TechCrunch |
- Bypa-ss raises $1M pre-seed to expand health tech product across Egypt
- Egyptian on-demand grocery delivery startup Appetito bags $2M pre-Series A
- On Twitter, political disinformation clouds Kenya’s trending topics
- Korean online payment service Kakao Pay surges nearly 114% on the first day of trading
- Nigeria’s lender Payhippo raises $3 million in seed funding to extend quick loans to SMEs
- Clubhouse goes multi-lingual with 13 languages added to newest update
- E-commerce aggregator Una Brands raises $15M Series A five months after its launch
- TechCrunch+ roundup: Yahoo leaves China, Nubank IPO, B2C expansion tips
- The consequences of SaaS sprawl: A real-world study
- Daily Crunch: Microsoft launches Loop, an open source, real-time collaboration tool
- Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, Niantic’s follow-up to Pokémon GO, is shutting down
- Report links most climate change denial on Facebook to 10 publications
- Lyft reports adjusted profitability again as revenue per rider rises
- Webflow’s Vlad Magdalin and CapitalG’s Laela Sturdy to discuss finding success in no-code
- LeoLabs, Maxar and Astroscale will join us to talk about sustainable in-space operations at TC Sessions: Space 2021
- Ottobock set to acquire fellow robotic exoskeleton maker SuitX
- Walmart acquires design tool Botmock as its invests in shopping by voice and text
- Facebook says it will delete facial recognition data on more than a billion users
- Step aside NFTs, Aqua thinks modern investors should dive into private equity
- Iron Ox launches a new robot for moving and monitoring indoor crops
| Bypa-ss raises $1M pre-seed to expand health tech product across Egypt Posted: 03 Nov 2021 01:45 AM PDT Digital healthcare continues to thrive globally following the effects of the pandemic last year, but venture capital inflows differ regionally with Africa lagging behind the rest of the world. However, investors have paid attention to a few innovative health tech startups, putting over $77 million across 56 deals last year. Egypt is one of the continent's bright spots and an integral contributor to health tech market value in MENA, which is expected to reach up to $2 billion by 2024. As companies such as Vezeeta, Chefaa and Yodawy thrive while offering telemedicine, diagnostics and pharmaceutical products, newer companies are looking to make names for themselves in entirely different segments. One of such is Bypa-ss, a healthtech company dealing with health information exchange. Today, the company is announcing that it has raised $1 million in pre-seed funding from investors such as Magic Fund, Acuity Ventures, Launch Africa, Plug and Play, and other regional and foreign VCs. The company was founded by chief executive Andrew Saad in 2019. During his days as a medical student, Saad met an older woman who was ill and needed treatment. Typically, hospitals would administer drugs after running some tests and referencing the patient's medical history. This time, neither the hospital nor the woman had her medical history at that point. Because of that, they were conflicted on whether to give her medicine or not. Saad told TechCrunch that he encountered similar situations with other patients as well. He went on to do some academic research concerning patients' data and electronic health records, which formed the foundation for starting Bypa-ss.  Andrew Saad (CEO Bypa-ss) The company started in Shebin El Kom, Menofia, before scaling to five other cities across Egypt last year. Bypa-ss' flagship product is called HealthTag and it services an ecosystem of hospitals, physicians and patients. For hospitals and physicians, HealthTag provides an integrated system for clinic management to track patients' cases stored by Bypa-ss after collating medical records from different healthcare providers. For users, HealthTag works as a mobile application and physical card. With the app and card, patients have ownership of their health records in one place and pay for their medical services online. They can receive prescriptions, labs scans and access a 70% discount from healthcare providers in Egypt when paying out of pocket. "We are aggregating and giving patients ownership of their health records while giving doctors and healthcare providers visibility on the patient's full history, allowing people-centric digital health information exchange as first of its kind in Egypt and North Africa," the company said in a statement. The pre-seed round equips Bypa-ss with an arsenal to expand its network of more than 3,000 healthcare providers. And also its customer base, which Saad says has increased by 150% since the start of the year. Also, while Bypa-ss started 2021 with six employees, the company has grown fivefold. Before this pre-seed round of $1 million, Bypa-ss raised $150,000 in an angel round, bringing the company's total investment to $1.15 million. "We are beyond excited to invest in Bypa-ss! We are confident that Andrew and his team will build the future of health information infrastructure in Egypt, and we are glad to be part of it," Plug and Play said in a statement. Bypa-ss will use the investment to accelerate its growth in Egypt, the CEO says. "With this investment coming in, we will be able to avail more features to our customers while maintaining our service level and growth momentum. Additionally, the company intends to use the funds to fuel expansion, perfect a high-end tech mobile app for patients to engulf and facilitate the information exchange between the stakeholders from different levels and sizes and capitalize on the company's rapid growth."  |
| Egyptian on-demand grocery delivery startup Appetito bags $2M pre-Series A Posted: 03 Nov 2021 01:00 AM PDT Egyptian grocery delivery startup Appetito has raised $2 million in pre-Series A funding, the company confirmed to TechCrunch today. The round, which comes after the company's $450,000 seed round in April, was led by U.S. and MENA-focused venture capital firm Jedar Capital. Pan-African VC Golden Palm Investments, DFS Lab, some angel investors and family offices also put money into the company. Appetito wants to tackle the inefficiencies in the FMCG supply chain in Egypt, CEO Shehab Mokhtar told TechCrunch in an interview. Egypt, home to more than 100 million people, has a retail FMCG market size of about $50 billion and, similar to other African countries, is highly fragmented and inefficient. When products move from suppliers to distributors to wholesalers to retailers before the end consumer, a lot of value is missing in the supply chain, especially for the consumers and suppliers. "We're trying to provide customers not only with a convenient experience but also an affordable one by sourcing the products directly from the manufacturers and selling them directly to them," Mokhtar said. "We believe that we can provide a convenient and affordable experience as well solving the inefficiencies in the supply chain of the retail industry." Appetito's first line of products when launching in 2017 was groceries. But the company now offers non-food items such as personal care items, detergents and stationery products. Mokhtar says Appetito sources all its products from top FMCG companies — Procter & Gamble, Hankin, Reckitt, Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Kellogg's — strike deals with them and receives all their goods and products in its warehouses. The goods are then shipped to the company's dark stores, of which there are currently seven in Cairo, Egypt's capital city. Suppose there is one takeaway this past year from the rise of rapid on-demand grocery and delivery startups globally, such as Gopuff, Flink and Gorillas (apart from their fundraising spree), it is how they prioritize speed and convenience over quality and affordability. Appetito doesn't want to take that direction; instead, it is keen on providing quality and affordable items to its users. In the words of the CEO, Appetito isn't trying to become a copycat of those models because Egypt is a different market with a unique set of requirements. The variation in models can also be seen in their delivery times. While GoPuff and the likes ensure that deliveries are completed in less than 10-20 minutes, Appetito's deliveries can take up to an hour, the next day or weekly, if scheduled. "We're trying to mix between affordability and convenience. If we're going to go only for the convenience, which is 10 or 15 minutes, that's going to be at the expense of affordability," Mokhtar said. "And this is something we do not seek or even try to get scale in Egypt or the countries that we are trying to penetrate going forward." To drive home how it prioritizes quality, Appetito has some private-label products under its name, a move that affords the company some exclusivity in the eyes of customers and delivers higher margins. Mokhtar sees it, alongside its newly launched meal kits option similar to Blue Apron's model, as essential verticals for the company in the next couple of years. Talking about how Appetito makes money, Mokhtar says the company gets discounts from suppliers and runs promotions for FMCG companies on its platform. "Any company wants to promote their brands; they can promote it through us because we have more than 100,000 downloads on our app on Google Store and Play Store. We have a wide consumer base and this is an opportunity for brands to market themselves on our platform," the CEO remarked. Asked about revenue, traction and plans, Mokhtar said the company, which has grown its revenue 6x since April, wants to expand its dark stores to 150 in the next three years. In a statement, the general partner at Jedar Capital, Sherif Nessim, said the company's orders grew 10x in the past year. "Quick commerce and fast grocery delivery business model has been gaining grounds regionally and globally and I look forward to Appetito's next phase as they expand to cover more areas in Egypt and start planning for regional growth," he added. As Appetito expands, it will face competition from companies offering comparable services such as Rabbit, GoodsMart and Breadfast. These startups, representing a fast-growing Egyptian grocery and convenience delivery space, collectively lead the way across Africa and have raised more money than their counterparts in other countries. Should they keep raising money to accommodate the growing needs of consumers whose habits and shopping patterns have evolved since last year, Egypt will continue to dominate this space in Africa just the way Nigerian startups have been the most sought after when it comes to fintech across the continent.  |
| On Twitter, political disinformation clouds Kenya’s trending topics Posted: 03 Nov 2021 01:00 AM PDT In the days immediately following revelations that Kenya's president Uhuru Kenyatta held secret wealth in offshore tax havens, Odanga Madung noticed something odd on Twitter. In spite of the damning information implicating Kenyatta in a hypocritical tax shelter scheme, the prevailing conversation on Kenyan Twitter focused on defending the country's beleaguered leader. The Kenyan president’s concealed accounts were just one secret revealed in the Pandora Papers, a trove of nearly 12 million leaked files detailing the hidden fortunes of a number of global leaders, celebrities and billionaires all hoarding their wealth in places like Panama and the British Virgin Islands. In new research, Madung and supporting researcher Brian Obilo, both Mozilla Tech and Society Fellows, reveal how online political propaganda filled the information vacuum in the country in the immediate wake of the Pandora Papers. "This is a very pervasive problem with Twitter’s platform here in Kenya," Madung told TechCrunch. Using Twitter's Firehose API, the researchers analyzed 8,331 tweets sent between October 3 and October 10 in the following the publication of the Pandora Papers. They discovered two hashtags, #offshoreaccountfacts and #phonyleaks — both seeking to undermine the legitimate revelations held in the leaked financial files — that vaulted into Kenya's trending topics during the period. "With the government and the president under pressure, due to soaring online outrage, a counternarrative operation was mounted — and found a strong ally in Twitter," Madung wrote. "… As a result, a distorted perspective began to gain momentum — one where Kenyans appeared outraged not by the Pandora Paper's damning findings, but by their implication that Uhuru Kenyatta is guilty of wrongdoing." From their analysis, those trends were far from organic. The researchers unearthed a number of accounts promoting related hashtags in repeated tweets and nothing else. The content specifically sought to exonerate Kenyatta, playing down revelations around his hidden wealth, arguing that the practice did not violate any laws and defending the offshore holdings as a savvy financial move. By cross-referencing previous research, Madung also found that some accounts boosting the inauthentic content were previously identified spreading adjacent pro-government propaganda in Kenya. "Of key importance here was that many of these narratives were not explicitly lies," Madung wrote. "This was political astroturfing that used a mix of propaganda and mal-information. It was designed to fabricate consensus — specifically, the consensus that most Kenyans support Uhuru Kenyatta and distrust the Pandora Papers." The campaign's methods weren't sophisticated, but they were organized and efficient. While the accounts could be easily identified through their repeated imagery, wording and frequent use of celebrity names, their degree of coordination did enable them to break through the noise to reach Twitter's high visibility collection of trending topics. While much of the astroturfing campaign relied on bending the truth, its organizers weren’t afraid to outright fabricate information either. In one example, an image depicts Nairobi-based economist Reginald Kadzutu defending Kenyatta in an interview with the BBC, but the interview never happened — the image is fake. After Madung alerted the company to the coordinated campaigns, Twitter took action against more than 230 accounts for violating its platform manipulation and spam policies. "Twitter's uniquely open nature empowers research such as this," a Twitter spokesperson told TechCrunch, noting that the company relies on a blend of AI and human moderators to detect efforts to manipulate conversation on the platform. According to Madung, Kenya's information ecosystem suffers from a well-established disinformation industry that continues to game Twitter. “Disinformation is an industry like any other — it’s about money, it's about clear outcomes," Madung told TechCrunch. "In many ways… [these campaigns] are very much like any normal agency." Within that industry, there's a well established formula that gets results, amplifying content all the way to Twitter's trending module. In an interview, one Twitter user the team spoke to explained that he had been paid to push various kinds of content onto Twitter's trends for the past five years, including talking points from Kenyan political parties. Through interviews, Madung also learned that some of those campaigns recruited and paid verified users to promote their messaging, lending them an extra boost under Twitter's trending algorithm. Anyone looking for the work can find it in WhatsApp groups recruiting for various political campaigns in the country. Those groups serve as command centers for the disinformation efforts, communicating messaging and coordinating timing to make those messages as potent as possible. "As one of the influencers we spoke to put it, 'Twitter is easy.'” Madung wrote.  |
| Korean online payment service Kakao Pay surges nearly 114% on the first day of trading Posted: 03 Nov 2021 12:00 AM PDT Shares in Kakao Pay, the fintech unit of South Korea's largest messaging app operator Kakao Corp, closed up 114% in its market debut on Wednesday. The Ant Financial-backed company ended day one of trading at $163.3 (193,000 won), securing a market capitalization of $21.2 billion. Kakao Pay's shares surged as high as $194.6 (230,000 won) on the KOSPI, up 155.6% from the issue price of $76.2 (90,000 won), the upper end of its IPO range. Kakao Pay raised $1.3 billion (1.53 trillion won) at a $9.9 billion valuation, offering 17 million new shares in its initial public offering last week. The gains for Kakao Bank came amid a crackdown on the country's tech companies by South Korean regulators and politicians. In September, local lawmakers accused the country's big tech companies, including Kakao Pay's parent company Kakao Corp, of monopoly issues. The lawmakers also have expressed concerns regarding the growing power and valuation of tech companies in Korea. Kakao Pay had to delay its listing twice this summer as the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) asked Kakao Pay to cut its share price and valuation. The company lowered about 6% of its targeted IPO to $1.3 billion from $1.63 billion in July. Kakao Pay will use its IPO proceeds to speed up its global expansion, including in Southeast Asia, Europe and China, said CEO Alex Ryu at an online press conference last week. Southeast Asia and Middle East-based companies have been reaching out to the fintech company to seek strategic partnerships, Ryu mentioned. It will invest in AI, cloud, robo-advisors and blockchain-powered fintech companies in South Korea and overseas countries after the listing, Ryu added. "Kakao Pay is fundamentally a financial platform, and we seek to maintain symbiotic relationships of mutual growth with other financial institutions," said Ryu. The company also plans to expand its offline payment infrastructure, operate a Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) service, set up a digital non-life insurance subsidiary, and launch a mobile trading system (MTS). Kakao Pay, founded in 2014, claims a total of 36.5 million users, with monthly active users at 20 million. The company’s total transaction volume recorded $72.4 billion for twelve months as of June, while its revenue increased more than 102% over the past two years during the pandemic. Kakao Pay recorded $6.9 million (8.2 billion won) in EBITDA in the first half of 2021. Kakao Pay said one of its differentiators is creating synergies with its sister companies like Kakao messaging app, Kakao Bank, Kakao Mobility, and Kakao Games. Kakao Mobility and Kako Entertainment are also set to go public in 2022. Kakao Corp's digital lender subsidiary Kakao Bank, which raised $2.3 billion via IPO in August, had a market cap of $23.9 billion (28 trillion won) as of today.  |
| Nigeria’s lender Payhippo raises $3 million in seed funding to extend quick loans to SMEs Posted: 03 Nov 2021 12:00 AM PDT Nigeria's lending startup Payhippo has raised $3 million in a seed round, funding the company plans to use in sourcing the talent needed to optimize its technology as it ramps up effort to extend speedy credit to more small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the West African country. The round was led by an array of angel investors, including Ham Serunjogi and Maijid Moujaled, the co-founders of the African cross-border payments company Chipper Cash; Olugbenga Agboola of the San-Francisco based payments firm Flutterwave; Bolaji Balogun, the CEO of investment banking firm Chapel Hill Denham; and Hakeem Belo-Osagie, the founder of Metis Capital Partners. This is the largest amount Payhippo has raised to date after receiving $1 million in pre-seed funding earlier this year. The company's co-founder and chief operations officer, Chioma Okotcha, said they are looking to hire more engineers and data scientists. "We capture our data from the loans we issue, and more talent in the team would allow us to optimize our technology to serve our customers better," she said. Payhippo says it disburses short-term loans in less than three hours, a record that remains unmatched by traditional banking institutions in the country, which often require borrowers to meet stringent conditions, like regular account activity and the maintenance of minimum operating balances. A bank loan application also requires a visit to physical branches and extensive paperwork. "We really focus on keeping this under three hours, and making sure that businesses can get the money they need when they need it. Ours is also a product that works for the SMEs in terms of a flexible repayment structure," Okotcha said. SMEs are the force behind Nigeria's economy accounting for 96% of businesses and 84% of employment in the country. However, a lack of access to credit continues to hinder their growth and limit their contribution to the country's GDP, according to a study about bank loans and SMEs in Nigeria, published by the Ilorin Journal of Human Resource Management. It is this financing gap that Payhippo was designed to bridge since it was founded in August 2019. "We had seen that traditional banks and lenders wouldn’t loan small businesses mainly because there were no credit scores, or the collateral requirements were too high. We decided to come into the market and create an instant financing option, where we create a credit score that allows small businesses to get the liquidity they need to buy inventory for business continuity," Okotcha told TechCrunch. "We use data from historical records that borrowers have built with us, but we also check their banking history to see the actual performance of their businesses," said Okotcha. Payhippo applies its own credit scoring formula that uses different SME data to determine the value of loans to give out. The loans are disbursed through mobile phones. The average loan disbursed by Payhippo is about $1,300, with the minimum loan being about $200. The startup, which is part of the 2021 Y Combinator summer cohort, was founded by Okotcha, Zach Bijesse, now the chief executive officer, and Uche Nnadi, the chief technical officer. Payhippo says it is banking on its fast turnaround time for loan applications to grow its customer base within Nigeria before venturing to other countries. The company says it has so far disbursed about 5,000 loans since inception, valued at $1 million and with a repayment rate of 97%, earning them $64,000 in revenues. It added that the demand for credit is high, fueling its current 25% month-on-month growth. Going forward, the company targets to tap the credit needs of the nearly 40 million SMEs in Nigeria to grow its business. "We know that just 1% of the Nigerian market is about 40,000 businesses, and we want to be in a position where we disburse 40,000 loans in a day," she said. Payhippo is one among many digital lenders in Nigeria offering short-term loans to SMEs. Others include Carbon and FairMoney. Last year, FairMoney disbursed a total loan volume of $93 million, representing a 128 percentage point increase from 2019. Carbon also disclosed in an earlier interview that it had hit 659,000 customers last year and had disbursed $63 million in loans, an increase of 9.1 percentage points from the 2019 financial year.  |
| Clubhouse goes multi-lingual with 13 languages added to newest update Posted: 02 Nov 2021 10:30 PM PDT Voice-first social media platform Clubhouse has gone back to school to learn itself a baker’s dozen worth of new languages. The company has announced in a press conference in India the addition of 13 new languages to its app, making it more accessible to people who want to see the platform available in their native languages. The app update bakes in localizations for the millions of people who don’t speak English, or who simply prefer a local-language alternative. The 13 languages are French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Malayalam, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, Tamil and Telugu. It’s an interesting line-up, which notably misses four of the top 10 most-spoken languages in the world (Chinese, Arabic, Bengali and Russian). The languages will be shipped in the Android version of the app first, which makes sense. According to Statcounter, more than 96% of Indian mobile users are on Android, with iOS lagging behind with a market share of around 3%. Its Android-first approach with this update is encouraging for an app that took an embarrassingly long time to make an Android version available at all. “It has honestly amazed us that people in so many countries have managed to come together to do this on an app that only supports English,” a PR representative for Clubhouse mentioned in an email to TechCrunch earlier today. Well… quite. In addition to the company’s newly discovered love for multiple languages, Clubhouse also announced a brand-new app icon, featuring musician, singer and songwriter Anirudh Deshmukh (pictured above). Based in Mumbai, Anirudh joined Clubhouse at the start of the year and by the spring, had launched his now 72K-member club, Anirudh, where he hosts his nightly show Late Night Jam.  |
| E-commerce aggregator Una Brands raises $15M Series A five months after its launch Posted: 02 Nov 2021 06:00 PM PDT Una Brands, the e-commerce aggregator focused on Asia-Pacific brands, announced today it has raised $15 million for its Series A. The full-equity round was co-led by White Star Capital and Alpha JWC, along with participation from returning investors and Ninjavan co-founder Alvin Teo. This news comes only five months after Una launched with a $40 million equity and debt seed round. The startup has not disclosed the ratio of debt and equity (like many other e-commerce aggregators, Una uses debt funding to buy brands because it is non-dilutive). Co-founder and chief executive officer Kiren Tanna told TechCrunch the Series A is a priced round with a valuation more than five times Una's last funding. Besides raising equity, Una also extended its debt facility size from Claret Capital. "We have a very strong pipeline of brands across APAC that we are working on, and as we have done some deals already, we are seeing larger and larger brands that are approaching us," said Tanna. The Series A was raised to accelerate the growth of its brand portfolio and Una's operations, and it plans to raise further debt and equity, he added. The company now has 90 team members in seven offices across the Asia-Pacific: Singapore, Australia, India, China, Indonesia and Malaysia. Unlike many other e-commerce aggregators that focus on Amazon sellers, Una describes itself as "sector agnostic" because of the number of marketplaces used across APAC, including Tokopedia, Lazada, Shopee, Rakuten and eBay. Una looks for profitable brands that make between $1 million and $50 million in revenue per year. After acquisitions, Una grows brands by adding new distribution channels or expanding them into new countries. Since launching, Una has bought more than 15 brands, and says the first ones it acquired have seen a 50% increase in sales and profits. The average EBITDA of its acquired brands are about 26%, putting the company on a path toward profitability, said Tanna. He added that Una is building technology to help its brands scale. Since most aren't on Amazon and many are seller-fulfilled, sometimes from their homes, Una transitions them to its professional warehouse fulfillment infrastructure. Tanna said the company is building its own technology to get transaction-level data from multiple channels to integrate it into its ERP system and track operational performance. In a statement, Alpha JWC managing partner Jefrey Joe said, "Digitally native brands in APAC is a secular trend growing at 4x the rate of those in the West. We believe Una's value proposition will resonate with brands across the region and further propel the growth of D2C in countries such as Indonesia."  |
| TechCrunch+ roundup: Yahoo leaves China, Nubank IPO, B2C expansion tips Posted: 02 Nov 2021 04:54 PM PDT After Nubank filed its F-1, Natasha Mascarenhas and Alex Wilhelm dissected the document to learn more about the operations of one of the world’s largest startups. “With over 40 million users across Brazil, as well as Mexico and Colombia,” the fintech company’s LTV/CAC ratio is central to its success, they found. Notably, as many as 90% of Nubank customers were acquired organically. Full TechCrunch+ articles are only available to members. Even with more competitors entering their markets, Nubank’s sticky customers generate a relatively high monthly average revenue. As a direct result, its CAC payback periods are relatively short and its “losses do not appear even close to lethal,” report Natasha and Alex. “Indeed, they are more modest than we anticipated.” More neobanks are waiting to get on deck and take their turn at bat in an IPO: PicPay, Chime and Monzo are likely the next few to enter the public markets, but these “fresh metrics could prove that neobanks are finally moving off their investing phase.” Thanks very much for reading TechCrunch+. I hope you have a great week! Walter Thompson What Netflix's move into gaming means for developers Image Credits: Sam Wasson (opens in a new window) / Getty Images Some analysts predict that Netflix will spend as much as $19 billion on original and acquired content in 2025, but that figure omits a new frontier for the global media platform: gaming. Netflix hired a lead for its gaming division in July and purchased Night School Studio in September, giving it access to more developers. “It makes one wonder how Netflix's plans will influence game developers and studios around the world,” writes Sendbird CEO John S. Kim. “More importantly, how will developers respond to Netflix's entry into the space?” As Yahoo leaves China, an accelerating stream of exits Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window) As of today, TechCrunch is no longer available to readers inside China. Citing an "increasingly challenging business and legal environment,” Yahoo (our parent company) became the latest global internet brand to exit the country. Microsoft recently decided to make LinkedIn unavailable there, and Epic Games decided to shut down its Fortnite servers in China last month. The move is directly related to the November 1 start date of the Personal Information Protection Law of the People's Republic of China (PIPL). "When taken as a whole, it's clear that international business and media and the Chinese market are decoupling at an increasingly rapid clip," write Anna Heim and Alex Wilhelm. Is China building the metaverse? Image Credits: BlackSalmon (opens in a new window) / Getty Images Given its strengths in areas like 5G, payments, e-commerce and related tech, China may have a strategic advantage when it comes to building the metaverse. Announced in 2017, many of China’s AI initiatives are starting to bear fruit. Other trump cards, such as access to vast data sets for AI training and its robust manufacturing infrastructure, could tip the balance. “It's not hard to imagine — at least in the near term — that China's version of the metaverse may be the richer experience for consumers and for those who sell to them,” says Catherine D. Henry, SVP Growth at Media.Monks. When should your B2C startup enter a new market? Image Credits: PM Images (opens in a new window) / Getty Images Many entrepreneurs say fortune favors the brave, but French microbiologist Louis Pasteur got it right: luck 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. Shareholders approve Bird-SPAC merger, stock promptly falls Image Credits: Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch After shareholders of Switchback II Corporation approved its merger with scooter company Bird this morning, its stock fell as much as 20%. When the deal was announced in June, the company was expected to reach a valuation of $2.3 billion after the merger. “That's precisely what the company will be worth in light of Switchback II's share price declines, but the number could be lower than the headline figure from early merger disclosures,” reports Alex Wilhelm. Make the most of iOS 15’s updates to the App Store Image Credits: Blue Planet Studio (opens in a new window) / Getty Images Watchful consumers may notice the performance updates in iOS15, but for app developers, the release brings a host of changes to the App Store that includes access to new metrics and updated product pages. In an overview that includes suggestions specifically for app developers, Ilia Kukharev, head of ASO at AppFollow, reviews several features that have been released and previews upcoming changes. “There hasn't been this big of a change since iOS 11 was released over four years ago,” he writes. Backblaze's IPO a test for smaller tech concerns Image Credits: sdecoret / Getty Images Cloud storage company Backblaze tentatively priced its upcoming IPO between $15 and $17 per share, which values it at $684.3 million at the higher end of the price range. That pricing makes it unique, writes Alex Wilhelm, because if smaller companies can go public at multiples similar to that of bigger firms, "one more startup excuse for avoiding IPOs goes poof." Balancing risk: Modern architecture's role in the BNPL playbook Image Credits: Klaus Vedfelt / Getty Images Buy now, pay later activity is exploding. According to one estimate, BNPL now accounts for $100 billion each year. But the companies providing BNPL loans face risks, as outdated banking infrastructure leaves loan providers with little visibility into their end-customer’s ability to repay, writes Matt Bivons, CEO and co-founder of Canopy Servicing. Switching to more modern loan servicing infrastructure can help providers minimize third-party and merchant risk, while being insured against “unfair practices and the ability to do business with the transparency customers need to borrow responsibly.” Quick observations on Udemy's unicorn edtech IPO Image Credits: Vertigo3d (opens in a new window) / Getty Images Udemy went public at $29 and raised a significant amount of capital, but the unicorn’s stock tumbled 6% the same day it debuted. The sell-down indicates that Udemy may have to prove that its new focus on enterprise business will generate steady revenue growth, write Alex Wilhelm and Natasha Mascarenhas. Until that happens, “the company's valuation appears ready to hold fast in second gear.”  |
| The consequences of SaaS sprawl: A real-world study Posted: 02 Nov 2021 03:12 PM PDT The SaaS revolution began in 1999 when Marc Benioff founded Salesforce.com. Salesforce went public in 2004 after achieving $96 million in annual sales. Sixteen years later, it was added to the Dow Jones Industrial Average after reporting revenues of $17.1 billion in fiscal 2020. SaaS is no longer a revolutionary concept. It's been embraced as a foundational IT building block within companies of all sizes, industries and geographies. SaaS sprawl is a natural consequence of the SaaS revolution. An analysis of Okta's 2020 customer database revealed that companies employing 2,000 or more individuals maintained an inventory of 175 SaaS apps on average. A similar survey conducted by Blissfully in 2019 indicated that firms employing more than 1,000 individuals used 288 SaaS apps on average. And finally, two-thirds of the companies included in Productiv's 2021 SaaS Management survey employed 100 or more SaaS apps. By any measure, SaaS apps have become a conspicuous and pervasive component of every company's digital landscape. The numbers quoted above fail to convey the true sprawl created by widespread SaaS adoption. SaaS definitions vary from one company to the next and may include a combination of personal productivity tools, business applications, data services, collaboration tools, security services, AI/ML modeling platforms, etc.
Users with the greatest exposure to IT resources should be subjected to the strongest authentication procedures upon initial login and additionally be required to respond to step-up or continuous authentication requests during extended work sessions. Multiple user accounts are established for each SaaS service. User identities are not limited to full-time employees but will inevitably include a wide variety of temporary employees, external contractors and service providers, and even robots or devices. Authorization policies are instituted to control the actions that users can perform within their accounts on specific IT assets. Consequently, the number of SaaS apps employed within an enterprise is just the tip of a bigger administrative iceberg created by the multiplicative sprawl of user identities, accounts and asset-specific policies. This article reports the results of a study performed earlier this year to illustrate the multiple dimensions of SaaS sprawl. The data employed in this study was provided by Authomize, a security company that employs AI technology to profile relationships between user identities, IT assets and authorization policies across an enterprise. All of the data employed in this study was provided and handled on an anonymized basis. MethodologyThe implications of SaaS sprawl were initially evaluated in over a dozen enterprises. Four were ultimately selected to illustrate the knock-on effects of SaaS adoption. The companies discussed in this article ranged in size from 700 to 3,000 paid employees (subsequently referred to as PEs, which includes both full-time and part-time employees on a company's payroll). These companies are based in the U.S. and Europe and were founded five to 25 years ago. They've experienced the SaaS revolution firsthand. Although they may not be purely cloud native firms, SaaS services play a dominant role in supporting their daily business operations. These companies operate in four distinctively different industries: oil and gas, edtech, financial services and enterprise software. Throughout the remainder of this article these four firms will be referred to as “the study companies.” The knock-on effects of SaaS sprawlSaaS sprawl is commonly conceived to be a reference to the number of cloud-based SaaS services being employed by an enterprise. In reality, it is a much broader phenomenon. Service sprawlThe number of unique SaaS services being accessed by the identity provider (IdP) databases within the study companies ranged from 310 to 994. This is significantly higher than the SaaS counts reported in the studies cited above and likely includes cloud-based services that would not be strictly classified as business applications. This study was based on the broadest possible definition of SaaS services, excluding only IaaS vendors. The ratio of unique SaaS services to employees ranged from 1:1 in the smallest (700 PE) company to 1:3 in the largest (3,000 PE) company. However, these ratios were not correlated with company size. The 2,500 PE firm included in this study had a 1:8 ratio of services to employees.  |
| Daily Crunch: Microsoft launches Loop, an open source, real-time collaboration tool Posted: 02 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 2, 2021. Today has been a fun one, namely because your humble TechCrunch was in the news. Not for reasons that we're stoked about, but the larger China-world digital decoupling is real, and we got caught in it. Let's talk about it. — Alex The TechCrunch Top 3
Startups/VC
What Netflix's move into gaming means for developersSome analysts predict that Netflix will spend as much as $19 billion on original and acquired content in 2025, but that figure leaves out a new frontier for the global media platform: gaming. Netflix hired a lead for its gaming division in July and purchased Night School Studio in September, giving it access to more developers. “It makes one wonder how Netflix's plans will influence game developers and studios around the world,” says Sendbird CEO John S. Kim. “More importantly, how will developers respond to Netflix's entry into the space?” (TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.) Big Tech Inc.It's a Microsoft day, so here's the rest of our coverage from the company's event:
From elsewhere in Big Tech-land:
TechCrunch Experts Image Credits: SEAN GLADWELL / Getty Images TechCrunch wants to know which software consultants you've worked with for anything from UI/UX to cloud architecture. Let us know here.  |
| Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, Niantic’s follow-up to Pokémon GO, is shutting down Posted: 02 Nov 2021 02:58 PM PDT Niantic’s augmented reality game about the boy who lived is about to die. The company that brought us Pokémon GO debuted Harry Potter: Wizards Unite two years ago, following a similar formula to their initial smash hit. But it turns out that popular franchise plus augmented reality game doesn’t always equal success. Harry Potter: Wizards Unite will officially become unplayable on January 31, 2022, but after December 6, the game will be removed from all app stores. Players won’t be able to make in-app purchases after December 6 either, but existing in-app purchases like Gold can be redeemed in the game until January 31. No refunds will be available “except where otherwise required by law,” the game wrote in its announcement. Even though the fantasy game posted decent numbers after its initial release, it was clear from the get-go that it wasn’t reaching the same levels of success as Pokémon GO. Despite the pandemic, Pokémon GO had its highest-earning year in 2020, grossing over $1 billion, and the app is already earning even more than that this year, with $1.1 billion so far. “Not all games are meant to last forever,” Niantic wrote in a blog post. “We accomplished [our goals] together, delivering a two-year narrative story arc that will soon complete.” It’s true that Niantic’s Harry Potter game is far more narrative-driven than Pokémon Go, which only vaguely gestures at a plot. But the numbers behind these games speak to another potential reason behind the game’s closure. According to app analytics firm Sensor Tower, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite saw approximately 739,000 installs globally in the first 10 months of 2021, down 57% year over year from the same period in 2020, when it saw approximately 1.7 million installs. Similarly, in-app consumer spending was also down 57% so far this year compared to the same time period last year. To date, the game was downloaded an estimated 20.3 million times, generating $39.4 million from consumer spending. Meanwhile, Pokémon GO has generated over $1.1 billion in revenue so far this year. The sunsetting of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite comes after Niantic debuted a new game last week, Pikmin Bloom, developed in collaboration with Nintendo. Niantic is also working on Transformers: Heavy Metal, a game that will let users battle giant robots in AR. In a blog post today, Niantic said it had nine games and apps in its development pipeline, including some that will soft launch next year. Niantic told TechCrunch that employees working on Harry Potter: Wizards Unite will be redirected to other projects. Niantic CEO John Hanke noted in an interview with TechCrunch upon the release of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite that the system the game used was built for Pokémon GO and Ingress. “As we built things, particularly for Pokémon GO, we tried deliberately to make them part of a platform that could be re-used in other games,” Hanke told TechCrunch at the time. “The social features are a great example of that; those were built to support Pokémon GO, but were built to be easily adopted by other games.” So perhaps the shutdown of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite reveals that while walking around and interacting with digital objects might work in the Pokémon universe, it can’t be applied seamlessly to any other franchise.  |
| Report links most climate change denial on Facebook to 10 publications Posted: 02 Nov 2021 02:10 PM PDT Most climate change misinformation comes from only a handful of sources. That's according to a new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate(CCDH). The organization found that ten publishers are responsible for 69 percent of all interactions with climate change denial content on Facebook. Included in the group, which the CCDH titled "The Toxic Ten," are Breitbart, Russia Today and Media Research Center, which has ties to the fossil fuel industry. The findings broadly mirror that of another report the CCDH published earlier in the year, which found that as much as 73 percent of vaccine misinformationon Facebook can be linked to only 12 individuals dubbed the "disinformation dozen." That study has been widely cited by US lawmakers who have called on social media platforms to do more to address the "urgent threat" misinformation represents to public health. As it did with the earlier disinformation dozen report, Meta, Facebook's parent company, disputed the methodology the CCDH used to compile its latest study. "The 700,000 interactions this report says were on climate denial represent 0.3 percent of the over 200 million interactions on English public climate change content from Pages and public groups over the same time period," a spokesperson for the company said. It also pointed to the recently announced expansion of features like the Climate Change Information Center as evidence of its commitment to tackling misinformation on the topic. In an interview with The Washington Post, Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the CCDH, said the organization looked at approximately 7,000 articles published between October 2020 and October 2021. He called the sample "robust" and said there was enough data "to derive representative finds of trends." Additionally, the report examined the financial incentives involved in publishing climate change denial content. The CCDH estimates eight of the companies included in the Toxic Ten made $5.3 million in Google ad revenue over the last six months, with $1.7 million going to the search giant. “We recently announced a new policy that explicitly prohibits publishers and YouTube Creators from monetizing content that promotes climate change denial. This policy will go into effect on November 8 and our enforcement will be as targeted as removing ads from individual pages with violating content,” a spokesperson for Google told Engadget. "When you put it all together, you've got these two industries, Big Oil and Big Tech, and they are the two industries that pose the greatest threat to the survival of our species," Ahmed told The Post. The timing of The Toxic Ten report comes as delegates from around the world meet at the UN's COP26 climate summit in Scotland in what's been described as "the world's last best chance" to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Without dramatic reductions, the planet is currently on track for a "catastrophic" 2.7 degree Celsius rise in global temperatures. With every additional degree of warming beyond the 1.5-degree target put forward by the Paris Agreement, there's a greater risk of the planet passing specific tipping points that could lead to even more dramatic changes to the climate. Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on Engadget.  |
| Lyft reports adjusted profitability again as revenue per rider rises Posted: 02 Nov 2021 01:48 PM PDT Lyft reported Tuesday its second consecutive quarter of adjusted profitability as riders returned to the U.S. ride-hailing company’s service. The ride-hailing service, which competes with Uber in the ride-hailing business, reported revenues of $864.4 million in the third quarter, a 73% pop from the $499.7 million in the same year-ago period. Analysts expected revenue of $862.68, per Yahoo Finance data. If that Q3 revenue growth seems high, remember where the world — and ride-hailing companies — were this time last year. Lest you forget, last year Lyft and Uber were grappling with a business heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. In short, business is getting back to normal-ish. It’s worth noting that revenue also grew 13% from the $765 million reported in the sequentially preceding quarter. Lyft’s second-quarter results beat analyst expectations for earnings and revenue, pushing shares up 14% in after-market trading. Key numbersTwo items stand out in the third-quarter results: positive adjusted EBITDA, one metric of profitability, and an increase in average revenue per rider. Let’s break it down. Lyft reported a net loss of $71.5 million in the third quarter, a narrowing (meaning improvement) from the $459.5 million it reported in the same period last year. On an adjusted EBITDA basis, Lyft reported $67.3 million worth of profit. Adjusted EBITDA strips out a number of costs. However, it’s worth noting that this is the second consecutive quarter of adjusted EBITDA for Lyft, a metric that it has long promised to push into positive territory. The company has shown it continues to improve on that metric. Its EBITDA was a positive $23.8 million in the second quarter. And, for comparison, in the same quarter a year ago, Lyft reported an adjusted EBITDA loss of $239.7 million. The tl;dr? Lyft’s adjusted EBITDA is improving. Moving on to what drove (ahem) those revenues, let’s turn to the company’s active riders. Lyft reported 18.9 million riders in the third quarter, a 51% increase from the same period last year and 11% more than the second quarter. That third quarter number is actually lower than what was expected and it’s still off from the peak of 22.9 million riders in the fourth quarter of 2019. However, the average revenue per rider hit a record $45.63, a 14% increase year over year. That figure was spurred by a 6% sequential increase in ride frequency and. of course. prices for those rides. Another interesting nugget is that new rider activations increased 47% year over year.  |
| Webflow’s Vlad Magdalin and CapitalG’s Laela Sturdy to discuss finding success in no-code Posted: 02 Nov 2021 01:20 PM PDT Webflow has raised more than $200 million and become a household name in the world of web design, creation and hosting. What makes Webflow special is that it has been a pioneer in the no-code space, allowing everyday, non-engineer folks to build websites without writing a single line of code. Unsurprisingly, this has caught the attention of investors and consumers alike. That includes CapitalG’s Laela Sturdy, who joined the Webflow board during the company’s massive Series B fundraise. So, it should come as no surprise that we’re absolutely thrilled to have Webflow co-founder and CEO Vlad Magdalin and CapitalG partner Laela Sturdy join us on Wednesday, November 3, at 12 p.m. PDT/3 p.m. EDT for an upcoming episode of TechCrunch Live (REGISTER FOR FREE). TechCrunch Live is a weekly event series at TechCrunch that is focused on helping founders build better venture-backed businesses. We do this by sitting down with founders and the investors who finance them to hear how they came together on the deal and how they work together moving forward. Sometimes, we even get to walk through the company’s old pitch deck to learn what truly sang. About halfway through the episode, we move to the TCL Pitch-Off, where folks in the audience can volunteer to hop on our virtual stage and pitch their startup to our expert guests, who offer their live feedback. Considering the immense success that Webflow has had both fundraising and growing its customer base, and remembering how sought-after a firm CapitalG is, this episode is sure to delight, entertain and inform. We can’t wait to see you there! Register here for free!  |
| Posted: 02 Nov 2021 12:51 PM PDT Space is vast, but the part where humans can operate productively and sustainably, especially when it comes to for-profit commercial enterprises, is actually relatively small — and increasingly crowded. We’re thrilled to have three experts at TC Sessions: Space 2021 who are leading the charge in new initiatives that seek to make in-space operations even more attainable, cost-effective and safe to help us untangle some of the ways we can handle booming business in low Earth orbit (LEO). LeoLabs CEO and co-founder Daniel Ceperley, Astroscale CEO and founder Nobu Okada, and Maxar’s GM of Robotics Lucy Condakchian will be at the event for a discussion of on-orbit operations, and what it’s going to take to make LEO an effective and sustainable location for commercial space companies to cooperate, especially as the number of satellites surrounding Earth is set to explode in growth over the next few years. Ceperley’s LeoLabs has established itself as the leading private company currently tracking low Earth objects, including debris from past launches, active satellites and more. LeoLabs is the leading provider of commercial collision warning services and real-time Space Domain Awareness (SDA) for low Earth orbit (LEO). These services are powered by LeoLabs' worldwide network of radars and its cloud-based software system. Okada’s Astroscale was founded specifically to solve the issues around the growing thread of space debris. The startup is working on technologies for end-of-life management of satellites, removal of existing orbital debris and life extension programs for active satellites in order to make them useful beyond their originally scheduled service life. Maxar is working on in-space robotic technologies designed to service satellites and other spacecraft on orbit, including NASA’s OSAM-1 program, which will refuel and reposition an active orbital satellite, and also on SPIDER, a program that will show how robots can perform on-orbit assembly of satellites, which will make it much easier and more affordable to launch future operational spacecraft. TC Sessions: Space 2021 takes place on December 14-15. We've dedicated two full days to explore and gain more understanding of the rapidly advancing technologies and opportunities in space — from in-space propulsion systems and lunar sampling to investment trends and public-private collaboration. Buy your pass today and get an insider's look at on-orbit operations and servicing — and so much more. Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Space 2021? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.
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| Ottobock set to acquire fellow robotic exoskeleton maker SuitX Posted: 02 Nov 2021 12:00 PM PDT German medical device maker Ottobock today announced that it has entered into a deal to acquire Bay Area-based exoskeleton startup SuitX. The deal is one that makes sense for Ottobock, which builds its own exoskeletons, along with prosthetics and orthotics. SuitX is a spinout from UC Berkeley's Robotics and Human Engineering Lab, founded by mechanical engineering professor Homayoon Kazerooni. Prior to launching the company and serving as CEO in 2012, Kazerooni founded Ekso Bionics in 2005. That company went public back in 2014. Both effectively operate in the same category, producing robotic exoskeletons designed for two distinct purposes: work assistance and healthcare. SuitX currently produces three work exoskeletons (back, shoulder and leg) and two health-related systems: the Phoenix for walking assistance and the ShieldX, which is designed to take the stress off of carrying heavy lead aprons. More recently, it has begun trials for a robotic knee brace called Boost Knee.  Professor Kazerooni and Ottobock’s Samuel Reimer. Image Credits: SuitX "I feel fortunate that I am now put in a position to deliver our life-enhancing medical and industrial exoskeleton products globally," Kazerooni said in a release tied to today's announcement. "This step is a success not only for SuitX but also for the University of California, Berkeley, where entrepreneurial endeavors are fostered to their greatest extent for the good of humans worldwide. I’m looking forward to bringing our technologies to communities internationally with Ottobock for better quality of life." Ottobock produces its own exoskeletons, including the Paexo Shoulder, which is designed to support the neck, back and shoulders during overhead work. Exoskeletons have been a hot topic of late, including those from Sarcos, which went public via SPAC earlier this year. This deal finds Ottobock acquiring 100% of SuitX's shares. Financial details were not disclosed.  |
| Walmart acquires design tool Botmock as its invests in shopping by voice and text Posted: 02 Nov 2021 11:40 AM PDT With its latest acquisition Walmart is further investing in technology that will enable shopping via voice and chat. The retail giant announced it’s acquiring “select technology assets” from a startup called Botmock, which had developed a set of tools for designing, prototyping, testing and deploying conversational applications across platforms. Founded in 2016, Botmock got off the ground just when conversational experiences were starting to be developed. At this time, there was a lack of resources available for design teams. The company says most of its early customers were working directly within platforms like DialogFlow or IBM Watson, for example, which made it harder for them to rapidly test their ideas. Meanwhile, non-developers were using tools like Visio or LucidCharts to create their conversation flows. Botmock promised a better toolset that would allow teams to avoid blind spots in their design and build better overall conversational experiences.  Image Credits: Walmart Botmock’s solution offers a drag-and-drop editor for designing a chatbot’s (or voice bot’s) conversations. The system automatically develops the code in the background as users design their conversation flows. It also helps to handle the specific complexities that were involved with the project — like platform-specific restrictions — while facilitating team collaboration. Ahead of Walmart’s acquisition, the Botmock system worked with a company’s existing tools, like Atlassian JIRA, RASA, DialogFlow, Atlassian Confluence, Slack, Zapier, Alexa Skills Kit or IBM Watson. The conversations developed within Botmock could then be output to text-based or voice platforms, including Apple Business Chat, WhatsApp, SMS, Messenger, Microsoft Office Teams, Slack, Alexa or Google Assistant. According to a recent version of Botmock’s website, its tools were being used by more than 50,000 people. It also touted customers across verticals, including large businesses like Nationwide, Accenture, Delta, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Oracle, Viasat, Mercury.ai, Liveperson, BlueRobot, BT, Avanade and Enbridge. Walmart, however, intends to use Botmock for what it calls “conversational commerce” — an area of increased investment in recent months. The company in October announced the beta test of a “Walmart Text to Shop” experience that allows customers to text to make purchases. It follows years of investment in voice-based shopping, which culminated in a 2019 partnership with Google for voice-enabled grocery shopping. Today, Walmart offers voice-based shopping through both Google and Siri, and allows customers to check-in for contactless pickup using their voice. Surprisingly, however, text-based shopping is only now getting warmed up, Walmart says. With Botmock, the company says it will be able to build out natural voice and chat interfaces for both its customers and its associates — the latter through the internally used “Ask Sam” app which can answer questions or direct store staff to the location of products, among other things. “With such a tool we can build natural voice and chat interfaces for our customers and associates faster and deploy them more rapidly,” shared Cheryl Ainoa, Walmart SVP of Core Retail Services & Emerging Technology. “Building seamless interactions for voice or chat is a fairly difficult design problem that requires us to consider all possible conversational flows, which depend on customers' unique situation and needs,” she explained. “For example, when a customer is building their weekly grocery cart using their voice, they might say, ‘add milk to my cart.’ The right action and the response to the customer depends on various factors, including if the customer has bought milk in the past, what their preferred type of milk is (e.g. 2% or non-fat, etc.), do they already have some type of milk in their cart, and if so, should we ask whether they want to change the quantity or let them know they already have it in their cart,” Ainoa noted. In the past, these types of experiences could take months to develop and deploy, but Botmock’s technology will allow it to deploy in days, she added. This, in turn, will help to speed time to market and lower its costs. Walmart did not detail the terms of the deal, noting only it was acquiring select technology assets. According to Botmock’s website, however, the team will also be joining Walmart and working to transition its existing customers by helping migrate their data. Its customers will have access to Botmock through December 1, 2021 and pro-rated refunds on subscriptions are being issued, the website said.
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| Facebook says it will delete facial recognition data on more than a billion users Posted: 02 Nov 2021 11:19 AM PDT Just days after rebranding itself, Facebook announced plans to delete a trove of the most worrisome data that the world’s biggest social network collected on more than a billion individuals. In a blog post Tuesday, Facebook’s newly named parent company Meta explained that it would close shop on its facial recognition systems and delete a massive collection of more than a billion facial recognition templates used to pair faces with photos and videos. Facebook will no longer do that pairing moving forward for users who previously opted in. Facebook introduced facial recognition in 2010 to automatically tag photos with names. The feature was automatically enabled at launch, and Facebook only made the system explicitly opt-in in 2019, a choice that explains how it managed to compile more than a billion facial recognition profiles. “Looking ahead, we still see facial recognition technology as a powerful tool, for example, for people needing to verify their identity, or to prevent fraud and impersonation,” Facebook VP of artificial intelligence Jerome Pesenti wrote in a blog post. “… But the many specific instances where facial recognition can be helpful need to be weighed against growing concerns about the use of this technology as a whole.” Pesenti noted the uncertain environment for facial recognition technology in the decision to limit Meta’s facial recognition work to a narrower set of applications. At this point, Facebook’s face recognition system was probably more trouble than it was worth. Many proposals to regulate online privacy in the U.S. remain hypothetical, particularly at the federal level, but existing laws can complicate the use of facial recognition technology. Among them is an Illinois privacy law known as the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), which has ensnared some of tech’s biggest companies. Earlier this year, Facebook was ordered to pay $650 million in a BIPA settlement for using facial recognition to identify Illinois residents’ photos without their consent. The controversial facial recognition firm Clearview AI is also currently facing a BIPA lawsuit in the state. The FTC also cited Facebook’s use of facial recognition in its record-breaking but ultimately toothless $5 billion settlement with the company over deceptive privacy practices. Facebook’s decision to turn away from facial recognition is a symbolic gesture on the heels of the company’s big rebrand around the metaverse. Concerns about Facebook’s privacy and moderation failings have done little to dent its business, but public distrust and looming regulation will follow the company into its next chapter, rebrand or no. As the company now known as Meta tries to reposition itself as a trustworthy steward for the next internet era, it has its work cut out for it. Attempting to cast off some baggage from previous privacy scandals is a shrewd move — and ultimately a win for users — even if nobody buys the sudden change of heart.  |
| Step aside NFTs, Aqua thinks modern investors should dive into private equity Posted: 02 Nov 2021 11:00 AM PDT Alternative assets, from bottles of fine wine to non-fungible tokens to even fractional shares of physical art, are becoming a mainstream form of modern investing. As consumers diversify their portfolios away from traditional public equities, New York-based startup Aqua is betting that the future may look a little more private. Co-founded by Rohan Marwaha and Dev Patel, Aqua wants to help any investor have access to private equity funds, an investment vehicle that has traditionally been reserved for high net-worth individuals or institutional investors. By getting savvy investors to put money into a PE fund instead of the S&P 500 or Cartoon Ape, Aqua thinks it can blend stable returns with diversified assets. "There's all of this general proof that investors are excited, investors are ready and they understand what the new asset classes are," Marwaha said. "Where we draw the distinction is that, in private equity funds, it's a little bit less risky, but it's part of the same trend."  Image Credits: Aqua Aqua is a two-sided marketplace. It helps private equity firms deal with the back office, logistical work of handling smaller investors, while giving those same investors access to opportunities with minimums of $10,000 — instead of a traditionally higher range between $250,000 and $25 million. The startup, still pre-launch, declined to share any information about early usage on its platform or customer engagement. Marwaha saw inefficiencies within the private equity system while working as an analyst at Blackstone, an investment group where he worked for less than a year. He noticed that most processes within private equity firms are completed by hand, on paper or through fax machines. The archaic processes disincentivize PE firms from pursuing smaller investors, since coordination for capital calls and eventual returns is even harder to pull off.  Image Credits: Aqua (opens in a new window) The co-founder argues that the logistical woes of dealing with smaller checks aren't hindering interest from PE firms. "A tech-enabled solution, where we deal with all the back office work of dealing with the smaller investors, would be a huge value add to private equity," he said. "They want access to dollars to continue to grow their funds and new opportunities, they just don’t want to have to deal with administrative stuff." From an integration perspective, Aqua acts like an LP for PE firms. It operates a single entity on a PE firm's cap table on behalf of the consumers that are pouring smaller checks into the fund. When and if returns come, Aqua then distributes the profits to every investor that puts money into the pipeline. Persuading PE firms to use the service for fundraising will be the biggest early challenge for Aqua. After all, how can you bet that a firm will try out a new experimental service if its processes are built atop an entirely different ethos? Marwaha pushed back on this characterization, saying that "there were always people interested in [private equity funds] but it was just too difficult for the [firms] themselves to take on their capital." It doesn't hurt that Aqua isn't charging firms a dime for its services. Aqua, at least for now, doesn't cost a penny for PE firms to use. Instead, the startup makes money through normal return cycles, only cashing in when its customers do. Because distributions aren't as predictable as, say, recurring revenue from a SaaS subscription, Aqua is exposing itself to some volatility: returns can take anywhere from seven to 10 years. The team is working to make sure it has a good diversity of assets, with rolling return options, for the health of its business (and I'm sure, the delight of its consumers). Aqua is also experimenting with options in which individuals can buy and sell portions of funds during designated times of the year. The strategy has convinced a slew of early backers and partners. Aqua has landed a partnership with Permira, an asset manager with over $50 billion under its umbrella. The company also announced that it has raised a $2.5 million seed round led by Gradient Ventures, Google's AI-focused venture fund, with participation from Y Combinator. With the early validation, the two founders plan to hire eight more people within the next six months.  |
| Iron Ox launches a new robot for moving and monitoring indoor crops Posted: 02 Nov 2021 10:43 AM PDT Iron Ox today announced the launch of the crop-assisting mobile robot Grover. According to the Bay Area-based indoor farming firm, the mobile robot is capable of lifting and moving up to 1,000 pounds of payload. The primary cargo is a 6×6-foot module that houses hydroponically fed produce. The modules are moved to a machine for scanning their progress and then transferred to another station for either additional care or harvesting. The system navigates a grow space courtesy of on-board lidar, as well as sets of forward and upward-facing cameras. “We are applying technology to minimize the amount of land, water and energy needed to nourish a growing population,” CEO Brandon Alexander said in a release. “Our short-term goal is to mitigate the impact of climate change on the agriculture system. And we won’t stop until we achieve our long-term mission of making the produce sector carbon negative.” The technology arrives during a time of increased interest around indoor farming, as startups are looking for potentially more sustainable agricultural efforts to feed booming population growth. Vertical farming is perhaps the buzziest form in the category, but Iron Ox's solution takes the form of a more traditional greenhouse — albeit one that is fully automated from the ground up. The California-based company recently broke ground on a 535,000-square-foot indoor farm in Texas. In September the company raised a $53 million Series C, bringing its total funding to $98 million.  |
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