Tesla’s robot strategy is inextricably tied to its Autopilot strategy, for better or for worse

Tesla’s robot strategy is inextricably tied to its Autopilot strategy, for better or for worse

NEWS

Tesla unveiled its first actual prototype of its Optimus humanoid robot on Friday — an actual robot this time, by the strictest definition, instead of a rreal flesh and blood human clad in a weird suit. The robot performed some basic functions, including walking a little bit and then raising its hands — all for the first time without supports or a crane, according to Tesla founder Elon Musk.

The company may be taking its first early steps into humanoid robotics, but it has a lot riding on the business. Musk has said that the Optimus bot will eventually be more valuable “than the car business, worth more than FSD [Tesla’s add-on ‘Full Self-Driving’ feature which does no such thing].”

What was apparent at the event on Friday night is that Tesla is making the economically wise, but strategically questionable decision to yoke together the destinies of both Optimus and its Autopilot (and by extension, FSD) ambitions.

Tesla suggested that the reason it’s been able to move so quickly in the robotics world is that it has already laid a lot of the groundwork in its work attempting to develop autonomous driving for vehicles.

“Think about it. We’re just moving from wheels to our legs,” explained one of the company’s engineers. “So some of the components are pretty similar […] It’s exactly the same occupancy network. Now we’ll talk a little bit more details later with Autopilot team […] The only thing that changed really is the training data.”

It was a recurring theme throughout the presentation, with various presenters from Tesla (the company trotted out many, as is maybe to be expected for an event billed primarily as a recruiting exercise) bringing up how closely tied the two realms of research and development actually are.

In truth, what Tesla showed with its robot on stage at the event was a very brief demo that barely matched and definitely didn’t exceed a large number of humanoid robot demonstrations from other companies over the years, including most famously Boston Dynamics. And the linkage between FSD and Optimus is a tenuous one, at best.

The domain expertise, while reduced to a simple translation by Tesla’s presentation, is actually quite a complex one. Bipedal robots navigating pedestrian routes is a very different beast from autonomous vehicle routes, and oversimplifying the connection does a disservice to the immense existing body of research and development work on the subject.

Tesla’s presenters consistently transitioned relatively seamlessly between Optimus and its vehicles’ autonomous navigation capabilities. One of the key presenters for Optimus was Milan Kovac, the company’s Director of Autopilot Software Engineering, who handed off to fellow Autopilot director Ashok Elluswamy to dive further into Tesla vehicular Autopilot concerns.

It’s very clear that Tesla believes this is a linked challenge that will result in efficiencies the market will appreciate as it pursues both problems. The reality is that there remains a lot of convincing to do to actually articulate that the linkages are more than surface-deep.

Not to mention, Autopilot faces its own challenges in terms of public and regulatory skepticism and scrutiny. A robot you live with daily in close proximity doesn’t need that kind of potential risk.

Tesla may have turned its man-in-a-suite into a real robot with actual actuators and processors, but it still has a ways to go to make good on the promise that it’s a viable product with a sub-$20,000 price tag any of us will ever be able to purchase.

Tesla’s robot strategy is inextricably tied to its Autopilot strategy, for better or for worse by Darrell Etherington originally published on TechCrunch

Tesla’s robot is a real robot now, not just a guy in a suit

Tesla’s robot is a real robot now, not just a guy in a suit

NEWS

Tesla CEO Elon Musk kicked off its Tesla AI Day 2022 with a quick level set on expectations — “we’ve come a long way” — and then stepped aside to allow the first iteration of its robot walk out onto the stage.

The robot wasn’t a human dressed in a robot costume like last year.  Instead, Tesla introduced a functioning robot, albeit with exposed cables and a bit wobbly, at its second annual event. According to Musk, it was the first time it was working without “any support, cranes, mechanical mechanisms or cables.”

Tesla Robot moving and waving

After a brief turn about the stage, the robot left the stage before the rest of the presentation continued, which included several short videos of the robot (now tethered for stability) carrying a box in an office, watering a plant and lifting a small piece of metal in the Tesla factory in Fremont, California.

The aim of the demo and ensuing presentation, in which a number of Tesla employees gave what can only be described as a bipedal robotics 101 course, was to show more progress. (After all, anything beyond a human in a costume could be considered progress). Instead, the event aimed to telegraph where Tesla is headed, shore up confidence in its trajectory and (hopefully) recruit the talent it needs to further the program.

Image Credits: Tesla robot specs display

Eventually, Musk said the first-gen prototype, which he referred to as Bumble C, will evolve into Optimus. This eventual robot will be able to walk efficiently and stay balanced, carry a 20-pound bag, use tools and have a precision grip for small robots. The Bumble C prototype is outfitted with 2.3 kilowatt hour battery pack, which one Tesla employee said was “perfect for about a full day’s worth of work.”

Some of the specs of the robot have changed since last year. For instance, the weigh of the bot has moved up from 125 pounds to 160 pounds.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the Tesla bot roadshow, was the repeated reference and crossover with Tesla vehicles. The company said it is leveraging its energy products and using those components for the bot, including battery management. The supercomputer used in Tesla vehicles is also in the Tesla bot. And Tesla is tapping the hardware and software used in its advanced driver assistance system Autopilot for the bot as well. The Tesla bot is also equipped with wireless connectivity as well as audio support and hardware level security features, which the company said are “important to protect both the robot and the people around the robot.”

The big looming question is whether all of these efficiencies, once combined in the bot, will result in a scalable robot that works. Of course, Musk thinks it’s possible, going as far to say that he envisions the Optimus will be just $20,000.

Tesla’s robot is a real robot now, not just a guy in a suit by Kirsten Korosec originally published on TechCrunch

ByteDance’s Pico debuts its Quest rival, but challenges remain

ByteDance’s Pico debuts its Quest rival, but challenges remain

NEWS

When ByteDance bought the Chinese VR headset maker Pico a year ago, the message it sent was clear: it was betting that the immersive device would be where future generations spend most of their time consuming digital content. It’s a marriage reminiscent of Meta’s acquisition of Oculus back in 2014, except the world is now in a different place with technological advances that make VR headsets cheaper, less laggy, and more comfortable to wear.

The TikTok parent has long aimed to compete in a market dominated by Oculus’s VR devices for consumers. When Meta launched Quest 2 in 2020, ByteDance worked on a confidential internal project to develop AR glasses, The Information reported. Pico’s product launch this week is a further indication of its ambition to challenge Quest, which has enjoyed roughly two-thirds of the global AR and VR market for the past two years.

The Pico 4, which starts at €429 (around $420 thanks to a strong dollar) for 128GB and ships to Europe, Japan, and South Korea aside from China, has received applause in the VR community. It weighs only 295 grams without the straps and can function as a standalone device but also be tethered to PCs for more advanced VR experiences. It uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 processor as Quest 2 does. 

“It’s inexpensive and good quality, with specs that can match Quest 2,” says Gavin Newton-Tanzer, host of mixed reality conference AWE Asia.

“Was impressed with the weight, comfort, LCD display, pancake lenses, color AR passthrough, and controllers. All it needs now are serious triple-A VR exclusives to distinguish itself from Meta to get gamers interested,” writes a VR content creator.

Merely “matching” Quest 2 specs doesn’t sound good enough given the latter came out two years ago and became an instant hit. Pico not only has a lot of catch-up to do on the technological front but also in terms of content and branding.

“Oculus’s content ecosystem is more established, providing a better understanding of what consumers want,” says Newton-Tanzer. Popular rhythm game Beat Saber, for instance, had generated $100 million in revenue on Oculus Quest by October 2021.

Here are the games that were announced at the Meta Quest Gaming Showcase

Pico is facing a chicken-or-egg problem, the XR expert suggests. Its user base across product lines isn’t currently large enough that top-tier creators would be devoted to making games, videos, and other VR content exclusively for its platform. It reportedly sold 500,000 units last year, half of its target. In contrast, Quest 2 shipped 10 million units in the space of October 2020 and November 2021. But without premium content, Pico will have a hard time attracting users in a meaningful way.

The good news is Pico has established a strong foothold in China and doesn’t face much competition in the home market. Oculus doesn’t have an official presence in China, meaning users have to go through the hassle of ordering an overseas version, getting the Oculus app from a foreign app store, and accessing its global app ecosystem through a virtual private network as Meta’s servers are blocked in China.

The technological bifurcation could allow Pico time to test and learn in the home market before launching into the West at full steam. Expansion in the U.S. is already set in motion as ByteDance began building a team for Pico on the West Coast, according to Protocol, with a focus to attract talent in content, marketing, and R&D.

ByteDance-owned VR startup Pico strengthens ties with Qualcomm

ByteDance’s Pico debuts its Quest rival, but challenges remain by Rita Liao originally published on TechCrunch

Uniswap Labs eyes over $100 million in new funding

Uniswap Labs eyes over $100 million in new funding

NEWS

Uniswap Labs is in early stages of putting together a new round, according to four sources familiar with the matter, as the parent firm of the popular eponymous decentralized protocol gears up to broaden its offerings.

The startup is engaging with a number of investors including Polychain and one of Singapore’s sovereign funds to raise an equity round of $100 million to $200 million at a valuation of about $1 billion, two of the sources said, who like others requested anonymity sharing private information.

The deliberations of the round haven’t reached final stages, so terms of the deal may change, the sources cautioned. Uniswap Labs declined to comment, whereas Polychain did not return a request for comment Thursday.

The new funding is indicative of Uniswap’s ambitious plans to expand its offerings. The decentralized exchange commands 64% of all DEX volumes, according to DeFi Llama. And the exchange protocol’s token has a market cap of nearly $5 billion despite the market downturn. (During the peak bull cycle last year, Uni’s market cap exceeded $22.5 billion.)

Uniswap Labs, which counts a16z and Paradigm among its existing backers, raised its last funding round — a Series A — in August 2020, according to Web3 Signals.

In recent months, Uniswap Labs has shared plans to add “several new products.” One of the new offerings will allow customers to trade NFTs on Uniswap from a number of marketplaces, Uniswap Labs COO Mary-Catherine Lader told Decrypt.

“Our mission is to unlock universal ownership and exchange,” Lader told TechCrunch in an earlier interview. “If you can embed the ability to swap value and have people join the community and exchange value with your project, or your company or organization — that’s a powerful way to allow more people to engage in this ownership.”

Uniswap Labs eyes over $100 million in new funding by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

Amazon launches QVC-style livestream shopping in India

Amazon launches QVC-style livestream shopping in India

NEWS

Amazon has launched a QVC-style livestream shopping in India, broadening its offerings in the key overseas market where it has deployed over $6.5 billion to win customers.

The company on Friday quietly rolled out the new service, called Amazon Live, bringing an army of creators to host livestreams and plug products in the videos. The idea is, influencers, with already a large following, will drive their fans to the shopping app and influence them into buying products. They get a cut each time they are able to make a sale.

Amazon Live is currently hosting livestreams across several categories including electronics, fashion and beauty, and home on the app. The videos are averaging 50 to 1,000 simultaneous views.

The launch follows Walmart-owned Flipkart, Amazon’s chief rival in India, also testing a similar offering on its app early this year. Amazon itself quietly launched Live in the U.S. in 2019, attempting to get a slice of a nascent shopping trend on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.

Live shopping originally gained traction in China, where many influencers consistently sell items worth millions of dollars in a single broadcast. Austin Li, a popular influencer, sells more than $1 billion worth of goods in a session.

But whether the model will work in India remains a big question.

In the meantime, New Delhi is preparing to tighten rules to root out fake and paid reviews of products on e-commerce websites and social media platforms. A framework of regulations targeting people who endorse merchandise will soon be released, the government has said.

Image credits: TechCrunch

On an FAQ page, Amazon has identified the influencer program as an extension of its Amazon Associates (affiliate) program. The company requires these influencers to have an account with YouTube, Instagram, TikTok or Facebook to qualify.

Amazon is lagging Flipkart in India on several key metrics and struggling to make inroads in smaller Indian cities and towns, according to a recent report by investment firm Sanford C. Bernstein. Amazon has so far offered “a weaker proposition in ‘new’ commerce” in the country, the report added, pointing to innovations by Flipkart and social commerce platforms Meesho and DealShare.

YouTube acquires Indian social commerce startup Simsim

Amazon launches QVC-style livestream shopping in India by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

GV aims to help build a company that can sniff out disease, literally

GV aims to help build a company that can sniff out disease, literally

NEWS

Alex Wiltschko has what he thinks is a big idea. He wants to build a company that digitizes scent.

It’s a natural step for Wiltschko, who has a PhD in neurobiology from Harvard, where he studied how the brain processes odor. He didn’t wind up in this specific group accidentally, he suggests. It owes to a lifelong “obsession with scent and olfaction” that he came to study alongside Sandeep “Bob” Datta, a Harvard professor who has himself long focused with what happens after one’s sensory neurons pick up a scent.

The researchers were trying to better understand how the human brain works — including why certain scents are tied to memories. For a long time, too, their area of study was dwarfed by the attention that sight and image processing has received over the years. Then came Covid 19, and with it, far more focus on how taste and smell are processed — and lost.

Now the race has begun to better understand and digitize and even recreate scent. Indeed, in July, a neurotech startup called Canaery raised $4 million in seed funding to develop a scent-sensing platform. Moodify, another startup that’s working on the digitization of scent, closed an $8 million round of funding last year, including from Procter & Gamble.

As Datta told Harvard Magazine late last year, “Right now, there’s a lot of intense interest in smell from physicians and from the many millions of patients who’ve had their sense of smell affected. And it has really highlighted, collectively, how little we know about all aspects of our sense of smell.”

Wiltschko is among the select few, for now, who see opportunity in solving these unknowns. His longtime employer, Google, also see it. After logging close to six years with Google AI while working on his doctorate, Wiltschko just became an entrepreneur-in-residence (EIR) at GV, the venture arm of the search giant, where, more specifically, he hopes to build a company that can identify disease faster based on specific odor molecules.

It’s a meaningful vote of confidence from GV, which has only appointed five life-science-focused EIRs in its 12-year-history, including the founders of Flatiron Health (which went on to sell to the pharma giant Roche in 2018 for $1.9 billion); the gene-editing company Verve Therapeutics, which went public last year; and Rome Therapeutics, a startup that’s developing therapies for cancer and autoimmune diseases by focusing on portions of DNA that have been largely overlooked by researchers, it says. (Rome has raised at least $127 million over two rounds of funding so far.)

The big question, of course, is what will come of the effort. To learn more about how he’s approaching his mission, we talked yesterday with Wiltschko, who was personable but also reluctant to share too much. Our conversation has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

TC: I haven’t come across something like this before. Are you trying to better understand how to build neural networks based on how people process and compartmentalize information about odors?

AW: Taking a step back, every time computers got a new “sense,” like to see or to hear, society completely changed for the better, right? When we first learned how to store visual images, in the 19th century, and eventually how to store them on computers in the 20th century, all of a sudden, we could do things like take X-rays. We could do things like store memories [of] the visual world. And we didn’t need painters to do it, everybody could do it. We did it again for hearing; we [could make] music [captured in one location] available to the masses.

But computers can’t smell. They have no ability to detect the chemical world [so] we can’t store the really powerful memories that we associate with smell, like the smell of my grandmother’s home. It’s just gone. It only lives in my mind. The smells of people who I love, and of places I’ve been, are completely ephemeral today.

We [also] know that diseases have a smell. We know that different wellness and health states have a smell. Plants, when they’re sick or when they’re healthy, smell different. The amount of information that’s out there in the world that we could potentially act on to make our lives longer, make our lives more joyous, grow more food — that’s really only able to happen inside of living things inside of living noses — if we could automate that, we could have a massive and positive impact on society.

What applications do you have in mind?

I think the North Star for me — and I don’t know how long it’s going to take to get there — is that we become capable of smelling diseases earlier to detect diseases earlier than we currently can. There are lots of stories that are  out there — lots of anecdotes and various papers — and research has kind of built up a picture to me that we can smell Parkinson’s much, much earlier than we could otherwise detect it; we can smell diseases much, much earlier. And if we could actually build devices that can turn that information into digital representations, then potentially we could catch diseases earlier and learn how to treat them better.

How do we know that we can detect Parkinson’s earlier than any other way through scent?

There’s not one single slam dunk that we can detect diseases earlier, but there’s a lot of stories that all have their strengths and weaknesses that add up to a clearer picture. For Parkinson’s, there’s a nurse who first reported that she could smell Parkinson’s in her husband before he actually developed it, and they put it to the test. They gathered T shirts that men had worn —  half of them with Parkinson’s, half without Parkinson’s — and said, ‘Hey, can you tell which of these T shirts were worn by a person with this disease?’ She got almost all of them except for one, and she said [to the researchers], ‘Actually, I think you’re wrong.’ And that person did end up developing Parkinson’s disease.

They took the story further and tried to isolate exactly what it was that she was smelling. And researchers found the exact material being emitted by the body: this waxy substance called sebum that is excreted by cells on your back. And they found the exact molecules that she was smelling. But it was her nose, it was her ability to take an olfactory picture of the world and turn it into a notion of whether or not someone was sick, that preceded all of that.

If we can ultimately digitize scent as you suggest, do you have any concerns that odors could be manipulated for certain means — perhaps to make people think that they’re in danger when they aren’t, or safe when they’re in danger? There’s much good that comes from new technologies but also second-order effects that we don’t always think through.

It’s definitely important whenever a new area of technology is developed to think through those things, for sure. One area that I think is nascent, it’s not at all clear where it could go, but at least I personally am relaxed by certain scents. I don’t know why. And so I think there’s a lot for us to learn in that space.

Have you studied the effects of COVID-19 on sense of smell?

Me personally? No. But my former mentors have certainly been looking at this very, very closely. We started a lot of this research into what people think things smell like when COVID was just starting. And we had to be very careful, because people would lose their sense of smell when they got COVID. And if you’re studying what people think things smell like, you need to be very, very careful if folks suddenly become anosmic — that’s the term for having lost the sense of smell. And so we had to develop all kinds of new checks and balances into our research protocols.

And now you’ve joined GV with the idea of developing a company. What sorts of resources are available to you? Will you be partnering with some of your former colleagues at Harvard Medical School? I’m assuming you need access to many datasets.

What’s wonderful about starting to work on this idea today versus maybe 10 years ago is that the ecosystem of people who are working on olfaction or scent has grown dramatically. And I think the attention that’s being paid to our sense of smell — because now we’re understanding how important it is when we lose it [has fostered a] much richer ecosystem of folks who are working and thinking about olfaction.

Are there already companies up and running that are trying to do exactly what you hope to do?

It’s a vibrant ecosystem, and there’s lots of folks that are working on different pieces of it. What’s really wonderful about joining GV as an entrepreneur in residence is being able to take the broad view and thinking about how I can have the most impact in the space in digital olfaction.

Can you share more about that path? You mentioned Parkinson’s. Is the idea to focus first on being able to diagnose Parkinson’s, then to build around that, or are you taking a multi-pronged approach?

Harkening back to the other senses, there’s just 1,000 things you could do if you could take the visual world or if you could take all of sound and store it in a computer and analyze it. Those are the two edges of the sword — there are so many opportunities, so many places to start, [but] on the other hand, you have to focus, so that’s where I spend a lot of my time thinking, what’s the right path specifically to chart towards our North Star, which is improving the well being and length of human life?

People offer wildly varying timelines when it comes to when we might see artificial general intelligence. Some say it’s 5 years away. Some say 10 years. Some say 500. What’s your best guess when it comes to how far away we are from digitizing the sense of smell?

It took maybe 100 years to digitize our sense of sight. I think we can compress digitizing our sense of smell into a fraction of that. It’s not going to be easy. It’s going to take a lot of work. But now’s a good time to start.

GV aims to help build a company that can sniff out disease, literally by Connie Loizos originally published on TechCrunch

Here are some of the cringiest revelations in the Elon Musk text dump

Here are some of the cringiest revelations in the Elon Musk text dump

NEWS

A new, particularly juicy document has surfaced in discovery leading up to the Elon Musk v. Twitter trial, slated to take place in a few weeks. Behold: a trove of texts between Musk and key figures at Twitter, like founder Jack Dorsey, board chair Bret Taylor and current CEO Parag Agrawal, and other casual chats with investor Jason Calacanis and even Joe Rogan.

There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s get down to it.

‘I kinda don’t think I should be the boss of anyone’

Elon Musk doesn’t want to be a boss. That’s a big revelation for someone who’s the CEO of more than a few companies.

In an early April conversation with Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal – before their relationship soured to the point of poop emojis – Musk admitted that he doesn’t love being a leader.

“Frankly, I hate doing mgmt stuff. I kinda don’t think I should be the boss of anyone. But I love helping solve technical/product design problems,” Musk told Agrawal.

Musk and Agrawal’s relationship seemed promising at the beginning.

“Treat me like an engineer instead of a CEO,” Agrawal told Musk.

Throughout their conversations, founder and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey routinely speaks highly of Agrawal’s engineering ability. But on April 26, Dorsey, Musk and Agrawal got on a Google Hangout together to discuss the takeover. Judging by the texts, it didn’t go well.

“At least it became clear that you can’t work together. That was clarifying,” Dorsey said.

elon and parag bonding over being engineering-types who got put in leadership positions, who just wanna do design work pic.twitter.com/JOOmuEzOvm

— The Chancery Daily (@chancery_daily) September 29, 2022

Count your blessings that you don’t need to pay Doge to tweet

Elon Musk has had some controversial ideas for Twitter, like verifying all human users and making the algorithm open source (this was Dorsey’s idea first). But perhaps his worst idea yet is to combat bot spam by making people pay dogecoin to tweet.

“I have an idea for a blockchain social media system that does both payments and short text messages/links like twitter. You have to pay a tiny amount to register your message on the chain, which will cut out the vast majority of spam and bots. There is no throat to choke, so free speech is guaranteed.”

A few days later, on April 13, Musk’s idea took greater shape.

“My Plan B is a blockchain-based version of twitter, where the ‘tweets’ are embedded in the transaction of comments,” he told Steve Davis, president of The Boring Company. “So you’d have to pay maybe 0.1 Doge per comment or repost of that comment.”

Thankfully, Musk later concluded that a blockchain-based Twitter would not be feasible at this time.

Jack Dorsey is known as ‘jack jack’ in Elon’s phone

We already knew that Dorsey was aboard the Musk takeover train. But in these texts, it seems that the two entrepreneurs do really respect each other. So much so that Dorsey earned the pet name “jack jack” in Elon’s phone. Cute!

As early as March, Dorsey and Musk were conversing over the future of Twitter.

“A new platform is needed. It can’t be a company. This is why I left,” Dorsey said. When Musk asked what Twitter should look like, jack jack replied, “I believe it must be an open source protocol, funded by a foundation of sorts that doesn’t own the protocol, only advances it. A bit like what Signal has done. It can’t have an advertising model.”

In a public comment in April, Dorsey said that “Elon is the singular solution” that he trusts. But he was just as supportive of Musk in private.

“I appreciate you. This is the right and only path. I’ll continue to do whatever it takes to make it work,” jack jack told Musk.

Gayle King: Buying Twitter is a ‘gangsta move’

Elon Musk doesn’t employ communications teams and generally does not enjoy talking to journalists. But, alas, he talks to Gayle King, co-host of CBS mornings.

“ELON! You buying twitter or offering to buy twitter Wow!” the news anchor told Musk. “Now Don’t you think we should sit down together face to face this is as the kids of today say a ‘gangsta move.’”

We are pretty sure that the kids are not saying this. But it is worth noting that Gayle King is one of very few women who Musk ever talks to over hundreds of texts.

Musk then told Gayle King Oprah should join the Twitter board.

“Maybe Oprah would be interested in joining the Twitter board if my bid succeeds. Wisdom about humanity and knowing what is right are more important than so-called “board governance” skills, which mean pretty much nothing in my experience,” Musk said.

To be honest, we would watch an Oprah interview with Elon Musk.

Joe Lonsdale wanted to connect Musk and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis

Joe Lonsdale, who co-founded Palantir and now runs the venture firm 8VC, also makes an appearance. Lonsdale recently made remarks blaming Black culture for racial disparities in funding and calling men who take paternity leave “losers,” for context.

“I love your ‘Twitter algorithms should be open source” tweet…” Lonsdale texted in late March. “Our public squares need to not have arbitrary sketchy censorship.”

Musk responded with “Absolutely. What we have right now is hidden corruption!”

Lonsdale dropped back by in mid-April. “Haha even Governor DeSantis just called me just now with ideas how to help you and outrages at that board and saying the public is rooting for you,” Lonsdale wrote. “Let me know if you or somebody on your side wants to chat w him.” (Musk replied with a brief and brutal “Haha cool.”)

Jason Calacanis volunteered to be Twitter CEO

Angel investor Jason Calacanis couldn’t help but slide into Musk’s texts in April when news of the offer to buy Twitter was out in the wild, joking that Musk should raise his offer to $54.21 — “the perfect counter.”

“You could easily clean up bots and spam and make the service viable for many more users — removing bots and spam is a lot less complicated than what the Tesla self driving team is doing,” Calacanis wrote. “And why should blue check marks be limited to the elite, press and celebrities? How is that democratic?”

Calacanis also swooped in the following day offering more unsolicited advice, including his suggestion to cut Twitter’s workforce by more than half to make its revenue math more favorable. “Day zero,” Calacanis wrote. “Sharpen your blades boys. 2 day a week Office requirement = 20% voluntary departures.”

He also suggested that Twitter recruit MrBeast to make original video content as well as dip a toe into more creator monetization features with video — a “huge unlock”— giving video creators 100% of ad revenue up to their first $1 million then splitting revenue.

Both Musk and Calacanis agreed that Twitter Blue is “an insane piece of shit” and its features should be razed and rethought outright. “These dipshits spent a year on Twitter Blue to give people exactly… Nothing they want!” Calacanis texted.

When Musk asked if he wanted to be a strategic advisor if the deal panned out, Calacanis swore the text equivalent of an oath to Twitter’s future owner: “Board member, advisor, whatever… you have my sword,” Calacanis wrote. “Put me in the game coach! Twitter CEO is my dream job.”

His enthusiasm appears to have gotten him into hot water with Musk soon after.

“What is going on with you marketing an SPV to randos? This is not ok,” Musk wrote in May. “Morgan Stanley and Jared [Birchall, Musk’s wealth manager/right-hand man] think you are using our friendship not in a good way.”

Calacanis defended himself by describing how the Musk/Twitter deal “captures the world’s imagination in an unimaginable way,” hence why he took it upon himself to field investment interest.

“You know I’m ride or die brother — I’d jump on a grande [sic] for you,” Calacanis said, earning himself a tapback.

Joe Rogan was stoked

“I REALLY hope you get Twitter,” Joe Rogan texted on March 23. “If you do, we should throw a hell of a party.” (Musk replied with the 100 emoji.)

Rogan also asked if Musk would “liberate Twitter from the censorship happy mob.”

“I will provide advice, which they may or may not choose to follow,” Musk said.

Riot Games President Mark Merrill thinks Elon is Batman

We quote directly with no comment:

“You are the hero Gotham needs — hell F’ing yes!”

Here are some of the cringiest revelations in the Elon Musk text dump by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch

Google Colaboratory launches a pay-as-you-go option, premium GPU access

Google Colaboratory launches a pay-as-you-go option, premium GPU access

NEWS

Google Colaboratory (Colab for short), Google’s service designed to allow anyone to write and execute arbitrary Python code through a web browser, is introducing a pay-as-a-you-go plan. In its first pricing change since Google launched premium Colab plans in 2020, Colab will now give users the option to purchase additional compute time in Colab with or without a paid subscription.

Google says that the update won’t affect the free-of-charge Colab tier, which remains in its current form. The only material change is that users can buy access to compute in the form of “compute units,” starting at $9.99 for 100 units or $49.99 for 500.

As Google Colab product lead Chris Perry explains in a blog post:

Paid users now have the flexibility to exhaust compute quota, measured in compute units, at whatever rate they choose. As compute units are exhausted, a user can choose to purchase more with pay-as-you-go at their discretion. Once a user has exhausted their compute units their Colab usage quota will revert to our free of charge tier limits.

In tandem with the pay-as-you-go rollout, Google announced that paid Colab users can now choose between standard or “premium” GPUs in Colab — the latter typically being Nvidia V100 or A100 Tensor Core GPUs. (Standard GPUs in Colab are usually Nvidia T4 Tensor Core GPUs.) However, the company notes that getting a specific GPU chip type assignment isn’t guaranteed and depends on a number of factors, including availability and a user’s paid balance with Colab.

It goes without saying, but premium GPUs will also deplete Colab compute units faster than the standard GPUs.

Google began telegraphing the rollout of pay-as-you-go options in Colab several weeks ago, when it notified Colab users via email that it was adopting the aforementioned compute units system for subscribers. It framed the shift as a move toward transparency, allowing user to “have more control over how and when [they] use Colab.”

Some perceived the move as user-hostile — an attempt to charge more for or clamp down on Colab usage. But in a statement to TechCrunch, a Google spokesperson pointed out that limits have always applied to all tiers of Colab usage paid plans.

“[T]hese updates are meant to give users more visibility into … limits,” the spokesperson said via email. “Colab will continue supporting its free of charge tier, including basic GPU access.”

The sensitivity around pricing changes reflects how much Colab has grown since it spun out from an internal Google Research project in late 2017. The platform has become the de facto digital breadboard for demos within the AI research community — it’s not uncommon for researchers who’ve written code to include links to Colab pages on or alongside the GitHub repositories hosting the code.

Google Colaboratory launches a pay-as-you-go option, premium GPU access by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Truepill, a digital health unicorn, conducts fourth round of layoffs in 2022

Truepill, a digital health unicorn, conducts fourth round of layoffs in 2022

NEWS

Truepill, a platform that helps other companies offer diagnostics, telehealth services and prescriptions, has conducted its fourth layoff of the year.

Sources say the layoff impacted around 65% of the existing staff across the engineering, human resources, design, IT and finance teams. The layoff comes around two months after its last round, which impacted about a third of the company, or 175 people.

One employee, who spoke to TechCrunch on the condition of anonymity, said that they were told that their position was “no longer sustainable due to economic factors” on a 1:1 call with leadership. Severance was mentioned but HR has not yet reached out to the employee with further details.

“[The company said] it hoped there wasn’t going to be any layoffs after the August round,” the source said. “[Leadership said that] investors made some requests in order for the company to extend the financial runway so they made tough choices, but that we were now on good footing.”

A company-wide all hands, previously scheduled for this week, has been bumped to next week, the source added.

A troubling startup layoff trend has emerged

In April, Truepill halted prescriptions to ADHD medications because of growing concerns about digital health. The disruption in service impacted employees within Truepill’s recently acquired adult ADHD treatment company, Ahead. Reports say that Truepill was the preferred pharmacy partner of Cerebral, which is under federal investigation amid claims that employees felt pressure to prescribe drugs to customers.

In June, Viswanathan confirmed that he laid off an additional 15% of staff, impacting 150 people. Viswanathan said in a letter that the company was “focused on defining a new category in healthcare and growing top-line revenue,” but what was essential is the company operates “with a new level of financial discipline and prioritization, ensuring the longevity of Truepill for both our clients and our teams.”

In August, Truepill’s entire U.K. team was laid off, as well as a meaningful portion of the virtual pharmacy platform’s product team, sources told TechCrunch. The data team was also impacted, while the diagnostics and telehealth components of the company — its core services — will be only lightly supported going forward.

Today’s layoff impacts a number of teams, including the support engineering team that was tasked in picking up the U.K. team’s work after they were let go.

Truepill did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Current and former Truepill employees can reach out to Natasha Mascarenhas at natasha.m@techcrunch.com, or Signal, a secure messaging app, at (925) 271 0912.

A troubling startup layoff trend has emerged

Truepill, a digital health unicorn, conducts fourth round of layoffs in 2022 by Natasha Mascarenhas originally published on TechCrunch

GGV Capital latest to back Workstream’s goal of filling software gap for deskless workers

GGV Capital latest to back Workstream’s goal of filling software gap for deskless workers

NEWS

Recruitment and onboarding for deskless and hourly workers has always been a challenge, and one that startups have taken on in recent years. These employees are often always in demand due to traditionally high turnover rates, and yet, many still rely on paperwork and videos.

Desmond Lim, Workstream co-founder and CEO. Image Credits: Workstream

Workstream is one of the startups working on a solution for this problem, in its case, mobile-first hiring and onboarding tools. The company got a boost from investors to the tune of $60 million in Series B extension funding, led by GGV Capital. We’ve profiled Workstream twice in the past two years, when it raised $10 million in 2020 and then again in 2021 for its $48 million Series B.

“The past two years have really shown that there’s a huge gap in software built for this deskless, hourly worker,” Desmond Lim, co-founder and CEO of Workstream, told TechCrunch.” My parents are both hourly workers, and I used to run my own restaurant, so I grew up in that space and saw such a strong need for that.”

As mentioned, many startups are working on solutions to more easily hire deskless, hourly and remote workers. Much of this problem was brought out in the open largely due to COVID, and venture capital investors jumped in to support them.

Just this year, we saw investments into Remofirst, which is tackling international hiring; Connecteam, a company that brings together HR tools; Emi, which developed software to speed up the time it takes to fill dozens of frontline worker positions; Flip, a chat app designed especially for frontline workers; AskNicely, a frontline experience app; and SnapShift, a web solution for restaurant staff management. Add to that Blink, Shiftsmart, When I Work, Fountain and Seasoned, which also grabbed funding in the last year.

Workstream’s text-based recruitment tool gets a $48M bet from BOND and beyond

Lim explained that there are indeed many HR tools out there, but Workstream differentiates itself by designing its software to be a mobile-first tool built for deskless workers rather than employers.

“They really deserve better and to have access to software and tools built for them which is why our software is mobile, texting and built with their needs in mind,” he added.

The new investment gives the company total funding to just over $120 million and a valuation that is “close to half a billion dollars,” Lim said.

Joining GGV Capital in the investment were new and existing investors, including Founders Fund, Coatue, BOND, Basis Set Ventures, CRV, World Innovation Lab and Soma Capital.

Meanwhile, the company is working with more than 170 of the top quick-service restaurant brands, including Burger King, Dairy Queen and Jimmy John’s. Workstream’s revenue grew 10x in the past 18 months as its customer base increased to over 4,000 customers across 25,000 locations from 1,500 customers across 10,000 stores in 2021. At the same time, the company grew its own workforce to 220.

It is also expanding outside of that sector into new verticals and counts companies like Marriott International, Ace Hardware, UPS and European Wax Center as customers.

“There are 2.7 billion deskless workers in the world and 70 million in the U.S.,” Lim said. “We are going to extend beyond restaurants into supermarkets, retail, hotels, auto, healthcare and more. With this funding, we will invest in R&D and hiring to lean back into this strategy and be the first end-to-end software design for the deskless workforce. There are so many more products we can build to serve them.”

The future of remote work is text

GGV Capital latest to back Workstream’s goal of filling software gap for deskless workers by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

Can companies issue stakes in their success without using shares or options? This startup thinks so

Can companies issue stakes in their success without using shares or options? This startup thinks so

NEWS

So-called ‘stakeholder capitalism’ has not had the most illustrious of histories. Yes, there have been ‘Walmart Associates’ who were able to own stock in the company, or ‘John Lewis Associates’ (in the UK), but it’s hardly made the average person well off. At least they got something? In tech startups, however, tech founders are helped by many people along the way, most of whom will never work for the company but who can have an enormous affect at the early stage. That one intro to an investor, for instance, can be a game-changer. But tech founders have what is known as “founders amnesia” which means that when eventually they get that $20 billion exit, they somehow forget all the people that helped them along the way.

Koos (which, in Estonian, means ‘together’ and ‘alongside’) offers a standardized API allowing companies to offer a form of ‘stake’ in a company’s success, and – breaking news – it doesn’t use blockchain tokens to do it.

Unlike a loyalty program, the Koos ‘equity-like’ platform pays out to stakeholders only when the company meets predefined business goals. Koos claims this means the platform is much more ROI-positive and rewards those who contributed to the company’s success, unlike, say, a simple loyalty scheme for customers.

How it works: a company defines a business goal; sets out when the business goal is met; records meaningful actions via its tokens (not blockchain ones); and pays out via the Koos platform on results.

Founded earlier this year by serial entrepreneur and the former CIO of the Estonian Civil Service, Taavi Kotka, Koos says it can be used by companies to issue ‘stakes’ (but not options or shares) in companies more easily than issuing said options or shares, it claims.

It’s now raised $4 million in seed funding led by relatively new European VC Plural, with participation from investors including LocalGlobe, Tiny.vc and Matt Clifford, co-founder of Entrepreneur First.

This follows an angel pre-seed round of $600,000 from a number of Estonian founders such as Taavet Hinrikus, former CEO of Wise, Sten Tamkivi, co-founder of Teleport, Markus Villig, founder of Bolt, and Kaarel Kotkas, founder and CEO of Verrif.

It will now build out its platform across the UK and Europe, with a legal framework that complies with EU and UK law.

Kotka, who led the Estonian government’s policies around digital democracy and e-government for four years, said in a statement: “We have come up with a digital tool that allows businesses to engage and reward their community, widening the circle of people who have access to equity-like incentives which in turn increases the pool of people who will advocate for the business and want it to succeed.”

The startup says it now has 27 companies running its platform, including start-ups, NGOs, SMEs and larger corporations. Koos makes its money via an onboarding fee, a monthly retainer, and 1% of all rewards (tokens) created by the programmes on the Koos platform. 

For any service consumed on Forus’ platform, 1% will be given as a Koos token to the client, 1% to the service provider and 1% to contributors.

Sten Tamkivi, adviser and Plural Platform co-founder, said in statement: “Plural wants to invest to help create a more equal society. We believe that broader community ownership leads to more meritocratic systems so that wealth can be distributed based on actual contributions. Koos has come up with a way to track the support of all stakeholders in a community or business, without having to give away equity. We anticipate that the platform Koos is building will become an essential building block of many startups, funds and communities including charities and NGOs.”

Can companies issue stakes in their success without using shares or options? This startup thinks so by Mike Butcher originally published on TechCrunch

Former Revolut employees launch Solvo, an app that simplifies crypto investing

Former Revolut employees launch Solvo, an app that simplifies crypto investing

NEWS

Meet Solvo, a new mobile app that wants to make it easier to invest in cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency-related financial products. The two founders Ayelen Denovitzer and Shailendra Sason met while they were working for Revolut, in the crypto team more specifically.

Earlier this year, Solvo raised a $3.5 million seed round from Index Ventures with CoinFund and FJ Labs also participating. Since then, the company has put together a small team of 10 people and started working on its iOS app.

The main thesis behind Solvo is that cryptocurrencies are still too complex. If you want to buy crypto assets, chances are you don’t know where to start because there are thousands of different tokens. While you may have heard about DeFi (decentralized finance) and the ability to generate yield, accessing those products is even more complicated.

When Solvo releases its app in October, users will be able to buy and sell tokens (obviously). But Solvo has picked 10 cryptocurrencies so that you don’t get lost in an endless list. You can also deposit and withdraw tokens from Solvo.

The startup is also taking advantage of staking or DeFi products that generate yield by contributing to liquidity pools. This way, Solvo customers earn interests when they move their crypto assets to what the company calls ‘Vaults’. For instance, the startup plans to offer Solana and Cardano Vaults.

Hiding the complexity is an interesting strategy as Solvo can take a cut of earnings from Vaults. As long as customers still earn some interests, the product is working as expected.

Finally, Solvo also lets you invest in Bundles. It lets you invest in multiple projects and tokens in a single transaction. Essentially, it works like those popular tokenized baskets, such as the DeFi Pulse Index or the Metaverse Index.

“Investing with Solvo will be simple, easy and understandable – three words not associated with crypto. Solvo is meeting a clear need for investors today, offering products that are focused on high quality assets, that provide diverse exposure and reduced risk as well as an attractive yield. It is for all the investors who want to use crypto to diversify their investments and want an easy way to do that,” co-founder and CEO Ayelen Denovitzer said in a statement.

In many ways, Coinbase originally positioned itself as the easiest way to get started with crypto. But the company has launched many different products over the years, including derivatives and support for 225 cryptocurrencies. Let’s see if Solvo can fill that gap in the market.

Former Revolut employees launch Solvo, an app that simplifies crypto investing by Romain Dillet originally published on TechCrunch

‘Virtual ward’ startup Doccla gets Series A injection as it eyes AI tools

‘Virtual ward’ startup Doccla gets Series A injection as it eyes AI tools

NEWS

Doccla, a Sweden founded but London-headquartered health tech startup that sells a remote patient monitoring platform to hospitals to run so-called ‘virtual wards’, has closed a £15 million (~$17M) Series A funding round a year after raising a $3.3M seed.

The Series A is led by US VC General Catalyst, with participation from funds managed by healthcare investors KHP Ventures (a collaboration between King’s College London, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust). Existing investors Giant Ventures, who led the seed round, and Speedinvest also backed the Series A — which sees Chris Bischoff, MD at General Catalyst, joining the board.

General Catalyst is an investor in US remote care health tech unicorn Cadence which also sells a remote monitoring service, so could be seen as a potential competitor to Doccla. Although the (currently) different target markets (US vs Europe) and specific product presentation — we understand Cadence is focused on populations with chronic disease, while Doccla talks in terms of building virtual wards/’Hospital at Home’ — are, evidently, distinct enough to convince the VC firm there’s value in backing both for growth.

Doccla’s growth trajectory must certainly have helped: The 2019-founded startup only launched its remote patient monitoring service during the pandemic but says it’s now present in a fifth (20%) of all Integrated Care Systems (ICS) in the UK, with patient intake from 20+ hospitals. In total it says it’s monitored 50,000+ patients to date. (NB: ICS are a feature of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) in England — essentially partnerships between relevant organizations and local authorities with the goal of joining up the planning and delivery of health services across their region.)

The startup’s platform allows clinical staff from hospitals to monitor the vital signs of those under treatment remotely (either continuously or intermittently) — freeing up hospital beds for new patients to be admitted by enabling early discharge via at-home monitoring. That’s important because the NHS suffers from a particular low average number of beds per 1,000 people compared to other OECD EU nations, with just 2.4 beds vs the OECD EU average of 4.6 and Germany’s average of 7.9.

It sells an end-to-end remote patient monitoring service which covers provisioning the devices used for monitoring (including pre-configured smartphones with large fonts to improve accessibility for the visually impaired/frail etc; and wearable medical devices to measure a wide range of physiological parameters); and taking care of software integration, logistics and customer service, and tech support for the elderly and non-digital natives — with its pitch being that it differentiates from competitors by significantly reducing the workload on hospital staff.

Doccla says its current clients include a number of NHS trusts across the UK, including Northampton General Hospital, Cambridgeshire Community Services, and Hertfordshire Community Trust.

On the competition front, it name-checks Huma, Current Health, and Docobo as UK rivals — but co-founder Martin Ratz points to three main areas where he argues it’s serving up something “very different”.

“For starters, we are CQC [Care Quality Commission, aka the independent regulatory body for healthcare providers in England] accredited and therefore can take clinical responsibility for patients, reducing the workload for healthcare personnel,” he tells TechCrunch. “We are device agnostic and are not pushing our own device. Finally, our service layer enables us to deliver market leading patient compliance — exceeding 95% across all pathways.”

The Series A funding injection will be ploughed into further developing its tech stack to support the integration of more medical devices into its patient monitoring platform and electronic healthcare record systems; and for data analytics and AI — to “expand clinical capacity and availability” to meet demand for “virtual hospitals that alleviate pressures on healthcare systems”, as it puts it.

Or, put another way, with both beds and doctors in chronically short supply AI-powered efficiencies are the new, transformative tool to enable already stretched-to-breaking point health services to (safely) stretch even further — or that’s the claim.

“In the future, we will be able to cover additional clinical specialties, with an even more advanced level of care as well as logistical improvements of the service delivery,” suggests Ratz.

Asked what Doccla is using AI for, he confirms it’s working on developing predictive alerts that could help clinicians monitor more patients.

“Doccla will use data insights to develop automation and AI for further improvement of service delivery and clinical outcomes,” he tells us. “This will include various support tools for clinicians, such as predictive alerts.”

There are plenty of safety pitfalls here, given — for example — the bias risks around AI if training data is not representative of the patient population, so how Doccla goes about integrating automated alerts and other AI-powered support tools into its platform without compromising patient safety will certainly be one to watch. (Getting regulatory accreditation on such features will also be less straightforward, with more agencies and oversight bodies in play.)

Still, it looks important that Doccla’s investor roster includes a fund with direct links to a number of NHS Trusts.

Image credits: Doccla

On the question of scalability, especially around patient support — which may require a lot of patient one-to-one interactions with tired and/or frail people who may not be accustomed to using connected technology — Ratz says: “Doccla places significant value on our service layer, as it’s crucial to building and scaling a virtual hospital. In particular, new models of care, especially at the intersection with behavioural change, require it. Doccla’s virtual patient support teams, as well as our clinical teams, are highly efficient and enjoy economies of scale.”

Also on the slate for the Series A: Expansion to new European markets and segments, per Ratz. But he won’t be drawn on where exactly it’s eyeing for new launches. “Doccla’s current focus is the UK where we serve a range of customers and our European expansion will be shaped by upcoming public tenders, notably those in larger markets,” he says, adding: “I can say that we’re already in dialogue with significant operators in several countries.”

The funding will also be used for fuelling the startup’s growth by running virtual clinical trials for the pharmaceutical industry, according to Ratz — presumably with the fully informed consent of any patients who agree to sign up to such trials. (Doccla’s current privacy policy states that it will not share users’ personal data — and further claims to “only collect the data that we need to deliver care safely and effectively”.)

The startup’s platform is able to serve a “very diverse range” of patients, from palliative care to pre- and post-surgery patients, says Ratz — although this type of remote care is clearly not suitable for every type of patient (even if you’re going to start throwing AI into the mix).

“The largest patient groups we work with include COPD [Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease] and heart-related health. The applicability of remote care is exceptional however some patient groups — for example, those who require in-person support such highly acute patients or people with dementia — are less suited for remote monitoring,” he says.

Commenting on the Series A funding in a statement, General Catalyst’s Bischoff added: “The virtualisation of hospital wards is a critical step in efficiently expanding health resources and enabling timely, safe transition of care into the home. Doccla has immense potential and is driving real impact by not only providing a much-needed lifeline for overwhelmed hospitals but also improving patient outcomes through remote monitoring. The founders’ vision to drive more digitally-enabled, decentralised healthcare that combines physical and virtual pathways aligns with General Catalyst’s Health Assurance thesis. Importantly, their partnership approach with NHS Trusts echoes our core values of radical collaboration and responsible innovation — innovation that improves society. At General Catalyst, we support companies that bring about powerful, positive change that endures, and we believe Martin, Dag and the team will do just that.”

Patient monitoring startup Doccla secures $3.3M seed funding for ‘virtual wards’ platform

‘Virtual ward’ startup Doccla gets Series A injection as it eyes AI tools by Natasha Lomas originally published on TechCrunch

Pigment raises another $65M to build the modern business planning platform

Pigment raises another $65M to build the modern business planning platform

NEWS

French startup Pigment has raised a new round of funding less than a year after raising a $73 million Series B round. If you’re not familiar with Pigment, the company develops a business planning and forecasting platform.

For small companies that are growing up, it can replace Microsoft Excel as it’s more secure and more solid in general. For bigger companies that already use a business planning product from Oracle or SAP, Pigment can replace these legacy platforms with something a bit more modern.

The company calls this new $65 million round a Series B+ because it’s more or less in the same ballpark as its Series B. While Pigment isn’t disclosing the valuation of the startup, it is going up following today’s deal.

So why did Pigment raise again so quickly? Because there was an opportunity and because the current economic environment doesn’t look great. IVP and Meritech Capital are leading the round.

Pigment’s co-founder and CEO Eléonore Crespo told me that she doesn’t need to raise more money to turn her company into a long-term, stable business. Of course, market conditions could change and Pigment could end up raising more next year.

I also asked her if Pigment uses Pigment as its forecasting tool. The answer is yes, obviously.

Pigment connects with the tools that your teams already use, such as Salesforce, NetSuite, Workday and Snowflake. Clients use the platform to import, clean and enrich data from those other products. Once the data is in, you don’t have to enter the same number in multiple sheets as you can automatically reflect your metrics across the board. Pigment supports Excel-like formulas as well.

This way, Pigment becomes the single source of truth for all the important numbers in the company. As a software-as-a-service product, Pigment customers can also talk with each other on the platform directly.

After that, customers can create “what-if” scenarios from different data sets. Executives can change parameters to see the impact of a new product launch, a large client coming on board or — unfortunately — a round of layoffs.

Pigment currently has around 170 employees. Annual recurring revenue is growing nicely (5x in 6 months) and the company now has 100 customers, such as Webhelp, PayFit, Forto, Gong, Figma, Carta and ClickUp.

Business planning products are quite relevant right now as companies have to plan for the worst. Having a tool that lets you accurately view all the important metrics and make big decisions has become essential. And Pigment hopes its platform will stand out from other tools in this industry.

Image Credits: Pigment

Pigment raises another $65M to build the modern business planning platform by Romain Dillet originally published on TechCrunch

Apple reportedly readjusts iPhone 14 production targets after slow demand

Apple reportedly readjusts iPhone 14 production targets after slow demand

NEWS

Apple’s new iPhone 14 lineup isn’t proving to be as popular as the company would have hoped for. So it is readjusting its production targets by cutting down additional orders for the device.

A report from Bloomberg notes that the Cupertino-based tech company produced around 90 million units in the second half of the last year. And while Apple initially asked its manufacturing partners to make 6 million more units for the second half of this year, it has now scaled back to produce devices in line with last year’s levels.

Apple’s iPhone 14 was merely an iterative update over the iPhone 13 while the iPhone 14 Pro received more significant upgrades. So Bloomberg’s report says that the company is seeing high demands for the Pro models, and is making more production capacity available for those higher-end models. Notably, the company’s new device in the lineup, the iPhone 14 Plus will go on sale next month. And we’ll only get to know about sales response for that version a few weeks after general availability.

Last week, ITHome said Apple asked Foxconn to dismantle some of the iPhone 14’s production line due to slow demand, citing people in the know. Earlier this month, analyst Ming Chi-Kuo also said that the tech giant is looking to increase production for Pro models due to their increasing popularity over the regular model.

Apple also began to produce the iPhone 14 in India this week in order to shift some burden of manufacturing from factories in China. This is the first time the company is producing the latest iPhone model locally just weeks after the official launch. For some context, Apple began making iPhone 13 in India just this April.

A recent report published by JP Morgan suggested that Apple is looking to shift 25% of its iPhone production to India by 2025. It also noted that initially Indian factories will produce only iPhone 14 and 14 Plus models, and cover only 5% of the production supply for the company (1 million units per month).

Review of Apple’s iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro: They’re leaning into it

Apple reportedly readjusts iPhone 14 production targets after slow demand by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

Italy’s Satispay raises €320M at a €1B+ valuation with backing from Block, Tencent and more for its indy payment network

Italy’s Satispay raises €320M at a €1B+ valuation with backing from Block, Tencent and more for its indy payment network

NEWS

More signs that the economy is slowing down in Europe, and that costs are going up, are driving merchants and consumers to look for less expensive ways to carry out their everyday business. Today, a startup out of Italy called Satispay — which operates an independent payment network that bypasses big banks and credit companies and promises lower transactions fees plus other benefits like better budget control to its users — is picking up a massive round of funding on the back of strong demand for its services.

The Milan-based startup — which currently has 3,000,000 consumers and 200,000 merchants (both SMBs and larger retailers) among its users — has raised €320 million ($305 million as of today, based on the current uber-strong dollar). CEO and co-founder Alberto Dalmasso confirmed to us that this Series D catapults the company’s valuation to over €1 billion (at present, around $955 million).

The all-equity round has some very interesting investors in it, including some eye-catching strategics. It’s led by Addition, the firm founded by Lee Fixel; with participation also from Greyhound Capital, Coatue, Lightrock, Block Inc. (the U.S. fintech formerly known as Square), China’s Tencent (which owns WePay and much more) and Mediolanum Gestione Fondi SGR. Tencent and Block are among a group that quietly started to back Satispay back in 2021, while Greyhound has been investing in it since 2018.

This latest Series D is a major step up and a mark of Satispay’s ambitions: prior to this it had raised just €130 over three rounds. This latest round ranks as one of the highest-ever rounds for an Italian tech startup.

The funding will be used both to expand Satispay’s product set, as well as for geographic expansion. Satispay got its start in Italy and the country today accounts for the bulk of the company’s business, but the startup’s plans include expanding also into France and Germany, where it has started to build out its operations in recent years.

Satispay is part of larger wave of businesses that have emerged over the last several years with ambitions to build out payments rails that bypass those of larger, older, slower and more costly incumbents — a trend that has exploded with the rise of mobile phones, a much wider ability (and demand) for people and businesses to use digital networks for financial transactions, and frankly an appetite from investors to back disruptive tech that might prove to become the next “killer app.”

The ever-expanding group also includes companies like Dwolla in the U.S. (which Dalmasso says is probably the most similar to Satispay in terms of how it operates); peer-to-peer payment efforts like PayPal’s Venmo and Square’s Cash App; buy-now, pay-later services; and the plethora of blockchain-based efforts to build out new currencies and means of buying and selling; and much more.

Satispay got its start when Dalmasso and his co-founder Dario Brignone (who is the CTO) came together under a common observation: that the world was moving towards using less cash. But at least in Italy in 2012, there was a big gap in the market: a lot of merchants, especially the smaller ones that make up the majority of retailers and others in Italy, were not keen on using card machines because of the high transaction values.

Dalmasso’s metric was a single cup of espresso: it was the most common thing bought at a cafe and each one had to be paid for in cash.

So they set out to see if they could create their own payments network that essentially reduced the friction to pay for that espresso without customers needing to scramble for coins, and without giving merchants a pain point by making it cost them money to sell it by any means other than cash.

The bet was that once you created this, it would be used to pay for other things, and more expensive items, too.

Although the world has moved on a lot since then and contactless payments in many places have taken away the minimum spend limit (and prices have gone up, sadly), Satispay has built in other features that make it unique and has helped it remain popular with users. One of these is that users essentially deposit money into a Satispay account from their existing bank accounts to spend over a period of time, much like a pre-pay account, which helps them control what they spend monthly.

“The goal was not to create a new bank, since we all have bank accounts,” he said. This also means that Satispay still plays nice with banks and others.

There are plans down the road to improve the connections between bank accounts and Satispay so that users have more options of more continuous funding if they do not want to use the pre-pay option. And while there is no kind of credit in the app now, there are obvious synergies between Satispay and buy now. pay later services, so that is another option to explore down the road. Dalmasso confirmed that Satispay is running tests in this area currently.

For now, there are a lot of interesting use-cases where the current pre-pay app is finding a lot of traction. They include helping city governments provide food stamps to users (which are deposited as a sum on Satispay to be used for food purchases); and a surge of use during Covid when people wanted to pay for items remotely or even in person without even tapping phones or taking out cards, using just Satispay’s app on their devices to complete purchases. On average, people are using the app to make between 10 transactions and 18 transactions per month, Dalmasso said.

“Satispay is revolutionizing the mobile payment space in Europe, allowing users to transfer money efficiently and securely, not only in-store and online but with friends and family as well,” said Fixel in a statement. “We look forward to supporting Satispay as it continues to grow its team, expand its customer and merchant bases and accelerate its business to become Europe’s leading payment network.”

 

 

Italy’s Satispay raises €320M at a €1B+ valuation with backing from Block, Tencent and more for its indy payment network by Ingrid Lunden originally published on TechCrunch

YC-backed fintech Numida raises $12.3M led by Serena Ventures to extend loans to MSMEs beyond Uganda

YC-backed fintech Numida raises $12.3M led by Serena Ventures to extend loans to MSMEs beyond Uganda

NEWS

Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) across Africa make up the bulk — over 90% — of businesses in the continent but are still marginalized in accessing credit from formal institutions because of the nature of their operations; for instance, many often lack the kind of collateral that is acceptable by banks.

To bridge the gap, Uganda-based fintech Numida, has opted to focus its digital lending business on small enterprises as part of its strategy for driving financial inclusion in emerging markets.

Spurred by an increase in demand for its services, Numida is currently eyeing growth opportunities beyond Uganda saying that it has a proven business model that can be adopted across the continent to unlock the potential of MSMEs.

The growth plans come against the backdrop of $12.3 million pre-series A equity-debt funding in a round led by Serena Ventures with participation from Breega, 4Di Capital, Launch Africa, Soma Capital, and Y Combinator, VCs that are all making their first investment in Uganda.

Existing strategic investor MFS Africa also made a follow-on investment, while Lendable Asset Management extended a $5 million debt to the startup.

“I’m most excited about continuing to build and provide financial products for these micro and small business owners who have been forgotten by the traditional financial services industry even though they are hardworking and have viable businesses. There are so many of these businesses across the continent, we really do believe that we’ve proven a model in Uganda that can be Pan-African and unlock the potential of these businesses to growth and achieve great things,” Numida CEO, Mina Shahid, who co-founded the startup in 2017 with Catherine Denis and Ben Best, told TechCrunch.

Numida co-founders (L-R) Catherine Denis, Ben Bes, and Mina Shahid. Image Credit: Numida

Ethical lending

Numida plans to extend loans to an additional 10,000 businesses, to hit its 40,000 target, within the next 18 months, a goal that will be brought closer by its entry into two new African markets (selected from Ghana, Nigeria, Egypt, or Kenya).

Businesses on its portfolio receive loans of between $100 to $5,000, an amount that is payable after one month and attracts interest rates of between 10% and 16%.

“We do risk-based pricing but on average, the interest rate is about 11.5%,” Shahid said.

For credit consideration, Numida, which is the first startup in the East African country to get into YC (W22), looks at various aspects of businesses, including the sector and cash flow. Repeat clients in good standing get their loans approved instantly, but new applicants, and repeat businesses seeking larger facilities, must wait for up to 24 hours to have the loans approved.

The startup uses its own credit scoring model, which Shahid says, is built off the loans it has extended to customers and business profiles. He added that they operate differently from most digital lenders who usually scrape data from clients’ phone books and social media accounts as conditions for lending – many of these lenders reach out to the borrowers’ contacts with debt-shaming messaging in cases of default.

“When we started building this business, we saw that a lot of people were getting taken advantage of because they didn’t really understand the user terms because most people don’t actually read these privacy policies or user agreements to understand what they were giving up. And so, we wanted to be very conscious about our approach, and we only ask for information that helps us determine if it is a business and if the person applying for a loan is the owner of the business,” Shahid said.

“The information we use is the one provided by the customer on the app, so we don’t snoop or scrape any data…We have a bunch of historical data that helps determine whether or not the information we’re collecting is relatively in the right ballpark”.

Since raising its seed funding last year, Numida has grown over 7.5 times propelled by the soaring demand for quick loans. The startup has to date issued $20 million in working capital to micro and small businesses, having grown from issuing $250,000 a month to $2 million.

The value of loans is set to grow as the startup continues to receive debt backing from institutions such as Lendable. Shahid said they hope to, in the interim, continue to remodel their products for even more affordability.

“We continue to improve our assessment of risk and our understanding of risk so that we can build a healthy portfolio that can allow us the room to reduce our prices while continuing to provide unsecured working capital loan products to these businesses,” he said.

Ghana’s fintech Fido raises $30M to roll out new products and expand across Africa

Kenyan fintech Pezesha raises $11M backed by Women’s World Banking, Cardano parent IOG

YC-backed fintech Numida raises $12.3M led by Serena Ventures to extend loans to MSMEs beyond Uganda by Annie Njanja originally published on TechCrunch