Wednesday, April 6, 2022

TechCrunch

TechCrunch

Visa unveils first innovation hub in Africa to drive product development

Posted: 06 Apr 2022 02:30 AM PDT

Global digital payments giant Visa has opened up an innovation studio in Kenya, its first in Africa and sixth globally, after posts in Dubai, London, Miami, San Francisco and Singapore.

The studio will bring together developers, Visa's internal and external clients, and other partners to co-create payment and commerce solutions.

"Sub-Saharan Africa is a fast-growing region with a tech-savvy population. As we continue to grow digital payments adoption in the region, our aspiration is to deepen our collaboration with clients and partners in developing solutions that are designed around the unique needs of Africa," said senior vice president & head of Visa in Sub-Saharan Africa, Aida Diarra.

"As a brand built on technology, Visa has driven the major technology advancements that make electronic payments what they are today. We are confident that the innovation studio will continue that legacy and cement Sub-Saharan Africa's position as a leader in creating out of the box solutions to deal with our most pressing challenges as a region," said Diarra.

Visa has previously used its existing innovation hubs to design products for the African market, including a collaboration with Nigerian Fintech Paga to develop new merchant acceptance solutions involving QR codes and NFC technology.

Also fostered in Visa's other innovation labs was a recent partnership with Kenya's Safaricom allowing the telco's 150,000 mobile money (M-Pesa) merchants to accept card payments.

Across Africa, both local and multinational corporations, as well as governments, are taking cue to launch such innovation centers as a means to developing new products through collaborations and to remain globally competitive.

Organizations such as Cisco and Philips also run similar labs in Nairobi, while the Kenyan government is building a technology city, Konza City, to drive innovation in the country.

Meanwhile, numerous innovation hubs have opened up in Africa's startup capital, Nigeria, with concentration around Lagos, the country's cultural and commercial center, and home to the continent's greats like tech-jobs network Andela, payments company Flutterwave and e-commerce platform Jumia.

Qureos raises $3M to grow its learn to earn platform

Posted: 06 Apr 2022 02:00 AM PDT

Qureos, a UAE-based edtech and remote work marketplace that is changing how people upskill and get jobs across the globe, plans to grow the uptake of its platform by 10 times this year in its race to create 100 million jobs over the next few years. The startup has today announced closing a $3 million pre-seed funding to accelerate this growth.

Qureos was founded in August last year by Alexander Epure, Mehrad Yaghmai and Usama Nini in a bid to make mentorship more accessible to individuals that are starting out in their careers, or are looking to switch jobs.

The startup has gr3own into a platform that allows cohort-based synchronized learning led by industry experts (mentors), who use the platform to monetize their expertise.

Qureos also matches the trainees on its platform with projects in their respective fields of study.

"The experience that we have at Qureos is about learning from others and from industry experts, and through project-based learning or case study solutions," said Qureos CEO Epure, who together with Nini are ex-Swvl employees.

All eyes are on Swvl as it starts trading on a SPAC combination

Epure added that Qureos learning is a shift from self-paced massive open online courses (MOOC), which he said are often hard to scale because they require constant updating.

At Qureos, trainees are assigned practical tasks to solve in groups on behalf of client companies.

"Everyone submits their work, gets feedback, a rating and reflection from the mentors. As such, you learn from peers and from the best in the world," said Epure.

To date, Qureos has attracted over 25,000 trainees, 200 mentors from big-tech companies like Google, Cisco and Amazon, and 300 business partners that are using its platform to complete tasks.

Trainees pay a fee while companies pay subscription charges based on the frequency and types of job postings.

The startup's user-base originates from 133 countries, with about 32% being from Africa, and mainly residing in South Africa and the North Africa region.

Epure said they are creating new learning and work opportunities for the millions of youth in the generation Z and millennial demographics, who are vastly unemployed or underemployed due to a lack of marketable skills that are often not taught in traditional curriculums. The startup was recently selected by Dubai Future Accelerators to solve the skills gap of the unemployed and those entering the job market.

Qureos says it’s creating new learning and work opportunities for millions of youth. Image Credits: Qureos

At the same, Epure said that the platform is helping companies cut down the cost and time spent in hiring new staff by up to 79%, as potential employers can quickly recruit new talent based on the results of projects executed by trainees.

The pre-seed round was led by Dubai-based COTU Ventures and New York-based Colle Capital — which helped Swvl go public last week through a special purpose acquisition company.

Colle Capital founder and managing partner Victoria Grace said, "We see tremendous opportunity in Qureos' mission to bridge knowledge gaps and upskill professionals through leveraging the extraordinary pathway with direct mentorship. Simultaneously, this platform provides a fantastic opportunity for highly-skilled individuals to directly monetize their knowledge, compounded by distinct network effects, and for companies to access high-quality and motivated pools of talent."

The round also had participation from global and regional investors, including Globivest, Plutus21 Capital, Dubai Angel Investors, and AlZayani Venture Capital and a number of angel investors including current and former leaders of Swvl, Boston Consulting Group, Moelis & Company, Careem, Cisco Systems, Koinz, Message Bird, Bain & Company, Hiperpool, ADNOC, QIA.

Qureos is planning to use the funding for a marketing drive to increase awareness and uptake, after a period of 'organic growth'.

"We have a global footprint today and to sustain it moving forward we are building a team to help us with our growth plans, and this includes building different forms of awareness marketing. We also have an aggressive plan to strengthen our technology and product," said Epure.

“The vision is to create an ecosystem that has a validated and unique way of learning that also ensures that trainees have access to world class mentors.”

Meaningful Gigs raises $6M seed to link designers in Africa with remote jobs from US companies

Indian Twitter rival Koo will let users self-verify

Posted: 06 Apr 2022 01:53 AM PDT

Indian social media app Koo introduced a voluntary self-verification service to its users on Wednesday in an unusual step that it believes will bring credibility and trust on its platform.

The Bengaluru-headquartered startup said users on its platform will have the option to self-verify their profiles "in seconds" using their government-approved identity cards. The feature is designed to improve the quality of discourse and curb bad elements such as spammers, bots and anonymous trolling, Koo co-founder and chief executive Aprameya Radhakrishna told TechCrunch in an interview.

A group of users tend to contribute negatively on social media platforms because there is no way people can hold them to account, Radhakrishna explained.

Users who verify themselves will get a green tick marker against their name when they comment on a post. "This will mentally give their input in a conversation more weightage," he said, adding that posts and comments from verified users may rank better on the platform eventually.

On social media platforms, a verification badge is typically reserved for celebrities and other influential public figures, making it a coveted feature. Users will be able to verify themselves by linking their accounts to a unique biometric number from New Delhi’s digital identity database Aadhaar. They will receive a one-time password on their Aadhaar-registered phone number for authentication.

Radhakrishna said the startup will work with a third-party firm to verify users and won't store users' IDs. This will recuse the startup from being in a position to be able to share users’ personal data with law enforcement agencies, he said in response to a question.

The move is also positioning Koo — which operates in 10 Indian languages and has been downloaded over 30 million times — to become a more attractive platform among advertisers as they will have the option to reach only those users who have verified themselves.

No other social media platform anywhere in the world has taken a step of this kind, said the startup, which counts Tiger Global, Mirae Asset, Blume Ventures, Accel, and 3one4 Capital among its backers.

"Users can get self-verified in less than 30 seconds through our safe and secure verification process. This is a huge step towards lending greater authenticity to users and promoting responsible behavior on the platform. Most social media only give this power to some accounts. Koo is the first platform that has now empowered every user to have the same privilege," he said.

The announcement is part of a broader attempt from Koo to proactively address the challenges that have grappled established social media firms Twitter and Facebook. Later this week, Koo also plans to publish the inner workings of its algorithms, including how it ranks posts to help lawmakers gain better understanding of — and build more confidence in — the platform.

The platform, which has attracted a number of Indian politicians on the platform in the past one year, allows users to reach a wide number of users by cross-posting their thoughts in multiple languages.

Radhakrishna also said Koo is evaluating new ways including web3 to monetize on the platform.

Productsup raises $70M to help retailers navigate sales strategies in the choppy world of e-commerce

Posted: 06 Apr 2022 12:02 AM PDT

To many people, e-commerce is synonymous with shopping on Amazon, but the reality is that a retailer has the option to use a bundle of different channels to sell and market products, and many do. Today, a startup called Productsup, which has built a platform that helps retailers navigate that landscape, is announcing $70 million in funding — a growth round that underscores both the opportunity for building more e-commerce business management tools, but also Productsup’s own traction in the market, where it already counts more than 900 brands among its customers, including the likes of IKEA, Sephora, Beiersdorf, Redbubble, and ALDI.

European firm Bregal Milestone is leading the round for Berlin-based Productsup, with previous backer Nordwind Capital also participating. The company has been around since 2010 and seems to have disclosed less than $24 million raised in that time, according to PitchBook data, while Crunchbase puts the total at $20 million.

Vincent Peters, the CEO (the three co-founders are Johannis Hatt, Kai Seefeldt, and chief innovation officer Marcel Hollerbach), told TechCrunch that the valuation was not being disclosed with this round, but given how little it’s raised in the last 12 years, that is a strong sign that the company has been growing well on its own steam.

Now, the plan is to take on some funding to accelerate that with more investments into R&D and product development, more global deals, and M&A to bring in more functionality and to enter new markets. Peters points out, citing figures from Constellation Research, that its total addressable market for providing e-commerce channel management services is $11.4 billion.

“We'd previously been working on technology only used by a few people, but since then the P2C category has taken flight and we have caused a serious shift within the market. As more people are waking up to our message, it is time to turbo-charge the growth,” Peters said in an emailed interview. “Our strong numbers back us up in this case as they have proven the cadence is picking up, people are talking and customers are adopting our strategy – and we've had fantastic results. The early stages were all about proving our technology worked and it was adaptable, and now the market is waking up.”

"With technology advancements like the metaverse on the horizon, these are exciting times for the commerce world," said Hollerbach in a statement. "We are about to enter a new era of innovation, so it's our priority to ensure companies are equipped to manage the proliferation of shopping channels and experiences to become the disruptors — not the disrupted."

The world of e-commerce is definitely complex and fragmented — you need no more proof than the very existence of thousands of e-commerce businesses, not just retailers but platforms for selling and tools to help sell better. But that also means there are a number of companies providing services in the same category as Productsup.

A Google search of the company’s name plus the word competitor says it all. The results include other companies with the tagline “We’re their #1 competitor” linking to rivals: there are so many rivals that they’re gaming how to come at the top of the search results for those doing comparative shopping for e-commerce solutions.

Peters tells me that his company’s approach is different, and better, because it’s moving away from the idea of a point solution and has built a platform to manage different aspects of e-commerce marketing and sales from a single place.

“Most companies in our space offer piecemeal solutions. We're the only provider who can enable companies to realise their global potential,” he told me in an email. Productsup, he said, enables them to manage this at scale and covering different use cases like feed management, seller and vendor onboarding, product content syndicatio. “We enable companies to implement this globally instead of having to worry about individual channels or regions.” Those regional and channel siloes are indeed one of the biggest pain points in digital commerce in general, and one reason why marketplaces like Amazon gain so much ground, since they are in themselves one-stop shops.

All of that is definitely in keeping with how a lot of SaaS platform players are positioning their solutions today (moving away from point solutions is a big theme, for example, in cybersecurity; and in workplace productivity), but it’s also a crowded space. Companies like Shopware, another German player that also raised a big round earlier this year, and even Salesforce play aggressively in this space.

While the Covid-19 pandemic undoubtedly gave a major boost to the world of e-commerce, what has been left in the wake of that (hopefully!) subsiding — and in any case making some gradual returns away from social distancing and the rest — is “commerce anarchy” in Peters’ words. In other words, even more choices for consumers, and more complexity for those trying to sell to them.

“Firstly, companies are caught in a state of flux, faced with commerce anarchy that the pandemic has accelerated,” he said. “Nowadays, brands, retailers and online platforms don’t know if consumers are on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram or a combination of all three. Additionally, post pandemic, in store shopping has returned, bringing local inventory ads back to the forefront for companies trying to reach shoppers. The number of channels that organisations need to meet customers is growing in both complexity and volume. In order to succeed in this ever-changing landscape, retailers need a solution that can manage these channels seamlessly.” And that will include whatever new platforms are around the corner, as there inevitably are.

Add to this, he said, are other issues that extend beyond the simple process of being able to find and buy something online. “Consumers have become increasingly concerned with issues such as sustainability, ethical processes, and are changing buying patterns to reflect this,” he said. “Brands that cannot cater to this will suffer.”

The company says that ARR grew by over 60% in the last twelve months, gross revenue retention rate of 90% and a net revenue retention rate of 120% — although it’s not disclosing actual figures.

"Our decision to partner with Productsup was based on its long-term, sustainable trajectory as a mission-critical enterprise-grade commerce solution," said Cyrus Shey, managing partner of Bregal Milestone, in a statement. "Whereas alternative vendors mostly offer point solutions, Productsup uniquely addresses the needs of the evolving commerce market for a single view of all product information value chains and offers seamless, end-to-end product data control – across all global channels and in real-time."

Google Cloud launches BigLake, a new cross-platform data storage engine

Posted: 05 Apr 2022 10:00 PM PDT

At its Cloud Data Summit, Google today announced the preview launch of BigLake, a new data lake storage engine that makes it easier for enterprises to analyze the data in their data warehouses and data lakes.

The idea here, at its core, is to take Google’s experience with running and managing its BigQuery data warehouse and extend it to data lakes on Google Cloud Storage, combining the best of data lakes and warehouses into a single service that abstracts away the underlying storage formats and systems.

This data, it’s worth noting, could sit in BigQuery or live on AWS S3 and Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2, too. Through BigLake, developers will get access to one uniform storage engine and the ability to query the underlying data stores through a single system without the need to move or duplicate data.

“Managing data across disparate lakes and warehouses creates silos and increases risk and cost, especially when data needs to be moved,” explains Gerrit Kazmaier, VP and GM of Databases, Data Analytics and Business Intelligence at Google Cloud, notes in today’s announcement. “BigLake allows companies to unify their data warehouses and lakes to analyze data without worrying about the underlying storage format or system, which eliminates the need to duplicate or move data from a source and reduces cost and inefficiencies.”

Image Credits: Google

Using policy tags, BigLake allows admins to configure their security policies at the table, row and column level. This includes data stored in Google Cloud Storage, as well as the two supported third-party systems, where BigQuery Omni, Google’s multi-cloud analytics service, enables these security controls. Those security controls then also ensure that only the right data flows into tools like Spark, Presto, Trino and TensorFlow. The service also integrates with Google’s Dataplex tool to provide additional data management capabilities.

Google notes that BigLake will provide fine-grained access controls and that its API will span Google Cloud, as well as file formats like the open column-oriented Apache Parquet and open-source processing engines like Apache Spark.

 

Image Credits: Google

“The volume of valuable data that organizations have to manage and analyze is growing at an incredible rate,” Google Cloud software engineer Justin Levandoski and product manager Gaurav Saxena explain in today’s announcement. “This data is increasingly distributed across many locations, including data warehouses, data lakes, and NoSQL stores. As an organization's data gets more complex and proliferates across disparate data environments, silos emerge, creating increased risk and cost, especially when that data needs to be moved. Our customers have made it clear; they need help.”

In addition to BigLake, Google also today announced that Spanner, its globally distributed SQL database, will soon get a new feature called “change streams.” With these, users can easily track any changes to a database in real time, be those inserts, updates or deletes. “This ensures customers always have access to the freshest data as they can easily replicate changes from Spanner to BigQuery for real-time analytics, trigger downstream application behavior using Pub/Sub, or store changes in Google Cloud Storage (GCS) for compliance,” explains Kazmaier.

Google Cloud also today brought Vertex AI Workbench, a tool for managing the entire lifecycle of a data science project, out of beta and into general availability, and launched Connected Sheets for Looker, as well as the ability to access Looker data models in its Data Studio BI tool.

Google, Databricks, Fivetran, Redis and others launch the Data Cloud Alliance

Posted: 05 Apr 2022 10:00 PM PDT

There’s a new alliance in town: the Data Cloud Alliance. Founded by Google Cloud, Accenture, Confluent, Databricks, Dataiku, Deloitte, Elastic, Fivetran, MongoDB, Neo4j, Redis and Starburst, the group’s mission is to “make data more portable and accessible across disparate business systems, platforms, and environments—with a goal of ensuring that access to data is never a barrier to digital transformation.”

Snowflake filed a trademark registration for “Data Cloud Alliance” in 2020, but that registration is now abandoned and the company isn’t part of this new alliance.

The idea here is to make life easier for the members’ customers by working together to provide APIs and integration support to allow for data portability and accessibility between their platforms, no matter whether those are being used on-premises, or on private or public clouds (or a mix of them). The members will also work together to create “new, common industry data models, processes, and platform integrations to increase data portability and reduce complexity associated with data governance and global compliance,” Google notes in its announcement today. Databricks, for example, says it is excited to partner with Google to “foster data sharing based on open standards like [Databrick’s] Delta Lake.”

It’s worth noting that the partners here are mostly not competitors but offer services that complement each other. Many of these companies have also partnered with Google before, with Confluent, Elastic, MongoDB, Neo4j and Redis Labs working with Google to integrate their services with the Google Cloud Platform, for example.

“Data is the common foundation for all digital transformations,” said Gerrit Kazmaier, VP and GM of Databases, Data Analytics and Business Intelligence at Google Cloud. “By committing to open data standards, access, and integration between the most popular data platforms and applications today, we believe we can significantly accelerate business transformations and close the data to value gap.”

Google Cloud challenges AWS with new open-source integrations

Intel suspends operations in Russia 

Posted: 05 Apr 2022 09:32 PM PDT

A month after stopping shipments to customers in Russia and Belarus, Intel has now suspended all business operations in Russia. 

In a statement, the company said, "Intel continues to join the global community in condemning Russia's war against Ukraine and calling for a swift return to peace," adding that it will support its 1,200 employees in Russia and "[implement] business continuity measures to minimize disruption to our global operations." 

Other tech companies that have taken action in Russia include Apple, which halted product sales after the Ukraine invasion, AMD, Adobe and General Electric. Meanwhile, Spotify, along with news outlets like CNN, ABC and the BBC have suspended services in Russia in response to a new law that dramatically restricts free speech. 

In a new feature for TechCrunch, reporter Vadim Smyslov covered the impact the war is having on Russia's tech workers, with many choosing to leave the country after war was declared, and others unable to receive payments after Russia was disconnected by SWIFT in early March. Others crossing the Russian border described being detained and interrogated. 

Tech workers describe detentions and interrogations as they flee Russia

As tech companies suspend sales in Russia, what is the actual business impact?

Two new ways to attend TC Sessions: Mobility 2022 — in person or online

Posted: 05 Apr 2022 08:10 PM PDT

Well, the early-bird has left the building and taken substantial savings right along with it. Did you miss out? Don't despair — we’re still committed to making TC Sessions: Mobility 2022 available and accessible to as many mobility fanatics as possible. How? Listen up.

We've added two new pass types: Expo Only and Online Only. Here's how they work and what they offer.

The Expo pass is for folks who want to head over to San Mateo and attend the event in person. The Online Only pass is, well, self-evident. No matter your geographic location, you can access outstanding online content on May 20.

Pick your pass: Buy an Expo pass for $75 (after May 15 the price goes up to $125). Buy an Online Only pass for $45.

Here's what you can access with a $75 Expo pass:

  • 2-days of in-person access to the expo area, where you'll find 50+ innovative early-stage mobility startups showcasing their tech with hands-on demos 
  • All the breakout sessions — smaller, expert-led and topic-focused discussions that let you get to the heart of mobility tech, trends and challenges
  • Plus access to exclusive analyst content online with replays of the breakout sessions you might have missed on May 20 only.

Here's what you can access with a $45 Online Only pass:

  • Analyst commentary alongside all recorded videos from the entire event starting on May 20 for 1 week.
  • The online sponsor expo
  • Network with other attendees online  

TC Sessions: Mobility 2022 takes place live in San Mateo, California, on May 18-19 — with online analyst commentary on May 20. You may have missed the early-bird savings, but you have two new budget-friendly ways to attend.

Buy your pass today and prepare to explore the rapidly changing world of mobility tech, expand your network and grow your business. 

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Mobility 2022? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Demand Curve: How I’d grow Skio

Posted: 05 Apr 2022 04:49 PM PDT

Joey Noble Contributor
Joey Noble is community manager at Demand Curve.
More posts by this contributor

“Skio helps brands on Shopify sell subscriptions without ripping their hair out," explained Skio's founder, Kennan Davison, when we sat down with him to understand how the product works, how it’s been growing to date and the challenges the company faces.

Skio launched in April 2021 with the goal of eliminating the hacky workarounds that other subscription apps have been using for Shopify. The company lets its clients employ native Shopify checkout along with a passwordless login to provide a seamless experience to their customers.

In the beginning, like many startups, Skio had to do things that don't scale to acquire its first customers. Kennan would frequent direct-to-consumer communities on Twitter to find upset users of his competitor, ReCharge. After acquiring the first few customers, Skio created case studies to showcase how it improves the subscription process.

As the company began acquiring more customers, word-of-mouth helped the company show how much of an improvement Skio is over ReCharge (and other competitors). Considering the amount of inbound requests the company received to demo Skio, it’s clear it has product-market fit.

Now, Skio has over 100 recurring customers, including brands like Bev, Muddy Bites, Doe Lashes, Krave Beauty and more. The company has nearly zero churn, and it wants to keep it that way. To do that, the team’s goal is to continue acquiring users who are upset with their current subscription solution.

How can Skio continue growing this customer base while maintaining a low churn rate? That's what we’ll explore in this article.

This post will share why some growth strategies are better than others, introduce growth concepts and explain our approach. The aim is to give you the insights necessary to pattern match a growth strategy to your own startup and begin applying the content right away.

Before we begin, here's a quick look at Skio:

  • Industry: E-commerce.
  • Business model: Recurring subscriptions.
  • Revenue source: SaaS fee + transaction fees.
  • Price point: $399/month + 1% transaction fee + 20 cents.

Acquisition strategy

As previously mentioned, Skio's target customers include current users of ReCharge, particularly those who aren't happy with it. Skio charges a monthly subscription fee as well as a transaction fee.

To grow Skio's revenue, we need to increase the total number of paying customers subscribed to its app. These customers must be low-churn risk, which means the most frustrated ReCharge customers are acquired before we target Shopify owners more broadly.

How to choose a growth strategy

There are three ways startups can acquire customers: inbound, outbound and viral.

Viral growth

Viral growth happens when awareness of a product is spread by customers using that product. Slack and TikTok are great examples of viral products, because users send invites to others to join, and the more users on the platform, the more valuable it is. Product-led growth and referrals are the most common viral-based acquisition strategies.

There are three key factors to consider when assessing if viral growth will work for your startup.

We'll assess whether a viral growth strategy will work for Skio using a simple scoring method. Each factor will be given a rating of low, mid or high based on the likelihood of success.

Invitations: How many invitations will each user send to non-users?

For an invite to be relevant, Shopify store owners that use subscriptions will have to invite other Shopify store owners that use subscriptions. While founders tend to be well connected, it’s unlikely they will know enough people who fit that subscription for the number of invites sent to reach the critical mass required for viral growth.

Score: Low.

Conversion rate: What percentage of those invitations will convert someone into a new user?

Daily Crunch: Peloton Guide with body-tracking camera now on sale for $295

Posted: 05 Apr 2022 03:15 PM PDT

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

Welcome to the Daily Crunch for Tuesday, April 5, 2022. Today was one of those days reporters love — frenzied writing, source-gathering — all the trappings of a good newsletter! Join us as our fingers dance joyous Lindy Hop routines across our keyboards.

While we have you here: Do you love robots? We sure do! Join us in Boston on July 22 to nerd out about arms, assembly, articulation, actuators and Asimovian legal discourse. Come to think of it, we are 12% sure we'll cover the rest of the robotics alphabet, too. — Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • Fast slows to a halt: Despite raising quite a bit of cash last year, it seems one-click checkout company Fast found itself having to slow down. It all happened very quickly, though. Last Friday came reports that Fast was looking for a buyer, and then the company surprised us all today by announcing it will close its doors, with us reporting "that its 2021 revenue growth was modest, its cash burn high and its fundraising options limited."
  • Venture capital market still in motion: When funding deals in 2021 were that good, it was always going to be difficult to match. So it's not much of a surprise that when The Exchange examined Crunchbase data on venture capital deals in the first quarter, it saw some slowdown. Given the current macroeconomic conditions, that is to be expected: inflation, higher interest rates, bigger check sizes, higher valuations. The Exchange's recommendation? Be proactive in this environment.
  • Peloton lowers price point for Guide: Peloton's set-top system Guide is now available for sale at the sliced-and-diced lower price of $295 after earlier announcing it would be $495. This is not the first product where the fitness giant reduced the price — in the name of affordability perhaps?

Startups and VC

Hellooooo startup nerds. We're back with another round of news from the world of startups, starting with an op-ed from Marc Schröder, managing partner at MGV, about how VCs don't need to worry about a financial slowdown. A propos of VC — the biggest VC firms have a lot more assets under management than you might be aware of, as Connie explores in her article.

News I choose for you to peruse:

Q1 crypto losses spike 695% on year following massive hacks

Image of a grenade made from computer keys against a neon yellow background.

Image Credits: Peter Dazeley (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

The total value of cryptocurrencies reached nearly $2.3 trillion last year, but as that number soared, so did interest from malign actors looking to exploit bugs, poor code and social engineering hacks.

The web3 ecosystem "lost" $1.23 billion to exploits in just the first quarter of 2022, a nearly eight-fold increase compared to a year earlier, and that number is likely to continue increasing as the space expands, reports Jacquelyn Melinek.

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

Q1 crypto losses spike 695% on year following massive hacks

Big Tech Inc.

  • Instacart makes it harder to remove tips: Tipping has been a constant Instacart issue for years, so it's good to see the grocery delivery giant doing something about it. Users will now have to report an issue in order to zero out the tip, and Instacart will cover up to $10. It's a good start, and we'll reserve our comments about users who do this with no cause.
  • Twitter's edit button debacle: We have triple the Elon Musk/Twitter news for you today. First, Amanda Silberling opines about why an edit button would not solve much, then she joins Alex Wilhelm and Kyle Wiggers to discuss what Musk's motives might be in buying all that Twitter stock, and finally, Wilhelm discusses Musk joining the Twitter board.
  • Flutterwave CEO in the hot seat: A former employee is accusing Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga 'GB' Agboola of alleged bullying after the two parties could not come to a settlement as part of a lawsuit. TechCrunch reached out for comment addressing these claims, and among the responses, the company stated, "We confirm that at the point of resignation, all monies due to our former employee at the time were promptly disbursed and we have records to confirm this. We however sincerely regret the circumstances that led to the dispute and wish it had been addressed in a more timely manner." Stay tuned.
  • Gogoro drives into the public market: Taiwan's two-wheeler battery-swapping company closed its SPAC and expects to be $335 million in cash proceeds richer. That's a lot of batteries it can swap. We report that "backed by more favorable market conditions and much better timing, Gogoro has been able to unlock the recipe needed for scaling its battery swapping system." It just now needs to catch on over on this side of the pond.

Twitter is working on an edit button for real

Posted: 05 Apr 2022 02:49 PM PDT

Apparently it wasn’t just an April Fools’ joke or an errant Elon Musk tweet.

As any true blue Twitter user knows, the divide over the social network adding an edit button is the deepest ideological ravine of our time — and Twitter is poised to switch sides.

The company confirmed Tuesday that it is indeed working on a way to edit tweets. Twitter started tinkering around with a tweet-editing option last year and will test it out in Twitter Blue Labs, a corner of the platform’s premium subscription product where it tries out new features. Twitter Blue subscribers can expect to see an edit tweet button “in the coming months,” according to the company.

On Monday, the news broke that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was buying a sizable 9.2% chunk of Twitter and taking a board seat. In characteristic Musk fashion, the iconoclastic mega-billionaire spilled the beans about an edit button in a tweet a day before the company opted to make an announcement through official channels.

Twitter has shown a somewhat novel willingness to shape the platform based on user feedback, so it will be interesting to see what happens as the test begins. It’s easy to find strong opinions in favor of or vehemently against editing tweets, but much harder to know at scale what most people really want. Some Twitter power users have clamored for an edit tweet button for years, while others have serious misgivings about making misinformation and harassment even harder to manage on a social network still rife with serious problems.

In the past, the company has downplayed its interest in giving users the ability to edit tweets, saying that the feature barely ranked on its list of priorities. But 2022 Twitter is a very different beast, one that bears little resemblance to the stagnant social platform of yore — and one that’s no longer led by CEO Jack Dorsey, who faced investor pressure toward the end of his tenure to pick up the company’s pace.

Though Dorsey’s out, pick up the pace it did. Twitter has accelerated into all kinds of new products over the last two years, rapidly developing and sometimes discarding new features as quickly as they came. Fleets, Twitter’s experimental disappearing tweet product, lasted for less than a year after officially debuting in November 2020.

The company first launched its perk-packed premium monthly subscription service Twitter Blue a little less than a year ago and has generally been willing to see what sticks in recent months. That includes everything from TikTok-like reaction videos and photographer-friendly images to rolling policy changes that reframe the platform’s rules as a living document that responds to global events.

I know how the world ends, and it’s with a Twitter edit button

Twitter exec says edit button isn’t ‘anywhere near the top of our priorities’

Twitter is the latest platform to test a TikTok copycat feature

Rivian picks up EV production in Q1, on track to hit annual target

Posted: 05 Apr 2022 02:40 PM PDT

Rivian produced 2,553 vehicles in the first quarter, putting it on course to meet its production goal of 25,000 EVs this year, the company said Tuesday.

Rivian also reported that it delivered 1,227 vehicles in the first quarter. The production figures include a mix of the Rivian R1T pickup truck, R1S SUV and the commercial vans it is making for Amazon, a Rivian shareholder.

“These figures are in line with the company's expectations, and it believes it is well positioned to deliver on the 25,000 annual production guidance provided during its fourth quarter earnings call on March 10, 2022,” the company said in a statement.

In March, Rivian lowered its production guidance to 25,000 vehicles in 2022 due to supply constraints. Analysts had expected Rivian to produce closer to 40,000 EVs in 2022, but supply constraints augmented by Russia’s war in Ukraine and the lingering effects of the pandemic caused the company to adjust its target.

"The biggest constraints we now face really lie with the supply chain," CEO RJ Scaringe told investors during its first-quarter earnings call in March. "It's really a small number of parts for which the supplier isn't ramping at the same rate as our production lines are ramping up. Were it not for supplier constraints," he added, "we're confident we could achieve in excess of 50,000 vehicles this year."

The Q1 production results suggest Rivian has successfully navigated some of the production bottlenecks that often plague automakers attempting to scale operations — and notably during one of the more constrained supply chains in recent history.

Production grew 150% from the 1,015 vehicles in the fourth quarter when Rivian first began making and delivering its R1T electric pickup truck. Deliveries also improved, but not as significantly, growing just 22.5% from the 920 vehicles sold in the fourth quarter.

Base10 Partners closes fund three with $460M to invest globally: ‘The cat is out of the bag’

Posted: 05 Apr 2022 02:38 PM PDT

Base10, a venture firm founded only four years ago, just closed its third fund with $460 million in capital commitments. Because co-founder Ade Ajao — originally from Spain — is half Nigerian, the new fund makes Base10 — which now has $1.3 billion in assets under management — the world's largest Black-led venture capital fund, it says.

While that’s notable, far more interesting to us is how Ajao and firm co-founder TJ Nahigian are using that distinction to their advantage without making diversity an express part of their own investing mandate. Indeed, the firm says it is — and has always been — solely concerned with backing startups that help automate “real economy” sectors, like food, retail, logistics and fintech. More, it says by simply focusing on good companies and not approaching teams with a kind of “ideal” founder profile in mind, it naturally finds its way into strong startups with very diverse teams.

Maybe so. Something about its approach appears to be working. Some of the bets Base10 has made include the Brazilian fintech company Nubank, which went public late last year. (Ajao wrote it an early personal check but says Base10 was formed too late to invest in the outfit until it was already a growth-stage business.) Base10 is also an investor in such buzzy startups as Notion (now valued at $10 billion), Figma (valued at $10 billion), FTX (valued at $32 billion) and Handshake (valued at $3.5 billion) to name just a handful of its 79 portfolio companies to date.

We talked yesterday with Ajao, who helped co-found the Madrid-based rideshare company Cabify before jumping into VC via Workday Ventures. We wanted to better understand how he and Nahigian — also an investor and former entrepreneur — built what they have in such a short period, and how market turmoil right now is impacting their outlook.

TC: You’ve long emphasized that while you’re minority-led, you’re not minority focused. This remains true?

AA: That remains true. One thing that is quite important for us is showing that if you just try to invest in the best businesses out there, and you try to do it with an open mind — meaning you try to remove biases about backgrounds, demographics and geography — you will end up with better financial performance and a portfolio that will likely be more diverse. Other minority-led funds with the same approach are seeing the same. To me, that says more about the industry’s blind spots than anything else.

How diverse are the founders in your portfolio, and when you use ‘diverse,’ what are you describing? Geography? Gender?

We mean demographics and geography, and that is gender, ethnicity and where you’re from. At a more high level, more than half of the portfolio has a founder or co-founder that would be considered “underrepresented” in venture. The majority of the portfolio is outside of Silicon Valley or San Francisco.

How interrelated do you think these two pieces are? You’re casting a wide net geographically. Is that why you think your founder composition is more diverse or is there more intention involved?

We are investing in Africa, we’re investing in Latin America, we are investing in the Midwest. But the single geography with the most investments is the Bay Area, where we all live, and even within the Bay Area, we have a higher percentage of companies that are founded by people with non-traditional backgrounds. I don’t know why — I don’t have all the data — but one thing we began noticing more as we had to substitute in-person meetings [with Zoom calls] was that when we had a founder pitch the entire group, they often said, “Oh, wow, you guys look different.” I think it has an impact.

Regarding Latin America, SoftBank has done so much to support the region, including, in some cases, marking up its own investments in companies there. Is there any concern about money drying up a bit as SoftBank slows its roll, or have enough other investors descended that it shouldn’t make a difference?

I started Cabify in Latin America in 2011. And then my next three investments were [the Brazilian] e-hailing app 99Taxis, [the Colombia-based on-demand delivery company] Rappi and Nubank, and I passed those deals to several VCs in Silicon Valley who would not touch them. Back then, partnerships did not want to invest in businesses outside the Bay Area — it was seen as a disadvantage. It was, ‘We’ll write a term sheet if you agree to move to the Bay Area.’ Now, in the last 18 months, I’ve gotten emails and calls from a number of those partnerships that are like, ‘Hey, we’re going to Mexico,’ ‘We’re going to Colombia — who should we meet there?’

I never thought the story was only about SoftBank. I think what [former SoftBank exec] Marcelo [Claure] and his team did was quite commendable. They really put a spotlight in the ecosystem and on what other people were missing. But I do think enough people are seeing the light. [In the meantime] what I like is that you actually don’t see a lot of general partners at venture capital firms in the Valley who have had experience in Latin America, and the reason I like that is because it gives us an advantage. [Laughs.]

Doug Leone of Sequoia suggested recently that startups should be prepared that some of the money that has been sloshing around is going to dry up as market turmoil knocks the confidence of investors. In the meantime, we’re already starting to see layoffs, down rounds, implosions. How are you thinking about this moment in time?

If you look at the amount of money raised by venture capital and recorded in the last eight quarters — I think it hit a record amount every quarter — that money has to go somewhere. The other thing I will say is that for the last two years, basically every LP has seen record amounts of cash distributions from venture capital funds.

I’m no macro economist. I don’t know if we’re about to enter into a recession. I just think back 10 or 11 years ago when I was fundraising [for Cabify] on Sand Hill Road, and it is day and night [compared with today]. I mean, like 10 years ago, if you were doing a company in Spain or doing a company in Colombia, like, good luck. And Nigeria? I mean, that was crazy talk. Now, I think that cat is out of the bag.

The US government has just 1% of the EV chargers it needs

Posted: 05 Apr 2022 02:12 PM PDT

The U.S. government owns about 1,100 charging stations. It may need more than 100,000 charging stations to support widespread EV use in the next decade, according to testimony from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on Tuesday.

The testimony, which was first reported by Reuters, mainly delved into the U.S. Postal Service’s efforts to transition its fleet to EVs and federal fleet transition issues. GAO found that federal agencies like USPS held certain incorrect assumptions about the cost and benefits of using gas versus electric vehicles, namely that USPS used gas prices that are about $2 per gallon less than the current national average in its estimates, and assumed maintenance and acquisition costs that are higher than the reality.

GAO has identified charging infrastructure costs and installation as a key challenge to acquiring EVs for federal fleets.

Last month, President Joe Biden’s administration unveiled a plan to award nearly $5 billion over the next five years to build thousands of EV charging stations. The plan, which falls under Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill, is the first tranche of a total $7.5 million approved by Congress in November to be used for funding 500,000 EV charging stations.

Biden also signed an executive order in December that would see the government ending purchases of gas-powered vehicles by 2035. The order said light-duty vehicles purchased by the government will be emission-free by 2027. It’s important to note, though, that the White House’s definition of emission-free includes plug-in hybrids, so maybe someone should tell them that hybrid cars are still gas powered?

Despite these lofty goals, few moves have been made yet toward electrifying America’s government fleets. The General Services Administration (GSA) said that as of March 10, federal agencies have only ordered an additional 1,854 zero-emission vehicles since its prior report.

The U.S. government usually purchases about 50,000 vehicles annually. The federal fleet currently has about 657,000 cars, SUVs and trucks, out of which less than 1% are currently electric, according to GSA data.

The Department of Energy’s Federal Energy Management Program offers technical support to federal agencies looking to buy EVs and install EV supply equipment (EVSE), which can be purchased at a discount through the GSA EVSE blanket purchase agreement. GSA negotiates discounted prices for many EV models. Last year, GSA was able to secure Chevy Bolts for almost $10,000 below market price. That said, the only other pure electric vehicle available last year under GSA’s scheme, the Nissan Leaf, is offered at a discount of around $1,000.

Meta adds the ability to share video from third-party apps directly to Facebook Reels

Posted: 05 Apr 2022 01:23 PM PDT

Facebook is adding the ability to post Reels from third-party apps, its parent company Meta announced on Tuesday. The company is introducing a “Sharing to Reels” integration, which will allow developers to make it easy for people to share video from their apps directly to Facebook.

“Once integrated, third-party apps will have a Reels button so people can share short videos, then customize with Reels editing tools like audio, text, effects, captions and stickers,” said John McCarthy, Meta’s director of product management, in a blog post. “Instead of downloading their video content and uploading it later, they can now create and share video seamlessly with one tap of a button.”

Meta highlighted that as part of the launch, several of its partners, including Smule, Vita and VivaVideo have already integrated the “Sharing to Reels” button in their apps. Developers who are interested in integrating the button in their apps can learn more about doing so on Meta’s developer website.

The company says the new feature will help people reach new audiences on Facebook and builds on its “Sharing to Stories” feature, which allows developers to enable their users to share content to Facebook Stories directly from third-party apps.

Image Credits: Meta

Today’s announcement comes as Facebook recently rolled out Reels worldwide after publicly launching in the U.S. last September. Alongside the global rollout, Facebook also introduced more creative tools and new ways for creators to make money from their Reels through advertising, and soon, Stars.

While Reels first began as a way to directly combat TikTok with a feature inside the Instagram app, Meta also brought them to Facebook shortly after. The company touted during its Q4 2021 earnings that Reels is now its "fastest-growing content format by far." The company also said Reels was the biggest contributor to growth on Instagram and "growing very quickly" on Facebook, too.

Reels is one of the largest product investments at Meta, which has publicly discussed the threat posed by TikTok. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has called TikTok a big competitor that's growing at "quite a fast rate off of a very large base." It’s clear that Meta sees its new integration with third-party apps as a way to increase the popularity and reach of Facebook Reels, as it continues to compete with TikTok.

Facebook Reels rolls out worldwide along with new creative tools and ads

Affirm is giving job offers to the ‘vast majority’ of Fast engineers

Posted: 05 Apr 2022 01:10 PM PDT

Fast, a one-click speedy checkout platform, is shutting down today. In conjunction with that decision, Fast is giving a "vast majority" of its engineers the chance to join Affirm, a public fintech company in the buy now, pay later space, according to Affirm.

Per an email seen by TechCrunch and first obtained by Business Insider, Fast CEO Domm Holland said that his company’s shut down was a result of a lack of financial resources to continue operating the business. He also noted that the current environment has been "extremely challenging for high-growth tech companies."

"With Fast winding down, our agreement will enable the vast majority of our engineers to transition to roles at Affirm. I’m grateful to Affirm for their work to place many of our engineers in great roles quickly," Holland continued in the e-mail, noting that Affirm has roughly $3 billion in cash on its balance sheet. Holland didn't make clear how many engineers would be given the chance to join Affirm, and if it was decided by seniority, team or geographic location.

While acqu-hiring is a common way for a startup in need of a soft landing to get an exit, this move appears to be different. A person familiar with the manner alleges that Fast was in talks with Affirm leadership on this agreement separate from its shut down, which will include the removal of all services and the brand's existence. In other words, Affirm seems to want Fast's talent, but not a whiff of its product.

Affirm, which went public in 2020, recently raised its third-quarter financial outlook with slimmer operating expenses and higher revenue expectations. In an email sent to TechCrunch, an Affirm spokesperson noted that the company has long invested in engineering talent, and over the last year has completed three strategic talent acquisitions.

"With Fast winding down its operations and discontinuing its brand and products, we saw another opportunity to invite a great technology team to join us," the statement read. "While we do not have plans to get into the one-click checkout business, we look forward to welcoming many of Fast's talented engineers to Affirm as we continue to advance our existing product roadmap in support of our mission to build honest financial products that improve lives."

Fast declined to answer how long the talks have been going on, and how many Fast employees will be receiving a job offer.

When it comes to vision, the overlap between Fast and Affirm isn’t too hard to garner. Fast launched with a vision to make it easier for consumers to check out on e-commerce websites, while Affirm launched to help consumers afford those online purchases in the first place. Both companies built platform-agnostic services that support the optimization of consumers’ purchasing journeys; although clearly, one’s fate was better established than the others.

Affirm’s active merchants have grown to 168,000, up 2,030% from the prior year, and its partners cover more than 60% of U.S. e-commerce, including Walmart, Amazon, Target, Peloton and tons from Shopify. It also boasts more than 11 million active consumers, up 150% year over year.

Current and former Fast employees can contact Natasha Mascarenhas on e-mail at natasha.m@techcrunch.com or on Signal, a secure encrypted messaging app, at 925 609 4188. You can also direct message her on Twitter @nmasc_.

Fast shuts doors after slow growth, high burn precluded fundraising options

Substack wants to join the podcast monetization fray

Posted: 05 Apr 2022 01:04 PM PDT

Uploading paywalled audio on Substack isn’t new, but the newsletter platform is re-upping its attempt to woo podcasters into using its service.

Substack posted two blog posts today urging creators to make podcasts on Substack. Like a newsletter, they can charge subscribers for access, so long as they are willing to part with a 10% cut. This works for podcasters whose entire show is paywalled, as well as for podcasters who only paywall certain episodes. Posting on Substack doesn’t prohibit you from also sharing public episodes on various podcatchers — listeners can access paywalled episodes on either the Substack app or via RSS feed.

Apple and Spotify have been dueling to make themselves the go-to platform for podcast monetization, but Substack is competing just as much with other subscription platforms like Patreon. Coincidentally, the podcasts “The Fifth Column” and “American Prestige” both announced this week that they will shut down their existing Patreon accounts to join Substack, per Hot Pod. Substack has previously wooed big creators over to its platform by paying large cash advances, but the platform doesn’t disclose who it does or does not pay an advance — the company’s policy is to let the creators decide for themselves if they want to disclose that they’re part of what it calls the “Substack Pro” program. So, we can only speculate whether these Patreon-to-Substack movements are anything more than coincidental timing.

It’s hard to say what benefit Substack provides podcasters that Patreon doesn’t offer as well. Substack has also been working on native video uploads in beta, helping creators better control who sees their paywalled videos — right now, on Patreon, a paywalled video is usually a link to an unlisted YouTube video, which can be easily shared. But Patreon has also stated that it’s working on native uploads. Besides that, Patreon takes either a 5%, 8% or 12% cut depending on what plan you choose, while Substack takes 10% — unless you’re on Patreon’s premium plan; you’ll keep more of your earnings over there.

Podcasters of a certain ilk might be swayed by Substack’s “hands-off” content moderation policy. Both Substack and Patreon prohibit spam, porn, illegal activities, doxxing, plagiarism and impersonation, but Patreon has more detailed guidelines about misinformation related to COVID-19 and QAnon.

Substack's lax rules have made it a comfortable home for some prominent anti-vaccine figures banned from mainstream social networks like Twitter. A small subset of five prominent anti-vaccine newsletters alone pulls in at least $2.5 million annually on the platform.

Substack explains its 'hands-off' approach to content moderation

Substack is testing a video feature, which will roll out widely in ‘the coming weeks’

Niantic makes another acquisition, absorbing AR studio NZXR

Posted: 05 Apr 2022 12:51 PM PDT

Just a month after its last acquisition of the WebAR development platform 8th Wall, Niantic announced its purchase of New Zealand-based augmented reality studio NZXR today. These strategic acquisitions are part of Niantic’s overarching plan to build what it calls a “real-world metaverse,” which is dependent on AR rather than VR.

NZXR formed during the pandemic, when its Wellington-based team was laid off from working on Magic Leap, an AR headset for enterprise. Rather than going their separate ways, the team built their own business, working on projects like the AR skateboarding game Skatrix and the interactive theater experience Destination Mars.

According to NZXR’s own blog post, the company had collaborated with Niantic before accepting their offer of a permanent partnership, becoming part of the company behind games like Pokémon Go. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“When John Hanke, Niantic's CEO, wrote ‘the metaverse is a dystopian nightmare‘ it resonated with us far more than any of the metaverse hype pieces published before or since,” NZXR wrote. “A better world is not given. It's going to take a lot of work and Niantic has demonstrated to us that they're willing to put in the effort.”

In November, Niantic unveiled its free Lightship AR Developer Kit to make building AR experiences more accessible. Soon after, the makers of Pokémon Go and Ingress raised $300 million at a $9 billion valuation, aiming to build a “metaverse” that brings people together through shared technological experiences. This summer, Niantic is trying to make good on that promise by hosting “community days,” or meetups for people who play their AR games, in 65 countries across the world. In the meantime, it will be a challenge for Niantic to figure out how to bridge the gap between “people staring at their phones catching Pokémon in the same location” and “people actually interacting due to their shared enjoyment of an AR game.”

Niantic raises $300M at a $9B valuation to build the ‘real-world metaverse’

WarnerMedia CEO exits as Discovery merger nears close

Posted: 05 Apr 2022 12:47 PM PDT

On Monday, April 11, the highly anticipated $43 billion merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery was set to officially close. But a new report from Variety suggests the deal may actually close as early as this Friday, according to its sources. 

We already have somewhat of an idea of what will happen with the companies’ two streaming services, Discovery+ and HBO Max. Back in March, Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said that the megamerger would at first bundle Discovery+ and HBO Max together until they could figure out the best way to consolidate the two services into a single direct-to-consumer platform.

HBO Max and Discovery+ will be combined into one service following merger

WarnerMedia not only owns HBO Max, but also linear network HBO, CNN (as well as new service CNN+), Warner Bros., DC Films, New Line Cinema, TBS, TNT, TruTV, Cartoon Network/Adult Swim, Turner Sports and Rooster Teeth, among others. It is also part owner of The CW. Meanwhile, Discovery is the parent of Discovery+, Discovery Channel, Investigation Discovery, Travel Channel, Turbo/Velocity, HGTV, Food Network, TLC, Animal Planet, Science Channel and OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network).

Streamers of both Discovery+ and HBO Max can expect a lot of changes to come, as the two companies will be combining huge content libraries that are equally unique in their own way, giving people a vastly complex offering. 

Also announced today, WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar proclaimed his resignation in a memo ahead of the WarnerMedia-Discovery merger. 

In April 2020, Kilar was hired as CEO of WarnerMedia prior to the launch of the streaming service HBO Max. However, Kilar was up for the challenge as he was previously brought on as CEO of Hulu shortly after its 2007 launch.

Discovery Inc. CEO David Zaslav will take the reins, and the former WarnerMedia CEO has cultivated a streaming giant that Zaslav can bank on. And boy, will he make bank.

In May 2021, Zaslav signed a new employment contract that ends in 2027, which was designed to keep him at the company through its merger with WarnerMedia.

Per a regulatory filing in March, the value of Zaslav's 2021 compensation package jumped to $246 million, a huge difference compared with $45.8 million in 2019. In 2020, it was $37.7 million.

Like Kilar, the Discovery Inc. CEO has lengthy experience in the industry and has led the company since 2007. 

After months of delay, GM restarts Chevy Bolt EV production

Posted: 05 Apr 2022 12:37 PM PDT

General Motors has finally resumed production of the Chevrolet Bolt EV and EUV after months of delay, The Detroit News reports.

The automaker had halted production of the vehicles at its Orion assembly plant in Michigan after issuing a recall last August of more than 141,000 Bolts due to battery fire risk. GM has confirmed 18 Bolt fires globally, which the automaker and its battery supplier, LG Chem, attributed to two manufacturing defects: a torn anobe tab and a folded separator. As a mea culpa, LG picked up the $2 billion tab for the cost of the recalls.

Supply chain issues caused the reopening of the plant to be repeatedly pushed back over the last seven months, stretching far beyond GM’s initial plan to reopen in September. In October, GM began sending out replacement battery modules to dealers, where owners with recalled Chevy Bolts could swap out old modules with new ones, something the automaker is still doing to mitigate the lack of supply until vehicles make it off the assembly line.

While the Chevy Bolt has been GM’s most popular EV brand, the automaker said last July it would invest $35 billion through 2025 in the development of EVs and automated technology. It’s pouring money into its Ultium platform, the underlying EV architecture and batteries for its next-gen EVs, including the Hummer EV, Chevrolet Silverado, Buick crossovers and the Cadillac Celestiq and Lyriq (GM just began production on the Lyriqs last month).

In addition, on Tuesday, GM said it would partner with Honda to make millions of affordable EVs on the Ultium platform.
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