Monthly Archives: June 2021

News: Yieldstreet raises $100M as it mulls going public via SPAC, eyes acquisitions

• June 2, 2021
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These days, investing goes way beyond the stock market. And in recent years there’s been a growing number of startups which aim to give more people access to a wider array of investment opportunities. Today, one of those startups has raised a significant round of funding to help it achieve its goals. Yieldstreet — which

These days, investing goes way beyond the stock market. And in recent years there’s been a growing number of startups which aim to give more people access to a wider array of investment opportunities. Today, one of those startups has raised a significant round of funding to help it achieve its goals.

Yieldstreet — which provides a platform for making alternative investments in areas like real estate, marine/shipping, legal finance, commercial loans and other opportunities that were previously only open to institutional investors — announced Tuesday that it has raised $100 million in a Series C funding round.

Former E*TRADE CEO Mitch Caplan, of Tarsadia Investments, led the round. Other participants include Alex Brown (a division of Raymond James), Kingfisher Capital, Top Tier Capital Partners and Gaingels. Existing backers Edison Partners, Soros Fund Management, Greenspring Associates, Raine Ventures, Greycroft and Expansion Capital also put money in the round, which brings Yieldstreet’s total raised to $278.5 million since its 2015 inception.

Milind Mehere and Michael Weisz co-founded Yieldstreet with the mission of making investing more inclusive for non-institutional investors. In an interview with TechCrunch, CEO Mehere declined to say at what valuation the Series C was raised other than to say “near unicorn.”

What he did share is that Yieldstreet has funded nearly $1.9 billion on its platform and has about 300,000 consumers signed up on its platform. That’s up from $600 million invested on its platform from more than 100,000 members in February 2019, at the time of its last raise. Also since that time, Yieldstreet has seen its investor base climb by 350%, he said. And this year, the company is expecting “over 50% revenue growth,” compared to 2020.

Image Credits: Yieldstreet

Since its inception, Yieldstreet says it has provided nearly more than $950 million in principal and interest payments to its investors.

And, both the number of investment requests and new investors surged by more than 250% from January to April 2021 compared to the same period in 2020, with new investors already exceeding all of last year, according to the company.

Mehere also shared that Yieldstreet is considering going public via a SPAC (special purpose acquisition vehicle) sometime in the next year or two.

“We are growing extremely fast and a few SPACs have approached us,” he told TechCrunch. “We are on a great path to potentially explore some of those options in the next 12 to 24 months. I think the public markets would be great for a company like Yieldstreet, purely because that gives you the visibility to expand your consumer growth but also gives you access to equity to pursue growth strategies such as potential acquisitions and other things.”

So far, Yieldstreet has acquired two companies (both in 2019): WealthFlex and Athena Art Finance. 

Some context

At a very high level, Yieldstreet aims to give consumers access to invest in asset classes outside of the stock market.

“These are investments that generate passive income. For example, we do a bunch of things in real estate such as financing warehouses, multifamily and distribution centers,” Mehere told TechCrunch. “We also do art, auto loans or equipment finance. These are typically investments done by institutions and what we’re trying to do is really fractionalize them and get them to real estate investors. A lot of this stuff is asset-backed and it’s generating cash flow.”

In an effort to help people understand just exactly what they’re putting their money into, Yieldstreet aims to provide “a ton of investor education,” Mehere added, in the form of content such as articles, blog posts and infographics.

The company also aims to have its portfolios working “around the clock” to automatically apply earned income toward everyday expenses — a concept conceived by Mahere as “self-driving money.”

Yieldstreet will use its new capital to expand its user base, develop new investment products, explore international expansion and pursue strategic acquisitions, according to Mehere. Outside of its New York City headquarters, Yieldstreet also has offices in Brazil, Greece and Malta.

“Alternative investing has generally been restricted to very high net worth individuals. This is not just a U.S. problem, but a worldwide one. In Europe, especially, it is exacerbated by a negative interest rate,” he said. “So it’s even more compelling to them to tap into U.S. assets.” As such, Yieldstreet plans to expand into Europe and Asia as part of its growth strategy.

Tarsadia Investments (and former E*TRADE CEO) President Caplan believes the company is “uniquely positioned” to “achieve significant growth in revenue while ultimately achieving tremendous scale.”

“Everything begins and ends with the management team,” he told TechCrunch. “Yieldstreet’s management team’s vision for the future of digital investing aligned perfectly with that of our organization at Tarsadia. Yieldstreet is building the future of investing.”

News: Locus raises $50 million for its logistics management business

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Locus, a startup that uses AI to help businesses map out their logistics, said on Wednesday it has raised $50 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand its presence. The new round, a Series C, was led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC. Qualcomm Ventures and existing investors Tiger Global Management

Locus, a startup that uses AI to help businesses map out their logistics, said on Wednesday it has raised $50 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand its presence.

The new round, a Series C, was led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC. Qualcomm Ventures and existing investors Tiger Global Management and Falcon Edge also participated in the round, which brings the startup’s to-date raise to $79 million. The new round valued the startup, which was founded in India, at about $300 million, said a person familiar with the matter.

Angel investors Amrish Rau (CEO of Pine Labs), Kunal Shah (CEO of CRED), Raju Reddy (founder of Sierra Atlantic), and Deb Deep Sengupta (former President and MD of SAP in South Asia) also participated in the round.

Locus helps its clients automate their logistics workload — tasks such as planning, organizing, transporting and tracking of inventories, and finding the best path to reach a destination — that have traditionally required intensive human labor, said Nishith Rastogi, CEO of Locus, in an interview with TechCrunch.

“When you order from Licious or BigBasket, for instance, they need to decide each day at their centres how many vehicles they need to use, and what size of vehicles they need to go with,” Rastogi explained. These clients, he said, also need to assign drivers based on how familiar they are with the delivery area, and factor in the traffic to determine at what time they should leave for delivery.

“We help our clients move beyond visibility into all of these decision makings,” he said, adding that the startup uses proprietary algorithms and deep machine learning.

The startup — which operates in North America, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Indian subcontinent — says it has helped its customers save over $150 million in logistics costs, and shaved off tens of millions of kilometres from their journey that they would have travelled otherwise.

Rastogi said the vast majority of the startup’s revenue today comes from international markets, especially North America. The startup said its platform is especially popular among FMCG, retail, and e-commerce firms as well as those who need distribution partners.

Locus enters into categories where the cost of logistics is a big portion of cost of goods sold and where the profit margin is thin, he said. “At many distribution or e-commerce companies, the cost of logistics can be 40% of the good sold. This gives our clients a huge incentive to make some changes,” he said, adding that brands across the globe are increasingly beginning to explore ways to optimize their supply chain networks.

“Locus’ smart product suite is optimizing supply chain efficiencies by using machine learning to deliver real-time tracking and insights for the last mile fulfillment,” said Varsha Tagare, Sr. Director at Qualcomm Technologies and Managing Director at Qualcomm Ventures, in a statement. “We’re excited to invest in Locus to enable logistics as a service and support their journey to become a global last-mile automation leader.”

Rastogi termed the new funding as “insurance money” as he said the startup already generates enough cash, but said the additional capital would help the startup as it looks to expand in additional markets and also broaden its technology team.

News: Rocket Lab cleared by the FAA to resume launches after mission failure last month

• June 2, 2021
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Rocket Lab has already received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to resume its launch activities, following a failure during the second stage burn of its 20th Electron rocket mission that resulted in the loss of the payload. That’s a testament to Rocket Lab’s safety systems design, and everything working as intended when it

Rocket Lab has already received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to resume its launch activities, following a failure during the second stage burn of its 20th Electron rocket mission that resulted in the loss of the payload. That’s a testament to Rocket Lab’s safety systems design, and everything working as intended when it encountered an anomaly, meaning that while the mission failed, it did so safely and without any risk to ground crew, the general population or other orbital objects.

This doesn’t mean Rocket Lab will actually resume launches immediately; while the FAA has determined that its existing launch license is still in good standing after the incident, the company itself will continue its investigation into the cause of the problem. Rocket Lab CEO and founder Peter Beck called the ongoing effort to determine the cause of the second stage engine shutdown “an intricate and layered fault analysis,” but also noted that they have already replicated the error in testing.

Now, the focus will be on working out exactly the sequence of events and figuring out what exactly caused what that led to the automatic safety shut-off. That process is expected to be done sometime “in the coming weeks,” and then at that point the company will proceed with resuming active flight activities.

Rocket Lab didn’t reference an earlier mission failure from last July in this update. It ultimately concluded that anomaly was the result of a bad electrical connection, but which had similar results with a second stage engine safety shutdown.

The company did note that the information collected from the first stage of the Electron rocket that it recovered after the launch indicates that everything went as planned with that part of the mission. Rocket Lab is in the process of adding reusability to its Electron first stage booster, and had implemented a new atmospheric re-entry and splashdown process test in this one, which went smoothly. The company added that the new heat shield it used for this flight worked as intended, and that it now plans to do hot fire testing on the engines from the recovered first stage to see how they perform.

News: Etsy is acquiring UK-based social selling site Depop for $1.625B in a mostly-cash deal

• June 2, 2021
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Very big news today coming out of Europe in the world of e-commerce. Etsy, the New York-based marketplace where crafty creators and those interested in their styles can discover and buy those goods, today announced that it is acquiring Depop, a London-based marketplace targeting millennial and Gen-Z consumers with a new take on social shopping.

Very big news today coming out of Europe in the world of e-commerce. Etsy, the New York-based marketplace where crafty creators and those interested in their styles can discover and buy those goods, today announced that it is acquiring Depop, a London-based marketplace targeting millennial and Gen-Z consumers with a new take on social shopping. Etsy is paying $1.625 billion for the company, in what Etsy is describing as a mostly-cash deal.

This is not just Etsy’s biggest acquisition to date by some margin — it’s made seven other deals but all for well under $1 billion — but a huge acquisition for e-commerce in Europe, and also a massive endorsement of companies that are building business models, namely commerce models, specifically targeting younger and/or more creative users.

Some 90% of Depop’s users are under the age of 26, and this will give Etsy a sizeable opportunity both to tap them and their community in Depop itself, but likely will also act as a bridge to bringing more content and younger shoppers to Etsy, which may have started skewing younger but has also a huge number of older users now, too. Etsy is publicly traded and has a market cap of over $20 billion currently.

Depop last raised money, it seems, in 2019 (a $62 million round) and was on a roll at the time, with 13 million users and growing very fast in the U.S. Today, some two years later, its user numbers have grown to over 21 million stylists, designers, artists, collectors, vintage sellers and more, with an especially strong audience in the U.S. (Etsy’s biggest market) and its home market of the UK (which is also strong for Etsy).

This is a volume game for Etsy, but not necessarily an initially profitable one: Depop in 2020 saw gross merchandise sales of $650 million but revenues of only $70 million, both up 100% on the year before.

Depop’s ethos is a promising one, however, in terms of how Etsy might see itself growing, particularly as a kind of anti-Amazon in the world of clothes, home goods, and consumer goods shopping. Depop also fits squarely into a lot of the tastes of the moment. 2020 was a year that saw not just a huge surge of e-commerce, but also the flourishing of a lot of smaller businesses and cottage industries as a swathe of people opted to shop locally and support individuals, and to buy more used goods — areas where Depop plays very strong.

“We are simply thrilled to be adding Depop—what we believe to be the resale home for Gen Z consumers—to the Etsy family. Depop is a vibrant, two-sided marketplace with a passionate community, a highly-differentiated offering of unique items, and we believe significant potential to further scale,” Josh Silverman, Etsy, Inc. CEO, said in a statement. “Depop’s world-class management team and employees have done a fantastic job nurturing this community and driving organic, authentic growth in a way that aligns well with Etsy’s DNA and mission of Keeping Commerce Human. We see significant opportunities for shared expertise and growth synergies across what will now be a tremendous ‘house of brands’ portfolio of individually distinct, and very special, e-commerce brands.”

Silverman’s track record includes a number of years at eBay leading Shopping.com, something also worth considering when thinking about how sees the growth of Etsy over time.

Depop’s CEO Maria Raga added: “We’re on an incredible journey building Depop into a place where the next generation comes to explore unique fashion and be part of a community that’s changing the way we shop. Our community is made up of people who are creating a new fashion system by establishing new trends and making new from old. They come to Depop for the clothes, but stay for the culture. We’ll now take an exciting leap forward as part of the Etsy family, benefiting from Josh’s and his team’s expertise, and the resources of a much larger company whose values are so aligned with ours here at Depop.”

The transaction is expected to close in Q3 2021, pending regulatory approval in the U.S. and UK and other closing conditions, and Etsy said that after the deal closes, it will operate Depop as a separate brand alongside Etsy and Reverb, a marketplace for musical instruments that it acquired in 2019.

More to come. Refresh for updates.

News: EU and Bill Gates make joint push for $1BN to accelerate clean tech

• June 2, 2021
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The European Commission has announced a partnership with Bill Gates’ sustainable energy funding vehicle with the goal of unlocking new investments for clean tech and sustainable energy projects totalling up to $1BN (€820M) over five years (2022-2026). EU-based projects the partnership will focus on initially fall into four sectors which are being prioritized for their

The European Commission has announced a partnership with Bill Gates’ sustainable energy funding vehicle with the goal of unlocking new investments for clean tech and sustainable energy projects totalling up to $1BN (€820M) over five years (2022-2026).

EU-based projects the partnership will focus on initially fall into four sectors which are being prioritized for their potential to deliver substantial reductions in regional emissions — namely:

• Green hydrogen;
• Sustainable aviation fuels;
• Direct air capture;
• Long-duration energy storage.

The goal is to scale technologies which are currently too expensive to compete with fossil fuel-based incumbent technologies.

The pair said they will continue to work on setting up the program over the coming months, with an eye on having something further to announce at the COP-26 conference in November.

It’s not the first time the Commission and Gates’ Breakthrough Energy organization have worked together on funding sustainable investment. But the scale of this latest partnership dwarfs the €100M fund the EU established back in 2019 with its venture investment funding arm.

Now the Commission has partnered with Breakthrough Energy Catalyst — a financing program within Gates’ organization that aims to accelerate the development and adoption of technologies needed to underpin a low-carbon economy — to mobilize up to 10x more than the earlier fund to build large-scale, commercial demonstration projects for clean technologies.

The overarching goal is of course to lower the costs and accelerate deployment of clean tech in order to deliver significant reductions in CO₂ emissions in line with the Paris Agreement.

The bloc is a major emitter of CO₂ but has committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, under the European Green Deal.

Gates’ philosophy with his 2015-founded Breakthrough Energy vehicle, meanwhile, is that renewables alone won’t be enough to avert catastrophic climate change — and investments in a range of high risk but potentially high reward technologies is also needed.

But given the lengthy time-scales needed for a return on these types of investments public-private partnerships look like a key piece of the financing puzzle.

Commenting on the partnership announcement in a statement, EU president Ursula von der Leyen, said: “With our European Green Deal, Europe wants to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. And Europe has also the great opportunity to become the continent of climate innovation. For this, the European Commission will mobilise massive investments in new and transforming industries over the next decade. This is why I’m glad to join forces with Breakthrough Energy. Our partnership will support EU businesses and innovators to reap the benefits of emission-reducing technologies and create the jobs of tomorrow.”

In another supporting statement, Gates, founder of Breakthrough Energy, added: “Decarbonising the global economy is the greatest opportunity for innovation the world has ever seen. Europe will play a critical role, having demonstrated an early and consistent commitment to climate and longstanding leadership in science, engineering, and technology. Through this partnership, Europe will lay solid ground for a net-zero future in which clean technologies are reliable, available, and affordable for all.”

On the EU side, funding for the partnership is expected to come from the bloc’s flagship R&D fund, Horizon Europe, and also via the low-carbon-focused Innovation Fund within the framework of the InvestEU program.

Breakthrough Energy Catalyst will mobilise equivalent private capital and philanthropic funds to finance selected projects.

The partnership will also be open to national investments by EU Member States through InvestEU or at project level, the Commission noted. It added that a call for expressions of interest for potential InvestEU implementing partners is currently open until June 30 2021.

Renewable energy and clean(er) transport were also key focus areas for the massive €750BN ‘Next Generation EU’ coronavirus recovery fund put together by the Commission last year — which said it would borrow money on the financial markets through the issuance of bonds for post-pandemic recovery — with that money pegged to be channelled through EU programs between 2021 and 2024.

The bloc’s lawmakers have also suggested that digitization and AI technologies — which are other areas it’s pegged for major investment — will play a key supporting role in Europe’s green transition.

News: Tier banks $60 million in debt from Goldman Sachs to expand scooter fleet

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Berlin-based Tier Mobility has raised $60 million to help the e-scooter company expand its fleet and its network of battery charging stations in 2021. The funds, which come from investment banking firm Goldman Sachs, come just weeks after Tier was awarded the London e-scooter pilot permit, alongside Lime and Dott. With a major new city

Berlin-based Tier Mobility has raised $60 million to help the e-scooter company expand its fleet and its network of battery charging stations in 2021.

The funds, which come from investment banking firm Goldman Sachs, come just weeks after Tier was awarded the London e-scooter pilot permit, alongside Lime and Dott. With a major new city on the horizon and hints of further expansion plans, Tier will need a significant upfront investment to cover everything from fleet orders to local warehouses to new teams.

In November, Tier also closed a $250 million Series C funding round, led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. The latest funds are asset-backed financing, meaning Goldman Sachs is essentially providing Tier with a loan that is secured by one of the company’s assets, probably its scooters. Tier did not respond to a request for specifics on the loan.

“The size of this highly scalable asset-backed debt facility is a game-changing first in micro-mobility, accelerating our expansion and cementing our market leadership in Europe,” said Alex Gayer, Tier’s chief financial officer, in a statement. “This facility leverages our recent equity raise and will enhance our capital-efficient growth.”

In addition to London, over the past year, Tier has added the coveted cities of Dubai and Paris to its list. It’s available in over 100 cities across 12 countries in Europe and the Middle East. With the fresh capital, Tier plans to extend its international coverage and invest in its multi-modal fleet, adding bicycles and mopeds to the mix.

The Tier Energy Network is Tier Mobility’s plan to place charging stations in retail stores to incentivize riders to swap scooter batteries.

The Goldman Sachs-backed funding will also enable Tier to expand its Tier Energy Network, a venture to place battery charging stations in retail stores across its coverage area. The energy network would provide an incentive structure for riders to take a minute at the end of their ride to swap the scooter’s battery and earn free credit, while shops can enjoy the extra foot traffic.

“Even amid a global pandemic, TIER has established a proven track record of profitable unit economics and asset longevity,” said Ben Payne, managing director at Goldman Tier, in a statement. “We are excited to help the European leader extend sustainable mobility to more people across the world.”

News: Home services platform Urban Company raises $255 million at $2.1 billion valuation

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Home services marketplace Urban Company said on Wednesday it has raised $255 million in a new financing round and confirmed a valuation of $2.1 billion, joining over a dozen other startups in India that have earned the unicorn status this year. The new financing round — a Series F — was led by Prosus Ventures,

Home services marketplace Urban Company said on Wednesday it has raised $255 million in a new financing round and confirmed a valuation of $2.1 billion, joining over a dozen other startups in India that have earned the unicorn status this year.

The new financing round — a Series F — was led by Prosus Ventures, Dragoneer and Wellington Management, while Vy Capital, Tiger Global and Steadview participated in it. The Gurgaon-headquartered startup said* the new round features a primary capital infusion of $188 million while the rest is a secondary sale by some angel and other early investors. The startup has raised about $470 million to date.

Formerly known as UrbanClap, the seven-year-old startup offers a range of home services on its platform. Does your AC need maintenance work? Is the TV not working? The house needs a fresh coat of paint? Plumbing issues? Need your cleaned and disinfected? How about a haircut done at a place of your choosing?

These are just some of the services Urban Company offers to its customers, who can place an order using the startup’s app or the website and pick a good time and venue.

The idea of the startup came from its three co-founders, who in their early 20s were puzzled why nobody else was trying to take a stab at the industry, which remains largely unorganized, said Raghav Chandra, a founder of Urban Company, in an interview with TechCrunch.

What started as an idea is now a unicorn. The startup today operates in 35 cities in India, Singapore, Australia, the UAE, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. More than 35,000 service partners are active on the platform, said Chandra, who serves as Urban Company’s Chief Technology Officer.

“Urban Company is disrupting a large, fragmented industry that has seen low digital adoption until now,” said Ashutosh Sharma, Head of Investment for India at Prosus Ventures.

Through their technology-enabled platform and keen focus on providing high-quality, trained service partners, Urban Company has been able to achieve the very difficult task of productizing services. In addition, the initial traction with international expansion in geographies we know well is encouraging and presents an opportunity for significant growth into the future,” he added.

The startup’s fast-growth was abruptly punctuated last year after New Delhi enforced a nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus. Chandra said the startup began seeing recovery last year after the nation started to open up again and had its best month to date in March this year.

Chandra said the startup will deploy the fresh capital to further expand in the markets where it operates, and work on ways to supercharge onboarding, training, and safety of service workers on the platform. It is also looking to expand its technology team. The startup plans to file for an IPO within the next 24 months, it said.

Urban Company spends weeks on training and upskilling the workers that join its platform, said Chandra. The startup today also enables workers with expertise in one category to learn about other categories, hence increasing their odds of getting more work and earning more. Chandra said offering upskilling courses to the workers will remain one of the key areas as the startup expands.

*The startup had disclosed the new fundraise in a filing with local regulator in April, but co-founder and chief executive Abhiraj Singh Bhal declined to comment at the time, citing the rising coronavirus cases in the country.

News: Amazon confirms Prime Day will run June 21-22, an earlier than usual start

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Amazon confirmed its annual sales event known as Prime Day will be held on Monday, June 21 and Tuesday, June 22. Bloomberg had previously reported these same dates, citing leaked records. The once-a-year mega sale had typically been held in July, when the shopping season goes through its usual lull. But due to the COVID-19

Amazon confirmed its annual sales event known as Prime Day will be held on Monday, June 21 and Tuesday, June 22. Bloomberg had previously reported these same dates, citing leaked records. The once-a-year mega sale had typically been held in July, when the shopping season goes through its usual lull. But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, last year’s Prime Day was delayed until October in most markets, including the U.S.

Despite the changes, Amazon said small and midsize businesses generated mo0re than $3.5 billion during the Prime Day event, Amazon said, up 60% from the year prior. However, it didn’t disclose its total Prime Day figures.

This year, Amazon will kick off Prime Day early with a new promotion aimed at supporting small businesses. Starting June 7 and running up until Prime day’s start, when Prime members spend $10 on items sold by a participating small business, they’ll receive a $10 credit they can later spend during the Prime Day event.

This deal will run in select markets, including the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan, and is the big promotion for small businesses in Amazon’s history, the company noted. More than 300,000 selling partners are participating.

Prime Day was originally conceived as a way to push more Amazon shoppers to convert to paying Amazon Prime subscribers by luring them with deep discounts across categories — including Amazon’s own consumer hardware devices, like Echo smart speakers or Fire TV devices, which have been regular best sellers.

This will again be the case, as Amazon promises savings and discounts across home, electronics, beauty, fashion and Amazon devices. And it will again extend sales to other areas of Amazon’s business, like Prime Video, Amazon Music, Prime Gaming and others.

One of those deals is live now, as Prime members are offered a four-month free trial for its on-demand music streaming service, Amazon Music Unlimited, which offers up to 70 million songs. The company recently added lossless streaming support as a free upgrade, following Apple’s move to do the same for its own Music subscribers.

While Prime Day has been running since 2015, Amazon has more recently begun using the event to put a stronger spotlight on how it helps small businesses in light of increased regulatory scrutiny and antitrust investigations over its business practices.

In addition to Congressional hearings which saw Amazon founder and (soon to be former) CEO Jeff Bezos hauled in to testify, DC’s Attorney General Karl Racine last month filed an antitrust suit against Amazon, accusing the retailer of stifling competition by exerting control over third-party sellers. The suit alleges Amazon fixed prices on its retail platform by prohibiting sellers from selling products for less elsewhere, creating an artificially high price floor across the online retail market.

The company is also facing antitrust investigations abroad, including in the E.U. The retailer has been accused of harming small businesses by leveraging nonpublic data from its third-party sellers who use its marketplace in order to copy the best-selling products and undercut its selling partners.

This reality stands in sharp contrast as to how Amazon presented itself during an upbeat press briefing, where it had leveraged actress Kristen Bell’s (“The Good Place”) likeability factor to promote how well small businesses were doing on Amazon. During the event, she “interviewed” favorite sellers, like dog food seller Pawstruck and artisanal self-care product maker Live by Being, who had nothing but great things to say about working with Amazon.

Bell, along with Karamo Brown and Mindy Kaling, will also be highlighting some of their favorite sellers on Amazon’s video shopping service, Amazon Live.

Amazon also gave a broader update on its small business sellers and related efforts. The retailer noted that, last year, it delivered more than 250 new tools and services to help its selling partners reach 300 million customers globally.

“It’s pretty incredible to think in the past year in the U.S. alone, our small and medium-sized selling partners sold more than 3.7 billion products as more than 7,200 products, every minute,” said Keri Cusick, head of Small Business Empowerment at Amazon, in a press briefing. “Overall, they average $200,000 in sales, up from about $150,000, and more than 27,000 American sellers had over half a million dollars in sales,” she added.

Amazon didn’t offer specifics about its upcoming Prime Day deals, but said that it will host hundreds of thousands of deals leading up to Prime Day from companies including Le Creuset, Tommy Hilfiger, Lego, Mattel and Black & Decker.

Alexa device owners can also shop early, starting on Friday June 18, by asking “Alexa, what are my deals?”

Prime Day will be available on Amazon.com or regional websites, on Amazon.com/espanol for Spanish-language speakers and in Amazon’s physical retail stores.

News: Tesla files trademark, hinting at Elon Musk’s restaurant concept plans

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Tesla has recently filed a new trademark for its brand under restaurant services, a sign the company might be finally gearing up to deliver on an idea that CEO Elon Musk and other company executives have discussed publicly since at least 2017. The company applied for three new trademarks that will cover the categories of:

Tesla has recently filed a new trademark for its brand under restaurant services, a sign the company might be finally gearing up to deliver on an idea that CEO Elon Musk and other company executives have discussed publicly since at least 2017.

The company applied for three new trademarks that will cover the categories of: “Restaurant services, pop-up restaurant services, self-service restaurant services, take-out restaurant services, according to the May 27 filing with the United States Patent and Trademark Office that was first reported by Electrek. The application is awaiting examination and will be reviewed by an attorney around August 27.

You might be thinking, how does the restaurant industry fit in with the world’s most influential luxury electric car company? Let’s take it back to 2017, when then-CTO JB Straubel said at a FSTEC restaurant-technology conference that the company might move into the restaurant business. The idea was to turn EV charging stations into full-service convenience stores that also serve food. Tesla has tried out a scaled down version of that idea by creating lounges like the one at its Kettleman City, California Supercharger station.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk then expanded upon the convenience store idea and tossed out on Twitter — as he does — a restaurant concept. “Gonna put an old school drive-in, roller skates & rock restaurant at one of the new Tesla Supercharger locations in LA.”

A few months later, Tesla did in fact apply for a restaurant and supercharger station, but has been relatively quiet about the potential business venture since. The company, which recently dissolved its communications team, did not respond to requests for more information on Tesla’s plans to open a restaurant charging station, or whether other restaurants would be able to use the logo to create a similar business model.

Tesla’s iconic ‘T’ logo is featured on the USTPO application to be trademarked for use by restaurants. The company also applied for trademarks for the word ‘Tesla’ itself, as well as a stylized version of the word.

Tesla applied for a trademark under restaurant services for a stylized version of the company name.

With this filing, it looks like Tesla might be taking the necessary steps to move forwards with Musk’s plans to create a Sonic-meets-fueling station. This is not the first time the restaurant industry and the auto industry have collided. The Michelin Guide, in which the loss or acquisition of a star might make or break a restaurant, was originally compiled in 1900 by brothers Andre and Edouard Michelin who wanted to create demand for automobiles, and therefore, the tires they manufactured. So they created an extensive guide of restaurants and hotels, as well as mechanics and gas stations along the way, so people might be encouraged to use their newfound mobility to explore their taste buds and the world.

Tesla’s supercharger restaurant isn’t quite as revolutionary as that, but it does invite creativity to the EV game by providing people with another incentive structure to purchase a new vehicle – even if that incentive is only to appear trendy while basking in the nostalgic glow of the past. And who knows, maybe the waiters will serve up burgers on electric roller skates, too.

News: Cognigy raises $44M to scale its enterprise-focused conversational AI platform

• June 1, 2021
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Artificial intelligence is becoming an increasingly common part of how customer service works — a trend that was accelerated in this past year as so many other services went virtual and digital — and today a startup that has built a set of low-code tools to help enterprises integrate more AI into their customer service

Artificial intelligence is becoming an increasingly common part of how customer service works — a trend that was accelerated in this past year as so many other services went virtual and digital — and today a startup that has built a set of low-code tools to help enterprises integrate more AI into their customer service processes is announcing some funding to fuel its growth.

Cognigy, which provides a low-code conversational AI platform that notably can be used flexibly across a range of applications and geographies — it supports 120 languages; it can be used in external or internal service applications; it can support voice services but also chatbots; it provides real-time assistance for human agents and usage analytics or fully-automated responses; it can integrate with standard call center software, and also with RPA packages; and it can be run in the cloud or on-premise — has closed a round of $44 million, funding that it will be using to continue scaling its business internationally.

Insight Partners is leading the Series B investment, with previous backers DN Capital, Global Brain, Nordic Makers, Inventures and Digital Innovation and Growth also participating. The Dusseldorf-based company had previously only raised $11 million and spent the first several years of business bootstrapped.

Cognigy is not disclosing its valuation but it has up to now built up a concentration of customers in areas like transportation, e-commerce and insurance and counts a number of big multinational companies among its customer list, including Lufthansa, Mobily, BioNTech, Vueling Airlines, Bosch, and Daimler, with “thousands” of virtual assistants now powered by Cognigy live in the market.

With 25% of Cognigy’s business already coming from the U.S., the plan now is to use some funding to invest in building out its service deeper into the U.S., Asia and across more of Europe, CEO and founder Philipp Heltewig said in an interview.

“Conversational AI” these days appears in many guises: it can be a chatbot you come across on a website when you’re searching for something, or it can be prompts provided to agents or salespeople, information and real-time feedback to help them do their jobs better. Conversational AI can also be a personal assistant on your company’s HR application to help you book time off or deal with any number of other administrative jobs, or a personal assistant that helps you use your phone or set your house alarm.

There are a number of companies in the tech world that have built tools to address these various use cases. Specifically in the area of services aimed at enterprises, some of them, like Gong, are raising huge money right now. What is notable about Cognigy is that it has built a platform that is attempting to address a wide swathe of applications: one platform, many uses, in other words.

Cognigy’s other selling point is that it is playing into the new interest in low- and no-code tools, which in Cognigy’s case makes the integration of AI into a customer assistance process a relatively easy task, something that can be built not just by developers, but data scientists, those working directly on conversation design, and non-technical business users using the tools themselves.

“The low-code platform helps enterprises adopt what is otherwise complex technology in an easy and flexible way, whether it is customer or employee contact center,” said Heltewig. As you might expect, there are some direct competitors in the low- and no-code conversational AI space, too, including Ada, Talkie, Snaps and more.

Flexibility seems to be the order of the day for enterprises, and also the companies building tools for them: it means that a company can grow into a larger customer, and that in theory Cognigy will also evolve the platform based on what its customers need. As one example, Heltewig pointed out that a number of its customers are — contrary to the beating drum and march you see every day towards cloud services — running a fair number of applications on-premises, since this appears to be a key way to ensure the security of the customer data that they handle.

“Lufthansa could never run its customer services in the cloud because they handle a lot of sensitive data and they want full ownership of it,” he noted. “We can run cloud services and have a full offering for those who want it, but many large enterprises prefer to run their services on premises.”

Teddie Wardi, an MD at Insight, is joining the board with this round. “We are thrilled to be leading Cognigy’s Series B as the company continues on their ScaleUp journey,” he said in a statement. “Evident by their strong customer retention, Cognigy has created an essential product for global businesses to improve their customer experience in an efficient and effortless manner. With the new funding, Cognigy will be able to expand their leadership position to reach new markets and acquire more customers.”