Monthly Archives: March 2021

News: Canoo combines work and play in its new electric pickup truck

• March 11, 2021
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Los-Angeles based startup Canoo revealed its newest — and now third — electric vehicle, a pickup truck that does away with the sharp corners and huge engine housing of both comparable EV trucks and legacy diesel pickups and is aimed at both commercial customers and weekend warrior-minded consumers. The truck, which Canoo says is the

Los-Angeles based startup Canoo revealed its newest — and now third — electric vehicle, a pickup truck that does away with the sharp corners and huge engine housing of both comparable EV trucks and legacy diesel pickups and is aimed at both commercial customers and weekend warrior-minded consumers.

The truck, which Canoo says is the most space efficient on the market, was leaked Wednesday evening in advance of an official reveal set for Thursday afternoon.

The three Canoo vehicles all share a design language. But the important part, and the cornerstone of Canoo, is the foundation. Canoo uses the same platform architecture on all of its vehicles, only altering the cabins, or top hats, with each new model. Canoo’s proprietary platform is like a thin, flat skateboard that houses the critical components of the EV powertrain. The company said this type of design gives its truck a similar flatbed size as a best-selling traditional pickup.

The truck will open for preorders in the second quarter of 2021, with deliveries set to begin as early as 2023.

The truck clocks in at 184 inches in length (in comparison, Tesla’s Cybertruck is 231 inches long and the Rivian R1T is 218 inches). But where Canoo’s model stands out is in its pull-out bed extension, which stretches the truck bed from six feet to a fully enclosed eight feet, and extends the length to a more competitive 213 inches. It also boasts up to 600 horsepower and has a battery range of more than 200 miles. 

Like Canoo’s other vehicles, the pickup has all kinds of options to change it. There are dividers for the truck bed, for instance as well as a camper shell that can turn it the vehicle into a van. There’s even a rooftop tent — at least in its photos — which suggested that Canoo is thinking about an accessories business to go along with its vehicles.

There’s also cargo storage area that has a fold down work table and additional electrical outlets, side tables that can flip down, a hidden step to the truck bed that contains even more storage, and a roof rack.

“Our pickup truck is as strong as the toughest trucks out there and is designed to be exponentially more productive,” Canoo executive chairman Tony Aquila said in a statement. “This truck works for you. We made accessories for people who use trucks – on the job, weekends, adventure. You name it, we did it because it’s your platform and she’s bad to the bone.”

Last December, Canoo went public through a merger agreement with special acquisition company Hennessy Capital Acquisition Corp., with a market valuation of $2.4 billion. It joined a string of EV automakers and charging infrastructure companies that Fisker Inc., Nikola Corp. and Lordstown Motors in forgoing a traditional IPO on the road to a NASDAQ listing.

 

News: Twitter Spaces to launch publicly next month, may include Spaces-only tweets

• March 11, 2021
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Twitter Spaces, the social network’s Clubhouse rival, is working towards a public launch in April, the company announced in comments made in a public Twitter Space audio room on Wednesday. According to the Space’s host, Alex aka @akkhosh on Twitter, the company intends to make it possible for anyone to host a Twitter Spaces room

Twitter Spaces, the social network’s Clubhouse rival, is working towards a public launch in April, the company announced in comments made in a public Twitter Space audio room on Wednesday. According to the Space’s host, Alex aka @akkhosh on Twitter, the company intends to make it possible for anyone to host a Twitter Spaces room of their own sometime in April.

“So, very soon,” the Twitter employee noted. “That’s where we’re headed.”

TechCrunch immediately reached out to Twitter to fact check his statements on Wednesday. Given that, in the context a broader conversation about a beta product that just rolled out to testers on Android a week ago — and for joining Spaces only — his comments could have been interpreted to mean that Android beta testers would also gain the ability to host their own Spaces by April.

That would still be a fairly quick pace of development for a product that only launched into public testing late last year.

However, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed that we can take Alex at his word.

“Can absolutely confirm that he meant everyone on Android and iOS, not just beta testers,” the spokesperson told TechCrunch. In other words, the company is making Twitter Spaces available to the public user base in a matter of weeks.

The speed of development now taking place at Twitter has been notable. In just a few months, Twitter has launched its audio chat room feature to public testing and has quickly iterated on the product to tweak elements like it titles and descriptions, scheduling options, support for co-hosts and moderators, guest lists, and more. When forthcoming changes are announced — like Android support, co-hosts, or scheduling options, for example — they’re promised to roll out in a matter of weeks, not months.

A few other ideas were also discussed during yesterday’s Twitter Spaces session. The company said it’s considering support for using music in Spaces and thinking about better ways of integrating tweets.

For the former, the goal would be to offer Spaces’ hosts some sort of welcoming music they could play for their listeners. The company has also discussed the idea of offering users the way to tweet inside the Space directly, where tweets would not be displayed on your public timeline. There are various ways this could be accomplished — for example, by offering an ephemeral, fleeting chat room inside the Space, similar to Twitter’s older live video app Periscope, or by offering a dedicated timeline just for the Space itself, which could be more complex to build.

Of course, there are some concerns with rushing a product like Twitter Spaces to launch. In Spaces’ competitor, Clubhouse, users are still regularly reporting dealing with verbal abuse and bad actors who are looking to take advantage of the platform as a place to hustle or scam people.

It’s less clear to what extent Twitter Spaces has been impacted by similar issues, as its product is still non-public. But one Twitter Spaces user who joined during yesterday’s session talked about how their recent Twitter Space was hijacked by a fan group who attempted to take over the discussion. While these particular hijackers would be placated by having the ability to run their own Spaces session, it’s easy to imagine how a coordinated effort to derail a Twitter Space could still be a problem in the weeks to come.

Twitter, in the early days of Spaces, had spoken publicly about how it would first ensure that “women and those from marginalized backgrounds” — a group of people who “are disproportionately impacted by abuse and harm on the platform,” a product designer had said — would be the first testers of the product to ensure it’s built with safety in mind. But in the weeks that have followed, there has not been as much said about Twitter Space’s anti-abuse measures or policies, as the team’s focus has been directed more on the product itself, and its various bells and whistles.

Even when taking the time to speak to analysts and investors or sit down for interviews, Twitter execs and product leaders have tended to gloss over why it keeps building new tools — like its Stories feature Fleets and now, Spaces — to encourage conversations from those who are too afraid to tweet.

The fact is that many are afraid because Twitter has not yet successfully made its platform a place where users aren’t trolled, abused, or attacked — for sometimes even the most benign statements or missteps.

One feature that could potentially help protect users by holding abusers accountable is recording Spaces.  Twitter earlier said it aims to build in a way to natively record Spaces conversations. When on the record, fewer people may be willing to speak abusively, perhaps. That could encourage more thoughtful conversations but could still potentially scare other users off from trying the product.

Meanwhile, the jury is still out on Twitter Spaces and Clubhouse’s long-term potential. There’s a question as to whether some of these platforms will see dwindling usage when the world re-opens as the pandemic ends and the conference and networking circuits heat back up. In that light, Twitter Spaces may end up having more long-term staying power as it’s connected to Twitter’s broader product and plans to make its platform a place for creators to organize, and eventually monetize their fan bases.

News: Energy Impact Partners has set up an index for climate tech… and it’s crushing the overall market

• March 11, 2021
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Given the deluge of climate focused companies flooding public markets, it’s getting hard to keep track of who’s doing what, where they’re traded and how they’re performing. That’s why the folks at Energy Impact Partners have set up an index tracking tech companies that are focused on sustainability, energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Given the deluge of climate focused companies flooding public markets, it’s getting hard to keep track of who’s doing what, where they’re traded and how they’re performing. That’s why the folks at Energy Impact Partners have set up an index tracking tech companies that are focused on sustainability, energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

For the past few months the firm, whose investors include some of the largest energy consumers and utilities in the world, has been working on setting up the index of representative climate tech offerings that are available on public markets and discovered one thing — these companies are crushing returns compared to the overall market.

Since the beginning of 2020, EIP Climate Index has outperformed NASDAQ by approximately 2.8 times — it’s up 127% compared to 45% for the NASDAQ. Of the companies on the list, about 20 out of the 27 companies are new offerings that have been public less than a year and have outperformed NASDAQ during that period. About16 of them are up over 100% during that time. That’s true even with the overall index down about 20 percent from its January peaks.

The index isn’t actually available for public investment, it’s an educational tool more than anything else, but it does show the breadth of companies working on climate-related solutions and reveals the overwhelming appetite of public market investors to back these companies.

“There’s been a really incredibly positive run in the climate tech run in the public markets and not just from SPACs,” said Shayle Kann, a partner at Energy Impact Partners. “Part of our motivation for creating this climate tech index let’s see if we can put together as diverse a group of companies as possible.”

Included in the EIP index are companies like Beyond Meat, which is a sustainability darling, and businesses that are a bit longer in the tooth like hydrogen fuel cell companies Ballard Power and Bloom Energy. The companies run the gamut from electric storage to renewable energy production, to vehicle charging and infrastructure to alternative protein providers.

“The idea was, how was the sector, if you include all this stuff, performing as a whole. We created this index and tried to be inclusive. It has been dramatically outperforming the market.”

While the EIP list is intended to be informative, there’s no reason someone couldn’t take this index and turn it into an exchange traded fund for the industry. Most of the ETFs that are currently on the market are focused narrowly on energy production, or infrastructure, this index is potentially the first to track the broadly diversified world of companies focused on mitigating the impacts of climate change and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

There are even additive manufacturers in the mix like Desktop Metal, which Kann said had a huge climate component to its technology.

“Additive manufacturing has a fairly strong climate case in reduced waste, reduced transportation, electrification of the manufacturing process,” Kann said. 

It’s also a signal that early stage private investors can take note of too, said Kann.

“It provides a broader pathway to public markets. The companies that see their share prices run up here. What it suggests for us and for everybody else in this venture capital world is the exit pathways are improved when this index does well,” he said. 

 

News: ServiceNow adds new no-code capabilities

• March 11, 2021
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As we’ve made our way through this pandemic, it has forced businesses to rethink and accelerate trends. One such trend is the movement to no-code tools to allow line-of-business users to create apps and workflows without engineering help. To help answer that demand, ServiceNow released a couple of new tools today as part of their

As we’ve made our way through this pandemic, it has forced businesses to rethink and accelerate trends. One such trend is the movement to no-code tools to allow line-of-business users to create apps and workflows without engineering help. To help answer that demand, ServiceNow released a couple of new tools today as part of their latest release.

Dave Wright, the chief innovation officer at ServiceNow, says that COVID has forced more teams to work in a distributed fashion, and that has in turn has advanced the idea of putting software building into the hands of every employee.

“So because people haven’t had the same support networks and are distributed, you need to be able to produce software that has a consumer grade feel to it. And if you could get that in place, then you can get people to use the system. If you get people to use the system, then you start to get better employee productivity and employee engagement,” Wright explained.

This has typically revolved around the three main areas of focus on the ServiceNow platform — customer service, IT and HR — but in order to step outside those three categories, the company has decided to develop a new area called Creator Workflows, which are designed to help workers build new workflows suited to their needs.

The company has come up with a couple of new tools to help these Creators: AppEngine Studio and AppEngine Templates, which work together to help these folks build these no-code workflows wherever they work across an organization.

AppEngine studio provides the main development environment where users can drag and drop the components they need to build workflows that make sense for them. The templates take that ease of use a step further by providing a framework for some common tasks.

The new release also incorporates a couple of recent acquisitions: Loom Systems and Attivio. The company has taken the latter and repurposed it to be a platform-wide search tool called AI Search.

“It allows you to deliver contextualized consumer grade results. So it means that we can personalize the results that you get from a search back to you so that it’s more relevant to you and more focused on giving you that context that you really need to make sure you get actionable information,” he said.

Another company that they purchased was Loom Systems, which gave the company an AIOps component and the ability to inject that AI across the platform. Gab Menachem, who was CEO and co-founder at Loom prior to the acquisition, says the process of becoming part of ServiceNow has been smooth.

“Vendors in this space find themselves kind of giving customers a science project. In ServiceNow the whole focus of this year has been to incorporate [Loom] into the workflow and make work flow naturally, so that employee productivity would be boosted, and the engagement will be high. And that’s what we focus on, and I think it was a really easy transition into a big company because it just made all of our customers a lot happier,” Menachem said.

This new tooling is available starting today.

News: Spain agrees on labor reform that will recognize delivery platform riders as employees

• March 11, 2021
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Spain’s government has reached an agreement with trade unions and business associations over labor reforms that will see delivery platform couriers recognized as employees, it said today. Once such a law is passed, the development could have major ramifications for platforms operating in the market — which include the likes of Deliveroo, Glovo and UberEats,

Spain’s government has reached an agreement with trade unions and business associations over labor reforms that will see delivery platform couriers recognized as employees, it said today.

Once such a law is passed, the development could have major ramifications for platforms operating in the market — which include the likes of Deliveroo, Glovo and UberEats, to name a few.

“The Ministry of Labor and Social Economy, the trade union organizations CCOO and UGT and the business organizations CEOE and CEPYME have reached an agreement to establish the employment status of workers dedicated to the delivery or distribution of any consumer product or merchandise through platforms digital,” the ministry said in a statement (which we’ve translated from Spanish)

“The agreement recognizes the presumption of employment of workers who provide services through digital delivery platforms, in line with the Supreme Court ruling,” it added.

“The presumption of employment is recognized for workers who provide paid distribution services through companies that manage this work through algorithmic management of the service or working conditions, through a digital platform.”

 

Agreement on the reform means the government can now start to move forward with the legislative process after many months negotiating on exactly how to change labor laws.

The timing looks especially interesting as the European Union is also considering how to improve conditions for gig workers more broadly — so Spain’s plan to legislate, ahead of other EU countries, to recognize a subset of gig workers as employees could be influential in shaping wider regional policy.

Wider reforms in Spain aimed at supporting growth of digital business also come with a strong social inclusion component, with the government saying no one should be left behind in a drive to modernize.

The labor reform agreement follows a number of legal challenges in Spain in recent years over the classification of delivery riders. There have been varying outcomes in the courts but last year Spain’s Supreme Court ruled against homegrown delivery platform, Glovo, in a case relating to the employment classification of a courier — putting a stamp of finality on the matter as it also declined to refer questions to Europe’s top court.

Delivery platforms in the market have suggested the impact of the planned reform could result in thousands of couriers losing their source of income.

Up to 30,000 couriers are reported to provide services on delivery platforms in Spain.

There have also been accusations that platforms are being unfairly singled out as a politically easier target vs other more established industries which also rely on labor provided by ‘autónomos‘ (self-employed) workers.

However delivery startups have been less vocal about what a legal requirement to put couriers on the payroll would mean for their business model — or, indeed, their (ongoing) quest for profitability.

Responding to news of Spain’s labor reform agreement, Mark Tluszcz, CEO at Mangrove Capital Partners — who has been a long time critic of the gig platform business model — told TechCrunch: “We have long taken the view that gig platforms would have to go through significant structural changes driven by individual countries’ laws. Unless gig workers are recognized as employees, we risk creating a subclass of workers that don’t have adequate rights or social coverage. The pandemic has clearly illustrated the need to ensure all workers have protections and it is increasingly difficult for gig platforms to argue otherwise.”

Workers must see algorithmic workings

In an interesting additional component to the reform agreement announced today, the government said the incoming legislation will require that workers’ legal representatives are informed of the criteria powering any algorithms or AI systems that are used to manage them and which may affect their working conditions.

Its statement specifies that this includes algorithmic systems that are related to access to employment and for any rating systems that monitor performance or profile workers.

This component looks like it’s taking inspiration from a number of recent legal challenges in Europe which have focused on ride-hailing platforms’ algorithmic management and drives’ access to data the platforms hold on them.

James Farrer, a former Uber driver who successfully challenged the company’s employment classification in the UK — where the Supreme Court recently held that the challenging drivers are workers — and who is also involved in the more recent algorithm and data access challenges, has set up a not-for-profit with the aim of establishing a data trust for drivers for the purpose of collective bargaining.

Spain’s unions appear to be taking a similar tack by pushing for access to the algorithmic rules that are used to manage couriers as a tool to tackle the power asymmetry between platforms and workers.

A spokesperson for Uber sent us this statement in response to the Spanish government’s announcement:

“Over the past few weeks, thousands of couriers across the country have come together to stand against this proposed regulation that would deprive them from the independence they value most. At Uber, we are fully committed to raising the standard of work and giving independent workers more benefits while preserving flexibility and control. We want to work with all relevant parties across Spain to improve independent work, instead of eliminating it.”

Deliveroo also sent us this statement:

“This proposal goes against the interests of riders who value flexible work, restaurants who benefit from delivery services and customers who value on-demand delivery. Thousands of riders who took to the streets to protest their desire to remain self-employed have had their voices ignored.

“Delivery platforms have put forward constructive proposals to enable riders to work flexibly with additional security and have warned that forced reclassification will lead to less work for riders, will hurt the restaurant sector and will restrict the areas where platforms can operate. Unfortunately these messages have also been overlooked.

“Nothing has been finalised and we will continue to argue that the Government should provide riders with flexibility and security, which is what they want. We will continue to engage with the Spanish Government to seek alternative ways forward. We urge the Government to listen to riders and urgently think again.”

Glovo declined to make a statement at this time.

In recent weeks, Uber has been lobbying for deregulation for platform workers in Europe ahead of the EU’s consultation process on improving gig work — seeing the possibility of a pan-EU framework as an opportunity to reshape regional employment rules to better mesh with modern working patterns. However the move has led to criticism that it’s trying to lower EU standards.

 

News: Happening today: Attend TechCrunch’s free Miami meetup to hear how to raise money from Miami investors

• March 11, 2021
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In just a few hours, we’re going to (virtually) meet up in the Magic City, Miami. Since we first let you know about our new Spotlight series, we’ve gotten a ton of registrations and some amazing submissions for our pitch-off. The small event features three segments: networking, a pitch-off, and a fireside chat with Rebecca

In just a few hours, we’re going to (virtually) meet up in the Magic City, Miami. Since we first let you know about our new Spotlight series, we’ve gotten a ton of registrations and some amazing submissions for our pitch-off.

The small event features three segments: networking, a pitch-off, and a fireside chat with Rebecca Danta, Managing Director of Miami Angels, and Brian Brackeen, General Partner of Lightship Capital. Everyone is welcome to attend today’s event, but it’s specifically programmed to help and highlight those in the Miami region.

Register here. It’s free.

Meet Our TechCrunch City Spotlight: Miami Pitch-Off Companies and Judges

We had to go through some fantastic submissions to get the five that will pitch their companies to our judges today. We think you’ll agree that Miami’s best have come out in full force.

First, let’s meet the companies:

• Evan Leaphart will be presenting his unique approach to helping kids learn how real-life actions lead to financial consequences with Kiddie Kredit
• Lacey Kaelani has been a casting pro for years. How are things still done through Craigslist ads and hacked together databases? No idea. Casting Depot aims to solve that problem.
• Samella Watson, founder of Sebiya, will remind us that when travelling where you stay is more than just a place to sleep.
• Dan Saltman has seen people from all walks of life try to handle the footprint that social media leaves in their wake. Sometimes, you want to start over. Redact is the tool to do it with.
• D Marie Thompson has a very personal story when it comes to nursing and she founded MyRa to solve a problem that affected her and her colleagues.

The three judges that have the difficult task of picking a winner and runner-up are:

• Alexis Alston, Senior Associate at Lightship Capital
• Patty Wexler, Managing Director at Starlight Ventures,
• Laura González-Estéfani, Founder and CEO of TheVentureCity

Each company will get four minutes to present and then the judges will have a few minutes to ask questions. After all of the companies have pitched, the judges will get five minutes to decide who takes the crown of first-ever TechCrunch City Spotlight Pitch-Off champion.

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Not in Miami? Don’t worry. TechCrunch is bringing this series of free events to other cities across the United States and abroad. In the coming weeks, we’ll have similar events in Pittsburgh, Detroit, and others as TechCrunch digs deep into growing tech scenes outside of Silicon Valley.

News: Google Cloud launches a new support option for mission critical workloads

• March 11, 2021
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Google Cloud today announced the launch of a new support option for its Premium Support customers that run mission-critical services on its platform. The new service, imaginatively dubbed Mission Critical Services (MCS), brings Google’s own experience with Site Reliability Engineering to its customers. This is not Google completely taking over the management of these services,

Google Cloud today announced the launch of a new support option for its Premium Support customers that run mission-critical services on its platform. The new service, imaginatively dubbed Mission Critical Services (MCS), brings Google’s own experience with Site Reliability Engineering to its customers. This is not Google completely taking over the management of these services, though. Instead, the company describes it as a “consultative offering in which we partner with you on a journey toward readiness.”

Initially, Google will work with its customers to improve — or develop — the architecture of their apps and help them instrument the right monitoring systems and controls, as well as help them set and raise their service-level objectives (a key feature in the Site Reliability Engineering philosophy).

Later, Google will also provide ongoing check-ins with its engineers and walk customers through tune-ups architecture reviews. “Our highest tier of engineers will have deep familiarity with your workloads, allowing us to monitor, prevent, and mitigate impacts quickly, delivering the fastest response in the industry. For example, if you have any issues–24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week–we’ll spin up a live war room with our experts within five minutes,” Google Cloud’s VP for Customer Experience, John Jester, explains in today’s announcement.

This new offering is another example of how Google Cloud is trying to differentiate itself from the rest of the large cloud providers. Its emphasis today is on providing the high-touch service experiences that were long missing from its platform, with a clear emphasis on the needs of large enterprise customers. That’s what Thomas Kurian promised to do when he became the organization’s CEO and he’s clearly following through.

 

News: Facebook is bringing ads to shorter videos and Stories

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Facebook is expanding its monetization options for video creators. For anyone watching videos posted by those creators, that probably means you’ll see more ads. Facebook App Monetization Director Yoav Arnstein wrote in a blog post that creators will now be able to include in-stream ads in videos that are as short as one minute —

Facebook is expanding its monetization options for video creators. For anyone watching videos posted by those creators, that probably means you’ll see more ads.

Facebook App Monetization Director Yoav Arnstein wrote in a blog post that creators will now be able to include in-stream ads in videos that are as short as one minute — previously, the minimum was three minutes. Those ads will usually play after 30 seconds of a shorter video.

“Looking ahead, we’re exploring in-stream ad formats that increase engagement through rewards or product interaction — intending to help content creator payouts grow while providing a good viewing experience for people and a way for advertisers to reach relevant audiences,” Arnstein wrote, adding that the company is “especially focused on short-form video monetization” and will be testing a way to include ads that look like stickers to Facebook Stories.

Facebook splits the revenue from these ads with the video creators, and it says it’s also updating the program criteria. To participate, Facebook Pages must  nowhave 600,000 minutes of viewing time across all videos (previously only videos of three minutes or longer had counted) for the last 60 days and five or more active or Live videos.

On the Live side, Arnstein wrote that Facebook is moving its in-stream advertising program out of invite-only mode, allowing creators with 60,000 minutes of Live viewing in the last 60 days to participate. And it will be investing $7 million to encourage the adoption of Stars (a virtual currency that fans can use to support creators) by offering free Stars.

Non-advertising products are also continuing their international rollout. Arnstein wrote that paid online events (launched last summer) are available in 20 countries, with plans to expand to 24 more (including Argentina, Hong Kong and Ireland) in the coming weeks, while fan subscriptions are available in more than 25 countries and will be introduced in another 10 (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey).

News: Ocean floor mapping robotics startup Bedrock announces an $8M raise

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“It seems quite odd that no one has built the SpaceX equivalent for the ocean,” Anthony DiMare tells TechCrunch. “There’s no big, modern technology company that fits the space yet.” DiMare cofounded Bedrock Ocean Exploration last year, with Charles Chiau. The latter brought a depth of robotics expertise to the space, while DiMare has experience

“It seems quite odd that no one has built the SpaceX equivalent for the ocean,” Anthony DiMare tells TechCrunch. “There’s no big, modern technology company that fits the space yet.”

DiMare cofounded Bedrock Ocean Exploration last year, with Charles Chiau. The latter brought a depth of robotics expertise to the space, while DiMare has experience with the oceans. His previous company, Nautilus Labs, which specialized in ocean fleet logistical planning, raised an $11 million Series A back 2019.

After leave the startup, DiMare says he met up with Chiau at San Francisco diner, where the pair discussed the challenges and opportunities in mapping the ocean floor. Today Bedrock is announcing that it has raised an $8 million seed round led by Eniac Ventures, Primary Venture Partners, Quiet Capital, and R7.

The company notes that more than 80% of the ocean remains unmapped. And those parts that have been are often at fairly low resolution. As the CEO puts it in a press release tied this morning’s news, “A far greater percentage of the surfaces of the Moon and Mars have been mapped and studied than our own ocean floor has.”

The funding will go toward developing partnerships and building out the company’s robotics and cloud platforms. The team, which currently includes some participants from the recent Shel-sponsored X Prize ocean floor competition should be expanding, as well.

Among the chief uses for the technology is lying undersea cable. “As of now, it’s done in basically a one-off basis,” says DiMare. “I know that if I need to lay a cable between the United States and China, I’m going to guestimate the most efficient route and do a survey over that area and hope that it generally returns information that I need to lay a cable. But if I find something, I need to reroute it.”

Off-shore wind farms are major potential growth category for the company as well. “Right now we’re not working any oil companies,” says DiMare. “We didn’t know if we were going to have to go down that route. Thankfully, offshore wind has just absolutely exploded. There’s just so much work to be done in the offshore wind space that we can literally just focus on that.”

News: BlockFi lands a $350M Series D at a $3B valuation for its fast-growing crypto-lending platform

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If there were any doubt about a cryptocurrency boom, we need look no further than at the explosion of growth of certain companies in the space. One such company is BlockFi, which today announced it has closed on a massive $350 million Series D funding that values it at $3 billion. While this news in

If there were any doubt about a cryptocurrency boom, we need look no further than at the explosion of growth of certain companies in the space.

One such company is BlockFi, which today announced it has closed on a massive $350 million Series D funding that values it at $3 billion. While this news in and of itself is certainly attention-getting, it’s even more impressive when you consider the startup just raised a $50 million Series C last August at a $450 million valuation. The latest financing brings its total equity raised since inception to about $450 million, with the company raising $100 million across its seed and Series C rounds.

Zac Prince — who comes from a background in consumer lending —  founded BlockFi with Flori Marquez in 2017. The Jersey City, New Jersey-based startup raised $1.6 million in a seed round of funding that closed in 2018 and was led by ConsenSys Ventures and included participation from SoFi.  

Prince describes BlockFi as a financial services company for crypto market investors that offers a retail and institutional-facing suite of products. On the retail side of its platform, people can use its mobile app to earn a yield on their crypto holdings (6% on Bitcoin, 8.6% on stablecoins), buy and sell crypto and get low-cost loans secured by the value of their crypto portfolio “so they can get liquidity without selling,” he said. Specifically, clients can buy and sell digital assets (from Bitcoin, Ethereum and Link to Litecoin, PaxG and multiple stablecoins) directly on BlockFi.

The startup is also a lender and provider of trade execution services to institutions participating in digital asset markets. 

It’s a model that seems to be working in a big way. Since the end of 2019, BlockFi has seen its client base grow from 10,000 to more than 225,000. Today, BlockFi has 265,000 funded retail clients and over 200 institutional clients.

And it’s lent over $10 billion to its retail, corporate and institutional clients.

Over the past year, BlockFi has also accomplished the following:

• Increased the number of assets on its platform to $15 billion, compared to $1 billion last March — with a 0% loss rate across its lending portfolio since inception.
• Bumped its monthly revenue to over $50 million, up from $1.5 million a year prior.
• Boosted its headcount to about 530 people, compared to 100 last March.

“In less than six months since we completed our Series C, Bitcoin and other digital assets have assumed a central role in many investors’ portfolios and in broader financial markets,” Prince said. “Our conviction that digital assets are the future of finance has been vindicated by our client base, which grew 10 times year over year in 2020 and has more than doubled since the end of 2020.”

New investor Bain Capital Ventures, partners of DST Global, Pomp Investments and Tiger Global co-led the Series D, which included participation from a slew of other firms including existing backer Valar Ventures, Breyer Capital, Susquehanna Government Products, Jump Capital and Paradigm, among many others. BlockFi employees who have been employed for more than one year have the opportunity to receive liquidity on a portion of their equity via a secondary tender offer as part of the financing round.  

BlockFi believes that investor enthusiasm for the Series D round reflects both the company’s strong business growth, as well as “broader conviction in cryptocurrencies as an asset class.” 

“Individual investors, institutional asset managers and corporate treasury departments are all exploring avenues to invest in cryptocurrencies,” the company said.

“Our goal for BlockFi has always been for it to facilitate cryptocurrencies going mainstream – and each day provides more evidence that is exactly what is occurring,” said Marquez, who serves as the company’s SVP of operations.

Bain Capital Ventures Partner Stefan Cohen agrees. He believes there are currently limited banking services available for crypto holders, which puts BlockFi in an opportune position.

“Bitcoin has already eclipsed $1 trillion in market cap and is likely headed higher to fulfill its store of value promise. As wealth accumulates to BTC holders, most will look for ways to earn yield or borrow against their holdings for more traditional asset purchases such as homes, cars and education,” he wrote via email. “BlockFi stands alone as the leader in bringing simple, secure, everyday financial services to cryptocurrency holders.”

The startup’s exponential growth over the past year proves “there was clearly a huge need for BlockFi’s services,” Cohen said.

“Their vision was to build an easy-to-use, trusted platform to bring cryptocurrency to the mainstream, and they’ve truly succeeded,” he added.

Meanwhile, Cohen said Bain Capital has had a long-term thesis on Bitcoin becoming a store of value and has actively invested in “picks-and-shovels businesses” that enable what is now a $1 trillion-plus market. 

“Trusted financial services are a critical pillar of the space, and we view it as a highly strategic component of the market,” he added.

Looking ahead, the startup has plans to launch in the second quarter a Bitcoin Rewards Credit Card, which will give BlockFi clients the ability to earn Bitcoin cash back on every transaction. It plans to use the new capital to continue growing its product suite, expand into new global markets and for strategic acquisitions. The company also plans to double its headcount by year’s end, according to Prince.

BlockFi already has a global presence and retail clients in over 100 countries. Last year, it opened institutional client service offices in London and Singapore.  This year, the startup is looking to add regional support in Europe, APAC and LatAm for its retail clients. 

Over the past week, BlockFi was making headlines for other reasons. The company was the victim of an “unusual assault” on March 7 when an attacker spammed the platform with fake sign-ups and abusive language.

To that end, the company acknowledges that it became aware that an unauthorized third party began attempting bulk sign-ups on its platform on March 7.

“We do not know the origin of the email addresses used for these ‘sign-ups’  but they did not come from us and they were not the emails of BlockFi clients,” the company told TechCrunch. “In general, we would characterize the event as vulgar spam’ and the total number of valid emails affected was less than 1,000.”

The company maintains that no data from BlockFi was accessed and its data was not compromised.  

“Our clients’ funds and data were safeguarded throughout the incident,” the company added. “Since then, our engineering and security teams have taken steps to prevent events like this from happening in the future. In addition, we reached out directly to all of the valid email recipients to apologize for the incident.”