TechCrunch |
- TechCrunch+ roundup: Food tech smorgasbord, VCs squeeze crypto founders, startup layoffs 101
- TikTok moves all US traffic to Oracle servers, amid new claims user data was accessed from China
- An inside look at 2150 VC’s bet on urban tech to tackle the climate crisis
- Marc Lore’s food delivery startup Wonder raises $350M at a $3.5B valuation
- Senators call for US to adopt common charger
- Black Gen Z VCs are here and swinging for the fences
- Researchers say Hermit, a powerful mobile spyware, is used by governments
- Roku and Walmart partner up to bring shoppable ads to streaming
- As Brex exits the SMB space, its CEO says that doesn’t include startups … at least the funded ones
- TechCrunch podcasts roundup: Aaron Levie on web3, more from WWDC and the LatAm startup scene
- Unified-IO is an AI system that can complete a range of tasks, including generating images
- Rsocks, a popular proxy service, was just seized by the DOJ
- Yandex shifts focus to ya.ru as it heads for media exit in Russia
- WhatsApp now lets you hide your profile picture and ‘Last seen’ status from specific people
- Could this ‘quiet company’ kick open the IPO window?
- Canada sunsets its COVID Alert app based on the iOS and Android exposure notification API
- This feels like a SoftBank deal from 4 years ago
- We turned our investors into our best source of customer feedback
- How to use human-centered AI with Forethought and NEA
- FDA clears COVID-19 vaccines for children under 5
| TechCrunch+ roundup: Food tech smorgasbord, VCs squeeze crypto founders, startup layoffs 101 Posted: 17 Jun 2022 11:58 AM PDT Most of us have a variety of fermented food products in our kitchen: you can’t make tofu, chocolate, vinegar or bread without agreeable microorganisms that can be produced at scale. Today, precision fermentation is innovating the alternative protein industry as food tech startups find the best methods for brewing eggs, dairy, meat and seafood in bioreactors that taste like “the real thing” — and are priced similarly. According to The Good Food Institute, a nonprofit that studies alternative proteins, fermentation startups received $290 million out of the $911 million investors dropped on alternative protein companies in Q1 2022. “To date, fermentation-derived meat, seafood, egg and dairy companies have raised over $3 billion since GFI started tracking these investments in 2010,” reports Christine Hall, who took a closer look at the sector for TechCrunch+ this week. Full TechCrunch+ articles are only available to members Her story is a smorgasbord of food tech companies brewing products like bee-free honey and eggs that didn’t come from poultry. Now that so many early entrants in the alternative protein market are on supermarket shelves, food tech investors are licking their lips. “There's a lot of room here, and the winners may not be the names that we know today,” said David Kestenbaum, general partner at ZX Ventures. “I think it's going to be the next generation of names that are coming up now." Thanks very much for reading TechCrunch+ this week. Have a happy Juneteenth! Walter Thompson Do you have questions about startup layoffs? Image Credits: Bill Varie (opens in a new window) / Getty Images Please join me on Tuesday, June 21 at 11 a.m. PT/2 p.m. ET for a Twitter Space with Matt Hoffman, partner and Head of Talent at M13. Matt helps companies build innovative cultures that scale with their businesses. In this chat, he’ll share advice for creating processes that can help managers ensure that separated employees are treated ethically. This is open to managers and workers, so please submit your questions during the Space, and we’ll get to as many as we can. To get a reminder before the discussion starts, follow @techcrunch on Twitter. Dear Sophie: Which visa is best for bootstrapping a startup? Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch Dear Sophie, I'm a founder from Germany. Our product is already generating around $200,000/year right off the bat. Our customers are mainly U.S.-based, and we don't plan to raise any capital from investors. I’ve been looking into the new startup visa option and the E-2 and L-1B visas, and I've been pretty heads-down focused on building the product, so I'm not famous. What’s my best option for bootstrapping my startup in the U.S.? — Game-Changing in Germany Fearless Fund's Arian Simone on why a downturn is business as usual for minority founders Image Credits: Fearless Fund In the U.S., Black women are the most entrepreneurial demographic, but they’re also more likely to fall into a funding gap when they need access to capital. Out of $330 billion in VC funding that startups received last year, “less than five Black women raised money past the Series A stage, and one of them was Rihanna,” reports Dominic-Madori Davis. To help level the playing field for minority women working in tech and consumer packaged goods, entrepreneur Arian Simone co-founded Fearless Fund in 2019 with business advisor Ayana Parsons and actress Keshia Knight Pulliam. The fund has backed 31 companies to date, and despite the chill in the markets, it has no plans to slow down. "Companies that are venture-backed have seen their fair share of horror stories," said Simone. "They don't typically get rattled by the current macroeconomic climate." Is consolidation on the horizon for Southeast Asia's tech industry? Image Credits: jayk7 (opens in a new window) / Getty Images The super app business model is paying dividends in Southeast Asia. Offerings from Grab, “the everyday everything app,” run the gamut from grocery delivery to investment services; Malaysia-based AirAsia has rebranded itself as Capital A as it expands its offerings to encompass ride hailing, food delivery, and much more. These companies aren’t building these new business units from scratch: they’re using strategic acquisitions to enter new markets and fence out the competition. “As more tech companies look to the super app business model to retain users and increase monetization, we could expect more inorganic expansion and consolidation in the coming years,” says Amit Anand, founding partner of Jungle Ventures. Pitch Deck Teardown: Ergeon’s $40M Series B deck Image Credits: Ergeon (opens in a new window) Need a new fence or driveway? Ergeon gives consumers a way to purchase bespoke construction projects that may be too small for a general contractor but are more than a DIY job. Fresh off a $40 million Series B, founder and CEO Jenny He shared all 16 slides from their April 2022 deck, including a redacted growth trajectory slide that outlines the company’s path to $10 billion in revenue by 2027. Crypto founders face falling valuations, pulled deals amid market volatility Image Credits: dblight (opens in a new window) / Getty Images As the crypto markets trend downwards, investors who were cozying up to web3 founders for a seat at the cap table not three months ago are now playing hard to get, and founders are paying the price. With VCs now backing out of deals or re-negotiating previously agreed-upon valuations, crypto founders are scrambling to raise as a recession looms and capital dries up, reported Jacquelyn Melinek. "It's shocking how much VCs are willing to take advantage of people in this situation," said one founder of a gaming crypto startup. 3 climate tech VCs share how they find, vet and support carbon-slashing startups Image Credits: TechCrunch This week at TC Sessions: Climate 2022, Tim De Chant spoke to three active climate tech investors to learn more about how they identify new opportunities and what they're looking for at the moment.
"Our job is to take risk, to a degree, and to risk it on teams that we think are truly talented," Stead said. "So that's one piece of the equation," she added. "But the other side of the equation is that the world doesn't receive the benefit of anything unless it can scale, unless it's fundable, unless there's a great market with it, and it's profitable." Why software valuations could drop more if things don't change soon Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window) The value of tech companies — private and public — has plummeted significantly as investors take a step back. But things are getting worse for software companies: The Fed increased the U.S. interest rate by 75 basis points yesterday — the highest single rate hike since 1994 — and these startups are likely to feel the repercussions directly on their valuations soon, wrote Alex Wilhelm in The Exchange. "The idea that software multiples are not on the cusp of a Lazarus redemption arc is a gloomy one for unicorns, many of which were re-priced last year and got expensive price tags they have to live up to. The possibility of software multiples compressing further is downright terrifying for this cohort." Growing up enterprise for SaaS startups: 7 lessons on doing it right Image Credits: Andrew Rich (opens in a new window) / Getty Images “A lot of founders make the mistake of thinking that hiring a bunch of highly paid account executives (a fancy name for salespeople) is the same as ‘going enterprise,” says Bill Binch, operating partner at Battery Ventures. “It’s not.” In an excerpt from his new book, Binch shares scenarios that will help SaaS founders tackle the concept of “enterprise readiness,” along with seven success factors he gleaned from working with “sales leaders, marketing managers, and CEOs who had been through this evolution.” |
| TikTok moves all US traffic to Oracle servers, amid new claims user data was accessed from China Posted: 17 Jun 2022 11:33 AM PDT TikTok said on Friday it is moving U.S. users' data to Oracle servers stored in the United States. Overshadowing its migration announcement was a damning report that followed, claiming that TikTok staff in China had access to its U.S. users' data as recently as this January. The report from BuzzFeed News, which cites recordings from 80 TikTok internal meetings it obtained, claims that U.S. employees of TikTok repeatedly consulted with their colleagues in China to understand how U.S. user data flowed because they did not have the "permission or knowledge of how to access the data on their own." "Everything is seen in China," the report said, quoting an unnamed member of TikTok's Trust and Safety department as saying in a September 2021 meeting. The report further casts doubt on the short video giant's entanglement with Beijing, a long-running accusation amplified by former President Donald Trump, and the firm's public comments about the independence of its U.S. unit. U.S. officials have for years expressed concern that TikTok might let China's authoritarian government have access to the data the firm collects from Americans and users from other nations. The matter escalated in September 2020, when the Trump administration said it would bar the Chinese-owned mobile apps WeChat and TikTok from U.S. app stores. (India banned TikTok and several other Chinese-owned apps in 2020 citing national security concerns.) TikTok — as well as its parent firm ByteDance — has publicly said it would never hand over U.S. users’ data. The firm also engaged with Microsoft and Oracle to sell the U.S. unit and explored selling stakes to U.S. investors to comply with Trump’s order. The Biden administration revoked the Trump-era executive order and replaced it with one that called for a broader review of a number of foreign-controlled apps that could pose a security threat to Americans and their data. TikTok said in a blog post Friday that “100% of U.S. user traffic is being routed to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure” in the United States, with an asterisk. “We still use our U.S. and Singapore data centers for backup, but as we continue our work we expect to delete U.S. users’ private data from our own data centers and fully pivot to Oracle cloud servers located in the U.S." A report in March said the two firms were said to be close to finalizing a deal. TikTok said Friday it is also "making operational changes," including establishing a U.S.-based leadership to "solely manage U.S. user data for TikTok." "These are critical steps, but there is more we can do. We know we are among the most scrutinized platforms from a security standpoint, and we aim to remove any doubt about the security of US user data," it added. TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment on BuzzFeed News' reporting. |
| An inside look at 2150 VC’s bet on urban tech to tackle the climate crisis Posted: 17 Jun 2022 11:00 AM PDT You've probably heard of unicorns, and you may have heard of soonicorns. But have you heard of gigacorns? Unlike its other more common cousins, the term “gigacorn” doesn’t refer to valuation. Instead, it tells us how well a startup can help fight carbon dioxide emissions, climate change and its implications. According to venture capitalist Christian Hernandez, who coined the term, a gigacorn is a company that has managed to lower or sequester CO2 emissions by one gigaton per year while being commercially viable. Hernandez describes himself as a gigacorn hunter, and he’s not hunting alone. The venture capital firm he co-founded, 2150 VC, counts among its limited partners Crédit Suisse, sovereign funds from Norway and Denmark and the venture arms of BMW and Toyota. With $312 million to invest, 2150 VC’s goal is to find and fund future gigacorns in urban tech. “We think of our scope of investment as being the broad ‘urban stack,'” 2150’s partner and co-founder Jacob Bro told TechCrunch. Some might feel this focus on urban tech is counterintuitive, but 2150 is taking the view that cities are here to stay. Its scope is also broader than it may sound. This so-called urban stack covers “all the inputs and outputs and the operations of a city from the materials that we use, the proteins we consume, the energy that powers the city, to how we heat and cool our homes, how we move things around and keep citizens healthy, safe and secure,” Bro said.
“We need all hands on deck. No single solution will solve the climate crisis, and we need to back thousands of parallel bets.” Jacob Bro, 2150 partner and co-founder 2150 VC’s portfolio includes companies such as carbon accounting platform Normative and Leko Labs, a Luxembourg-based construction startup that's developing sustainable wood-based building materials. It also has investments in firms focusing on biodiversity, cooling and energy efficiency for buildings. To better understand where and why 2150 VC is betting, we spoke with Bro and Hernandez about impact investing, regulation and the growing number of funds dedicated to climate tech. Editor's note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity. TC: Your thesis seems to be that countries won’t stop developing cities, and that the focus should be on mitigating the impact on climate caused by urban areas. Can you explain why you took this approach? Jacob Bro: The founding partners of 2150 come from different backgrounds — from technology and real estate to corporate innovation and venture capital. We partnered around the same realization: that the urban environment consumes the vast majority of natural resources and generates 70% of greenhouse gasses. Cities can't be stopped. Urbanization is accelerating given the concentration of prosperity, education, healthcare and culture in cities. So we need to solve the "urban prosperity versus energy" paradox urgently. Christian Hernandez: In the words of the UN Secretary General [António Guterres], ”Cities are where the climate battle will largely be won or lost.” We want to direct our capital and efforts to the hardest to abate sectors; those that can have the greatest impact. Buildings and industry represent 60% of emissions, yet they received only a quarter of all private equity and VC funding. Decarbonizing concrete (8% of emissions) and steel (7%) is hard, but it's critical. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), over half of the technologies needed to achieve net-zero by 2050 are available today. So we are very much focused on identifying and scaling the most impactful ones. We often talk about “carbon now” versus “carbon later,” meaning that the value of reducing carbon emissions at scale today — given the 25 gigatons we need to cut by 2030 — is much greater than the value of reducing carbon in 20 years. Within climate tech as a whole, which verticals are you most bullish about? Bro: Within the urban value chain, we rank the biggest problems and opportunities. We consider impactful areas, including cooling, window technologies, cement and concrete, alongside enabling technologies like carbon accounting. You once wrote that “policy and regulation will make or break our investments.” Can you explain? Hernandez: Policy is an important component of the work that we do, which is why we recently brought on board Christopher Burghardt, an experienced climate tech entrepreneur who has served as head of policy for the likes of First Solar and Uber. Regulation and policy play a key role in accelerating (or inhibiting) the deployment of the technologies that we back. As an example, New York state passed the Low Embodied Carbon Concrete Leadership Act (LECCLA), which mandates a lower carbon footprint in concrete poured for state-funded projects to accelerate adoption of lower carbon cement and concrete. On the other side of the Atlantic, each European country has its own processes and regulations for the testing and approval of cement mixes, which can take six to eight months and inhibits the adoption of new technologies. |
| Marc Lore’s food delivery startup Wonder raises $350M at a $3.5B valuation Posted: 17 Jun 2022 10:59 AM PDT New York-based Wonder, a mobile restaurant delivery service led by Marc Lore, has raised $350 million in Series B funding. The company is now worth about $3.5 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. The funding round was led by Bain Capital Ventures and included participation from Accel, Alpine Group, Amex Ventures, Forerunner, General Catalyst, GV, NEA, YieldStreet and others. This latest funding round brings Wonder’s total amount raised in debt and equity to $900 million. The startup partners with popular chefs to create exclusive menus and bring their recipes to mobile restaurants. Users can then order dishes from these mobile restaurants to their doorsteps. According to Wonder’s website, your order is cooked and plated “just steps away from your door, then served as soon as it’s ready.” In a blog post about the raise, Lore said Wonder is now available in 22 towns in New Jersey and services over 130,000 households. Since the platform’s launch six months ago, Wonder has created 19 mobile restaurants. The company has collaborated with several famous chefs, including Bobby Flay, Nancy Silverton, Michael Symon and more. Lore says the new funding will be used to continue to expand within the tri-state area in New Jersey, with Bergen County being next on the list. Wonder is also going to launch 11 more restaurants, which will bring the company’s total number to 30. “Our innovative techniques, technology, world-class culinary partnerships, and talent opens up so much potential for exciting, new possibilities,” Lore said in the blog post. “Wonder has a real opportunity to not only completely change how people eat, but also to create a better future with access to the world's best food in a convenient, affordable and sustainable way.” The Wall Street Journal reports that although Wonder currently has a limited market reach, the company plans to expand into new areas across the United States by 2035. Wonder also aims to add other prepared-food businesses to its network, as it plans to add ready-to-heat meals and meal-preparation kits to its delivery service. Lore isn’t new to the delivery market, as he founded e-commerce shopping site Jet.com and later sold it to Walmart for $3 billion in cash in 2016. After the acquisition, Lore led Walmart’s U.S. e-commerce operations until January 2021. |
| Senators call for US to adopt common charger Posted: 17 Jun 2022 10:04 AM PDT A little over a week ago, the European Union reached an agreement that will require hardware manufactures to adopt a common charger — specifically the USB-C standard — by 2024. Yesterday, a trio of Democratic senators sent an open letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo urging that the United States follow suit. The letter, signed by Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, notes consumer frustration, costs and an uptick in e-waste, owing to the proliferation of different charging cables. The letter specifically cites a figure from the EU, noting that chargers alone account for around 11,000 tons of e-waste a year. "This policy has the potential to significantly reduce e-waste and help consumers who are tired of having to rummage through junk drawers full of tangled chargers to find a compatible one, or buy a new one," the lawmakers note. "The EU has wisely acted in the public interest by taking on powerful technology companies over this consumer and environmental issue. The United States should do the same." USB-C has, of course, been widely adopted by a number of manufacturers across the industry. There are, however, some holdouts, which either continue to employ older standards like micro-USB or rely on their own proprietary ports. Apple's iPhone is the most notable example of the latter. While the company has adopted USB-C for MacBooks and iPads, its phones continue to sport the first-party Lightning cable. Such legislation would require the company move to USB-C. The upcoming iPhone 14 is rumored to sport Lightning, while rumors point to the arrival of USB-C for next year's Pro models. |
| Black Gen Z VCs are here and swinging for the fences Posted: 17 Jun 2022 10:02 AM PDT One day early in the pandemic, Dazayah Walker came across a job she'd never heard of before: venture capitalist investor. The pandemic ensured she had time, and intrigued by the profession, she started teaching herself the trade. She soon realized it was a way to build wealth, and as a young Black woman, it was also a viable career path to which she was never exposed. “This is one of those quietly kept industries where people have been becoming multimillionaires for years,” Walker told TechCrunch. “We just have not been included in that.” That's starting to change. Although the investor landscape remains mostly white and male, there has been an uptick in Black VCs striving to fund overlooked founders while simply pursuing a career once obscured from them. This new crop of VCs are starting younger than ever — and like Walker, they’ve set their sights high. Walker studied economics at Spelman College and worked as an executive assistant at record label Quality Control. Two months after discovering venture capital, she pitched to start the label's first VC fund. Today, at 24, she runs the label’s entire investment portfolio. “There is a consistent need for fresh perspectives, new forms of creativity and innovation, and this is done through diversity and inclusion,” Walker said. “It's an opportunity for [us] to be in a space to have an impact and inspire.” Another way of looking at the worldWalker initially was worried that her lack of a Stanford degree or Bay Area expertise would hinder her progress, but the perspectives and ideas she brought to the table have helped her establish herself.  Quality Control VC, Dazayah Walker. Image Credits: Dazayah Walker Atlanta, where Quality Control is based, is an emerging tech hub, and the label is one of the nation's most popular. Walker says her young perspective is valued as the spending power of Gen Z grows. She has leveraged the cultural relevance of Quality Control and its artists to build her network, knowing that founders and investors are always looking to associate themselves with whatever’s considered “cool.” To date, Walker has helped the label execute eight deals, many focused on consumer apps and fintech, and spends time educating her favorite artists about investing. She once wanted to become a music executive but has shed those aspirations for a focus on opening economic opportunities for others who, like her, didn’t know this avenue to prosperity existed. “There's so much overlap in the intersection between music and technology,” Walker said. “I see the opportunity for this to be bigger than the now, but as a way to build generational wealth and define a legacy.” Over in Los Angeles, Jonathan Moore, 22, left his Wall Street career to work as an analyst at TCG Capital Management. He pitched the idea for the firm to launch a crypto fund, believing the intersection of web3 and the creator economy could tap a generation of untapped talent. Since launching the fund in September 2021, he has closed over 20 deals and says the outlook for this year is equally promising. |
| Researchers say Hermit, a powerful mobile spyware, is used by governments Posted: 17 Jun 2022 09:30 AM PDT Security researchers at Lookout have released new details about an Android spyware deployed in targeted attacks by national governments, with victims in Kazakhstan, Syria and Italy. The spyware, which Lookout is naming Hermit, was first detected in Kazakhstan in April, just months after the Kazakh government violently suppressed protests against government policies. Lookout said a Kazakh government entity was likely behind the most recent campaign. The spyware has also been deployed in the northeastern Kurdish region of Syria and by Italian authorities as part of an anti-corruption investigation. Lookout obtained a sample of the Hermit Android malware, which they say is modular, allowing the spyware to download additional components as the malware needs it. The spyware uses the various modules to collect call logs, record audio, redirect phone calls and collect photos, messages, emails and the device’s precise location, much like other spyware. Lookout said, however, that the spyware has the ability to root phones, by pulling in the files from its command and control server needed to break the device’s protections and allow near-unfettered access to a device without user interaction. In an email, Lookout researcher Paul Shunk said the malware can run on all Android versions. “Hermit checks the Android version of the device running the app at various times in order to adapt its behavior to the version of the operating system.” Shunk said this “stands out from other app-based spyware.” It’s believed the malicious Android app is distributed by text message spoofed to look like the message is coming from a legitimate source, impersonating apps from telecoms companies and other popular brands, like Samsung and Chinese electronics giant Oppo, which then tricks the victim into downloading the malicious app. Lookout said there was evidence of a Hermit-infected iOS app that, like other spyware, abuses Apple enterprise developer certificates to sideload its malicious app from outside of the app store — the same behavior Facebook and Google were penalized for by skirting Apple’s app store rules. Lookout said it was unable to obtain a sample of the iOS spyware. Now Lookout is saying its evidence points to Hermit having been developed by Italian spyware vendor RCS Lab and Tykelab, a telecom solutions company, which Lookout says is a front company. An email sent to an email address on Tykelab’s website was returned as undelivered. A spokesperson for RCS Lab did not return a request for comment. Hermit is just one of several known government-grade spyware known to be used by authorities in what is becoming a busy market for mobile exploits for allowing governments to conduct targeted phone surveillance. But many of these government hacking-for-hire companies, like Israeli firms Candiru and NSO Group, are used by nation states and their authorities to spy on their most vocal critics, including journalists, activists and human rights defenders. You can send tips securely over Signal and WhatsApp to +1 646-755-8849. You can also send files or documents using our SecureDrop. Learn more |
| Roku and Walmart partner up to bring shoppable ads to streaming Posted: 17 Jun 2022 09:13 AM PDT Roku and Walmart announced a new partnership that aims to crack the code on making purchases via TV streaming and shopping with remotes. On Thursday, the two companies introduced their plan to allow viewers to purchase items with their remotes while streaming on Roku devices. The deal is expected to unite Roku’s streaming platform’s 61.3 million subscribers with a retailer that had total revenue of $141.6 billion in the first quarter of 2022. The companies wrote in a statement that this is a first-of-its-kind partnership between retailers and streaming platforms. This doesn't count Amazon, of course, which is both a retailer and streaming platform. But it could open the door for other streaming services to do the same. Essentially, the program adds an overlay to an existing ad so that streamers can choose to click "OK" on their Roku remote and make a transaction right on the screen with their TV show paused. A shopper won't be taken to Walmart.com or need to capture QR codes on their phones to complete orders. Typing a credit card number using a TV remote can be frustrating so Roku and Walmart have made it so customers won't have to enter their credit card numbers since Roku's payment platform has the customers' payment details pre-populated. The partnership "evolves shopping beyond the QR code and will change the way customers interact and shop TV and video content," Roku and Walmart wrote. Roku's OneView ad-buying platform will power and measure Walmart's shoppable ads. In addition, the Roku Brand Studio will design custom branded content for TV streaming and shopping. To start, the shoppable ads will appear on The Roku Channel video-on-demand content and will roll out over time to other channels on the platform, Roku informed TechCrunch.  Image Credits: Roku "We're working to connect with customers where they are already spending time, shortening the distance from discovery and inspiration to purchase," said William White, chief marketing officer, Walmart, in a statement. "No one has cracked the code around video shoppability. “By working with Roku, we're the first to market retailer to bring customers a new shoppable experience and seamless checkout on the largest screen in their homes — their TV." "We're making shopping on TV as easy as it is on social," added Peter Hamilton, head of TV Commerce, Roku. "For years, streamers have purchased new Roku devices and signed up for millions of subscriptions with their Roku remote. Streaming commerce brings that same ease and convenience to marketers and shoppers." Since this announcement, Roku stock jumped over 4% in after-hours trading on Thursday. This is a small win for the company as we reported back in April that Roku stock declined following its first-quarter results, dropping 20% in March and more than 70% in a year. We will have to wait and see if this new partnership with Walmart will satisfy investors and drive higher engagement for the platform. Video shopping is far from new, and shoppable TV has moved beyond QVC (the TV shopping channel) and 1-800 ads. For instance, Amazon launched Amazon Live in 2019 — a strong indicator that live video had become the new focus for e-commerce. Then, Instagram took the plunge in 2020, introducing Live Shopping. Facebook followed with Facebook Shops. Walmart, Google, TikTok and Shopify all joined the party as well. Walmart has been fairly experimental when it comes to new ways to transact. It was the first retailer to test out both TikTok’s and Twitter's live e-commerce platforms and has invested in live shopping by hosting events across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TalkShopLive and others. The live shopping space continues to heat up as, yesterday, eBay announced the launch of eBay Live, a live and interactive environment for shoppers. Live commerce has been the major trend for years now since users can easily navigate online checkout using a mobile phone or desktop. But T-commerce — or shopping content as it’s seen on TV — has never really taken off. YouTube most recently has tried to enter this space by making its YouTube app a second-screen companion for TV viewers that will allow them to shop as they watch. It remains to be seen whether it will take over or if Roku and Walmart can move the needle on people purchasing products on their television screens. Updated June 17, 2022 at 12:56 p.m. EDT with Roku comment to TechCrunch. |
| As Brex exits the SMB space, its CEO says that doesn’t include startups … at least the funded ones Posted: 17 Jun 2022 09:11 AM PDT Brex's decision to stop serving SMB customers surprised many in the startup and fintech community. TechCrunch spoke with CEO and co-founder Henrique Dubugras to learn more about what drove the decision and to get clarity around exactly who is affected. Firstly, Dubugras emphasized that the company "remains committed to startups." When asked about the criteria in which it determined which businesses would be impacted by its move, he said that Brex chose to no longer work with any businesses that did not have some sort of “professional” funding — either venture capital, angel money or funding from an accelerator. As a result, “tens of thousands” of businesses were told their accounts would be shut down as of August 15. Dubugras admitted the set of criteria may not have been “perfect,” but that it had to “have one.” Businesses affected, he said, are mostly brick-and-mortar businesses such as bakeries, restaurants and small design agencies — many of whom would argue are being impacted by rising inflation and a challenging macro environment the most. And while Brex may still be serving startups, it is opting to no longer serve any boostrapped startups, if Dubugras’ words are to be taken literally. If a startup that has received funding did receive communication from Brex mistakenly, Dubugras said they would be reinstated.
"It's really really hard to do both because of the sheer volume," he added. Dubugras said it was also getting pressure from customers “to go global faster,” and that also led to its decision. It wanted to divert resources that were going to SMBs to help its scaling customers, he said. Brex began its push to serve SMBs in late 2019 and early 2020, according to Dubugras. Since then, he said, smaller startups that the company was serving were growing larger and had different needs. The company decided to evolve its offering to be able to serve larger businesses and enterprise customers. He said it became difficult to serve brick-and-mortar companies that had a "completely different set of needs," and so the company made the decision to stop working with those businesses. "The decision didn’t come without a lot of thinking and a lot of pain. We know it’s going to be painful for the customers affected and we want to do as much as we can to help there," Dubugras told TechCrunch. "But hopefully, we’ll come out as an even better offering for our core customers and be able to further our mission.” Brex earlier this year announced a big push into enterprise and software, and he said that remains the company’s core strategy moving forward. My weekly fintech newsletter, The Interchange, launched on May 1! Sign up here to get it in your inbox. |
| TechCrunch podcasts roundup: Aaron Levie on web3, more from WWDC and the LatAm startup scene Posted: 17 Jun 2022 09:05 AM PDT TechCrunch is more than just a site with words. We’re also building a growing stable of podcasts focused on the most critical topics relating to the startup and venture capital worlds. Embedded below are the latest from the TechCrunch Podcast from Darrell who talks to TC writers about their own stories of the week; Chain Reaction, our crypto-focused podcast hosted by Lucas and Anita; Found, a long-form bit of work that goes deep on the real saga of company formation from Jordan and Darrell; and Equity, our long-running, Webby-award-winning podcast focused on venture capital and the latest startup news, hosted by Natasha, Mary Ann and Alex. TechCrunch Live took this week off. Be sure to subscribe where you listen to podcasts! The TechCrunch PodcastThis week, Darrell mixes it up and talks with Kurt Knight who isn't a TC writer but is the senior director of Platform Product Marketing at Apple who comes on to talk about WWDC and updates to Apple’s Continuity. We also talk with Lucas Matney about the former OpenSea exec whose arrest has the crypto world worried. And as always, you'll get a rundown of the week's top news on TechCrunch. Articles from the episode:
Other news from the week:
Chain ReactionThis week Anita and Lucas discuss another stressful week for crypto markets, which has pushed even bullish investors into bearish territories. They also chatted about growing crypto regulation efforts and Jack Dorsey's latest effort called "web5." They also spoke with Aaron Levie, CEO of enterprise software company Box. While his day job doesn't have anything to do with the blockchain, he has attracted the ire of plenty of crypto VCs for sharing thoughts on Twitter about why web3 won't work. They spoke to Levie about some of his biggest complaints and what it would take for him to angel invest in a crypto startup. Subscribe to the Chain Reaction newsletter to dive deeper: https://techcrunch.com/newsletters Helpful links:
FoundThis week Darrell and Jordan talk to two founders who had just come off stage from the TC Sessions: Mobility Pitch-Off. First up is Eloa Guillotin, co-founder and CEO of Beyond Aero, which is making long-range electric aircraft possible by using hydrogen-electric propulsion. Then they spoke to Jim Gibbs, co-founder and CEO of Meter Feeder, which is on a mission to provide a low-cost payment and enforcement solution for small to mid-sized governments for parking through an API. Take our listener survey and let us know a bit about yourself and what you think of Found. Connect with us:
EquityThis is Equity Monday by Alex and Grace who kicked off the week with a quick rundown of the biggest stories. This week:
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| Unified-IO is an AI system that can complete a range of tasks, including generating images Posted: 17 Jun 2022 09:00 AM PDT The Allen Institute for AI (AI2), the division within the nonprofit Allen Institute focused on machine learning research, today published its work on an AI system, called Unified-IO, that it claims is among the first to perform a “large and diverse” set of AI tasks. Unified-IO can process and create images, text and other structured data, a feat that the research team behind it says is a step toward building capable, unified general-purpose AI systems. “We are interested in building task-agnostic [AI systems], which can enable practitioners to train [machine learning] models for new tasks with little to no knowledge of the underlying machinery,” Jaisen Lu, a research scientist at AI2 who worked on Unified-IO, told TechCrunch via email. “Such unified architectures alleviate the need for task-specific parameters and system modifications, can be jointly trained to perform a large variety of tasks and can share knowledge across tasks to boost performance.” AI2’s early efforts in building unified AI systems led to GPV-1 and GPV-2, two general-purpose, “vision-language” systems that supported a handful of workloads including captioning images and answering questions. Unified-IO required going back to the drawing board, according to Lu and designing a new model from the ground up. Unified-IO shares characteristics in common with OpenAI's GPT-3 in the sense that it's a “Transformer.” Dating back to 2017, the Transformer has become the architecture of choice for complex reasoning tasks, demonstrating an aptitude for summarizing documents, generating music, classifying objects in images and analyzing protein sequences. Like all AI systems, Unified-IO learned by example, ingesting billions of words, images and more in the form of tokens. These tokens served to represent data in a way Unified-IO could understand.  Unified-IO can generate images given a brief description. Image Credits: Unified-IO “The natural language processing (NLP) community has been very successful at building unified [AI systems] that support many different tasks, since many NLP tasks can be homogeneously represented — words as input and words as output. But the nature and diversity of computer vision tasks has meant that multitask models in the past have been limited to a small set of tasks, and mostly tasks that produce language outputs (answer a question, caption an image, etc.),” Chris Clark, who collaborated with Lu on Unified-IO at AI2, told TechCrunch in an email. “Unified-IO demonstrates that by converting a range of diverse structured outputs like images, binary masks, bounding boxes, sets of key points, grayscale maps and more into homogenous sequences of tokens, we can model a host of classical computer vision tasks very similar to how we model tasks in NLP.” Unlike some systems, Unified-IO can’t analyze or create videos and audio — a limitation of the model “from a modality perspective,” Clark explained. But among the tasks Unified-IO can complete are generating images, detecting objects within images, estimating depth, paraphrasing documents and highlighting specific regions within photos. “This has huge implications to computer vision, since it begins to treat modalities as diverse as images, masks, language and bounding boxes as simply sequences of tokens — akin to language,” Clark added. “Furthermore, unification at this scale can now open the doors to new avenues in computer vision like massive unified pre-training, knowledge transfer across tasks, few-shot learning and more.” Matthew Guzdial, an assistant professor of computing science at the University of Alberta who wasn’t involved with AI2’s research, was reluctant to call Unified-IO a breakthrough. He noted that the system is comparable to DeepMind’s recently detailed Gato, a single model that can perform over 600 tasks from playing games to controlling robots. “The difference [between Unified-IO and Gato] is obviously that it’s a different set of tasks, but also that these tasks are largely much more usable. By that I mean there’s clear, current use cases for the things that this Unified-IO network can do, whereas Gato could mostly just play games. This does make it more likely that Unified-IO or some model like it will actually impact people’s lives in terms of potential products and services,” Guzdial said. “My only concern is that while the demo is flashy, there’s no notion of how well it does at these tasks compared to models trained on these individual tasks separately. Given how Gato underperformed models trained on the individual tasks, I expect the same thing will be true here.”  Unified-IO can also segment images, even with challenging lightening. Image Credits: Unified-IO Nevertheless, the AI2 researchers consider Unified-IO a strong foundation for future work. They plan to improve the efficiency of the system while adding support for more modalities, like audio and video, and scaling it up to improve performance. “Recent works such as Imagen and DALL-E 2 have shown that given enough training data, models … can be trained to produce very impressive results. Yet, these models only support one task,” Clark said. “Unified-IO can enable us to train massive scale multitask models. Our hypothesis is that scaling up the data and model size tremendously will produce vastly better results.” |
| Rsocks, a popular proxy service, was just seized by the DOJ Posted: 17 Jun 2022 08:37 AM PDT The U.S. Department of Justice has confirmed it has seized and dismantled the infrastructure of a Russian botnet used to hijack millions of devices worldwide for use as proxy servers. According to prosecutors, Rsocks provided its web proxy service — operated by unnamed Russian cybercriminals — by hacking into millions of computers, smartphones and Internet of Things devices, and converting them into unwitting proxy servers, allowing paying customers to use the IP addresses of the compromised devices without the permission or the knowledge of the owners. Rsocks’ own Twitter account claimed access to more than eight million residential devices and more than one million mobile IPs. Proxy services, which are not inherently illicit or illegal, provide IP addresses to its clients for a fee, such as bypassing censorship or accessing content geo-blocked to a particular region. But according to prosecutors, Rsocks was allegedly hacking into millions of devices by conducting brute force attacks. Customers could access a web-based "storefront" where they could rent access to proxies for a specific time period. Once purchased, the customer could download a list of IP addresses and ports associated with one or more of the botnet's backend servers, and then route malicious internet traffic through the compromised devices to mask or hide the true source of the traffic. "It is believed that the users of this type of proxy service were conducting large scale attacks against authentication services, also known as credential stuffing, and anonymizing themselves when accessing compromised social media accounts, or sending malicious email, such as phishing messages," the Justice Department said in a press release announcing the successful takedown of the botnet's infrastructure. FBI investigators used undercover purchases to get access to the Rsocks botnet to identify its backend infrastructure and victims. The initial undercover purchase in early 2017 identified approximately 325,000 compromised victim devices, mainly located in the United States. As well as home businesses and individuals, several large public and private entities have fallen victim to the Rsocks botnet, prosecutors said, including a university, a hotel, a television studio and an electronics manufacturer — and homes and small businesses. "Cyber criminals will not escape justice regardless of where they operate," said U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman." Working with public and private partners around the globe, we will relentlessly pursue them while using all the tools at our disposal to disrupt their threats and prosecute those responsible." The Rsocks botnet is the second of its kind that has recently been dismantled by U.S. authorities. In April, an FBI operation revealed that it had disrupted another botnet, known as Cyclops Blink, which was operated by a group of hackers working for Russia's GRU, the country's military intelligence unit. |
| Yandex shifts focus to ya.ru as it heads for media exit in Russia Posted: 17 Jun 2022 07:54 AM PDT TechCrunch has learned that Russia search giant Yandex is to switch from using yandex.ru as its main front page for Russian-speaking users to ya.ru — a less trafficked domain it’s owned since 2000 that, historically, has only hosted a basic search engine page. Imagine if Google decided to de-emphasize google.com in favor of a less popular domain it also owns and you’ll get an inkling of how big a shift this looks to be for the Russian internet landscape. (Albeit, a fuller comparison would be if Google News was the main page used to reach its search engine and the company decided to shift to emphasizing the more minimalist google.com search portal instead.) We understand the shift relates to Yandex’s recent announcement that it’s selling its flagship media products, news aggregator News and blogging recommender platform Zen — a divestment that followed hard on the heels of the Kremlin’s decision to invade Ukraine. The war has led to a ramping up of censorship inside Russia that’s made media ownership far more politically risky business than it used to be. Yandex’s business hasn’t been sanctioned by the West but two of its execs have been hit with EU sanctions in recent months following critical analysis of the role its platform plays in amplifying Kremlin propaganda — so the company remains under pressure to find ways to de-risk its ops while continuing to operate inside Russia. (Hence, for example, a recent update to its Maps product that simply erased national borders.) Today a very subtly redesigned version of ya.ru has emerged which adds a weather icon and a button pointing visitors to other Yandex services. Yandex has owned the ya.ru search engine page in parallel with the richer yandex.ru portal for decades but the former has been left essentially untouched — while the latter evolved into an eye-assaulting info/propaganda hub for Russian-speaking users via the integration of Yandex’s media products. The updated ya.ru page now features the word ‘search’ — albeit inked in grey, meaning it’s barely visible — displayed above the search bar. And while the page still contains yards of white space there are subtle signs of revived interest in an underdeveloped domain. Albeit it still remains a far cry from the information-dense look of yandex.ru where content from the News aggregator saps attention via a bottomless-scroll feed.  The slightly ‘new look’ ya.ru search page (Screengrab: Natasha Lomas/TechCrunch) Contacted about the changes to ya.ru, a Yandex spokesperson confirmed the update, which they said is the first time the page has been updated in 22 years. They also said more changes are coming — telling us: “We plan to redesign the ya.ru page and release a new mobile app. The focus will be on search and Yandex virtual assistant Alice. We’ll share details later.” The spokesperson declined to answer further questions but sources familiar with the matter confirmed the changes to ya.ru relate to the sale of News and Zen. Our sources also told us that Yandex plans to focus on ya.ru from here on in — suggesting the search engine page will become its main front page in Russia. The shift of focus — and what looks like a return to Yandex emphasizing its technological roots — aligns with the company’s desire to move away from being perceived as a media company in its home market, with all the political and economic risk that now entails. What this shift of emphasis means for continued development of yandex.ru isn’t clear. But since the eponymous portal page hosts media products that Yandex is in the process of selling it could augur a more material shift linked to the deal. Back in April, the Russian tech giant agreed to sell its two media products, News and Zen, to local social media giant, VK. We understand final sign-off on the deal terms is expected early next month. As we’ve reported before, it’s not clear how the operational terms of the deal will finally shake out — given how embedded the media products are on yandex.ru. Yandex also agreed to a corporate restructuring in 2019 that increased Kremlin control over the business. And given the key role the yandex.ru homepage plays in amplifying Kremlin propaganda domestically — as a result of the embedded News aggregator which, per state internet rules, is only able to link to licensed media sources, thereby allowing Putin’s regime to use legal strictures to shape the domestic online news narrative — it’s possible to envisage the regime applying conditions to the sale. Speaking to TechCrunch back in April, Grigory Bakunov, a former deputy CTO at Yandex recounted how engineers at the company previously considered shuttering the News product as the Kremlin sought to increase its control over the online news narrative — but, ultimately, missed their opportunity to kill the product before the state completed a ‘virtual takeover’ of the algorithmic feed, in 2017, when it passed a law that news aggregators could only use state-approved sites as sources. |
| WhatsApp now lets you hide your profile picture and ‘Last seen’ status from specific people Posted: 17 Jun 2022 07:52 AM PDT WhatsApp announced this week that it’s rolling out the ability for users to select who from their contact list can see their profile photo, about and “Last seen” status. Prior to the official launch, the new privacy setting was available to select users as part of a limited beta. Up until now, users had three privacy options to choose from to decide who could see their profile photo, about and Last seen status. The options were: everyone, my contacts and nobody. Now, there’s a fourth option titled “My contacts except…” With this new option, you can exclude specific people in your contacts from seeing your profile photo, about and Last seen status. It’s worth noting that if you choose to hide your Last seen status from others, you won’t be able to see theirs either.
The new privacy option is now rolling out to all iPhone and Android users around the globe. You can access them by navigating to the privacy section in your account settings. WhatsApp announced this week that it’s also rolling out new features for group calls. Most notably, the app now lets you mute or message specific people on a call. The app has also added a new helpful indicator to make it easier for users to see when more people join large calls. The launch of these new features comes as WhatsApp announced earlier this week that it was adding the ability for users to transfer their conversation chat history, photos, videos and voice messages from Android to iPhone via Apple's Move to iOS app. Prior to this expansion, users only had the option to transfer chats from iPhone to Android. The ability to transfer WhatsApp data from Android to iPhone is rolling out now in beta. Although it's been easy to transfer WhatsApp data from one iPhone to another, or from one Android to another, users have had to find difficult workarounds when moving from Android to iPhone. The new tool will solve this problem and make it a lot easier to make the switch. |
| Could this ‘quiet company’ kick open the IPO window? Posted: 17 Jun 2022 07:30 AM PDT Earlier this month, The Exchange took a look at quieter companies that have been growing consistently before, during and after the 2021 venture capital peak. The startups and unicorns that didn’t raise at 50x or 100x ARR last year may be the companies most ready to kick open the IPO window at some point in the future. Quite a number of you were enthused by the coverage of less-flashy private tech companies, so we’re taking another look at this startup cohort this morning. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on TechCrunch+ or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday. To further our conversation, I spoke with Derek Ting, the CEO of TextNow, which crossed $100 million in annual revenue — not merely in run-rate fashion — and has a very interesting venture capital history. We’ll also go over how to open the IPO window when the market stops falling by full percentage points every day. Turning the clock back, you may recall that this column once had a regular series of posts looking at private companies that had reached the $100 million ARR threshold. We got bored of the topic after a number of cycles, as it turned out that most former startups that reached nine figures of revenue wound up looking and sounding rather like one another.
What’s TextNow and how’s it doing?TextNow is a consumer phone and text service that offers a zero-cost service with advertising and various tiers that do not include ads. TechCrunch first covered the company back in 2011, when it raised around $1 million. The company has now raised around $1.5 million in total — that is not a typo; we did not mean to type billion. The Exchange last mentioned TextNow last year when it reached a $100 million annual run-rate. Per the company, it closed out 2020 with $62 million in total revenue and $103 million in 2021. That puts TextNow far above the $100 million run-rate mark today, and as it has hired a CFO, is an IPO candidate as soon as the market welcomes such transactions again. How did TextNow not need to raise several hundred million dollars?We wanted to learn how TextNow had done what seems nearly impossible for most venture-backed companies — grow to public-market scale without the need to raise and spend tectonic sums of money. Per Ting, the answer is somewhat pedestrian. He said that TextNow focused on unit economics ahead of scaling, adding that the more that the company grew, the less it needed external capital. |
| Canada sunsets its COVID Alert app based on the iOS and Android exposure notification API Posted: 17 Jun 2022 07:29 AM PDT The government of Canada today announced that it is ending use of the app it commissioned based on the COVID-19 exposure alert API developed jointly by Google and Apple as a measure to help combat the spread of the illness. The system is disabled immediately, according to a government alert, which also advises users to delete the COVID Alert app from their devices. As to why it’s ending the program, the release indicates that it’s tied to a significant drop in PCR testing in the country, which is resulting in very few one-time keys being issued to patients for use in the app, so usage has apparently slowed to a trickle. Canada implemented the COVID Alert app in July 2020, and Health Canada says that since then it’s been downloaded by 6.9 million people, and provided notifications of exposures on behalf of 57,000 people who tested positive and entered their one-time key into the app. The COVID Alert app was developed in part by engineers at Shopify, with security review by BlackBerry, working in collaboration with provincial and federal government resources. Meanwhile, in Ontario, the health system is seeing record demand — mostly due to spin-off effects from COVID, including staff outages, rather than COVID cases themselves. Wastewater data (the best source of infection info since most at-scale PCR testing programs have been suspended) from Ontario also indicates a rise in COVID cases in the province over the past couple of weeks. |
| This feels like a SoftBank deal from 4 years ago Posted: 17 Jun 2022 07:00 AM PDT Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Equity is back in the saddle this week, with Mary Ann and Alex and Grace powering through a busy week’s news. And while much of the news in startup land is a bit lacking these days — you may have noticed a sentiment shift on Twitter! — we did find some good tidings as well. Here’s the rundown:
And that is a wrap! We will chat you all next week! Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts |
| We turned our investors into our best source of customer feedback Posted: 17 Jun 2022 06:30 AM PDT When my co-founders and I started Equi, we each committed to putting 80% of our liquid net worth into the investment platform we were building. It made sense because we had initially built the product for ourselves. We knew what investment strategies would yield the best returns on our savings, but without $100 million in the bank and a family office to manage the funds, leveraging these strategies was impossible. We also quickly learned that the major banks and private wealth advisers really didn't have much when it came to great alternative investments. They all had the same big brand names, but they didn't deliver the performance to back it up. Our current target customers are “accredited investors,” who represent about 10% of households in the U.S. These investors also represented 100% of the institutional and angel investors we were in conversations with when we went out to raise our seed round earlier this year. Since our future business partners also fit in our target customer demographic, we asked ourselves: What if we required our investors to take the same bet on our product that we did? We were inspired by Vanguard, which pioneered the model of collective ownership to drive lower expenses for their funds. They chose to raise money from their customers so they could be owned by their founders, employees and customers rather than taking capital from passive investors. Vanguard successfully aligned incentives between their shareholders and customers, and we decided to do the same. Our “Customer Pledge” is a commitment to invest personal capital on the platform now or within the next two years. Our $10 million seed round closed with hundreds of investors on the cap table. Partners at funds like Foundation Capital, Hustle Fund, Montage Ventures, F7 Ventures, Gaingels and Calm Ventures, as well as over 100 angel investors, took our Customer Pledge. While we could've closed the round with a fraction of these many investors, we decided to take smaller checks from a greater number of people to gather as much feedback and input as possible. We also reserved 25% of our fundraise for groups underrepresented in VC, so that input would be diverse and varied. This paid off. Our shareholders showed an unparalleled level of engagement. They've been through the onboarding experience, they've used our product dashboards, they've received our marketing emails, and they've interacted with our customer support. Because they're technology leaders — and many previously built or ran successful companies of their own — their feedback has been even more invaluable than I anticipated. Not only can they identify and clearly articulate issues, but they can also use their expertise to proactively brainstorm solutions and solve problems. |
| How to use human-centered AI with Forethought and NEA Posted: 17 Jun 2022 06:26 AM PDT Deon Nicholas is the CEO and co-founder of Forethought, the AI company whose mission is to transform customer experiences with human-centered AI. Forethought has raised over $100 million in venture capital, including from NEA, which led Forethought's $9.52 million Series A. Hear from NEA's Vanessa Larco on what convinced the firm to invest in Forethought, and see Forethought's early pitch deck that promised to up-end the customer service industry. This event opens on June 29 at 11:30 a.m. PDT/2:30 p.m. EDT with networking and pitch-practice submissions. The interview begins at 12 p.m. PDT followed by the TCL Pitch Practice at 12:30 p.m. PDT. Register here for free. TechCrunch Live records weekly on Wednesdays at 11:30 a.m. PDT/2:30 p.m. EDT. Join us! Click here to register for free and gain access to Forethought’s pitch deck, enter the pitch-practice session and access the livestream, where you can ask the speakers questions. |
| FDA clears COVID-19 vaccines for children under 5 Posted: 17 Jun 2022 06:19 AM PDT The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized use of the COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and BioNTech, and from Moderna, for kids between six months and five years of age. The FDA’s decision follows a lengthy review process, and the dosage for children under five is greatly reduced relative to those for older children and adults. While Pfizer’s vaccine was previously authorized in the U.S. for people five and up, Moderna’s inoculation was limited to those aged 18 or above. The new authorization clears use of Moderna for children aged six months to 17 years. This isn’t the final step before inoculation programs begin for the new age groups: The Centers for Disease Control will offer additional guidance and a recommendation, which is a step not strictly required, but usually followed, by doctors and pharmacists who perform the inoculations. Still, vaccinations for those under five in the U.S. could begin rolling out as soon as Monday. The FDA’s decision is based on tests of more than 4,526 volunteer participants, while Moderna’s is based on a study involving over 6,300 children. |
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