TechCrunch |
- Norrsken Foundation’s hub opens in Rwanda, to house 1,000 entrepreneurs by next year
- South African crowd-solving startup Zindi building a community of data scientists and using AI to solve real world problems
- Porsche invests in German startup aiming to be a one-stop shop for carbon neutral homes
- China’s ride-hailing giant is delisting from the New York Stock Exchange
- Our new hybrid lives: Tactile virtual experiences and hardware that lives with us
- Judging by the future, not the past, Stride takes steps to turn student finance upside down
- Oura Ring 3 review
- Daily Crunch: After a transitional year, Apple announces its 2021 App Store Award winners
- FTC sues to block NVIDIA’s purchase of ARM
- Grab’s SPAC splat caps off a bad week for blank-check combinations
- Gillmor Gang: Get Better Back
- NASA awards Blue Origin, Nanoracks, Northrop Grumman over $400M in contracts to avoid space station gap
- Here’s a first look at the new Polestar SUV and how it fits in the automaker’s three-year plan
- GM delays production of new Chevy Bolt EVs until end of January
- Dear Sophie: What are the latest rules for H-1B visas?
- Actuator is go!
- Rocket Lab reimagines rocket design with its Neutron launch vehicle
- After being pushed out of Google, Timnit Gebru forms her own AI research institute: DAIR
- Nowhere to hide: The emissions threat facing corporate America
- Glorify, an ambitious app for Christians, just landed $40 million in Series A funding led by a16z
| Norrsken Foundation’s hub opens in Rwanda, to house 1,000 entrepreneurs by next year Posted: 03 Dec 2021 01:37 AM PST In 2019, Swedish coworking space and investment fund Norrsken Foundation announced the launch of its first entrepreneurship hub outside the Scandinavian nation in Rwanda. The center, located in Kigali, has finally opened up to the region, though it is happening in two phases. The first, which took place yesterday, will welcome 250 entrepreneurs. The second phase hopes to bring in over 750 additional entrepreneurs to the Norrsken House in Kigali by December 2022, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. "We have massive demand we can satisfy to become the biggest physical hub for startups in Africa," said the managing director of Norrsken East Africa, Pascal Murasira. The Kigali center is the first of 25 hubs the Norrsken Foundation plans to open globally over the next decade, according to founder Niklas Adalberth, the Klarna co-founder who left the unicorn fintech in 2016. The foundation sees itself as "nonprofit, nonpolitical and nonpartisan" with a mission to help entrepreneurs solve the "world's greatest challenges." In addition to its coworking space in Stockholm, Norrsken runs an impact accelerator program and an impact VC fund of €130 million. In Africa, alongside Norrsken House in Kigali, the foundation also manages an Africa-focused seed fund. While Norrsken mentioned in 2019 that its seed investments ranged from $25,000 to $100,000, with plans to make later-stage investments from $100,000 to $1 million, it did not give any update on its fund size this time. The organization only stated that it made a handful of investments into companies based in Rwanda, the two most recent ones being Viebeg Technology and PesaChoice. While the pandemic played a huge role in the project delays, Norrsken said it continues to follow the timeline it laid out when starting in 2019. "We think about launching Norrsken House just in the same way as we think about launching a product. You get it out there before it's ready, to involve users and get feedback on how to perfect it," a company's spokesperson said. "We don't have all the answers, and we need our users to help us shape the final product. Construction will continue and operations will gradually come online throughout the first half of 2022." But with the pandemic triggering shifts in how we work and communicate globally from offline to remote, why is Norrsken continuing with the project? To Adalberth, it all boils down to a known fact that offline clusters help create billion-dollar companies. Globally, unicorns have popped up from cluster cities with economic, technological, innovative and real estate advancement: Think Silicon Valley, London, Stockholm, Beijing, Bengaluru, São Paulo and Lagos. The founder hopes to replicate this model within the Norrsken House in Stockholm and Kigali. He believes Norrsken can create microcosms of these ecosystems with the center. And by bringing together 1,000 entrepreneurs solving real societal issues with their business models and connecting them to funding, network and mentorship, Norrsken aspires to create "impact unicorns." However, unlike Stockholm, which is regarded as a unicorn factory in Europe, Kigali doesn't have a prominent big-name startup yet. And though it has a vibrant startup and tech ecosystem, it lags behind other markets such as Lagos, Nairobi, Cairo, Cape Town and Johannesburg in terms of receiving VC funding. Still, Norrsken chose Kigali as its first base in Africa because of Rwanda's advantage in providing a friendlier business environment, internet penetration and infrastructure. "I think that we ended up with Kigali for a couple of different reasons. One is that we thought that we could perhaps make the highest impact in Kigali," Adalberth said. "Also, from the World Bank, you know that Kigali is one of the easiest countries to do business in Africa. And it has built out infrastructure in terms of internet, traffic, and so on. So it's a good prerequisite to building unicorns, and the final piece that was missing is what we're trying to enable now with the Norrsken House." [gallery type="slideshow" size="medium" ids="2242615,2242609,2242614,2242618,2242619,2242616,2242612,2242613,2242610"]
According to Murasira, startups including PesaChoice, SPENN, Fixa, BioMassters and ZoraBots will move into the Norrsken House in this first phase. Other tenants are partner organizations such as Katapult VC, The Bestseller Foundation, The Howard Buffett Foundation and the Novartis Foundation, which is housing its East Africa health tech hub and accelerator program at the center. According to research by AfriLabs and Briter Bridges in 2019, Africa has more than 600 active tech hubs, with 10 African cities home to about 250 of those and the rest spread across the continent. These hubs such as Nigeria's CcHub and Kenya's iHub (a subsidiary of the former) have contributed significantly to the growth of startups and innovation on the continent; some regard them as the backbone of Africa's tech ecosystem. As Adalberth noted, hubs as technology clusters set up suitable conditions to create successful tech companies. But Norrsken knows that if it seeks to replicate the ecosystems of Lagos, Cape Town and their successful counterparts that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital, it needs to take a multi-stakeholder approach that involves the government, private sector and academia. "We are a 'hub of hubs.' We offer infrastructure, access to networks, venture capital funds to invest in startups. This is going to be the biggest hub in the region and even before we launched, we received a lot of interest from international organizations, international funds, government, looking to work with us to be able to invest in the local startups," Murasira said. "Our theory is that once we have these role models that we elevate via this venue, we can have more young people deciding to go into entrepreneurship as a career path. So if we maintain that momentum and build this, it will be a tremendous accomplishment for us and the East African tech ecosystem." |
| Posted: 02 Dec 2021 11:00 PM PST Zindi is all about using AI to solve real world problems for companies and individuals. And the South Africa-based crowd-solving startup has done that over the last three years they have been in existence. Just last year a team of data scientists under Zindi used machine learning to improve air quality monitoring in Kampala as another group helped Zimnat, an insurance company in Zimbabwe predict customer behavior — especially on who was likely to leave and the possible interventions that would make them stay. Zimnat was able to retain its customers by offering custom-made services to those who would have otherwise discontinued. These are some of the solutions that have been realized to counter the data-centered challenges that companies, NGOs and government institutions submit to Zindi. Zindi announces these challenges and invites its community of data scientists to take part in solution-finding competitions. Participating data scientists submit their solutions and the winner gets a cash prize. The hosts of the competitions get to use the best results to overcome the challenge they had — like in an air quality monitoring project by AirQo, which sought solutions for forecasting air pollution across Uganda, and in helping Zimnat cut its losses. "So AirQo now has a dashboard that allows the public to check air quality and air quality forecasts. One of the exciting things about this project is that AirQo hired two of the winners from the challenge to help with the implementation of the project," said Zindi co-founder and CEO, Celina Lee. South African Megan Yates and Ghanaian Ekow Duker are the platform's other co-founders. "AirQo also raised funding from Google, based on the solution that they built, and they'll now be replicating it in other African countries," said Lee about the competition that was organised in partnership with the Digital Air Quality East Africa (DAQ EA) project of the University of Birmingham and the AirQo project from Makerere University, Kampala.  Zindi is a database of data scientists across Africa. The crowd-solving startup recently secured $1 million in seed funding. Photo Credits: Zindi. Among other notable private and public organizations that have tapped Zindi include Microsoft, IBM and Liquid Telecom UNICEF and the government of South Africa. So far, Lee is excited about what Zindi has achieved and is enthusiastic about the community's future given how the crowd-solving startup has grown since launch. The platform is now providing alternatives and stepping up competition against traditional consulting firms operating across Africa, which are often expensive. Zindi's users have grown three-fold from the start of last year to 33,000 data scientists from 45 countries in the continent. It has also paid data scientists $300,000 in prize money. This number is set to grow as it hosts the third inter-university Umoja Hack Africa challenge in March next year, where college students will compete against one another for different solutions. Zindi is using the inter-university competition to expose students to practical data science experiences and to solve real life challenges using AI. During last year's event the platform attracted about 2,000 students during the event that took place virtually because of the pandemic. "Students get to build their first machine learning models, and from there, it opens up all kinds of doors for their careers and education," said Lee, who is originally from San Francisco. Zindi currently has a jobs portal to "shorten the path from learning to earning." The talent placement portal allows organizations to tap from its pool of talent by posting openings. The crowd-solving platform is also planning to introduce a learning component that provides training material to budding data scientists, this is after it realized a knowledge gap and need for training. Besides, Lee said that most of Zindi's users are university students in need of learning experience, and who require enhanced skills to solve world problems. The new plans will be made possible by a $1 million seed funding the platform recently secured.
"So we’re going to be using the funding to introduce much more learning content, because one of the things we understand is that, especially in Africa, data science is such a new field. And a lot of our data scientists are still university students or very early in their careers. And they’re just looking for a chance to learn and build their skills." The seed round was led by San-Francisco based VC firm Shakti, with participation from Launch Africa, Founders Factory Africa, and five35. All these plans are towards building a strong data science community in Africa and for the continent, according to Lee, who said that they want to grow their users to reach one million in the near future. This, she said, will be achieved by opening up training opportunities to early-career data scientists and by forming a strong community that encourages collaboration and mentorship. Lee said, "and so where we want to eventually reach a million data scientists in Africa – we want to make data science something that any young person who’s interested in pursuing this career has access to the tools, the connections, and the experience that they need to make a successful career in this field." "Our vision is to make AI accessible to everyone." |
| Porsche invests in German startup aiming to be a one-stop shop for carbon neutral homes Posted: 02 Dec 2021 09:27 PM PST Porsche’s venture arm has taken a minority stake in 1Komma5, a five-month-old German startup aiming to offer households everything needed for a carbon neutral home, including energy storage, charging infrastructure for electric vehicles and solar. The investment, the amount of which was not disclosed, follows a series of deals made by Porsche Ventures in the past two years, including Israel-based sensing technology startup TriEye, online electric micromobility dealership RidePanda and virtual sensing startup Tactile Mobility. This investment is a bit of a departure from Porsche Ventures’ typical mobility tech play. “With this investment, we want to underline our ambition in the area of smart city and sustainability,” Patrick Huke, head of Porsche Ventures Europe and Israel told TechCrunch. The Hamburg, Germany startup was founded by Micha Grueber, who is the CFO, and Philipp Schröder, whose previous stints were at Tesla and energy storage systems company Sonnen. The company — its name a nod to the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement to keep the increase of global temperatures down to 1.5°C — is taking an interesting route to its one-stop shop goal. Today, companies are all focused on selling the components such as solar or energy storage, Schröder said in a recent interview. At the same time, no one in Europe is focused on bringing together these decentralized assets. That is bound to cause problems, Schröder contends. “There will be issues in a decentralized energy world if every home is having a heat pump and a charge point and storage system and they do not communicate on the grid level (or with each other) there will be issues,” he said. 1Komma5 is aiming to bring everything together through its software as well as acquisitions. Specifically, 1Komma is seeking to buy leading electrical installation companies in Germany — and will eventually expand to other countries such as Austria and Switzerland — that focus on renewable energies such as solar, heat pumps and energy storage. 1Komma5 provides the enterprise software for these companies to handle administrative tasks and customer-relationship management as well as energy management software that ties the charging, solar and energy storage together. What makes 1Komma5’s business interesting is its plan to interconnect these components like solar and energy storage at home level and at the grid level, Schröder said. The startup has made five acquisitions so far through cash and stock deals. The young startup has grand ambitions to use 100 million euro in cash and stock over the next to two years to acquire more of these renewable energy-focused installation companies. It’s targeting installation companies that have revenue between 5 million and 20 million euro and skilled labor — not sales outfits that simply outsource to other contractors. The funding from Porsche will be used to to help 1Komma5 expand, a plan that includes opening retail locations that embody a premium Apple design-like vibe where potential customers can learn about the essential building blocks of a carbon-neutral home. Customers to these stores might see a Porsche Taycan next to a home charger, energy storage and solar, for instance. The first showrooms are planned at Hamburg’s Binnenalster and in Lingen an der Ems and are expected to open in the first quarter of 2022. Porsche doesn’t have any immediate plans to offer 1Komma5 products to its own customer base. However, as Huke noted, Porsche Ventures makes strategic investments and it will be looking at different possibilities in the medium to long term. |
| China’s ride-hailing giant is delisting from the New York Stock Exchange Posted: 02 Dec 2021 06:10 PM PST China’s ride-hailing behemoth Didi has begun the procedure of delisting from the New York Stock Exchange and applying to list in Hong Kong instead, the company announced via a Weibo post on Friday morning. The decision came days after Bloomberg reported the Chinese government had asked Didi to delist from the U.S. out of security fears. Didi could not be reached for comment by TechCrunch at the time. The move is anything but surprising. The SoftBank-backed mobility powerhouse has faced immense regulatory pressure since it failed to assure Beijing its data practices were secure before its blockbuster IPO in July. Over the past few months, China has rolled out a litany of new data regulations, including rules that would bolster user privacy protection and restrict cross-border data transfers. A Didi executive previously said it stored data in China and it was "absolutely not possible" that it passed data to the U.S., just like “many other U.S.-listed Chinese firms.” Didi’s market cap currently stands at $37.6 billion. Its shares have plunged from over $15 apiece at debut to $7.8 as of Thursday. More to come… |
| Our new hybrid lives: Tactile virtual experiences and hardware that lives with us Posted: 02 Dec 2021 04:46 PM PST With hybrid models taking off across many aspects of society, it's clear that though they offer incredible flexibility, the boundary lines between work and personal life are becoming increasingly blurred and emotionally draining. Ritual has always been a powerful force in shaping our mental and emotional states; the gathering of people, physical totems, wardrobe and space design all work to choreograph that experience. But for people in the hybrid workforce, many of the rituals to which they’ve become accustomed are no longer accessible—their daily work experience involves no gathering, no change in location, and little (if any) wardrobe change. We are doubling down on hybrid virtual experiences, even though studies reveal that young people who spend more than seven hours a day staring at a screen are more susceptible to depression, anxiety and have greater difficulty in completing tasks. Furthermore, employees are reporting fatigue and exhaustion from a sea of back-to-back meetings that stretch across multiple time zones, making the days feel endless. Given that so much of the population is currently reliant on computing devices to engage in everything from work and school to shopping, banking and healthcare, we have to start taking a harder look at how we're designing and developing those devices to better equip us for new rituals for the hybrid virtual world. Today, computing devices account for every possible scenario, from the traditional desktop workstation to the ultra-portable handheld mobile phone. But what if the design of these objects could help users enforce the boundaries between work and personal life? For instance, a device with a keyboard in front of a screen conveys "productivity tool," while a touch tablet experience feels more casual and entertainment-focused. What if remote workers could have the option to switch between these two modalities to signal a switch from "work" to "personal"? Another area that has exploded into the tech spotlight is video chat and conferencing tools. For many of us, the majority of our interactions are now playing out via virtual meetings on video conferencing apps. HD webcams and ring lights have been in high demand, and the number of virtual backgrounds and effects multiply daily. But there are still many challenges and limitations to the video conference experience, partly because it's so dependent on the hardware design. Tools like Zoom, Google Hangouts and Teams have all been racing to keep up with the latest upgrades, but the software can only go so far without tackling hardware hurdles like integrated lighting sources, improved audio or even tactile feedback. However, if we start to accept these paradigm shifts of in-person to virtual, we can begin to design for the future normal with hardware upgrades like a camera lens no larger than a pixel that disappears into the screen to make it appear as if users are making direct eye contact with their colleagues. Other areas, such as the application of temperature and tactile technologies, can help us feel deeper connections with one another via virtual spaces. There may also be new possibilities in exploring olfactory technologies as immersive experiences continue to evolve. But what does this hardware evolution actually look like when it comes to production and consumption? While the expediency and convenience of technology is certainly impressive, it comes at a cost to our planet. Have consumers become Earth's abusers?When I think about my most cherished possessions, what they have in common is that they are old and rare. Of course, this is typical of valuable items, but why couldn't we bring this value system to our tech products? While I swap out my iPhone every year or two, I take tremendous joy in upgrading parts on my Ducati motorcycle bit by bit. I would never think of tossing it out for a brand new one. As consumer demand for sustainable solutions increase, hardware companies must adjust their offerings. Powerful brands like Apple could be a great leader in strong regenerative practices. Building your own desktop PC is nothing new (especially for hardcore gamers) but imagine a future where all portable tech is modular with swappable upgrades. What if 50 years from now, your smartphone from 2025 is a still functional and highly valued piece of vintage tech? The reality of our new normal is that the plethora of devices is not going away, while software developments are continuing to make leaps and bounds. It's time we started thinking about our devices as objects to keep and care for, repairing and refurbishing things like phones and computers to keep up with the latest advancements, much like we do with our cars or even our homes. |
| Judging by the future, not the past, Stride takes steps to turn student finance upside down Posted: 02 Dec 2021 04:40 PM PST If you’re trying to get a mortgage or an auto loan, banks will put on their judging glasses and look into your past. Makes sense; it’s a reasonably reliable indicator as to whether you’ll be able to repay your loans or not. Student financing is a little different. Sure, your past plays a role, but for a lot of education, having a degree dramatically changes your earning potential, and hence your ability to repay. With a philosophy that the current student loan systems perpetuate the rich-get-richer systems, Stride Funding is taking a different approach and just raised $12 million to help it take the business a few more steps into the future. The issue at the heart of the company is one of equality and access to education — one of the most significant indicators as to whether someone will have an opportunity for financial upward mobility. As you might expect, there are layers of privilege (can your parents help pay for your loans) and — more specifically — institutionalized racism in the picture. It is with quixotic optimism that Stride Funding is taking on the $130 billion student loan industry, which currently has $1.6 trillion worth of loans outstanding. Since closing its seed round in 2019, Stride increased the capital committed to students to over $50 million, with capital providers such as Silicon Valley Bank seeking to finance hundreds of millions of additional funds.The main thrust behind the company is to make education more available, especially to populations that have traditionally struggled to secure financing. “Especially in student lending, there’s this massive gap in terms of access to capital,” says Tess Michaels, CEO and founder at Stride Capital. “Ninety-two percent of private loans require co-signers, and less than a fourth of students actually have access.” The company today announced it closed a $12 million Series A financing, led by Firework Ventures (co-founded by Brigette Lau and Ashley Bittner). Other investors include impact investors such as Juvo Ventures and Graham Holdings — alongside previous investors GSV Ventures, Slow Ventures and Sinai Ventures. The Stride Funding team has a personal mission at the core of its business: “Both my parents immigrated here to the States, and education was their pathway to economic mobility. Education is what opens doors. And unfortunately for a lot of historical reasons, I think a lot of folks, especially underrepresented populations, are just left out of the market,” says Michaels, highlighting how this difference further amplifies the gap between the haves and the have-nots. “I feel very tied to the mission. We have supported such a wide range of really, really amazing, inspiring students, from refugees to DACA students, women, underrepresented minorities, and so on. We get such encouraging stories all the time from students, and it just reinforces that this is something that is worth doing.” |
| Posted: 02 Dec 2021 04:13 PM PST I admit I was thinking about the Oura Ring incorrectly. I was thinking of the device as an alternative to my Apple Watch. I suppose this is true, in the vaguest sense — likely for most people, it's one or the other. After all, two activity trackers is overkill for most. It's also cost-prohibitive. At $299, we're well within smartwatch territory on the pricing front. There's also the fact that, starting with the Ring 3, Oura is adding a $6/month subscription fee that kicks in after a six-month grace period. The new service arrives with additional features, but also sticks behind a paywall metrics that were previously free to users. The Oura Ring 3 is, in a word, an investment. But it isn't a smartwatch. If anything, it's a successor to the fitness band — a category we don't think about much these days, but one that utterly dominated the wearable category before Apple sunk its teeth into the space. Companies like Fitbit and Xiaomi still sell a ton of the things on an annual basis, but they've largely fallen out of fashion in favor of their more fully featured brethren. The more I've begun to think about the Oura Ring as a fitness band (or, perhaps more appropriately, health band), the more it has begun to make sense.  Image Credits: Brian Heater It is, in a sense, a passive device — not one that buzzes and beeps, constantly demanding attention throughout the day. The Oura Ring is a device to be worn and largely ignored, save for the occasional predetermined nudge for things like movement reminders. And if we're being honest, that's always going to be the case here. Sure, many fitness bands have blurred the line with displays, but the ring form factor has some very real limitations with regard to real estate. Rather, the Ring is designed to stay out of the way, collecting actionable sleep, health and fitness data that you can peruse later on a connected mobile app. And really, that's long been the selling point here. For the most part, a ring is better at staying out of your way than a fitness band. That was the appeal of Motiv's initial play — and while that product seemingly moved away from the fitness category, it's a banner than Oura has been more than happy to pick up and run with.  Image Credits: Brian Heater Before we venture any further, a confession: I'm not a ring guy. I don't particularly like rings and don't wear them (cue: "Don’t Fence Me In"). This is one of the big reasons I'm not going to be a regular Oura user. I've also, honestly, become fairly attached to my smartwatch. That said, I've been wearing the Ring 3 for the prescribed two weeks. That was Oura's recommendation/soft demand for reviewing the product. It was a strange request, as far as these things go. When reviewing hardware, you generally like to spend as much time with the product as possible. Easier said than done, sometimes. But here, the company insists that a fortnight is required for setting a kind of baseline measurement. It's not that readings are going to be bad for the first two weeks, so much as things will be better when you've been wearing the device for a bit and Oura has a clearer idea of your habits, sleep and biometrics. And it's understandable, given that we're all different, and customization is a key to any sort of health device. My guess is that sort of buy-in won't be difficult to engender among those willing to plunk down $299 for a ring. It's also a relatively simple lift given that it's a minimally invasive product. Again, as someone who isn't a ring person, it took some getting used to, but as a bit of a restless sleeper myself, it's easier to wear to bed than a big, bulky smartwatch. Let's take a moment to appreciate the built-in irony of a sleep-tracking device that's hard to wear to bed. The Oura Ring is not that. It’s comfortable. Because it's a ring. Again, I'm not a ring guy, but the simple fact of it occupying less real estate makes it less invasive. Design-wise, the product is virtually identical to its predecessor. It's a single-color metal band, round, but for a flatish edge that denotes the top of the product.  Image Credits: Brian Heater If you don't know your ring size, the company will send a sizing kit à la Warby Parker, featuring a number of plastic dummy rings. You're encouraged to wear one around for 24 hours, as the human finger has a way of swelling and contracting during the day. I chose my size and color (a matte black) and waited. Ultimately, I found the final product to be a bit looser than its plastic counterpart, but the ring stayed on fine. And, indeed, I found that the exact fit tended to evolve over the day. On the face of it, the device looks like a standard ring — and that's really the appeal. You will, however, sometimes see a green glow emanating from the inner circle, as the ring's sensors grab a heart rate reading. Daytime heart rate monitoring is among a handful of new features available at launch, along with period production (something I admit that I did not have an opportunity to test) and improved temperature sensing. Based solely on those new features, the 3 represents an incremental update over the 2. The list of upcoming features arriving this year and next is a significantly longer one, including additional content like meditation and breathing sessions, workout heart rate monitoring, more accurate sleep staging and SpO2 blood oxygen sensing. In the case of that last one, in particular, it's not entirely surprising it was delayed — and Oura's certainly not alone in turning on a key health sensing feature after launch. In this case, it's not about FDA approval (not yet, at least), but rather implementation. This stuff is tricky to get right, and that likely goes double when you're not Samsung or Apple. It is, however, a long list of promised features that will likely leave many potential consumers wondering why the company didn't wait to launch a more fully realized product. I do ultimately wonder if it's a piece of a deeper strategy to offer a base of hardware with the promise that features will continue to improve and roll out over the course of its life. After all, there's no question that Oura has some long-term ambitions with this stuff. Look no further than the myriad studies in which the company has participated. A cursory glance at its blog shows everything from depression to the impact of phone usage on sleep to adapting to undersea environments. Not everything is going to prove out, and certainly most or many would lead to brand new features, but at the very least, there's some interesting insight here into precisely how much we'll ultimately be able to monitor or predict with sensors. Among other things, those studies do appear to have proven out the accuracy of measuring things like heart rate on a finger versus the wrist. Ultimately, I prefer a wrist-worn tracker like the Apple Watch for its workout tracking. I was able to pair the two and use them to paint an overall picture of my activity. I recognize not everyone has the means — or desire — to do this, however. Where the Oura Ring ultimately succeeds versus more traditional trackers is its emphasis on actionable insights — that's precisely why the company is so insistent people let it determine a baseline before judging its efficacy.  Image Credits: Brian Heater Things like recovery and readiness tend to be overlooked by these sorts of devices. Oura describes the latter thusly:
Effectively, it takes all of the metrics it has been collecting and determines whether you're doing a good enough job recovering between them. Recovery Time was a constant red flag for me. Which, fair enough. I could and probably should be doing a better job letting my body recover between workouts. It's certainly something to improve on, as the red "Pay attention" notifications plainly indicate.  Image Credits: Brian Heater Another place that pops up is sleep. Clicking over to the Home tab, the app notes, "Your heart rate decreased late last night, so you might not by fully recovered. To help your body recharge, how about taking a moment to unwind today?" It seems obvious on the face of it that, say, meditating at night (versus the morning when I usually do) or practicing breathing exercises before bed, would be better for my (admittedly restless) sleep than, say, doom scrolling with my buds on Twitter. But in amongst the daily grind, it's easy to lose sight of this fact. I've always said that one of the underrated and under discussed benefits of a wearable is that it's kind of the tech equivalent of tying a string around your finger. It's an injection of mindfulness and a reminder of why you made that investment in the first place. We buy these things because we want to better ourselves. And in a world where technology too often does the opposite, some positive technological reinforcement is a net positive. |
| Daily Crunch: After a transitional year, Apple announces its 2021 App Store Award winners Posted: 02 Dec 2021 03:10 PM PST To get a roundup of TechCrunch's biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here. Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for December 2, 2021! There's a lot going on. More fintech in Latin America. Actuator launching. App Store Awards. The week's software selloff. It's a lot, so buckle in. Maybe the news slowdown will come next week? Here's hoping! – Alex The TechCrunch Top 3
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4 analysts break down Bret Taylor's pretty sweet week Image Credits: Salesforce Bret Taylor is on a roll: On Monday, he became the chair of Twitter's board, and a day later, Salesforce made him its co-CEO and co-chair. Enterprise reporter Ron Miller looked back at Taylor's career to better understand how a one-time Google product manager ended up co-leading one of the world's most valuable companies. To get a fuller perspective, he interviewed four analysts:
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| FTC sues to block NVIDIA’s purchase of ARM Posted: 02 Dec 2021 01:35 PM PST NVIDIA’s plan to acquire ARM just hit a major stumbling block. The Federal Trade Commission has sued to block the merger over concerns the $40 billion deal would “stifle” competition for multiple technologies, including datacenters and car computers. ARM is a “critical input” that fosters competition between NVIDIA and rivals, the FTC said, and a merger would give NVIDIA a way to “undermine” those challengers. The FTC was also worried NVIDIA would have access to sensitive info from ARM licensees. The merger could reduce the incentive for ARM to develop tech that might run counter to NVIDIA’s business goals, officials added. The administrative trial is due to start August 9th, 2022. The company didn’t appear bothered. NVIDIA characterized the lawsuit as the “next step” in the FTC process, and repeated its arguments in favor of the buyout. The acquisition would “accelerate” ARM’s product plans, foster more competition and still protect the chip architecture designer’s open licensing model, according to NVIDIA. You can read the full statement below. Despite the claims, an FTC lawsuit is a huge issue for NVIDIA. The Commission files lawsuits like these when it believes a company is breaking the law — concessions might not be enough. It also comes after the European Commission launched an investigation into the purchase in October. NVIDIA is facing questions from major regulators clearly wary of the acquisition, and those agencies might not accept the answers. As it stands, NVIDIA’s competition likely isn’t happy. Qualcomm reportedly objected to the ARM deal in communications with the FTC (among other bodies) over fears NVIDIA might refuse to license designs. And when heavyweights like Apple, MediaTek and Samsung also depend on ARM, it’s doubtful the rest of the market would be enthusiastic. At the least, the trial would likely delay closure of the union past NVIDIA’s original 2022 target.
Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on Engadget. |
| Grab’s SPAC splat caps off a bad week for blank-check combinations Posted: 02 Dec 2021 01:33 PM PST What goes up must come down. And what goes SPAC must go splat? We’ll keep workshopping that. Regardless, shares of super app Grab took a pounding today after its SPAC combination was approved last night and began to trade this morning. Grab’s stock initially rose, before falling sharply as the day went on. By the close of trading, Grab was worth $8.75 per share, or down 20.53%, per Yahoo Finance’s count. Shares fell another 1.7% as of the time of writing. But Grab’s lackluster performance was only one from SPAC-led debuts today. Buzzfeed also ran into a redemption buzzsaw while trying to get its SPAC deal done, while its staff was in open revolt and its leadership tried to bring them into line by threatening to dock their pay — that will fix it, surely. And there was more. MetroMile, the neoinsurance company that went public via a SPAC, hit a new 52-week low today of $2.27 per share before recovering. Given that the company’s 52-week high was just over $20 per share, its declines are this side of legendary. There are other splashes of SPAC blood on the public-market walls. Shares of Desktop Metal are under the $6 mark after shooting as high as $34.94 in the last year. That’s another SPAC combo that has largely deflated post-consummation. Who else? Lordstown: Today it’s worth $4.14 per share, despite being worth as much as $31.56 in the last year. The list goes on. There will be some SPAC winners. SoFi is still above the $10 per share mark by a good margin, for example, but woof. What about Grab, though?When we were parsing Grab’s third-quarter results this morning, we noted its falling revenues and rising losses. Those key performance metrics were pointing in the wrong direction. Still, with redemptions at effectively zero, and the SPAC backer holding for three years, I presumed that there was something in Grab that I was missing. There was not, as it turned out. The growth method of avoiding investor discontent is to post lots of revenue expansion, thus making even rising losses appear smaller, at least in percentage-of-revenue terms. Flat losses are better. And falling losses best, of course. But if revenue is in decline while losses are going up, then things are bad. Not that Grab won’t pull it all together in time. It might! But going public with falling top line and rising red ink was never going to be easy. Perhaps we should be less surprised that Grab has managed little other than underperformance thus far as a public company. Not a great week for SPACs. |
| Posted: 02 Dec 2021 01:22 PM PST In a discussion about culture versus history on this edition of the Gang, Denis Pombriant invokes the Beatles as examples of agents of change that used rock and roll to alter the arc of history. “Just understand that four kids from Liverpool changed the entire culture of the world. Not immediately, but over time.” With the release of almost 8 hours of footage documented the beginning of the group’s last year of existence, those of us who revere the output and impact that ended some 50 years ago have perhaps now reached our limit. As I endured the 3-part saga each night of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, I kept thinking that enough was finally enough. Maybe Jack Dorsey thought the same thing as he quit his CEO job at Twitter. Conventional wisdom says he either was asked to leave by a board larded with corporate raiders and unhappy investors, or just plain was done. I think he did a pretty good job with a social network invented by him and loved by its embedded fans. Recent social software like newsletters and Clubhouse clones has brought the company to an interesting place in the road where it can serve the role of a postwar Hollywood studio managing the transition to a new era of subscription media. Saturday morning I’m some two hours away from the end of the Beatles’ Get Back, and it’s been much more than I’d imagined. For days I’ve been joking that this is finally the end of the story, but it’s nothing like that. The thing that was created may be over, but the group is really just now forming its place in the history of the world. Each day grows closer to the moment when Lennon hopes they’ve passed the audition, but we already know the answer from the earliest moments. Yes it is, it’s true. Harrison is the deepest into the essence of what they’ve created, with his anger fueling the project. The three song writers are done listening to each other on a pragmatic level, struggling with their fame but not willing to give any of it up just yet. Harrison and Ringo decrypt Octopus’s Garden, but the kernel in the scene is George’s command of the full Beatle envelope. As he sketches out the chord structure of Ringo’s tune, he foreshadows the second part of the project, the Abbey Road return to Beatle studio magic. As each chord resonates, the shimmer of the Beatle process appears, glows, and then is replaced by the next chord and process. Lennon and McCartney exist more in relation to each other, each somewhat frozen in fatigue from grappling with the other. Harrison is more than willing to blow things up, but his ongoing narrative commentary is both accurate and positive in its optimism. He’s been living in this fishbowl long enough to know he is the only one of the group to prod it forward. When he injects Billy Preston into the sessions, everyone else can see what is obvious to Harrison. When McCartney runs down Let It Be, Preston disappears into the mix. Lennon thirsts for the live feel Preston summons, but McCartney won’t surrender his apparent control of the project by endorsing a new group member. A different hierarchy emerges in the film: Without Lennon (asleep or anesthetized at home) the three default to McCartney but function only when Harrison is engaged. When McCartney senses the Frankenstein he's enabled in Harrison, he retreats to the relative safety of Lennon's call-and-response wit. Ringo's eyes widen as he waits for his opening, a coiled cheshire cat. Harrison lays trap after trap for those who appear unobservant only to comment later on what was going down. George Martin is a third straight project deep into unraveling this slow motion meltdown, but appears surprisingly ineffective at adding punch to the rope-a-dope circulating in the room. Watch Harrison's eyes as he glancingly acknowledges the camera for only the frames necessary to raise a smile. He is the director, screenwriter, and auteur of this thing. Several remaining questions: what went on the day the group forbade the cameras at Saville Row? Before the pause and palpably after, the music tightens up as the band does some of its magic to the material. Harrison’s Get Back lead guitar switches places with Lennon’s rhythm guitar. The presumed wisdom is that the Quiet Beatle is laying out post-quitting the Twickenham sessions, but the results suggest otherwise. McCartney’s chops on the roof are transformational on all the tracks, a sign of the songs having locked into a pocket to be mined in the studio a few weeks later on Abbey Road tracks I Want You (She’s So Heavy), Something, and Come Together. Don’t believe the conventional wisdom. Now that we’ve all been in the room, who’s kidding who? Not McCartney, who talked divorce well before the project ran aground in the drafty Twickenham studio. Not Lennon, who months earlier knew the group was in trouble when their manager died. The Magical Mystery Tour debacle should have convinced them they couldn’t just wing a TV show, but they tried it again anyway. George Martin wasn’t their producer; he was their mentor. Ringo actually married a Bond girl. They spoke a secret language to each other. There was no Fifth Beatle. the latest Gillmor Gang Newsletter __________________ The Gillmor Gang — Frank Radice, Michael Markman, Keith Teare, Denis Pombriant, Brent Leary and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, November 19, 2021. Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor @fradice, @mickeleh, @denispombriant, @kteare, @brentleary, @stevegillmor, @gillmorgang Subscribe to the new Gillmor Gang Newsletter and join the backchannel here on Telegram. The Gillmor Gang on Facebook … and here's our sister show G3 on Facebook.
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| Posted: 02 Dec 2021 01:18 PM PST Just two days after officially (and quietly) confirming that it intends to replace the International Space Station with a commercial station by 2030, NASA has awarded over $400 million in agreements to three companies to further develop private station plans. The three companies, which received the awards under the agency's Commercial low Earth orbit (LEO) Destinations program, are:
NASA received eleven proposals in total, director of commercial spaceflight Phil McAlister said Thursday. He added that of the three chosen proposals, there was a diversity of technical concepts and a variety of logistical and launch vehicle options offered. “This diversity not only enhances the likelihood of success of NASA strategy, but it also leads to a high degree of innovation, which is critical in most commercial space endeavors,” he said. The three companies have already released a handful of details about their proposals. Blue Origin is calling its station concept "Orbital Reef," and it is designing it with Boeing, Sierra Space and others. The team said it wants to launch the station in 2027. Meanwhile, Nanoracks is calling its station, which is being developed with its parent company Voyager Space and aerospace prime Lockheed Martin, "Starlab." While Northrop didn't give its station proposal a flashy name, it's working with Dynetics to deliver a modular design based around its Cygnus spacecraft. These substantial awards mark the first phase of a two-phase process as NASA seeks to ensure that there will be no gap between the retirement of the ISS and the introduction of a new station. NASA has repeatedly stressed, both to Congress and more recently in a report by the Office of Inspector General, that the overall success of the development of a thriving economy in LEO is dependent upon avoiding this gap.  Image Credits: Blue Origin (opens in a new window) "If there is no habitable commercial destination in low Earth orbit after the ISS is decommissioned, NASA will be unable to conduct microgravity health research and technology demonstrations needed for long-duration human exploration missions to the Moon and Mars, significantly increasing the risk of—or delaying—those missions," the agency said in the report. To dodge this potential scenario, NASA has proposed for one or more commercial LEO "destinations" (as it sometimes calls stations) to be operational by 2028 — giving a two-year overlap before the ISS is retired by the end of the decade. While that report raised doubts as to the feasibility of hitting that timeline, each of the three companies and NASA executives were confident in their ability to avoid a station gap. “I can’t believe that a decade after commercial cargo was launched, folks are still questioning the robustness and ingenuity and flexibility of the commercial pathway,” Jeffrey Manber said. “Sure, there are challenges going forward, […] we have a robustness, we have a multiplicity of providers working on this. This is exactly the right way to go forward on risk mitigation, to have multiple providers on the commercial pathway.” This first set of awards will help the companies develop their designs, work that is expected to continue through 2025. In the second phase of the program, which is targeted to commence in 2026, NASA intends to certify for human use one or more stations — from this group of companies or other entrants — and ultimately become one of many customers purchasing in-orbit services and use of the stations. NASA said in a statement that this will allow it to focus on its Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the moon, and eventually human spaceflight to Mars. Notably absent is Axiom Space, which won a separate award to send up modules to attach to the ISS before separating and self-orbiting as its own station, but the company clarified that it did not bid on CLD. The big question, of course, is how much these stations will end up costing — and how much of the overall cost NASA will end up paying. McAlister said the agency “encourage bidders to maximize their financial contribution to these activities,” and he noted that non-NASA investment currently stood at around 60% with NASA’s contribution under 40%. But the three companies, and the agency, wouldn’t say much more about how much capital they’re anticipating expending for designing, launching and operating their stations. The story has been updated with additional details from the media briefing. |
| Here’s a first look at the new Polestar SUV and how it fits in the automaker’s three-year plan Posted: 02 Dec 2021 01:14 PM PST From its motorsport beginnings to today, Swedish electric automaker Polestar has come a long way. According to CEO Thomas Ingenlath, the Volvo spin-off is just getting started. Ingenlath, along with members of the automaker’s leadership team, laid out a three-year plan for Polestar during a presentation in New York on Thursday that included an ambitious sales goal and a peek at its next electric vehicle. “Cars are a very highly emotional affair,” Ingenlath said as he kicked off his pitch to media.  Polestar 3 electric vehicle teased at an event in December 2021. Image Credits: Polestar At its core, the plan is to launch three new vehicles by 2024, expand the number of vehicles sold to about 290,000 units, and do so in new markets across Europe and Asia Pacific. The foundations for this expansion are the company’s own core values of design, sustainability, innovation and customer engagement. Sustainability in particular was emphasized during the event, with Polestar reaffirming its mission to produce a carbon neutral car by 2030. This will be dependent on a number of sustainable practices big and small, from using recycled materials to changing how Polestar does business on the supply chain level. We know very little about the upcoming Polestars 3 and 4, though Ingenlath insisted the ball was rolling on production of both, even offering a teaser image of the 3 to whet the EV aficionados’ appetites. The all-electric SUV will be built in the United States, specifically in Charleston, South Carolina. Along with being produced in a climate-responsible manner, the Polestar 3 will also be equipped with hardware from lidar developer Luminar and Nvidia-sourced processors to make its advanced driver assistance system capable of automated driving on highways, though it seems this feature won’t be available at launch. Little beyond that is known of the 3, and even less of the Polestar 4, though it’s billed as a premium sport SUV “Coupe,” with a more rakish fastback profile, according to the teaser graphics displayed during the presentation. Polestar has also used the Porsche Cayenne and Macan as price-point benchmarks for the 3 and 4, respectively, so we can infer that these competitors also set the bar for the level of luxury and performance both cars intend to challenge. Interestingly, the car we know the most about is the furthest one away: the Polestar 5. It was recently announced that the Precept Concept will indeed go into full production as the 5th Polestar, a four-door luxury sport GT. As it stands, the Precept is in a way a physical declaration of Polestar’s future and will inform the upcoming SUVs as well. The jump from 29,000 units sold to 290,000 in three years sounds daunting, as well as increasing Polestar’s presence, but Ingenlath isn’t worried. “From here on in, Polestar is all about growth.” With its production already underway, we’ll likely hear more about the Polestar 3 sooner than later. |
| GM delays production of new Chevy Bolt EVs until end of January Posted: 02 Dec 2021 12:27 PM PST General Motors will continue to delay production of new Chevrolet Bolt EVs at the company’s Orion assembly plant in Michigan “through the week of Jan. 24, 2022,” the company said in a statement emailed to TechCrunch on Thursday. The automaker said it would instead “continue to focus on battery module replacements” for tens of thousands of Chevy Bolts that were recalled earlier this year due to potential fire risks within the batteries. The plant has been shut down since August 23, and GM has repeatedly pushed back production dates for new Bolt vehicles. In October, GM started shipping dealers replacement battery modules for the recalled Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles. A GM spokesperson said the company was not publicly disclosing any specifics on the number of modules that had been shipped or replaced. “We continue to ramp up repairs and are focused on completing the repairs as quickly as possible,” the company spokesperson said in an email. “In fact, we notified employees at our Orion assembly plant (the assembly plant for the BOLT EV) that we are keeping the plant down through January to continue to prioritize recall repairs.” In May, the company planned to add new software that would prevent fires to the 2017 to 2019 Bolts that were originally recalled after a few fires were reported. When the software wasn’t effective, Chevy issued a recall in July. The automaker recalled all Bolt EVs in August after a newer model year Bolt caught fire. LG Chem, the manufacturers of Chevy’s Bolt batteries, has since agreed to pay the nearly $2 billion cost of the recall. During GM’s investor day in October, the company said it would double its revenues by the end of the decade and take over EV market share from Tesla. The company previously pledged to release 30 new EVs by 2025, but so far, all GM has announced schedules for are its GMC Hummer EV pickup, which is scheduled for delivery by the end of 2021, the Hummer EV SUV, which is scheduled for 2023, and the Cadillac Lyric, which should come to market by early next year. |
| Dear Sophie: What are the latest rules for H-1B visas? Posted: 02 Dec 2021 12:18 PM PST Here’s another edition of "Dear Sophie," the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies. "Your questions are vital to the spread of knowledge that allows people all over the world to rise above borders and pursue their dreams," says Sophie Alcorn, a Silicon Valley immigration attorney. "Whether you're in people ops, a founder or seeking a job in Silicon Valley, I would love to answer your questions in my next column." TechCrunch+ members receive access to weekly "Dear Sophie" columns; use promo code ALCORN to purchase a one- or two-year subscription for 50% off. Dear Sophie, I've always wanted to live and work in the United States. I have been applying for software engineering positions in the United States, and one company says that if they hire me and get me an H-1B visa, the filing fees and cost will be taken out of my paycheck. Is that allowed? Also, is it permissible to have more than one company put me into the H-1B lottery so I have a better chance of being selected? Will the companies find out? — Motivated in Morocco Dear Motivated, I appreciate you reaching out with your questions! Now is an ideal time to look for job opportunities with companies that are willing to sponsor prospective hires for an H-1B. Most companies have started — or will soon start — the process of identifying H-1B candidates. I recently dove into a few of your questions and more dos and don'ts in a recent podcast about the H-1B lottery process, which will begin in March. As many startups are dealing with the Great Resignation by hiring talented professionals, such as software engineers, remotely using various global professional employer organizations (PEOs), your questions are common heading into the next lottery season. For a startup, putting a candidate in the H-1B lottery can be a great way to support your talented team member because the number of H-1B registrants rises each year. Startups often eagerly support their team members through H-1B sponsorship to enable them to have a better life in the U.S. and increase loyalty, as well as to bring them into a more synchronous time zone to enable fluid collaboration.  Image Credits: Joanna Buniak / Sophie Alcorn (opens in a new window) Who pays H-1B fees and costs?According to federal regulations, an employer cannot collect H-1B-related fees and costs for the "employer's business expenses" from the beneficiary of the H-1B visa. That means the employer must pay the $10 registration fee to enter employees or prospective employees into the lottery, attorney fees and costs connected with the H-1B program, and the cost of preparing and filing an H-1B petition, including the Labor Condition Application that is filed to the U.S. Department of Labor. Other costs that an employer cannot pass along to an H-1B holder include expenses for tools and equipment, transportation costs necessary to employment and living expenses when the employee is traveling on company business. However, some costs and fees may be paid by the employee, or employers are allowed to pass along some fees and costs to an employee. Examples of what employees are able to pay for generally include translations of personal documents, family members' visas and fees related to a collective bargaining agreement, but this is definitely something to talk to your attorney about. Keep in mind that a shortage of tech talent in the United States is prompting many companies to do all they can to attract and retain talent. Forward-thinking companies are offering up immigration as a benefit, paying the immigration-related costs and fees that they are not required to cover and agreeing to sponsor new hires for a green card after a year or two of employment. Make sure your H-1B-sponsoring employer cares both about legal compliance as well as creating a hospitable work environment. H-1B lottery registrationA company can only register an individual once for the H-1B lottery each year. If an individual is registered more than once for a lottery by the same company, that individual will be removed from the lottery. However, it is technically possible for you to have multiple companies register you for the H-1B lottery each year. I understand your desire to increase your odds of being chosen in the H-1B lottery. Keep in mind that you are legally allowed to have a job offer from more than one company, but this may raise a red flag with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which will want to make sure the job offers are legitimate. Even though each company that registers you for the lottery may not find out about the other prospective employers, I recommend you approach the situation with integrity and transparency by communicating your approach with those prospective employers as you take your reputation with you in Silicon Valley. In some limited situations, an employer may receive limited damages from an H-1B recipient who leaves the employer before an agreed-upon date depending on the damages and state law. If you find yourself in this situation, I recommend consulting with an immigration attorney. Alternatives to the H-1BIf you don't get selected in the lottery, there are several backup options available, such as a cap-exempt H-1B, an O-1A visa or even an E-2 visa if you have the desire and the means to start your own company in the U.S. I discuss these and other options in my podcast episode, "Selected or Not Selected in the H-1B Lottery, Now What?" Best wishes to you on your journey to the U.S.! — Sophie Have a question for Sophie? Ask it here. We reserve the right to edit your submission for clarity and/or space. The information provided in "Dear Sophie" is general information and not legal advice. For more information on the limitations of "Dear Sophie," please view our full disclaimer. You can contact Sophie directly at Alcorn Immigration Law. Sophie's podcast, Immigration Law for Tech Startups, is available on all major platforms. If you'd like to be a guest, she's accepting applications! |
| Posted: 02 Dec 2021 11:30 AM PST Today's the big day! After months of toiling away in roundups, Actuator is finally graduating to your inbox as the latest addition to the TechCrunch newsletter family. I've written 40 of these things since our quiet, pre-name test launch back in February (we called ourselves "Robotics Roundup" for a few unfortunate months there). You can check out the full backlog here, and if you're still reading this through TechCrunch.com, be sure to sign up here. Seeing as how we're nearing the end of another very weird year, I plan to spend the next couple of weeks exploring 2021's biggest robotics trends. Think about it like Spotify Wrapped, only instead of an embarrassing number of Steely Dan songs (definitely not talking about myself here), we'll take a look at the trends in automation, AI, research and investment that defined the last 12 months. And in doing so, we should get a better picture of the world we’re heading into. I've been threatening to launch a robotics newsletter at TC for a number of years now — probably dating back nearly as far as our first big robotics event in Boston, way back in 2017. It's been a rich vein for some time, but honestly, I don't think we could have picked a better moment to launch this thing than right now. As we stare down the two-year anniversary of a global pandemic, it's clear that for many of us there may not be a "normal" to return to — for better or worse. For those in the robotics industry, this is the first glimpse into something big, bold and exciting. Maybe it’s overly optimistic to imply that we might emerge from this to something better (and believe me, the last 21 or so months have sucked deeply on a personal level), but it’s undeniably time to rethink the way we do just about everything. Logistics, healthcare, restaurants, agriculture, retail — all of these categories are set to be fundamentally transformed by COVID-19. And robotics has an important role in that transformation. It’s been nearly two years, and countless industries are still under tremendous strain to fill positions. Those who have previously considered full automation a distant pipe dream are looking far more aggressively into these solutions, and as a result, we've seen a tremendous uptick in investments across a broad range of categories. Concepts that VCs would have traditionally balked at as too far afield have found their way to the tops of term sheets across the world. I've been writing about technology professionally for a long time now, and for the first time, I'm hearing people talk seriously about robotic ubiquity in the present tense. Just before Thanksgiving, I spoke with Matthew Johnson-Roberson, who had just been appointed the head of Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute. He told me:
We're not quite there yet, obviously. But I do fundamentally believe that we're a lot closer to that goal than we were in, say, January 2020. Part of our job here going forward is discussing how we get there. We should also be taking the opportunity to discuss the consequences of getting there. What all of this means for things like jobs, quality of life and the environment, for example. And, not to put too fine a point on it, how to ensure that robotics continues to serve us and not the other way around. Committing to an indefinitely weekly newsletter is something that felt a bit daunting at first blush. But having done it every week for a while now, one thing's for certain: We won't be running out of things to discuss any time soon.  Image Credits: AWS Heck, I may have taken the week off (happy belated Thanksgiving to those who celebrate), but robotics didn't. My buddy Frederic is in beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada this week for AWS's re:Invent conference. Amazon kicked off the show with the launch of a robotics fleet management program. The problem RoboRunner is attempting to solve is one we've seen various startups take on. Specifically, how do companies get different brands of robotics systems to play nicely together? Here’s AWS CTO Werner Vogels:
Can Amazon gobble up industrial robotics fleet management the way it has…well, everything else, basically? The company certainly has the infrastructure and resources to take the disjointed category on. It also now has a foot in the world of early-stage robotics startups, courtesy of a new partnership with MassRobotics. Amazon is teaming up with the Boston-based tech hub to launch a new robotics accelerator specifically focused on AWS applications.  Image Credits: Nuro Autonomous delivery company Nuro just announced another massive raise. This latest $600 million round was led by Tiger Global Management (because, of course). It brings the company's valuation to a whopping $8.6 billion. As for where that funding is going, co-founder Dave Ferguson told TechCrunch, “With the boost of this new funding, we're turning our focus to commercializing and scaling the production of our third-generation vehicle at our new facility in Southern Nevada.”  Image Credits: Somatic When we talk about the dirty jobs that automation could one day replace, cleaning public toilets is no doubt near the top of the list. Michael Levy, the CEO of Somatic, dropped me a line to note that the company's robot has reached a new milestone in automatous bathroom scrubbing, as evidenced by the below video: The company, which effectively came out of stealth at our robotics event last year, has designed a system capable of riding in an elevator, opening doors and scrubbing down bathrooms. As Levy told me last year, "The reason bathrooms are such a good application is because everything is bolted down to the floor. Things move in a predictable way. All commercial bathrooms built after 1994 are ADA compliant. What's good for robotics is that lays a specific design."  Image Credits: FJDynamics Some more big funding for a robotics agtech firm — this time in China. Founded by former DJI chief scientist Wu Di, FJDynamics just announced that it has closed a $70 million Series D for its robotic harvester. Rita had a frank conversation with Wu, who noted, "You can have the most advanced AI algorithms. But if the technology doesn't work on the production line or the farm, because you don't have any industry experience, then how does your technology benefit people?" Fair enough.  Image Credit: Miso Robotics On the note of broader trends to look out for, anecdotally, it seems there's raring to be an uptick in crowded capital rounds. Miso Robotics, which produces the hamburger cooking robot, Flippy, just announced a sizable $35 million crowdfunded Series B spread out over 8,200 investors (a list that includes both new and returning names).
It's a big round, as far as crowdfunding goes — and a trend worth keeping an eye on. Certainly there's something to be said for widescale consumer buy-in, but one wonders what going this route means for investor confidence, among other things.  Image Credits: Stellar Earlier this week, Stellar Pizza announced plans to launch its robotic pizza cooking truck in Los Angeles at some point next spring. Formed by a trio of SpaceX expats, the company says its trucks are capable of cooking a pizza from scratch in less than five minutes and producing a pizza every 45 seconds at max capacity. Per its press material:
Hopefully the robotic pizza truck business proves a smoother ride for Stellar than it did for Zume, which has since undergone one of the weirdest pivots in recent memory and is now producing sustainable packaging with help from ABB. Image Credits: UC RiversideNeusbot comes to us from UC Riverside this week. The soft robot moves as iron oxide and copper nanorods convert light into heat. A team at the school believes the technology could be used to help clean oil spills in the future. "Normally, people send ships to the scene of an oil spill to clean by hand,” researcher Zhiwei Li says in a release tied to the news. “Neusbot could do this work like a robot vacuum, but on the water's surface."  Computer rendering of what the final Semiramis hanging garden structure will look like. Image Credits: Gramazio Kohler Research A fun one from ETH Zurich to close us out. The school is using construction robots to blur the lines between architecture and art with the creation of an homage to the hanging gardens of Babylon — one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. An aside from the piece by Devin that is simultaneously surprising and completely on-brand:
Learn something new about one of your co-workers every day. |
| Rocket Lab reimagines rocket design with its Neutron launch vehicle Posted: 02 Dec 2021 11:21 AM PST Rocket Lab finally pulled the cover off its Neutron rocket, a medium-lift vehicle that CEO Peter Beck calls "a rocket of 2050," as the company looks to take a greater share of the launch market currently dominated by SpaceX. This is the first major update on the project from the company since Neutron was announced in March. Since then, Rocket Lab's been busy, going public via a merger with a blank-check firm, continuing to develop its Electron reusability program and expanding its space services division. All the while, the company has managed to stay mum about Neutron — until now. Carbon compositesNeutron features a number of surprising innovations that depart from other rockets of its class in both operation and development. The first is materials: The 131-foot rocket will be made out of a special carbon composite, much like its sibling rocket, Electron. It's an interesting choice, particularly as SpaceX famously decided to ditch carbon composites for its Starship system in favor of stainless steel. But this is not Rocket Lab's first rodeo with carbon composites; not only do they make up the bulk of the Electron rocket, Beck has been working with advanced composites and materials since the start of his career at a New Zealand government research facility. "If you’re someone who is used to working in metallics, actually moving into composites is really challenging," Beck told TechCrunch. "But if you’ve always been in composites and your experience is there, then actually, they’re pretty simple." Metallic structures are heavy and low-performance; while that can be made up for with high-performance engines, this doesn't lead to high margins or high reliability for reuse, he added. Lighter structures avoid what he called "the rocket spiral of doom": a never-ending arms race between heavier structures requiring more propellant, which then requires a larger propellant tank, which increases the weight and requires even more propellant — ad infinitum. "This is the first time in my career ever where the spiral of doom is inversed. The spiral of doom is inversed because of the lightweight structures, and it’s not just important from a launch perspective, it’s actually really important from a reentry perspective,” he said. Why? According to Beck, Neutron's large diameter at 23 feet and light weight gives it a large ballistic coefficient, a measure of an object's ability to resist air drag. So the focus on structure means using less propellant on reentry, less air drag (and less heat as a consequence), and a simpler engine. The Neutron will also be finished in a new type of graphite composite for added thermal protection, a new addition that will be coming to future Electron rockets as well. The ‘Hungry Hippo’Another major departure from conventional rocket design are Neutron's fairings, a piece of equipment that traditionally sits at the top of the rocket like a nose cone, protecting the payload inside. Historically, fairings separate and fall back to Earth and are generally considered expendable, though SpaceX retrieves them from the ocean for refurbishment and reuse. Rocket Lab has instead attached the four fairings to the first stage, where they will mechanically open (imagine a strange, robotic flower). This is yet another design decision that has been driven by the use of composite materials, Beck said.  Image Credits: Rocket Lab (opens in a new window) "Normally you don’t have the mass margins to be able to hold onto fairings and do things like that. You have to get rid of the fairings as quick as you can, because you can’t afford that parasitic mass. But when the parasitic mass is really low, then it allows you to be able to do these kinds of things." Neutron will be capable of carrying a maximum of 15,000 kilograms of payload to low Earth orbit, putting it right in competition with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Relativity Space’s in-development Terran R rocket. But what about the second stage?Not only is there no nose cone payload fairing, Rocket Lab also decided to overhaul the second stage as well. Conventional rocket design integrates the second stage by sandwiching it between the first stage and the payload. But with Neutron, the second stage will hang inside the first stage. When the rocket needs to deploy the payload, the “Hungry Hippo” fairing design will open and release both the second stage and payload to orbit. Rocket Lab intends to use Neutron for different types of missions, including human spaceflight. In the case of a crewed launch, Beck said they could simply remove the fairings and the capsule holding the crew would go on top. The second stage is designed to be expendable. While other rocket companies are working on full reusability, Beck said the jury was still out on whether second stage reusability makes sense, particularly considering the increased mass requirements of reusability and the associated operational costs of recovery. Returning to EarthOnce the second stage is deployed, the first stage will return to Earth to land right back on its launch pad. That means no touchdown on an ocean barge, another choice that will save on operational costs, Beck said. Neutron will get to orbit and back using seven new engines Rocket Lab has developed, which it calls Archimedes. These low-pressure engines will run on liquid oxygen (LOX) and methane, rather than LOX and kerosene. Just like the decision to return the first stage to the launch site, the propellant choice was designed to minimize turnaround time between missions. "Engines have typically in the past required a lot of refurbishment. And they require a lot of refurbishment because the propellants chosen have been LOX and kerosene. Kerosene creates a lot of sooting, a lot of coking," he said. "So that’s what drove the decision to use methane, is that you can run an engine on methane and it’s perfectly clean and still shiny after you’ve finished burning it." Neutron will eventually take off from somewhere in the United States, and Rocket Lab is in the middle of a competitive process to choose a launch and manufacturing site. Much has been made of the auspicious absence of any specific launch date for Neutron — Rocket Lab had previously said 2024, which was not mentioned in this morning's update — but Beck said that omission wasn't intentional. "We're aiming to get one on the pad in '24 and get a commercial customer up in the sky in '25," he confirmed. "But we also acknowledge it’s a rocket program. So it's a lot of work to do but we’re working hard and that’s the plan." Rewatch the company’s Neutron update in here: |
| After being pushed out of Google, Timnit Gebru forms her own AI research institute: DAIR Posted: 02 Dec 2021 11:17 AM PST Almost exactly one year ago, Timnit Gebru, one of the leaders of Google’s ethics in AI team and one of the foremost experts in that topic, was fired after sending an email of concern to her team. Now she has set up shop herself with a brand new research institute, DAIR, focused on the topics she felt were being sidelined at Google. The Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute is “an independent, community rooted institute set to counter Big Tech's pervasive influence on the research, development and deployment of AI,” according to its announcement press release. Built from the start to include and emphasize diverse perspectives and question the processes used at companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook/Meta, DAIR will be independently funded. The focus will be on publishing papers in the academic realm but without either the relentless pressure of traditional academia or the paternalistic interference of a global corporation hanging over the researchers. “I’ve been frustrated for a long time about the incentive structures that we have in place and how none of them seem to be appropriate for the kind of work I want to do,” Gebru told The Washington Post. So far the institute has raised $3.7 million, from the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Kapor Center and the Open Society Foundation. That ought to be enough to get started — and pay its researchers well, ensuring that this type of work is a realistic alternative to working at one of the deep-pocketed corporations that frequently fund AI research. I’ve asked Gebru, whom we have had on stage to talk about these very topics, for further information on DAIR’s methods and directions for future research and will update this post if I hear back. But two personnel give an idea of what we can expect. Safiya Noble, author of “Algorithms of Oppression” and Macarthur Genius Grant recipient, will be on DAIR’s advisory committee; we recently hosted her for a panel at TC Sessions: Justice where she spoke about the danger of considering technologies neutral or valuable as they become widely used and “banal,” when in fact that is exactly the time they should be under greater scrutiny. And Raesetje Sefala is DAIR’s first research fellow; Sefala’s recent research focuses on geographical and economic segregation in South Africa, quantified by satellite imagery. “AI needs to be brought back down to earth. It has been elevated to a superhuman level that leads us to believe it is both inevitable and beyond our control,” said Gebru in the announcement. “When AI research, development and deployment is rooted in people and communities from the start, we can get in front of these harms and create a future that values equity and humanity.” |
| Nowhere to hide: The emissions threat facing corporate America Posted: 02 Dec 2021 10:50 AM PST Each degree Celsius of warming will erase 1.2% of the United States GDP, according to Solomon Hsiang, a climate scientist and economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and the co-director of the research group Climate Impact Lab. If U.S. companies do not act now to halt climate emissions, Hsiang predicts a loss of up to 10.5% of annual GDP, which equates to approximately $2.2 trillion per year. Most organizations do not understand the gravity of the need to address emissions now. Businesses across industries and throughout the world are facing an existential threat that can no longer be ignored. It's time to address the impact of rapidly accelerating climate change in the corporate sector. The effect of harmful emissions on the bottom line can't be overstated. Customers are choosing to purchase products from carbon-conscious companies and investors such as BlackRock, Balderton Capital and Alante Capital are considering sustainability in their investment processes. The market has moved beyond good intentions. To ensure an organization is successful in its efforts to measure and reduce emissions, it is imperative that they have a plan and tools in place to take on every component of the company ecosystem. How do companies get started?The first and most important step is to admit you have a problem and are emitting more than you think. Acknowledge your carbon footprint. Communicate a desire to learn and do better. Begin education at a strategic level first, then distill it throughout the organization to key stakeholders consistently over time. In the absence of a universal standard, the C-suite must be knowledgeable about and capable of quantifying sustainability risks threatening their business — and the practices being put into place to ameliorate them. Assemble a dedicated team and bring in a third-party consultant or software vendor to assess the company's emissions and make recommendations. Typically, the sustainability team drives the effort. Include the CFO and CTO for data collection and the evaluation of cost and revenue implications. Ensure that your general counsel is also included in the conversation for compliance purposes. Representatives from operations, community relations, HR and communications should take part. Next, conduct an assessment that provides a deep analysis of the company's carbon emissions and overall sustainability practices. The assessment should include factors generating direct and indirect emissions, such as vehicle fleets and purchased energy including electricity, heating and cooling. Host a series of regular meetings between executives, sustainability teams and consultants to discuss the results of the assessment, which actions will be taken, and the timeline for implementation. This will help to enlist missionaries in the efforts, from the top-down and bottom-up. Once they are organized in their efforts, companies must also look at how they generate carbon emissions beyond their four walls. Start a dialogue with your value chain — this is where enterprise-grade SaaS emission platforms come in. Scope 3 emissions resulting from assets not owned or controlled by an organization, but that impact their value chain, most often represent the biggest part of a company's footprint. If you aren't measuring and reducing scope 3 emissions, then your carbon reduction plan is not credible, even if you have reduced or eliminated scopes 1 and 2. The more you engage your stakeholders, the closer you get to the emissions, the quicker you reduce such emissions. How might approaches vary?Whether a small startup or a large enterprise, the approach to reduction is the same: Begin with measurement. Set science-based reduction targets and monitor your footprint on a consistent basis. Leverage fintech-inspired tools to make on-target, granular goals and a climate-positive impact. Map your business by department, brand, business units and geography, while also including the company's value chain and suppliers. Data plays an essential role in setting a company's baseline. Without accurate information that is granular, you cannot determine if the actions you are taking are working, nor whether those you plan to execute in the future will work. In addition to a precise baseline, it's imperative to be precise with approval workflow to prevent "garbage-in, garbage-out" data. There needs to be a massive amount of trackable and actionable data points — internally and externally — through the value chain. Next, assign actions and establish deadlines to meet the goals. Ensure that your numbers are precise and utilize sustainability management software and carbon consultants to kick off your reduction journey before shifting to automation. When it comes to reduction, choose your first battle by identifying where your highest emissions are coming from. Typically, these emissions stem from company transportation — burning fossil fuel for our cars and buses traveling to and from the office, or jetting to other parts of the world for a business meeting. Though they might seem small at the time, they add up to what truly matters. Investigate each and every component of inside operations and your supply chain and select sustainable partners. You can't blame your accounting department for not using recycled paper if your company is still doing strategic business with the most important Brazilian soy importer. Continuously evolve and evaluate your climate progress on a weekly or even daily basis. Ideate, iterate and try again when you stumble. Stay accountable to your company's emission reduction goals and remain open and transparent with regulators, employees, customers and investors. What happens if companies don’t follow through?Companies should begin implementing long-term changes to accommodate eventual green policy. While there may be incentives that companies may benefit from, the cost of energy and fossil fuels has been steadily skyrocketing in recent years. This, in conjunction with the desire to leave the planet in a better place, should be reason enough to take action. Your company's low-carbon efforts will pay in the end regardless of how long the wait for subsidies is. Millennials and Gen Zs evaluate a company's sustainability practice as part of the decision to accept a job offer. Companies of any size that are driven by climate action goals and efforts and share those transparently and publicly are more likely to attract fresh, intelligent workers who share the same personal philosophies. Employees that work for organizations focused on net-zero emissions become a company's biggest ambassadors and advocates in both internal and external conversations, not only helping to attract new hires, but also to maintain longer tenure in the workplace. Companies in industries such as oil and gas are struggling to adapt and having difficulty attracting talent. What organizations are demonstrating early success?Companies that are transparent and committed to their journey are recognized winners. They're willing to acknowledge their carbon impact and have invested resources to tackle their emissions. Microsoft, HP, Orange, Beyond Meat and Bpifrance are succeeding in their climate action goals. When transparency is at the forefront, not only can organizations highlight their areas of improvement, but they can also publicly celebrate their successes. Existing groups such as Amazon's Climate Pledge, UNFCCC's Climate Neutral Now, and The Climate Group's EP100 allow companies to pledge their climate actions among others in their industry. These established groups allow your executive team to connect with other leaders who share the same climate philosophies as you do. Better yet, companies can form their own climate coalitions to explore emissions measurement solutions and tools with like-minded leaders. Share your progress, including trials and tribulations, regularly and transparently. After COP26, it's clear that companies have a big role to play in our journey to tackle climate change. From financing the green transition to supporting other businesses in their reduction efforts, corporations will have a massive impact on getting us closer to our 1.5-degree C target. And who knows, they might even be responsible for tipping the carbon balance. |
| Glorify, an ambitious app for Christians, just landed $40 million in Series A funding led by a16z Posted: 02 Dec 2021 10:46 AM PST Religion-based apps, tools and communities aren’t brand new, including to investors. Pray.com, for example, an LA-based app for daily prayer and bedtime Bible stories that was founded in 2016, has raised at least $34 million from investors, including Kleiner Perkins. Ministry Brands, a nine-year-old, Knoxville, Tennessee-based outfit that now includes dozens of software and payments brands tailored to faith-based organizations, was acquired in 2016 for $1.4 billion by Insight Partners (which is reportedly now looking to flip it). Still, fueled by a pandemic that drove churches to close, faith-based apps and communities are growing faster than ever — the most popular, Bible app, is now on more than 400 million devices worldwide — and getting more notice as a result. The newest of these is Glorify, a two-year-old, 60-person, subscription-based “well-being” app that offers users guided meditation, along with audio bible passages and Christian music. The London-based outfit just raised $40 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from SoftBank Latin America Fund, K5 Global and a long string of famous individuals, including Kris Jenner, Corey Gamble, Michael Ovitz, Jason Derulo and Michael Bublé. We talked yesterday with its 22-year-old co-founder and co-CEO, Ed Beccle, who says he spends up to a third of his time in São Paulo, and who recently sold his previous company for what he describes as a "multimillion-dollar" exit. Indeed, he says he dropped out of high school at age 16 to work on his startups. Perhaps unsurprisingly, during our conversation, he laid out a vision that extends well beyond meditation and Bible readings. He also offered a peek into how wealthy celebrities and startup entrepreneurs are being brought together. Excerpts of that chat follow, edited lightly for length. TC: You say this is your third or fourth startup. With Glorify, did you see an opportunity or are you a religious person or is it a combination of both things? EB: I think definitely a combination of both. It’s hard not to get a little bit philosophical when you’re young, and you’re doing exciting things, [and] maybe you make more money than regular people your own age. For me, at least, I stopped and thought, ‘Well, I can afford all the Ubers and Uber Eats in the world, and I don’t really spend any other money. I don’t have a mortgage or dependents. What would I do if I could do anything?’ [The answer] has always been working on tech that changes the way people think and feel. That’s what I’m kind of obsessed with. . . Now I’ve never been more proud of anything in my life than this company because it is so much more than just a business. I’ve come at it from from a lot of different angles and one is very much on an emotional level and my own beliefs around faith. Then the other is: It’s the most incredible commercial opportunity. It’s going to be, I think, far bigger than people realize. TC: You have a pretty interesting syndicate of investors. How did that come together? EB: I think it came together a bit like everything that I’ve done, which is just, you know, by my continually trying and chatting to as many people as I can and putting myself in a lot of awkward situations sometimes to get in front of the right people. In terms of the celebrity elements, I have to say that that was a shock. [Former Hollywood agent turned founder of K5 Global] Michael Kives has been a complete hero on this front; he sent me a message that said, ‘Are you free’ on whatever the date was. ‘I want you to come to dinner with me and the Kardashians’ and there were probably 25 people on the guest list that he sent over, and I’m not sure there was a single person aside from myself and one other who wasn’t an A-lister. Like, it was crazy. I walk through the door, and there was Michael [Bublé] and Jason Derulo, and, I mean, what you see on the press release is literally the tip of the iceberg. We’ve only released some of the names. It comes down to: Why have we done it? Why have I tried so hard to get a lot of these people involved? It’s because we’re trying to create a cultural movement around faith and making believing in God and something greater something that’s more than just okay [and into] something that can really change your life. My goal with all of these people is to get them to make Glorify the medium that they talk about their faith through. TC: Can you talk about some of the business metrics that made these people decide to commit to the venture? EB: We’re averaging at least 250,000 people daily and we’ve had now 2.5 million downloads over the last year or so. I think things have really kicked off in the last six months to be honest, and what’s so exciting is that a lot of this growth has been semi organic. It’s not from viral K factor that exists within the app. We always thought it was too early to start introducing stuff like that. TC: Is the plan to evolve this into a full-fledged social network? EB: When we talk about it being a social network, 100%. It’s just that trying to look at social very differently. We want to optimize for very different things. I want to be building tight-knit engaged communities that are really meaningful and purpose-led, rather than things that are mass, superficially engaged, which is really the trap of social today. We don’t monetize through ads; the user really isn’t the product. We want to bring people closer together and not necessarily in huge groups but through amazing micro interactions that can exist and bring you closer to a small group of people who you really care about. TC: Are you close to break-even at this point? EB: Definitely not, but it’s very intentional. We’ve proven paid conversion, which we’re really happy about . . . I believe the engaged audience that we will have will probably have a higher propensity to pay for all sorts of other products that we release. That cool daily worship product will [continue to] be in the Glorify app, although far improved, even in over the next few months, but [we think we can] take that audience and direct them to other products that we’ve created, where they’ll have high propensity to pay. TC: Are you talking about virtual tithing? Bible study? EB: An example would be in in Christian dating. It’s an amazing, huge space, but anyone who really tries to build within it has to become kind of a Christian Tinder, using visuals to be the primary way you match people. I don’t know if that’s really the right way to go about it. Instead, you know, if you’re a user of Glorify, we’ll be able to match you with people based on shared beliefs [and] your engagement with the Bible [and] all sorts of things where we have almost a competitive advantage over anyone else because of the product that we’ve begun with. Pictured above: From left to right, Henry Costa and Ed Beccle, co-CEOs of Glorify. The two met at a co-working space when Costa was doing angel investing in London. According to Beccle, they instantly hit it off and he asked Costa if he would be his co-founder at their previous company. They later co-founded Glorify.
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Lee said, "For us, it’s really about scaling the community and creating more value for all of our data scientists."
$35+ million raised
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