NEWS AROUND US: June 2021

Wednesday, 30 June 2021

SpaceX delivers 88 satellites to orbit, lands first stage onshore for first time in 2021

SpaceX launched 85 satellites for external customers, as well as three Starlink satellites, to orbit on Tuesday, marking the second successful launch of the company’s dedicated rideshare missions. While the Transporter-2 mission will deliver fewer objects to space than the first rideshare mission (the Transporter-1 sent up 143 satellites, a new record), it launched more mass to orbit overall.

The Transporter launches are part of the company’s rideshare business model. Announced in 2019, these missions split up the rocket’s payload capacity amongst multiple customers, resulting in lower costs for each – many of whom are smaller companies that may find the expenses associated with getting to orbit otherwise impossible to pay. SpaceX still ends up with a full launch and the revenue to operate it.

The Falcon 9 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral in Florida at around 2:32 PM. It’s the twentieth Falcon 9 launch in 2021 and the first launch this year that featured the first stage returning to land onshore, rather than on a drone ship at sea. The first stage booster separated at around 2:34 PM and returned to Cape Canaveral and successfully landed around 8 minutes after liftoff. This was its eighth flight.

Image Credits: SpaceX (opens in a new window)

The mission includes nearly ten customers, some of whom are launch service providers who are themselves organizing customer payloads – like Spaceflight Inc., who is launching 36 small satellites on behalf of 14 customers, as well as its electric propulsion vehicle dubbed Sherpa-LTE. It also includes the first satellite launch for space intelligence company Umbra and Loft Orbital’s “rideshare” satellites, YAM-2 and YAM-3, each of which are equipped with 5 independent sensors for separate customers.

As this was SpaceX’s twentieth launch this year (and 127th mission to date), it’s pretty safe to assume that the company will far surpass last year’s record of 26 launches.

This was the second attempt of the Transporter-2 launch, which was originally scheduled for June 29. That launch was halted at T-11 seconds after a rotary aircraft entered the flight zone. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk called the regulatory system broken in response.

Unfortunately, launch is called off for today, as an aircraft entered the “keep out zone”, which is unreasonably gigantic.

There is simply no way that humanity can become a spacefaring civilization without major regulatory reform. The current regulatory system is broken.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 29, 2021

SpaceX sets new record for most satellites on a single launch with latest Falcon 9 mission

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BMW i Ventures announces new $300 million fund to invest in sustainable technology

BMW i Ventures, the venture capital arm of BMW Group, has announced a new $300 million fund to further its investment in technologies that make transportation, manufacturing and supply chains more sustainable.

The firm doesn’t operate as a traditional corporate venture capital fund, but rather acts independently from BMW while being fully backed by the German automaker. Its previous €500 million (about $525 million at the time) fund, which was announced when the firm moved to Silicon Valley in 2016, is now at the end of its period for new investments. From now on, new investments will come from Fund II.

Fund I focused more on autonomous and digital vehicle technology, customer experience and advanced production. For example, autonomous truck company Kodiak Robotics, which last week announced an investment from BMW i Ventures, was a part of this fund. Fund II will further emphasize sustainability and zero emissions in all the sectors that lead up to designing, manufacturing and building a car, rather than specifically investing in core car technology.

“Sustainable supply chain is one of the things we’re really interested in right now,” Marcus Behrendt, managing partner at BMW i Ventures, told TechCrunch. “BMW Corp has announced that it wants to significantly reduce its carbon footprint, and therefore it’s looking at all ways of producing this, not just emission from the vehicles, but also the emissions that are produced when manufacturing and developing the cars.”

BMW i Ventures started dipping its toes into such sustainable investments at the end of 2019, investing in Turntide Technologies – a company developing a smart electric motor system – Solid Power – a solid state battery technology company – and Boston Metal – a company looking to decarbonize the metal industry. Its most recent investments, says Behrendt, are indicative of what Fund II will bring. The firm has already made its first investment out of the new fund with U.K.-based Motorway, a used car marketplace.

“We have two goals right now, so the first is the financial goal and that’s our most important driver,” Kasper Sage, managing partner at BMW i Ventures, told TechCrunch. “Certain CVCs out there don’t really care for the return on investment, they just get to benefit from the business deal that comes with the investment, which could actually hurt the business they’re investing in. Our goal is to make the company as successful as we possibly can.”

BMW i Ventures’ second goal is to provide strategic value back to the “mothership,” or BMW Group in Munich. By mainly investing in early stage companies, the firm has an early market signal that it can convey back to BMW.

“In some cases it’s just making them aware that this new technology exists and might be coming your way,” said Sage. “For example, we invested in Lime, so that’s micromobility, nothing that will ever make its way into a car. But it is important to understand that this is a part of the future of how people move from A to B.”

Behrendt and Sage both said BMW i Ventures has no intentions of acquiring any of its investments, but rather wants to be at the forefront of finding companies with high potential that can work with BMW or the rest of the industry in the future.

Sage said the firm has had 12 exits so far, plus six public companies at the moment and one that recently filed for a S-1 and will soon be public.

“We don’t need corporate buy-in to make an investment,” said Behrendt. “We do consult our engineers for due diligence and we also connect them with other startups. We’re trying to combine the best of both worlds. So we are acting like a financial VC, we’re taking board seats, we’re leading rounds, we can make quick decisions. And on the other hand we’re providing all the connections within our organization to the company.”

The startups that BMW i Ventures invests in get the benefit of networking with BMW engineers and employees and learning from a legacy company how the automotive ecosystem works. Behrendt says for a company like Solid Power, where the technology is is another four or five years out, there’s a strong collaboration between BMW’s business unit and the company to help them grow.

“This is a win-win situation,” said Behrendt. “We are introducing them and will bring them into the company, they will be talking to the right engineers. There’s no guarantee that they will get a contract in, but they will start working together and exploring and getting help and maybe helping out with quick solutions.”

Refraction AI’s Matthew Johnson-Roberson on finding the middle path to robotic delivery

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Women’s social network Peanut launches microfund StartHER to invest in pre-seed stage startups

Peanut, the maker of a social networking app for women, is entering into the investing space with today’s launch of a microfund called StartHER. As the name implies, the new fund will focus on investing in women as well as other historically excluded founders “of all ages, life stages, ethnicities and sexual orientations,” the company says. In particular, StartHER aims tackle the difficulties specific groups have in raising their first capital — something typically referred to as the “friends and family round.”

Peanut argues there’s inherent bias in assuming that every startup founder has access to what are, essentially, wealthy friends or family who can spare a little startup capital. These rounds often range in size from $10,000 to as large as $150,000 or more, and can make a difference when it comes to getting a new company off the ground.

“The assumption that founders should have networks able to invest in their businesses creates an unfair starting line for most groups. If we don’t remove barriers to that initial funding by providing access to capital, how can we ever hope to see a changing founder profile further through the fundraising funnel?” says Peanut CEO Michelle Kennedy, in a statement about the fund’s launch. “Peanut’s StartHER fund opens the door to founders looking for that early funding. It’s our opportunity to finally level the playing field. We want to be the family these founders can turn to, opening the door to our professional networks too.”

The lack of access to funds for female founders may have gotten worse during the pandemic, as Crunchbase data indicates female-founded startups globally saw a 27% decrease in funding in 2020 as compared to 2019. The pandemic shut down access to in-person networking opportunities and disproportionately impacted the family caretakers, who tend to be women, as schools, daycares and other childcare assistance businesses closed their doors. These changes may have contributed to the decline, though it’s hard to pinpoint.

But even outside the pandemic’s impacts, women are underrepresented in venture investing — including on the firm’s side. Only 13% of decision-makers at VC firms are women, which can influence what startups receive funding.

“It’s no secret that the venture capital industry is dominated by those with privilege and lucrative connections. As a member of the Female Founders Fund, I’m excited to be a part of StartHER’s investment committee to help these entrepreneurs, who have not been adequately recognized, grow their networks in the venture capital community,” said Anu Duggal, Founding Partner of Female Founders Fund, who joined SheHER’s investment committee.

StartHER says it’s looking to step in to fill that gap by offering small investments to early stage, pre-seed businesses focused on making a positive impact on society, healthcare, or the environment. According to its online application, StartHER will write checks of between $25,000 and $50,000 — likely one of the first checks a new startup may receive. The overall fund is $300,000 in size, and will make 3-4 investments in 2021. Peanut will not take an equity stake in the companies it invests in.

“Moving forward, we’ll be considering other factors such as deal flow to help inform how we invest and the companies we choose to invest in,” explains Kennedy. :We’re heavily focused on making the right investments that will have the most impact versus simply making returns. For StartHER, our goal is not to make X number of investments for X returns, but to diversify the VC funnel by serving as an entry point to capital for underrepresented founders,” she says.

Along with Duggal and Kennedy, the investment committee for the fund includes femtech journalist and angel investor Bérénice Magistretti; Chief Business Officer at Conde Nast Britain, Vanessa Kingori MBE; Founder of Shiffon Co. and Startup Girl Foundation, Shilpa Yarlagadda, and Author, Columnist and Brand Strategist, Elizabeth Uviebinene.

Applications are accepted on a rolling basis, and the committee meets every six months to consider the fund’s applications. Beyond the investment, startups who receive SheHER funds will also be given access and office hours to the networks of the committee members, the website says.

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Volvo Cars sets the tone for its next-gen vehicles with ‘Concept Recharge’ EV

Volvo Cars wants to completely electrify its lineup by 2030 and on Wednesday offered a glimpse into how it plans to get there and what its next generation of vehicles might look like.

But it’s not going to do it alone. Although the automaker plans on developing its own in-car operating system and other parts of the car, Volvo Cars detailed how it plans to work with partners like Northvolt, Google and Luminar to build out its future vehicles lineup. It also unveiled the first images of “Concept Recharge,” a concept EV that has flat floors, two interior screens and rear “suicide doors” that open from the middle of the vehicle.

Volvo Concept Recharge. Image Credits: Volvo Cars

The Concept Recharge is also outfitted with Luminar sensors, in line with an announcement earlier this month that Volvo Cars’ forthcoming flagship electric SUV will be equipped with Luminar’s technology stack as standard.

On the battery front, Volvo Cars is working with Swedish battery developer Northvolt on a pack that it says will enable a range of up to around 621 miles — a massive achievement of energy density, should Northvolt pull it off. The two companies are aiming to build a gigafactory in Europe by 2026 in a new 50-50 joint venture, with a potential annual capacity of up to 50 gigawatt hours. Volvo Cars will also source 15 GWh of batteries from Northvolt’s battery plant in Skellefteå, Sweden from 2024.

Future Volvo Cars vehicles will be capable of bidirectional charging, a capability that can turn the EV into a mobile generator or a mini power plant, offloading excess energy to the electricity grid.

Volvo said its OS, VolvoCars.OS, will act as an “umbrella system” for underlying operating systems, including its infotainment system led by Google and tech from Linux, QNX and AUTOSAR. While the vehicle will contain up to 100 electrical control units, these will run on a core computing system made up of three main computers being developed in partnership with Nvidia.

The automaker also discussed in more detail its plans to equip its flagship electric SUV with Luminar’s sensor suite and technology from Volvo’s software arm Zenseact. Executives shirked questions asking to specify the level of the autonomous system — referring to the scale developed by the Society of Automobile Engineers to measure the level of autonomy in a driving system — saying that they preferred to discuss the forthcoming AV driving system in terms of supervised or unsupervised. Under those terms, Volvo said the two modes — Cruise and Ride— would require driver supervision and no supervision, respectively. It said it would gradually launch unsupervised functionality at some point in the future.

The forthcoming system will generate tons of driving data from customers, and Volvo doesn’t intend on it to go to waste. The automaker said it aims to build a data factory to process information it collects from customers that use its autonomous drive safety features (with their consent). It would use this data to make improvements on the system, which it would push to vehicles via over-the-air updates.

“We need to transform this company from just a premium conventional company. We need to transform it into a leader in the new premium electric segment, which is growing very fast,” Volvo CEO Håkan Samuelsson said. “We need to understand batteries in the same way we understand the combustion engine.”

GM’s newest startup aims squarely at the commercial EV market

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How to cut through the promotional haze and select a digital building platform

Brian Turner Contributor

Brian Turner, LEED-AP BD&C, leads strategic planning for product development and project work at Buildings IOT. Throughout his career, Brian has provided hands-on expertise to architects, engineers and building owners to design and implement integrated building systems.

Everyone from investors to casual LinkedIn observers has more reasons than ever to look at buildings and wonder what’s going on inside. The property industry is known for moving slowly when it comes to adopting new technologies, but novel concepts and products are now entering this market at a dizzying pace.

However, this ever-growing array of smart-building products has made it confusing for professionals who seek to implement digital building platform (DBP) technologies in their spaces, let alone across their entire enterprise. The waters get even murkier when it comes to cloud platforms and their impact on ROI with regard to energy usage and day-to-day operations.

Breaking down technology decisions into bite-sized pieces, starting with fundamental functions, is the most straightforward way to cut through the promotional haze.

Facility managers, energy professionals and building operators are increasingly hit with daily requests to review the latest platform for managing and operating their buildings. Here are a few tips to help decision-makers clear through the marketing fluff and put DBP platforms to the test.

The why, how and what

Breaking down technology decisions into bite-sized pieces, starting with fundamental functions, is the most straightforward way to cut through the promotional haze. Ask two simple questions: Who on your team will use this technology and what problem will it solve for them? Answers to these questions will help you maintain your key objectives, making it easier to narrow down the hundreds of options to a handful.

Another way to prioritize problems and solutions when sourcing smart-building technology is to identify your use cases. If you don’t know why you need a technology platform for your smart building, you’ll find it difficult to tell which option is better. Further, once you have chosen one, you’ll be hard put to determine if it has been successful. We find use cases draw the most direct line from why to how and what.

For example, let’s examine the why, how and what questions for a real estate developer planning to construct or modernize a commercial office building:

Why will people come? — Our building will be full of amenities and technological touches that will make discerning tenants feel comfortable, safe and part of a warm community of like-minded individuals.
How will we do it? — Implement the latest tenant-facing technology offering services and capabilities that are not readily available at home. We will create indoor and outdoor environments that make people feel comfortable and happy.
What tools, products and technology will we use?

This last question is often the hardest to answer and is usually left until the last possible moment. For building systems integrators, this is where the real work begins.

Focus on desired outcomes

When various stakeholder groups begin their investigations of the technology, it is crucial to define the outcomes everyone hopes to achieve for each use case. When evaluating specific products, it helps to categorize them at high levels.

Several high-level outcomes, such as digital twin enablement, data normalization and data storage are expected across multiple categories of systems. However, only an enterprise building management system includes the most expected outcomes. Integration platform as a service, bespoke reports and dashboarding, analytics as a service and energy-optimization platforms have various enabled and optional outcomes.

The following table breaks down a list of high-level outcomes and aligns them to a category of smart-building platforms available in the market. Expanded definitions of each item are included at the end of this article.

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Look out language teachers, a synthetic human could be about to take your job

Hour One, a startup that allows businesses to create ‘photoreal’ presenters which can speak pre-set any text or any language in a highly realistic manner, has signed a deal with Berlitz. The language learning giant will use the platform to augment its instructor-led services and grow its online language training programs in a way that would normally be impossible, without hiring thousands of human teachers.

Curt Uehlein, Berlitz’s CEO said in a statement: “Berlitz has built our methodology and brand on delivering the best outcomes for students serious about fluency, which requires a very human-centric experience. Our digital experiences had to replicate the classroom experience. Doing that successfully means Berlitz can extend our reach into new markets, and be more accessible to students, removing barriers of location and affordability.”

Hour One has been able to almost re-create the in-person instructor experience for Berlitz, with highly-realistic photoreal characters who have (in my opinion) very natural facial expressions and gestures, and – crucially – perfectly synced speech. I’ve seen the software in operation myself and it is extremely convincing. Instead of course content being created in a studio with a human speaker, it can now be generated using AI. Look out language teachers…

Oren Aharon, CEO, Hour One said: “Where other brands keep innovation at the periphery, Berlitz has fully embraced our technology to scale its business and propel it into the new era.”

Originally from Israel and new in New York, Hour One has raised $5 million from Galaxy Interactive, Kindred Ventures and Remagine Ventures.

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Slack’s new voice, video tools should fit nicely on Salesforce platform after deal closes

It’s easy to forget, but Salesforce bought Slack at the end of last year for almost $28 billion, a deal that has yet to close. We don’t know exactly when that will happen, but Slack continues to develop its product roadmap adding new functionality, even while waiting to become part of Salesforce eventually.

Just this morning, the company made official some new tools it had been talking about for some time including a new voice tool called Slack Huddles, which is available starting today, along with video messaging and a directory service called Slack Atlas.

These tools enhance the functionality of the platform in ways that should prove useful as it becomes part of Salesforce whenever that happens. It’s not hard to envision how integrating Huddles or the video tools (or even Slack Atlas for both internal and external company organizational views) could work when integrated into the Salesforce platform.

Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield says the companies aren’t working together yet because of regulatory limits on communications, but he could definitely see how these tools could work in tandem with Salesforce Service Cloud and Sales Cloud among others and how you can start to merge the data in Salesforce with Slack’s communications capabilities.

“[There’s] this excitement around workflows from the big system of record [in Salesforce] into the communication [in Slack] and having the data show up where the conversations are happening. And I think there’s a lot of potential here for leveraging these indirectly in customer interactions, whether that’s sales, marketing, support or whatever,” he said.

He said that he could also see Salesforce taking advantage of Slack Connect, a capability introduced last year that enables companies to communicate with people outside the company. “We have all this stuff working inside of Slack Connect, and you get all the same benefits that you would get using Huddles to properly start a conversation, solve some problem or use video as a better way of communicating with [customers],” he said.

Why Sapphire’s Jai Das thinks the Salesforce-Slack deal could succeed

These announcements seem to fall into two main categories: the future of work and in the context of the acquisition. Bret Taylor, Salesforce president and COO certainly seemed to recognize that when discussing the deal with TechCrunch when it was announced back in December. He sees the two companies directly addressing the changing face of work:

“When we say we really want Slack to be this next generation interface for Customer 360, what we mean is we’re pulling together all these systems. How do you rally your teams around these systems in this digital work-anywhere world that we’re in right now where these teams are distributed and collaboration is more important than ever,” Taylor said.

Brent Leary, founder and principal analyst at CRM Essentials says that there is clearly a future of work angle at play as the two companies come together. “I think moves like [today’s Slack announcements] are in response to where things are trending with respect to the future of work as we all find ourselves spending an increasing amount of time in front of webcams and microphones in our home offices meeting and collaborating with others,” he said.

Huddles is an example of how the company is trying to fix that screen fatigue from too many meetings or typing our thoughts. “This kind of “audio-first” capability takes the emphasis off trying to type what we mean in the way we think will get the point across to just being able to say it without the additional effort to make it look right,” he said.

Leary added, “And not only will it allow people to just speak, but also allows us to get a better understanding of the sentiment and emotion that also comes with speaking to people and not having to guess what the intent/emotion is behind the text in a chat.”

As Karissa Bell pointed out on Engadget, Huddles also works like Discord’s chat feature in a business context, which could have great utility for Salesforce tools when it’s integrated with the Salesforce platform

While the regulatory machinations grind on, Slack continues to develop its platform and products. It will of course continue to operate as a stand-alone company, even when the mega deal finally closes, but there will certainly be plenty of cross-platform integrations.

Even if executives can’t discuss what those integrations could look like openly, there has to be a lot of excitement at Salesforce and Slack about the possibilities that these new tools bring to the table — and to the future of work in general — whenever the deal crosses the finish line.

Slack’s new video and voice tools are nod to changing face of work

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Genocide Designation for Myanmar Tests Biden’s Human Rights Policy

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Behind Wayne’s Story

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Ford will extend production cuts into July because of global chip shortage.

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The city of Doral said it is reviewing all of the work of a former Surfside building official.

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Here are some key dates in the Cosby case.

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Bill Cosby is freed after serving three years of his sentence for sexual assault.

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‘The shame was overwhelming,’ Andrea Constand said in a victim impact statement in 2018.

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Today in On Tech: Why the internet didn’t melt down.

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What’s in Our Queue? ‘Octonauts’ and More

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The World Wide Web sells for $5.4 million.

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Mae West Vamped and Winked. She Also Blazed a Trail We’re Still Following.

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What a Water Shortage Is Doing to Some of America’s Best Farmland

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Before the Board of Elections messed up the tally, it ignored repeated offers of help.

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Death Toll Rises to 16 in Florida Building Collapse

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Eric Adams files a lawsuit to preserve his right to challenge the election results.

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3 Art Gallery Shows to See Right Now

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Tuesday, 29 June 2021

L.A. County recommends everyone, even if vaccinated, wear masks indoors over Delta variant concerns.

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Supreme Court Backs Pipeline in Case on New Jersey Land Seizures

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Facebook unveils ‘Bulletin,’ a newsletter subscription service.

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Frieda Fritzshall, 91, Dies; Survived to Create a Holocaust Museum

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Facebook’s newsletter platform Bulletin is now live

The cool new thing on Facebook is for Mark Zuckerberg to drop product news in live audio rooms. So today, Zuckerberg took to his brand’s Clubhouse competitor to announce its next new thing: Bulletin, a newsletter platform.

Bulletin is built on a separate platform from Facebook — on its website, the FAQ states that this is to “enable creators to grow their audience in ways that are not exclusively dependent on the Facebook platform.” You don’t need a Facebook account to subscribe to a newsletter, but Bulletin relies on Facebook’s infrastructure, including the use of Facebook Pay to purchase premium subscriptions and join subscriber-only groups and live audio rooms.

Competitors like Substack take a “hands-off” approach to content moderation, allowing anyone to start a newsletter. But every writer currently on Facebook’s Bulletin was hand-picked to contribute. Still, Substack has received scrutiny for subsidizing anti-trans rhetoric through its controversial Substack Pro program, which commissioned particular writers to write on Substack. So, Bulletin won’t be immune to the issues that plague Substack despite its heavily curated model.

The initial slate of writers on Bulletin includes Malcom Gladwell, Mitch Albom, Erin Andrews, and Tan France — the FAQ also notes that its beta program is US-centric, with only two international writers at the moment (“We will look to include more international creators after our beta program launch,” Bulletin says.) Facebook is paying its writers up front for their contributions, and so far, doesn’t plan to take a cut of their profits. If writers choose to move off the platform, they will have the ability to take their subscriber lists with them.

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How VCs can get the most out of co-investing alongside LPs

William Kilmer Contributor

William Kilmer is managing partner with C5 Capital, a venture capital fund investing in the secure data ecosystem. He was formerly an operating partner at Mercato Growth Partners and served as CEO and chairman of PublicEngines (acquired by Motorola), and Avinti (merged with M86 Security) and served as chief marketing officer/chief strategy officer of M86 Security (acquired by Trustwave).

Why VCs love alternative investors

Alternative investors aren’t the only ones who benefit from co-investing, it’s also a boon for GPs. They gain a broader array of funding options by partnering with alternative investors, and they can leverage their own capital more effectively with prospective investments.

VCs have other benefits too: While co-investing LPs remain passive in the business, the VC can use that voting power to preserve investor rights and consolidate decision-making. It also allows them to put more money to work in any company while staying within diversification limits.

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Wednesday, 30 June 2021

The why, how and what

Focus on desired outcomes

Tuesday, 29 June 2021

Why VCs love alternative investors

Monday, 28 June 2021