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Tesla keeps slashing prices, this time by as much as 20%

Kirsten Korosec

Tesla has once again lowered prices of its EVs — this time for U.S. buyers — as the automaker scrambles to shore up demand. This is at least the fourth time the automaker has discounted its vehicles, or offered credits, in the past several months. The price reduction trend kicked off in October when in China up to 9% on the Model 3 and Model Y. Earlier this month, Tesla again, this time by nearly 14%. The company has also tried to woo U.S. and Canadian buyers with price reductions. Tesla in early December offered U.S. buyers a toward a Model Y or Model 3 if they had their vehicle delivered in December 2022. In the last week of the year, the automaker upped that discount to $7,500, according to the . Tesla has turned its attention once again to the U.S. market. The company updated its website last Thursday with new prices for U.S. buyers. The long-range Model Y crossover now starts at $52,990 (not including fees), a nearly 20% drop in price. This new, lower base price is important because it allows buyers to qualify for the $7,500 federal tax incentive. Only EVs priced below $55,000 qualify for the tax credit under new terms established in the Inflation Reduction Act that was signed into law last August. Tesla also reduced the price of its high-performance Model 3 sedan by 14%, to $53,990. Tesla’s oldest and most expensive vehicles, the Model S sedan and Model X, are also cheaper. Although the two vehicles are still far above the $55,000 cap. The price reductions come as Tesla faces more competition from legacy automakers, startups and, in China, giants like BYD.

Tesla invests $3.6B in two new Nevada factories to build Semis and cells

Rebecca Bellan

Tesla is investing $3.6 billion into expanding its existing gigafactory in Nevada. Confirming White House reports from earlier today, the it will build two new production facilities in the state — a 100-gigawatt-hour battery cell factory and Tesla’s first high-volume Semi truck factory. Taking up a combined 4 million square feet of space, the new factories will expand on Tesla’s existing Nevada gigafactory, which is home to Model 3 electric motors and battery packs, as well as Tesla’s energy storage products Powerwall and Powerpack. The facilities will be built east of Sparks at the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center. In December, of its long-delayed electric Semi during an event at the company’s gigafactory in Sparks, during which the first Semis were handed over to Pepsi, Tesla’s first Semi customer. The new factory is expected to deliver Semis at high volume. The new cell factory will produce Tesla’s 4680-type cylindrical lithium-ion battery cells with capacity to produce enough batteries for 2 million light-duty vehicles annually, the company said. The news comes a day before Tesla shares its fourth-quarter and full-year 2022 earnings, during which Tesla is expected to address , the effects of on margins and perhaps even claims that CEO Elon Musk has been distracted by his . Musk is also in the middle of a over his infamous 2018 “funding secured” tweet to take Tesla private, which did not end up happening. Tesla’s latest capital push in Nevada mirrors its $3.5 billion investment into its first gigafactory in Sparks in 2014. Since then, the company has invested a total of $6.2 billion in Nevada, building a 5.4-million-square-foot facility that has produced 3.6 million drive units, 1.5 million battery packs and 7.3 billion battery cells, according to Tesla. The company said the new facilities will add 3,000 jobs to the region. Tesla did not say when it intends to break ground on the new factories, nor when it expects to start production on cells and Semis. It’s likely that the cells produced there will go directly into Semis, since Musk had previously said supply chain challenges and limited availability of battery cells contributed to the multiple production delays of the truck. Musk had  an electric Class 8 truck prototype in 2017 and planned to start production in December 2019, but Tesla only managed to in October 2022.

Elon Musk admits Twitter has too many ads, says fix is coming

Darrell Etherington

Elon Musk continues to change things at a breakneck pace at Twitter, and on Saturday the still-CEO (I guess he hasn’t found anyone willing to take over yet?) seemed to address user complaints that ads are getting worse on the platform. Musk said that the social network would be “taking steps” to address what he acknowledged was too much frequency for ads displayed on Twitter, and also the ads themselves taking up too much space. Finally, Musk reiterated that there will also be a new, higher-priced subscription tier coming that will entirely remove ads. An option to pay to get rid of ads altogether has been something Twitter users have been expressing a desire for since at least the introduction of the original Twitter paid subscription, which provided a number of features to users but did nothing to change the rate at which they saw ads on the site. Musk previously tipped (in December) that there would be a fully ad-free higher tier subscription . At the time, Musk also said Blue subcribers at the existing rate would see half the ads of free users. Ads are too frequent on Twitter and too big. Taking steps to address both in coming weeks. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) Musk’s acknowledgement of the sorry state of ads on Twitter comes just after he oversaw the death of the network’s support for third-party clients. beginning last week, starting by suddenly revoking access for the largest clients, including Tweetbot and Twitterific, and then updated its developer guidelines earlier this week to fully cut off access for all such clients.

Capella Space launches defense-focused subsidiary as demand for satellite imagery soars

Aria Alamalhodaei

Satellite imagery startup Capella Space is establishing a subsidiary aimed at serving U.S. government customers, as it seeks to fulfill growing demand from intelligence and defense organizations for its synthetic aperture radar tech. Capella is no stranger to working with the government. The company was founded almost seven years ago, and in that time it has seen a huge response from government customers, CEO Payam Banazadeh said in a recent interview with TechCrunch. “What we found out is that there’s a huge demand for what we’ve already built on the government side and we actually have a very, almost perfectly aligned product market fit in the government sector,” he said. More recently, he added that Russia’s war with Ukraine has highlighted the utility of synthetic aperture radar in particular, which can capture images even in adverse weather and light conditions. The new subsidiary, , intends to cater to some of the government’s specialized requirements related to security and confidentiality. It will focus on existing products at first — the data and analytics — using Capella’s existing satellites in orbit, which are already serving government customers. But on a longer timeline, Banazadeh said the company plans to potentially modify its existing data products and satellites based on feedback it gets from customers. “We see significant demand on potentially operating satellites on behalf of the government or potentially even providing those satellites as a product themselves,” he said. Capella Federal will be headed by Eric Traupe, a retired United States Marine Infantry Officer who was previously a former assistant director of the CIA. Clayton Hutmacher, former operations director in the U.S. Special Operations Command, will serve as chairman of the Capella Federal Board. The company also added Robert P. Ashley Jr., former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), to its existing government advisory board. Capella is not the only space company to establish a subsidiary or business segment aimed at government; in recent weeks, SpaceX quietly announced the launch of Starshield, and Rocket Lab Rocket Lab National Security LLC for defense-related work. Working with the government is simply good business sense for space companies, Banazadeh said. “You can’t be a space company without having government as a big customer of yours,” he said. “One, it’s too big of an opportunity and too big of a problem set to ignore and two, some of the problems that they’re dealing with, especially now, space is a very important tool to solve those problems. So I don’t think you can be a sustainable space company and not have a strong line of business into the government.”

Big factories, big trucks and big Musk: Tesla Q4 earnings expectations

Rebecca Bellan

Tesla’s fourth-quarter and full-year 2022 earnings are upon us, and with it expectations from Wall Street for the electric vehicle maker to hit revenue for the quarter of $24.03 billion and adjusted earnings per share to land around $1.13, according to If Tesla hits that revenue estimate, it’ll mark a record for the company, but also the slowest pace of growth since mid-2020. As usual, Tesla will share its results Wednesday after market close, and management will discuss the earnings and answer analyst questions during a webcast that will he held at 5:30 p.m. ET. The automaker is closing out a tumultuous year in which its due to factors ranging from CEO Elon Musk’s distraction with Twitter to fears over slowing sales in a pandemic-affected China. Tesla is expected to address these concerns, as well as its recent and , during the call tomorrow. In fact, so much has happened over the last few months in Tesla-land that Dan Ives, a managing director at Wedbush Securities, the upcoming earnings call and guidance commentary will be “one of the most important moments in the history of Tesla and for Musk himself.” Before we dive into our expectations for the call, let’s note that Tesla shares closed Tuesday at $143.89, rallying more than 30% since earlier this month after shedding two-thirds of its value from April 2022. Musk doesn’t always join Tesla’s earnings calls — and is in fact currently busy in court over claims that he with his infamous 2018 “funding secured” tweet — but the CEO is expected to make an appearance tomorrow, if only to assuage investor fears that he’s not giving Tesla enough of his attention since taking over Twitter. The executive also went to trial in November to defend his after a shareholder filed suit to rescind the deal, which he said was given unjustly to Musk, a “part-time CEO.” During Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call, Musk promised Tesla would deliver an “epic end of year.” The automaker set record vehicle sales and deliveries, but still missed its own and Wall Street estimates. In part fueled by to Model Y and 3 vehicles in December, Tesla delivered in the fourth quarter. The street had expected anywhere from 420,000 to 425,000 units to be delivered. Analysts will likely question the company on its misses, as Q4 marked the third quarter in a row that the automaker to as many deliveries as it promised. Tesla might be called on to provide more realistic estimates for 2023. We might also see updated delivery and sales numbers for the fourth quarter when earnings are released. Earlier this month, of its long-range Model Y crossover (20% to $52,990) and Model 3 sedan (14% to $53,990) for U.S. buyers. The new, lower base price of the vehicles qualifies them for the $7,500 federal tax credit under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which was signed into law in August. Under the terms of the IRA, the threshold for electric sedans is $55,000 and for SUVs, pickup trucks and vans is $80,000. Tesla also lowered the prices of its Model S sedan and Model X, which are still too expensive to qualify for the EV tax credit. The most recent price slashes mark at least the fourth time the automaker has discounted its vehicles or offered credits in the past several months. in China up to 9% on the Model 3 and Model Y in October, reducing prices further by nearly 14% earlier this month. The company also issued first a for Model Y and 3s in the U.S. and Canada in early December, before kicking it up to $7,500 later in the month. Investors have not taken kindly to the price cuts, which they feared signaled a dip in demand for the iconic EVs. However, the price cuts seem to have in fact boosted demand for the vehicles. What investors will be hoping to gauge is whether the price cuts have cut too significantly into Tesla’s margins. It might be too early to have those answers, but Tesla will likely provide some guidance. Tesla announced Tuesday plans to invest , adding two new facilities dedicated to building battery cells and Tesla Semis. The automaker might discuss these plans further, such as when they hope to break ground on the facilities and start production. The automaker has said it has a multi-year plan to boost production by 50%, so analysts will want to hear about other new gigafactories. There have been reports that Tesla is planning a , and the company is getting close to a deal to build , as well. Tesla finally revealed in December its of the long-delayed electric Semi, handing over the first few of , which the company ordered back in 2017. A number of high-profile companies, including Anheuser-Busch, Pepsi, Walmart and UPS, also reserved Semis, so we might get some updates on production and when those companies can expect deliveries. Tesla’s Cybertruck has also suffered multiple delays, but Musk said in July that the company the truck toward the middle of this year. We’re expecting further updates on timing, as well as new features. In September, Musk said the Cybertruck would be “waterproof enough to .”

Google to ban unlicensed loan apps in Kenya as new rules take effect

Annie Njanja

Google’s new policy requiring digital lenders in Kenya to submit proof of license to operate in the East African country takes effect today. The policy aims to clamp down on rogue loan apps, which are pervasive in the country. This means that only providers with licenses from the country’s pinnacle bank, the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK), will be listed on Play Store, Google’s digital distribution service. Digital lenders whose applications are yet to get a green light from the CBK, and can produce evidence of the same, will also obtain Google’s interim approval, but it will only be valid for 45 days. Once this period elapses, the unlicensed providers will be required to resubmit the declaration form attesting that the approval from CBK is still pending. A Google spokesperson told TechCrunch that if the application for license is rejected during the 45 days, interim approval will be immediately rescinded. Google’s move to in Kenya comes in the wake of similar efforts in , Indonesia and Philippines, where the providers are also required to have requisite permits from authorities that regulate the financial services sector to be listed on Play Store. In Nigeria, Google requires the loan apps to have a “verifiable approval letter” from the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, which last year set rules that require loan apps to declare their fees and demonstrate how they receive feedback and solve complaints, among other requirements. Only 22 digital lenders, including Tala, a PayPal-backed loan app; Pezesha, a B2B embedded lending platform; and Jumo, a fintech providing financial services including lending, have so far been licensed, out of the 381 that applied as per CBK’s update yesterday. Kenya and Nigeria are major tech hubs in Africa, and have witnessed the proliferation of loan apps, offering quick unsecured personal or business loans. However, the lack of stringent regulations, and Google Play Store’s slack vetting process, have enabled the rise of rogue operators, necessitating authorities to take apt measures to protect citizens. In Kenya, Google’s new policy follows a new regulatory environment that requires digital lenders to avoid the use of threats or debt-shaming tactics, including the posting of personal information on online forums, unauthorized calls and messages to customers, and access to their contact lists for purposes of coercion in case of default. Loan apps collect borrowers’ phone data, including contacts, and demand access to messages to check the history of mobile money transactions — for credit scoring and as conditions for disbursing loans. Rogue lenders have been sharing some of the contact information with third-party debt collectors without prior consent. As per Kenyan law, loan apps must reveal their pricing model, and disclose all the terms and charges to customers in advance, and are expected to notify the regulator before introducing new products or making changes to existing ones. They are further required to disclose their source of funds, and provide evidence of the same, as confirmation that they are not engaging in financial crimes like money laundering.

Quantum sensing startup Q-CTRL raises another $27.4M

Kate Park

Guardz emerges from stealth with $10M for SMB security and cyber insurance to protect against attack-as-a-service breaches

Ingrid Lunden

Small and medium businesses have become a growing target for malicious online hackers in recent years, currently accounting for between and of all security breaches and some $7 billion annually in related losses, according to different estimates. Today, a startup called is emerging from stealth with a two-part offering aimed at protecting them: a SaaS-based set of low-code security tools designed for businesses using cloud services, designed to be implemented without any specific security or advanced technical expertise; and insurance to help cover organizations in cases where something is disrupted. The startup is launching initially in the U.S., and along with that, it’s announcing $10 million in funding. The funding, meanwhile, is coming in the form of a seed round, led by Hanaco Ventures, with iAngels, GKFF Ventures and cybersecurity investor Cyverse Capital also participating. Guardz is not disclosing valuation at this stage. Co-founders Dor Eisner (CEO) and Alon Lavi (the CTO) have decades of security experience between them, starting with years working on intelligence in Israel’s defense forces. A lot of work in cybersecurity tends to be focused either on enterprises — large organizations with a lot to lose in security breaches — and individual consumers, who have had a number of antivirus and other security software designed to target their specific use cases. Enterprise security was very much where both Eisner and Lavi were working prior to founding Guardz. Eisner tells me he started to think about the challenges for SMBs in particular through his work at Rapid7, where he was doing a lot of research into what was happening on the Dark Web. “As we started to look at the Dark Web we were first looking for what was being built and sold to attack enterprises,” he recalled. But what they found, he said, was something else: a set of tools being sold to hackers to “spray and pray” — level large amounts of cyberattacks against a wider set of smaller targets, SMBs, that were typically not set up to protect themselves against this. Eisner refers to this class of “software,” if you can call it that, as “Attack As A Service.” AaaS essentially “weaponizes” the SaaS model, in Eisner’s words. AaaS “products” are essentially sold online on the dark web to malicious hackers who want to target cloud-based organizations: they buy and use the services online, on demand, as normal businesses might buy and use legitimate SaaS products. “You don’t need to build complicated products to target SMBs. You just use the AaaS tools,” he said. SMBs are relatively easy, low-hanging fruit for malicious hackers these days. “SMBs just don’t have the budget or expertise to understand what to protect. In the last year, we’ve seen a big spike in these attacks and the usage of AaaS.” Looking at and understanding what AaaS-based attacks are aiming to breach — primarily perimeters and clould-based data — is the basis of Guardz’s security tools. Alongside this, it’s partnering with insurance companies to provide cyber insurance to its customers. For now, Guardz is not disclosing who its insurance partners are and is instead selling the insurance as a white-label service. The coupling of insurance with cybersecurity products is becoming more commonplace these days. Others that are building similar products together include , which launched in 2021 and also targets SMBs; , which raised $100 million last year and also targets SMBs; out of France; , backed by Microsoft; and , which now has a whopping $5 billion valuation. Their rise in part comes from the fact that, even with all the precautions in the world, the pace of malicious hacking, and the fallibility of humans is such that, an organization can still face a breach and lose valuable data or more as a result of malicious activity — let alone face legal action by partners or customers as a result. But it’s also an opportunity because in many cases organizations are finding that they are not meeting certain requirements to get competitive insurance rates, or in some situations get insured at all: selling cyberinsurance policies along with the tools that the insurer approves to secure those IT assets becomes a logical way of packaging everything together. But Eisner emphasized to me that he very much sees Guardz as a cybersecurity company — not an insuretech — and so it does not have plans to build its own insurance products, but will continue working with third parties to provide these to their customers in bundles. “With the rise of Attacks-as-a-Service, the ongoing shortage of cyber talent, and the increasingly lucrative nature of targeting smaller businesses, the market is well-primed for a holistic cyber solution that addresses the unique challenges and imminent threats facing these companies,” said Alon Lifshitz, founding partner at Hanaco Ventures, in a statement. “We are excited to take part in Guardz’s journey as it makes headway in addressing and alleviating the crisis of high cyber vulnerability for small businesses everywhere.” “The rise and democratization of ransomware and phishing attacks is hurting SMBs the most as they are currently the least protected, making this a huge and entirely underserved market,” added Shelly Hod Moyal, founding partner of iAngels. “With their first-hand experience building and commercializing successful cyber products, Dor Eisner and Alon Lavi are perfectly positioned to lead Guardz’s one-stop-cyber-shop for small businesses. We’re excited to partner with the Guardz team as they work to empower SMBs with the necessary tools to protect themselves.”

Southeast Asia farm-to-table startup Secai Marche raises Series A

Catherine Shu

, a farm-to-table fulfillment platform serving farmers in Japan and Southeast Asia, announced today it has raised 210 million Japanese yen (about $1.6 million USD) in Series A funding. The round included participation from venture capital firm The Agribusiness Investment and Consultation Co., Spiral Ventures Asia Fund I and Beyond Next Ventures. This brings the startup’s total raised so far to $4.5 million. TechCrunch last covered Secai Marche when it . Since its seed funding, Secai Marche has built out its warehouse management and fulfillment system for perishables and established a cold supply chain from farm to end-users that covers more than 300 farmers. Founder Ami Sugiyama told TechCrunch that by optimizing its supply chain and minimizing lead time for deliveries, Secai Marche is able to maintain a wastage rate of less than 1%. Sugiyama said that the food service distribution industry in Southeast Asia is very large but highly fragmented and inefficient. Secai Marche helps smooth bumps along the F&B supply chain with its in-house software, like a warehouse management system and demand forecast for perishable items. Over 4,000 items are available on the platform from farmers in Southeast Asia and Japan, including vegetables, fruit, eggs and seafood. They sell to more than 500 retailers and HORECA (hotels, restaurants and catering) customers. Other farm-to-table startups in Southeast Asia that have raised funding over the last few years include , and . Secai Marche strives to differentiate from other farm products wholesale platforms by providing an end-to-end fulfillment solution open to all farmers, which means it carries a wider variety of products, and providing more transparency. The funding will be used to develop Secai Marche’s demand forecast system and optimize truck routing as it expands its service areas.

Finley closes $17M to turn 100-page debt capital agreements into software-managed code

Christine Hall

As , some startups turned to private credit, including debt capital, as a way to supplement their operations in the meantime. However, the policies and procedures paperwork that goes with these deals aren’t always easy to understand. CEO Jeremy Tsui told TechCrunch that and accounts for 90% of all corporate debt in the middle-market. However, while working in debt capital at Goldman Sachs, he witnessed two things: private credit, or lending by non-bank parties, filling the gap for banks making fewer corporate loans, and then companies finding it challenging to understand the hundreds of pages in their agreements. “With consumer credit, we’ve seen a lot of innovation, but business credit or business lending has really been stuck in the past,” he said. That’s when he came together with his brother, Josiah Tsui, and friend Kevin Suh in 2020 to create Finley, a software company that helps clients manage their private credit loans, turning hundreds of pages of documents into digestible bites, including storing key dates, so that companies taking these kinds of loans can more easily comply with the loan terms and reporting requirements. Finley and has now closed on $17 million in Series A capital after spending the past two years focused on building its product and hitting a few key revenue and product milestones, Tsui said. CRV led the round, and as part of the investment, James Green, general partner at CRV, will join Finley’s board. Green told TechCrunch he met Tsui and his co-founders in 2021 after they had just come out of Y Combinator and raised the seed round. What Finley was doing is similar to other investments the firm has made, including Mercury and Jeeves. He said interest in debt capital has grown, even among non-technology companies. Finley’s debt capital management dashboard. Finley “The reality is with interest rates rising and cost of capital increasing, the requirements for debt have become more challenging, and there’s still plenty of it,” Green said. “But among the covenants and the warrants and documentation, the reporting is all much more complicated than it was when capital was much cheaper three years ago.” Joining CRV in the round are existing investors Bain Capital Ventures, Haystack, Y Combinator, Nine Four Ventures and specialty lender Upper90. Finley is working with companies like Ramp, Parafin and TripActions to manage hundreds of millions of dollars in debt capital and tasks like credit agreement digitization to fund disbursement to portfolio analysis. “Finley is helping us manage our $300 million credit facility with Goldman Sachs,” said Loraine Tang, vice president of tax and treasury at TripActions, in a written statement. “There are many compliance, reporting, and optimization tasks to coordinate in order to make the most of our funding. Finley’s software helps coordinate these tasks by pulling in data from across our systems and streamlining many aspects of debt capital management for this facility.” Meanwhile, the new funding will go to expanding into new verticals, hiring across the board and into new software offerings for debt capital providers and lenders, Jeremy Tsui said. In addition, the company doubled its headcount in the last year to 18. Tsui declined to disclose hard revenue figures or valuation, but said last year the company grew revenue five times, was able to save one to two finance headcount for the average customer and unlocked access to capital that companies didn’t have beforehand. “Having access to capital can be the difference between stagnation and growth,” he added. “We work closely with CFOs to make sure that they’re not only securing the loan, but do the reporting and compliance so they can maintain access to those loans.”

Labor officials found that Apple execs infringed on workers’ rights

Amanda Silberling

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found merit to complaints that high-level executives at Apple violated national labor law. This finding comes after the NLRB also found that Apple illegally interfered with labor organizing at retail stores in and . These charges were filed by , a former senior engineer program manager at Apple. In an email to TechCrunch, Gjøvik explained that Apple employment policies “coercively silence Apple employees and chill them from engaging in protected activity through over-broad and vague terms, as well as through an implication of constant surveillance.” Gjøvik submitted a number of documents as part of her NLRB complaint, including an email from CEO Tim Cook. After a journalist an Apple all-hands meeting in September 2021, Cook sent a memo to staff expressing frustration about leaks to the media. “I want to reassure you that we are doing everything in our power to identify those who leaked. As you know, we do not tolerate disclosures of confidential information, whether it’s product IP or the details of a confidential meeting,” Cook wrote. “We know that the leakers constitute a small number of people. We also know that people who leak confidential information do not belong here.” A representative from the NLRB told TechCrunch that work rules, handbook rules and confidentiality rules at Apple “tend to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of their right to protected concerted activity,” according to these findings. Per labor law, this “ ” activity refers to actions like speaking to the media or openly talking with co-workers about pay and benefits, among other things. It is illegal for employers to threaten or question employees about their participation in these behaviors. “Apple was pressuring employees to upload their ‘faceprint data’ to Apple internal servers, capturing secret photographs and videos of employees, and told employees that face-related logs were automatically uploaded from their iPhones daily,” Gjøvik alleged at the time. She added that it was not clear what data of hers was being uploaded, and what organizations within the corporate Apple structure could access her personal information. As , Apple employees are often systematically prevented from maintaining separate work and personal cellphones and Apple IDs. Gjøvik was fired by Apple in September 2021 for leaking confidential information; she told TechCrunch that she thinks she was fired in retaliation after that her office was built on the of , where cracks in the floor exposed employees to carcinogenic fumes. The NLRB has not yet made a decision regarding Gjøvik’s complaints that she was illegally fired in retaliation for speaking out about work conditions.

AV company Aurora hires president ahead of commercial launch

Kirsten Korosec

Aurora Innovation said Monday it has hired Ossa Fisher as president as the autonomous vehicle company prepares to commercially launch its self-driving trucks business next year. The company said Fisher, who was most recently president and chief operating officer of education tech company Istation, will be based in Dallas. Aurora is headquartered in Pittsburgh and has offices in San Francisco and Mountain View, but its self-driving truck testing and operations is in the Dallas area. Aurora Innovation was founded in 2017 by Sterling Anderson, Drew Bagnell and Chris Urmson — three veterans of the nascent autonomous vehicle technology world who previously worked at Tesla, Uber and the Google self-driving project (now Waymo), respectively. Urmson is CEO, Anderson is chief product officer and Bagnell is chief scientist. Fisher’s experience building up and running a commercial business will balance out the more technical backgrounds of Aurora’s three founders, according to a company spokesperson. The hiring comes about a year ahead of the company’s planned commercial launch by the end of 2024. Aurora does have a number of pilot programs with customers like , Schneider and Uber Freight, all of which are “paying.”  However, Aurora doesn’t recognize this as commercial revenue; instead, those pilot program payments are used to offset the company’s R&D expenses. It does report “collaboration revenue,” each quarter as part of its partnership with Toyota. Aurora Innovation said in November it to continue to develop its autonomous vehicle technology until its commercial launch.The company closed the third quarter with about $1.2 billion in cash and short-term investments. The company is expected to report its fourth-quarter earnings February 15.

Google parent Alphabet cuts 6% of its workforce, impacting 12,000 people

Paul Sawers

Alphabet, parent holding company of Google, has announced that it’s cutting around 6% of its global workforce. In an published by Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, the narrative followed a similar trajectory to that of other companies that have downsized in recent months, noting that the company had “hired for a different economic reality” than what it’s up against today. Put simply, it had bolstered its workforce during the pandemic-driven digital boom times, but it’s now having to reverse course as the world curtails its spending in the face of economic headwinds. “We’ve undertaken a rigorous review across product areas and functions to ensure that our people and roles are aligned with our highest priorities as a company,” Pichai wrote, adding that the layoffs will impact units across Alphabet, not just Google, and that all regions and product areas will be affected. The news means that four out of the five so-called “ ” firms have now announced significant redundancies in the past few months, with Apple the only one of the big-five U.S. tech giants not to announce layoffs as of yet. Indeed, earlier this week, Microsoft  , affecting nearly 5% of its workforce, which followed , or 1.2% of its global headcount. Facebook’s parent Meta, meanwhile, back in November, hitting 13% of its workforce. Other tech giants to announce significant layoffs in recent times include enterprise software giant Salesforce, which confirmed that it was at the turn of the year, impacting more than 7,000 employees. It’s worth noting that Alphabet hasn’t been impervious to downsizing before now. Its robot software offshoot Intrinsic announced it was last week, equating to 20% of its headcount, while its life sciences subsidiary Verily by 15%, representing around 240 people. But today’s announcement will see roughly 12,000 roles worldwide at the company disappear. In terms of severance, what Alphabet is offering U.S. employees seems decent at first glance. The company said that packages will “start at” 16 weeks’ salary, plus an additional two weeks for every year worked, while they will be paid in full for the entire notification period, which is a minimum of 60 days. Moreover, it committed to paying all outstanding 2022 bonuses and unused vacation time, with six months’ healthcare and additional support services available. Outside the U.S., Pichai simply said that the company would “support employees in line with local practices.” Despite the layoffs, Pichai was keen to put a positive spin on events, saying that good things can emerge from difficult times. “As an almost 25-year-old company, we’re bound to go through difficult economic cycles,” he wrote. “These are important moments to sharpen our focus, reengineer our cost base, and direct our talent and capital to our highest priorities.”

Backed by Elevation Capital, Profit.co helps companies execute OKRs

Catherine Shu

Developed by Andy Grove at Intel in the 1970s, OKR is now one of the most popular management methodologies. OKR, which stands for “objectives and key results,” helps companies achieve goals, including financial and operational targets. At places with a lot of employees, however, it can be hard to make sure everyone is on the same page. wants to keep teams connected with a platform that helps businesses visualize OKR planning, review and execution. Headquartered in Fremont, California, with offices in Singapore, India and Japan, Profit.co announced today it has raised $11 million led by Elevation Capital. The company says it has grown nine times in annual recurring revenue over the past two years. Profit.co’s SaaS platform is used by more than 1,100 customers in 25 countries, including Deckers Brand, Sandvik, Deriv, Singapore’s Open Government and Phoenix Rescue Mission. Before founding Profit.co in 2018, CEO Bastin Gerald worked at companies ranging from startups like Cashedge and Apptivo to large enterprises like Oracle. During his career, Gerald encountered different ways of managing and implementing strategies for businesses and clients. He told TechCrunch that businesses of all sizes were eager to adopt methods and products to track their priorities, but had trouble implementing them. While working at Apptivo, Gerald created an implementation model that he realized had the potential to reach a wider audience. This grew into Profit.co. Companies often use spreadsheets, presentation slides and non-OKR-focused project management software to execute their OKRs, but that makes it harder for businesses to keep up with their plans as they grow and add employees. It also means team members and leaders have trouble seeing exactly how much work other teams are putting into projects. Other OKR platforms include Microsoft’s Ally.io, Workboard and Gtmhub, but Gerald said Profit.co differentiates by using the PEEL (plan, execute, engage and learn) method for its five key modules. The first is the strategy module, which helps businesses create a one- to five-year high-level plan. Then the tasks module lets them manage daily tasks, while the OKR module, which supports meetings, bridges the gap between long-term strategies and daily tasks. The final two modules are focused on individual performance: the employee development module includes employee performance assessment and improvement, while the employee engagement module lets them report and get recognized for their accomplishments (a gifting platform will be added to it next month). Profit.co integrates with Slack, Jira, Salesforce, HubSpot and Oracle, and while OKR is its default methodology, it can also be used with other ones, including SMT. Most of its customers have at least 100 employees, and come from a wide range of sectors, including financial services, telecom, manufacturing, retail, tech and government organizations. Examples of how companies have used the platform include REHAU, a polymer business with more than 20,000 employees that started Profit.co when it began adopting OKRs. Profit.co helped it increase transparency among employees in different departments. Another is online trading platform Deriv, which used Profit.co to keep teams updated on each other’s targets and progress while scaling up to 1,000 employees in 50 countries. Profit.co monetizes by charging per user and also offers coaching and consulting services for businesses working on large-scale transformation projects. Part of its funding will be used on product development, including adding 30 new product categories. In a statement about the funding, Elevation Capital principal Akarsh Shrivastava said, “As teams within organizations become more niche with time, it becomes imperative for business leaders to have a reliable and comprehensive view of whether targets are being met. Profit.co is superbly filling this gap through a combination of deep technical knowledge and a sharp understanding of organizational needs.”

Area 120, Google’s in-house incubator, severely impacted by Alphabet mass layoffs

Kyle Wiggers

, the Google in-house incubator responsible for products such as , , and , has been significantly affected by broader layoffs at Google parent company Alphabet. A spokesperson tells TechCrunch via email that the majority of the Area 120 team has been “winded down,” and that only three projects from the division will graduate later this year into core Google product areas. The spokesperson wouldn’t say which specific projects were being shuttered or graduating. Previously, Area 120 was incubating pilots like the workplace video platform , spectrum marketplace  ,  and more. At any given time, it usually had around 20 projects underway, though not all of them were made public. A source familiar with the matter tells TechCrunch that Aloud, which is developing a platform video creators can use to quickly dub videos, is one of the projects staying. Given the clear synergy such an app might have with Google products like YouTube, it makes sense. “Employees in the U.S. who were affected have been notified [of layoffs at Area 120], but in other countries this process will take longer, and is subject to local laws and practices,” the spokesperson added. “Our managing partner of Area remains at the company.” Area 120 was created by Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai in March 2016 with the goal of creating experimental apps and services that could be later folded into established profit drivers.  ( ( Area 120 underwent a reorg in 2021 that saw the group moved into a new division led by Clay Bavor, where it lived alongside other forward-looking efforts at Google having to do with augmented reality, virtual reality and . Then came cuts. Last September, Google half the projects at Area 120 and majorly reduced the program’s staffing. A source previously told TechCrunch that Area 120 had fewer than 100 employees after the previous round of cuts. Google declined to confirm the number.

Burned by layoffs, tech workers are rethinking risk

Natasha Mascarenhas

as it used to be. Rocket ships are being unveiled as sputtering messes, mission-driven startups don’t feel so mission oriented when responding to investor pressure, and widespread offer a loud reminder that jobs are breakable contracts not sacrosanct vows. Over the past few months, thousands of employees from , , , , and countless other companies that don’t have the privilege of being household names are back on the job market. A job market that includes hiring freezes, salary cuts and a general malaise that industry experts warn won’t be over this year. So where does tech’s talent go from here? The answer is complicated, and it’s too early to have definitive labor data. before , top MBA programs want laid-off workers to join , and the tech companies that are in a position to hire TechCrunch spoke to laid-off employees about how they’re approaching their careers differently in 2023. Pseudonyms have been used in cases where names are included to protect current and future employment prospects, per the requests of the individuals quoted. The common thread between all the answers includes a reframing of how “safe” it is to work in tech, and, perhaps more importantly, what it takes to jump back into the sector after getting burned. Aaliyah was laid off from her tech job in the spring. Just one month earlier, she had a positive review with her boss and was promised a raise with more stock options. The layoff thus came as a surprise. And unlike some of her colleagues, who put their names in spreadsheets and jumped back into the job hunt, Aaliyah took a few weeks to think. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay in tech. I wasn’t sure I wanted to work for anyone,” she said. “I had to make a decision in terms of what I want my day-to-day life to look like financially. Am I going to hustle or do I just want to take what falls into my lap?” she said on the phone. “After a couple of weeks, I felt like I’m ready to take more control back as opposed to just letting people kind of sway me one way or another.” Currently, Aaliyah works two full-time tech jobs — neither company knows — and she runs a consultancy business on the side. While many people work multiple jobs to make ends meet, the opportunity to work multiple full-time jobs in tech has been amplified by remote work and layoffs. In fact, over 39,000 people are in the Discord community, which is self-described “as a community of professionals looking to work two remote jobs, earn extra income, and achieve financial freedom. Be free from office politics and layoffs.” “Never again am I going to put myself into a position where I’m dependent on one stream of income from one company that may or may not do what’s in my interest,” Aaliyah said. “They’re gonna do what they want, and I’m going to do what’s mine.” It’s also a hedge against the bias she says she faces as a Black woman in tech. “As a Black woman, sometimes I feel slighted by being overlooked and not feeling like anyone thinks I’m capable of doing more,” she said. “So you may not have thought that I was capable of doing a lot more but I actually do — and you don’t know what’s in my bank account.” Some see over-employment as their next step, while others are still reflecting on how their job title evolves in this new environment. Sam has noticed an odd pattern in his work. He’s been the second finance hire, twice, by two venture-backed startups. And he’s been laid off by both of those companies over the past year. “It’s been odd, because I chose accounting and finance as my major back in undergrad 15 years ago because I was told it was the backbone of business, that they needed it in order for a business to function,” Sam said. He turned to mentors in the space and says that “their first reaction is that typically finance isn’t a function that is affected in these layoffs.” While the tech worker says that “accounting is an afterthought in tech,” the reality is a bit more complicated. While it seems that every other chief executive attributes “a need to be more disciplined” as a reason for conducting company-wide layoffs, even a strong financial runway isn’t enough to keep people hired. In Sam’s case, he was first let go by a Series B software-as-a-service product after a funding round fell through, so he began looking for new jobs that promised more financial stability. He eventually began interviewing with a number of companies and ended up choosing an edtech marketplace that had promised they had a large cash position from a recent fundraising spree. Then, when that company laid him off, he realized that good books aren’t enough to justify job stability. Today, Sam is doing part-time work, which he set up when he began hearing rumors of the second round of layoffs, and interviewing for full-time gigs. There’s a clash between what he wants, which is a stable, reliable job, and what he naturally cares about as someone who has spent time working in scrappy startups on small teams. “It’s kind of a dilemma I have right now, where I’m going through every process with a company that is much healthier on their bottom line, they have 401(K) match … If an offer ever does come from [those] companies, can I bring myself around enough to be interested? It’s hard to know what you care about.” He’s still frustrated over losing his job at the edtech company. “They’re out here building an edtech marketplace. And here I am, with all of the experience and skills and knowledge to help the company do that and I won’t be able to see that through,” he said. “I felt like it’s their missed opportunity. That’s what I still like struggle with.” Not long before Mary was fired from an HR tech company, she was given an award that recognized her contributions to the team. The trophy was still being engraved with her name when she got the call, just weeks later, that her job had been terminated due to the macroeconomic climate. Even worse, it was the second time this company laid her off. The first time, Mary reflects, was in March 2020 when “the world was falling apart.” “It didn’t feel like corporate irresponsibility or anything; it was just like, everything is on fire and we’re so sorry,” she said. “Then a few months later, they called me back, saying that things are not as bad as we thought.” Because the job market was tough — and she didn’t sense any poor management issues — she rejoined, got a small raise, her equity was reinstated, and so the job continued for the next two years, until she was laid off again this summer. Mary went back on the job hunt again, this time ending up at a venture-backed early-stage startup. Then, a few weeks into the job, she got laid off. This time, it stung even more — because this was the first job where she earned a six-figure salary since joining the tech world years ago. “I had just broken six figures and I had that for only five weeks,” Mary said. “I was really excited to max out my 401(k) and now I’m thinking I should have kept that extra two grand in cash.” Right now, she has five weeks of pay and one month of Cobra healthcare insurance, and plans to sign up for Medicaid. “Not everybody is walking away with a year’s worth of runway in their pocket,” Mary said. “When people had really high salaries and enjoyed really high salaries for the majority of their career — they assume other people have personal savings to guard against this […] but life is really expensive.” Despite being burned, Mary isn’t leaving the tech world because she’s inspired by “the incredibly bright, talented, capable people who are just trying to build something.” This year, she plans to ask her network for help with the job hunt, adding that no one is looking at cold job applications while Stripe and Twitter talent is getting laid off. She plans to be direct. “It’s a question of how profitable is enough?” she said at one point during the interview. “When is it enough to sustain your workforce — what math is happening here?” But she also is aware that, ultimately, what happened to her over the past twelve months may happen again. “You can ask all the right questions, you can do all the research, you can ask about burn and runway and all these things — and even if they say all the right things, if something changes in the market, there’s just very little power that you have as an individual,” she said. “Other than to, you know, save as much as you possibly can for a rainy day.”

Sony and Honda reveal Afeela, their joint EV brand, at CES

Rebecca Bellan

Nearly a year after Sony and Honda , the two companies revealed a prototype under the brand name Afeela. The four-door sedan was driven onstage at Wednesday as Kenichiro Yoshida, the CEO of Sony, talked through the company’s mobility philosophy, which prioritizes building vehicles that have autonomous capabilities and are transformed into “ .” The first preorders of the Afeelas are scheduled for the first half of 2025, with sales to begin the same year, said Yoshida. Initial shipments will be delivered to customers in North America in the spring of 2026. Sony and Honda have previously said the new EV will be initially manufactured at Honda’s North America factory and will feature Level 3 automated driving capabilities under limited conditions. Level 3 autonomy means the car can drive in situations like traffic jams, but the human driver must take over when the system requests it. Sony revealed new details on the vehicle’s design today, including the integration of external media along the front of the car that allows it to interact with other road users and share necessary information. [gallery ids="2465052,2465053,2465055"]   “We plan on exploring the possibility of how media can create a fun and exciting mobility interaction,” said Yoshida. The prototype is also equipped with 45 cameras and sensors inside and outside the vehicle in order to ensure safety and security, said Yoshida. The in-cabin sensors will monitor the driver’s status in order to prevent accidents. Afeela will also feature best-in-class entertainment for customers, said Yoshida. The Sony-Honda JV will integrate Epics Games’ Unreal Engine, a 3D computer graphics game engine, into their vehicles to help visualize not only entertainment in cars, but also communication and safety. w Kim Libreri, chief technology officer of Epic Games, said that the most natural way to visualize important data within the car is through intuitive interactive photo real augmentation, which is what Unreal Engine does best. “In the future, the automobile will become a next generation destination for social connectivity. Not only for the occupants, but also their network of friends and colleagues. It will become a continuum of our digital lives,” said Libreri onstage at . In order to handle all the compute needed for automated driving and advanced driver assistance system capabilities, car telematics and what we expect to be a tricked out infotainment system, Afeela cars will be built around Qualcomm’s system-on-a-chip technology, including their .

Tech Nation looks for new home as UK gov hands tech ecosystem contract to Barclays

Mike Butcher

After more than 10 years in operation, , the U.K.’s government-sanctioned ecosystem builder for U.K. tech startups and growth tech companies, is to cease operations after losing its grant funding to a programme run by . The team behind the nonprofit, which derived the bulk of its funding from the U.K. government, plans now to look for new backers and a new direction, after closing its doors on 31st March 2023. Tech Nation’s visa programme will continue in the immediate term. In a statement, Tech Nation said: “With this foundation removed, Tech Nation’s remaining activities are not viable on a standalone basis.” However, its chief executive, Gerard Grech, said, Tech Nation is also “actively seeking interested parties to acquire its portfolio of assets to take forward in a new guise. We have exhaustively explored whether Tech Nation could continue without core government grant funding, but have concluded after extensive consultation that this is not an option.” He added: “We have a portfolio of Tech Nation assets and an internationally acclaimed brand, and we have already started discussions with mission-based organisations to take these forward. We are inviting Expressions of Interest from interested parties.” The move comes at a time when the U.K. government has been playing lip-service to the idea of the country as a “Science and Technology Superpower.” A recent by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt saw him imploring entrepreneurs to move to the U.K.: “If anyone is thinking of starting or investing in an innovation or technology-centred business, I want them to do it here. I want the world’s tech entrepreneurs, life science innovators, and green tech companies to come to the UK because it offers the best possible place to make their visions happen,” he said. However, the closure of Tech Nation and the rise of other initiatives abroad have left the U.K. looking pretty thin in the “encouraging innovation” department. Tech founders and investors are already being attracted by the $369 billion on offer under the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act for technology startups. In the EU, countries like France are actually ramping up support for tech entrepreneurship. Indeed, state bank Bpifrance is another €500 million into deep tech startups. Meanwhile in the U.K., the government has cut back the R&D tax credit scheme for startups. And in a survey by industry body Coadec of more than 250 U.K. founders, the majority said the cuts . TechCrunch understands that Tech Nation had previously approached the government, asking it to consider absorbing it as a public body, but those talks went nowhere. The Sunday Times had previously  that government officials had been concerned that Tech Nation was “breaching state aid rules because it had failed to become self-sufficient,” which led officials to put the contract out to tender earlier this year. Tech Nation has long been embedded in the U.K. tech startup scene. Tech City UK, its predecessor, was launched in 2011 by former prime minister David Cameron and concentrated largely on the London ecosystem until 2018, when it merged with Tech North (based in Manchester). It’s since gone on to run myriad programs connecting tech startups and scale-up with each other and with investors in the U.K. and abroad. The organisation claims it has helped make the U.K. the leading digital economy in Europe. While 80% of startups fail within their first two-five years, over 95% of startups on Tech Nation’s accelerator programs have gone on to scale, it claims. More than a third of all tech unicorns and decacorns created in the U.K. have graduated from a Tech Nation program, collectively raising over £28 billion so far in venture capital and capital markets. Alumni include Monzo, Revolut, Depop, Bloom & Wild, Zilch, Just Eat, Darktrace, Marshmallow, Ocado, Skyscanner, Peak AI and Deliveroo. As a government-backed organisation, Tech Nation says it delivered a £15 return on every £1 funded by the U.K. government. Critics of the government’s decision to hand the contract to Barclays say it will put it into a conflict of interest, such as needing to support startups in the fintech space, which might compete with it. One said the government has and was a “potential competitor or customer of the startups it’s meant to be supporting.” Many northern tech leaders had previously expressed dismay that Tech Nation would lose government support at this time in the economy. “There’s such a gap in equity for Northern funders still. Organisations like Tech Nation are effectively the connective tissue between what is ultimately still a nascent ecosystem on a global scale,” Ben Davies, group marketing director at financial services firm Praetura, . Dan Sodergren, co-founder of people support platform Your FLOCK, based in Manchester said: “Without Tech Nation, we would not have the ecosystem outside of London that we have. They also were fundamental with programmes like Libra, Net Zero net or Rising Stars. These things were happening way before the rest of the market.” “Whatever you think of them, good or bad, the death of Tech Nation is the end of an era for the startup ecosystem in the U.K. The idea of government as a provider of startup advice to founders backed by Tier 1 VCs is finished. We have to make sure any help now reflects the needs of the future not the past — that means keeping the good things like a well-known visa offer intact and making government focus on creating the best environment for tech startups, with extra support going to those who need it most not to those who can probably find it anyway,” said Dom Hallas, executive director of .

Tesla slashes Model 3, Model Y prices in China for the second time in three months

Matt Burns

Earlier today, Tesla quietly announced new pricing for the China market. The Model 3 and Model Y saw their prices cut drastically, and Tesla finally revealed the pricing for the high-performance Plaid edition of the Model S and Model Y, both of which were not previously sold in market. This is the second pricing cut by Tesla for the lower-priced models in three months. In late October, up to 9% on the Model 3 and Model Y. The Model 3 is now priced at CNY 229,900 ($33,415), down from CNY 265,900, a reduction of CNY 36,000 ($5,240). The Model Y is now priced at CNY 259,900 ($37,775), down from CNY 288,900, a reduction of CNY 29,000 ($4,220). The Model S Plaid will cost 789,900 ($114,809) and the Model X Plaid will cost 879,900 ($127,890). Today’s announcement came days after the company’s , revealing lower than expected worldwide vehicle shipment numbers. Specifically for China, earlier today, the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) reported Tesla vehicle shipments dropped 44% to 55,796 in November as the automaker reduced factory output and cut prices amid reduced demand. The CPCA report shows that Tesla was outsold by two rivals: BYD and SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co, the joint venture of General Motors in China. BYD notably outsold Tesla over four to one, delivering 234,598 vehicles. SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co, the joint venture of General Motors in China making small budget EVs, also outsold Tesla by 53%, according to the association. Still, Tesla saw growth in China over the year. The CPCA report notes that Tesla delivered 50% more vehicles produced by its Shanghai plant over 2021 levels. Tesla’s Shanghai plant had temporarily paused production in December and is reportedly set to run at a reduced output in January. Tesla’s China division recently saw a major leadership shakeup. two days ago Tesla CEO Elon Musk promoted Tom Zhu to run its U.S. assembly plants and sales operation in North America and Europe. This makes him the second-highest executive at Tesla, surpassed only by Elon Musk. It’s unclear if Zhu will retain his current titles and duties as well, as Reuters notes.

Twitter officially bans third-party clients after cutting off prominent devs

Kyle Wiggers

After prominent app makers like Tweetbot and Twitterific, Twitter today quietly updated its developer terms to ban third-party clients altogether. by Engadget, the “restrictions” section of Twitter’s 5,000-some-word was updated with a clause prohibiting “use or access the Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications.” Earlier this week, Twitter said that it was “enforcing long-standing API rules” in disallowing clients access to its platform but didn’t cite which rules developers were violating. Now we know — retroactively. As Engadget notes, Twitter clients are a part of Twitter history — Twitterific was created before Twitter had a native iOS app of its own. And they’ve gained a larger following in recent years, thanks in part to their lack of ads. Twitter’s attitude toward third-party clients has long been permissive and even supportive, with the company going so far as to a section from its developer terms that discouraged devs from replicating its core service. But that seems to have changed under CEO Elon Musk’s leadership. Twitter The decision seems unlikely to foster goodwill toward Twitter at a time when the platform faces challenges on a number of fronts. In a , Twitterrific’s Sean Heber called Twitter “increasingly capricious” and a company he “no longer recognize[d] as trustworthy nor want to work with any longer.” Matteo Villa, the developer of Fenix, in an interview with Engadget called the lack of communication “insulting.” (Twitter has no communications department at present.) Twitter is under immense pressure to turn a profit — or at least break even — as advertisers flee the platform, spurred by unpredictable, fast-changing content policies. The company, which has $12.5 billion in debt, is on the hook for $300 million in its first interest payment and has lost an $4 billion in value since Musk acquired it at the end of October 2022. Fidelity slashed the value of its stake in Twitter by 56%. Cutbacks at Twitter abound. Some employees are bringing their own toilet paper to work after the company reduced janitorial services, the New York Times , and Twitter has stopped paying rent for several of its offices. Twitter’s also heavily pushing its Twitter Blue plan (now with an ), aiming to make it a profit driver. It plans to lift its ban on , chasing after campaign dollars in the 2024 U.S. elections. And the company is considering selling usernames through online auctions.

Paris to hold vote on shared scooters

Romain Dillet

This weekend, mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo that Parisians will get to vote whether they want to ban free-floating electric scooters or not. As , Dott, Lime and Tier, the three scooter companies currently operating in the city, have operating licenses that are set to expire on March 23, 2023. And the fate of those services could have wide implications across the micromobility sector. “If Parisians want to own their own scooter, there’s no issue. But we have a real issue with free-floating scooters. It’s not climate-friendly. Employees working for these companies are not properly treated,” Hidalgo told Le Parisien. “That’s why I’m going to ask a question to Parisians in a vote that is going to take place on Sunday, April 2 so that I can understand what they want,” she added. Each operator currently has a fleet of 5,000 electric scooters. Even though the vote will occur a few days after the license expiration, scooter companies will still be able to keep their services up and running after March 23. The licenses will be extended until there is some clarity. The city council is divided on electric scooters. Deputy Mayor David Belliard has been strongly against those services. He’s in charge of transportation and he’s also a green party member. He’s an important ally for Anne Hidalgo, a member of the Socialist Party. But that doesn’t mean that everyone in the city council wants to ban electric scooters. The mayor of Paris ultimately gets to decide whether shared scooters should be banned or not. And she has decided that… she’s not going to decide, even though she doesn’t like scooters. “Should we move forward with free-floating scooters or not? During last year’s public hearing with Parisians, it was a polarizing topic — it’s a battle. My idea is that we should stop. But I will respect the vote of the Parisians even if they disagree with what I want,” Hidalgo told Le Parisien. So the campaign is on. Dott, Lime and Tier are already lining up their talking points. For instance, according to them, electric scooters are a green transportation option. The reality is a bit more complex, as an electric scooter is greener than an Uber ride. But Paris also has a dense metro network. According to an Ipsos poll paid by Dott, Lime and Tier, 40% of people living in Paris are satisfied with free-floating scooters, and 88% of them also think that they are here to stay. Let’s see if that opinion will be reflected in the vote results. Here’s a joined statement from Dott, Lime and Tier: “We welcome the decision to consult Parisians regarding the city’s shared e-scooter service, and hope to ensure its continuity over the coming months. With more than 2 million unique riders having used the shared e-scooter service this year alone — and 700 tons of CO2 emissions avoided in 2021 by riding green in the capital — we are convinced that Parisians are aware of the role that zero emission micromobility options play in helping meet the ambitions set out in the Paris agreements at COP21. All the employees of the three operators in the Paris area — 800 in total, all on fixed-term and permanent contracts — take note of this reprieve. Lime, Dott and Tier will remain attentive about the terms of this consultation, which seems to state that only inner city Parisian residents will be eligible to vote and those living in city’s suburbs, as well as expats and non-native residents who live in inner city Paris will not be eligible to vote.”

Identity management platform Saviynt secures $205M in debt, appoints new CEO

Kyle Wiggers

Showing that there’s real investor enthusiasm for identity management platforms, , which enables companies to secure apps, data and infrastructure in a single platform, today announced that it raised $205 million in debt from AB Private Credit Investors’ Tech Capital Solutions group. Founder Sachin Nayyar, who returned to Saviynt as CEO this week alongside newly appointed president Paul Zolfaghari, said that the loan will be put toward expanding Saviynt’s platform, acquiring customers and growing the company’s partner ecosystem. He noted that the investment brings Saviynt’s total raised to date to $270 million following a $130 million debt raise in 2021, making Saviynt one of the better-funded startups in the identity management space. Asked why Saviynt opted for debt as opposed to equity, Nayyar says that it was “the best funding option aligned to the company’s growth needs.” It’s also, perhaps, a reflection of the tough economic reality. Global venture funding in 2022 declined 35% year over year from 2021, to Crunchbase data, while Q4 2022 saw the lowest amount invested since Q1 2020. As traditional capital becomes tougher to attain, venture debt — which was already in some entrepreneurial circles — is to become big for startups in 2023. “Despite the current funding environment, the investment interest was especially strong for a high-growth identity company like Saviynt,” Nayyar told TechCrunch in an email interview. “Identity management is a priority area of spending among large enterprises and mid-sized companies even during this volatile economic period because identity has become the new perimeter and is critical to cyber security.” It probably helps that identity management is having a moment, thanks in part to the lingering effects of the pandemic. The transition to remote work forced companies to reevaluate the way they identify users and control access to assets on their networks. One pandemic-era found that 61% of companies planned to increase their identity access management budgets in 2021. Investors, chasing after the trend, have upped their stakes in identity management; Crunchbase that $3.2 billion in venture dollars went into the identity management sector in 2021, up 2.5x from last year’s $1.3 billion. Saviynt Nayyar founded Saviynt in 2011 and stayed on until 2018 prior to his most recent stint. Before launching the company, Nayyar was the chief identity strategist at Sun Microsystems and president of Brinqa, the cybersecurity risk management platform. After leaving Saviynt, Nayyar served as the CEO of cybersecurity firm Securonix, where he led a $1 billion-plus growth investment from Vista Equity Partners last year. With Saviynt, Nayyar says that the goal was to address what he saw as a significant enterprise market need: an agile, cloud-native and converged identity platform for workforce, enterprise app, privileged and third-party identities. That’s jargony. But basically, Nayyar sought to do away with the need to juggle multiple identity management tool license schemes and integrations to make identity products work together. Using Saviynt, companies can secure and control access to assets, apps and infrastructure — whether on-premises, hybrid or across multiple clouds. The platform provides workflows to simplify identity lifecycle management and dashboards designed to help prioritize remediations. Those aren’t exactly groundbreaking features. Nayyar acknowledges that vendors like SailPoint, CyberArk and Okta offer comparable tech, and they’re not the only competition. ID management platform raised $275 million and reached a $2.8 billion valuation in an IPO two years ago, while startups like — which brings automation to identity and access management — are nipping at incumbents’ heels. Nayyar asserts, though, that most of its rivals have simply pieced together various disparate tech through acquisitions rather than build a converged platform from the ground up. Take that with a massive grain of salt — Nayyar has a product to pitch, after all — but it’s true that Saviynt’s solution is fairly holistic. Curiously, when asked about Saviynt’s customer base and revenue growth, Nayyar wouldn’t give numbers, saying only that revenue and customers have “more than doubled” since 2020. (He didn’t say how many employees Saviynt has, either, or indicate whether it plans to grow its workforce within the next year.) That doesn’t instill a lot of confidence in Saviynt’s trajectory; one assumes Saviynt would be eager to share the figures if they were favorable. But with Nayyar back at the helm and the massive new loan, Saviynt’s leadership is evidently intent on righting the ship. For his part, Alex Barry, the head of originations for AB Tech Capital Solutions, said: “We look forward to working with such a talented management team and prominent investor base at Saviynt. The company’s strong financial performance and market opportunity supports our expectation for a long-term, successful relationship.”

Scooters in Paris are at a crossroads

Romain Dillet

to happen to the 15,000 colorful electric scooters that currently spill across the streets of Paris? On March 23rd, their fate could drastically change as the French capital weighs up whether or not to renew licenses for the three scooter companies currently operating in the city. And this isn’t just going to impact Dott, Tier and Uber-affiliated Lime — the three companies that have since 2020. The decision will set a precedent for the many cities around the world that have also let scooters onto their streets. If things don’t go their way, a negative decision in Paris could have a chilling effect on micromobility startups globally. Paris has been a pacemaker in the electric scooter race. As one of the first cities to approve their use in open city environments, city residents (and visitors) took to them as a convenient way to navigate around halting traffic and congested public transport; scooters in Paris provided a counterpoint to the claims that they were overhyped, over-capitalized by unimaginative VCs and a flash in the pan. “This is important for everyone. In terms of business size, Paris is very important — it’s the biggest city in the world from a business point of view,” Dott’s director of marketing and communications Matthieu Faure told me. “And even from a symbolic point of view, Paris is important.” Things started to look shaky starting in September 2022, when the city’s Deputy Mayors David Belliard and Emmanuel Grégoire requested a meeting with the three mobility operators. They said that Dott, Lime and Tier weren’t doing enough when it came to safety and urban clutter. But this wasn’t the first time the city of Paris had said it wasn’t satisfied with these services. From the word go, there was no proper regulation in place and initially that led to a dozen different scooter startups rolling out their fleets in Paris — Bird, Bolt, Bolt by Usain Bolt ( ), Circ, Dott, Hive, Jump, Lime, Tier, Voi, Ufo and Wind. That eventually led to the tender process and a new set of rules — a maximum speed limit of 20 km/h and some dedicated parking spaces. Then in 2021, tragedy struck when a pedestrian was in a scooter accident. That led to more restrictions on scooter services. Scooter companies agreed to implement hundreds of slow zones with a 10 km/h speed restriction in specific areas — pedestrian streets, public squares and car-free areas. At one point, the city of Paris even turning the entire city into a slow zone but ditched the plan. There’s also the climate change question — and whether that’s really enough of a selling point. Scooter promoters like to say they are a green option for getting around. But as TechCrunch’s Rebecca Bellan has , scooters aren’t necessarily helping when it comes to environmental goals in certain urban areas. Such is the case in Paris. An extremely dense city with an efficient subway network and a subsidized with more than 400,000 subscribers, when people living in Paris need to go from A to B, they have a ton of options. Some people riding on electric scooters would have used their moped or requested an Uber, but many use scooters of the metro, which is arguably a greener mode of transportation compared to electric scooters. And yet, both tourists and Parisians have embraced electric scooters in a massive way. In October 2022, Dott, Lime and Tier registered more than 2 million rides. Out of the 400,000 users spread across the three services in Paris, 85% of them live in the city. Operators each have a hard cap at 5,000 scooters, meaning there are roughly 15,000 scooters on the streets of Paris. According to , there are close to 300,000 shared scooters in 33 European cities. But each scooter is used quite extensively in Paris — several times per day. Here’s a chart of the total number of scooter rides per month in Paris: Dott, Lime, Tier The promise of metrics like these has led to massive valuations and funding rounds. According to Crunchbase, to date, Lime, one of the companies that popularized the concept of free-floating scooters, $1.5 billion. Dott managed to $210 million while Tier nearly $650 million. To be sure, it’s been mostly quiet on the funding front for these companies for much of the last year. Partly this is because the most publicly visible of these companies, Bird, which pointedly but is traded on the NYSE, has totally run out of charge. (With its market cap now at less than $86 million — compared to more than $2 billion when it went public in March 2021 — last week Bird announced a by way of convertible notes and personal investments from founder and chairman Travis VanderZanden and CEO Shane Torchiana. The money came at the same time that Bird acquired the previously spun-out Bird Canada and made other moves to try to shore up its finances.) Turning back to Paris, following the September 2022 meeting, the three active scooter companies (Lime, Dott and Tier) got the civic message: they shouldn’t take for granted that scooter licenses would be renewed in 2023. With the wider market climate definitely not in their favor, proving that they are respectful companies in their marquee city became priority number one. In October 2022, the three operators put together a list of 11 proposals that would improve safety and public space integration, ranging from banning users who do not respect the road-traffic regulations to using camera-based sidewalk detection systems. Dott, Lime and Tier even started implementing some of those items. They added an age verification system and asked its users to take a photo of their ID. Similarly, there is now a registration plate on every scooter. This way, if there are two people riding a scooter at the same time, the police can write down the registration plate and the current time. Scooter companies can then find out who was using a specific scooter at that specific time. “We’ve decided in December to proactively roll out two of these, notably on ID verification and license plates. After 30 days, we now have 100% of shared e-scooters in Paris that have a license plate, and over 160,000 IDs have been verified and checked,” Erwann Le Page, director of public policy for Western Europe at Tier, told me. And then what happened? Nothing happened. The city of Paris is divided on scooter regulation. Deputy Mayor David Belliard has been one of the most vocal opponents. He regularly claims that scooters should be banned, and his words carry weight: among other things, he’s in charge of transportation. But the fact that he’s using media interviews to say that scooters should be banned proves that not everyone in the city council agrees with him. “It’s a personal opinion, he’s against shared scooters,” Dott’s Matthieu Faure said. “We don’t really understand why. He doesn’t give any rational explanation.” In particular, what does Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris, think about scooters? Nobody knows for sure. “The City Council has not communicated any decision yet. To date, the City has not responded to any of the meeting requests and letters sent by Lime or the two other operators,” a Lime spokesperson told me. “We have not heard back from Paris just yet. Our contract ends on March 23rd,” Tier’s Erwann Le Page added. We have asked the city of Paris for a comment, and we will update the story if we hear back. Lime If I read correctly between the lines, Anne Hidalgo will ultimately have to decide whether scooter licenses should be renewed. Everything else you hear on this topic is just noise. And there is no reason to communicate with scooter companies just yet. Scooter companies are already improving the safety of their services because the mayor of Paris is remaining silent. In other words, saying nothing is the best strategy to get improvements from operators right now. In contrast to the early days of shared scooters, micromobility companies have mostly switched to full-time employees to repair, replace and move vehicles and swap batteries. There are currently 800 people working for Dott, Lime and Tier in Paris. There are another 200 people working indirectly with the three operators. In particular, a subcontractor company patrols the streets of Paris and works with all three companies. And this model has been working well. Dott says that it is currently profitable in Paris when you take into account all fixed and variable costs associated with its Paris operations, including vehicle depreciation and amortization (EBIT profitable). While Dott, Lime and Tier are currently live in dozens of cities, Paris still represents a good chunk of these companies’ revenue. That’s probably why they decided to launch bike-sharing services with free-floating electric bikes. “We are currently operating 7,000 [bikes] in Paris and we plan to continue doing so,” a Lime spokesperson told me. Similarly, Dott has a fleet of 3,500 bikes, while Tier manages 2,500 electric bikes. This time, there was no tender process for free-floating bikes, but operators still had to sign an agreement with the city of Paris. They also pay a license fee. Dott Adding electric bikes is a smart move, as there are some synergies between scooters and bikes. For instance, Lime uses for its scooters and bikes, meaning that the operations team can swap batteries for all vehicles when roaming the streets of Paris. But it’s clear that Dott, Lime and Tier still want to offer scooters after March 23rd. On Wednesday, a group of employees working for Dott, Lime and Tier in front of the city hall. They were asking for a meeting with city officials to get some clarity. Once again, their demands were met with silence. Even if the city of Paris doesn’t seem to care about media coverage on the license renewal, the impending deadline means that the mayor of Paris will have to make a decision sooner rather than later. And many micromobility companies and local governments are turning their attention to what that answer will be. Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo announced that Parisians will get to vote whether they want to ban free-floating electric scooters or not. More details in our . Tier Mobility

Microsoft announces 10,000 job cuts, nearly 5% of its global workforce

Paul Sawers

Microsoft today announced details of a much-rumored round of layoffs, confirming in a  with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that 10,000 employees will be impacted as part of “workforce reduction” measures the company is taking in response to “macroeconomic conditions and changing customer priorities.” The news comes as major redundancies continue to permeate the tech industry, with Salesforce recently , impacting some 7,000 workers, while from its headcount. While Microsoft underwent of smaller , the latest reduction represents a sizable chunk of its workforce — nearly 5% of its employees globally. The company said that the layoffs will run from now through to the end of Q3 2023, while it also plans to consolidate some of its office leases to “create higher density across our workspaces.” In terms of severance, Microsoft said that U.S.-based employees will receive “above-market severance pay,” though it didn’t specify what that means. It also said that those impacted will continue to receive healthcare for six months, career transition services and 60 days’ notice prior to termination. In an email memo sent to employees, CEO Satya Nadella’s words followed a similar theme to that of other technology companies that have announced big layoffs over the past year. Essentially, as its customers increased their digital spending during the pandemic, they’re now reducing their spending, in part due to global economic downturn. “As we saw customers accelerate their digital spend during the pandemic, we’re now seeing them optimize their digital spend to do more with less,” Nadella wrote. “We’re also seeing organizations in every industry and geography exercise caution as some parts of the world are in a recession and other parts are anticipating one.” It’s worth noting that while Microsoft is cutting some roles, it still plans to hire in other “key strategic areas.” “We will continue to invest in strategic areas for our future, meaning we are allocating both our capital and talent to areas of secular growth and long-term competitiveness for the company, while divesting in other areas,” Nadella continued. “These are the kinds of hard choices we have made throughout our 47-year history to remain a consequential company in this industry that is unforgiving to anyone who doesn’t adapt to platform shifts.” Microsoft said that its cost-cutting measures will lead to costs of around $1.2 billion in Q2, resulting from severance pay, changes to its hardware portfolio and its “lease consolidation” efforts.

Amazon to cut 18,000 jobs as tech layoffs continue

Paul Sawers

Amazon has announced that it will be “eliminating” more than 18,000 roles at the company, round of that was set to impact some 10,000 workers. The announcement is significant in terms of the number of people impacted, though it represents just 1.2% of Amazon’s 1.5 million global headcount. In early this morning, CEO Andy Jassy said that in addition to the roles affected in its Devices and Books businesses during its previous announcement back in November, the majority of the roles hit by the latest cutbacks will be in its People, Experience, and Technology ( ) and Amazon Stores businesses. The news comes just a day after Salesforce announced that it was , impacting more than 7,000 employees, and continues a trend throughout 2022 to counter economic headwinds. Data from layoff-tracking website suggests that . Today’s announcement was seemingly made earlier than Amazon had intended after got hold of preliminary details via a leak, which is why Amazon said that it has yet to inform those who will be impacted — but it plans to do so starting on January 18. “We typically wait to communicate about these outcomes until we can speak with the people who are directly impacted,” Jassy wrote. “However, because one of our teammates leaked this information externally, we decided it was better to share this news earlier so you can hear the details directly from me.” This also means that Amazon has yet to announce what kind of severance packages it will provide, though Jassy said it will provide a “separation payment,

Salesforce to cut workforce by 10% after hiring ‘too many people’ during the pandemic

Paul Sawers

Salesforce has announced that it’s cutting some 10% of its workforce, impacting more than 7,000 employees, while it will also shutter offices in “certain markets.” In a and a corresponding with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff referenced the “challenging” environment in which it’s operating, pointing to the “more measured approach” its customers are making with their purchasing decisions. Similar to other companies hit by significant layoffs over the past year, Benioff added that Salesforce had hired too many people through the pandemic during the boom times. For context, the company , a 30% increase on 2020. “I’ve been thinking a lot about how we came to this moment,” Benioff wrote. “As our revenue accelerated through the pandemic, we hired too many people leading into this economic downturn we’re now facing, and I take responsibility for that.” Benioff said that those impacted in the U.S. will receive a “minimum” of almost five months worth of pay, as well as health insurance and “other benefits to help with their transition.” Outside the U.S., Benioff said workers can expect a “similar level of support.” The news follows just a few months after activist investor  in the enterprise software company, with our concluding that Starboard was seeking cost-cutting measures as part of its investment. Certainly, Salesforce revealed an initial round of layoffs in early November “hundreds” of workers, with co-CEO and co-chair Bret Taylor that he would be stepping down. With just four days into the new year, there is little sign of the economic headwinds easing, and today’s news follows a slew of major layoffs last year including Facebook parent and Stripe . Already reports abound that in Q1 2023, while Amazon this week as part of its broader measures to counter the “uncertain macroeconomic environment.” As with just about every other tech company, Salesforce has been facing significant headwinds too. After hitting an all-time valuation peak of more than $300 billion in late 2021, Salesforce’s market cap has experienced something of a “correction” in the intervening months, now sitting at around $134 billion — roughly where it was at three years ago. The company also for 2023 at its most recent earnings report last year. Salesforce said that the restructuring effort will cost it between $1.4 billion and $2.1 billion, which it expects to incur in Q4 of fiscal 2023.

Quantum Machines continues to grow in spite of economic uncertainity

Ron Miller

Conventional wisdom suggests that a Series B company should be hunkering down right now, cutting costs, weathering the storm, but Israeli startup is defying this approach as it continues to grow in spite of the economic uncertainty swirling around the world. The company announced that it got an additional $20 million tacked onto its originally announced in September 2021. While co-founder and CEO Itamar Sivan wasn’t ready to talk specifics when it came to growth metrics, he suggested that unlike a lot of other startups in 2022, his company was meeting its growth and revenue goals. “It’s funny, I met with one of our investors a couple of days ago, and they said, ours might actually be the only company they met recently that was on target for 2022,” Sivan told TechCrunch. The company actually doubled its revenue last year and is expected to do so again in 2023. While he wouldn’t share an exact number, he indicated that it reached at least $10 million last year. “I cannot speak to sales or anything like that, but I can say that it has two digits in millions of dollars. So it still leaves a broad range between 10 and 99,” he said While customers may be cutting back on some tech, Sivan sees quantum research at a critical juncture, and he believes that’s why his company is adding customers. That means external economic conditions are having little impact on his startup, especially as countries around the world jockey for position around building quantum computers. “I believe that quantum computing in this regard is a safer field to be in in this environment because countries cannot afford to lose this race. So if a country slows down for a couple of years [because of economic concerns]…this might be an irreversible process,” he said. Because of the sensitive nature of quantum computing research, Sivan can’t name any of his customers directly, but did say that the company now has 280 customers across government, universities and corporations in 20 countries around the world. The company lists testimonial blurbs from a variety of institutions on its website including Harvard University, Weizmann Institute of Science, Seoul National University, ENS Lyon, USC and CEA Saclay, and it’s probably safe to guess that these testimonials are from customers. It also made its first acquisition last year when , a Danish company that has built tooling to help control parts of the quantum process. The new company should dovetail well with the existing Quantum Machines platform. The company has split into two divisions as a result of this: Quantum Control and Quantum Electronics. As we wrote at the time of , the original platform looks at the role of classical computing in the quantum process: As Sivan explains, the classical computer has a software and hardware layer, but quantum machines have three layers: “The quantum hardware, which is the heart, and on top of that you have classical hardware […] and then on top of that you have software,” he said. “We focus on the two latter layers. So classical hardware and the software that drives it. Now at the heart of our hardware is in fact a classical processor. So this is I think one of the most interesting parts of the quantum stack,” he explained. The startup, which had 60 employees when we spoke in September 2021, has grown to over 140 now and is continuing to hire. The $20 million investment infusion, which closed late last year, came from a variety of unnamed institutional investors, along with existing investors Qualcomm Ventures, Red Dot Capital Partners, Samsung NEXT, Meron Capital and Alumni Ventures. The company has now raised $100 million.

Alphabet robotics division Intrinsic hit with layoffs

Brian Heater

It’s a new year, but the industry’s struggles are showing no signs of abating. Big firms are as susceptible — if not more so. This week, Alphabet joined the growing list of tech giants making staff cuts amid ongoing economic struggles. Following a wave of layoffs from the likes of Amazon, Meta and Salesforce, Alphabet has begun letting people go. The company’s “Other Bets” division is the first to see impact. As the name not so subtly implies, these divisions operate outside key focuses like search and ads. With many of the firms having graduated from the Alphabet X moonshot factory, the operation has taken on an almost in-house accelerator style role. Earlier this week, life science firm Verily got hit with a 15% cut, amounting to around 240 people. “While these programs are promising and led by talented Veeps, and some of their innovations will integrate into our other core solutions, we cannot do everything and have had to make some difficult choices,” CEO Stephen Gillett said in . “Some Veeps will be redeployed to other teams; others will unfortunately be leaving us. These people have helped make Verily the company it is today, and I know how hard it is to see valued friends and colleagues depart.” Alphabet’s robot software firm, Intrinsic, has also been impacted. It will be laying off 40 employees TechCrunch has confirmed. It’s a big hit for the young division, amounting to around 20% of headcount. It’s also, frankly, a bit of an about-face for an area that appeared to be growing quickly. In fact, our last two conversations with the company have centered around acquisitions. In less than a year, Intrinsic has acquired both and — the latter having been announced less than a month ago. “Intrinsic’s leadership has made the difficult decision to let go a number of our team members,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We have communicated the news directly with them. We fully acknowledge how hard this will be and are offering as much proactive support as possible. This decision was made in light of shifts in prioritization and our longer-term strategic direction. It will ensure Intrinsic can continue to allocate resources to our highest priority initiatives, such as building our software and AI platform, integrating the recent strategic acquisitions of Vicarious and OSRC (commercial arm Open Robotics), and working with key industry partners. While incredibly tough to do, we believe this decision is necessary for us to continue our mission.” At the very least, it’s a big hit for an organization just getting its sea legs. There are a lot of companies competing in the same space as Intrinsic, so it’s hard to say how much of a step back such news will ultimately be. Earlier this week, fellow X robotics alum Mineral announced that it had just graduated from the lab.

Twitter’s third-party client issue is seemingly a deliberate suspension

Ivan Mehta

Last Friday, a ton of popular Twitter clients, including Tweetbot, Twitterrific, and Echofon, were down. Users couldn’t . At first, it looked like a bug in Twitter API, but radio silence from Twitter and new details indicated that the company deliberately limited access to third-party apps. (Update: Twitter the API changes following this report.) On Friday, late evening PST time, many users noticed that they could not access their third-party Twitter clients. The app makers quickly acknowledged the issue and said that they had been trying to contact the company. A Japan-based developer that many smaller Twitter clients were working without any glitches. Many folks in the community speculated that it could be an issue with the API or that the company is limiting access to larger clients. 本日のTwitterアプリBAN祭りのまとめです。手が回らないので編集権付きで公開しておくんで追加してもらえれば。 — 竹内裕昭🐧 (@takke) While developers and users expected Twitter to communicate with them in some ways, the company and its new owner Elon Musk maintained radio silence about the problem. However, the Tesla CEO tweeted everything ranging from the latest to building transparency on Twitter by publishing the platform’s . Internal messages on Twitter indicated that shutting down certain third-party clients was a company decision rather than a bug, reported over the weekend. The report said that one project manager told the product team that the company had “started to work on comms,” but didn’t provide any timeline for official and approved communication. Since the beginning of the saga, many developers have expressed their frustrations on and . Twitterrific-maker Craig Hockenberry posted a blog post called in which he said “Personally, I’m done. And with a vengeance.” Fenix developer Matteo Villa said on Twitter that he is considering pulling the client from the App Store — which is working at the time of writing — because he fears that the client might stop working at some point. And I'm honestly thinking of also pulling Fenix for iOS from the app store. People are still downloading it, and who knows if or when it'll stop working. — Matteo Villa (@mttvll) Tweetbot co-creator Paul Haddad even tried to make the app work by loading in old API keys. That trick worked for a while and some folks were able to access their accounts. However, users and the client was later suspended again. iOS developer said on their account that Tweetbot ran into the limit of 300 posts per 15 minutes — which was applicable for old v1.1 API — for all users. Correction: all Tweetbot users now share a rate limit of 300 posts per 3 hours. API calls sent by Tweetbot now show that the app resorted to API v1.1, it used to support v2 as per the app description. — Mysk 🇨🇦🇩🇪 (@mysk_co) Earlier, they had built a demo client to show that Twitter’s API was working and the suspension of third-party apps was not because of a bug. Just tested a bunch of third-party Twitter apps for both iOS and Android: many seem to work. Also created a demo client to test the API. All functions work. Twitter backend doesn't seem to be broken. Looks like those popular apps were suspended for some reason. — Mysk 🇨🇦🇩🇪 (@mysk_co) A bunch of these developers were concerned about handling refunds for folks who have subscribed to the pro or premium versions of their apps if Twitter banned third-party clients. That would also mean that their annual income would go down and they would have to build new products while making no money. Some developers have already shown intent of concentrating on other projects. Haddad told TechCrunch over an email that Tweetbot is concentrating on launching its Mastodon client Ivory — which is currently in a closed beta — at an accelerated pace. He said that currently the team is focused on making the onboarding experience better, then fixing the bugs and working toward an App Store release. Villa also released a beta version of his Mastodon client Wolly on Apple’s test platform TestFlight. Three days in, still no news from the glorious Twitter management. Very cool indeed. Fenix on iOS inexplicably still working 🤷‍♂️ Let's continue working on , there's still a ton to do. Get it on TestFlight if you want to try a new Mastodon app. — Matteo Villa (@mttvll) For some other developers, the situation is bleak — iOS developer Adam Demasi noted that some indie developers whose primary product is a Twitter client might face a difficult time. We have proof now that suspending Tweetbot, Twitterrific, and 23 other clients was intentional. Tapbots are lucky to be making Ivory, and Iconfactory are lucky they have other apps. The others, maybe not so much. Such is the unending stress of being controlled by a gatekeeper. — Adam Demasi (@hbkirb) Since Musk took over Twitter last year, the company has shuttered . Some other programs are in the defunct state even if the company has not announced official shutdowns. Developers have been cautious about their Twitter development plan given that the company hasn’t explicitly communicated its plans about platform support. These kinds of moves have undone . Last month, Twitter’s former head of developer platforms, Amir Shevat, wrote a TechCrunch article about how the new management . This dubious suspension of third-party Twitter clients without any communication will not instill any confidence in the community. Twitter confirmed the API changes in a post published on Tuesday afternoon, claiming it was just enforcing its “long-standing API rules,” and that “may result in some apps not working.” This belated response didn’t go down well with or impacted users, as to the post and other social media updates indicated. Twitter is enforcing its long-standing API rules. That may result in some apps not working. — Twitter Dev (@TwitterDev)

It’s time to bid on Twitter’s giant neon bird light

Amanda Silberling

In a strange attempt to make money, Twitter is surplus office furniture that it doesn’t need anymore, now that thousands of employees have either or been . When you’re rapidly and apparently , why not go for the hail mary? This auction isn’t just some rogue Herman Miller chairs (though of course, you can bid on those too). There is some truly bizarre Twitter memorabilia up for grabs, and — not to make the second football metaphor in two paragraphs — watching the bids update in real time on these strange items is kind of like my own personal Super Bowl (unless if the Eagles make a run for it, in which case, the actual Super Bowl will be my Super Bowl). If you one day hope to open a museum about the history of Silicon Valley, you might wanna check out this (and reevaluate your life goals, maybe). And if you don’t have thousands of dollars to spare for a , well, you should probably check it out anyway, because it’s funny and we need to get our laughs in when we can in this cruel world! There are 631 items up for auction, and you have about one day left get your bids in. Go forth and conquer. Or watch along in awe and horror. When I started working on this article, the bird was going for $350. Now, it’s up to $2,300 and I won’t be surprised if the next minimum bid is $5,000 by the time I hit post. No, this is not an indictment of my productivity. I’m a professional! People are just bidding really, really fast for this. 7/10. I love a good neon sign, but it’s really not weird that this thing exists. If you run a company and rent office space for said company, there’s an 80% chance you have a neon sign of your company logo. Don’t fact check that statistic. This thing is racking up bids quick. I’m going to estimate that it sells for 1,125 blue checks (or, $9,000). This thing is kooky and fun, but who actually wants this in their home? Then again, I am biased as someone who lives in a small apartment, considering that the people bidding on this probably own multiple properties and have plenty of room to hang up their novelty Twitter bird in a spare room where they can regale their fellow rich friends with tales of how they outbid their arch nemesis for this prized avian artwork. When you work under a guy who has COVID-related lockdowns and has used his massive platform to , why wear a mask? Sure, this is a basic precaution that you can take while working in an office to prevent the spread of a dangerous virus. But Elon Musk might think you’re a loser if you care about the safety of other human beings, so tread carefully. 4/10. Let’s give Twitter the benefit of the doubt and say they’re selling these masks because they just have  that will keep their employees protected for the foreseeable future. In that case, this is actually a really great deal! It’s only $60 right now! Go get those masks! According to a quick Amazon search, you can buy a 40-pack of KN95 masks for about $30. In this auction lot, Twitter is selling 48 cases, which appear to contain 40 masks each. Based on my very serious Amazon analysis, one KN95 mask costs approximately 75 cents. This lot contains 1,920 masks. So, if this sells at market rate, this should cost $1,440, or 180 blue checks. Hell yeah! I could use a box or two for myself, and then I would offer them up to some underfunded community organizations that might benefit from these free masks. Yeah, I know, this is a TechCrunch article, not my Miss America speech, but this shit is valuable! And it’s just sitting at Twitter, going to waste! I’ve heard through the grapevine that in the pre-Musk days of Twitter, the food was pretty good. If you’re being fed cheese that’s carefully sliced on a $3,000 blade, I can understand why. Bidding on this item started at just $25, then climbed up to $3,000 within an hour. To my surprise, that’s actually a very good deal! The same item — which is marketed here as a , rather than a cheese slicer — costs $16,525 from a restaurant supply website. Were they running a Michelin star Italian eatery on the sixth floor of Twitter? Imagine getting laid off from a company that owns $16,525 cheese/proscuitto slicers. I hate to say it, but I kind of understand some of Elon’s woes here. 8/10. I am actually kind of pissed off that this exists. No! There is no corporate kitchen that should own this! I promise you, the pre-sliced proscuitto at Trader Joe’s is perfectly fine! Behold, this lot is one of the only listings in which it was unclear what it was at first glance. It appears we have here a photo booth, and by booth, we mean a vintage-looking camera box that actually just holds a Canon EOS Rebel T3i, an entry-level, budget-friendly DSLR. However, this does come with a Profoto light, which runs for about . But wait, there’s more! You also get some fun photo booth props. From the photo, we can see a Twitter logo (classic), a slice of pizza and pie, some emojis, and there’s also a tennis racket there — it’s unclear if that is part of the lot as well, what kind of condition the racket is in, etc. 8/10. This is pretty weird, but it mostly feels weird that they are hiding an average DSLR inside of a vintage photo box thingy. Not to brag, but I own a full-frame Canon DSLR, so I really have no use for a T3i. That flash could be very nice though. And hey, who knows, that tennis racket might be salvagable. The neon bird sign? Fine, I get it. Neon signs are cool as hell. Yet this bird statue is currently up for $9,750, whereas the current bid on the neon sign is $4,600. There is no way that this thing is two times as cool as the neon sign. It’s just a statue! I am now wondering if there is some sort of secret significance to this statue that I don’t know about — like if you tap on it exactly seven times, a glowing eye will emerge that deports you to a secret pocket dimension. Stranger things have happened in Silicon Valley. 9/10. This isn’t that weird in itself, but it’s weird how in demand it is. No, but I think it would be funny to take this statue and drop it in front of the Meta headquarters or something. Here’s my opinion, take it or leave it. This is the coolest item up for auction at Twitter HQ. To start, I love plants, and as the listing kindly informs us: “Currently Artificial Plants but can be placed with real plants.” This also sparks joy because it’s not explicitly Twitter memorabilia — after all, Twitter is not the only social network that uses @ handles. This is simply just a beautiful sculpture for the biggest internet nerd in your life. 10/10. I don’t know why this exists, but I am very happy it does. Genuinely, yes. Can I fit a seven-foot-tall sculpture in my apartment? Nope! Can I make it work if I try hard enough? Yes, bring it on.

Twitter now offers an annual Blue subscription for hardcore users

Ivan Mehta

Twitter announced an annual Blue subscription plan for hardcore users who want to commit for a year. The revamped Twitter Blue subscription was launched last December at a rate of $8 per month (or $11 per month for iOS users). Now, users have a chance to get a discount and be all in for a year for $84 if they get it on the web. Twitter Blue is currently available in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, with . The annual plan is available for all users in all these countries. Twitter Elon Musk’s version of Twitter Blue includes features like  ,  and . Users also get features from the older version of Twitter’s paid plan like a thread reader and an edit tweet feature along with custom icons and themes. Since taking over the social media company, Musk has pushed on the fact that the company needs to make money and he is heavily relying on the new subscription plan to bring in a ton of revenue. Earlier this week, reported that Twitter will be soon due for interest payment on the loans worth nearly $13 billion Musk took to purchase the company. There have been a lot of indications of Twitter’s financial struggle. The company has had to vacate multiple international offices due to nonpayment of rent. To cut costs, Musk has also had to in the U.S.

Twitter is considering selling usernames through online auctions, new report claims

Aisha Malik

Twitter is considering selling usernames as a way to boost revenue, according to a new report from The report comes as the social network’s owner, Elon Musk, has been looking for ways to generate revenue for the company. The report says engineers at the company have considered organizing online auctions where people can bid for usernames, also known as handles. The potential new revenue stream has been discussed since at least December. It’s unknown if the idea will come to fruition, and if it does, it’s unclear if the plan will affect all usernames or only some of them. Last month, that Twitter would soon start freeing up 1.5 billion usernames, noting that inactive accounts would be deleted. After acquiring the social network in October, Musk that he was interested in freeing up accounts with desired usernames. Twitter will soon start freeing the name space of 1.5 billion accounts — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) The social network did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. Twitter’s does not allow the buying and selling of usernames. Despite this rule, people have been able to buy coveted Twitter usernames for years. The practice of selling desirable usernames has also attracted hackers in the past. In 2020, a teenager was arrested after and obtaining high-profile usernames to sell them. The hacker compromised the accounts of numerous public figures, including Musk, former president Barack Obama, Bill Gates and more. The new report comes as popular messaging app Telegram that will it hold an auction for usernames, for both individual accounts and channels, through a marketplace built on top of the . Since Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter, the billionaire has been trying to find ways to boost the company’s revenue amid a downturn in ad revenue. Reports suggest that since the start of Musk’s Twitter ownership, many advertisers  and the company has been its internal revenue projections. The company has made some changes over the past few months to boost revenue. Earlier this month, the company said it in the “coming weeks.” In November, the social network introduced a that costs $7.99 and comes with a verified blue checkmark.

Amazon secures $8B loan, anticipating market headwinds

Kyle Wiggers

Amazon has secured an $8 billion loan in anticipation of market headwinds. Provided by DBS Bank, Mizuho Bank and others, the loan — which will mature in 364 days (January 3, 2024), with an option to extend for another 364 days — will be used for “general corporate purposes,” Amazon said in a with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson told TechCrunch that the loan adds to the range of financing options the company has tapped in recent months to hedge against the “uncertain macroeconomic environment.” “Like all companies we regularly evaluate our operating plan and make financing decisions — like entering into term loan agreements or issuing bonds — accordingly,” the spokesperson said via email. “Given the uncertain macroeconomic environment, over the last few months we have used different financing options to support capital expenditures, debt repayments, acquisitions and working capital needs.” Amazon’s income dipped toward the end of 2022 as the economy took its toll. The tech giant spent billions doubling the size of its fulfillment network during the pandemic, a play that served it well initially but that proved to be short-sighted. Amazon was forced to for over a dozen facilities as e-commerce sales last year grew slower than expected. Another headwind — soaring energy prices — impacted Amazon’s business in a major way, with the company’s spending on shipping climbing 10% to $19.9 billion in Q3 2022. To cut costs, Amazon plans to reduce its workforce in early 2023, by as much as 10,000 employees. The layoffs, which would be the largest in the company’s history, are said to be concentrated in Amazon’s human resources, Alexa and retail divisions. In other penny-saving measures, Amazon has frozen hiring for corporate roles in its retail business, shut down its Amazon Care telehealth service, closed all but one of its U.S. call centers, and Amazon Scout, its long-running delivery robot project. Those moves haven’t been enough to prevent the company’s market cap from falling below $1 trillion for the first time since April 2020.

Twitter is set to reverse the political ad ban to bolster up its revenue

Ivan Mehta

Twitter said Monday that it plans to lift the ban on political ads in the “coming weeks.” The company . At that time, it said that “political message reach should be earned, not bought.” Twitter charted a different path from other social networks like Facebook and Instagram, which allowed political ads. The social network’s announcement comes at a time when advertisers have been pulling back spending on the platform. In November, the company’s owner, Elon Musk, blamed to suspend ads on Twitter. Musk also had as the company briefly paused ads on the platform, and Musk accused the iPhone maker of hating “free speech in America.” What’s more, Twitter said that it’s relaxing its norms about cause-based ads — ads related to topics like social equality and environmental change — in the U.S. The company didn’t really lay out details about what terms it’s changing, but it mentioned that cause-based ads should be geo-restricted. “Advertisers whose cause-based ads target only within the United States are exempt from the above-listed restrictions,” it said. Historically, Twitter allowed cause-based ads with a condition that advertisers can’t apply specific target filters on those campaigns. But Musk’s management team is set to change that. In terms of having guardrails around these kind of ads, Twitter said it will “first ensure that our approach to reviewing and approving content protects people.” Moving forward, we will align our advertising policy with that of TV and other media outlets. As with all policy changes, we will first ensure that our approach to reviewing and approving content protects people on Twitter. We'll share more details as this work progresses. — Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) One of Musk’s priorities after taking over Twitter has been to boost the company’s revenues. While he has launched a pricier Twitter Blue subscription service that costs $8 per month, the company still has to rely a lot on ad revenue. Reports suggest that since the start of the Tesla CEO’s Twitter ownership, and . As the U.S. is gearing up for elections in 2024, political entities will spend all the money possible to sway voters in their favor. It’s not clear if Twitter will gain a lot of revenue by allowing political ads. In 2019, Twitter’s then-CFO Ned Segal said political ads accounted for $3 million during the 2018 U.S. midterms. Since we are getting questions: This decision was based on principle, not money. As context, we’ve disclosed that political ad spend for the 2018 US midterms was <$3M. There is no change to our Q4 guidance. I am proud to work ! — Ned Segal (@nedsegal) Like previous policy announcements under Musk, this change is thin on details and there are hardly any specifics about how this will shape advertising and misinformation related to it on Twitter. Musk had also promised to run polls before , but there was no such poll before reversing its political ad ban.

Twitter launches its Blue subscription service in Japan

Ivan Mehta

After launching Elon Musk’s version of , the company has expanded the paid plan to users in Japan. Both the old ( ) and revamped Twitter Blue subscriptions were only available in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand. Twitter noted on its support page that users in Japan will be able to subscribe for ¥980 (around $7.40) per month on the web and ¥1,380 ($10.42) per month on iOS. These prices are marginally lower than the U.S. prices of $8 per month on the web and $11 per month on iOS. At the moment, Twitter Blue offers features like , , , a thread reader and an edit tweet feature along with custom icons and themes. While some of these features were already present in the legacy version of the paid subscription, the verification mark, higher limit on video uploads and the boost in rankings are newly introduced features. After taking over Twitter, Musk has had lofty plans of reducing reliance on ad revenue by adding more subscribers. He launched a new version of Twitter Blue initially in November but had to quickly shut it down because of . Twitter Blue’s expansion in Japan is not surprising. In his first all-hands meeting as Twitter boss, Musk reportedly . that Japan has more than 50 million Twitter users. Since then the company has tried to put guardrails around the new verification system by mandating users to have a phone number to buy and putting for newly created accounts. However, Twitter’s manual verification system of reviewing names and bio are not working as intended. Last week, of Senator Edward J. Markey.

Daily Crunch: Marqeta acquires fintech infrastructure startup Power Finance for $275M

Christine Hall

Kicking off the week, we’ve been thoroughly enjoying ’s story about in our post-Roe-v.-Wade world. The TL;DR is that healthcare in the U.S. is a weird world, and you should use end-to-end encrypted messages if you’re going to DM your friends about things that are potentially illegal.  — and “I can’t explain it. It’s weird,” Alphonzo “Phonz” Terrell said to . After losing his job at Twitter when Elon Musk took over, the former global head of Social and Editorial didn’t want to rest — he wanted to build. “Coming straight out of it, I was just like, ‘Oh, it’s time. It’s time to build, whether we get support or not.’” Now he’s . Speaking of alternatives to Twitter, and took to the internet to find . Ultimately they conclude that there isn’t, and will probably never be, a one-for-one replacement for Twitter. Oh, and good news for gaming nerds after a lot of really silly missteps: writes how the 403-page Dungeons & Dragons game system is now . And here’s a handful more, because we love ya: / Getty Images For SaaS startups, tax time can create a conundrum. Some states regard software-as-a-service products as, um, services, while others classify them as, er, products. “There’s also the issue of bundling on its own,” according to startup tax accountant Ardy Esmaeili. “SaaS might not be taxed, but it will be when paired with hardware.” To help founders better understand their liability, Esmaeili shares tips on how to identify a company’s physical nexus and lists multiple SaaS categories that states are likely to tax. “Engage an expert as early as you can,” he writes. “Don’t think you won’t have to worry about it yet, because waiting can have big consequences down the line.” Three more from the TC+ team: reports that Manu Jain . This might sting a bit for the company because Jain was the one who set up and scaled the smartphone maker’s presence in India. All right, now here you are, checking all the security boxes, getting your two-factor authentication set up, and along comes a hacker — albeit paid by Meta — that , which allows someone to bypass that two-factor authentication on Facebook and Instagram. I guess it’s good they caught it, but ugh! has more. And we have five more for you:

Russia is blocking encrypted email startup Skiff

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai

The Russian government has blocked another encrypted email provider, according to a Russian digital rights organization and the email provider. Last Wednesday, Roskomsvoboda, which describes itself as “the first Russian public organization active in the field of protecting digital rights and expanding digital opportunities,” that an unknown Russian state organization ordered the block of , an email and cloud service provider . Since then, Skiff’s chief executive Andrew Milich shared evidence of the block with TechCrunch. The block against Skiff comes three years after Russia blocked similar email encrypted services  and , showing that President Vladimir Putin’s regime is decidedly clamping down on encrypted communication services that allow its citizens to conduct conversations that are harder to spy on. The Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not respond to a request for comment. The Russian government’s censorship authority, commonly known as Roskomnadzor, also did not respond to an email asking for comment. Roskomnadzor’s of blocked sites does not list Skiff as blocked at the time of publication. Stanislav Shakirov, technical director and co-founder of , told TechCrunch that the block is in full effect and that “the blocking is done by the ISP on their equipment by the URL mask (*.skiff.com) and IP addresses.” Shakirov explained that this has the effect of blocking Skiff.com and all of its subdomains, “thus, Russian users who are not using VPN, browser plugins, or censorship bypass tools like Tor or Psiphon can’t get access to Skiff services.” Skiff’s Milich told TechCrunch that the company has seen an 81% decrease in traffic from Russia since last week, and he also shared a video of a user in Russia trying to log on to Skiff, which ends with the user seeing a connection error. Milich added that he has received several complaints from users in Russia that the service is not usable anymore. According to Skiff, the company has half a million users in Russia. “I started Skiff with a more private vision for the internet, where our personal information is not shared, bought, and sold. [Skiff’s co-founder ] Jason [Ginsberg] and I have both had personal or professional connections to Russia — mine through Stanford, and Jason’s family escaped the Soviet Bloc in the late 1970s via a covert radio network,” Milich said. “With fast adoption of our products and now suppression of them, we’re even more confident and determined in our mission to build products for private communication and freedom.”

Report: Impossible Foods planning to lay off 20% of staff

Christine Hall

Impossible Foods, which makes plant-based nuggets, burgers and patties, is reportedly laying off 20% of its staff, . According to the story, the 12-year-old company currently employs about 700 workers, which could then affect over 100 employees. This comes as the company made a last October. Impossible Foods did not respond to a request for a comment about the layoffs. While we know layoffs can happen anytime, it seems like the company was doing well. Earlier this month, the Redwood City, California–based company that included over 50% dollar sales growth in 2022. The company also touted that its Impossible Beef product was “the best-selling product by volume of any plant-based meat brand in the U.S.” Months before that, CEO Peter McGuinness said in an that the company had a strong balance sheet, good cash flow and growth of between 65% and 70%. The most recent stats were given as the company also announced it brought on Sherene Jagla, previously senior vice president and general manager at Newell Brands, as Impossible’s first chief demand officer. Her role is to “bring its sales, marketing, insights and product development teams into one integrated function under her leadership as it prepares for its next phase of growth.” In total, Impossible raised $1.9 billion in venture capital, . The last time the company raised capital was a round in November 2021, and it was at that time that the company was valued at $7 billion. Founder event last June and said that his vision for the company was to be the conduit that helps the world be less reliant on animals for food. “I don’t think the company will have a monopoly on making meat, fish and dairy foods for the whole world, for a lot of reasons,” he explained. “The critical function that we service is basically serving the scientific problem and developing the technology platform that enables it. Right now, we’re the only company in the world that has seriously done that, and obviously to continue to fund the business, we’re in the food business. My guess is in 10 years or so, to accelerate the scaling, we’ll be working with a lot of partners licensing the technology and allowing partners to carry the ball for us.” Even though Impossible and other plant-based companies have tried to go mainstream via grocery stores and restaurant partnerships, like Impossible’s with Burger King, as a Yahoo article pointed out last week. My colleague Tim De Chant also noted that when meat prices rose during the global pandemic, was closing. However, that changed with the recent inflation. And the scale still isn’t there as Stray Dog Capital’s Lisa Feria explained to TechCrunch. “Early-stage companies in the space don’t always have the scale to offer pricing that is on par with traditional dairy or meat products,” Feria said. “Ultimately, when the industry is at scale, we expect many plant-based alternatives to be more affordable.” Impossible is not the only plant-based meat alternative company to make layoffs in recent months. In a made last October, Beyond Meat said it , or 19% of its workforce, as part of cost-saving measures as sales were slumping.

Amid growing competition, Paramount+ and Showtime are combining in the US

Sarah Perez

Nearly a year after ViacomCBS announced its  to become Paramount, the company is now making a major change to its portfolio with today’s news that it will be fully integrating Showtime into — the streamer known in previous years as CBS All Access. The integration will include both streaming and linear platforms, the company noted, meaning Paramount+ will now be renamed “Paramount+ with Showtime,” while the Showtime linear TV network will also be renamed the same in the U.S. This sort of consolidation was bound to happen, given today’s competitive streaming environment where even Netflix has seen tougher quarters and has had to embrace advertising in order to further grow its business. There are many options for consumers to choose from in the streaming market, and a standalone service like Showtime simply doesn’t have the breadth and depth of content required to stand on its own. Showtime first   its over-the-top streaming service in 2015, six years before CBS All Access was rebranded to  . However, Showtime is not as popular as its younger sister, Paramount+, which makes up the bulk of the company’s direct-to-consumer subscriber base. The streaming service reported Paramount itself has almost 67 million global subscribers across Paramount +, Pluto TV, Showtime, Noggin and BET+. The integration isn’t just aimed at boosting Paramount+’s profile on the market; it will also help the linear Showtime network. Paramount said select Paramount+ original programs will soon join the TV network, which provides incremental value for Showtime’s distributors and potentially more linear customers, as well. The changes will roll out later this year and will involve only the premium tiers at Paramount+, the company clarified. This will allow Paramount+ to better compete against other premium streamers, like HBO Max, while also differentiating its streaming service by offering a combination of original and premium content, linear channels, live news and sports and Paramount Pictures movies. Similar to HBO, Showtime’s content tends to have more mature themes, which appeals more to a certain demographic beyond the general market Paramount+ targets. However, both services would benefit from a combined user base and the ability to cross-promote titles. “This new combined offering demonstrates how we can leverage our entire collection of content to drive deeper connections with consumers and greater value for our distribution partners,” wrote Paramount CEO Bob Bakish in a memo to employees, announcing the news. “This change will also drive stronger alignment across our domestic and international Paramount+ offerings, as international Paramount+ already includes Showtime content. And, very importantly, this integration will unlock operational efficiencies and financial benefits across our broader portfolio,” he said. Alongside the news, Paramount announced that Chris McCarthy will continue to lead the Showtime studio and oversee network operations for the linear channel. He will also work closely with Tom Ryan, who will oversee the “Paramount+ with Showtime” streaming business. The company warned that other changes to programming may come about with this transition. For example, in order to focus on building franchises out of Showtime’s hit shows, it will divert investment from underperforming areas that “account for less than 10% of our views.” That means, likely, some cancellations or removals are in order. Paramount says it has begun those discussions with its production partners but didn’t announce which shows are being cut or are being elevated by way of these changes. The newly merged Paramount+ with Showtime service will be in direct competition with Warner Bros. Discovery, which has  across HBO, HBO Max and Discovery+. In September, during Goldman Sachs’ Communacopia + Technology Conference, Bakish   that a merger had been discussed internally. “It shouldn’t surprise you that [we’re looking] to have optionality in the future…Quite frankly, if we weren’t having that conversation, you should fire all of us because we should have that conversation,” Bakish had said. In August 2022, Paramount+ an in-app Showtime bundle for U.S. customers that wanted to upgrade to a plan that included both Paramount+ and Showtime. Paramount had already integrated Showtime content with its streaming product in international markets, as a precursor to the company’s domestic integration plans.

Rewind’s new app lets you ‘time travel’ through music from decades past

Sarah Perez

A new app called wants to make it easier for music fans to explore the top songs of decades past. Hoping to cater to consumer demand for nostalgic music experiences, Rewind allows users to “time travel” through the music charts from 1960 through 2010 to learn about how older songs have influenced today’s hits. The app was built by developer Ziad Al Halabi, whose day job involves mobile app development at music streaming service TIDAL. The developer says he enjoys working on music apps, having earlier launched an audio player for musicians, which gained some 2 million installs. With Rewind, which originally began as a weekend project, the goal is to offer a portal to explore the older tunes that once ruled the top charts. “[What] would it be like if you opened your favorite music app in 1991? Or 1965?” the app’s description asks. “What are the biggest hits at the time? Who are the top artists or the rising new ones?” Rewind For older music fans, those questions may be easier to answer. But Gen Z brings a new group of users who are exploring music through apps like TikTok, where a song’s release date doesn’t necessarily matter. Already, TikTok has proved successful in introducing younger people to popular tracks from past generations, like “ ” or Fleetwood Mac’s “ — both of which went viral on the video app, breaking into the top charts years after their original run. And . This interest in older music dovetails with other Gen Z “nostalgia” trends, like their , , , ,  (a preference spanning generations, in fact), and of course, . “I’ve always been interested in how music has changed over time,” said Ziad. “Rewind is a capsule of all the music, artists and major events in one place. The app offers a new way of discovering new old music which is based on historical eras with a little hint of nostalgia,” he continues. “It’s exciting to see momentum with thousands of listeners, Rewind is perfect for tastemakers and fans looking to discover new music from the good old days,” Ziad added. Rewind The app isn’t just a way to browse the charts from years past, however. It takes things a step further and even includes some modern twists. For starters, users can explore the music from a given year by top albums and top music videos, in addition to growing the top Billboard charts. It also delves into relevant trends from a given time period. For instance, browsing the year 1991 offers a selection of “grunge-defining records,” like Nirvana’s “Nevermind” and Pearl Jam’s “Ten,” among others. Other sections present tracks that saw major radio airtime that year, highly anticipated releases and newly formed bands that emerged that year, and so on. In addition, Rewind features a “news” section that includes major events and moments from the year in question. It also includes ads that give it a retro feel. For example, in 1965, listeners will see ads for the first distortion guitar pedal while users browsing the 1980s might see ads for new synth instruments that helped shape 80s sounds. For a bit of fun, the app leveraged ChatGPT to write short reviews for music albums in its “Weekly Discovery” feature and used the AI technology to put together mixtapes for different years by asking ChatGPT questions like “can you make me a mixtape of 90’s best guitar riffs?” Another feature offers a way to scroll through a TikTok-style music feed that accompanies each year. Here, you can listen to song clips from the time period in a vertical feed. This particular feature could be better developed to include “like” or “comment” buttons, but for now you can play or pause the track or open the song directly in TIDAL. Rewind Not surprisingly, given Ziad’s job, Rewind integrates more deeply with TIDAL, allowing subscribers to stream tracks in full, explains the developer. This is because his work at TIDAL allowed him to easily access the API and the TIDAL catalog. But if Rewind catches on, he would like to add support for other music apps. However, even without a TIDAL subscription, users can stream the 30-second previews and scroll through the app’s TikTok-like feed. “The feedback I’m getting from users is that despite not having a TIDAL subscription, it is still a fun experience to browse the different years, get weekly discovery of albums [and] scroll through the TikTok-style feed,” Ziad tells us. Launched last month, the app gained a few thousand downloads on its debut weekend and is slowly growing. It’s available as a free download on both and  and doesn’t currently generate revenue.

If, and only if, McDonald’s had an appetite for acquisitions

Natasha Mascarenhas

Welcome back to  , the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. I’m back, I’m drinking an iced Americano maybe because I miss Alex, maybe because I just feel different today, and I’m ready to start our week together. Here’s what I got into on today’s Equity Monday: As always, thanks for listening. Let’s end our start to the year strong! You can support me by following me on  and  The show also tweets from  , so follow us there!  

Like me, Loona the Petbot is dumb but lovable

Darrell Etherington

a robot pet at least since Sony introduced the original Aibo in 1999 — probably earlier, but Aibo made it seem tangible. Since then, there’s been a steady stream of attempts at making robot pets a reality that matches what we often see in futuristic science fiction — including a recent Aibo reboot, Pleo the animatronic pet dinosaur, Furby, Jibo, Anki’s Cosmo and many more. threw its hat into the ring via Kickstarter late last year, and based on some very impressive demo videos, this looked like the actual achievement of a Pixar character come to life. Loona is actually shipping out to some of its earliest backers, with April set as the timeframe for current orders made via Indiegogo, and KEYI, the company behind it, was demoing the adorable little bot at CES earlier this month. The company also sent a Loona my way at the time, and I’ve been testing/developing a deep emotional bond with this bundle of electronics and ABS plastic ever since. At heart, Loona is a four-wheeled image recognition and robotics tech demonstration in a surprisingly affordable package. The asking price right now on Indiegogo via its “indemand” preorder arrangement is $359 for a package that includes some accessories, which is a discount from the planned $500 retail asking price. With its debut crowdfunding campaign video and GIFs, Loona aimed to hit would-be buyers right in their adorableness glands, showing a robot that manages to exude charm and personality through expert combination of animated eyes on its display “face,” articulating ears with glowing tips, and two arm/leg combos with a wheel at either end that can propel it forward and help it make hand or paw gestures. TC/Darrell Etherington The screen face is bright and high resolution, and the camera array that powers Loona’s recognition capabilities rests just below that, on what we might as well call a “chin” since we’re well down the anthropomorphization road at this point. The robot also has touch sensors for interaction purposes, including a pat-able top of head. There’s a mic onboard as well as speakers, so that Loona can hear its owner and also respond (though strictly non-verbally). When you set Loona up using the companion smartphone app, it allows you to set your voice recognition language and provides you with a range of prompts that the robot is pre-programmed to respond to so you can test them out. Loona’s core strength lies in its industrial design, which blends a retro-futuristic sci-fi robotics aesthetic (which is very evocative of WALL-E’s EVE, imo) with a hyperefficient approach to mechanical engineering that nonetheless allows the robot to express a wide range of possible emotions and communicate fairly expressively. The outer ABS plastic shell and rubber-tracked wheels also all feel durable, which is good for a robot that’s going to spend a lot of time bumping into things and potentially getting harassed by real live animal pets, and/or human children. There’s one noteworthy exception to this, which is clearly indicated on Loona out of the box: The robot’s ears are particularly susceptible to damage if yanked around too much, which makes sense given that they have built-in motors and probably feature the lightest-weight connectors of the whole thing. In other words, Loona’s ears are its Achilles’ heels, which is probably why they were the first thing my dog tried to (gently) chew on. But if you can keep treatment of those relatively light, there’s no reason to expect Loona can’t survive bumps, scrapes and even the occasional fall.   A great deal of Loona’s flexible mobility and expressiveness comes from one key element of the robot’s design: Its four wheels attach via a single axis located in the middle of its body. This allows Loona to do things like turn on a dime, raise its “paw,'” lift and lower its head and much more, all in a relatively simple mechanical package that avoids introducing multiple points of potential failure and a lot more complexity on the movement programming side. All in all, Loona combines some incredible ingenuity in terms of its design to significantly lower costs while also introducing the charm and visual appeal of far more complicated robotic pets. Loona’s physical design may be a master class in making the most of smart constraints, but the robot’s programming, performance and interactivity behavior is an abject example of overpromising and underdelivering. When the crowdfunding campaign first debuted, we made sure to check that the videos were real footage and not renders, and while the company says they are, using Loona in practice reveals that those shots must be carefully shot, selected and edited to convey the level of sentience that they manage to communicate. In really, Loona has lots of charisma and is indeed a technical achievement in terms of its movements and mannerisms, but using it is less like living in a Pixar movie, and more like having a Roomba that also coos at you. I will say that I really like the setup and first-run experience, which provides a needlessly overwrought but fun origin myth for Loona. A short animation implies that your robot is animated by some kind of seed spirit made by a rock monster — a seed spirit that of course has a super adorable bubble butt, as is de rigueur now for cutesy animated characters. The spirit travels through a portal and appears inside your Loona, animating its screen and adding new meaning to the old “toys-to-life” product category. Loona’s mythos includes this sweet dumper. Loona Once it’s been connected to your Wi-Fi network and imbued with the spark of life, the Loona app takes you through some demos of its capabilities, including face recognition (and marking you as its owner) and then some basic voice commands. This is where the experience went from magical to muddling: During the initial face setup Loona lost sight of me and just spun forlornly in a circle making somewhat plaintive whimpering noises while trying to find me again. Quitting and restarting the app fixed this, but then moving on to the audio commands, I had a hard time first figuring out how to tell when Loona was in listening mode after saying its wake word (“Loona,” unsurprisingly) and then it would hear the actual command and translate it into action at best half the time. Overall, this is where Loona really falls short of its promise — the vision system seems to work only some of the time, despite my attempts to lower or raise myself to optimize its line of sight. Similarly, trying to get it to engage with two toys provided by the company, including a “fold it yourself” cardboard ball and a red fabric bullfighting cape, worked only some of the time (not at all for the cape). When it does work, it is indeed delightful, as when it found the ball and approached it, trying to bat it around with its arms. But it was at best hit-or-miss for both visual and audio input in my use. Loona offers a lot of other interactivity options, including direct remote control with the app’s virtual controller, which is fun and a good way to ensure you get a lot of value out of this when playing with it with kids. There’s also a programming tool that allows you to run Loona through fully custom routines and sequences, which is also fun and educational as an activity with children. The robot is also effortlessly charming when just left on and to its own devices, as it wanders around, cooing, discovering random things, occasionally getting stuck on furniture (it’s supposed to have object avoidance to not do this) and generally seems intent on amusing itself. This behavior is when it is perhaps most pet-like, inscrutable and adorable in its pursuit of god knows what. Given how impressive its launch visuals were, there was no real chance that Loona could live up to expectations. But the robot also fails to live up to its most basic promises when it comes to sound and image recognition, which is a much harder pill to swallow. That said, when it does work, it actually does provide a genuinely delightful and impressive performance, and it seems like its creators are taking an iterative approach to improving the platform via software updates and more. TC/Darrell Etherington I want to be clear: Loona is fun, especially for kids, but it can also be frustratingly rough around the edges. That said, its planned retail pricing of $500 does massively undercut something like the Aibo. It’s still a decent chunk of money to spend — about the same as an entry-level iPad, which is far more capable, but far less cute.

Netflix’s ‘Kids Mystery Box’ feature now available on Android devices

Lauren Forristal

After eight months, Netflix’s feature has officially rolled out to Android devices today. Android users worldwide can now discover new children’s shows and TV characters by clicking on the “Mystery Box” in the “Favorites Row” at the top of the Netflix homepage. The company today updated its from May, stating, “This feature is now available on Android devices for all global members.” The Mystery Box feature works similarly to a and gives kids and their caregivers the ability to find new content in a more playful way. The content in the mystery box changes daily, ranging from shows and characters like Ada Twist, Iggy and Rosie from “Ada Twist, Scientist” to dinosaurs from “Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous.” Netflix has a decent slate of kids’ shows and films, including popular titles like “Cocomelon,” “Gabby’s Dollhouse” and Guillermo del Toro’s “Pinocchio,” which was just nominated for the . The streaming service also has , which allow parents to block specific shows and access viewing history. Netflix has historically experimented with new ways to introduce its content to consumers, ranging from personalized recommendations to screensaver promos and even a shuffle button that plays a random title. For instance, the Play Something feature selects a title for the user that’s based on their preferences. The Kids Mystery Box feature uses that same idea but is made to be more interactive and fun for younger users. Kids can use the feature to find their next series or maybe rewatch content they haven’t seen in a while. The update comes on the heels of Netflix revamping its , which features a new billboard layout, card transitions, animation for profile screens and more. It isn’t clear if the Android app will get the same upgrade.

Deel enters equity management space with acquisition of Capbase

Mary Ann Azevedo

Capbase Equity management is clearly a hot area. On January 10, investment giant Fidelity announced that it had , a venture-backed fintech startup, for an undisclosed amount. Shoobx is a provider of automated equity management operations and financing software to private companies “at all growth stages,” up to and including an initial public offering. Services it offers include helping companies send offer letters, grant equity to new employees, manage their cap tables and get a 409A valuation report, among other things.

Alphabet X graduates robotic agtech firm Mineral

Brian Heater

A little over two years after , Mineral is becoming its own Alphabet company. The team, which was formerly known as the “Computational Agriculture Project” (no prizes for guessing why they adopted the new name), just graduated from the X “moonshot” labs. “After five years incubating our technology at X, Alphabet’s moonshot factory, Mineral is now an Alphabet company,” CEO Elliott Grant said in . “Our mission is to help scale sustainable agriculture. We’re doing this by developing a platform and tools that help gather, organize, and understand never-before known or understood information about the plant world — and make it useful and actionable.” Years after attempting to build a robotics division largely through acquisition, Alphabet appears to be growing one more organically in-house. Mineral follows and in growing from X to a fully released Alphabet subsidiary. Mineral uses its in-house robots to create datasets and do research about different crops. It explains that — over the course of its half decade of (mostly stealth) existence — it’s discovered that most companies are doing a good enough job collecting the scope of data required to leverage machine learning. “There is no single mode of data collection suited to every agriculture task or crop,” says Grant. “We began with a plant rover that could capture huge quantities of high quality images, and over time expanded to building generalized perception technology that can work across platforms such as robots, third party farm equipment, drones, sentinel devices, and mobile phones.” The company’s end goal is creating detailed and rich datasets that can be used by farmers across the world to tap into previously unknown factors in growing. In doing so, it hopes to help cultivate crops that are more resilient to climate change, without exacerbating the urgent issue.

Max Q: A very Virginia affair

Aria Alamalhodaei

Hello and welcome back to Max Q! In this issue: Rocket Lab — and the United States — got a major win this week with the company’s first Electron rocket launch from Virginia. The mission, aptly titled “Virginia is for Launch Lovers,” provides a major boost for the company as it seeks to increase launch cadence and provide rapid, “on-demand” launch capabilities from either hemisphere. It wasn’t an easy road. The mission experienced years of delays, mainly due to technical issues with a novel autonomous flight termination system developed by NASA. Once the technology was ready, Rocket Lab then experienced further (albeit much shorter) delays due to the mid-Atlantic’s inclement winter weather. Regardless, the launch went off without a hitch. It marks Rocket Lab’s 33rd successful Electron launch to date. SpaceX conducted a wet dress rehearsal of the Starship launch system from its Starbase site in southeastern Texas, a major milestone in CEO Elon Musk’s quest to turn long-haul interplanetary transportation from science fiction to reality. It’s the strongest signal yet that Starship’s first orbital flight test could well and truly be imminent. The wet dress is a critical series of prelaunch tests that includes propellant loading of both the upper stage and booster, and a run-through of countdown to around T-10 seconds, or just before engine ignition. After the wet dress, which as far as we know revealed no major issues, SpaceX began the process of “de-stacking,” or separating the Starship second stage and Super Heavy booster. Up next: a full static fire test, where engineers would light up all 33 of the booster’s Raptor 2 engines. The launch system would then be re-stacked before the first orbital flight test. A static fire test and orbital launch could all take place in a matter of weeks — March is not off the table for the orbital flight test — but that’s assuming that everything goes well and no major mishaps take place ( ). It also assumes that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, the body that regulates commercial launches, issues SpaceX the all-important launch license fairly soon. The FAA has been basically mum about the status of its evaluation of SpaceX’s plans, though it’s been conducting extensive assessments of the Starship launch program  . SpaceX Starship. SpaceX

Is venture funding already back?

Connie Loizos

about a , slumping  and a slowdown in the world of startup investing, the business of funding was positively humming last week. After slowing way down last spring, venture outfits disclosed a stunning $8 billion in new capital commitments in the span of just five days. Consider the following: NEA revealed that it closed its two newest funds adding up to ; Cowboy Ventures announced two funds totaling ; and FJ Labs also disclosed . Then there’s Sapphire Sport (it closed a second fund of ), Volition Capital (it announced for its fifth fund), Kearny Jackson ( ) and Dimension ( ). Even non-U.S. outfits got into the act, including Highland Europe, which announced a new fund, and a Japanese chemical giant that revealed a fund. So what’s going on exactly? Are we already through this downturn? While impossible to know, the flurry of activity likely owes itself instead to a few unsurprising things. For starters, a lot of “new” funds were actually closed last year but not announced for one reason or another. , for example, an early-stage venture outfit based in Woodside, California, said it is now investing out of a $300 million third fund (compared with a $151 million debut fund and a $262 million sophomore fund that it closed in 2019). Defy actually closed the fund in the middle of last year but didn’t say anything until now because it was actively investing its previous fund until a few months ago, co-founder Neil Sequeira said. At the time, he said, the moment didn’t seem right. “It was an interesting time in the Nasdaq and [regarding] world geopolitical issues,” he said, referring to the confluence of events that made 2022 a year that many would sooner forget, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and disrupted supply chains to surging inflation around the world.

Haun Ventures leads Sovereign Labs’ $7.4M seed round to help scale blockchains

Jacquelyn Melinek

Sovereign Labs has raised $7.4 million in seed funding led by Haun Ventures, co-founders Preston Evans and Cem Özer told TechCrunch. The startup is an “open, interconnected rollup ecosystem” with a software development kit (SDK) to provide a framework for secure and interoperable zero-knowledge rollups (ZK-rollups). “Sovereign’s goal has always been to make scaling [blockchains] simple,” Özer said. “For people who have been in this space for four-plus years, it’s pretty clear that rollups and ZK-rollups are the way to scale blockchains to the masses.” A is a blockchain that gets security from another blockchain, so it’s a way to add functionality to an existing chain without sacrificing security, Evans said. Rollups can be used to support different use cases like tokens, NFTs, smart contracts and so on — but they’re cheaper to operate because they outsource transactions. The capital will be used to build its SDK and hire protocol engineers and researchers with expertise in blockchains and their frameworks, Özer said. Its SDK wants to help Rust (and eventually C++) developers to use ZK technology across any blockchain without having to be experts in cryptography, both the co-founders said. Some major ZK-rollup blockchains that exist today include , and StarkNet platform, which all aim to increase scalability and security for developers off-chain through higher speeds and lower fees before combining and submitting them to Ethereum. Ethereum-focused ZK-rollup projects like dYdX, Sorare and are also working on scaling the space and improving user experiences through other areas like decentralized exchanges, dApps and gaming. “Without scaling, current blockchain systems today are unusable,” Özer said. “The moment an application reaches product-market fit and there’s demand, the fees skyrocket and it becomes unusable […] applications have to figure out how to be scalable.” Most ZK-rollup solutions are standalone products built by and for the teams that work on them, Özer said. Sovereign Labs “isn’t in the business of building rollups ourselves,” but instead wants to build frameworks for others, he added. “We want to give this technology to everyone so they can leverage it easily and create [their own] ecosystems.” The team will work on creating different monetization strategies, but its SDK framework will be open source, free and “always will be,” Evans noted. In the near term, the co-founders expect rollups to be widely inaccessible until frameworks like its SDK are developed. “Over time, SDK products will become accessible,” Özer said. “We expect an explosion of ZK-rollups and for most developers to leverage it.”

Three months ago, he was laid off from Twitter. Now, his competing app Spill is funded.

Amanda Silberling

“I can’t explain it. It’s weird,” Alphonzo “Phonz” Terrell said. After losing his job at Twitter when , the former global head of Social & Editorial didn’t want to rest — he wanted to build. “Coming straight out of it, I was just like, ‘Oh, it’s time. It’s time to build, whether we get support or not.'” Luckily for Terrell, his new social media app has already raised a $2.75 million pre-seed round, the company announced today. Since in mid-December, Spill has reached 60,000 handle reservations. Spill currently employs fewer than 10 people and has three strategic advisors, including former Twitter design chief Dantley Davis, creator and DEI advocate April Reign and civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson. Terrell has more than a decade of director-level experience in marketing and social content, running campaigns for companies like HBO and Showtime before Twitter. If there’s any tech founder who can put his finger on the pulse of what social media users actually want, it’s Terrell — especially with an all-star team of advisors and colleagues in his corner. “We’re really leaning into meme culture, making it easier to put text on images or gifs — little touches and tweaks like that have been really exciting,” Terrell said. As a Black social media founder, Terrell has observed the way that Black cultural contributions are or , while white creators get credit for creating dances or memes that they had nothing to do with. Spill plans to incorporate blockchain technology to credit and pay creators who start trends and wide-ranging conversations, though Terrell is adamant that Spill is not a crypto project and will not pay in crypto. Rather, it’s just another technological tool that will exist under the hood. On traditional social media platforms, Black people have carved out their own communities, like . Spill hopes to be a home for Black users from the get-go, since the very people building the app are part of that community. Terrell has been consulting Black creators about what they’re looking for on Spill, while CTO DeVaris Brown is building an AI moderation model that incorporates Black dialects in its DNA. Historically, studies have shown that tweets written in AAVE (African American vernacular English) were 2.2 times as likely to be as offensive. That’s because most AI can’t understand the cultural context in which certain speech is being used, especially if the humans behind the algorithm don’t understand either. “We’re going to be more intentional and be more accurate around things that will be deemed offensive, because, again, this is our lived experience or learned experience,” Brown told TechCrunch in December. “It’ll be much more accurate to catch those kinds of things that will detract from the platform that would not lend to creating a safe space for our users and our creators.” With its $2.75 million in pre-seed funding, the app will begin expanding its team — first, it will hire for in engineering and community management. Leading the investment are MaC Venture Capital and Kapor Center, with participation from Sunset Ventures. As by TechCrunch, Black founders remain disproportionately overlooked in venture capital, raising just 1% of funds in 2022. “We knew we were up against quite a lot,” said Terrell. But when Terrell pitched Spill to the , a fund that specifically works to close access gaps for diverse founders, the investors decided to contribute within 10 minutes of their pitch. “We are excited that Spill aims to address major challenges created by existing social media platforms and utilize technology to build more diverse, equitable, and inclusive online communities,” said Allison Scott, CEO of the Kapor Center, in an emailed statement. Spill plans to launch in alpha during the first quarter of this year. Users can reserve their handles on Spill’s .

EV company Arrival to cut workforce by 50% in third restructuring effort

Kirsten Korosec

Arrival is going through another restructuring — this time led by a newly appointed CEO — that will slash its workforce by about 50% as the U.K.-based commercial EV company attempts to reduce operating costs and preserve cash. The company said Monday that Igor Torgov, former executive VP of digital at the company, has been hired as its CEO. Prior to Arrival, Torgov held a number of CEO, COO and other leadership positions at Atol, Bitfury, Yota, Columbus IT and Microsoft. The cuts announced Monday would reduce its workforce by 50%, to about 800 employees globally. Arrival said the layoffs along with other reductions in real estate and third-party spending will help it cut operating costs by $30 million a quarter. This is the third time since July that Arrival has taken drastic measures to stay viable. The company, which went public in 2021 via a , announced in July a that included a 30% reduction in spending across the entire business that could “potentially impact up to 30% of employees globally.” Arrival said, at the time, the plan would allow the company to meet its targets through late 2023 using the $500 million of cash it had on hand. As of December 31, 2022, that cash-on-hand number had dropped to $205 million. The company, which has centered its business plan around using microfactories to build its products, was initially focused on its , which achieved certification in the European Union in May 2022. The plan was to start producing with customer models by the second half of the year. In October, just a few months from its first restructuring, the company said it was and away from the U.K. market, where it is headquartered and where the first EV vans were supposed to be delivered. Arrival said it expects to start production of the van in Charlotte, North Carolina in 2024, subject to raising additional capital.

Hacker finds bug that allowed anyone to bypass Facebook 2FA

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai

A bug in a new centralized system that Meta created for users to for Facebook and Instagram could have allowed malicious hackers to switch off an account’s two-factor protections just by knowing their phone number. Gtm Mänôz, a security researcher from Nepal, realized that Meta did not set up a limit of attempts when a user entered the two-factor code used to log into their accounts on the new , which helps users link all their Meta accounts, such as Facebook and Instagram. With a victim’s phone number, an attacker would go to the centralized accounts center, enter the phone number of the victim, link that number to their own Facebook account, and then brute force the two-factor SMS code. This was the key step, because there was no upper limit to the amount of attempts someone could make. Once the attacker got the code right, the victim’s phone number became linked to the attacker’s Facebook account. A successful attack would still result in Meta sending a message to the victim, saying their two-factor was disabled as their phone number got linked to someone else’s account. “Basically the highest impact here was revoking anyone’s SMS-based 2FA just knowing the phone number,” Mänôz told TechCrunch. An email from Meta to an account owner telling them that their two-factor protections have been switched off. Gtm Mänôz (screenshot) At this point, theoretically, an attacker could try to take over the victim’s Facebook account just by phishing for the password, given that the target didn’t have two-factor enabled anymore. Mänôz in the Meta Accounts Center last year, and reported it to the company in mid-September. Meta fixed the bug a few days later, and paid Mänôz $27,200 for reporting the bug. Meta spokesperson Gabby Curtis told TechCrunch that at the time of the bug the login system was still at the stage of a small public test. Curtis also said that Meta’s investigation after the bug was reported found that there was no evidence of exploitation in the wild, and that Meta saw no spike in usage of that particular feature, which would signal the fact that no one was abusing it.

Meta is killing Move, another experimental social app from its in-house incubator NPE Team

Sarah Perez

Meta is killing off yet another project from its in-house R&D group, the NPE Team, following the company’s sizable , impacting 13% of its workforce. The latest experiment to be wound down is the social to-do list app called , which allowed users to earn points for completing tasks on either their personal or group to-do lists. These points, in turn, could be used to customize an alpaca avatar with accessories like hats, clothing, sunglasses and more. Move’s broader idea had been to encourage group participation as the avatar’s customization let users see which members were the most productive, based on how many accessories the user had earned for their alpaca. However, despite the app’s lighthearted nature and potential to gamify to-do lists, the company quietly announced the app will be closing down in March. In an iOS app update published on Sunday, Move informed its users the app would be shutting down and would no longer be available after March 2, 2023. As a part of this process, new user sign-ups are now disabled and existing users can log in to download their data ahead of the app’s final closure. The shutdown notice is the latest in a string of closures from Meta’s in-house incubator, NPE Team. First  in mid-2019, the group’s original focus had been on building consumer-facing apps that would allow Meta to test out new social features and gauge their impact. But the incubator has yet to produce a product successful enough to remain an independent brand. Instead, over the years, Meta’s NPE Team has launched then shuttered a number of social experiments, ranging from  apps to  to  to ,   and  , and many more. More recently, it announced its plan to aimed at the creator community. That service will close down in February 2023. Last year, it also killed off a and that had just over 900,000 downloads at the time of its closure. While many of the experiments may have generated data and insights that helped inform other developments at Meta, the initiative seemed incapable of producing breakout hits on its own. As a result, NPE Team began last year to focus its efforts more globally and make seed-stage investments in other businesses. It established offices in emerging markets, like Lagos, Nigeria, and backed startups, like the AI developer platform , for example. With the changes, there are now few active NPE Team-developed apps left on the app stores. On Google Play, a couple of NPE Team apps’ URLs are still accessible directly, including live sports podcasting app , and a friend finder called — but they’re not available through search and have not been updated since 2021 and 2019, respectively. On the App Store, only Move and remain. It’s unclear how much time BARS has left, however, as it hasn’t been updated since June 30, 2022. Across the tech industry, experimental projects inside larger companies have been impacted by widespread layoffs. At Google, for example, the majority of projects inside its own in-house incubator Area 120 were being wound down, the company said earlier this month. Only three projects will go on to graduate to other parts of Google this year, . We understand NPE Team was impacted by Meta’s layoffs as well, but the company has not yet shared a statement about its future plans for this org, specifically. Meta was asked for comment on Move’s closure; we’ll update if one is provided. However, the app’s closure notice can be on the App Store.

‘One Piece’ live-action series set to arrive on Netflix this year

Lauren Forristal

Netflix today that its “One Piece” live-action series would be available to stream sometime in 2023. The company tweeted the announcement alongside a new poster of the upcoming series. The poster shows the main character, Monkey D. Luffy (played by Iñaki Godoy), with his back turned. Adventure is on the horizon! One Piece sets sail in 2023 — Netflix (@netflix) A specific release date for the live-action series has yet to be revealed. It was first in January 2020. Other cast members include Emily Rudd as Nami, Mackenyu Arata as Roronoa Zoro, Jacob Gibson as Usopp, Peter Gadiot as Shanks, Morgan Davies as Koby, Vincent Regan as Garp, and Taz Skylar as Vinsmoke Sanji. “One Piece” is centered around Luffy, an impulsive and optimistic teenager who has the power to make his body act like rubber, allowing him to bounce, twist and bend away from his enemies. Luffy is on a journey to find a mythical treasure called the One Piece, so he can become the King of the Pirates. Based on the long-running pirate manga and anime, Netflix’s “One Piece” is an adaptation that millions of viewers will likely be excited to watch. “One Piece” is arguably the most popular manga series, . For comparison, “Dragon Ball” has sold more than 300 million copies. However, on are skeptical that Netflix can pull off a live-action anime. “One Piece” is being produced by Tomorrow Studios, the same company that produced Netflix’s “ ” , which was after one season. Netflix also released a “ ” movie in 2017, which was also considered a flop. In general, live-action anime shows and movies are widely disliked by fans, whether it be because the original story gets ruined or the adaptation fails to bring the characters to life. Netflix likely feels the pressure to do right by this fan-favorite anime.

Ford discounts its all-electric Mustang Mach-E in response to Tesla’s EV price war

Kirsten Korosec

Ford said Monday it has increased production and cut the price of its all-electric Mustang Mach-E crossover, the latest automaker to join an EV price war started by Tesla. Ford Mustang Mach-E vehicles are now between about 1% to 8.8% lower, depending on the trim level, according to the company, which emphasized that the discounts are possible now that its new EV supply chain is coming online and production is “significantly increasing.” “We are not going to cede ground to anyone. We are producing more EVs to reduce customer wait times, offering competitive pricing and working to create an ownership experience that is second to none,” Marin Gjaja, the chief customer officer of Ford Model e, said in a statement. “Our customers are at the center of everything we do – as we continue to build thrilling and exciting electric vehicles, we will continue to push the boundaries to make EVs more accessible for everybody.” Ford Those lowered prices will also extend to existing customers awaiting delivery of their vehicle, the company said. Ford said it will reach out to customers who purchased the Mustang Mach-E after January 1, 2023 and already have taken possession of the vehicle. The move is clearly aimed at distinguishing itself from rival Tesla. Some new Tesla owners, particularly in China, have demanded rebates or credit after the company slashed prices. Tesla has discounted its vehicles, or offered credits, at least four times in the past several months, kicking off what many in the industry have dubbed an EV price war. The price reduction trend kicked off in October when in China up to 9% on the Model 3 and Model Y.  Tesla  in January by nearly 14% and for vehicles sold in North America. The company has also tried to woo U.S. and Canadian buyers with price reductions. Tesla in early December offered U.S. buyers a   toward a Model Y or Model 3 if they had their vehicle delivered in December 2022. In the last week of the year, the automaker upped that discount to $7,500, according to the  . Tesla’s decision to drop the price of its EVs, which some analysts have suggested was due to softening demand, has put pressure on the rest of the industry. Tesla has among the highest profit margins in the business, allowing it to experiment with price changes. It’s also the EV sales leader. Those two factors mean that most, if not all, automakers making a run at Tesla will also lower prices of their EV models.

It’s time to cast your votes for TC Early Stage Audience Choice

Lauren Simonds

A not-so-humble brag here, so brace yourself. The programming at — April 20 in Boston, Massachusetts — is gonna be off the proverbial hook. How do we know? We read hundreds of applications from experienced founders and startup ecosystem experts eager to participate in Audience Choice for a chance to present at the show. Take advantage of early-bird ticket pricing. . Choosing the finalists wasn’t easy, but we’re excited to announce that Audience Choice voting opens today, January 30, and runs through February 17. We selected a total of 20 contenders in two categories for your voting pleasure — 10 roundtable discussions and 10 breakout sessions. Go read the abstracts and at TC Early Stage. The top five vote-getters from each category will join us to present live and in-person at TC Early Stage, so vote early and vote often. How do roundtables and breakouts differ? Excellent question. Audience Choice voting is open now through February 17. for your favorites, , and join us in Boston on April 20 to learn new skills, accelerate your learning curve and move your startup dream into reality. .

Jump on our limited two-for-one Disrupt 2023 presale offer

Lauren Simonds

Nothing wrong with your calendar, folks — it’s the end of January. Although takes place months from now — on September 19–21 in San Francisco — we believe in two things: planning ahead and rewarding those who do. Right now — and for a limited time only — take advantage of our Disrupt 2023 ticket presale offer. Simply to receive an exclusive two-for-one pass when we release tickets. You’ll save a serious chunk of cheddar. If you’ve attended TC Disrupt in the past, you know the outstanding ROI you can expect. For the new folks, you’ll gather with 15,000 of the smartest founders, investors and makers. Meet tomorrow’s unicorns today and hear from trendsetters, rising stars and iconic successes. Learn from the leading experts across the entire startup spectrum. Drive your business forward. Last year, Disrupt returned live and in-person for three off-the-hook days. Here’s just a small sample of some of the amazing speakers who graced the stage: Don’t forget about world-class networking, the companies exhibiting on the floor show and the dozens of breakout sessions and smaller roundtable discussions where you can dig deeper into a topic and connect with like-minded people. Here’s how Jessica McLean, director of marketing and communications for Infinite-Compute, described some of the benefits of going to Disrupt: “Tech startups go to Disrupt to show off their stuff. It’s the perfect place to scope out the competition, network with potential investors, get a feel for how other companies position themselves and to see what’s trending.” TC Disrupt offers virtually limitless opportunities, and your first one starts right here and now. to receive your two-for-one pass when we release tickets for Disrupt 2023. Plan-ahead reward: unlocked. Now, with one less task to think about, you’re ready to unlock even more rewards and opportunities at on September 19–21. We can’t wait to see you there! .

Instagram’s text update Notes feature is expanding to Europe and Japan

Aisha Malik

Instagram head Adam Mosseri today that the social network is launching its text update Notes feature across Europe and Japan. Notes are short posts of up to 60 characters that include just text and emojis, and appear above your profile photo. Prior to this expansion, Notes was already accessible everywhere Instagram is available beyond Europe and Japan since the . Users can post Notes by navigating to the top of their inbox, then selecting the followers they follow back or others from their existing “Close Friends” list. They can then type out the note itself, after which it will appear at the top of friends’ inboxes for 24 hours. If a user responds to a Note, the reply will arrive as a DM. 🎉 Notes Launch Worldwide 🎉 Notes are now available in Europe and Japan. Check it out and let me know what you think! 👇🏼 — Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) In a to his social accounts, Mosseri explained that Europe and Japan weren’t included in the initial rollout of Notes because Instagram needed to ensure that the feature complied with local regulations before bringing it to these regions. Instagram says it will take a few days for the feature to reach all users in the two new regions. At the time of the initial launch of Notes, Instagram said that during testing it found people appreciated having a way to start conversations in a lightweight way. The goal of the feature is to give users a casual and spontaneous way to express themselves and connect with others. In December, the New York Times that Meta was considering turning Instagram Notes into a more fully fledged Twitter rival to capitalize on the chaos at Twitter following Elon Musk’s acquisition. The report said the company had been weighing whether Notes should even be its own stand-alone app or another feed inside Instagram.

Addie’s opens first drive-up grocery store in Massachusetts following $10.1M seed

Christine Hall

Much of the frenzy from the past three years has mainly catered to urbanites who need a few items delivered in 20 minutes. But what if you are a suburban mom trying to fit a week’s worth of grocery shopping in between shuttling children to various activities? Enter , a drive-up grocery store opening its first location today in Norwood, Massachusetts. CEO Jim McQuade told TechCrunch that he and co-founder and CTO Jeremiah Strauss created the concept so that groceries could be stocked, stored and bagged all without shoppers having to go inside the store. The 22,000-square-foot store offers a curated list of 4,500 products from both national and local brands, ranging from bakery to baby items. Ordering looks pretty easy: Customers go to Addie’s website or app, purchase the groceries they want and choose a pick-up window that works best for their schedules. With 14 pull-through parking lanes, McQuade estimates that a customer can pull up and be driving off with their groceries in a matter of minutes. He had been following online grocery stores for the past decade; in fact, McQuade used the word “obsessed” to describe it. His “a-ha moment” came back when he and his wife had a toddler and a baby on the way and it took him 25 minutes to find three items in the store causing him to be home late. “I’m thinking there has to be a better way,” McQuade, now a dad of three, added. “However, we needed to reimagine every aspect of an operation to solve that problem, from the online order to the pickup. As a result, our solution looks nothing like a traditional supermarket, which is intentionally designed to be inefficient.” With the advent of online shopping, the traditional supermarket as we know it continues to go through changes. Online grocery shopping is predicted to account for by 2026, so it is only going to grow. In addition, grocery stores are also clamoring for and to best competitors. And yes, McQuade knows that national and local grocery stores offer similar pick-up service, but he explained that if you’ve ever tried one, you know that they can come with some drawbacks, like limited availability on pickup time slots, being at the whim of the picker’s ability to choose quality products, additional fees and the online ordering inventory not matching what’s actually on the store shelf, resulting in frequent out-of-stock items. Addie’s drive-up grocery store. Addie’s Instead, Addie’s created inventory management technology systems that talk to each other in real time. McQuade said the system knows digitally where every physical item is on the shelf. To use his example, if the store has 15 gallons of organic 2% milk, but five of them are promised to other customers, the system will only allow customers to buy the other 10 gallons, but will not accept the request if someone tries to buy 11 gallons. “We haven’t seen anyone else with that ability or get it right in this space,” McQuade added. “It lets us make sure that when we promise that item is here, we know we can keep it. So when you shop with us, you can shop with confidence.” Now with its first store open, Addie’s is eyeing its next move, which McQuade said will be expanding store locations, and he believes that this concept could grow to more than 2,000 locations. Addie’s planned expansion is buoyed by $10.1 million in new seed funding led by Disruptive Innovation Fund, the venture capital arm of Clay Christensen’s Rose Park Advisors. In addition, McQuade intends to use the funding to build out his team — those intentional efforts to increase efficiencies help the store to pay store employees $20 per hour in starting wages — and on technology development. Meanwhile, he believes Addie’s has built a model that is replicable in other towns. Grocery stores need to show profitability in orders and customers, two concepts McQuade believes has already been proven. “The busy families that have had access to our early operations love what we’re doing, and we’re seeing first, second and third orders well in excess of $200 each,” he added. “When we think about what that means, with an appropriate marketing profile, these customers are paying themselves back in a period of weeks, not months or years.”

Third-party Twitter apps are facing issues, users say

Ivan Mehta

People using third-party Twitter clients are facing a number of issues, including being unable to log in and access Twitter feeds. Tweetbot, Echofon and Twitterrific, three popular third-party Twitter apps, confirmed the issues and noted that they are not sure what has triggered the glitch. Tweetbot and other clients are experiencing problems logging in to Twitter. We’ve reached out to Twitter for more details, but haven’t heard back. We’re hoping this is just a temporary glitch and will let you know more as soon as we know more. — Tweetbot by Tapbots (@tweetbot) We’re aware that Twitterrific is having problems communicating with Twitter. We don’t yet know what the root cause is, but we’re trying to find out. Please stay tuned and apologies. — Twitterrific (@Twitterrific) Because Echofon just stopped working talking about Twitter made changes to the permissions but when it keeps bringing up an error msg instead of the app authorization page. — Charlie Poppington (@aujha_aye) Makers of these apps also complained about these issues on Mastadon. Twitterrific developer Sean Heber said, “Did Twitter just kill 3rd party clients?” while Tweetbot’s Paul Haddad said, “I’m hoping whatever is going on at Twitter is just some automated spam protection bot that is incorrectly suspending proper apps.” Mastodon Mastadon In an email response to TechCrunch, Haddad said the issue started around 7:30 PM PT today. He also mentioned that all API requests from the apps are failing. It’s likely that Twitter made some changes to its API for third-party clients that resulted in these apps breaking down. It’s not clear if this is a step to thwart access to the platform. Apart from the above-mentioned apps, users complained about being unable to access Twitter from clients like , , and . So the only way to access Twitter is through the official client or the website. on Twitter’s developer forum said that on the developer portal, these apps show up as “Suspended.” Since Elon Musk’s takeover, Twitter has killed many developer programs, including . Third-party developers have been cautious about their development plans around Twitter as the company hasn’t communicated its plans for the ecosystem. Last month, the company’s former head of developer platforms, Amir Shevat, wrote for TechCrunch that the new management . While Twitter hasn’t communicated anything about the issue, the TwitterDev account last month that the company “will continue to invest in our Developer Platform, especially our Twitter API.” Earlier this week, Twitter decided to make the algorithmic timeline — named “For You” — .

Epic and Match’s antitrust case against Google heads to jury trial on November 6

Sarah Perez

A date has been set for a trial by jury in a significant antitrust case against Google involving its alleged abuses of power in the Android app market. Fortnite maker Epic Games and dating app giant Match Group, joined by over three dozen state attorneys general, have accused Google of unfairly leveraging its market dominance and harming competition through its Google Play Store terms and practices. In particular, the plaintiffs take issue with the commissions Google requires on app sales and in-app purchases as well as the control Google has over Android app distribution in general. The case will now proceed to a jury trial on November 6, 2023, a judge in the Northern District of California has ruled. Epic Games began its path to suing the app store giants, Apple and Google, back in 2020 when it introduced a direct payment option in Fortnite to its iOS and Android apps, from their respective app stores. Epic then sued both companies for antitrust abuses. Apple largely won its case, but appealed the ruling as Epic still wants Apple held accountable for anticompetitive practices, while Apple didn’t want to change its terms to permit third-party payments, as the district judge had decided would be required. In the DoJ voiced its concerns over how the lower court had misinterpreted U.S. antitrust law — a signal of the increased interest the U.S. government has in the prosecutions of the tech giants. (The DoJ is also said to be in the early stages of .) Epic’s claims against Google, while largely similar to Apple’s, have to take into account the differences with Google’s app distribution platform. Unlike Apple, which prevents any other means of installing apps on iOS devices outside its own App Store, Google permits apps to be sideloaded on Android devices. In fact, Epic Games chose to distribute Fortnite to users when it launched on Android, and after the game for terms violations. To aid its case, Epic has focused part of its antitrust claim on the other alleged means Google used to maintain market power, including an internal program where Google in incentives to keep their games on the Play Store. Google, however, maintains the program is “proof that Google Play competes fairly with numerous rivals for developers,” it said. Match Group had also sued Google over its Play Store practices, .” Google shot back, saying Match just wants to for the services it provides the company as part of its platform. Epic and Match by adding new antitrust counts to their case. Google in October to disallow these requests, saying, among other things, the claims were filed too late. (The court granted the motion to amend the complaint in November.) In a more recent hearing related to this case, a California federal judge criticized Google for not preserving evidence from employee chats, after learning internal communications were taking place in Google Chat, where messages were automatically deleted after 24 hours. Though employees can change the auto-delete setting, Google apparently did not enforce this setting to be turned on. The U.S. District Judge James Donato asked the parties how many of the 260 Google employees who received a litigation hold notice had chosen not to preserve their chats, according to a report from The judge also threatened Google with a “substantial, trial-related penalty” if the court found evidence related to the trial was destroyed. “I think there’s little doubt from the evidence that I’ve heard so far that Google’s chat function could in fact have contained evidence relevant … to this case,” the judge said. by on Scribd Epic and Match’s lawsuit against Google also includes participation from 39 attorneys general (38 states plus the District of Columbia). A consumer class action is involved, too, and is seeking $4.7 billion in damages, The amount is based on what the plaintiffs believe consumers were overcharged due to the Play Store’s fees — increases that developers passed along to their own customers. This number is likely going to be disputed, given that it’s not clear if developers would have offered consumers any additional savings if they could sidestep fees, rather than keeping the money for themselves. The case is one of two notable antitrust complaints involving Google. The other is the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Google . In this one, the DoJ alleges that Google illegally maintains its position as the No. 1 search engine by paying out billions of dollars to Apple, Samsung, and other telecoms to be the default search engine on mobile devices. Epic Games and Google declined to comment on the new trial date. Match didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Spotify cuts 6% of its workforce, impacting 600 people

Romain Dillet

Music streaming service has announced that it will be conducting a round of layoffs that will impact around 6% of its global workforce. In its most recent earnings release, the company said that there were 9,808 full-time employees working for Spotify. Today’s move will impact around 600 employees. “Like many other leaders, I hoped to sustain the strong tailwinds from the pandemic and believed that our broad global business and lower risk to the impact of a slowdown in ads would insulate us,” Spotify co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek said sent to its employees. “In hindsight, I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our revenue growth. And for this reason, today, we are reducing our employee base by about 6% across the company. I take full accountability for the moves that got us here today,” he added. Ek’s is quite long compared to other internal memos announcing layoffs. In addition to this difficult announcement, he says that Spotify isn’t efficient enough to ensure the company’s long-term success. “We still spend far too much time syncing on slightly different strategies, which slows us down. And in a challenging economic environment, efficiency takes on greater importance,” he said. There are some adjustments at the helm of the company as well. Dawn Ostroff, the chief content and advertising business officer, will leave the company. Alex Norström will become the only person in charge of business as Spotify’s new chief business officer — he used to be the chief freemium business officer. Gustav Söderström, who has been the chief product officer for , is staying at the company and overseeing most engineering and product work. So it sounds like there isn’t much change on this front. According to Ek, the company had to conduct layoffs because Spotify’s current trajectory was unsustainable over the long run. “To offer some perspective on why we are making this decision, in 2022, the growth of Spotify’s [operating expenses] outpaced our revenue growth by 2X […] As you are well aware, over the last few months we’ve made a considerable effort to rein in costs, but it simply hasn’t been enough,” Ek wrote. Spotify employees who are impacted will be invited to one-on-one conversations over the next few hours. They will receive severance pay that will vary depending on local notice period requirements and employee tenure. On average, employees will receive five months of severance. Accrued and unused vacation will be paid out and healthcare coverage will continue during the severance period. , the company estimated it will incur approximately €35-€45 million in severance-related charges. Spotify will also offer immigration and career support. Over the past year, have dropped by 50%, to $97.91 a share. Shares are currently trading at $104 in pre-market trading, up 6.22% compared to Friday’s closing price. Last week, announced that it was laying off 10,000 people while parent company said it would cut 12,000 jobs. Amazon, Meta, Salesforce and many other smaller companies have all announced their own round of layoffs in recent weeks. Today, Spotify is joining this unfortunate trend.

BioNTech acquires Tunisian-born and UK-based AI startup InstaDeep for £562M

Tage Kene-Okafor

German-based biotech company BioNTech SE is set to acquire InstaDeep, a Tunis-born and U.K.-based artificial intelligence (AI) startup, for up to £562 million (~$680 million) in its largest deal yet. Per , the German vaccine maker intends to use  BioNTech is said to pay £362 million — a mix of cash and an undisclosed amount of BioNTech shares — upfront. The remaining £200 million is dependent on how InstaDeep performs in the future, according to the company’s statement. CEO Beguir, in an interview with TechCrunch last year, said In 2019, InstaDeep formed a multi-year strategic collaboration with BioNTech to launch where they would deploy the latest advances in AI and ML to develop novel immunotherapies. This acquisition is as a result of this long-term partnership that has seen InstaDeep become the centerpiece of a growing portfolio of initiatives around AI and ML at BioNTech. BioNTech intends to use computational solutions to create personalised drugs for cancer patients and according to its CEO  InstaDeep’s 240-man team will continue to provide its AI and machine learning services to other companies, including Google and Nvidia, per the company’s statement. “AI is progressing exponentially and our mission at InstaDeep has always been to make sure it benefits everyone. We are very excited to join forces and become one team with BioNTech, with whom we share the same culture of deep tech innovation and focus on positive human impact,” said Beguir on the acquisition. “Together, we envision building a world leader that combines biopharmaceutical research and AI with the aim to design next-generation immunotherapies that enhance medical care — thus, helping fight cancer and other diseases.” The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2023, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

Some initial thoughts on Apple’s resurrected HomePod

Brian Heater

a strange choice. At the time, Apple told us, “ has been a hit since its debut last fall, offering customers amazing sound, an intelligent assistant, and smart home control all for just $99. We are focusing our efforts on HomePod mini.” While the smart home hasn’t panned out precisely the way Apple or its competition hoped (just ask Amazon), the company never took its eye off that ball. HomeKit — and all it entails — is still a central piece of the company’s strategy, and getting Siri, the Home app, etc. into the home is still an important goal — another key branch of the ecosystem play. This morning, however, it became clear that the HomePod wasn’t dead. It was just resting. Biding its time. Given that it took nearly two years for — and Apple completely cleared out stock of the old speaker in the meantime — this is apparently a “back by popular demand” situation. The fact of the matter is, however, a good hub is still an essential piece of the smart home puzzle. Amazon, for example, may have been with its Echo play, but that doesn’t mean that getting those devices in the home is a key component of a long-tail strategy (the problem, ultimately, is the question of just how long a tail the people in charge of the money are willing to put up with). HomePod mini, while it has its place, is probably not going to fill that central smart home hub role for everyone. Nor, frankly, does it serve as a great replacement for a home speaker or TV surround sound. Sure, I said the thing has “remarkably big sound” in my review, but that’s relative to its size. The other important factor in all of this is Matter. The new smart home standard frankly blows the doors wide open for Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung and the rest. Prior to its stage-one rollout late last year, the world of smart home standards was one of warring kingdoms, with companies duking it out to get their respective “Works With” logos on the back of boxes. Matter is effectively one standard to rule them all. If it works with one, it will work with all. You can read an interview I did with a Matter exec at CES . Apple A thing that gets lost in all of this is how effective these devices can be in serving as a kind of catch-all platform for so many different home functionalities, from more complex smart home routines to doubling as an intercom. It also couples with existing features like Find My, so you can check in on a loved one who’s shared their location with you. New features include a temperature and humidity sensor, as well as the ability to detect and alert you when a smoke or fire alarm is going off — a nice little workaround for those who haven’t upgraded to a smart device like the kind Nest makes. It doesn’t include alerts for things like broken glass, however, which feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. The real value proposition is, however, the same as ever. Unlike most of the competition, HomePod is a speaker first, smart home hub second. That’s not a knock on its smart home bona fides, mind — it’s an acknowledgement that the product is sound-first in a way that few other products in this category are. It was always a gamble in a category that’s been largely defined by ultra cheap, loss-leading devices. Apple knew it was limiting its potential userbase right out of the gate with a $349 price tag for the original. The new product is $50 cheaper, in spite of its advances, but that’s still a far cry from Google and Amazon, which have quite literally been giving away entry-level smart speakers at various points. I spent some time with the new HomePod (technically “ by Apple’s official naming convention) early today. And I can attest to the fact that it sounds really great. The isolation is terrific. The treble is clear. The bass is powerful, without being overwhelming. As a long-time Google Home Max owner, I considered a potential move over (though the move away from Spotify is another question entirely). The system audio calibrates its EQ based on its location in a room. It utilizes the on-board accelerometer to recognize when it’s been lifted, and then takes about 20 or so seconds to adjust accordingly. That means, in theory, that you’ll get great sound regardless of whether it’s sitting against a wall or in the middle of a room (these are all the sorts of things I’ll feel confident saying once I’m able to bring a review unit home). Spatial Audio is an interesting feature here. I’ve mostly regarded it as a way to recreate a fixed point music source using headphones through head tracking. Here it means a more dynamic way of separating stereo channels. Stereo pairing is, once again, a big thing. The footprint is exactly the same as the last one. It’s a big size as far as smart speakers go, but once again, the sound is even bigger. Get two of these things and your home speaker needs are pretty much taken care of. I’m not going to suggest that they’re replacement for truly high-end speakers for the true audiophile set, but as far as normal listeners go, I think most folks will be more than satisfied with a couple of these, be it as standalone speakers or flanking your TV. I didn’t have the opportunity to A/B test against an older HomePod yet. I’m curious how easy it is to hear the difference in real time. Given how many of the updates here can arrive in the form of software updates, it would be an interesting test. It’s worth pointing out, however, that the new device is not backward compatible with the last generation when it comes to this feature. It’s presumably a hardware limitation. Though, while I understand why this would be an issue with an uneven match like the HomePod mini, this is frankly a big bummer for those who invested in the previous generation. Even if it’s not a perfect experience, the option would beat starting over from scratch again. The power cable is detachable for easier movement. There’s still no aux-in port here, which is, again, a bummer. It would be great to, say, plug in a turntable, but Apple’s really all in on a wireless music streaming experience here. I’m excited to spend more time with the system soon. The system arrives February 3. More soon.

Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch M2 Max review

Brian Heater

is as close as Apple has ever come to the perfect MacBook. It’s a kind of platonic ideal for the category, and the culmination of key updates to the product line, including the arrival (and upgrade) of Apple silicon and the company’s acceptance that some things ( , ) simply weren’t working, no matter how hard it tried. Taken as a whole, I don’t think I’ve ever liked an Apple laptop more than I like the 2022 MacBook Air, and I don’t anticipate that changing soon — at least not until the 2023 Air arrives, perhaps. Even with this month’s arrival of two new Pro models, last year’s Air remains the best mainstream laptop Apple has ever made. There’s a rub, of course. There always is. Regardless of all the innovations it’s built on top of, no mass-produced computer will please everyone. In fact, as a line, the Air has always been defined as much by the things it leaves out. It’s true that the Air is currently at its point of least compromise, but making a product thin and light has always meant some manner of compromise. That’s where the new Pros come in. Apple’s lineup has ebbed and flowed quite a bit over the years. With the disappearance of the standard MacBook, the Air has shifted from travel-minded ultraportable to what is effectively the company’s default laptop. The has stuck around as the “budget” entry, but the Air was — and continues to be — the best choice for a majority of users. Brian Heater After years of relying on Intel, Apple with the arrival of in-house silicon. But there’s also a sense in which the company painted itself into a bit of a corner, moving forward. For most users, the power gains offer diminishing returns, if you’re not, say, editing multiple 8K videos or rendering 3D. That isn’t to say such power won’t be required in the future, of course, given the trajectory of computing requirements. It’s just that the $800 gulf between the starting price for the M2 Air and M2 Pro MacBook Pro (kind of a mouthful) ultimately doesn’t make a ton of sense for your average user. This is, perhaps, a very long-winded way of saying the “Pro” in MacBook Pro is a less nebulous concept than ever before. It’s always been wholly clear that the Mac Pro, for instance, is designed for professionals than regular old consumers. The MacBook line has tended to be a bit more porous. If you’re more content consumer than creator, there isn’t exactly a load of reasons to make the leap. If, on the other hand, you’re a creator looking for a lot of power on the go, you’ll want to listen up. Apple has comfortably settled into a nice, consistent design language with the MacBook line, with the strange exception of the . The entry-level Pro system remains a strange time capsule of earlier days, with hanging on like some vestigial organ and reminder of a nice enough idea that ultimately failed to justify its own existence. The far handier F keys once again reside up top on the newer models, where they belong. The TouchID (the best thing about the Touch Bar) is perched on the top left. The keyboard remains on the soft side, as is consistent across Apple products, but it works well, and the days of key-sticking frustration are finally behind us. Brian Heater One of the primary aesthetic distinctions between the Air and the Pro are the skinny speaker grilles that flank the keyboard. The speakers get about as loud as you’d want a set of laptop speakers to get, and the open design allows for a richer sound than you get on the Air’s single back-firing panel. It’s good for a quick video or some music listening, but I imagine if you’re, say, editing audio, you’re going to want a pair of headphones regardless. Another key difference is ports. As a general rule, the more ports the better. Certainly that’s the case here. In fact, one of the Air’s most glaring issues is a lack of places to plug things in, limited to the proprietary MagSafe 3, two ThunderBolt 4/USB-C ports and a headphone jack. That’s it. In most situations for most people, that’s mostly sufficient. Carrying the Air around at , it was mostly fine — until it wasn’t. Brian Heater I suddenly found myself attempting to navigate the labyrinthian Forums shops at Caesar’s at 8:00 p.m. on a Tuesday. My external SD reader had completely given up the ghost sometime between my last in-person event and CES. A relatively unique set of circumstances, certainly, but it drove home how much I’d missed having a built-in card slot after jumping from the Pro to the Air. If you’re a professional photographer (I’m certainly not claiming to be one, mind), I don’t need to tell you how essential a tool it is. Like the Air, the Pro sports a pair of USB-C ports on the left side, just below the MagSafe connector. One of my highly specific issues with the Air is the decision to place the two USB-C ports on top of each other. Putting one on either side makes more logical sense in instances where the plugged-in object blocks the second port. Here, thankfully, the third sits on the other side. I’m among those who welcomed the return of MagSafe. It was one of the more beloved features of MacBooks past, and an odd thing to drop along the way. Brian Heater It’s worth noting that, in spite of being custom built for the purpose, it actually charges a bit slower than USB-C. But the magnetic detachment is a little extra peace of mind for the clumsier among us (I do claim to be one of these, however), and it frees up the other ports for other, noncharging tasks. The final port is an HDMI output that supports 8K displays — a first for the MacBook line and an extremely appealing feature for the creator class. What strikes you first on unboxing the new Pro, however, is the weight. The thing is heavy. The default weight of the 14-inch model is 3.5 pounds. The Air is 2.7 pounds. The 12.9 iPad Pro is 1.5 pounds (sans-keyboard case, mind). If you anticipate that the device will spend 50% of its time in your backpack, this is certainly something worth factoring in here. At 12.31 x 8.71 x 0.61 inches, the footprint is also larger than the Air (11.97 x 8.46 x 11.97) in every dimension. Not that any of this is surprising, of course. That’s kind of the whole deal. The Pro delivers a lot more horsepower and bells and whistles. Being a bit more stationary just sort of comes with the territory. This is also due, in part, to the Air’s smaller display, which is 13.6 inches to the Pro’s 14.2. A larger surface area is a foregone conclusion. In addition to being larger, the screen is simply a thing to behold. The Air’s 2560 x 1664 Liquid Retina display gets a big bump to a 3024 x 1964 Liquid Retina XDR. It’s really gorgeous and bright at up to 1,600 nits for HDR content or 500 (the Air’s overall peak) for SDR. The refresh rate maxes out at a smooth 120 Hz — double that of the Air. Is any of this necessary for watching Netflix? Not really. Is it nice to have? Obviously. And it’s certainly a great mobile screen for those whose job descriptions involve creating visual content. macOS is still a long ways from becoming a gaming powerhouse by any stretch, but it’s come a long way over the past decade, and first-party silicon is a big piece of that. (Steam doesn’t hurt, either). Apple; M2 Max The baseline ($1,999) Pro sports an M2 Pro chip with a 10-Core CPU, 16-Core GPU, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. The review unit Apple sent isn’t  top of the line, but it’s pretty close. It’s got the M2 Max with a 12-Core CPU and 38-Core GPU, 64GB or RAM and 2TB of storage. As configured, it’ll run you $4,100. If you want to go all in, you can bump the RAM up to 96GB and storage to 8TB. Suddenly, you’re tipping the scales at $6,300. That’s more than 3x the cost of the base unit — a $4,300 increase. In other words, you can really trick this baby out, but it’s gonna cost you. And then some. Performance is certainly reflected in the Benchmarks. The Max chip hit 1952 on the single-core and 15249 on the multicore GeekBench 5 tests (average of three tests). That’s a truly impressive gain over 1,922 and 8,974 we got with the M2 Air. The M1 Ultra still blows them all away with a 20,000+ multicore score, but that’s to be expected with desktop architecture. It frankly boggles the mind to consider the future of the Mac desktop (Mac Pro, perhaps?). TechCrunch In the meantime, it’s extremely impressive to see the gains made for notebook processors over the past two years. Unlike the Air, the Pro’s got a fan and a pair of vents on either side of the engraved MacBook Pro logo on the bottom of the system. A quartet of rubber feet elevate the system a bit, to give the outgoing warm and incoming cool air somewhere to go. Truth is, you’re not likely to trigger with most day-to-day activities, but when the time comes to truly push the system to its limit, you’ll be very glad Apple didn’t go fanless across the line. At 84888, the GeekBench Metal score handily beats the M1 Max (~64000-66000), courtesy of those 38 cores. Again, the M1 Ultra still beats the M2 Max’s GPU scores (>90000). The staggered rollout of silicon iterations may get a bit muddied for consumers, but the quick rule of thumb here is that the M2 Max trounces existing Mac laptop chips and even comes within spitting distance of the M1 Ultra. The native macOS port of , for instance, played smoothly (remind me to get a Bluetooth control), though the bottom of the Mac got quite warm to the touch. I was able to get it downright hot playing some Steam titles. Was I just looking for an excuse to replay ? Who can say, really? Performance was great, probably keep it on a desk when you game (oh, and maybe pick up a decent Bluetooth controller while you’re at it). While extremely efficient, Apple silicon isn’t beyond the need for cooling with resource-intensive tasks. With daily tasks, it stays cool. However, you don’t have to push the system to the limit to noticed a marked difference in processing power. Things I do on the regular, like opening apps and editing podcast audio are perceptively zippier, coming off using the latest Air as a daily driver. Brian Heater The new chips bring other updates beyond process power. There are some slight tweaks to the ISP (image signal processor) — specifically with regards to picture contrast. The webcam, still positioned in that display notch you either like or loathe, is more or less the same 1080p hardware you’ll find in the Air. The bump to 1080p was a long, long awaited upgrade, particularly in this golden age of the virtual meeting. Top: MacBook Pro native camera; Bottom: iPhone 14 Pro via Continuity Camera Brian Heater Some of the camera hardware (see the Studio Display) got off to a rough start. As we know, there’s currently only so much one can do with the processor versus good, old-fashioned camera hardware, but it’s certainly to a point where I’d feel wholly comfortable using it for a work meeting. Of course, if I’ve got an iPhone handy (as I usually do), I’m going to instead opt for Ventura’s feature. Above, you can see two screenshots taken in Zoom, one with the built-in webcam and the other with a mounted iPhone 14 Pro. The choice is simple. Brian Heater The battery life, meanwhile, is just straight up awesome. With video playback, I was able to squeeze an impressive 21.5 hours out of the system before the screen shut off. That’s just shy of the stated 22 hours. The Air and 13-inch Pro, meanwhile, are listed as up to 18 and 20 hours, respectively. It’s easy to see Apple hitting a full day in a generation or two. In the meantime, you should be able to make it through that direct flight from New York to Singapore without incident (no, I can’t sleep on flights, either). Really, it’s the perfect encapsulation of the new Pros. They’re big, bold and brash. They can do all sorts of things that would have seemed impossible on a MacBook only a few generations ago. They’re an exciting signpost for how far Apple’s notebooks have come and provide insight into where things are going, if the company continues its current pace of new chips a couple times a year. The last few generations of Macs can perform tasks that might have seemed impossible pre-pandemic. While that includes gaming, they still aren’t gaming machines by many definitions. If playing the latest and most resource-intensive titles is central to your computing experience, you know the drill. Apple silicon is built with workflows in mind. That is say, the “Pro” is more creative pro and less professional gamer. For those tasks, these systems sing — and if you want to play games after work, the new chips are increasingly capable with each generation. As noted above, this particular system is $4,100, as configured. Starting with the $1,999 base, an upgrade from the M2 Pro 10-core CPU/16-core GPU to the 12-core CPU/19-core GPU is a $300 add-on. Bumping that up to the Max with a 30-core GPU is a $500 increase over the base price. The top of the line M2 Max with a 38-core GPU is $700. Things can get real pricey real quick when you’re staring at Apple.com checkout. You try to future-proof and hedge your bets, as you consider whether you plan to hold onto your machine for three, five or 10+ years. It’s an investment, right? I don’t foresee Apple suddenly make another generational leap in the near future, but I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been wrong before. Predicting where tech will be in a decade can be a fool’s errand, even if it happens to one that’s central to this job. However, much as I noted above that the Air continues to be the best MacBook for most, I feel fairly confident that the M2 Pro will be plenty for most creative professions. If you need the added firepower of the M2 Max, you probably already know who you are. And hey, I can’t say I minded using it as my daily driver for a bit. Those load times might feel insignificant, but they add up. Brian Heater It’s a reaffirmation of the “Pro” in MacBook Pro: chunky, heavy, blazingly fast, full of ports and packed with the best the company has to offer. And they’re decidedly not for everyone — not even most. I’m still going to recommend the Air for nine out of 10 people (if not more) who ask me which MacBook to buy in the coming year. If you’re that 10th person, you almost certainly already know.

Apple is reportedly working on MacBooks with touchscreens

Ivan Mehta

After years of denials and loathing, Apple may finally be getting around to bringing touchscreens to MacBooks. According to , Apple is actively working on this project and may break away from its long-standing approach of designing a traditional desktop system without a touchscreen. Apple could launch MacBooks with touchscreens by 2025 as a part of a new MacBook Pro lineup, the Bloomberg report adds. This lineup revamp could also see the company switching from LCD to OLED displays for the 14-inch and 16-inch Pro models. Earlier this week, another report indicated that Apple was aiming to make its own screens for Apple Watch and iPhone. However, there was no mention of the company building displays for its Mac lineup. Apple executives have long maintained the stance that MacBooks don’t need to have a touchscreen. Instead, for years they have if they want a large computing device with a touchscreen. The closest Apple ever got around to bringing a touchscreen on a Mac was adding the TouchBar on the keyboard — — on MacBook Pros. Apple has long maintained that iPad is the best touchscreen “computer” out there. The company might have to slowly move away from that narrative if they are planning to launch MacBooks with a touchscreen. Meanwhile, Apple’s competitors, including , have built with different form factors. Steve Jobs famously called touchscreens on laptops “ergonomically terrible” back in 2010. “We’ve done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn’t work. Touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical. It gives a great demo, but after a short period, you start to fatigue, and after an extended period, your arm wants to fall off. It doesn’t work; it’s ergonomically terrible,” he had said. But technology has evolved since then and Apple has also introduced things like , another product idea that Jobs . More recently, Apple senior VP Craig Federighi also to touchscreen PCs as “experiments” and said he is “not into touchscreens.” On the positive side, iOS apps on MacBooks could work better if Apple decided to go ahead with this plan. The company first introduced to bring iOS apps to desktop systems. The iPhone-maker is treading on a convoluted line. On one hand, it has made its iPads more powerful in recent years, giving them desktop-class processors and decent add-on keyboards, and adding desktop features on the iPadOS. So to sell both iPad and MacBooks with touchscreen, Apple will have to keep enough differentiation between the two lineups.

Apple’s mixed-reality headset could arrive this year

Romain Dillet

According to a from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is going to spend most of 2023 focusing on a brand new device — a mixed-reality headset that has been a work in progress for several years. The new device could look like a pair of ski goggles, based on an earlier report from . It will feature several cameras so that the device can track your movements in real time and see what’s happening in the real world. Over the past few years, Apple CEO Tim Cook has stated several times that augmented reality is a promising technology. “I think the [AR] promise is even greater in the future. So it’s a critically important part of Apple’s future,” Cook Kara Swisher back in 2021. But it sounds like Apple’s upcoming product is going to offer a mixed-reality experience. Users will be able to experience both augmented and virtual reality. Details are still thin about the potential use cases and apps for the headset as it’s easier to control software leaks compared to product leaks. According to Bloomberg, Apple is currently planning to announce the new device during the inaugural keynote of the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June — Apple could name it Reality Pro. Some developers have already started working on apps for the new Apple platform. The new operating system for the Apple headset could be called xrOS. WWDC seems like the right stage for this kind of product announcement as a lot of developers working on third-party apps for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV and Apple Watch are paying attention to this event. Having popular apps and games for this new Apple platform will be key when it comes to ensuring the long-term success of the Apple headset. Mark Gurman also spent some time discussing Apple’s roadmap for 2023. And it seems like you shouldn’t expect a lot of surprises beyond the company’s mixed-reality headset. For instance, the MacBook Pro, the Apple Watch, the AirPods, the iPad mini, the iPad Air and the base iPad model will only receive better components that should improve overall specifications. Don’t expect major design updates or new features. The Apple TV and iPad Pro aren’t going to be updated at all. The most significant changes in Apple’s various lineups could be a 15-inch MacBook Air, the return of the big HomePod and a brand new Mac Pro. Apple has yet to update with its own ARM-based chip — it still sports an Intel CPU. According to Bloomberg, the new Mac Pro would look a lot like the existing Mac Pro. It will feature the M2 Ultra that you can find in . Unfortunately, users won’t be able to upgrade RAM due to the company’s unified memory approach. On paper, it’s going to be hard to convince people to buy a Mac Pro instead of a Mac Studio. But that doesn’t matter too much as the Mac Pro has never been a significant revenue-making product. Of course, there’s one product that is more important than everything else for Apple — that’s the iPhone. According to , iPhone 15 production is going as planned. The Dynamic Island could make its way to all four models — the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. There’s one thing . This year, Apple will comply with EU’s mandate and change the iPhone’s charging port from the Lightning connector to USB-C. And many iPhone users have been waiting for a simple change like this to upgrade their phone.

Why the Matter logo was everywhere at CES 2023

Brian Heater

stage at . Automotive trends got a lot of love, as well, as did and the metaverse. Heck, even had their moment to shine last week in Vegas. Another trend, however, was ever-present, if decidedly more understanded. The last few years have been a roller coaster for the smart home. After years of hype, the cracks have begun to show for some of the major players in the space. The most prominent example of late is . While no doubt being set up as something of a loss leader, few expected a $5 billion a year revenue loss at this late stage. In addition to the standard tech hype cycle, the smart home has also been cursed by a lack of interoperability. One of the technology’s most hopeful promises is an easy set up. Forget all of those expensive, time-consuming setups that require someone with contracting and electrical know-how — just plug it in, connect the app and you’re off to the races. But in consumer electronics, the best laid plans and all that. It’s still a relatively young category, with several pain points, but at least one was seemingly easily avoided. If you’ve followed consumer tech with any frequency, you know one thing for sure: Competitors will rarely give an inch. It’s an approach that — in the past — has led to antitrust and other regulatory scrutiny. In recent years, this has manifested itself as app stores and walled gardens. For the smart home, it’s meant a dearth of interoperability. If you’ve attempted to buy a smart home product, you’re almost certainly familiar with the limitations. Heck, there’s a decent chance you purchased a product and had to return it after finding out the hard way that it didn’t work with HomeKit, Alexa, Google Home, Samsung SmartThings or any manner of other ecosystems. This is the promise of Matter. Announced at the tail end of 2019, the home automation standard is the purview of the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA). The group was founded by Amazon, Apple, Google, Comcast and the Zigbee Alliance. It operates similarly to organizations like the Bluetooth Special Interest Group and WiFi Alliance. The company list has expanded greatly, but each member gets the same single vote, from Apple, Amazon and Google on down to the smallest startup. “Manufacturers all agree to send the same commands and all agree to do the same thing when they’ve received those commands,” Jon Harros, the CSA’s director of Certification and Testing Programs, told us in an interview at last week’s CES. “It wouldn’t matter whether the command came from one manufacturer or the other. If you’re receiving it, it will always work in the same way.” The obvious question in all of this is: Why now? Or, more explicitly, why did this take so long? For starters, the obvious issue alluded to above that most of these big companies would really rather not work with their competitors if they can avoid it. As such, getting everyone on the same page about something like this is a bit of a cat herding scenario. “Technically, there are a lot of different steps,” says Harros. “Number two, it was also we had to reach a level of maturity within the market and with those global players that everyone understood and recognized that having these walled gardens and having these fractured networks was actually limiting the AOT (automation of things), and that it was time to resolve that issue.” Effectively, the big players recognized that there was less value in cutting out the competition by demanding manufacturers comply to a single ecosystem than there was in suddenly opening their own offering up to practically every third-party device manufacture by way of a group effort. It’s a remarkable bit of collaboration in an era of closed ecosystems and app stores. “The IoT started reaching a point where it became obvious to have that reality of the billions of sensors and connected devices that we all know is possible,” says Harros. “They all have a major slice of the pie. They’re all doing very well, but the size of the pie could grow orders of magnitude. You’re now not talking about shipping millions of products, you’re talking about shipping billions.” More than 2,000 engineers pulled from different member companies were put to work creating a software protocol that would offer cross platform functionality, and provide the sort of product security consumers demand from their smart products in 2023. The initial fruits of that work began rolling out toward the end of last year. Plenty more are still on the way. “We’ve already had one train arrive at the station as Matter 1.0,” says Harros. “We wanted to make sure we launched on time, with all of the features and primary device types everyone wanted, straight out of the block. Before the train arrived, other trains set off behind it. There are members of the alliance that have been working on things like white goods [appliances], cameras and smart vacuums. They’re already on the way to the train station. They just haven’t arrived yet.” One of the beauties about the implantation of a software layer is that many existing products will be backward compatible with the standard through an over the air update. Newer products, meanwhile, will carry the Matter logo, which the alliance is hoping will become as ubiquitous as the Bluetooth and WiFi logos. For older products, you’ll be able to check them against the CSA’s online database. The organization is employing third-party laboratories to put devices through similar testing practices as the ones the FCC has in place. “We absolutely believe that — in a very short matter of time — everyone will recognize the Matter logo,” says Harros, “so when a consumer goes to an electronics store or your local home hardware store, they’re just going to look for that logo. You know that if it has that logo, it will interoperate with something else.”

Twitter makes algorithmic timeline default on iOS

Ivan Mehta

Twitter is making the algorithmic timeline named “For You” the default feed on iOS. If you are getting a sense of , you are not dreaming. The company has tried to pull , only to give the option to switch back to . So what’s different this time? The Elon Musk-led company is now showing both algorithmic and chronological feeds side-by-side. Users can switch between them by swiping on their phone screens. Until now, users had to tap on the sparkle icon in the top-right corner to switch between the “Home” and “Latest” timelines. Twitter is justifying its latest change by saying that users can now easily swipe between the renamed “For You” and “Following” timelines. The “For you” and “Following” tabs replace “Home” and “Latest” and will be pinned to the top of your timeline so you can easily switch between them. Swipe to switch timelines instead of tapping the ✨ icon. — Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) But the flaw with this design is that users will see the algorithmic timeline by default and eventually they might use the chronological timeline less. Another annoying thing about this change is that if you use a pinned list on your account for alternative timelines, you will now need to swipe more to switch between these lists. TechCrunch We can’t say we didn’t see this coming. Musk last month that the “main timeline should allow for an easy sideways swipe between top, latest, trending, and topics that you follow.” Couldn’t agree more! We’re making this change soon. Main timeline should allow for an easy sideways swipe between top, latest, trending and topics that you follow. Twitter search nav already sorta does this after you search. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) Last month, Twitter noted that it was taking steps to show in your timeline. At the time, the company said that this change would contribute to showing the “best” content on the platform to everyone. Twitter is not the only guilty party in pushing algorithmic feeds. TikTok already shows users an algorithmic feed, also named “For You,” by default when users open the app. Instagram has been pushing suggested content to users as well. While the company gives users the option to switch to , there is no setting to set one of these timelines as the default timeline. But Instagram is not stopping there. Last year, Mark Zuckerberg said that the company is planning to by this year’s end. Making an algorithmic timeline the default feed is not the only change the company is bringing. Musk said Twitter is building features for people to change font size, and add styles like bold, italic and underline. He noted that the goal for this is to have users “publish long-form content natively” on the platform.

Anime streaming services to try in 2023

Lauren Forristal

as a genre is always expanding, and with the streaming market growing just as quickly, it can be a hassle to find an anime that works for you. Whether you want to watch newer anime titles like “Chainsaw Man,” “Blood of Zeus” and “Bleach” or classics like “One Piece,” “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure” and “Cowboy Bebop,” here is a roundup of streaming services that you can check out as we begin the new year. is a no-brainer for all anime lovers, whether you’re a die-hard fan or newbie. Free to all users, popular shows on the platform include “One-Punch Man,” “Attack on Titan,” “My Hero Academia,” “Death Note,” “Dr. Stone” and newer titles like “Spy X Family.” Plus, Crunchyroll recently added , so subscribers have access to a vast anime library of over 40,000 episodes and more than 16,000 hours of content. However, the Crunchyroll free ad-supported version has its downsides, such as limited access to titles that are only available in 480p resolution. Fortunately, there are also three premium ad-free tiers, which give subscribers unlimited access to Crunchyroll’s content library (in HD), access to new episodes of series one hour after they air in Japan, as well as digital versions of manga. Each premium plan comes with a 14-day trial. The cheapest premium tier is called “Fan” and costs $7.99 per month. The plan allows subscribers to stream on one device at a time. “Fan” subscribers don’t get offline viewing, nor do they get the same perks as “Mega Fan” and “Ultimate Fan.” “Mega Fan” is $9.99 per month and allows subscribers to stream on four devices at once. It also offers offline viewing as well as perks like first access to Crunchyroll Expo events/lotteries and Crunchyroll Store discounts. Every three months, “Mega Fan” customers get $15 off $100 purchases in the Crunchyroll Store. The most expensive plan is “Ultimate Fan” for $14.99 per month. Subscribers of this tier get the most perks, which include the ability to stream on six devices at one time, offline viewing, first access to Crunchyroll Expo events/lotteries, $25 off $100 purchases in the Crunchyroll Store every three months, and goodies like an annual “swag bag.” Bones Studio If you’re looking for the next best anime streaming option, it’s  . Most of you probably already have a Netflix subscription, since it has a whopping , so you’re likely aware of all the anime content it has to offer. In 2021 alone, nearly 90% of its viewers watched Netflix anime titles, the company in March 2022. The streaming giant has a ton of popular series to binge, including “Hunter x Hunter,” “Naruto,” “Castlevania,” “The Seven Deadly Sins,” “Neo Genesis Evangelion” and “The Promised Neverland.” From originals to fan favorites, there’s a lot for subscribers to explore. While Netflix in general tends to be more expensive than Crunchyroll, the streamer recently launched a for only $6.99 per month. Meanwhile, its basic ad-free version is $9.99 per month, whereas the “Standard” plan is $15.49/month and the “Premium” plan is $19.99/month. With anime titles, is probably the third-best option for fans. The streaming service has the majority of the same hits that Crunchyroll and Netflix offer, including “Attack on Titan,” “One-Punch Man,” “Naruto” and “Cowboy Bebop,” among others. It also offers “Sailor Moon,” “Tokyo Ghoul,” “Demon Slayer Kimetsu No Yaiba,” “The Rising of the Shield Hero” and more. Plus, Hulu has a dedicated anime hub, which organizes content into categories such as the most popular titles, new releases, classics, recent simulcasts, and an alphabetical directory. It’s important to note that Hulu in October 2022. The ad-free plan is now $14.99 per month, and the ad-supported tier is $7.99 per month. On the plus side, Hulu offers a 1-month free trial. The streamer has a wide variety of content for everyone to watch, including comedy, drama, and reality TV, so it’s still a pretty good deal regardless of whether you’re an anime fan. At only $4.99/month, is a great inexpensive option for viewers. It also offers a seven-day free trial. If you’re a hardcore anime buff, we recommend using Hidive to expose yourself to various anime that you may not find on other streaming services. While the content library is definitely more niche, it still has 500 titles for fans to discover. Shows and movies on the service include “I’m Quitting Heroing,” “Gate,” “Call of the Night,” “Pantheon,” “Joshiraku,” “Vinland Saga,” “Alice in Borderland,” “Made in Abyss” and more. If you don’t mind commercial breaks, then and are for you. Completely free to viewers, Tubi has a solid number of well-known Japanese animation titles in its collection, such as “Yu-Gi-Oh!,” “Fairy Tail,” “Ghost in the Shell,” “Lupin the 3rd” and “Dante’s Inferno.” On the other hand, if you want to watch older titles then we suggest RetroCrush. The free streaming service is centered around vintage anime and has a smaller content library than other services. For instance, RetroCrush has titles like “Blue Seed,” “The Princess and the Pilot,” “City Hunter,” “The Twelve Kingdoms,” “Requiem from the Darkness” and “Demon City Shinjuku.” RetroCrush also has an ad-free premium subscription for $4.99/month after the 14-day free trial. The premium plan includes exclusives such as “Wicked City,” “Goku Midnight Eye,” “Puppet Princess,” “Angel Cop,” “House of Five Leaves” and “Persia, The Magic Fairy.”

CES 2023 debrief

Brian Heater

week. Strange and strangely familiar. You stay at the same hotel in a nearly identical room to the one you stayed in for the last 10 years or so. You see friends and colleagues you’ve not seen in a while. Everyone is three years older and a bit worse for wear. A global pandemic will do that to a person. Last year was supposed to be your triumphant return to the show, after two years away. But you got cold feet when the omicron numbers started spiking around the holidays. The subsequent holiday travel, coupled with exhibitors flying in from all over the world, was sufficient cause for concern. And you were far from alone. Attendance numbers — which had hit 170,000 in 2020 — were down to ~40,000, representing a 75% drop in attendance. The year between — 2021 — there was no in-person CES at all. The CTA, which puts on the event, ultimately made the right decision and went all-virtual for the first time in its history. That was its own kind of mess. The infrastructure simply wasn’t in place for an event this size and scope. One also suspects that the CTA would rather not let people get too used to covering shows like this virtually, for fear that they’d deem it unnecessary to return. But the world has slowly gotten back to normal, and so, too, has CES. It’s a bit like returning to your old school a few years after graduating. There are some familiar faces and some new ones. For better or worse, life went on without you. Hell, the school even built a big, new wing. In this case, it’s the shiny West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. With the South Hall more or less shuttered for the event, the growing army of mobility firms have since migrated here. At some point when we weren’t looking, CES became a car show. That’s due, in part, to timing — both one of CES’s biggest strengths and weaknesses. Strength, in the sense that it’s the first show of the year. Weakness because who really wants to be thinking (stressing) about the big show over holiday dinners or sitting on a plane January 2? In the weeks leading up to the event, the CTA announced that it was expecting 100,000 people at the event. That’s nowhere near pre-pandemic levels, but it certainly represents a respectable bounceback for a live event. After the dust cleared, it revised that number upward to 115,000. Speaking purely anecdotally, it didn’t that high, but feelings are certainly no replacement for official attendance numbers. I will say, there were spots (big chunks of Central Hall, for example) that felt as crowded as any year prior. Certainly I felt it attempting to get lunch in the cafeteria on day one. Other spots, like North Hall, appeared largely empty the handful of times I went back. I’m not sure that bodes particularly well for the concentration of robotics companies there. I probably jumped the gun with my , even if it was done with tongue semi-planted in cheek. Most, if not all, of the media outlets I spoke to sent fewer people than 2020 for a variety of reasons. First, we’ve all adapted to remote coverage. Second, plenty of people are still (rightfully) worried about a pandemic. Turns out it hasn’t actually gone away, despite our best efforts to pretend otherwise. Third, journalism is getting crushed yet again by the economic downturn. Budgets are tightening and many outlets simply have fewer reporters. The full name is The International CES, for obvious reasons. One could make a fairly credible case that CES 2020 was one of the first major COVID-19 superspreader events. There are, however, still travel restrictions in place. Most notable is China. A day after the show officially ended, The Wall Street Journal ran , “China Reopens to the World as International Travel Restrictions End.” China is obviously a huge player on the scene, and restrictions are invariably going to hurt your bottom line. Plenty of places were well represented at the show, including Korea and France. I discussed this a bit in the preview post, but it’s worth mentioning again. The CTA is very insistent we call it “CES,” and not the “Consumer Electronics Show.” Pedantic? Sure. Telling? Absolutely. The organization wants CES to be more things to more people. That includes cars, robots and plenty of software/apps. There are ways in which the event is still very much tied to tradition, but its organizers have also done a fine job adapting its scope. Size, too. CES is sprawling. It takes over the city — or least the area surrounding the Strip — and sometimes feels like a temporary city unto itself. Like any urban area, it has its pockets of concentration and its share of traffic jams. If you know what’s good for you, you won’t attempt to catch a car outside of the Venetian Expo (RIP, The Sands) around 6 PM. You should also know that you’ll need a 20- to 30-minute buffer, regardless of your mode of transportation, up to and including Tesla’s silly Small World tunnel. For the first time in 11 (!) years, the Adult Entertainment Expo coincided with CES and took the AVN Show (the porn Oscars, if you will) along with it. A fun bit of trivia: The whole thing is actually an outgrowth of a CES adult software section that existed in the ’80s and ’90s. I regret not having the time to check out the event and all its idiosyncratic tech this year. We did, however, get dinner at a great vegan restaurant in the new Resorts World tower our final night, and managed to encounter some of that show’s overflow. They’re a fun bunch. One of the most positive changes to the show in recent years is its shift in focus to startup culture. There’s little question that the two floors of Eureka Park are far and away the most vibrant section. The booths and aisles are far smaller and more tightly packed together. Not everything you’ll see in there is a winner, but the people showing it to you project a kind of genuine excitement you rarely see with the bigger companies. I would have loved to have spent more time there, but it just didn’t work out that way for me this year. The trend over the last several years is big companies opting to announce new stuff on their own stages and time. The move to virtual presses over the last several years has only accelerated this. But as the big companies move away from the show, bright-eyed startups are more than happy to fill that void. As I mentioned in a previous post, this was the year of putting stuff on my face. I tried out the Magic Leap 2, Meta Quest Pro, Vive XR Elite, PSVR2 and . VR/AR/XR once again reigned supreme. How that manifests itself in the broader consumer world, on the other hand, is another question entirely. It is, however, quite telling that everyone but Sony and its pure gaming headset are looking to enterprise. It’s simple where the money is right now, at least until the prices significantly come down for quality headsets. Another theme I found in talking to folks in that world is a genuinely eager feeling around Apple’s headset play. The consensus with these companies appears to be that the rising tide will lift all ships here, as the company reinvigorates the scene. Truth of the matter is that it’s been the “next thing” for so long there’s a genuine fatique here. Ditto for crypto/web3, albeit for entirely different reasons. There’s been a steady drumbeat of bad news for the category and many of the folks who would have otherwise been shouting their message from the rooftops are currently licking their wounds. I’ve not been shy with regards to my feelings around the technology, and it was frankly a relief not to be bombarded by those pitches this year. No doubt my inbox will be full of them this time next year. TechCrunch staff has spent the last several days building their Hot or Not lists, so I’ll include those here: Some of the shine has worn off around smart home tech. It’s hard not to see that reflected in Amazon Echo’s struggles. At the very least, it’s clear that things didn’t go exactly as planned for many companies. It is, however, quite heartening to see a kind of unified front in the form of the Matter Alliance. Health tech, meanwhile, remains a going concern, be it home fitness or wearables. We’ve seen a widespread push to get some of these products taken more seriously as medical devices, and that was very much on display here. Meanwhile, it was a genuine bummer to see what happened to , after covering them for so many CESes. Economics loomed large, of course. Overall, the release cadence of new products seems to have slowed for the industry. The end of 2022 didn’t see the same sort of rush of new products we usually get before the holiday. The reasons are clear. For one thing, money is tight and inflation is high, so people are spending less on non-necessities. For another, supply chain constraints are having a tangible effect on the industry’s ability to ship. Ahead of the show, I asked Sony what they planned to show off. For the first time I can recall, I got an official statement from a rep telling me what the company showing. “Sony will not be sharing any TV details during CES 2023,” a spokesperson told me. “However, please stay tuned for an upcoming announcement coming soon.” That’s a new one. The company did have movie trailers, though. I won’t say this felt like a transitional year — only because that can be said about pretty much every CES from the past decade. I also recognize that it’s note entirely fair to judge it by its first full-fledge show in three years. It was strange, and there was zero chance it was going to be anything  but. For the CTA’s sake, attendance exceeding what seemed like optimistic expectations is a genuinely good sign. As for us, I’m certain we’re not alone in rethinking how we handle CES going forward.

You must now verify your driver’s license to watch Pornhub in Louisiana

Amanda Silberling

At the start of the year, a went into effect in Louisiana that requires online publishers to conduct age verification checks if their site’s content is more than 33.3% pornography. In accordance with this law, Pornhub now requires visitors to verify their age with the , a digital wallet for Louisiana state driver’s licenses. Other popular adult websites haven’t instituted age checks yet, according to . But per the new law, porn sites can be sued for damages that result from a minor’s access to such content. TechCrunch reached out to Pornhub for comment. “Due to advances in technology, the universal availability of the internet, and limited age verification requirements, minors are exposed to pornography earlier in age,” the says. “Pornography contributes to the hyper-sexualization of teens and prepubescent children and may lead to low self-esteem, body image disorders, an increase in problematic sexual activity at younger ages, and increased desire among adolescents to engage in risky sexual behavior.” Hello from the surveillance state of Louisiana. People in Louisiana have to use their drivers license to go to pornhub. This is truly wild. Under his eye. — Public Defendering (@fodderyfodder) This legislation was authored by Representative Laurie Schlegel (R-LA), who also advocated for legislation that made it to participate in school sports in accordance with their gender identity. Before taking office in 2021, Schlegel worked as a sex addiction counselor. A sex worker, professor, and research fellow at UCLA’s Center for Critical Internet Inquiry, describes these age verification checks as part of a “sex panic.” Even though this legislation states that sites that conduct age verification cannot retain identifying information, Snow believes that porn consumers may still fear data breaches, which is a very Websites like Pornhub and OnlyFans require performers to prove their age and identity as a way of cracking down on nonconsensual content and child sexual abuse material (CSAM). But if consumers are required to hand over legal documents in order to watch porn, they might seek out other sites, where the content might not be as well-vetted. “It’s really just further marginalizing sex workers, which I think is going to be the primary effect,” Snow told TechCrunch. “I imagine this means that there will be an increased black market of premium content that’s non-consensually disseminated.” Legislation like Louisiana’s Act 440, as well as , are positioned as advocating for children’s safety. But in practice, this legislation usually just makes it more difficult for sex workers to do their jobs safely. Plus, in some cases, these laws have actually made it more difficult for law enforcement to curb sex trafficking. In 2018, the Department of Justice’s , which sex workers used as a tool to help them vet in-person clients. When the site was for money laundering and sex trafficking, Indiana police said that it became for them to catch people running sex trafficking operations. Snow says Act 440 “is likely to also have an effect similar to that of Backpage coming down, which is, you know, just sex workers losing another stream of income and having to resort to less protected avenues.” In 2020, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) proposed to the Senate a study on the secondary effects of SESTA/FOSTA on sex workers. “Sex workers have reported a reduced ability to screen potential clients for safety, and negotiate for boundaries such as condom use, resulting in reports of physical and sexual violence,” the bill . “Many sex workers have turned to street-based work, which has historically involved higher rates of violence than other forms of transactional sex.” Snow describes the act of requiring people to upload their ID to watch porn as surveillance. In the most extreme cases, she says this kind of surveillance can harm LGBTQ populations. “As homophobia and transphobia — especially homophobia in the context of porn — is rising, I could totally see the state zeroing in on people consuming gay porn, or lesbian porn, and either surveilling them further or criminalizing that,” she said. In the text of Act 440, the bill warns that pornography can inspire “deviant sexual arousal” but does not define what “deviant” means. “Trans women are disproportionately represented in sex work,” said Snow. “I don’t know if that’s a conscious decision for lawmakers, or if that’s just circumstantial, but I think trans women sex workers, as usual, will be the most affected.” For years, the U.K. government has been working on an online safety bill, which has been in limbo due to . As it stands, the bill could institute that would require users to verify their age before accessing sexually explicit content. In the past, the U.K. government has but the plan in 2019 due to concerns about the technical and regulatory challenges of mandating age verification, as well as privacy concerns. Now, age checks in the U.K. are up for consideration once again. In any case, we won’t be surprised if a bunch of Louisiana residents suddenly express interest in learning .

NEA now manages over $25 billion in assets — oh, and it’s looking beyond venture

Natasha Mascarenhas

, known by the acronym NEA, has closed a new pair of early-stage and growth-stage funds, both hovering a little over $3 billion to a total of $6.2 billion. The two-fund structure is a first that begets another first for the 45-year old firm: TechCrunch has learned that NEA has filed to be considered as a registered investment adviser, which, if passed, would give the firm a status similar to the likes of other storied firms including Andreessen Horowitz, SoftBank and Sequoia Capital. NEA’s shift signals the firm’s interest in doing business in a newer, more blended way. , NEA’s general managing partner who has worked at the firm for nearly three decades, spoke to TechCrunch about the firm’s growing remit amid tech uncertainty. For one, Sandell explains, NEA wants to take up even more room in the industry. Before the tech bubble hit its peak in 2021, the firm’s operations team uncovered that NEA was doing a 36% IRR on $4 billion dollars invested over a decade. The bad news? That NEA only accounted for 10% of the capital that the same cohort raised in total. “It sounds like an opportunity to me,” Sandell said. The firm thus set off to raise two funds, one that would be used solely to invest in early-stage bets and another that would dedicate one-third of its capital to existing growth-stage portfolio companies with the rest invested in new growth-stage companies. It helped that investors were also knocking on NEA’s door, asking for exposure to either early stage or late stage, not always both. “What we had heard over and over again, not from everybody, but certainly from some and some that mattered, is that they didn’t really know what to do with us,” Sandell said of LPs. “We had this one big fund and it had venture and growth in it … we had resisted going in the [dual-fund structure] for a long time.” It appears to be well equipped to handle the incoming homework. NEA currently has 22 investment partners and around 40 other venture operations staff among an overall staff of less than 100 people. Sandell noted generative AI and software as two of the firm’s interest areas, adding that they are especially interested in horizontal technology. Because the funds had their first close earlier, NEA has already invested 20% of the capital raised. The biggest difference, Sandell said, when it comes to investing the remaining 80% of the fund versus the initial 20% is that NEA wants to focus on capital-efficient businesses. “We know that capital will be scarce for the foreseeable future — at least for the period of the next three or four years during which these companies will be formed and developed and have to raise additional capital and so on,” he said, later adding that “a lot of the companies that were born in the last decade, because capital was so freely available, did not develop that efficiency gene.” If it becomes a registered investment adviser, NEA doesn’t need to limit its stakes, can invest in public stocks, participate in secondaries and can interact with its LPs in different ways. For example, Sequoia’s Alfred Lin recently noted that for two of its newer funds, Sequoia is only charging its LPs fees on invested capital, and while NEA is not doing that this time around, Sandell said he wouldn’t be surprised if they considered that in the future. “We haven’t had as much flexibility historically to do some things. And I’m excited about that,” he said. On one more note about LPs, Sandell shut down the idea that capital calls have been harder to get done in this environment, one factor that has added to the mirage of how much dry powder is in the market right now. “We’ve never had an issue with that,” he said. When asked about how much capital the firm, a quiet giant, has given back to its investors to date, Sandell didn’t share anything concrete but said that “I’m virtually certain we have returned significantly more capital than we’ve ever raised.” He added, “that’s not true of a lot of other firms that have grown very quickly.”

Qualcomm partners with Iridium to bring satellite messaging to Android phones

Brian Heater

For the past several , Qualcomm’s big announcements have largely revolved around automotive news. There will likely still be a fair bit of that this week, as well, but the company just announced an upcoming mobile feature in this down time between the Snapdragon Summit and MWC. The Southern California chipmaker is partnering with to bring satellite messaging to select Android devices, starting with those running its new flagship SoC, . The technology utilizes the 5G Modem-RF Systems on the Qualcomm hardware, coupled with Iridium’s satellite constellation to deliver emergency messaging, following in the recent footsteps of and . Garmin is in the mix here, as well, adding support by way of its Response feature built atop the Iridium network for emergency messages in remote locations where no carrier coverage exists. That technology was built with hikers in mind, though certainly there are plenty of other scenarios in which such SOS features could prove a literal life saver. “Garmin Response supports thousands of SOS incidents each year and has likely saved many lives in the process,” Garmin VP Brad Trenkle says in a release, “and we are looking forward to collaborating with Qualcomm Technologies and Iridium to help people connect to emergency services no matter where life takes them.” Applications include two-way emergency texting and messaging applications beyond SMS, using Iridium’s L-band. With today’s news, Qualcomm is opening access to the feature up to OEMs. The first batch of smartphones to get the feature will be arriving this year. I’d anticipate some more concrete announcements on that front right around MWC.

Cowboy Ventures goes bigger with $260M across two new funds, including an opportunity fund

Connie Loizos

, the now-10-year-old, Bay Area-based seed-stage focused fund founded by renowned investor Aileen Lee, has closed on two new funds totaling $260 million in capital commitments. The outfit garnered $140 million in commitments for its fourth flagship fund and another $120 million for its first opportunity-type fund (its “Mustang Fund”). The amount is more than all the capital that the outfit has raised across its previous funds, which were sized at $40 million, $60 million and $95 million, respectively. Then again, the team has grown over the years from being a one-person firm to an outfit with an investor team, including fintech specialist Jill Williams, who Lee recruited from Anthemis, and Amanda Robson, who was pulled out of Norwest Venture Partners, where she worked with numerous enterprise software companies, including some focused on AI and robotics. (Longtime Silicon Valley attorney Ted Wang is also closely associated with the fund as a “board partner” and advises more than a dozen of its portfolio companies.) It’s easy to appreciate why LPs committed more capital to Cowboy, even in a market that seems to be actively shrinking given broader market turmoil. First and foremost are its numbers, which look good, particular given the size of its earlier funds. Cowboy was among the first investors in Guild Education, for example, an online education company that’s focused on upskilling frontline employees, and was valued at when it closed its most recent round of funding in June of last year. Cowboy is also a seed investor in the security and compliance automation platform Drata, assigned a valuation in December when it raised $200 million in Series C funding. Cowboy Ventures In conversation with Lee, Williams and Robson late last week, Lee noted that Cowboy thinks of itself as a generalist firm, but that 70% of its most recent fund was funneled into enterprise startups and 30% into consumer startups, given Cowboy has also enjoyed success with the latter. (Most notably, one of its first checks went to Dollar Shave Club, the men’s grooming company acquired by Unilever in 2016 for a reported $1 billion.) Others of the firm’s bets include Vic.ai, a startup that’s automating accounting processes and just closed a Series C round in December; Homebase, a platform for small to mid-size businesses that helps with scheduling, payroll, cash advances and HR stuff and has raised roughly from investors to date; and SVT Robotics, whose software organizes robots in warehouses and factories (it closed in Series A funding in late 2021). Lee also said that Cowboy prefers to invest in “pre-product” startups (about 70% of its first checks fall into this category) and that, because from the outset it has cultivated a diverse community of founders, roughly half of its portfolio companies have either been founded or co-founded by a woman and roughly one-third of them have been founded or co-founded by a person of color. While Cowboy is very much focused on the bottom line, says Lee, it further aims to “have a positive impact on the community around us. We’re not a social impact fund, but we get out of bed every day a little bit excited to prove that you can be great at this job and also be a thoughtful human being at the same time.” Indeed, the three partners said the idea is to keep doing what Cowboy has been doing all along, with the added twist of operating an opportunity fund to back its breakout winners. Though LPs have said they’re less and less enthusiastic about such vehicles — it complicates their own portfolio construction when early-stage firms also operate later-stage pools of capital — Williams said Cowboy’s investors didn’t blink at the idea. It was time, she suggested. “We’ve been writing follow-on checks to a lot of our companies just either through [special purpose vehicles] or through our existing funds, but not necessarily in the check size that we would have wanted or even [given the room] our founders were giving us,” she said last week. “Instead of leaving capital on the table of doing SPVs, this gives us the opportunity to pursue exactly the same strategy but double down on our winners, and our LPs really see this as an extension of that strategy.” Robson meanwhile suggested that the team is excited to have fresh capital to put to work after two years of froth. “We have seen a lot of incremental ideas, and this was especially true in the second half of last year. But with budgets constrained and the bar higher regarding the value you have to provide [your customers],” she said, “we think we’re going to see far better ideation as this year goes on and the dust settles on what the new normal for the environment is.”

Fidelity makes first acquisition in 7 years, snapping up fintech Shoobx

Mary Ann Azevedo

Investment giant Fidelity announced today that it has acquired Shoobx, a venture-backed fintech startup, for an undisclosed amount. Jason Furtado and founded Boston-based Shoobx in 2013, according to Crunchbase. The pair went on to raise a known $10 million in funding for the company with investors such as Austin-based Scout Ventures and Steve Papa. Atlas Ventures is also a backer, according to the Wall Street Journal. All 40 of Shoobx’s employees will join Fidelity. Shoobx is a provider of automated equity management operations and financing software to private companies “at all growth stages,” up to and including an initial public offering. Services it offers include helping companies send offer letters, grant equity to new employees, manage their cap tables and get a 409A valuation report, among other things. On its , Shoobx notes that it has been called “Carta on steroids” because its “capabilities rocket past what Carta can provide.” Meanwhile, Carta Crunchbase that Carta has raised $1.1 billion to date, including a massive $500 million round raised in August 2021, led by Silver Lake. At that time, the company was valued around $7.4 billion, per the same data source. So while we don’t know how much Shoobx was worth at the time of this acquisition, it’s safe to say that its valuation is likely less than that of Carta’s based on how much it has raised over time. For its part, Fidelity said its purchase of Shoobx is a sign of its commitment to the private market “and will help to satisfy an increasing demand Fidelity sees from private companies to support them as they scale and grow.” The last time Fidelity acquired another company was in 2015, when it , according to a company spokesperson. Shoobx will be folded into Fidelity’s business, which provides equity compensation plan recordkeeping and administration services to nearly 700 companies with 2.5 million plan participants, totaling over $250 billion in plan value. Stock Plan Services is part of Fidelity’s , one of the country’s leading workplace benefits providers. According to Shoobx’s website, the two companies were partners prior to this announcement.

‘Most active investor’ FJ Labs closes on $260M across two new funds

Connie Loizos

Fabrice Grinda says he never intended to run a venture firm. He just really (really) enjoyed angel investing. In fact, by late 2013, when he was on the verge of selling the global classifieds marketplace — his third business — he says he had already written checks to more than 150 startups with his longtime friend, serial entrepreneur Jose Marin. “We’d been working together forever. It was really a family office that was angel investing at a massive scale,” Grinda recalls. Noting that flurry of checks, potential LPs, including strategic investors, family offices, and founders began to express an interest in investing with them, and by 2016, a Norwegian telecom company Telenor offered to provide exclusive funding to the duo, giving them $50 million to invest toward that end. Fast-forward, and their outfit, , has evolved from a two-man outfit to a sprawling firm with 34 employees, including eight investors and four “full-blown partners.” It began to grow in earnest in 2018, when LPs committed to invest $175 million with the outfit. Now Grinda is announcing that FJ Labs has garnered $260 million in capital commitments across a pre-seed fund and an opportunity-style “Series B and beyond” fund, with backing from family offices, institutional investors, and a wide array of founders, including those of LinkedIn, PayPal, Supercell, TransferWise, MongoDB and Wayfair. Indeed, over time, FJ Labs has come to look less like a “lab” and more like a traditional venture firm, though Grinda rejects the comparison. “We are a venture fund,” he says, but one that does “angel investing at venture scale. We don’t lead. We don’t price. We don’t take board seats. We decide after two one-hour meetings over the course of a week whether we’ll invest or not because we have extraordinary pattern recognition that allows us to decide extremely quickly.” It sounds high risk in a world where founders sometimes , yet FJ Labs has results to show for its approach. Among its many investments, for example, it has bet early on outfits that have ballooned over time, including Alibaba, Coupang, Flexport, and Delivery Hero. Focusing on marketplaces and network effects businesses — which Grinda knows well — certainly helps. So does the portfolio that FJ Labs has built over time, which includes 900 active investments as part of what Grinda describes as the “world’s largest marketplace portfolio.” (PitchBook data supports that FJ Labs was the globally in the third quarter of last year.) It all builds on itself like its own kind of flywheel, Grinda suggests, pointing to the firm’s deal flow to underscore the point. Through FJ Labs’s 900 companies, it has connections to roughly 2,000 founders, and they “come back for their next companies, and send us their friends and employees,” says Grinda. Similarly, because FJ Labs is a “source of differentiated deal flow for the VCs, they invite us to their deals,” he says. FJ Labs will get bigger still if everything goes as planned. Grinda says that the “idea is to create an institution that is going to be a legacy and be around “for decades.” It’s hard to imagine that Grinda, who is , could stick with venture capital so long. But he says to believe it. Right now there are three problems FJ Labs would like to help address while also making money, and none of them are minor. The first is inequality of opportunity, the second is climate change, and the third is the “mental and physical well-being crisis.” One related bet is on User Interviews, a seven-year-old Brooklyn startup that helps user experience researchers source study participants across different demographics and behavioral criteria. (TechCrunch covered its newest funding .) Other startups don’t easily fit into one of those three buckets, including Gravitics, a one-year-old Seattle startup that is developing living and work modules for space travel and that announced a last year, and a year-old London-based blockchain infrastructure company that just raised in seed funding to build private sharding capabilities for blockchain networks. A lot of the firm’s bets simply boil down to what FJ Labs’ perspective on what the future of humanity looks like, offers Grinda. “We have a perspective on the future of food, automobiles, real estate, work . . . We’re trying to solve the world’s problems; we’re also thesis driven.”

Sequoia, Marc Andreessen back early-stage fund Kearny Jackson

Manish Singh

Sequoia Capital and Bain Ventures are among the high-profile investors that have backed the venture firm Kearny Jackson’s second fund, the early-stage focused firm said Wednesday as it gears up to invest in more startups. , founded by former Spotify executive , said it has closed $14 million second fund. It has also roped in , formerly a VC at Menlo Ventures, as a co-GP. The fund, whose name is inspired from the street names where the two longtime friends have hung out over the years, plans to continue to invest in SaaS, fintech, infrastructure security firms, aiming to spot them early and fund their pre-seed and seed rounds, it said. “From KJ2, we’d like to invest $150k to $300K into pre-seed or seed stage startups, with the occasional series A. We’re directionally hoping for 0.5% to 2% ownership so we’re happy to collaborate with lead VCs in these rounds. With the addition of Sunil Chhaya, we are now looking to increase our check-sizes for KJ2 and beyond,” Krishnan told TechCrunch. A number of venture investors including a16z’s Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, Iconiq’s Doug Pepper, Greg Stanger, Arnav Bhimbet, Will Griffith and Divesh Makan, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Blackrock’s Mark Woolley, and a number of operators including Polygon co-founder Jaynti Kanani and Microsoft’s Manik Gupta have also backed the fund. Menlo Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and Foundation Capital are also LPs in the fund. “We are very honored that they’re coming back again for KJ2 and look forward to deepening our relationship with them. The founders in our portfolio have greatly benefited from connecting with top-tier investors who, in addition to providing capital, also offer valuable insights and guidance,” said Krishnan. It’s remarkable that so many operators and VCs have backed Kearny Jackson. Krishnan said the firm makes high-quality introductions of founders to bigger funds, in what is a “win-win for founders/VCs.” Kearny Jackson backed Sprig in its pre-seed round and introduced the founder to Bill Trenchard of First Round Capital. The two hit it off and First Round Capital led the seed round of Sprig. Unit, another Kearny Jackson portfilio startup, has been backed by Accel and Insight Partners. Seed financing round of CTRLStack and seed and Series A financing rounds of Cortex, two more KJ portfolio firms, was led by Sequoia Capital. Both Krishnan and Chhaya have also made a series of successful investments over the years. Krishnan is an investor in Figma, Notion, Airbase, AngelList, Sorare, Calm and Khatabook, for instance. Chhaya, who has also had stints at Piper Jaffray, Tenaya Capital and NextWorld, has sourced and deployed over $60 million over the years whose current value is nearly $500 million, he said. The duo co-GPs said they plan to host a number of events with other funds, for founders and those looking to start their own ventures in San Francisco and New York this year. Kearny Jackson has distributed about 20% of its $3.6 million 2018 maiden fund, Krishnan said. “I’ve worked with dozens of investors in my career — and pound-for-pound, Kearny Jackson is at the absolute top tier in terms of value added. KJ was a partner to me and to CtrlStack since before day 1, and was the first committed capital. As I was working through my vision for CtrlStack, thinking through sequencing and resourcing, KJ helped me narrow down the strategic landscape and accelerate the drive towards product-market fit,” said Dev Nag, founder and chief executive of CtrlStack. Nag, who sold his previous startup Wavefront to VMWare, is also an LP in the fund.

Chemical giant Denka dives into VC with $100M fund managed by Pegasus Tech Ventures

Kate Park

, a Silicon Valley-headquartered venture capital firm that helps corporations invest in startups, said it has set up a $100 million fund with Japanese chemical and life science company . Denka, a 107-year-old firm, is the sole limited partner of the newly established corporate venture capital fund and in line with its is interested in investing in startups that address pressing global issues, including sustainability and population growth. Pegasus Tech Ventures currently manages more than 30 strategic funds, or CVC funds, via partnerships with large global corporations in Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Europe and the U.S., said founder and chief executive of Pegasus Tech Ventures, Anis Uzzaman. These corporate partners — mostly in the manufacturing sector, like industrials, chemicals and pharma — want to put capital in startups to incorporate advanced technologies into their core business, Uzzaman told TechCrunch. Pegasus Tech Ventures will help Denka more specifically search for early- to late-stage startups in renewable energy, EV batteries, chips and health tech. According to Uzzaman, check sizes will range from $500,000 to $1 million for early-stage startups and $2 million to $10 million for later-stage companies. After a candidate is targeted for investment, Denka plans to have a team work with Pegasus on validating the startup’s thesis. Still, Pegasus will make the final decision on investments, Uzzaman said. Indeed, a group of partners at Pegasus Tech Ventures, including Uzzaman, Bill Reichert, Steve Payne, John Lim and Justin Jackson and investment managers at Pegasus will be heavily involved in the operations of this fund, Uzzaman added. Pegasus Tech Ventures has focused on connecting corporates and startups to leverage its “VC as a service” model since its inception in 2011 and has invested in more than 250 startups to date with more than $2 billion in assets under management. Other partners the VC firm has worked with include , the video game and entertainment company; , ; , a Japan-based maker of automotive spark plugs; , a Taiwan-headquartered computer hardware company; , a Japan-based automotive firm; , an entertainment company; , an Indonesia-based pharmaceutical firm; and  , an Indonesian conglomerate.

Meta centralizes more user and privacy settings across its apps, announces changes to ads controls

Sarah Perez

Facebook parent Meta announced today it’s further centralizing various user settings across its suite of apps — Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. As a result, several existing settings will be relocated to Meta’s “Accounts Center” feature, first in 2020. Specifically, the changes will see Meta moving settings related to personal details, passwords, security options and ad preferences to this area, which is accessible from the Settings page within each app. Meta Meta says the update is aimed at making its settings experience easier for consumers to use. But in reality, the constant relocation of apps’ settings — something Facebook, in particular, has been notorious for — can lead to consumer confusion. In this case, however, it may not be too difficult to find the newly moved items, as they’re still going to be in the Settings section. Now , Meta’s Accounts Center was introduced at a time when multiple and had been investigating the company for its antitrust behavior. Though the feature in some ways highlights the extensive data collection practices across Meta’s family of apps, it can also be used as a means of demonstrating to lawmakers how Meta is making it simpler for consumers to manage their data — or so the company hopes. With the update, consumers will be able to make choices about their data that are more consistent across platforms, Meta argues in its about the new features. For instance, users could set their ad topic preferences across both Facebook and Instagram in one place, it says. In addition to the relocated settings, Meta is updating data about users’ activity from Partners’ control, it adds, now calling this Activity information from ad partners. This is intended to help people see how their activity is sent to other websites and apps to power ads, Meta explains. The company says it’s also making changes aimed at allowing people to better understand their options when it comes to ads shown by Meta on other websites and apps and is exploring different ways of allowing users to customize these experiences — including through options that allow them to see fewer ads of things that don’t interest them. These latter updates follow the rollout of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) privacy changes on iOS, which impacted Meta’s and its . Since then, companies have been looking to find other ways to continue to personalize ads for their users, as doing so leads to a more effective and profitable ad business. As Meta’s changes are only today being announced, it’s too early to make comments on how these revised tools for configuring the user’s interests and ad preferences could be tied to a larger attempt to work around ATT using direct user input, but it’s likely that’s been a part of the reasoning here. Meta says the changes will launch today but “gradually” roll out to Facebook, Messenger and Instagram over the months ahead.

Urine luck: These CES startups want to take a closer look at your waste

Haje Jan Kamps

You wait for years for a urine analysis company, then all of them hit their flow all at once. One of the notable trends at this year was that the quantified-self movement is going deeper. No longer content with just measuring your heart rate, number of steps and EKG on your wrist, a new generation of startups is inching toward full-on medical-grade analysis of its users. Here are a few to keep an eye on: Withings U-Scan. Withings Health hardware company this week and announced it is working with the FDA to secure a U.S. launch as well. The product uses a hands-free system that can take up to three months worth of measurements with a single cartridge. Once you get over the nervousness of having that many lenses near your junk (don’t worry, there are no actual cameras involved), Olive can get on the go, analyzing your pee as you go. Haje Kamps/TechCrunch Israeli startup recently raised a , and promises to use optics only to analyze urine. The company uses a special toilet seat, no strips or additional accessories required. It is initially aiming at care homes and vulnerable populations but is hoping to find a user base across a number of healthcare sectors. The Vivoo solution dispenses a strip, then slurps it back in for optical analysis. No touching required. Haje Kamps/TechCrunch has been making at-home urine test strips for a long time and it showed off the next iteration of its business with a smart toilet. It’s aimed at residential care, elderly and healthcare markets. It gives a convenient alternative for users who may struggle to perform urine testing with hand-held urine strips. We can only imagine it was feeling a little awkward about its “world first” marketing messaging at its booth. Especially given that the Vivoo booth was right next to Withing’s, where it was showing off how it had beaten the “world first” to market. The product is a prototype, with a broader roll-out in the not-too-distant future. The company raised a $6 million Series A fundraise in June 2021. The round was led by Draper Associates. Well that’s reassuring.  SZM Don’t worry, it wasn’t all urine at CES this year. We also found SZM — Special Zone Master — which promises to do “visual analysis” of your favorite bodily waste — poop. The company promises to analyze stool shapes and color, record the time and frequency of your bowel movements and detect the presence of blood as well. “Just by taking a closer look at the stool, we can find the first signs of a health problem and take action before it is too late,” the company said in its marketing materials. We were curious to learn more, but the company’s founders where nowhere to be found — presumably, they were taking a well-deserved restroom break. It wasn’t entirely clear how far along the Korean startup was in its journey toward bringing its tech to a toilet seat near you.

Amazon will soon start charging delivery fees on Fresh grocery orders under $150

Aisha Malik

Amazon is going to start charging delivery fees for Fresh grocery orders that are under $150, the company said in an email to Prime members. Prior to this change, Amazon offered Prime members free grocery deliveries on orders above $35. The company says the move will keep prices low on its services. With this new policy, Amazon will charge a $3.95 delivery fee for orders between $100-$150, a $6.95 fee for orders between $50-$100 and $9.95 for orders under $50. The new fees, which will be charged on top of the $140 annual Prime membership, will go into effect starting February 28. “This service fee will help keep prices low in our online and physical grocery stores as we better cover grocery delivery costs and continue to enable offering a consistent, fast, and high-quality delivery experience,” Amazon said in the email to Prime members. The company says it will continue to offer two-hour delivery windows for all orders, and that customers in some areas will be able to select a longer, six-hour delivery window for a reduced fee. Amazon also plans on testing and adding more delivery options as it continues evolving its grocery service. People have taken to social media to how significant the price jump is when qualifying for free delivery. Given the current economic outlook, not everyone will be able to afford the new $150 minimum. In addition, some people have that Amazon Fresh became their only option for grocery shopping during the pandemic, and that the new fees will be an issue for them, especially since they will be unable to . Amazon operates dozens of Fresh grocery stores across the United States and expanded its push into the grocery space by acquiring Whole Foods in 2017. In 2021, the company added a $10 service fee for Whole Foods delivery orders, which were previously offered at no extra charge. The decision to introduce new fees comes as Amazon has been reining in costs amid a worsening economic outlook. In the past few months, Amazon has frozen hiring in its corporate workforce, and has said it will .

Board changes could signal Salesforce’s willingness to appease activist investors

Ron Miller

A week ago activist investor Elliott Management announced it had made a investment in Salesforce. By Friday, the company announced it was bringing in , and The Wall Street Journal was reporting that Elliott planned to nominate its own . According to people familiar with the situation, that Wall Street Journal story is accurate. Salesforce isn’t just dealing with Elliott though. Starboard Value bought in the company in October, and two other firms, ValueAct and Inclusive Capital, are also active inside the firm, . Perhaps it’s not surprising that Mason Morfit, CEO and chief investment officer of ValueAct Capital, is one of the three new members. He joins Arnold Donald, former president and CEO at Carnival Corporation and Mastercard CFO Sachin Mehra. They will replace Bret Taylor, co-chair and co-CEO, who announced in November at the end of the month along with longtime board members Sanford Robertson and Alan Hassenfeld, both of whom have been on the board since 2003. Patrick Gadson, a partner at the law firm Vinson & Elkins who is in charge of shareholder activism and mergers and acquisitions, said that Elliott usually asks for board seats as a starting point in discussions with a company where it is operating to help cement their demands. “They want much firmer commitments that usually include board representation of some sort that can help push through their thesis. So whatever it is they’re looking to do, they usually want someone in the boardroom who can hold the incumbent directors’ feet to the fire and make sure they actually do that thing,” Gadson told TechCrunch. He says the same is true for the other activists in play. All of this appears to be moving extremely quickly, but Yahoo Finance that the discussions around changes in board makeup have been ongoing since last summer. That would suggest that some combination of these activists have been working behind the scenes for quite some time. The new board members are probably a starting point as the activists push to make Salesforce more efficient and more profitable. Equity Research firm wrote in a note that Salesforce falls well short of its peers, which it defines as software companies with over $10 billion in revenue, when it comes to operating margins. “In comparison, this group of five companies has a similar revenue scale to Salesforce, yet has an operating margin profile of 41%, well above Salesforce, largely due to more efficient sales and marketing spend,” the company wrote. It believes that Salesforce probably couldn’t achieve that, but could reach 30%. And it’s entirely likely that Elliott and its fellow investors are looking for something in that range. It’s worth noting that the company has already committed to by 2026, but that may not be bold enough or fast enough for Elliott and company. For now, Elliott wants board representation, but it’s probably just the beginning of a long process where Elliott and its fellow activists try to force changes on the company to get spending down and profitability up in order to increase the value of the stakes these companies have taken in the CRM leader.

Consumer Robotics Show

Brian Heater

of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important robotics stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday at 11 a.m. PT, Welcome back to Actuator and happy first day of CES! This will never not feel weird to say – and not just because of the highly objective “happy” bit. One of the dirty little secrets of CES coverage is that – by the official start of the show, us reporter types have already been on the ground hustling for at least 48 hours. I flew into Vegas on Monday, and have spent the past two days meeting with startups and investors, attending press conferences and and covering smaller pre-show events that purport to offer a microcosm of the week to come – putting the teapot before the tempest, if you’re a fan of mixed metaphors. CES week lined up a little lopsided for Actuator. Today’s start of the show really refers to the floor opening. For us, that means the news coverage shifts a little bit, as we have more time for demos and carve out an hour between meetings here or there to seek out some weird stuff that would have almost certainly succumbed to the email deluge in our respective inboxes (did I mention that I came back to 1,600 unread messages last week?) I write this preamble largely to say that what follows will be neither a definitive nor final account of robots at CES. The show will almost certainly spill into next week’s Actuator. Still, after weeks of meetings, emails and press releases, I do feel confident painting some relevant trends in broad strokes, as I shovel some hotel buffet scrambled eggs. Another prevailing bit of weirdness in all of this is, of course, the whole pandemic dealie. I’d say conservatively that I’ve been to CES 15 times. They start blending after like number two. It’s been a constant in my life. A holiday sullying constant at the very beginning of every year. As such, it was strange sitting two in a row out, and it’s even stranger beginning back at it again. It’s great seeing all of the familiar faces slightly worse for wear after three very difficult years. It’s a homecoming for a town that has – more often than not – made your life hell, but for which you have a certain, unexplainable affection. Again, it’s impossible to say anything definitive at this point, but I do feel comfortable noting that both the show and city just feel quieter in 2023. Many of the lifers decided the whole spectacle wasn’t worth it for them (a decision I certainly respect). The supply chain and economic crises are no doubt contributing to what feels like a general slowdown of announcements, and many of the bigger companies have drifted away from big, live shows in general. In all of this, however, something altogether different is happening for robots. I’ve done robot roundups at the show for years, and for a long time it mostly felt like pulling teeth. Over the past several shows, however, there’s been a perfect storm. CES is starting to take robots seriously. LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – JANUARY 05: Attendees pass through a hallway at the Las Vegas Convention Center on Day 1 of CES 2022, January 5, 2022 in Las Vegas, Nevada. CES, the world’s largest annual consumer technology trade show, is being held in person through January 7, with some companies deciding to participate virtually only or canceling their attendance due to concerns over the major surge in COVID-19 cases. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) I grabbed a cup of coffee with a robotics investor earlier this week who asked if I thought the show would be worth it for them. Their understandable misgiving in all of this is that the “C” in CES once stood for “consumer.” The CTA – the governing body that puts on the event – has been very aggressive in its insistence that CES simply stands for CES now. But this has always been a consumer show, as evidenced by the presence of firms like Samsung and Sony. In 2023, however, someone who operates solely on the industrial side of the robotics equation could easily fill four-plus days here. CES is, by no means, a robotics show. But robotics’ slow permeation of technology and culture means they’re well represent and here to stay. There are a few key drivers for the growing presence of robots in Vegas this week. That last one is important for a lot of reasons. Thing is, there have always been robots – or robot-adjacent products at the show, but the category is about as mixed as bags come. A lot of startups have come and gone over the years with products that couldn’t find a market. There are also plenty of products that have been called robots that certainly look like something close to a platonic ideal of the concept. But more often not, these are toys – and not particularly good ones. We’ve also seen some extremely questionable robots trotted out on stage by companies like Samsung and LG. A robot demo has always been a quick and easy shorthand to demonstrate to consumers and shareholders that your company is committed to the future and futuristic things. There is – of course – still a lot of that here. If anything, the broader excitement around the category has convinced those people that they’re very much on the right track. CES is also very much a show about being in the moment. You do your best to vet the validity of a product, but true due diligence is a near impossibility here. NVIDIA’s – along with other key chipmakers – usually has a sizable presence. It was nice to see a little focus on the robotics side of things. The company debuted that brings simulated human robots into the equation, along with more realistic lighting conditions through ray tracing and the ability to render real-time sensor data. “To minimize the difference between results observed in a simulated world versus those seen in the real world,” Nvidia notes, “it’s imperative to have physically accurate sensor models.” NVIDIA Labrador, which has been something of a CES mainstay over the past few years, with Amazon (an outgrowth of support from the Alexa Fund) that leverages the Echo Show 10 as almost a robotic telepresence-style display. “The proof-of-concept demo with the Echo Show 10 is a preview of what we will be testing in our next rounds of pilots with care providers,” CEO Mike Dooley said in a release. “Capabilities like this can make a dramatic difference in the quality of people’s lives and their ability to live independently while staying connected with others, and we’re grateful to Amazon’s team for their support on this project.” Labrador Systems Speaking of eldercare robots, . The company tells me that getting noticed at the 2018 event led to its adoption in Japanese hospitals, care facilities and schools. It’s a small humanoid robot with one dexterous arm that can open doors and another that has a UV light for disinfecting surfaces – a big hit during the pandemic for obvious reasons. Brian Heater Yeti is the first of delivery robots we’re sure to see this week. What makes t particularly interesting is the inclusion of an auto dispense mechanism that can drop packages on porches or directly into a compatible locker for safe keeping. “During the validation processes we ran pilots with airports, retailers and postal services which gave us the deep insights we needed on the most effective use cases and scalability,” s co-founder and CEO Ritukar Vijay says of the company’s early deployments. “With our strategic alignment with Verizon and other enterprises, we are in the prime position to fill the gap that companies like Amazon and Fedex were not able to. As demand and the use cases for autonomous unassisted delivery continue to grow, we are positioned to provide robots as a service for restaurants, retailers and beyond.” Ottonomy And for the fun of it, here’s from Yukai Engineering, the folks who brought you the cat pillow with the wagging tail. Quoting myself here (I know, I know). The hardware startup says the product utilizes “respiratory entrainment,” which refers to a phenomenon where in the rhythm of a patient’s breathing matches that of a respirator. Here that basically means the person’s breathing matches up with the robot cushion, rather than the other way around. Yukai Engineering Lastly, from this year’s show, including a self-driving – and parking – stroller. Glüxkind All right, back to it. See you soon.

Marqeta buys fintech Power Finance in $275M all-cash deal, its first acquisition

Mary Ann Azevedo

has agreed to acquire two-year-old fintech infrastructure startup for $223 million in cash, marking the first acquisition in the publicly traded company’s 13-year history. About one-third of the purchase price is payable over a two-year period, subject to certain undisclosed conditions. And, if one undisclosed milestone in particular is met within the next 12 months, Marqeta said it will pay an additional $52 million for the startup, bringing the total acquisition price to $275 million. Founded in early 2021 by Randy Fernando and Andrew Dust, New York-based announced last September that it had in a seed funding round co-led by Anthemis and Fin Capital. Other backers include CRV, Restive Ventures (formerly Financial Venture Studio), Dash Fund, Plug & Play and a group of angel investors. The company at the time had also announced a $300 million credit facility. Oakland, California-based Marqeta, which and is today valued at nearly $3.7 billion, touts that it “provides a single, global, cloud-based, open API Platform for modern card issuing and transaction processing.” In other words, it provides the tools for companies — fintechs and otherwise — to provide cards, wallets and other payment mechanisms. Its customers include Block (formerly known as Square), Uber, Google, Affirm, DoorDash, JPMorgan, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Instacart and Ramp, among others. Power’s first product is a credit card issuance program, which is designed for companies, brands and banks to offer embeddable fintech experiences, such as customized credit card programs, targeted promotions and personalized rewards, into existing mobile and web applications. Marqeta’s main goal with the purchase is to expand and “significantly accelerate the capabilities” offered in its credit product. Specifically, the acquisition will give Marqeta customers a way to launch “a wide range” of credit products and constructs, the company said, by incorporating Power’s data science toolbox and its ability to embed experiences inside existing mobile and web applications into its own offering. Historically, Marqeta was focused on debit and prepaid cards, but in February 2021, it formally to help other brands launch credit card programs. Once the deal closes, Power Finance CEO Randy Fernando will lead the product management of Marqeta’s credit card platform. In a written statement, Fernando said: “Companies like ours were made possible because of the path Marqeta blazed in modern card issuing, demonstrating the possibilities in payments with flexible and modern payment infrastructure. At Power, we built a full-stack, cloud-native credit card issuance platform, and by becoming a part of Marqeta we have the ability now to bring this innovation to a much larger market at global scale.” News of the buy comes just three days after Marqeta revealed that it had tapped Simon Khalaf , effective January 31. Khalaf joined Marqeta in June of 2022 as its chief product officer and began leading the company’s go-to-market organization last August. Founder Jason Gardner, who has been vocal about his belief that ,” will transition into an executive chairman role. In an exclusive interview, Khalaf told TechCrunch that Marqeta “definitely felt that the Power team has built something unique and something that aligns with Marqeta’s mission and who we cater to.” “Our approach to credit so far has been the processor, but as customers have been asking us to do a lot of things in a highly innovative way, we looked at it and said, ‘We do need to own the full stack,’” Khalaf said. Rather than spend the resources to attempt to build out the technology it wanted to be able to offer its customers, Marqeta decided to explore acquisition targets. Some, Khalaf admits, were open to talks while others were not. The company ended up deciding that Power was the best fit both culturally and technologically. Marqeta, he said, is operating under the premise that consumers increasingly want personalization. “If you look at a credit card, not much innovation has happened to it,” Khalaf told TechCrunch. “But a lot of folks want a credit card to become alive with a credit limit that changes dynamically based on a user’s current financial situation, with rewards that change dynamically, and more importantly, that they can integrate into their e-commerce or retail workflows…That’s what Power has built.” “Most” of Power’s nearly 30 employees will be joining Marqeta, the company said. Presently, Marqeta has nearly 1,000 employees. Generally, Khalaf said that Marqeta has been witnessing hypergrowth but is now moving into a sustainable and profitability phase. “We’re highly focused on sustainable, mature and predictable operating cadences for the company,” he said. “The embedded finance market is growing very fast and it’s a market we’re going to spend a lot of energy on. The way we deliver products, and have packaged them to be API first….the embedded finance space is made for us, and we’re made for them. It’s a perfect match.” Through the acquisition, Khalaf said Marqeta hopes also to meet increasing demand from emerging, mobile-first retailers, creator marketplaces and labor marketplaces. “We’re going to see a lot of new demand around co-brands,” he said. “Businesses want a branded card that is alive that is integrated with their properties. And we’re going to be able to serve that market better versus just issuing a piece of plastic with standard rewards.” In November, Marqeta reported a third quarter net loss of $53.2 million, adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of $13.6 million and revenue of $191.6 million — which compared to $131.5 million in the same quarter of the prior year. Meanwhile, it reported that total processing volume rose by 54% to $42 billion. Once valued at $18 billion, Marqeta has — like many other fintechs — seen its stock price and valuation drop thanks to high inflation and a rising interest rate environment. Still, the company has continued to win new customers and grow its relationships with existing ones while beating analysts’ estimates. In appointing Khalaf as Marqeta’s new CEO, Gardner told investors that his goal was to find a leader “who would take Marqeta to the next level” after he had taken the company “from Zero to 1.” “That meant finding a leader with experience in building and operating a global business at scale while also focusing on a path to profitability,” he added. “…Our board of directors concluded that Simon was the clear choice to be Marqeta’s next CEO. His previous CEO experience and decades of experience scaling large technology organizations such as Twilio, Verizon, Yahoo, and Novell, his product insight, and his relentless focus on customer experience, will serve us well as we look to enter the next phase of our growth.” For his part, Khalaf said that further acquisitions were not out of the question but also would be very deliberate. “Acquisitions is not a strategy, more of a tactic,” he told TechCrunch. “You decide which customers we want to serve, which market you want to go after and then you evaluate whether you build, buy or partner. That’s what we’re focused on right now.” Marqeta’s acquisition is just one of in the fintech space so far this year.

Crypto security startup Hypernative raises $9M to help prevent web3 cyber attacks

Jacquelyn Melinek

, a crypto security-focused startup, has raised $9 million in seed funding as it emerges from stealth, co-founder and CEO Gal Sagie exclusively told TechCrunch. The funding round was led by boldstart ventures and IBI tech fund, with strategic investments from Blockdaemon, Alchemy, Borderless, CMT Digital, Nexo and angel investors. The company was started by Sagie and Dan Caspi, who’s also Hypernative’s CTO. The co-founders collectively have backgrounds in cloud infrastructure, building large-scale distributed systems and security, and have worked at places like IBM, Google and Microsoft. “We created Hypernative early last year when we saw huge amounts of money getting stolen or or scammed in crypto,” Sagie said. “We saw huge gaps between tools that existed and money being invested, so we wanted to create something to help prevent [attacks].” In September, the team launched its first product, Pre-Cog, a platform that monitors on- and off-chain data sources to predict threats before they occur. Since its launch, it has helped users save “tens of millions” of dollars, Sagie said. The startup concentrates on “building detection early” and manually connecting its tools through customer workflows, Sagie said. Its ideal client base ranges from asset managers, hedge funds, traders and market makers interacting with crypto to blockchains and protocols, he added. “We’re doing detection beforehand,” Sagie noted. “A lot of incidents alerted [users] within minutes or hours before an attack happened so we’ve helped prevent attacks through alerts.” In the future, Hypernative aims to build prevention workflows that give “end-to-end systems that mitigate risk without doing anything,” Sagie added. Even though crypto markets may be down, there’s still billions of dollars invested in the space, which makes it a target for attacks by those looking to make (and take) money quickly. In 2022, the across 134 specific incidents, according to Immunefi’s Crypto Losses 2022 . Last year, every quarter had a handful of multimillion-dollar losses, some bigger than others. The fourth quarter in 2022 saw the most, with $1.62 billion in total losses across 55 incidents, accounting for almost half of the total losses in the year, the report showed. “From my experience hackers don’t sleep,” Sagie said. “They don’t care if it’s a bull market or bear market. Where there’s money and opportunities, they go.” The crypto industry needs more tools to help prevent hacks before they transpire, so “there’s a big opportunity” to improve the space, Sagie said. “Hackers enjoy when there’s risk and volatility in the market and leverage that,” he added. “It’s a problem we need to solve.”

Sorare teams up with the Premier League for its NFT fantasy football game

Romain Dillet

French startup has signed a four-year licensing partnership with the Premier League. This is an important move for the company as the English football league is one of the most-watched sports leagues in the world. Sorare is a fantasy sports gaming experience based on NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. In particular, Sorare has partnered with many football leagues so that it can create trading cards representing football players. Each card is registered as a unique token on the Ethereum blockchain. Sorare players can buy and sell cards from other players. They can then put together a lineup of five players and earn points based on real-life performances. Sorare frequently issues new cards on the platforms that users can buy to add to their personal collections — that’s how the company generates revenue. And the startup has been quite successful so far. It raised a and signed partnerships with many clubs and football organizations, including Spain’s LaLiga, Germany’s Bundesliga and Italy’s Serie A. The Premier League is a nice addition to this list of organizations. With today’s new partnership with the Premier League, Sorare users will find all 20 clubs on the platform. There will also be league-specific competitions. “The Premier League is a truly global competition and has been the home to so many iconic moments and players over the last 30 years. As football fans ourselves, this partnership is something we’ve dreamt of since we founded the business,” Sorare co-founder and CEO Nicolas Julia said in a statement. “It’s a major milestone for us as we pursue our goal to build a compelling global sports community for fans and we’re extremely proud to have now partnered with three of the biggest sports leagues in the world: the Premier League, NBA and MLB. We’re incredibly excited and can’t wait to see fans play with Premier League cards in our tournaments.” As for sports fans who don’t particularly enjoy football, Sorare also teamed up with the NBA and MLB over the past few months. While the MLB season hasn’t started yet, Sorare’s NBA game is already live. It works more or less like the fantasy football game.

Manu Jain, Xiaomi exec who set up and scaled India business, leaves

Manish Singh

Manu Jain, the executive who helped Xiaomi set up and scale business in India, has left the company, he said Monday, joining a long list of high-profile departures at the local unit that is increasingly losing market share to rivals, including Samsung. Jain, who led the India business for seven years and also held the global VP role, did not say why he was leaving the firm, but he has been pitching investors ideas for an EV startup for several months, people familiar with the matter said. Jain had been telling many industry figures for several quarters about his plans to leave the venture, according to many of the people with whom he has spoken. Xiaomi entered the Indian smartphone market in 2014. Within quarters, Xiaomi had started to make a dent in the market, undercutting rivals Samsung, OnePlus, Oppo and Vivo with higher-specs phones at more affordable prices. A few years later, Xiaomi became the top smartphone vendor in India, a crown it no longer holds. Once a key figure in the India team, Jain grappled with a big blow after the relationship between China and India soured amid escalating geopolitical tension between the neighboring nations in 2020, people said, requesting anonymity. According to one source, Jain was supposed to be elevated to a higher global role but the firm changed its mind. Jain was also summoned by India’s Enforcement Directorate, where according to Xiaomi’s own account, he in a tax dispute issue. Amid the tension at its India unit, several key Xiaomi executives, including Raghu Reddy, Xiaomi India business head, have left the firm in recent quarters. Xiaomi did not respond to a request for comment in December about Jain’s impending departure. Jain did not respond to multiple requests for comment throughout last year. “I joined the Xiaomi Group in 2014 to start its India journey. The first few years were full of ups and downs. We started as a one-person startup, working from a small little office. We were the smallest amongst the hundreds of smartphone brands, that too with limited resources and no prior relevant industry experience,” Jain said in a statement. In his long statement Monday, Jain did not comment on Xiaomi’s dwindling market share in India and shrinking India leadership team.

Walmart-backed PhonePe’s nine-month 2022 revenue surged to $234 million

Manish Singh

PhonePe clocked a revenue of $234.3 million in the first nine months of 2022, the most valuable Indian fintech startup has disclosed in a filing. The nine-month financials marks a jump from the $201.6 million revenue that the Bengaluru-headquartered firm generated in the 12-month financial year period ending in March last year. PhonePe, which is , has projected a revenue of $325 million for the calendar year 2022 and $504 million for 2023, according to a valuation report prepared by the auditing firm KPMG and filed by PhonePe. The auditing firm’s estimates relied on information provided by the PhonePe management, the document said. The startup, backed by Walmart, doesn’t expect to turn EBIDTA positive, a key profitability metric, until calendar year 2025, KMPG wrote in its valuation report. PhonePe’s financials and metrics from the valuation report have not been previously reported. PhonePe regulatory filing At a $12 billion valuation, PhonePe is India’s most valuable fintech startup. The startup competes with Google Pay and Paytm. Paytm, which expects to reach $1 billion revenue by March this year, is currently valued at $4.1 billion. PhonePe, to be sure, is the clear leader in the mobile payments market on UPI, a network built by a coalition of retail banks in India. UPI has become the most popular way Indians transact online, and processes more than 7 billion transactions a month. Seven-year-old PhonePe commands about 40% of all these transactions. A concern for PhonePe’s growth was Indian regulators enforcing a market cap check on each player, but the deadline for the new guidelines was extended last month and now , giving PhonePe another two years of fast growth.

Apple introduces a brand new HomePod with better sound and smarts

Darrell Etherington

Apple has resurrected the larger HomePod with a second-generation version that includes better sound, as well as better intelligence and computing smarts. The new HomePod retails for $299 and preorders kick off today, with in-store availability and shipping beginning in the U.S. and other select markets on Friday, February 3. Apple’s new HomePod includes two color options — a white version as well as “Midnight,” a color they’ve favored over a standard black option on most recent product releases, including the M2 MacBook Air. We have yet to see this on the HomePod in person, but if other examples from Apple are any indication, it’s a very dark blue that basically resembles black in most viewing conditions. This new HomePod is wrapped in an “acoustically transparent mesh fabric,” and also includes support for Siri voice control as well as Apple’s own Spatial Audio technology for immersive sound reproduction. Users can also now create Siri smart home automations entirely on the HomePod using just their voice. Inside, the HomePod is powered by the S7 chip — the same processor found in the Apple Watch Series 7. That should give it a big performance upgrade over the OG HomePod, which contained an Apple A8, the chip that powered the last iPod touch as well as the iPad mini 4 and iPhone 6. The HomePod includes room-sensing technology to adapt its sound profile depending on its surroundings, and it can also be stereo-paired with another HomePod for improved sound. You can use them with an Apple TV 4K and eARC for sound system integration, and you can also use them as intercoms throughout the house if you have more than one. Apple also notes that the updated HomePod includes Matter support and can act as a home hub for Apple’s HomeKit smart home system.

VC funding to Black web3 founders popped last year, bucking trends

Dominic-Madori Davis

after froze the sector: , the  and the Sam Bankman-Fried for alleged fraud. Then there was the venture pullback amid an economic downturn. In 2021, raised a record $29.2 billion. By 2022, that number dipped to $21.5 billion — though that’s still much more than the total $4.8 billion and $4.2 billion such companies picked up in 2020 and 2019, respectively. Black people who invested in crypto hard during the winter, though many Black founders and investors who spoke to TechCrunch remain optimistic about the sector’s potential for the community and society overall. If anything, last year’s economic correction was necessary, they told TechCrunch. “Bubble had to pop,” People of Crypto co-founder said. “It wasn’t sustainable and economic correction was needed. The downturn removed the bad actors who only entered the space for fast dollars. It created an opportunity to exit the hype cycle, clearing the way for development that will ensure the growth of the ecosystem in a sustainable way, adding value.” , the co-founder of Utopia Labs, agreed. “This period of time was a rightful consequence for a period of rampant speculation and grift,” he told TechCrunch. “This will be a great time to focus. Getting back to the reality of solving pervasive problems in the world; it’s an important change of pace for the space.” Funding for Black web3 founders has only increased, and the crypto winter proved the most fruitful year. Crunchbase data shows that U.S. Black web3 founders raised $60 million (out of the $11.9 billion total given to all U.S. web3 startups in 2022). That amount is substantially higher than the $16 million such founders received in 2021, during crypto’s record-breaking year (U.S. web3 startups received $16.5 billion that year). In 2017, they raised $11 million out of $1.03 billion, and in 2018, they raised basically zero dollars out of around $2.8 billion; note the vanishingly thin red line in the chart below. In 2019 and 2020 Black web3 founders raised $2.5 million and $4.5 million out of $2.4 billion and $3.2 billion, respectively. Fundraising Black founders, and many were impacted by the downturn, though it’s quite telling that Black web3 founders were able to pick up record sums amid an overall dip in the web3 funding market. It appears that investors, too, are in some ways , a change of tune in how such entrepreneurs are usually considered.  

Stripe eyes an exit, Dell bets on the cloud, and Shutterstock embraces generative AI

Kyle Wiggers

Hey, party people, it’s Kyle, continuing to step in for Greg to write as he spends time with his newborn. Dunno about y’all, but it’s been . I’m dead tired and thankful it’s over. But because the news never sleeps, I’m rallying with the help of a fourth cup of coffee. Wish me luck. I’ve talked your ears off about it at this point, but I’m under contractual obligation (not really, but still) to mention TechCrunch’s upcoming event in Boston on April 20. The one-day summit on startups will include advice and takeaways from top experts, plus opportunities to meet fellow founders and share your own entrepreneurial experiences. Don’t miss it. On the subject of travel, it’s not too early to start thinking about this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt 2023, which will take place in late September in San Francisco. Tickets aren’t available just yet, but they will be in the near-ish future. Sign up for updates. With the call to actions out of the way (phew), here’s this week in tech news! and write that fintech startup Stripe has set a 12-month deadline for itself to go public, either through a direct listing or by pursuing a transaction on the private market. The payments giant was founded in 2010, so the fact that it’s exploring avenues for exit isn’t entirely surprising. But Stripe hasn’t been immune to the global downturn, recently 14% of its staff (around 1,120 people) and slashing its internal valuation . In a twist, Stripe reportedly tried to raise at least $2 billion in capital recently, to The Wall Street Journal. reports that Dell is making an acquisition to beef up its cloud services business — specifically its offering in DevOps. The company is buying , an Israeli startup that has built a platform for cloud orchestration and infrastructure automation, sources say for as much as $100 million. The purchase comes as DevOps startups continue to attract attention from investors, with venture funding in the sector reaching $4 billion in Q2 2021, to PitchBook. As part of a partnership with OpenAI, the AI startup that recently a multibillion-dollar investment from Microsoft, Shutterstock this week rolled out a tool that lets customers create images based on text prompts. Powered by OpenAI’s tech, specifically , the tool creates images that are “ready for licensing” after they’re made. That’s significant given that one of Shutterstock’s biggest competitors, Getty Images, is currently against Stability AI — maker of another generative AI service called Stable Diffusion — over using its images to train its AI without permission from Getty or rights holders. has the scoop on Brondell’s purchase of Nebia, the techy showerhead startup backed by Apple CEO Tim Cook and a host of other big names, including Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia. Nebia stood out when it launched with pricey nozzles that blasted users with a fine mist while conserving up to 70% of the water a typical showerhead sprays out. Co-founder Philip Winter told TechCrunch this week that Nebia’s products, including those it made with Moen, have reached more than 100,000 homes. An impressive new AI system from Google can generate music in any genre given a text description. But the company, fearing the , has no immediate plans to release it. Called  , the system was trained on a dataset of 280,000 hours of music to learn to generate coherent songs for descriptions like “enchanting jazz song with a memorable saxophone solo and a solo singer” or “Berlin ’90s techno with a low bass and strong kick.” Its songs, remarkably, sound something like a human artist might compose, albeit not necessarily as inventive or musically cohesive. Twitter owner and self-proclaimed “ ” Elon Musk is facing a legal challenge in Germany over how the platform is allegedly failing to enforce its own rules against antisemitic content, including Holocaust denial. Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany — which has strict laws prohibiting antisemitic hate speech — making the Berlin court a compelling arena to hear such a challenge. For his part, Musk has repeatedly claimed Twitter will respect all laws in the countries where it operates, , although he has yet to make any public comment on this specific lawsuit. Walmart recently introduced a new way to shop via chatbot. gave it a go and found that the experience leaves a lot to be desired. She writes: “It felt like the process of ordering a few basic things has become an ordeal and has taken a lot longer than the traditional method of searching in Walmart’s app and adding things to the cart. If conversational commerce like this is the future, I’d say this is very much still a work in progress.” , Google’s open source framework for building multiplatform apps for mobile, web and desktop, is coming along nicely. writes that at a recent conference, the tech giant highlighted the latest version of Flutter, which brings massively improved graphics performance, the ability to more easily embed Flutter code into existing web and mobile apps and support for new architectures like WebAssembly and RISC-V. For your listening pleasure, TechCrunch has a crop of compelling new podcast episodes in the queue (as is the case weekly, might I add). Over at , the crew took the mic to talk through deals of the week, All Raise’s CEO departure, what Google’s antitrust lawsuit means for startups, how the downturn impacted the way companies are hiring and why femtech stood out in 2022. On ,  and were joined by Klarna’s co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski to talk about how the company is expanding beyond the buy now, pay later space to become a neobank. And TC’s crypto-focused spotlighted Mo Shaikh, co-founder and CEO of the layer-1 blockchain Aptos, which is building infrastructure for web3 apps and products. TC+ subscribers get access to in-depth commentary, analysis and surveys — which you know if you’re already one. If you’re not, consider signing up. I doubt you’ll regret it. Just check out the highlights from this week: Salesforce finds itself under threat from activist investor Elliott Management, which it was taking a multibillion-dollar position in the CRM leader. examines what could be next for Salesforce as the company looks to cut costs and potentially sell unprofitable pieces of the organization. looks at investments in the energy transition, which took off last year. Businesses, financial institutions, governments and end users around the world sunk $1.11 trillion into low-carbon technologies, which was just over 30% more than 2021 and the second year in a row in which the growth rate exceeded that figure. writes that startups should expect more scrutiny from VCs on their hiring plans. Startups went on a hiring spree in 2021 as VC cash flowed and the job market was hot. But many overindulged in the talent pool and then had to make large cuts and layoffs in 2022.

This Week in Apps: Temu’s hot streak, Walmart’s m-commerce & an Apple XR App Store

Sarah Perez

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app economy in 2023 hit a few snags, as consumer spending last year dropped for the first time by 2% to $167 billion, according to the latest “State of Mobile” report by data.ai (previously App Annie). However, downloads are continuing to grow, up 11% year-over-year in 2022 to reach 255 billion. Consumers are also spending more time in mobile apps than ever before. On Android devices alone, hours spent in 2022 grew 9%, reaching 4.1 trillion. This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more. Temu , a shopping app from Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo, has been having quite the run as the No. 1 app on the U.S. app stores. The mobile shopping app hit the top spot on the U.S. App Store in and has continued to hold a highly ranked position in the months that followed, including as the No. 1 free app on Google Play since December 29, 2022. More recently, Temu once again snagged the No. 1 position on the iOS App Store on January 3 and hadn’t dropped since as of earlier this week. Offering cheap factory-to-consumer goods, Temu provides access to a wide range of products, including fast fashion, and pushes users to share the app with friends in exchange for free products, which may account for some of its growth. The app has seen 5 million U.S. installs this January alone, up 19% from 4.2 million in the prior 22 days from December 10 through December 31, Sensor Tower says. This brings it to a total of 19 million lifetime installs across the App Store and Google Play, more than 18 million of which came from the U.S. The growth now sees Temu outpacing rival Shein in terms of daily installs. In October, Temu was averaging around 43,000 daily installs in the U.S., the firm said, while Shein averaged about 62,000. In November, Temu’s average daily installs grew to 185,000 while Shein’s climbed to 70,000, and last month, Temu averaged 187,000 installs while Shein saw about 62,000. The app appears to be leveraging a similar growth strategy to TikTok, which heavily spent on marketing to gain users. According to  , Temu has run some 8,900 ads across Meta’s various platforms just this month. The ads promote Temu’s sales and its extremely discounted items, like $5 necklaces, $4 shirts and $13 shoes, among other deals. These ads appear to be working to boost Temu’s installs. But dig into the app’s reviews and you’ll find similar complaints to Wish, including scammy listings, damaged and delayed deliveries, incorrect orders and lack of customer service. Without addressing these issues, which Temu seems more likely to go the way of Wish, not TikTok, no matter what it spends. Screenshot of Walmart Text to Shop Walmart recently introduced a new way to shop: via text. Last month, the its “Text to Shop” experience, which allows mobile consumers across both iOS and Android devices to text Walmart the items they want to purchase from either their local stores or Walmart.com, or easily reorder items for pickup, delivery or shipping. However, the chat experience as it stands today does not come across as fully baked, our tests found. The chatbot said confusing things and the user interface at times was difficult to navigate, despite aiming to be a simpler, text-based shopping experience. We tested the experience, which leverages Apple’s Message app on iPhone, and it did not go well. The bot responded twice at times, offered only a few options for generic requests like “eggs,” asked everytime if an item was for pickup or delivery, provided inaccurate responses and spoke nonsense when confused — like when it returned options for “la croix organic eggs.” We’d say stick with the Walmart app for now. Read the . Could the next big app platform be Apple’s AR/VR headset? That’s the , which leaked details of Apple’s upcoming headset, the $3,000 Reality Pro due out this year. The headset will attempt to create a 3D version of Apple’s operating system, the report said, and will include features like FaceTime videoconferencing (with avatars), the ability to watch immersive videos, play VR games and use Apple’s apps — including the Safari web browser, photos, mail, messages, calendar, App TV+, Apple Music, Podcasts and the App Store. The report described an interface with a grid of app icons and widgets, and said Siri could be used when you needed to input text. However, the interesting details involved how users could interact with on-screen items. Apparently, the device would have external sensors to analyze the user’s hands and sensors inside to track the user’s eyes. This would allow the user to select items on the screen by looking at them, then pinch their thumb and forefinger together to activate the task — without needing to hold additional hand controllers like rival headsets, Bloomberg said. It may also Digital Crown, like Apple Watch, for switching between AR and VR and its iOS-like interface. Additionally, Apple is to be building software that allows users, including those who don’t know how to code, to build their own AR apps for its upcoming mixed-reality headset. There are of course still a lot of unanswered questions about the headset’s capabilities, though it does sound like a very “Apple” attempt at getting VR right. But the device’s price point will make it a premium product for the time being — and one launching during a down economy — which could limit its growth. We want all versions of our games to use the current suite of Epic Online Services including parental controls, purchasing defaults, and parental verification features. We are not able to update the app on these platforms given Apple and Google’s restrictions on Fortnite. (2/2) — Fortnite Status (@FortniteStatus) Bumble Meta Tapbots , the makers of the popular third-party Twitter app Tweetbot that was recently  by Twitter’s , this . Hoping to fill the void that  leaves behind, the company is now making its anticipated Mastodon client app   available  as an Early Access release. The “Early Access” label is a subtitle that Tapbots put on its release to indicate there will still be features missing as it debuts, the company told us. However, by launching publically on the App Store, Tapbots is able to put Ivory into more people’s hands after filling up the limited number of TestFlight slots it had for its test version. For longtime Tweetbot users, Ivory will offer a familiar experience. But instead of serving as a client for Twitter’s network, the company has now embraced the promising  Though not quite as simple to use or understand as Twitter, Mastodon has gained traction in the months following Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. At launch, it sports dozens of features, ranging from support for baseline functionality to clever bells and whistles, like being able to theme the app or change its icon. The app also supports multiple accounts, and lets you view your local and federated timelines, trending posts, post statistics, notifications and more. It also enables Mastodon-specific options that weren’t available on Twitter — like the ability to add content warnings to posts — as well as more common features, like the ability to post GIFs and polls. There are other thoughtful touches designed to appeal to power users, too, like hashtag tracking, mute filters with regex support and timeline filters that let you show or hide posts that meet certain criteria you set. This could appeal to Mastodon’s older users, as well, who may want to mute and avoid some of the posts shared by Mastodon newcomers who are bringing Twitter’s culture to the platform, leading to unwanted posts without content warnings in their timelines. Pestle , a handy and is getting a notable update on January 28. The app is adding a number of features for power users, including “Smart Folders,” which are automatically created folders that organize recipes based on user-set criteria, plus PDF and image import features. The latter allows users to import the recipes they had saved in other formats, while Smart Folders simplify the otherwise tedious process of organizing recipes. For instance, you could create Smart Folders that automatically add any saved recipe with a specific ingredient, or a dessert folder with additional rules. The app itself is a free download but offers subscriptions of $1.99/mo or $19.99/year (or $39.99 lifetime) for pro users.

Raylo raises $136M to build out its gadget lease-and-reuse ‘fintech’ platform

Ingrid Lunden

With the economy , and sales of mobile phones and other consumer electronics globally, a U.K. startup called that’s leaning into both of those themes has picked up £110 million ($136 million) to grow its business, offering consumers access to new gadgets by way of short-term leases. The London-based company currently operates in the U.K. selling monthly subscriptions for phones, tablets and laptops, and it plans to use the funding both to expand that list to a wider range of gadgets like e-bikes, as well as to continue investing in its tech, which includes an AI-based platform to assess risk for each sale, recommendation tech and a platform called “Raylo Pay” that is embedded by third-party merchants for Raylo to power leasing services for them. The circular aspect of its sales model, the company said, is also the basis of another development at the business: Raylo said it now has “ ” status — which signifies that as a for-profit company, Raylo also is operating with a view to making “a material positive impact on society and the environment through their operations,” as laid out by the B Corp organization. Notably, this funding is coming mainly in the form of debt, with a portion as equity, although CEO and co-founder Karl Gilbert would not disclose the exact amount. NatWest and Quilam Capital are providing that debt, with unnamed previous backers providing equity. (Existing investors include Telefonica, Guy Johnson of Carphone Warehouse fame, Octopus Ventures, Macquarie Capital and others.) This is a significant injection of financing for Raylo: Prior to now, it had raised only about £12 million in equity, including , and about £30 million in debt. Raising debt at the moment is significantly easier than equity-based for many startups that are generating cash: They are using the funding as they might a more traditional raise but without giving up a stake in the company, nor facing negative pressure on their valuations as a result of doing that. “This round transforms our finance infrastructure so that we don’t need a lot of equity going forward,” Gilbert said, adding that the round “is designed for us to hit profitability.” Raylo has been growing at a fast clip, with its subscriber base doubling in the last year and Gilbert noting it’s on track to double again this year, and Raylo Pay growing 10x in the last six months to a “£3 billion opportunity.” The actual numbers of users and revenues are not being shared but it appears that the activity off Raylo’s platform is the big prospect: Gilbert describes his company not as an e-commerce platform, but a “fintech” because of the roles that Raylo Tech and the other technology play, and how all of that aligns the startup more closely with neo-banks and other financial services startups using personalization, AI and related tools to better target their services — which in turn are built not for acquiring goods as such, but for helping people to manage their money better. All the same, as far as consumers are concerned, the crux of Raylo’s business, and what it is built on, is the idea that people want the latest gadgets — be they phones and laptops, or VR headsets and e-bikes — but most do not have the disposable income to buy outright all of the items they’d like to have. And so it’s created a platform to cater to this, offering shorter-term ownership of those gadgets for a lower price. The per-month rate goes down depending on the length of the lease, but currently the cheapest models are leased at £7.31/month, tablets at £10.72 and laptops at £17.92. Gilbert tells us that while customers are given the possibility of buying the equipment, most do not. The average loan is 19 months, from a stock pool that is typically 60% brand new and 40% certified refurbishments, Gilbert said. Very few opt to buy products at the termination of those leases. “The proposition is designed for pure rental,” Gilbert added. Between 5-10% contact the company to keep merchandise for good, but “it’s rare that consumers want to own the product at the end.” There are, and have been, a number of other players in the circular economy landscape. Some like Grover (which also focuses on gadgets and “leases”), BackMarket (refurbished gadgets) and Vinted (clothes) have scaled up over the years, with lots of funding, big valuations and many customers. Others like Lumoid have found it hard to get the right kind of traction to stick around. In that context, Raylo is taking an interesting approach by focusing on its technology and services for third-party platforms. “Renting” phones is not particularly a new concept: This is effectively what mobile carriers offering handset subsidies were doing for years when they “sold” phones on two-year plans with the idea being that in theory a user would trade it in or return it at the end of that contract. That model has proven to be a challenging one for carriers, who in years past had the double whammy of analysts slamming them for carrying heavy sums on their balance sheets as handset subsidies, and consumers gravitating away from these to SIM-only plans to have more flexibility (and churn-ability) in the long run. Carriers however still may want to offer these options, which is where a company like Raylo can step in to provide both the lease and the management of that lease. (Notable that mobile behemoth Telefonica is one of the startup’s key backers.) Needless to say, that model has cataclysmically backfired for some. A startup called Fair, by SoftBank, when Uber found it to be too much of an operational and financial burden on its business. The logic was that an independent company could do a much better job managing and growing that business. Alas, and Fair did . Gadgets are, figuratively speaking, much faster-moving — not to mention cheaper — than cars and so a business offering outsourced financing for gadget leases, as Raylo is doing, may well prove to have a better shot at success, meeting with a market of merchants that might not want to handle that kind of business themselves but have that option for customers who need it. “We may have started with our own channel, but we see ourselves as a platform that enables others’ distribution of their brands,” Gilbert said. “It’s like a new category of BNPL, offering crucial affordability channels, not to mention helping with sustainability commitments, for those brands.” The focus on sustainability is motivating Raylo’s backers, it seems. “We are delighted to have been able to support Raylo’s future growth ambitions with this new financing facility. The business’ commitment to changing the way consumer electronics are sold and enjoyed is extremely well aligned with NatWest’s ESG objectives and passion for innovation and disruptive technologies,” said Milena Sheahan, senior director at NatWest, in a statement. “Raylo are a progressive, forward thinking business, with a solid platform to positively influence consumer behaviour and attitude towards use of technology in the future. We are proud to have Rayo join us as a valued client within NatWest’s Speciality Finance customer franchise.”

Aptos wants to shake up the blockchain space by creating more economic value, co-founder says

Jacquelyn Melinek

Welcome back to , a podcast diving deep into stories, backgrounds and the latest news with the biggest names in crypto. For this week’s , I sat down with Mo Shaikh, co-founder and CEO of the layer-1 blockchain . Shaikh is a three-time founder with over a decade of experience in financial services as well as blockchain technology and crypto. He also worked on blockchain strategic partnerships for , Meta’s wallet, and was the strategy director at ConsenSys. “When we’re thinking about Aptos, we certainly thought that the people need a new form of sharing information digitally and being able to share that information and economic value digitally in more efficient, more fair ways,” Shaikh said during the podcast. “That’s the mission that we’re on.” Last year was huge for Aptos — the blockchain launched publicly and raised about $400 million in funding amid a bear market, Shaikh shared. The new-ish layer-1 like Andreessen Horowitz, Circle Ventures and the now-defunct , to name a few. Aptos wants to reach billions of people without disruption or downtime, while giving thousands of transactions per second and sub-second latency, Shaikh shared. “All these things put together can rival not only other previous generations of blockchains and scaling solutions that we’re seeing in the market, but they’re now starting to challenge the internet and the way economic value and information moves across the world itself.” Looking forward to 2023, Aptos plans to make it a “year of intention,” Shaikh said. “I think it’s a year of intention for the entire industry.” There will be a new evolution to existing web3 products that have been out in the market, while big traditional players — like its — that were previously “sitting on the sidelines” are going to dive into the space “in a big way,” he added. comes out every other Thursday at 12:00 p.m. PT, so be sure to subscribe to us on or your favorite pod platform to keep up with the action.

Web3 gaming needs to focus on sustainable economies, Immutable co-founder says

Jacquelyn Melinek

gaming industry remains below its 2021 peaks, it still pulled in substantial venture funding last year. But looking to the future, the subsector may look outside of to grow and sustain itself for the long haul. “Tokens are a fantastic way to share ownership of economies. I’m very supportive of tokens and think they’re a brilliant invention and have done a lot,” Robbie Ferguson, co-founder and president at Immutable, said to TechCrunch. “But we will definitely see increased retail skepticism and diligence where they want to see traction on these games.” For , which raised $200 million at a $2.5 billion valuation last year, the most important element is “to build a fantastic experience for players — the economy has to be sustainable and user experience has to be fantastic,” Ferguson said. “From there, everything will flow.” Since the beginning of 2022, the top 10 blockchain gaming projects by market capitalization fell as much as 95% due to the inability to maintain sustainable in-game economies and player bases, according to Delphi’s The Year Ahead for Gaming . For example, the token price for Axie Infinity, one of the biggest web3 games to gain traction, hit all-time highs of $160 in November 2021 but has since declined 92% to less than $12, according to CoinMarketCap . “We believe that most projects shouldn’t have live tokens in the market until the bulk of their core game loops are established, which can immunize them against speculation and inflated expectations,” the Delphi report stated. There will be a much higher standard for how effectively and efficiently a foundation uses its tokens and the direct return on tokens spent, Ferguson said. “I think a lot of tokens are spent poorly at the moment.”

Stashpad is a notepad for devs with a ‘DM to yourself’ interface

Ivan Mehta

It’s hard to develop a personal note-taking habit. Many folks just resort to using a default app like Apple’s Notes app or sending something to themselves on Slack. It’s fine if you just need to jot down a note or two, but it becomes hard to organize and search for them later. is working on a solution for that issue — especially for developers and product managers. Stashpad is an app that runs on all desktop platforms (Intel and M1 Mac, Windows and Linux). When you first launch the application, it has a minimal learning curve for getting started — you can just start typing in notes. You can put these notes under one Stack for a project — think of this as creating a folder. There is also an option of creating a sub-stack (no, not that one) under a folder. All stacks open up as tabs on top of the app, and there is an option of pinning tabs for easy access. The app also has a “Sticky” mode, which makes it easier to take notes during a video call. Stashpad While the basic structure is simple, the app gives users a plethora of formatting options, including code. And if you are an advanced user, you can remember and use keyboard shortcuts accessible through a command bar for anything from navigating through the app to creating or moving notes. Plenty of modern tools like , the browser, and and calendar apps follow the same philosophy. Stashpad has kept the notetaking part simple even though there’s a lot of flexibility when it comes to organizing and structuring notes. For instance, users can easily build a to-do list but won’t get features like reminders for that. So they will need to integrate Stashpad into their daily workflow to make the most out of it. The company’s co-founders Cara Borenstein and Theo Marin previously worked at Twilio and Nextdoor, respectively. The founders, who met at Columbia University while studying computer science, said that while working at their job they realized that a lot of developers rely on personal notepads for listing tasks and getting the work done. So they decided to build Stashpad. “At our jobs, we noticed that there were some knowledge-sharing challenges within teams and set out to build a better wiki. We came to realize that challenges with the wiki are more of a people challenge than a tech challenge when it comes to creating the right incentives to keep the wiki up-to-date. We realized that the personal notepad, much more than the wiki, is key to how devs like us get stuff done,” they told TechCrunch over an email. Stashpad While the company counts tools like Notion, Evernote and Obsidian as competitors, it says these apps are focused more on knowledge management while Stashpad is concentrating on note-taking for working memory. “In some senses, we’re complementary to these tools. However, it’s common to use these tools for both working memory and long-term knowledge management. We believe that the working memory use case deserves its own, purpose-built tool. By designing for this use-case, we’re better able to prioritize frictionless capture while helping you keep different chains of thought compartmentalized,” they said. Stashpad is free for personal usage, but if you want to use it across devices along with the mobile app you have to pay $8 per month. The company is also working on providing a commercial license for teams at $50 per year. The startup first launched its desktop app in August, and to date, it has users from companies like AWS, Coinbase, Atlassian and Spotify. Stashpad Stashpad is launching its iOS app today to go with the desktop client. The app lets you sync 50 notes on the free tier and unlimited notes on the paid tier. The company has designed the mobile app in such a way that it helps people take quick notes by placing the cursor in the writing box directly. The founder said that they wanted to keep the interface in line with the desktop design and give people the experience of “DMing themselves.” The company raised $1.8 million last year from Alex Solomon (CTO at PagerDuty), Will Larson (CTO at Calm), operators at Postman, Loom and Webflow, and the co-founders’ former colleagues at Twilio and Nextdoor. As the company participated in Techstars in 2021, its total raise to date is $2 million. Stashpad is planning to work on making notes collaborative so users can share some of their notes for a group brainstorming session. However, the founders said at the core, they still want the app to be a personal notetaker. The startup plans to release an Android app this quarter along with support for images in notes. In the future, the company also plans to release an API to make the experience more customizable for developers.

Black founders still raised just 1% of all VC funds in 2022

Dominic-Madori Davis

The latest Crunchbase data shows that Black startup founders in the United States raised around $264 million out of the total $33.6 billion in venture capital allocated in Q4 2022. That’s an uptick from the $178 million — — the group raised in Q3. In total, U.S. Black founders raised an estimated $2.254 billion out of the $215.9 billion in U.S. venture capital allocated last year. That’s about 1%, a slight drop from the 1.3% raised in 2021. Let’s break this down. So Black founders in the U.S. picked up around 0.79% of VC funds raised in Q4 2022. There was a fear that, during a bear market, investors would retreat to their old-school networks, and the total amount of funding Black founders received last year is practically half the amount they raised in 2021 — a record $4.34 billion (out of around $330 billion in the U.S. and $681 billion globally). Despite the record-breaking 2021, that amount of money equates to just 1.3% of all capital raised in the U.S. alone. No matter what, it seems the actual percentage of the money raised for this cohort barely moves, even as more and more capital floods the markets. , the founder of the fintech , told TechCrunch that it’s embarrassing as a Black founder to always be associated with negative statistics, especially as one trying to fundraise.

China smartphone market slumps to 10-year low in 2022

Rita Liao

After a decade of frantic growth, China’s smartphone market is hitting a speed bump as COVID-19 roils the world’s second-largest economy. The country’s smartphone shipments dropped 14% year-over-year in 2022, reaching a 10-year low, according to research firm Counterpoint. It was also the first time that China’s handset sales slid below 300 million units in 10 years, according to Canalys. Even in December, which has historically seen seasonal jumps in sales, China recorded a 5% quarter-to-quarter decline in smartphone shipments. The three-year-long stringent “zero-COVID” policy that and dampened consumer confidence, coupled with global macroeconomic headwinds, spelled an end to China’s years of double-digit growth. Troubles mounted when the in early December resulted in a surge in cases, further adding pressure to the waning economy. Last year, China’s GDP grew 3%, its lowest in decades other than 2020. China isn’t the only one experiencing a downward trend. Globally, smartphone shipments . Alibaba’s annual shopping bonanza in November offered some clues to China’s weakening spending power. The event, which is often compared to Black Friday and seen as a bellwether for the country’s consumer appetite, for the first time since its inception in 2009. There was one winner in this gloomy time. Apple finished the year with an all-time high market share of 18% thanks to “its aggressive promotions” and “resilient” demand in the high-end segment in China, according to Canalys. Its ascent also coincides with Huawei’s fall from grace in the premium handset market since . Apple’s relationship with China remains a delicate one. The country is not only one of its biggest markets but has been the manufacturing backbone that created the world’s most valuable company today. In the past few years, however, COVID-related disruptions, such as a , prompted the hardware juggernaut to rethink its supply chain strategy. The Wall Street Journal in early December that Apple was looking to relocate some of its supply chains out of China to other parts of Asia, including Vietnam and India. India, in particular, is expected to play a bigger role in Apple’s supply chains as the firm plans to expand its manufacturing capacity in the country to , according to JP Morgan analysts. In Q4, the top smartphone brands in China by shipment were Apple, Vivo, Oppo, Honor ( following U.S. sanctions on the parent firm), and Xiaomi.

Eazy Digital helps Southeast Asia’s small insurers digitize their operations

Catherine Shu

Founded by two insurance industry veterans, wants to give small insurance companies in Southeast Asia the same advantage as their larger competitors. Its SaaS platform lets insurers digitize many parts of their operations, enabling them to scale up more efficiently. The Bangkok-based startup announced today it has raised $850,000 in an oversubscribed seed round led by Wavemaker Partners, with participation from Seedstars International Ventures, Wing Vasiksiri and Sasin Bangkok Venture Club. Eazy Digital was founded last year by Haprem Doowa and Maethavee Sukul. Doowa was previously co-founder and CEO of Frank Insurance, an online digital broker in Thailand that was in 2021. Sukul was head of operations at Frank, Bolttech Insurance Broker and digital health insurance broker Benix. Eazy Digital co-founder Haprem Doowa Doowa told TechCrunch that while working together at Frank, he and Sukul “both realized that the insurance industry was plagued with manual work and quick home-built solutions.” Many insurance companies in Thailand manage their agents using a combination of Excel, Line chats and phone calls. While larger insurance companies have the money and team members to build their own software, their smaller competitors, which Doowa said make up over 90% of insurance companies, struggle to digitize their operations. Eazy Digital’s goal is to give them a platform that is affordable and helps solve their scalability issues. It enables insurers to manage agents, operations, user referrals and engagement. Eazy Digital’s competitors include eBao, Appman and ZA Tech, which also build software for insurers. Doowa said Eazy Digital differentiates by focusing on distribution and the efficiency of agency sales and customer referrals. “Both are revenue-earning for the companies which makes it easier for insurance companies to say yes to working with us,” he added. The startup’s new funding will be used for marketing, hiring and product development with an eye on expanding to other Southeast Asian markets.

Plant-based foods investor says her focus is more on teams than taste

Tim De Chant

seeing a slew of new alternative meat and animal products popping up in your grocery store, Lisa Feria is at least partially to thank. Feria has spent the last seven years investing in startups in the sector. She and her partners at have invested in over 40 companies, from the well-established to up-and-comers No Evil Foods,  and . Based in Leawood, Kansas, the firm has been around since 2015. , who is CEO and managing partner, has seen most of the ups and downs. Recently, the big names have been struggling: Beyond Meat’s share price slid 80% over the past year. Milk alternative maker Oatly has been beset with . And consumers have generally cooled on the products. As demand has and companies have adjusted, with McDonald’s stalling rollout plans for its and meat giant JBS its plant-based meat division. And yet Feria and others remain bullish on the sector. TechCrunch sat down with her to see why she’s still upbeat and what she’s telling her portfolio companies in these uncertain times.