.”

The LightForce brackets are 3D-printed, and so are the trays they come in. This enables orthodontists to place the brackets exactly where they need to go on the teeth. The new brackets are semi-translucent, which means they appear to be the same color as the teeth, leaving them much less visible. Image Credits: LightForce Orthodontics

This investment is good news for teeth-havers, but it’s also great news for 3D printing fans. Orthodontics is one of the world’s biggest commercial users of 3D printing technology — Invisalign is currently the world’s biggest 3D printing company — and that trend isn’t going to change as LightForce now has the bank balance to go and buy a godawful number of printers themselves.

With the $50 million cash-injection into the company’s war chest, the battle for the braces can commence in earnest. The new funds will help scale LightForce operations and go-to-market efforts to enable more orthodontic practices around the country to combine the digital benefits seen with aligner therapy with the tooth-moving efficiency and quality outcomes seen with braces. It’s going to be an exciting, but complex journey: Scaling an operation where every set of hybrid ceramic braces is custom-printed for each client is fantastically challenging both logistically and operationally. 

“Scaling, mass customization is a very unique problem that most talk about in theory, but very few have dealt with in practicality,” admits Griffin. “There’s around 200 of us in the company right now, and we will probably double that over the next year. Sales and engineering are probably going to be the biggest expenses, but in terms of headcount, we will need to grow the most in manufacturing technicians, both in terms of physical and digital manufacturing.”

EV conversion startup Opibus raises $7.5M to start bus and motorcycle mass production

Posted: 02 Nov 2021 02:00 AM PDT

Opibus, the first company in Kenya to commercially future-proof diesel and gasoline vehicles by converting them to electric, is set to embark on an ambitious plan to mass produce electric buses and motorcycles after unlocking $7.5 million in pre series A round.

The Swedish-Kenyan company raised $5 million in equity and $2.5 million in grants in a round led by Silicon Valley fund At One Ventures,  backed by Factor[e] Ventures and pan-African VC firm Ambo Ventures. The round is the company's first major fundraise, having previously raised capital from angel investors.

Opibus told TechCrunch that it is looking to deliver its first electric bus by the first quarter of next year.

"We are proud to be backed by globally recognized investors providing a balance between deep-tech and emerging market expertise. We have together reached a clear strategic and visionary alignment, with the conviction that mass manufacturing of electric mobility solutions in Africa will not only make the products more accessible and affordable, but also lead to one of the largest industrialization and welfare transitions of the region in modern time," said Opibus' CEO and co-founder, Filip Gardler.

Founded in 2017 by Gardler, Filip Lövström and Mikael Gånge, Opibus has over the years specialized in auto conversions, and is now moving to full electric vehicle manufacturing, starting with motorcycles and public commercial vehicles, all while developing charging and energy solutions.  

"The targets and objectives we've set for Opibus might seem bold, however it is a mission that has become more important than ever. We have a responsibility to the coming generations and the earth [as a] whole," said Gardler. 

Already, the company has started taking pre-orders of its electric motorcycles, while confirming to TechCrunch that the demand is promising. Opibus bikes will start at $1,300 depending on several features including battery capacity. The company said the competitive advantage of its product includes declining operational costs of up to 60% lower that of fossil fuel alternatives.

Going forward, the company plans to move to a bigger plant as it prepares to increase its production to serve the entire African continent.

"We are about giving vehicles a second life but for motorcycles we see that we won’t be able to scale fast enough if we’re converting motorcycles. And since we want to design a product that’s better than what is already in the market, we are building our bikes from the ground up – by designing and manufacturing them in-house," Opibus' chief strategy and marketing officer Albin Wilson told TechCrunch.

In addition to Kenya, the company's other clients are spread out in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa. 

A switch to electric power offers countries in sub-Saharan Africa a range of gains including a reduced cost of transport and lower carbon emissions. Countries like South Africa, Mauritius and Rwanda are already ahead of the game. South Africa has drafted a roadmap for the increased production and adoption of fully electric vehicles, while Rwanda rolled-out incentives that will make it less costly to buy and operate them.

"The electric mobility space in Africa represents a huge opportunity; not only to provide a better service at a lower cost to customers, but also to reduce carbon emissions and avoid deadly exposure to particulate pollution on a local level," said Factor[e] Ventures managing partner, Morgan DeFoort.

Reports show that electric mobility in Africa is nascent but opportunities remain vast, especially if the infrastructure to support its adoption is built. Challenges facing the industry include the initial high cost of electric vehicles, a lack of charging infrastructure, low grid power connectivity, taxation and low level of awareness about EVs.

With inadequate infrastructure being among the biggest setbacks in EV adoption, Opibus has started installing communal charging infrastructure to serve public transport providers. The company plans to install the charging hubs in major towns near the country's capital city, Nairobi, as it builds out a network that will sustain the mass transport electric buses planned for launch next year. Opibus also plans to forge partnerships with mini grid companies to ensure that its motorcycle customers in rural areas have access to charging points.

The company sees great potential for electric vehicles on the continent as the price of items like the solar batteries reduce significantly. It has so far converted 170 vehicles to serve different clientele including mining companies and tour firms. Its SUV conversions reach a maximum speed of 50 miles per hour, and an off-road driving range of just over 60 mph. 

 For its conversions, Opibus replaces diesel and gasoline engines with electric motors and controllers, served by battery packs that are fitted with minimal modifications on the chassis.

Flippy, the hamburger-cooking robot, gets more capable

Posted: 02 Nov 2021 02:00 AM PDT

Following its recent pilot in select White Castles, Miso Robotics today announced a new version of its hamburger-cooking robotic arm, Flippy. The new version of the robot, simply named Flippy 2, is designed to further automate simple cooking tasks for fast food establishments.

As Miso notes in a release, primary staff feedback on the original version is that Flippy required too much human assistance on either side of its primary cooking tasks. That includes the initial handling of the uncooked foodstuff and putting the cooked food in the holding era. Basically Flippy was replacing the need to constantly monitor and adjust the food while cooking, but not much in the lead-up or follow-through.

Image Credits: Miso Robotics

Per Miso CEO Mike Bell:

Like all technologies, Flippy 2 has evolved significantly from its predecessor, and we are extremely grateful for the insights collected from White Castle to truly push its development forward in a real restaurant environment. "Flippy 2 takes up less space in the kitchen and increases production exponentially with its new basket filling, emptying and returning capabilities. Since Flippy's inception, our goal has always been to provide a customizable solution that can function harmoniously with any kitchen and without disruption.

Miso says the more compact version of the robot is capable of increasing throughput by nearly a third over its predecessor, while requiring significantly less human hand-holding. The second Flippy arrives as restaurants are facing widespread employment shortages amid the pandemic.

EV startup BasiGo debuts in Nairobi after $1 million pre-seed funding

Posted: 02 Nov 2021 01:32 AM PDT

Electric vehicle startup BasiGo has today announced the launch of its operations in Nairobi, bringing clean energy options to Kenya's public transport industry, currently dominated by fossil-fuel buses. 

The startup plans to sell locally assembled electric buses using parts from China's EV maker BYD Automotive, the company said while announcing it had raised $1 million in pre-seed funding. BasiGo also disclosed that its buses will come in 25 and 36-seater capacities, with a range of about 250 kilometers, which it says is enough to cover daily round trips.

The company is planning to enter other markets within the East Africa region after establishing ground in Kenya. BasiGo is backed by a number of investors including Climate Capital, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, and Third Derivative, an accelerator focused on climate-technology

“For years, diesel-powered buses have been the only viable solution for bus operators in Kenya. We are excited to provide public transport operators with a new option: state-of-the-art electric buses that are more affordable, and reliable, and reduce bus operator exposure to the rising costs of diesel fuel," said BasiGo CEO and co-founder Jit Bhattacharya.

Owing to the high initial acquisition costs, BasiGo plans to introduce a financing model that will allow its customers to purchase its EV buses at the price of their diesel equivalents, while offsetting the balance through usage-based subscription fees. BasiGo says that they will begin the pilot program after the arrival of the first bus later in the year. 

"The cost of electric bus technology has come down dramatically over the last 10 years, to the point where electric buses can offer significant savings compared to fossil-fuel buses. Our goal is to help bus owners in Kenya realize these savings, and in the process, help Kenya become a global leader in sustainable public transport," said Bhattacharya.

Bhattacharya is not new to the field of electric vehicles, having been a technology leader in rechargeable (lithium-ion) batteries for more than 12 years. Over the course of his career, he worked as the CEO of Mission Motors in Silicon Valley and was also a senior manager at Project Titan — the secret electric car project by Apple Inc. More recently, he served as the chief technology officer of Fenix International, an off-grid solar home system company acquired by the French multinational electric utility company ENGIE in 2018.

BasiGo's other founder, Jonathan Green, has over the past 15 years helped companies deliver renewable energy technologies to users in Africa. More recently, he held the role of strategy and operations director at Fenix International, where he led the delivery of more than 500,000 pay as you use solar systems to customers across six markets in Africa.

The company's plan to launch electric buses in Kenya comes in the wake of increasing bids for the adoption of clean energy in public transport. On-demand taxi companies like Bolt and Uber have already introduced electric vehicle options as they slowly move away from vehicles using fossil fuels, which are increasingly linked to air pollution.

A real-time project by IQAir, a Swiss-based air quality technology company, shows that vehicles and motorcycles are the main contributors to air pollution in Nairobi. According to IQAir, PM2.5 concentration (fine inhalable matter) in Nairobi air is currently 1.3 times higher than the WHO annual air quality guideline value. 

In general the WHO estimates that air pollution causes the deaths of at least 18,000 Kenyans every year, with other researchers confirming that a transition to electric vehicles could help alleviate the situation across Africa.

The SSA Nature Sustainability report says that a switch to electric power offers countries in sub-Saharan Africa a range of gains, including affordable transport and a reduction in emissions, with fossil-fuel vehicles contributing 12% of the region's total emissions. 

And while the opportunities for electric mobility remain huge, a majority of African countries lack the necessary infrastructure to support its adoption. A lack of recharging infrastructure, low grid power connectivity and generally expensive e-vehicles remain hindrances to the adoption of electric transportation options in many African countries according to a UNEP report. 

BasiGo's COO, Alex Mwaura, said they will tap the country's renewable energy resource to fuel public transportation. 

"Kenya is unique in that we have a surplus of renewable energy which can be taken advantage of by the public transport sector to make it more sustainable going forward. Nairobi's transportation sector is evolving rapidly, and we look forward to partnering with the government and relevant agencies to grow the infrastructure for electrified public transit."

Also working to bridge the infrastructure gap are electric vehicle maker Opibus and NopeaRide — Kenya's first fully electric taxi company — which are both setting up charging hubs across Nairobi. 

Opibus is the first company in Kenya to commercially future-proof diesel and gasoline vehicles by converting them to electric. The company's conversions are popular with tour firms, which prefer them owing to their silent nature during safaris. 

NopeaRide recently received funding from EEP Africa, a financing facility for early-stage clean energy in Southern and East Africa, to build more solar charging hubs in Nairobi, making it possible for the company to increase its service radius.

Other emerging EV companies in Kenya include electric motorcycle manufacturer Kiri Electric, and Drive Electric, which leases electric vehicles and provides charging station installation and e-mobility consultancy.                                                      

SoftBank-backed Indian logistics startup Delhivery files for $1 billion IPO

Posted: 01 Nov 2021 10:56 PM PDT

Indian logistics startup Delhivery seeks to raise about $998 million in its initial public offering, the startup said in a fling with the local regulator, joining a number of other tech startups in the world’s second largest internet market to explore the public markets.

The 10-year-old startup plans to issue new shares worth $669 million, while the rest of the capital will be utilized to buy existing shares, it said in a filing (PDF).

The startup, which was valued at over $3 billion four months ago, is hoping to list at a valuation of over $6 billion in the public market, Indian newspaper Economic Times reported earlier this week.

Backed by SoftBank, Tiger Global Management, Times Internet, The Carlyle Group, Steadview Capital, and Addition, Delhivery began its life as a food delivery firm, but has since shifted to a full suite of logistics services in over 2,300 Indian cities and more than 17,500 zip codes.

The Gurgaon-headquartered firm has raised $1.37 billion in funding over the years, according to data intelligence platform Tracxn. It reported loss of $56 million on a revenue of $514 million in the financial year that ended in March this year.

A look at Delhivery’s performance in fiscal year 2021. (Shared by Delhivery in the IPO filing.)

It is among a handful of startups attempting to digitize the demand and supply system of the logistics market through a freight exchange platform.

Its platform connects consigners, agents and truckers offering road transport solutions. The startup says the platform reduces the role of brokers, makes some of its assets such as trucking — the most popular transportation mode for Delhivery — more efficient, and ensures round the clock operations.

This digitization is crucial to address the inefficiencies in the Indian logistics industry that has long stunted the national economy. Poor planning and forecasting of supply and demand increases carrying costs, theft, damages and delays, analysts at Bernstein wrote in a report last month about India's logistics market.

Delhivery, which says it has delivered over 1 billion orders, works with "all of India's largest e-commerce companies and leading enterprises," according to its website, where it also says the startup has worked with over 10,000 customers. For the last leg of the delivery, its couriers are assigned an area that never exceeds 2 square kilometers, allowing them to make several delivery runs a day to save time.

Indian logistics market's TAM (total addressable market) is over $200 billion, Bernstein analysts wrote in a report to clients earlier this year. The startup said late last year that it was planning to invest over $40 million within two years to expand and increase its fleet size to meet the growing demand of orders as more people shop online amid the pandemic.

Korean autonomous driving startup 42dot bags $88.5M Series A to accelerate its growth

Posted: 01 Nov 2021 10:30 PM PDT

42dot, a South Korea-based autonomous Transportation-as-a-Service (TaaS) startup, announced today it has raised $88.5 million (104 billion WON) in a Series A round of funding to advance its urban mobility operating system (UMOS).

The Series A brings the startup's total raised so far to $130.1 million. The company valuation is now estimated at $425 million (500 billion WON), a source familiar with the matter said. A spokesperson at 42dot declined to comment on the valuation. 

The latest funding included participation from new investors like Shinhan Financial Group, Lotte Rental, Lotte Ventures, STIC Ventures, We Ventures, DA Value Investment, and others. Returning backers also joined the Series A round, but the spokesperson did not provide their information. South Korea’s several big conglomerates, including Hyundai Motor, Kia Motors, LG Electronics, SK Telecom and CJ Logistics, invested in the company’s $42 million pre–Series A in September 2019.   

The Seoul-based company will use the proceeds to advance its AI-based technology, establish joint ventures and hire staff. It has 200 employees as of October, the spokesperson noted. The company also plans to expand its business through investment and M&A, based on its statement. In July, 42dot signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with South Korean financial firm Shinhan Capital to develop a mobility financial service.

42dot was founded in 2019 by CEO and co-founder Chang-Hyeon Song, who is also Head of TaaS team at Hyundai Motors. In April, the South Korea-based automaker set up a new TaaS division to strengthen its mobility strategies. 

The lidar-free self-driving company developed an autonomous driving software and hardware solution, AKit, which uses only two types of sensors such as cameras and imaging sensor radar to perform all aspects of sensing the environment surrounding the autonomous vehicle. 

42dot also built an autonomous mobility/logistics platform called “TAP!” that offers a raft of services across ride-hailing, fleet management, demand-responsive transport, smart logistics and more. 

The company's two core solutions, Akit and TAP!, are expected to commercialize in 2023. Its clients will be primarily autonomous carmakers and mobility platform operators, the spokesperson said. 

"In the future, cities will be operated under a federated fully autonomous, self-managing, self-healing logistics and transportation infrastructure. The new infrastructure will provide a much more optical and cost-effective way to move people and goods," Chang noted in its press kit. 

Chinese autonomous driving startup WeRide bags $200M in funding

Wayve, the lidar-free self-driving startup, raises $13.6M from Ocado

Chipper Cash gets $2B valuation with $150M extension round led by FTX

Posted: 01 Nov 2021 10:00 PM PDT

Chipper Cash, an African cross-border payments company, has raised $150 million in a Series C extension round led by Sam Bankman-Fried's cryptocurrency exchange platform FTX.

The investment comes barely six months after Chipper Cash closed its first Series C round of $100 million, led by SVB Capital, the corporate venture capital arm of SVB Financial Group.

SVB Capital reinvested in this extension round and other existing investors such as Deciens Capital, Ribbit Capital, Bezos Expeditions, One Way Ventures and Tribe Capital.

While new investors also participated, they remain unnamed at the moment. The company's total Series C stands at $250 million but its total funding to date is over $305 million.

During TechCrunch's last conversation with CEO Ham Serunjogi, when the company announced its Series C round, he called Chipper Cash "the most valuable private startup in Africa" without specifics on the actual value.

The statement was left open for interpretation and several debates have sparked since then on whether Chipper Cash is a unicorn or not. Well, Serunjogi can confirm that Chipper Cash is indeed one now, as this extension round takes its valuation slightly above $2 billion.

Serunjogi founded Chipper Cash with Maijid Moujaled in 2018 to offer a no-fee peer-to-peer cross-border payment service in Africa via its app. Its services are used across seven African countries — Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa and Kenya.

This year, the company began to make strides outside the continent. In May, it expanded to the U.K., allowing people to send money from the European nation to Chipper Cash's African markets.

Chipper Cash

Image Credits: Chipper Cash

Last month, Chipper Cash, with over four million users, ventured into the already competitive U.S. to Africa corridor with established players such as Wise, MoneyGram, Sendwave and Remitly; the U.S. is responsible for almost 30% of the international remittances to sub-Saharan Africa.

Though the margins for remittances are small, the market has grown exponentially for the better part of the past decade, except last year when total remittances stood at $42 billion, down from $48 billion in 2020, per the World Bank.

Considering how expensive it is to send money to sub-Saharan Africa (it is the most expensive region to send money globally), Chipper Cash's play is to offer the "best prices" and also facilitate money movement from Africa to the U.S.

"Chipper Cash is offering remittances considerably cheaper than anyone else," Serunjogi told TechCrunch over a call. "More important to that is that we are now the first ones that I know honestly to be able to support Africa to the U.S. in terms of sending money." 

Platforms such as WorldRemit already allow specific African countries like South Africa to send money to the U.S., so Chipper Cash is not entirely the first to try to offer such a service.

With that said, Serunjogi says peer-to-peer money movement from the U.S. to Nigeria and Uganda is currently live for users in those markets. The company will roll out the service to users in Ghana, South Africa and Kenya before the end of the year.

For outflow payment services — sending money from Africa to the U.S. — the CEO says that users in Uganda, South Africa and Kenya will be the first to get access next year.

Chipper Cash has also been busy tapping into the world of social payments. Earlier this year, Twitter launched its Tips feature, also known as Tip Jar, to allow creators to receive money on its platform. The social media company integrated with some payments platforms to make it accessible in different regions.

As creators in developed markets can select PayPal, Patreon, GoFundMe, Cash App and Venmo to receive tips, Chipper Cash was picked to offer the service to African creators through its payments link.

"The idea for Twitter and ourselves is to offer multiple ways for creators to be able to be paid for their work and their contribution online," said Serunjogi.

"And Twitter worked with us on this given our presence as the largest cross-border payments platform in Africa that could support multiple countries for Africans using Twitter."

Chipper Cash plans to make its Tip Jar integration accessible for users in the U.S. by next year, said Serunjogi.

SVB-led $100M investment makes Chipper Cash Africa’s ‘most valuable startup’

The partnership with Twitter and cross-border expansion to the U.S. shows the growth opportunity for Chipper Cash and the funding from FTX only makes it more glaring. 

FTX is one of the largest cryptocurrency derivatives exchanges in the world. Last month, the company raised a $420 million round at a $25 billion valuation.

Sam Bankman-Fried runs the company and is also the co-founder of Alameda Research, a quantitative trading platform. Via FTX, he has invested in many businesses, including blockchain startups Sky Mavis and Circle and brokerage trading company DriveWealth (Chipper Cash recently partnered with DriveWealth to offer U.S. stocks to Ugandans).

Chipper Cash is FTX's first investment in Africa and continues the plethora of signs pointing to serious crypto growth and recognition on the continent. This past year, crypto adoption in Africa grew more than 1,000% from peer-to-peer transaction volume totaling $105 billion, according to Chainalysis.

But Bankman-Fried maintains there is yet more room for adoption. "Despite the recent growth in Africa, moving money across the continent is still slow and expensive. Unsurprisingly it is the fastest growing market with grassroots crypto adoption," he told TechCrunch.

The FTX boss added that FTX's partnership with Chipper Cash is to "make money transfer as simple as a text message and accelerate the adoption of crypto within Africa and beyond."

Given Bankman-Fried's statement and Chipper Cash crypto tests in Uganda and South Africa, it is hard not to see the company using crypto to effect its peer-to-peer money movement within and outside the continent.

Twitter Tip Jar lets you pay people for good tweetin’

Another instance where the partnership proves beneficial is with Chipper Cash's Network API. It fundamentally allows developers to leverage the company's infrastructure to collect and disburse payments into Chipper wallets. In essence, Africans who use FTX will have the option to "Pay with Chipper Cash" on the crypto trading platform.

"That's going to be a compelling use case for both of our companies as we keep scaling and as FTX keeps scaling their geographical coverage," the CEO said. "They do some of the most innovative work in the crypto space, so working with them is going to be quite exciting."

Serunjogi says the investment is a crucial repricing event for the company and gives it a strong balance sheet to continue scaling and "maintain our lead in the space."

Closing back-to-back equity rounds in months, to an extent, has become the norm in markets like the U.S., Europe, India, and Latin America. However, it's only just picking up speed in Africa.

Within the past year, startups like Nigerian open banking platform Mono, neobank Kuda and automotive tech company Autochek have raised successive rounds indicating investors' huge appetite for African tech, especially fintech.

The sector remains the most funded on the continent. It has produced the most unicorns, with Chipper Cash — the most valuable startup on the continent alongside OPay — officially becoming the fourth this year after Flutterwave, OPay and Wave. It's the fifth overall unicorn after tech talent company Andela reached the status in late September.

In general, however, the continent has six current unicorns, including Interswitch, a fintech giant that attained a billion-dollar valuation in 2019.

Rising African venture investment powers fintech, clean tech bets in 2020

Coinbase to acquire India’s Agara for over $40 million

Posted: 01 Nov 2021 09:03 PM PDT

Coinbase is acquiring the startup Agara, which operates an AI-powered customer support platform, the two said Tuesday, as the cryptocurrency exchange looks to make it easier for users to join the service and seek assistance.

The firms didn't share the financial details of the acquisition, but the size of the deal is between $40 million and $50 million, two people familiar with the matter told me. A Coinbase spokesperson declined to comment. Agara co-founder and chief executive Abhimanyu also declined to comment on the size of the deal, citing confidentiality agreement.

Four-year-old Agara, which started its journey in India and runs operations in the U.S. as well, had raised about $7 million from Blume Ventures, RTP Global, UTEC Japan, and Kleiner Perkins prior to the acquisition, according to data intelligence platform Tracxn.

Agara has built deep expertise in machine learning and natural language processing that it uses to improve user experience. The startup, which employs over 40 people, has amassed several larger customers across the globe and offers integrations with a number of popular services such as Salesforce, Shopify, and Twilio. After the acquisition, Agara will shift focus to Coinbase, Abhimanyu told TechCrunch in an interview.

"We started the firm largely looking at two things. One was customer experience and support. The second was machine learning. The idea was to create an ML tech stack and apply that to customer care," said Abhimanyu. "Some of the more complicated things we do are around phone calls. We have been working to automate much of, if not all, of the support that happens through phone calls," he said.

The startup's tech team — a bulk of which works from India — will join Coinbase as part of the deal, he said. The two firms expect to close the deal later this year. The move comes months after Coinbase laid out its strategy to build a tech hub in India and hired Pankaj Gupta, a former Google Pay executive, in the country.

"We plan to leverage Agara's powerful technology to automate and enhance our customer experience (CX) tools. Improving our CX remains a top priority for Coinbase — in the past few months we have increased our support staff headcount by 5x and announced that we'll deliver 24/7 phone support and live messaging by end of year. Through this acquisition, we'll be able to provide our customers with new personalized, intelligent, and real-time support options," said Manish Gupta, EVP of Engineering at Coinbase, in a statement.

China’s HR tech startup Moka closes $100M led by Tiger Global

Posted: 01 Nov 2021 08:21 PM PDT

Moka, a six-year-old Chinese startup that wants to make human resources management easier with software, said today it has closed a $100 million Series C round.

The startup aims to automate the entire process of talent management, from hiring to retaining existing staff. For example, it can automatically collect post-interview feedback from candidates and store that information in a database. It can also alert employers when staff make changes to their resumes, which signifies they may be mulling new opportunities. 

The latest investment was led by Tiger Global with participation from Blue Lake Capital, GL Ventures — the early-stage arm of the storied Hillhouse Capital, GSR Ventures and GGV Capital.

The new round came just over a year after Moka earmarked $43 million in a Series B round. The company said it has reached the “unicorn” status but declined to disclose its exact valuation. Its streak of fundraising success no doubt reflects rising investor interest in startups that help boost enterprise productivity, as consumer-oriented internet services, from gaming to short videos, face enhanced regulatory restrictions.

Moka said it has accumulated over 1,500 paid clients including Tencent, Xiaomi, McDonald’s, and Arm China, with an annual retention rate of over 110%. Its CEO Li Guoxing, a Stanford grad, claimed in a previous speech that Moka’s products are particularly popular amongst Chinese internet firms.

Moka raises $27M led by Hillhouse to make hiring more data-driven in China

Singapore-based cashback platform ShopBack acquires BNPL service Hoolah

Posted: 01 Nov 2021 05:00 PM PDT

ShopBack, the Rakuten-backed e-commerce loyalty platform, announced today it will acquire buy now, pay later startup Hoolah. Both companies are based in Singapore and operate in Southeast Asian markets. The deal was done in stock and cash, and terms were undisclosed.

After the merger closes, ShopBack will own all of Hoolah, but the BNPL service’s brand, app and website will continue to operate as before, ShopBack founder and chief executive officer Henry Chan told TechCrunch. The merger means new features will be added to ShopBack's platform, evolving it from a loyalty app for e-commerce purchases to enabling transactions with BNPL options.

ShopBack, a cashback startup in Asia Pacific, raises $45M from Rakuten and others

Other acquisitions ShopBack has made to build out its business include personal finance community Seedly and Ebates Korea.

ShopBack, which has raised about $126 million from investors like Rakuten, Temasek Holdings, EV Growth, EDBI and East Ventures, says it is now used by about 30 million shoppers across 8,000 merchants in nine Asia-Pacific markets.

Founded in 2018, Hoolah's investors include iGlobe Partners, Accelerasia Ventures, Genting Ventures and Maximilian Bittner, the founder and former chief executive officer of Lazada Group. Its BNPL services give shoppers the option of paying for purchases in three interest-free installments. The company says it has been used by more than 250,000 shoppers and is available on 2,000 merchants in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong.

Balancing risk: Modern architecture’s role in the BNPL playbook

 

Electric vehicle maker Rivian seeks to raise $8.4 billion in IPO

Posted: 01 Nov 2021 04:14 PM PDT

Electric vehicle startup Rivian hopes to raise up $8.4 billion in its initial public offering, according to a regulatory filing posted Monday.

The company, which is backed by Amazon, said in the filing that it plans to offer 135 million shares at a price between $57 and $62. Underwriters also have an option to buy up to 20.25 million additional shares. If underwriters exercise that option, Rivian would raise as much as $9.6 billion.

Based on the number of outstanding shares, that would put its market valuation at about $53 billion. If employee stock options and other restricted shares are considered, Rivian’s valuation could be as high as $60 billion.

Rivian filed October 1 to become a publicly traded company in the United States. The S-1 document did not disclose the targeted share price at the time. An amended document filed Monday provided the new information, which included interest from repeat backer Amazon and newcomer Blackstone in Rivian.

Amazon, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Coatue Management, Franklin Templeton, Capital Research Global Investors, D1 Capital Partners LP, Third Point LLC, funds affiliated with Blackstone Alternative Asset Management, Dragoneer Investment Group LLC and certain entities affiliated with Soros Fund Management LLC have indicated an interest in buying up to $5 billion of shares of Class A common stock.

A recent filing by Amazon shows the e-commerce giant already holds a 20% stake in Rivian.

Rivian’s filing was been one of the most anticipated of the year; now attention has turned to its public debut on the Nasdaq exchange. Rivian will trade under the ticker symbol RIVN.

Make the most of iOS 15’s updates to the App Store

Posted: 01 Nov 2021 03:46 PM PDT

Ilia Kukharev Contributor
Ilia Kukharev is the head of ASO at AppFollow and has been engaged in the localization of websites, mobile applications and ASO optimization for over a decade.

The final version of iOS 15.0 was released on September 20. While there are no major changes in the OS itself, Apple touts this new wave of updates will present faster, more stable and convenient operations for users.

But what’s really important are a number of updates that will greatly affect developers and their apps' presence on the App Store. There hasn't been this big of a change since iOS 11 was released over four years ago.

With iOS 15.0’s new updates come new opportunities for developers, giving them more freedom and opportunity to test and market their work across this OS. Let's break down how developers can make the most of iOS 15.0 and what these updates mean for the wider app community.

Optimizing your product page with A/B testing

Updated product pages are the most anticipated feature of this update. Developers now have access to a tool for testing icons, screenshots and videos that are accessible directly from the App Store Connect management console, which will help gauge the impact of visuals on potential users.

It's been a long time since the app community has seen such significant updates in the name of user experience.

Within the App Store ecosystem, the icon being tested must be inside the app build and it must successfully pass the App Review approval process before it can become available to all users.

During this process, moderators check the app for prohibited content, inconsistencies, etc. that may impact user experience. How does this impact uploads? We've already seen the results through updates within the Google Play Store (which has a similar implementation), where the app icon for testing can be uploaded without an app update and does not require approval from the moderators.

Screenshots and videos have a similar process. All of these elements must be reviewed first, and only then can they be used for testing purposes. The final difference is that the ability to test the subtitle (a brief description of the app) in Google Play is not available in App Store Connect.

This matters because developers can finally try different icons, subtitles, etc. to measure what may have the most impact on consumers checking out a product page. These results are available in the App Analytics section of the App Store Connect console. Developers can evaluate changes in conversion, compare page performance and decide whether to keep the new screenshots/icons or roll back to older assets.

Max Q: Sierra Space, Blue Origin, Boeing and others stake out space real estate

Posted: 01 Nov 2021 03:15 PM PDT

Hello and welcome back to Max Q. It feels odd to be living in a time when companies are announcing their plans to develop commercial space stations and yet, here we are! Read on for news from Sierra Space, Blue Origin, Boeing and others on their plans for a station, called Orbital Reef. Plus this week, another space SPAC and more.

Tips, opinions, criticism, thoughts? Email me at aria.techcrunch@gmail.com or find me on Twitter at @breadfrom.

Don't forget to sign up to get the free newsletter version of Max Q delivered to your inbox.

Orbital Reef is claiming its slice of LEO real estate

Let’s get into it: Sierra Space, Blue Origin and Boeing are teaming up to send the spacecraft to orbit in the second half of the decade. The planned station, called "Orbital Reef," will also include tech and services from Redwire Space, Genesis Engineering and Arizona State University.

The news comes less than a week after Voyager Space, Nanoracks and Lockheed Martin laid out their own plans for a commercial space station, which the group says will launch in 2027. Axiom Space is also planning a commercial station.

The big questions that remain: how much it’s going to cost. None of the executives would say. The other major piece of the puzzle is the launch capabilities of Blue Origin's New Glenn, Boeing's Starliner and Sierra Space's Dream Chaser spaceplane. None of these vehicles have yet reached orbit, and the team wants their commercial station in space by the latter half of the decade.

Satellite manufacturer Terran Orbital is going public via SPAC merger

The trend of space companies heading to the public markets via SPAC mergers is not over yet. Terran Orbital, a leading manufacturer of small satellites, is going public in a merger with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Tailwind Two Acquisition Corp. The deal has a post-transaction enterprise value of $1.58 billion and will furnish the company with around $470 million.

Terran Orbital is a contract manufacturer of satellites, working primarily with the government. The company will be opening the world’s largest spacecraft manufacturing facility in Florida. It also has plans to launch and operate its own satellite constellation and to deliver satellite imagery as a service. In a statement, CEO Marc Bell called it the new SaaS: "Satellites-as-a-Service."

Other news from TechCrunch

Gitai Japan successfully completed a technology demo of its robotic arm aboard the International Space Station, a major milestone in the Tokyo-based startup’s goal of commercializing its space robots. Gitai has a really fascinating vision for the future of space, which sees robots as composing the labor force in off-world colonies on the moon and Mars.

Promus Ventures, a VC firm based in Chicago, closed a €120 million ($139 million) space fund, dubbed Orbital Ventures. The new fund, which will operate out of Luxembourg, will be focused on early-stage space companies.

Other news from around the web

ABL Space had a huge week, closing $200 million in funding from existing investors including Fidelity Management and Lockheed Martin Ventures. The financing shot the company’s valuation to $2.4 billion. The company aims to launch its first rocket, dubbed RS1, from Alaska before the year is out.

Amazon has a new agreement with telecom giant Verizon for its Project Kuiper internet satellite project. Verizon will aim to improve wireless internet access in rural areas in the U.S. by expanding its LTE and 5G service.

Astroscale and ClearSpace were awarded a collective £700,000 ($1 million) from the U.K. Space Agency to conduct mission feasibility studies into de-orbiting unusable satellites — AKA cleaning up space junk.

Firefly Aerospace is on track to send its Blue Ghost lunar lander to the moon in September 2023, announcing it had completed a critical design review with NASA that paves the way for it to begin construction of the spacecraft. Firefly eventually wants to complete annual missions to the moon’s surface.

Isar Aerospace inked a firm launch services agreement with satellite company EnduroSat to launch multiple satellites to orbit from the company’s site in Andøya, Norway between 2022 and 2025.

ispace scored a new investment from Airbus Ventures, part of a Series C extension that brings the company’s total raise to around $200 million (ispace has three lunar lander missions planned through 2024).

Join us at TC Sessions: Space in December

Last year we held our first dedicated space event, and it went so well that we decided to host it again in 2021. This year, it's happening December 14 and 15, and it's once again going to be an entirely virtual conference, so people from all over the world will be able to join — and you can, too.

Read more stories on TechCrunch.com

Daily Crunch: Twiga Foods lands $50M Series C to grow its B2B food supply platform

Posted: 01 Nov 2021 03:10 PM PDT

To get a roundup of TechCrunch's biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here.

Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for November 1, 2021. TechCrunch hopes that you had a lovely Halloween, if you celebrate. Yes, your humble scribe had some leftover candy for breakfast. No, he doesn't feel well.

That it's finally November means that our two-day space-themed event is now next month (more here)! — Alex

TC Sessions: Space 2021

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • Nubank files to go public: Brazilian neobank Nubank has filed to go public, and TechCrunch has first notes out concerning its economics. Our read of its filing left us impressed at its low-cost customer acquisition, ability to drive long-term revenue from its customers and the fact that its sales and marketing spend is minimal compared to its aggregate revenues. More to come on the intricacies of its business model.
  • Epic pulls Fortnite from China: The China-world decoupling takes on many forms. One way to view it is through a rising inability for non-Chinese companies to bring their products to the country's shores. LinkedIn is out. And now Epic Games is ending its work to make a Fortnite version for China, despite having Tencent as a key shareholder.
  • Chromebook sales crash: News that global PC sales fell 2% in the third quarter might sound like bad news, but computer sales are still above their pre-pandemic levels, Ron Miller reports. But of the PC varieties out there, it appears that Google's own Chromebook effort is taking the most stick. It dropped from 18% market share to just 9%. Good news for Windows, we reckon.

Startups/VC

Before we get into our regular run of startup news, let's talk satellites. News that gigantic private company SpaceX's Starlink has formed an Indian subsidiary was not a surprise. But that it came the same day that Amazon's Project Kuiper wants to put two prototype satellites into orbit by the end of next year caught our eye. We're seeing American companies continue to push ahead on space tech despite a more national-level space rivalry forming between China and the United States.

  • OctoML raises $85M: The work of building and deploying machine learning (ML) models is big business. Startups Mage and Spice AI are working in similar areas of technology. Or more simply, in time there will be ample tooling to help companies of all sizes — and, we presume, levels of technical know-how — to get busy with ML at scale without having to fight tooth and nail to hire a full-stack, in-house data science team.
  • Zendesk v. Twilio? Everyone wants to own customer data. Last year Twilio announced a multibillion dollar deal to buy Segment, allowing it to scoot into the customer data world (more here). And more recently Zendesk announced that it was dropping even more billions of dollars for SurveyMonkey, which will help it also better understand customers. They are not yet competing directly, but as we see tech companies get busy buying rivals, it's going to be a recurring theme that two giants that previously played somewhat separately are now a bit closer to one another.
  • $550M for hard venture bets: Any yahoo can stick $50 million into a growth-stage software startup that is cruising toward an IPO. Just make sure that its various SaaS ratios are in good shape and write the check. Walden Catalyst just put together a huge fund to invest in harder technology solutions to perhaps more intractable problems. The result should be higher returns on home runs. (TechCrunch also covered a new fund from White Star over the weekend.)
  • Mosaic raises $44M for its construction tech: By working to automate certain parts of the residential construction process, Mosaic wants to lower the cost of such projects. Given that many nations around the world are enjoying related housing crises, anything to get more homes built sounds like a win to us.
  • When I Work wants to help you tell others when you work: Shift-based work has often been organized, managed and crisis-controlled via text messages and phone calls. Stonehenge-era tech, in other words. When I Work wants to bring modern messaging to shift-based workers, allowing them to better swap, miss and snag work as they need to. It also just raised $200 million.
  • Finally from our startup-related notes, Twiga raised $50M to scale its food logistics work in both Kenya and surrounding nations. As our own Tage Kene-Okafor notes, Africans spend more of their household income on food than folks living on other continents. It wants to shake up that dynamic and bring lower-cost foods to more, by our read.

When should your B2C startup enter a new market?

Many entrepreneurs say fortune favors the brave, but French microbiologist Louis Pasteur got it right: Fortune favors the prepared mind.

Bold is good, but smart is better, especially when it comes to expanding the range of a B2C startup. Introducing yourself to customers (not to mention regulators) in a foreign market comes with a lot of known unknowns.

“It may be that through luck or ingenuity, your business has thrived in your home country with minimal marketing spend, but there is absolutely no guarantee this will happen abroad,” says Jim Mann, director of acquisitions at Thrasio, a consumer goods company.

When should your B2C startup enter a new market?

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

Our own Natasha Lomas has a great look into how major American technology companies worked to limit the power of European privacy laws. You won't believe that a lot of wealthy companies worked hard out of sight to ensure that regulation fit their own requirements versus those of consumers!

TechCrunch Experts

dc experts

Image Credits: SEAN GLADWELL / Getty Images

TechCrunch wants to help startups find the right expert for their needs. To do this, we're building a shortlist of the top growth marketers. We've received great recommendations for growth marketers in the startup industry since we launched our survey.

We're excited to read more responses as they come in! Fill out the survey here.

Instagram rolls out an ‘Add Yours’ sticker in Stories to create threads users can respond to

Posted: 01 Nov 2021 02:22 PM PDT

Instagram announced today that it's introducing a new “Add Yours” sticker that creates public threads in Stories. The new feature essentially allows users to respond to other users' Stories with their own following a prompt or a certain topic. The global launch comes as Instagram initially tested the feature in Indonesia and Japan last month.

The interactive sticker can be used to create a content chain where each user adds their own Story. For instance, a user can post an "Outfit of the Day" Story and then prompt their followers to add their own via the sticker.

"With custom prompts and public responses, you can share the sticker and see who responds to it in their own Stories," the social media giant said in a tweet.

You can access the new feature by selecting the sticker tool from the top navigation bar when you capture or upload content to your Story. From there, you can select the “Add Yours” sticker to start a public thread. Alternatively, you can respond to an “Add Yours” sticker by clicking on it and adding your own Story to take part in a chain.

Although the feature is aimed at getting users to collaborate, it can also be seen as a way to discover more people to follow. Once you click on the sticker in someone's Story, you'll be able to see everyone who has taken part in the thread and view their Stories.

It's worth noting that the new sticker is somewhat similar to TikTok's "duet" feature, which allows users to create content featuring an original video. However, Instagram's feature slightly differs, as it allows you to see everyone's additional posts in the content chain in one place, whereas TikTok currently doesn't surface all of the duetted videos that were posted from an original TikTok in one place.

The launch of this latest sticker comes as Instagram made its Link sticker in Stories available to all users last week after previously limiting it to businesses and high-profile creators. The global availability of these two new stickers aims to give users ways to collaborate and share their interests, as Instagram continues to compete with other social media platforms.

Music wearable Mictic raises $2.5M to get you shredding, scratching and strumming

Posted: 01 Nov 2021 02:12 PM PDT

Switzerland-based Mictic has created a pair of wearables that turns thin air into your concert hall. Imagine a theremin without the theremin, hooked up to a clever loop station, and you’ve got the right idea. Just from the demos and descriptions, it’s the kind of startup you’d scratch your head over and talk about in the bar after a long day of CES, for it to never be heard of again. Mictic, however, rose above the gimmicks sufficiently to raise a $2.5 million seed round from PTK Capital — and even adds music megastar Moby to its cap table.

The Mictic device is a pair of wristbands that includes sensors to measure your movements. It connects to your smartphone, and the app unlocks music-making creativity for beginners with no music skills at all. At launch, the app will offer 15 sounds and soundscapes, including a variety of musical styles and genres.

The startup has one of the stranger inception stories — it started with a game of badminton. The founders went along to a game of tennis, which was canceled due to rain, and the game was moved indoors instead. The founders were discussing how anti-climactic the game is, from an aural enjoyment point of view. So they went and hacked together a product that turns every slap of the shuttlecock into an epic explosion or other sound effects. From there, the team added a bunch of other soundscapes, changed the interface and ended up building a full-on musical instrument.

In addition to the pre-made soundscapes, the company’s founders are excited about the potential of their product as a more serious musical instrument.

“People can connect with Ableton, and they can use Mictic the same way they would use any MIDI controller. We hope that people will find new ways of using our product,” says the company’s CTO Matthias Frey. “We are also planning to expand our platform business in the very near future. Once the product is out, one of the next steps for users is for them to be able to create their own soundscapes quite easily.”

The funding round will enable the company to grow further and to test out its product in the market. Mictic currently consists of 10 people, and it is hoping to grow further.

“We really had to bootstrap for a while and then we built this fundraising round. Our next step is to put the product out as soon as possible. We’re proud of it and we are looking forward to getting a sense of how people are planning to use the product,” says Mictic’s CEO Mershad Javan. He agrees that $2.5 million isn’t going to be enough to fulfil all of the company’s dreams; “It’s not a whole lot of money, but to us it is a matter of shipping our product to our customers, and then hopefully ramp up from there. As soon as we can actually bring in some key data and business insights, we can continue to grow and probably raise another round of funding fairly quickly after.”

In its press materials, Mictic makes a big deal of Moby being on the company’s cap table, and is excited about the potential for collaboration and advisor potential, but admits that the musician was a relatively minor participant in the round, investing less than 10% of the $2.5 million round. In addition to investing directly in Mictic, the musician is a limited partner (i.e. an investor) in PTK Capital, the venture firm leading Mictic’s round.

Mictic opened up for preorders over the weekend, and the weird and wonderful musical instruments can be yours for a cool $119. The company expects to be shipping in the next month or so.

Update: An error snuck in, and we stated that the Mictic product cost $199. That has been updated to the correct price: $119

Generator-maker Generac set to buy smart thermostat startup Ecobee

Posted: 01 Nov 2021 01:56 PM PDT

Wisconsin-based generator producer Generac today announced plans to acquire Ecobee. A bit of a surprising match on the face of it, though not the first time we've seen a more traditional company has expanded into the smart home space through this kind of acquisition — take Assa Abloy's purchase of August Home a few years back.

If nothing else, it's the easiest way to kickstart new tech development for a company that's been around for a long time — more than 60 years, in Generac's case. The company will pay $200 million in cash, plus $450 million in stock to Ecobee's shareholders. If additional targets are hit before closing, Generac will toss in up to $120 million more in stock, totaling up to $770 million.

Toronto-based Ecoboee was founded in 2007, and has since become one of the bigger names in the connected thermostat space, alongside companies like Nest, which was acquired way back in 2014. Nest would eventually become Google's de facto smart home brand. And, like Nest, Ecobee subsequently expanded into additional smart home devices, including security cameras and sensors.

"Generac's evolution into an energy technology solutions company creates many opportunities to integrate our ecobee products with their residential device offerings, enabling direct monitoring and control of a significant portion of the home's electrical load," Ecobee CEO Stuart Lombard said in a statement. "We are excited to join the Generac team so together we can deliver a cleaner, more resilient and sustainable energy future for our customers and communities."

Ecobee has raised around $150 million, including investments from Amazon's Alexa Fund. For a while, Amazon seemed like a clear candidate to acquire the company, adding to its existing smart home brands like Ring, though it recently announced its thermostat created with help from Honeywell.

The deal is expected to close in Q4, pending regulatory approval.

Is China building the metaverse?

Posted: 01 Nov 2021 01:23 PM PDT

Catherine D. Henry Contributor
Catherine D. Henry is SVP Growth at Media.Monks, where she advises leading global brands on how to enter the metaverse.

There is a heated debate on the state of the race between the United States and China to dominate in AI. But perhaps the more strategic question is whether China is building the metaverse.

Built upon infrastructural technologies like AI, the metaverse refers to the vast array of digital experiences and ecosystems, from e-commerce and entertainment to social media and work, where we spend more and more of our lives. It's soon going to be hard to conceive of a world in which much of our social and economic lives are not defined by the rules of the metaverse. To the builder goes the opportunity to establish rules to their own benefit.

In truth, both the U.S. and China are trying to build and lay claim to the metaverse, with other actors such as Europe trying to do so as well, but they simply don’t control enough of the core technologies that make the metaverse possible.

These core technologies include AI, 5G, end-user devices and the sector-straddling super apps that bring everything together — and related technologies such as smartwatches and eyewear. Competence and dominance across these four criteria is what may give China an insurmountable head start over the U.S. in the race to build the future of the virtualized human experience.

China's AI advantage

The Chinese leadership understands that AI is revolutionizing virtually all aspects of social life, including consumption. AI is a top priority for government and business, and the Chinese government has called for China to achieve major new breakthroughs by 2025 and become the global leader in AI by 2030.

If the metaverse does become the successor to the internet, who builds it, and how, will be extremely important to the future of the economy and society as a whole.

The strategy was initially outlined in the Chinese government's New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan in 2017. It has since spurred both new policies and billions of dollars of R&D investments from ministries, provincial governments and private companies.

As a result of China's AI initiatives, the American advantage in the sector has been steadily eroding: In 2017 the U.S. had an 11x lead over China, but by 2019, that lead had come down to 7x. By 2020, the U.S. was left with a narrow lead of 6x. Even this lead has been uncertain, and the ex-chief software officer of the Pentagon went so far as to say that China already had an insurmountable lead in AI and machine learning.

Moreover, some question the American lead when it comes to the availability of training data. In the privacy versus public good debate, the U.S. tends to lean toward privacy, whereas China has long exercised government intervention in maintaining a civil society as a public good.

Finally, China has access to vast data sets to train AI, which presents a significant strategic advantage, especially considering the country’s population of 1.4 billion.

China builds the devices

The capacity to build and ultimately become the preeminent force in the metaverse starts with China's long-standing and unrivaled dominance of consumer device manufacturing. From smartphones and notebooks to AR and VR headsets, Chinese manufacturers are building the largest portion and widest varieties of the devices that consumers need to access digital platforms and social experiences. The most advanced design and production competencies are likely to already reside in cities like Shenzhen.
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