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.
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.
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Happy Friday! We don’t know about you, but we are both ready for some R&R after ploughing through a wall of deep-cringe texts from the Musk/Twitter trial. We hope you get some, too, this weekend.
Under attack: Microsoft confirmed that it “is aware” of some attacks to its Exchange server. Carly is staying on top of the story and reports that there is “no immediate fix.”
Eyeing that sweet capital: Manish has a scoop that Uniswap Labs, a decentralized exchange, is going after over $100 million in new funding.
Stream on: YouTube TV is offering a new à la carte option that enables subscribers to purchase stand-alone networks without subscribing to the full channel lineup in its Base plan, Lauren reports.
Startups and VC
When insurtech company Metromile went public via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in February last year, it was valued at over $1 billion. A year and five months later, Lemonade acquired the company for less than $145 million. And yet, things aren’t as bleak as they might seem, Anna reports.
This year, 40% of the world’s population will play games, with total spending nearing $200 billion. The purveyors of web3 want a slice of this gargantuan market, Rita reports. She writes that criticisms of the first generation of crypto games have been well documented, so the question for developers now is what decentralized games should look like.
Some services are in such demand, it can insulate their providers against the vagaries of the market. During an economic downturn, consumers don’t cut back on pet food or toilet paper. Similarly, everyone needs some form of insurance.
Between 2016 and 2022, insurtech startups received around $43 billion in funding, and despite the downturn, most of the investors that reporter Anna Heim recently surveyed are still positive about the sector’s prospects:
Martha Notaras, general partner, Brewer Lane Ventures
David Wechsler, principal, OMERS Ventures
Stephen Brittain and Rob Lumley, directors and co-founders, Insurtech Gateway
“We are simply seeing a reality check happen,” said Wechsler. “Unfortunately, there are many companies that should not have raised as much as they did, or perhaps don’t have sustainable business models. These companies will struggle to survive.”
TechCrunch+is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack.You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!
Big Tech Inc.
SoftBank has been doing some readjusting to company valuations lately, but the latest adjusting is happening with its own company. Kate reports that SoftBank’s Vision Fund is reportedly laying off 30% of its workforce even as it considers a third fund.
Here are five more for you:
Inside Elon’s texts: Amanda and Taylor dig into a document that surfaced that provides a look into the innermost workings of Elon Musk’s mind as he texts back and forth with “friends.” We put that in quotes because, well, you’ll see.
Slimming down: At a Meta all-hands meeting, Mark Zuckerberg broke the news that it will freeze hiring and cut costs, Taylor reports.
We on a mission: SpaceX and NASA are partnering to send a commercial crew to “boost the orbit of the Hubble Space Telescope.” If it is successful, it will extend the telescope’s life span by as much as 20 years, Aria reports.
What did we just watch?: Meta has a new feature called Make-A-Video that enables you to make videos out of text prompts. To quote Devin, “I just think it’s fascinating that however realistic these videos are in one sense, they’re all so bizarre and off-putting in others.”
Crypto has evolved from a niche product into a critical piece of the infrastructure underpinning an entirely new vision for the internet — web3. Startups are at the core of this innovation, and despite volatility in the crypto markets, builders in the space have remained steady in their efforts to leverage blockchain technology to reshape online spaces and interactions.
In November, TechCrunch is hostingTC Sessions: Crypto— a special event dedicated to the crypto and web3 space. The stage is filled with top VCs, industry experts – FTX’s Amy Wu, CEO of OpenSea, Devin Finzer and more! Pitch on the live stagein person, in Miami, Florida.
Pitch your Web3 or crypto tech startup
TechCrunch is on the lookout for founders building web3 or crypto companies to pitch in-person at TC Sessions: Crypto. We know that web3 cuts across all industries and verticals – new protocols, finance, infrastructure, gaming, recruiting and more. Startups applying to pitch should have web3 or crypto as the central pillar of their product, regardless of industry application.
Founders will have four minutes to pitch followed by a Q&A with our panel of judges. Selected companies will be announced on TechCrunch. Apply here.
What are the qualifications to participate in web3 & crypto Startup Pitch-Off? It’s simple:
Be an early-stage startup.
Have at least a minimally viable product.
Have a core element of their product powered by or utilizing web3 infrastructure
Incorporated anywhere but must attend in person
In addition to the opportunity to pitch, you’ll get training with TC’s Startup Battlefield Editor and two complimentary passes to the entire TC Sessions: Crypto event. The deadline to apply is October 3rd.
Speaking to the press Friday, Speaker Pelosi refused to address an insipid statement from Rep. Kevin McCarthy because it was so nonsensical.
The Madam Speaker began to simply explain what kitchen table problems the Democratic party stands for and how Republicans have tried to undermine them all.
A reporter (I don't know who) did the Minority leader's bidding, asking the Speaker to respond to one of Rep. McCarthy's idiotic remarks.
"Yesterday, Kevin McCarthy told us he essentially he feels that you are holding House Democrats hostage from speaking out about the border crisis because of the way you whip on the House floor," he said. "How would you respond to that and do you believe the border is secure?"
Speaker Pelosi said securing the border was part of their plan to "protect and defend the country."
"I don't respond to those kind of questions. I mean With all due respect to your question at the end, but not to his comments because I don't know what he's talking about, I don't know if he does," Pelosi said.
One of the truest things Rep. McCarthy ever stated was about the horrific insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6 as soon as it happened. McCarthy planned to try and get Trump to resign.
Since then, he rescinded his remarks and became a shill for Republican traitors and seditionists.
Vladimir Putin's decision to illegally annex four Ukrainian territories and his nuclear threats aren't going down very well with the civilized world. Russia has been quickly losing ground in Ukraine, shocking the rest of the world with Ukraine's strategic and bold military maneuvers. And you can't just grab your neighbor's land and say, "It's mine!"
President Biden said, "America and its allies are not going -- let me emphasize -- are not going to be intimidated, are not going to be intimidated, by Putin and his reckless words and threats. He's not gonna scare us or intimidate us."
"Putin's actions are a sign he's struggling," the President continued. "A sham referendum he carried out, and this routine he put on, the sham routine he put on this morning," trying to present a unified front in Russia.
"America is fully prepared with our NATO allies to defend every single inch of NATO territory … Mr. Putin, don't misunderstand what I'm saying," he added before announcing more sanctions on Russia. "Every inch."
Biden also released a statement that read in part:
Embedded insurance — selling coverage at the same time as another product or service — is on the rise. According to data platform Dealroom, it accounts for a growing share of all policies sold, and startups in this space raised nearly $800 million in 2021 alone.
Having recently polled investors on all things insurtech, we were curious to know if the market remained as bullish on embedded insurance as last year — and whether it was warranted.
“Personally, I remain bullish on embedded insurance,” Brewer Lane Ventures general partner Martha Notaras told TechCrunch. “Many insurance purchases are difficult, so rolling insurance into another transaction makes a lot of sense.”
While seeing clear value in the ability to bundle insurance with another purchase, Notaras and other investors we talked to also had reservations.
“We believe in the concept of embedded insurance, but a more measured approach would suit investors well when analyzing these businesses,” Distributed Ventures partner Adam Blumencranz said.
Is Tumblr porn making a comeback? No, it’s not — and Amanda Silberling joins me on this week’s TechCrunch podcast to explain why, and why people thought it might be. Devin Coldewey also joins us to talk about NASA’s DART mission, which saw the U.S. space agency throw a little spacecraft at a big asteroid moon. Yes it’s all real and it all makes sense, I promise. And of course, we run down the biggest stories in tech this past week that you need to know about.
By the way, if you recently were laid off, TechCrunch is offering a free expo pass to Disrupt (October 18-20) in San Francisco. No strings attached. These tickets get you access to the expo floor, breakout sessions and plenty of networking opportunities like partner roundtables and parties. For more info, check out this page.
Simple crypto: Cryptocurrencies are still complex, or that’s the viewpoint of Solvo, a new app that is making crypto investment simpler, Romain reports. What’s different is that instead of being offered dozens of currencies to choose from, Solvo has curated a list of 10 so you don’t get lost in all the names.
Long live IPOs!: Travel is back and with it news that TripActions was making a possible play for an initial public offering, which would value the company at $12 billion, Mary Ann reports. Catch Alex’s take on the matter down in the TC+ section.
Startups and VC
Eviation’s Alice electric aircraft took off for the first time yesterday, teasing a future in which regional flights of hundreds of miles will be done with zero emissions and a lot less noise. It’s still a ways off, but today’s demonstration shows it’s at least just a matter of time and money, Devin reports.
A strong sales organization is the tip of the spear for every SaaS startup, but because so few founders have meaningful experience in this arena, they don’t know how to set their teams up for success.
In this TC+ article, contributor Kevin Varadian explains how to chart a sales coaching journey that boosts retention and increases revenue.
“It’s important to recognize that today’s sales teams are more problem-solvers than deal-closers — soft skills are more important here than technical capabilities,” he says.
TechCrunch+is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack.You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!
Big Tech Inc.
Google’s Stadia is donezo, Brian reports. Stadia, the company’s game streaming service, was young, just under three years old, but just wasn’t getting the expected traction. However, based on Stadia’s remarks, there may be something new brewing.
We had a rather long Big Tech section for you yesterday, so enjoy these five shorter snippets:
Make amends: Amnesty International’s new report is calling for Meta to pay reparations for Facebook’s role in promoting content that led to the Rohingya genocide in 2017, Natasha L reports.
It’s demo day season. This morning marked the kickoff of VC firm 500 Global’s Fall 2022 Demo Day, which saw over a dozen startups give their best pitches to prospective investors — and customers. Participants ran the gamut from fintech and sustainability to edtech and developer tools, and several stood out from the rest of the pack.
The event comes just weeks after Y Combinator had its bi-annual Demo Day, its first since moving operations back to in-person. 500 Global, formerly branded under 500 Startups, has an accelerator that competes with YC. Both outfits look to back early-stage founders with money and advice in exchange for equity. YC has backed over 3,500 founders, while 500 Global has backed more than 2,800 founders, according to each institution’s websites. Unlike YC, 500 Global has geographic-specific accelerator programs, similar to Techstars, with focus on areas like Aichi, Japan, Cambodia, and Alberta, Canada.
That said, today’s debut from 500 Global is from its first and flagship program, hailing back from 2010 and, fittingly, including companies from all around the globe. All companies go through a four-month program but start at different times, thanks to 500 Global’s somewhat new rolling admissions strategy. Let’s dig into some of the moonshots of the batch and end with some notes from Clayton Bryan, partner and head of 500 Global’s Accelerator Fund.
The moonshots
For example, there’s Taiwan-based Rosetta.ai, an ecommerce startup tapping AI to let customers search for products — particularly apparel and cosmetic — through specific attributes. Rosetta’s AI algorithm “sees” which attributes (e.g., sleeveless, ruffled, microbeads) a shopper might want as they browse an online store and builds a “preference profile” for them, which merchants can use to cross-sell or set up promotions that trigger if it seems likely the shopper will abandon their cart.
Image Credits: Rosetta.ai
It’s early days for Rosetta. But the company, which was founded in 2016, has raised $2.4 million in capital to date and claims to have customers including Shu Uemura, in which L’Oréal owns a majority stake. The trick will be continuing to win customers over rivals like Lily AI, which similarly attempts to match customers with products using attributes and AI models.
Elsewhere on Demo Day, Lydia.ai walked through its health assessment service for insurance carriers. Designed to do away with lengthy medical exams and forms, Lydia has insurance plan applicants answer a few questions about their health — e.g., whether they have a chronic illness, have recently been hospitalization and so on — via their smartphones. The platform then generates an abstracted health score supposedly devoid of sensitive medical details, which insurers can use for risk management and underwriting.
Image Credits: Lydia.ai
Lydia isn’t the first to attempt this. Health tech startup Fedo also algorithmically generates health scores, quantifying a person’s risk for diseases and their propensity to claim. The opaqueness of Lydia’s approach also raises questions, like whether its algorithms account for demographic differences and historic biases in health care. But if the startup remains true to its mission — insuring the next billion people — it could be one to watch, particularly given the capital (~$13 million) already behind it.
One of the more unique Demo Say startups that presented was BetaStore, a supplier for the “informal” retail outlets common in Africa. Informal retailers are unlicensed and unregistered retailers that don’t report to tax agencies, typically operating out of open markets and shops. BetaStore serves as a goods marketplace for informal retailers, providing access to staples such as dish soap, laundry detergent and all-purpose cleaner at wholesale prices and delivering them to the retailers (within 48 hours).
Image Credits: BetaStore
BetaStore customers can order products via chat, text message or WhatsApp. On the backend, the platform provides sales analytics to manufacturers, which BetaStore notes can be leveraged to make “data-driven” decisions to scale up shipments.
BetaStore appears to be off to a strong start. Founded in 2020, the Nigeria-based startup claims to have distributed over 140,000 goods to retail customers in Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Senegal and fielded over 20,000 orders. Recently, BetaStore began offering financing to retailers and plans to launch a buy now, pay later product in the coming months.
One year after the rebrand
Minutes after Demo Day ended, Bryan spoke to TechCrunch about 500 Global and how it’s growing within an increasingly volatile (and competitive) market.
“It’s been kind of gloomy, but we’ve told our companies time and time again that the silver lining is that 2021 was a phenomenal year for venture funds raising financing,” he said, fitting into the news that U.S. based investors are sitting on $290 billion in dry powder right now. The accelerator’s top advice was to start fundraising earlier, ready the company more before going out to the market, and stay smart on managing expenses. His advice these days is that startups should be preparing for at least 18 months of runway.
It has been almost a year since 500 Global rebranded from 500 startups, a move that Bryan said was meant to reposition the institution as less of an accelerator, and more of a venture firm. Its more than semantics; former batch participants have come back to 500 for follow-on funding, during their Series A but up till their series D.
“Historically, we haven’t had any any optionality, but now we’re going multi-strategy and we’re working on later stage funds,” he said. “We have the demand with our founder community, we have a demand even within our partner community that they want to have access to more de-risked companies.”
He added: “We’re very proud of our accelerator. It is a key vantage…but now it’s helped unlock other opportunities for us as a firm that we’re exploring with a lot of enthusiasm.”
“We’re not immune to the the changes that are happening in our ecosystem, we’re aware of what other funds are doing and other programs are doing,” he said. “Our program has been operating strongly for the last 10 plus years. But at the same time, we can’t rest on our laurels, and we’ve got to make sure that we have compelling deal terms.”
If Congress won’t act to stop mass shootings, maybe hitting the purveyors of violence in their pocketbooks will do the trick.
The survivors of the July 4th Highland Park, IL shooting have sued gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson, the gun distributor, the gun retailer, the shooter and his father.
The Chicago Sun-Times says the suits “could have wide implications for gun-makers.”
The gun-maker, the lawsuits say, “markets its assault rifles to young, impulsive men by appealing to their propensity for risk and excitement,” by maintaining an active presence on social media using violent video games — including ones played by [shooter Robert] Crimo — and social influencers as marketing tools.
…
They say the gun-maker’s marketing campaign continued even though Smith & Wesson “knew or should have known in the last decade, mass shooters have used Smith & Wesson weapons as their weapons of choice.”
…
The gun-maker “facilitates violence for profit,” those suing say, with “marketing and promotion” that aim to attract “young men looking for military-style rifles to act out a perverse combat fantasy of killing as many people as possible.”
Twitter is adding new features to make it easier for users to watch and discover videos on its platform, the social network announced on Thursday. Most notably, the company is launching a scrollable TikTok-like scrollable video feed.
In the coming days, users on iOS will be able to click on a video in their feed to enter the new scrollable video feed. Once you finish watching the video you clicked on, you will be able to scroll up to start browsing more video content. You’ll then be in a scrollable feed of videos, which is similar to the browsing experience on TikTok. If you want to exit the viewer and go back to the original tweet, you can click the back arrow in the top left corner.
Twitter says the purpose of the new immersive media viewer is to make it easier for users to discover engaging videos. The social network didn’t say when the immersive media viewer will roll out to users on Android.
In addition, Twitter is launching a new video carousel within its Explore tab. Users will see a new “Videos for you” category that will display popular and trending videos that the app thinks you would be interested in.
Image Credits: Twitter
Twitter began testing a TikTok-like video feed back in December 2021 to give users a more personalized Explore page. In this test, Twitter turned the entire Explore page into a video feed, complete with a “For You” tab. With the changes announced today, Twitter isn’t focused on replacing the entire Explore page with a TikTok-like feed.
The company’s approach to a TikTok-like feed can be seen a somewhat tolerable one, especially considering that it isn’t directly forcing it onto users, as the previous TikTok-like video feed test did. People who like scrollable video feeds can access the immersive view if they like, and users who don’t want a video feed can choose to not open up the immersive viewer.
But of course, not everyone likes change, especially when it’s the introduction of a copycat feature from another platform. Instagram learned this the hard way, as it was essentially forced to walk back it TikTok-like full-screen home feed a few months ago due to immense backlash from users. It’s possible that Twitter wants to avoid a similar situation, which is why it’s opting to add a more controllable experience when its comes to scrollable video feeds.
Here’s a question for you: How seriously should we take Amazon’s home robotics play? Perhaps a better way of framing it is: When do we take Amazon’s home robotics play seriously? I realize these sound like pointed questions, and I should specify that they’re not really specific to Amazon. They’re more a result of having been burned in the past.
The road to the home robot is littered with fine intentions from companies large (Sony) and small (Anki, etc.). For decades, robots have been a kind of industry shorthand for forward-thinking innovation. Want the world (and, more importantly, shareholders) to know you’re focused on the future? Roll a robot out at your press conference, and who cares if it ever comes out?
Amazon’s obviously addressed that last bit of potential criticism. Astro came out. Announced a year ago this week, the company launched the robot as part of its “Day One Edition” program, offering it up with limited availability at a steep price ($1,500). During a call before yesterday’s Alexa event, the company’s head of consumer robotics, Ken Washington, bristled when I implied that the Astro rollout found the company testing the waters of piloting the robot.
Image Credits: Amazon
“[Day One] is a way for us to put these products in their hands quickly,” the executive told me. “Not for us to — not learn their interest — learn what they want to see most to be added to it.… We’ve had hundreds of thousands of inbound requests and we continue to manufacture and deploy Astros to those customers who make those requests. I can’t share the actual sales quantity because we don’t share the data. But we’re off to a great start.”
To a certain extent, I think the pushback is about framing. I see Astro’s early run as an attempt to determine whether people ultimately want this manner of home robot. Amazon appears to take that want as a kind of foregone conclusion and instead looks at the program as a way to determine precisely why people want Astro. With the announcement of a new SDK being offered to the University of Michigan, Georgia Tech and the University of Maryland this year, it’s probably time to start thinking of Astro as a platform first.
Image Credits: irobot
There’s a sense in which the company is almost working backward from the iRobot model. The company determined a need (vacuuming) and made a purpose-built robot for that function. iRobot tends to be extremely deliberate in its approach. That’s why it took so long for the firm to introduce a proper two-in-one vacuuming/mopping robot.
“The customer is very excited about the convenience of a two-in-one robot, so we needed to build one,” CEO Colin Angle tells TechCrunch. “But, being iRobot, we needed to actually build one, as opposed to doing it in a way that doesn’t deliver on the promise. Right now, most two-in-one robots are really one-plus-one.”
Of course, assuming the FTC doesn’t put the kibosh on the deal (not yet a foregone conclusion), the two are about to be part of one big, happy family. If iRobot does end up rolling into Amazon’s consumer robotics line, it will be impossible not to take the company’s ambitions seriously. Certainly the way the company has accelerated the warehouse and fulfillment robotics categories are a clear indication of what the company is capable of doing with essentially unlimited resources. And while it’s already built its own home robot, it’s easy to imagine the Roomba serving in a similarly foundational capacity as Kiva for its consumer robotics play, going forward.
We got a whole bunch of news to get through this week. Gonna kick things off with a fun one. Back in July 2021, we covered the news that Agility Robotics’s Cassie ran a 5K. It was an impressive feat and a nice feather in the cap of the OSU spinoff. The company has, of course, become better known for Cassie’s follow-up, Digit, but the original ostrich-inspired robot is still involved in some interesting locomotion work in a handful of universities.
Agility CTO Jonathan Hurst tells TechCrunch:
Many dynamic behaviors are hard to represent mathematically, especially any physical interaction like walking or running. Machine learning techniques have the potential to represent that complexity, but so far have struggled to find good solutions or to translate from a simulation to a real machine. We’re figuring out how to use our expertise and knowledge of legged locomotion to guide the machine learning process, and getting results that outperform other techniques. That’s exciting! There’s no free lunch — a machine learning system likely won’t discover useful new behaviors on its own; we have to understand the goals and guide it well.
This week, the Amazon-backed startup announced that the ’bot has captured a world record, running 100 meters in 24.73 seconds (it’s a feat the company teased during a panel at our July Robotics event). That’s still a ways from Usain Bolt’s 9.58 seconds, but is still an extremely impressive feet for a bipedal robot nonetheless (there’s also something to be said for knowing that we can still outrun them for a bit longer).
Avidbots’ NEO in action Image Credits: Avidbots
Big raise for Avidbots this week. The Canadian firm announced a $70 million Series C for its industrial floor-cleaning robots. The round was led by Jeneration Capital and features True Ventures, Next47, SOSV, GGV Capital, BDC Capital, Golden Ventures and Kensington Capital. It brings the company’s total raise up to $107 million.
Avidbots plans to add an additional 100 people in product, engineering, sales and marketing over the course of the next year. Says CEO Faizan Sheikh:
We are very excited about the future as this financing allows us to accelerate our timelines for bringing new products to market as well as continuously improve our autonomous driving software and service for existing customers to deliver an even better experience and greater value.
Image Credits: Livin Farms
One of the more interesting users for robotics I’ve come across in recent weeks is Livin Farms. The Austrian firm raised $5.8 million for its Hive Pro system, which rears black soldier fly larvae for sustainable protein powder.
“[O]ur customers contribute massively to fixing the broken food system and therefore saving the planet,” CEO Katharina Unger said in a comment to TechCrunch. The process takes around 11 days, at which point the larvae “will become half a ton of biomass plus half a ton of fertilizer.”
Natasha has an interesting bit of news out of Europe this week. The EU recently updated liability laws to include artificial intelligence. The new AI Liability Directive will make it easier to sue systems like drones, robots and smart devices.
“The principle is simple,” justice commissioner, Didier Reynders, told TechCrunch. “The new rules apply when a product that functions thanks to AI technology causes damage and that this damage is the result of an error made by manufacturers, developers or users of this technology.”
Meanwhile, Rita wrote about an initiative designed to break China’s reliance on U.S.-designed semiconductors. It’s easy to understand the motivation here, given how much U.S. sanctions during the Trump administration sidelined Huawei in the past few years. Horizon Robotics is leading the way with a massive $3.4 billion in funding thus far.
Image Credits: Tesla
And finally, we’re ramping up for Tesla’s AI day. The event is tomorrow, and I plan to stay up late to help Kirsten cover it — and get a sneak peek at the company’s long-teased Optimus robot. Let’s just say my expectations are sufficiently tempered, but I’m open to being pleasantly surprised.
We’re beyond amazed at the collective creativity, ingenuity and technical prowess of theStartup Battlefield 200. Out of thousands of applications, only 200 early-stage startups made the final cut, and you’ll find all of them — and only them — exhibiting on theTechCrunch Disruptshow floor on October 18-20 in San Francisco.
That’s a whole lotta noteworthy startups, so we’re going to break it down a bit for you and highlight them by vertical. Today it’s hardware, robotics and mobility. Hungry for more? You can find them all listed in theExhibitor Directory.
TC Disrupttakes place on October 18-20. It’s where startups go to grow, so grab your pass today and come prepared to network with these great startups!
Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TechCrunch Disrupt 2022? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.
Taiwanese battery-swapping company Gogoro has signed a $345 million five-year credit facility agreement in order to increase liquidity among uncertain economic conditions.
The loan comes from a group of 10 syndicated banks led by Mega International Commercial Bank Co., according to a regulatory filing.
Gogoro will use the funds to pay off an existing facility, secure energy cells for its batteries, support operations in Taiwan and provide working capital as needed, according to a company spokesperson.
The company will have an option to extend the loan for an additional two years and even get a discount if it continues to meet its carbon reduction goals.
The fresh funds come a month after Gogoro released its second-quarter earnings results, which showed a company that is still growing, but is cautious, given market and macroeconomic conditions. Year-over-year Gogoro managed to increase its revenue by 5.3% to $90.7 million; however, the impact of COVID in Taiwan and China caused Gogoro CEO Horace Luke to revise guidance for the full year from $460 million to $500 million down to $380 million to $410 million.
After reaching mid-September highs of $5.55 per share, Gogoro’s stock took a hit last week, which bearish analysts attribute to declining electric scooter sales in Taiwan and disappointing progress in foreign markets. Gogoro is currently trading at $4.10 on Wednesday after market close.
In November last year, the company launched battery-swapping stations in China, operating under the Huan Huan brand, which is a partnership between Gogoro and electric two-wheeler makers Yadea and DCJ. Gogoro also partnered with Hero MotoCorp to launch a battery-swapping network in India, as well as Hero-branded electric two-wheelers based on Gogoro’s technology. Gogoro previously said it plans to launch its first swapping stations in New Delhi by the end of this year, but the company did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for updated guidance.
Gogoro went public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in April. The hype for SPACs is dwindling, with less interest coming from the public markets. Now, a range of EV SPACs are struggling with production issues, inflationary pressures and supply chain bottlenecks that are lowering valuations and throwing up hurdles to liquidity. Recently, Nikola and Lucid Motors, two other EV SPACs, said they’d need to raise more cash to bring their vehicles to market.
Gogoro says the fact it was able to raise its borrowing capacity and secure favorable terms and borrowing rates “in today’s credit-cautious environment” is validation that the company’s partners understand and support Gogoro’s vision and ability to grow.
Progressives cheered Tuesday after the Biden administration announced that Medicare beneficiaries will see their Part B premiums and deductibles decrease in 2023, the first time in more than a decade that seniors and people with disabilities will pay less for health services and medical equipment not covered by Part A than they did the year before.
According to the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the standard monthly premium for Part B enrollees will be $164.90 in 2023, a decrease of $5.20 from 2022. The annual deductible for all recipients will be $226, a decrease of $7 from this year.
As CNNreported: "The reduction, which was signaled earlier this year by Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, comes after a large spike in 2022 premiums. Medicare beneficiaries had to contend with a 14.5% increase in Part B premiums for 2022, which raised the monthly payments for those in the lowest income bracket to $170.10, up from $148.50 in 2021."
Regie.ai, a startup using OpenAI’s GPT-3 text-generating system to create sales and marketing content for brands, today announced that it raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Scale Venture Partners with participation from Foundation Capital, South Park Commons, Day One Ventures and prominent angel investors. The fresh investment comes as VCs see a growing opportunity in AI-powered, copy-generating adtech companies, whose tech promise to save time while potentially increasing personalization.
Regie was founded in 2020 by Matt Millen and Srinath Sridhar. Previously a software engineer at Google and Meta, Sridhar is a data scientist by trade, having developed enterprise-scale AI systems that detect duplicate images and rank search results. Millen formerly was a VP at T-Mobile, leading the national sales teams (e.g., strategic accounts and public sector).
With Regie, Sridhar says he and Millen aimed to create a way for companies to communicate with their customers via channels like email, social media, text, podcasts, online advertising and more. Because companies have so many platforms and mediums at their disposal to speak with customers, he notes, it can be a challenge for content marketers to produce continuously compelling content to reach their customers.
“The way content is getting generated has fundamentally changed,” Sridhar told TechCrunch in an email interview. “Marketers and copywriters working in the enterprise … increasingly [need] to produce and manage content and content workflows at scale.”
Regie uses GPT-3 to power its service — the same GPT-3 that can generate poetry, prose and academic papers. But it’s a “flavor” of GPT-3 fine-tuned on a training data set of roughly 20,000 sales sequences (the series of steps to convert prospects into paying customers) and nearly 100 million sales emails. Also in the mix are custom language systems built by Regie to reflect brands and their messaging, designed to be integrated with existing sale platforms like Outreach, HubSpot, and SalesLoft.
Image Credits: Regie
Lest the systems spew problematic language, Regie says that every system goes through “human curation” and vetting before being released. The startup also claims to train the systems on “inclusive” language and test them for biases, like bias against certain demographic groups.
Customers can use Regie to generate original, optimized-for-search-engines content or create custom sales sequences. The platform also offers blog- and social-media-post-authoring tools for personalizing messages, as well as a Chrome extension that analyzes the “quality” of emails that customers send — and optionally rewrites the text.
“Generative AI is completely disrupting the way content is created today. The biggest competitors of Regie would be the large content authoring and management platforms that will be completely redesigned AI first going forward,” Sridhar said confidently. “For example, Adobe’s suite of products including Acrobat, Illustrator, Photoshop, now Figma as well as Adobe Experience Cloud will start to get outdated as Regie continues to build on an intelligent content creation and management platform for the enterprise.”
More immediately, Regie competes with vendors like Jasper, Phrasee, Copysmith and Copy.ai — all of which tap AI to generate bespoke marketing copy. But Sridhar argues that Regie is a more vertical platform that caters to go-to-market teams in the enterprise while combining text, images and workflows into a single glass pane.
“Generative AI is such a paradigm shift that not only productivity and top-line of companies will go up as a result, but the bottom line will also go down simultaneously. There are very few products that can improve both sides of that financial equation,” Sridhar continued. “So if a company wants to reduce costs because they want to assimilate sales tools, or reduce outsourced writing while simultaneously increasing revenue, Regie can do that. If you are an outsourced marketing agency looking to retain more customers and efficiently generate content at scale, Regie can definitely do that for agencies as well.”
The company currently has more than 70 software-as-a-service customers on annual contracts including AT&T, Sophos, Okta and Crunchbase. Sridhar didn’t reveal revenue, but said that he expects the 25-person company to grow “meaningfully” this year.
“This is a revolutionary new field. And as always, adoption will require educating the users,” Sridhar said. “It is clear to us as practitioners that the world has changed. But it will take time for others to get their hands dirty and convince themselves that this is happening — and that it is a very positive development. So we have to be patient in educating the industry. We also have to show that content quality isn’t compromised and that it can perform better and be maintained more consistently with the strategic application of AI.”
