Yearly Archives: 2020

News: US seed-stage investing flourished during pandemic

• December 24, 2020
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If you didn’t think much about seed in 2020, you’re not alone. Late, huge rounds consumed most of the media’s oxygen, leaving smaller startups to compete for scraps of attention.

As the United States entered its first wave of COVID-19 lockdowns, there were wide expectations in startup land that a reckoning had arrived. But the expected comeuppance of high-burn, high-growth startups fueled by cheap capital provided by venture capitalists raising ever-larger funds, failed to arrive.

Instead, the very opposite came to pass.

Layoffs happened swiftly and aggressively during the early months of the pandemic era. But by the middle of Q2, venture activity had warmed and third quarter dealmaking felt swift and competitive, with some investors describing it as the hottest summer in recent years.

But somewhat lost amongst the splashy megarounds and high-interest IPOs that can dominate the news cycle were seed-stage startups. The raw little companies that represent the grist that will shape itself into the next set of giants.

TechCrunch explored what happened in seed investing to uncover what was missed amidst the storm and fury of late-stage startup activity. According to a TechCrunch analysis of PitchBook data and a survey of venture capitalists, a few trends became clear.

First, the pattern of rising seed-check sizes seen in prior years continued despite the tumultuous business climate. Second, more expensive and larger seed deals were not only caused by excessive capital present in the private markets. Instead, COVID-19 shook up which startups were considered attractive by private investors. And the changeup did not necessarily raise their number.

Let’s dig into the data and see what it can teach us about this wild year. Then we’ll hear from Eniac Ventures’ Nihal Mehta, Freestyle’s Jenny Lefcourt, Pear VC’s Mar Hershenson and Contrary Capital’s Eric Tarczynski about what they saw in 2020 while writing a chunk of the checks that our data encompasses.

The American seed market in 2020

If you didn’t think much about seed in 2020, you’re not alone. Late, huge rounds consumed most of the media’s oxygen, leaving smaller startups to compete for scraps of attention. There was so much late-stage activity — around 90 $100 million or larger rounds in Q3, for example — it was difficult for smaller investments to command attention.

But despite living in the background, the dollars invested into seed-stage startups in the United States had an up-and-down year that was fascinating:

Seed dollar volume fell as Q1 progressed, reaching a 2020 nadir in April, the start of Q2. But as May arrived, the pace at which investors put money into seed-stage startups accelerated, recovering to January levels — which is to say, pre-pandemic — by June. The COVID dip, for seed, then, was a short-term affair.

News: National Grid sees machine learning as the brains behind the utility business of the future

• December 24, 2020
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If the portfolio of a corporate venture capital firm can be taken as a signal for the strategic priorities of their parent companies, then National Grid has high hopes for automation as the future of the utility industry. The heavy emphasis on automation and machine learning from one of the nation’s largest privately held utilities

If the portfolio of a corporate venture capital firm can be taken as a signal for the strategic priorities of their parent companies, then National Grid has high hopes for automation as the future of the utility industry.

The heavy emphasis on automation and machine learning from one of the nation’s largest privately held utilities with a customer base numbering around 20 million people is significant. And a sign of where the industry could be going.

Since its launch, National Grid’s venture firm, National Grid Partners, has invested in 16 startups that featured machine learning at the core of their pitch. Most recently, the company backed AI Dash, which uses machine learning algorithm to analyze satellite images and infer the encroachment of vegetation on National Grid power lines to avoid outages.

Another recent investment, Aperio uses data from sensors monitoring critical infrastructure to predice loss of data quality from degradation or cyberattacks.

Indeed, of the $175 million in investments the firm has made roughly $135 million has been committed to companies leveraging machine learning for their services.

“AI will be critical for the energy industry to achieve aggressive decarbonization and decentralization goals,” Lisa Lambert, the chief technology and innovation officer at National Grid and the founder and president of National Grid Partners.

National Grid started the year off slowly because of the COVID-19 epidemic, but the pace of its investments picked up and the company is on track to hit its investment targets for the year, Lambert said.

Modernization is critical for an industry that still mostly runs on spreadsheets and collective knowledge that’s locked in an aging employee base, with no contingency plans in the event of retirement, Lambert said. It’s that situation that’s compelling National Grid and other utilities to automate more of their business.

“Most companies in the utility sector are trying to automate now for efficiency reasons and cost reasons. Today, most companies have everything written down in manuals; as an industry, we basically still run our networks off spreadsheets, and the skills and experience of the people who run the networks. So we’ve got serious issues if those people retire. Automating [and] digitizing is top of mind for all the utilities we’ve talked to in the Next Grid Alliance.

To date, a lot of the automation work that’s been done has been around basic automation of business processes. But there are new capabilities on the horizon that will push the automation of different activities up the value chain, Lambert said.

“ ML is the next level — predictive maintenance of your assets, delivering for the customer. Uniphore, for example: you’re learning from every interaction you have with your customer, incorporating that into the algorithm, and the next time you meet a customer, you’re going to do better. So that’s the next generation,” Lambert said. “Once everything is digital, you’re learning from those engagements – whether engaging an asset or a human being.”

Lambert sees another source of demand for new machine learning tech in the need for utilities to rapidly decarbonize. The move away from fossil fuels will necessitate entirely new ways of operating and managing a power grid. One where humans are less likely to be in the loop.

“In the next five years, utilities have to get automation and analytics right if they’re going to have any chance at a net-zero world – you’re going to need to run those assets differently,” said Lambert. “Windmills and solar panels are not [part of] traditional distribution networks. A lot of traditional engineers probably don’t think about the need to innovate, because they’re building out the engineering technology that was relevant when assets were built decades ago – whereas all these renewable assets have been built in the era of OT/IT.”

 

News: Five VCs discuss what surprised them the most in 2020

• December 24, 2020
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Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Today is our holiday look-back at the year, bringing not only our own Danny and Natasha and Chris and Alex into the mix, but also five venture capitalists who we got to leave us their

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

Today is our holiday look-back at the year, bringing not only our own Danny and Natasha and Chris and Alex into the mix, but also five venture capitalists who we got to leave us their notes as well. The goal for this episode was to reflect on a year that no one could have ever predicted, but with a specific angle, as always, on venture capital and startups.

We asked about the biggest surprise, non-portfolio companies to watch, and trends they got wrong and right. There was also banter on Zoom investing (Alex came up with Zesting, but we’re taking suggestions if anyone comes up with a better moniker) and startup pricing.

Here’s who we asked to call into our super Fancy Equity Hotline:

• Sarah Kunst, Cleo Capital
• Turner Novak, Gelt
• Lolita Taub, The Community Fund
• Garry Tan, Initialized
• Iris Choi, Floodgate

Thanks to them all for participating, and of course you, our dear Equity listeners, for a blockbuster year for the podcast.

News: The built environment will be one of tech’s next big platforms

• December 24, 2020
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From the beginning, the plan for Sidewalk Labs (a subsidiary of Alphabet and — by extension — a relative of Google) to develop a $1.3 billion tech-enabled real estate project on the Toronto waterfront was controversial. Privacy advocates had justified concerns about the Google-adjacent company’s ability to capture a near-total amount of data from the

From the beginning, the plan for Sidewalk Labs (a subsidiary of Alphabet and — by extension — a relative of Google) to develop a $1.3 billion tech-enabled real estate project on the Toronto waterfront was controversial.

Privacy advocates had justified concerns about the Google-adjacent company’s ability to capture a near-total amount of data from the residents of the development or any city-dweller that wandered into its high-tech panopticon.

But Alphabet, Sidewalk Labs’ leadership and even Canada’s popular prime minister, Justin Trudeau, had high hopes for the project.

“Successful cities around the world are wrestling with the same challenges of growth, from rising costs of living that price out the middle class, to congestion and ever-longer commutes, to the challenges of climate change. Sidewalk Labs scoured the globe for the perfect place to create a district focused on solutions to these pressing challenges, and we found it on Toronto’s Eastern Waterfront — along with the perfect public-sector partner, Waterfront Toronto,” said Sidewalk Labs chief executive Dan Doctoroff, the former deputy mayor of New York, in a statement announcing the launch in 2017. “This will not be a place where we deploy technology for its own sake, but rather one where we use emerging digital tools and the latest in urban design to solve big urban challenges in ways that we hope will inspire cities around the world.”

From Sidewalk Labs’ perspective, the Toronto project would be an ideal laboratory that the company and the city of Toronto could use to explore the utility and efficacy of the latest and greatest new technologies meant to enhance city living and make it more environmentally sustainable.

The company’s stated goal, back in 2017 was “to create a place that encourages innovation around energy, waste and other environmental challenges to protect the planet; a place that provides a range of transportation options that are more affordable, safe and convenient than the private car; a place that embraces adaptable buildings and new construction methods to reduce the cost of housing and retail space; a place where public spaces welcome families to enjoy the outdoors day and night, and in all seasons; a place that is enhanced by digital technology and data without giving up the privacy and security that everyone deserves.”

From a purely engineering perspective, integrating these new technologies into a single site to be a test case made some sense. From a community development perspective, it was a nightmare. Toronto residents began to see the development as little more than a showroom for a slew of privacy-invading innovations that Sidewalk could then spin up into companies — or a space where startup companies could test their tech on a potentially unwitting population.

So when the economic implications of the global COVID-19 pandemic started to become clear back in March of this year, it seemed as good a time as any for Sidewalk Labs to shutter the project.

“[As] unprecedented economic uncertainty has set in around the world and in the Toronto real estate market, it has become too difficult to make the 12-acre project financially viable without sacrificing core parts of the plan we had developed together with Waterfront Toronto to build a truly inclusive, sustainable community,” Doctoroff said in a statement. “And so, after a great deal of deliberation, we concluded that it no longer made sense to proceed with the Quayside project.”

News: Bristol’s Brightpearl raises $33M Series C round led by Sage to boost its platform for retailers

• December 24, 2020
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Brightpearl, which allows retailers to streamline their operations thus boosting sales, has raised $33 million in funding to scale its business. This Series C round was led by Sage, which has put  $23 million into the UK company. Previous backers Cipio Partners, Notion Capital and Verdane also participated, puting in $10 million. The Bristol, UK-based startup

Brightpearl, which allows retailers to streamline their operations thus boosting sales, has raised $33 million in funding to scale its business. This Series C round was led by Sage, which has put  $23 million into the UK company. Previous backers Cipio Partners, Notion Capital and Verdane also participated, puting in $10 million.

The Bristol, UK-based startup has a platform for financial management, CRM, fulfillment, inventory and sales order management, purchasing and supplier management, warehousing and logistics.

Sage now takes a seat on Brightpearl’s board. In a statement it said: “Together, Sage and Brightpearl will help retail and e-commerce customers take advantage of best-of-breed cloud finance and retail management solutions, supporting them on their digital journey. The partnership with Brightpearl is consistent with Sage’s broader strategy to invest in complementary high growth cloud-based software applications.” Brightpearl has existing partnerships with Shopify, eBay and Amazon.

Derek O’Carroll, the chief executive of Brightpearl, said in a statement: “We are delighted to build this new relationship with Sage to further support our retail customers and accelerate the strong presence that Sage and Brightpearl have in the UK and US. Brightpearl’s solution brings significant benefits by automating retail processes so global merchants can save time and deliver outstanding and rapid end-to-end customer experiences.”

News: China’s e-commerce titan Alibaba hit with antitrust probe

• December 24, 2020
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China’s top market watchdog has begun a probe into Alibaba over alleged anti-competition practices at the e-commerce firm, the latest of Beijing’s efforts to curb the country’s ever-expanding internet titans. The State Administration for Market Regulation said Thursday in a brief statement that it is investigating Alibaba over its “choosing one from two” policy, in

China’s top market watchdog has begun a probe into Alibaba over alleged anti-competition practices at the e-commerce firm, the latest of Beijing’s efforts to curb the country’s ever-expanding internet titans.

The State Administration for Market Regulation said Thursday in a brief statement that it is investigating Alibaba over its “choosing one from two” policy, in which merchants are forced to sell exclusively on Alibaba and skip rivaling platforms JD.com and Pinduoduo.

Alibaba cannot be immediately reached for comment.

On the same day, state-backed Xinhua reported that Ant Group, Alibaba’s affiliate, has been summoned by a group of finance authorities to discuss its “compliance” work. Ant, which works as an intermediary for financial services and customers, has pledged to take measures to curb debt risks after Chinese authorities abruptly called off its colossal initial public offering last month.

“Today, Ant Group received a meeting notice from regulators. We will seriously study and strictly comply with all regulatory requirements and commit full efforts to fulfill all related work,” the firm said in a statement.

More to come…

News: Google reportedly tightens grip on research into ‘sensitive topics’

• December 24, 2020
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Google is currently under fire for apparently pushing out a researcher whose work warned of bias in AI, and now a report from Reuters says others doing such work at the company have been asked to “strike a positive tone” and undergo additional reviews for research touching on “sensitive topics.” Reuters, citing researchers at the

Google is currently under fire for apparently pushing out a researcher whose work warned of bias in AI, and now a report from Reuters says others doing such work at the company have been asked to “strike a positive tone” and undergo additional reviews for research touching on “sensitive topics.”

Reuters, citing researchers at the company and internal documents, reports that Google has implemented new controls in the last year, including an extra round of inspection for papers on certain topics and seemingly an increase in executive interference at later stages of research.

That certainly appears to have been the case with Dr. Timnit Gebru, an AI researcher at Google whose resignation seems to have been forced under confusing circumstances, following friction between her and management over work that her team was doing. (I’ve asked Gebru and Google for comment on the story.)

Among the “sensitive” topics, according to an internal webpage seen by Reuters, are: “the oil industry, China, Iran, Israel, COVID-19, home security, insurance, location data, religion, self-driving vehicles, telecoms and systems that recommend or personalize web content.”

It’s clear that many of these issues are indeed sensitive, though advising researchers to take care when addressing them seems superfluous considering the existence of ethics boards, peer review, and other ordinary controls on research. One researcher who spoke to Reuters warned that this sort of top-down interference from Google could soon get “into a serious problem of censorship.”

This is in addition to the fundamental issue of vital research being conducted under the auspices of a company for which it may or may not be in their interest to publish. Naturally large private research institutions have existed for nearly as long as organized scientific endeavor, but companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft and others exert an enormous influence over fields like AI and have good reason to avoid criticism of lucrative technologies while shouting their usefulness from every rooftop.

News: Gift Guide: Last-minute subscriptions to keep the gifts going all year

• December 23, 2020
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SURPRISE! It’s December 23rd. How? Because time doesn’t make sense anymore and last week was really a month ago and April was yesterday.

Welcome to TechCrunch’s 2020 Holiday Gift Guide! Need help with gift ideas? We’re here to help! You can find our other guides right here.

SURPRISE! It’s December 23rd. How? Because time doesn’t make sense anymore and last week was really a month ago and April was yesterday.

Last minute shopping is always pretty dreadful, but this year particularly so. No one should be dropping their social distancing practices just to battle crowds for a twice-returned air fryer. Online retailers, meanwhile, have been warning of shipping delays since before December even started.

Fortunately, subscription boxes and services exist. They’re easy to order at the very last minute, easy to give from afar, and they’ll spread the gifting fun out over weeks and months.

Need some ideas? Here’s some inspiration:

For the puzzle/escape room fan: Hunt A Killer

THERE’S BEEN A (fictional) MURDER!

You’ve been contacted by a detective who needs your help, and your job is to figure out whodunnit through the process of elimination. Each month brings another slice of the story via a box filled with puzzles, newspaper clippings, audio recordings, props, and other clues that lead you to the criminal.

I’ve done a few of these sets with family, and we’ve very much enjoyed them as a way to lose ourselves in a fictional world for a few hours. It’s paced in such a way that no single box is a commitment of more than an hour or two, so you can just drop back in whenever you’ve got the time. You can also expedite the next month’s box if you don’t want to wait, which is great.

Price: Varies, but the 6-month prepay option gets you one full game for around $165.

For the crafters and scrapbookers: Pipsticks

Got a friend whose childhood love for stickers never faded? Pipsticks will send them a bundle of (really, really nice!) stickers each month. They’ve got a “Kids Club” plan meant specifically for the little ones, or a “Pro Club” pack for anyone looking to buff up their journaling/scrapbooking/crafting sticker collection.

Price: Starts at $12 per month

For the dog owners: Barkbox

Spoiling dogs is fun. Barkbox brings’em a constant rotation of treats and toys, all tailored around each month’s theme, like “Dogsgiving” in November or “Lick or Treat” back in October. Boxes are tailored to the size of the dog, and they’ve got a slightly pricier “Super Chewer” box with ultra-durable picks for dogs that chomp right through anything you put in front of them.

Price: Starts at $23 per month

For the highly caffeinated: Coffee subscriptions

There’s a whole world of coffee to explore out there, but it’s way too easy to pick up whatever bag looks pretty and stick with that brand until the end of time. Got a friend thats been buying the same red plastic tub of grounds for ten years? Encourage them to branch out a bit!

There are so, so many options for coffee subscriptions, but a few that our team has tried and can vouch for are: YesPlz, Trade Coffee, Mistobox, Red Bay Coffee, and Angel’s Cup

Price: Varies

For the one who wants to read more: Book of the Month

They vet the books, you read them. Each month you pick from one of five genre-spanning options and it’s dropped at your door. Running short on time and haven’t finished last month’s pick, or just not into this month’s selections? You can skip a month quite easily.

Price: Starts at $50 for 3 months of books

For the new human (and their parents): Lovevery Play Kits

Got a friend with a newborn and have no idea what to get them? Lovevery takes the subscription box concept and breaks it down month-by-month for the first stretch of a kid’s life. The newborn box, for example, focuses on high contrast items and things that’ll make tummy time a little more fun, whereas later boxes bring in toys that help with finer motor skills like stacking and grasping. They also offer boxes for toddlers, introducing concepts like rhyming, matching, and counting. The boxes are a bit pricey, but the company makes huge efforts to keep things sustainable and baby safe.

Price: Around $80 per box

For the TechCrunch reader: Extra Crunch

Shameless plug time! Extra Crunch is our membership program, where we’re able to go deep on topics like hiring, building a company, and picking the right investors. We regularly host Extra Crunch Live sessions where we chat with some of the biggest names in the industry and field questions from the audience, and our EC-1 series gives readers a rare view into the formation and strategies of some of the fastest growing companies around. We just launched a gifting option — check it out here!

Price: $75 per year

For the one with good handwriting: Maido in a Box

My handwriting is a joke, but I still absolutely love a good pen. One of my favorite stores to just wander around — back when that was a thing we could do — is Maido. Owned by the Japanese bookstore chain Kinokuniya, Maido offers up a carefully curated collection of pens and stationary in a way thats exhaustive but not overwhelming.

With the pandemic greatly limiting aimless retail store exploration, Maido has started producing monthly themed boxes where they bring their best goods to you. I’ve ordered a few of these so far, and each box has been just wonderful. If you’ve got a friend that has ever spent twenty minutes talking about their favorite pen, this one’s for them.

Price: $35

For the would-be green thumb: Succulent Studios

I love plants! Sadly, I also tend to kill plants pretty much immediately. I was very proud this year to grow a whole FOUR grape tomatoes before my tomato plant fell over and died. The hell am I supposed to do with four grape tomatoes?

As a result, our house and yard are filled with all of the succulents we can find — they’re super pretty and, thankfully, incredibly hard to kill. A lot of ours came from Succulent Studio, a service that does a wonderful job of finding new plants (with fun names like Lime Sparkler and Superbum) and delivering them safely to your door. If one does happen get beat up en route, they’ll teach you how to revive it… or, failing that, they’ll replace it.

Price: $16.50 for 2 plants a month

For the folks who like wine: MORE WINE

As with coffee, there are SO many different wines to try and so many different services that want to help you try them all. It’s tough to narrow it down, but there are plenty of services with proven track records. Winc has you take a quiz that aims to analyze your tastes and pair accordingly. Cellars Wine Club lets you pick a theme (Imports? Sweet? Sparkling? Reds only?) Vinebox sends wine by the glass in cute little test tube lookin’ vials so you don’t have to commit to a whole bottle. TechCrunch’s own Darrell Etherington likes Gargoyle Wine Club, with the caveat that it only ships to Canada.

Price: Varies, but generally around $60-80 per box.

For the traveller who can’t travel right now: Try the World

One of my favorite parts about traveling is wandering into a local grocery store and trying all of the regional staples — all of the snacks, candies, and other goodies I’ve never seen at home. That sort of exploration isn’t super feasible in 2020, a year when many of us haven’t even left our own state.

As its name suggests, Try the World brings all of those goodies from around the globe straight to your doorstep. I’ve had boxes contain regional-favorite hot sauces, teas, spices, mustards, and more. The only catch? If you find something you love, finding where to buy more can be tough.

Price: starts at $40 a month

For the snazzy dresser: Gentleman’s Box

As written by our Editorial Director Henry Pickavet, who I can confirm is often dressed much more nicely than me:

I consider myself to be a fairly decent dresser. I tend to lean on ties, tie bars, pocket squares and the like to spruce up a button-down or a gray jacket.

But the choices! The sheer number of accessories, color schemes and levels of fancy can be overwhelming. Which is why I was pretty excited when I came across Gentlemen’s Box.

Each month, I receive a small box that includes five to six items: a tie and a pair of socks, as well as a combination of a random mix of a number of other things that alternate from month to month, such as a tie bar, cuff links, a lapel pin and a pocket square. I’ve also received a few watches, a few pairs of sunglasses, a wallet, a tray for odds and ends, and money clip. Fancy, right?

Each box also comes with an editorially curated booklet that includes details about how the selections of the month fit together, as well as pictures from customers showing their wares in the wild. I look forward to the end of the pandemic for a number of reasons, and on that list is to be able to go out again and get my dapper on.

Price: Depending on what you’re looking for, ranges from $35 to $100+ per box

For the gamer: an all-you-can-play service on their platform of choice

Why give’m just one game when you can give them access to tons of games? A lot of the big names in gaming all have Netflix-style on-demand games services now, and they’re actually pretty dang solid. Sony has PS Now (check out Horizon Zero Dawn, Hollow Knight, and the God of War series if you haven’t already), and Microsoft has Xbox Game Pass (Gears 5! MotoGP 20! Celeste!). Even Apple is getting in on the fun with Apple Arcade — if you dive in there, be sure to check out Beyond a Steel Sky, one of our favorite things of 2020.

Price: PS Now and Xbox Game Pass are both $10 per month (but cheaper if you prepay), while Apple Arcade is $5 per month

 

News: Daily Crunch: Telegram prepares to monetize

• December 23, 2020
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Telegram will introduce ads, TikTok’s parent company is moving into drug discovery and President Trump continues his battle against Section 230. This is your Daily Crunch for December 23, 2020. The big story: Telegram prepares to monetize Telegram founder Pavel Durov said the messaging app will introduce advertising next year on public one-to-many channels. Durov

Telegram will introduce ads, TikTok’s parent company is moving into drug discovery and President Trump continues his battle against Section 230. This is your Daily Crunch for December 23, 2020.

The big story: Telegram prepares to monetize

Telegram founder Pavel Durov said the messaging app will introduce advertising next year on public one-to-many channels. Durov wrote on his Telegram channel the ad platform will be “one that is user-friendly, respects privacy and allows us to cover the costs of server and traffic.”

He also pointed to premium stickers as another way that Telegram could monetize, while emphasizing that existing features will remain free and that he does not support showing ads in private chats.

In addition to discussing the company’s monetization plans, Durov said that Telegram is “approaching” 500 million users.

The tech giants

Nikola’s stock crashes after announcing cancelation of contract with Republic Services for 2,500 garbage trucks — This is the latest deal to unravel for Nikola as it tries to patch up following recent devastating reports.

TikTok parent ByteDance hiring for AI drug discovery team — “We are looking for candidates to join our team and conduct cutting-edge research in drug discovery and manufacturing powered by AI algorithms,” the company said in a job posting.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Chinese autonomous driving startup WeRide bags $200M in funding — The new funding will see WeRide joining hands with Yutong, a 57-year-old company, to make autonomous-driving minibuses and city buses.

Voyager Space Holdings to acquire majority stake in commercial space leader Nanoracks — Nanoracks provided the Bishop Airlock that was installed on the International Space Station.

Honk introduces a real-time, ephemeral messaging app aimed at Gen Z — Instead of sending texts off into the void and hoping for a response, friends on Honk communicate via messages that are shown live as you type.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Dear Sophie: What’s ahead for US immigration in 2021? — Sophie Alcorn weighs in on what’s next for U.S. visas and green cards.

Looking ahead after 2020’s epic M&A spree — This year, four deals involving chip companies totaled over $100 billion on their own.

Heading into 2021: Venture fundraising, liquidity and the everything bubble — Alex Wilhelm’s final column of the year.

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

Trump vetoes major defense bill, citing Section 230 — President Trump has vetoed the $740 million National Defense Authorization Act, a major bill that allocates military funds each year.

XRP cryptocurrency crashes following announcement of SEC suit against Ripple — The XRP token’s value has declined more than 42% in the past 24 hours.

TaskRabbit is resetting customer passwords after finding ‘suspicious activity’ on its network — The company later confirmed the activity was a credential stuffing attack, where existing sets of exposed or breached usernames and passwords are matched against different websites to access accounts.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

News: Trump vetoes major defense bill, citing Section 230

• December 23, 2020
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Following through on his previous threat, President Trump has vetoed the $740 million National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a major bill that allocates military funds each year. In tweets early this month, Trump said he would sink the NDAA if it wasn’t altered to include language “terminating” Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, an

Following through on his previous threat, President Trump has vetoed the $740 million National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a major bill that allocates military funds each year.

In tweets early this month, Trump said he would sink the NDAA if it wasn’t altered to include language “terminating” Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, an essential and previously obscure internet law that the president has had in his crosshairs for the better part of the year.

“Your failure to terminate the very dangerous national security risk of Section 230 will make our intelligence virtually impossible to conduct without everyone knowing what we are doing at every step,” Trump said in a statement on the veto. It’s not clear what the president meant, or what he was referring to in criticizing the military funding bill as a “‘gift’ to China and Russia.”

The president cited “bipartisan calls” for a Section 230 repeal in his decision, in spite of the NDAA’s overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress and the fact that Section 230 reform was never seriously considered in the unrelated military spending bill. Trump also claimed that Section 230 “facilitates the spread of foreign disinformation online,” a threat that the president, who frequently spreads dangerous misinformation online, has historically expressed little concern for.

Section 230 became a hot topic in 2020 as lawmakers, states and the federal government made major moves to rein in the tech industry’s biggest, most powerful companies. The law protects internet companies from liability for the content they host and is widely credited with opening the doors for internet companies big and small to grow their online business over the years.

Looking for leverage over tech platforms that policed his content, Trump zeroed in on Section 230 — and Twitter in particular — early this year. In May, the president signed an unusual but largely toothless executive order attacking tech’s liability shield. “The choices Twitter makes when it chooses to edit, blacklist, shadowban are editorial decisions, pure and simple,” Trump said when he signed the order.

Trump’s position on Section 230 and the NDAA was never particularly tenable. While the NDAA is a massive piece of legislation, the kind that rolls up many disparate things, altering it to somehow repeal Section 230 was never on the table. It’s also hard to overstate the unpopularity of the position the president has staked out here. The NDAA funds many parts of the military beyond combat and this year’s bill includes including pay raises for the troops and additional health support for Vietnam veterans.

Trump’s views on Section 230 are similarly extreme, even relative to many other members of his party. While there is support for changing Section 230 on both sides of the aisle, Congress is far from a consensus on what needs to change and a complex bipartisan reform effort is ongoing. Throwing Section 230 out altogether is very unlikely to be the end result of whatever kind of reform Congress comes up with in the coming year.

The House plans to convene on Monday to override the president’s exercise of veto powers, an effort that would require a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress. The House approved the NDAA earlier this month with a veto-proof 355-78 vote, including broad support from the vast majority of House Republicans. The Senate passed the legislation along to the president with a similarly strong bipartisan 84-13 vote in favor of the bill on December 11.