Monthly Archives: August 2021

News: Accel leads $18M Series A for Knoetic, a startup that wants to make HR professionals’ lives easier with software

• August 25, 2021
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Knoetic, a startup that has built a software analytics platform for chief people officers, emerged from stealth today with $18 million in Series A funding. For the unacquainted, chief people officers are also known as heads of human resources, or HR. Accel led the financing, which notably also included participation from over 100 angel investors,

Knoetic, a startup that has built a software analytics platform for chief people officers, emerged from stealth today with $18 million in Series A funding.

For the unacquainted, chief people officers are also known as heads of human resources, or HR.

Accel led the financing, which notably also included participation from over 100 angel investors, including a number of executives, VCs and former and current chief people officers (CPOs) of companies such as Mozilla, Pinterest, Gusto, Box, Twilio, Fitbit, Kickstarter, Looker, Hired and GitHub.

For founder and CEO Joseph Quan, the fact that so many people who worked in the industry put money in the round as angels was huge validation that Knoetic is on the right track.

Founded in March 2020, the New York City-based startup has built a platform that combines a social network and a SaaS analytics tool for chief people officers. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit last year, human resources leaders found themselves in a position they’d never before been — hiring talent remotely and having to work virtually to retain workers that previously came to an office.

Quan himself has worked in a variety of roles in the HR technology space, including at Twine, Knoetic’s predecessor company. 

Image Credits: Knoetic; Founder and CEO Joseph Quan

“The reason we exist was really born out of the pandemic. We noticed in our ecosystem of chief people officers that their role was thrust into the spotlight and it was a really tough time for them, and also a really lonely time,” Quan told TechCrunch. “Everyone was kind of scrambling for answers and we just realized this was a time to actually put together a network that allows all these people to commiserate and tackle some of their hardest questions, and then from that, form the basis for a broader vision.”

Over 1,000 HR professionals are members of Knoetic’s social community, which the company has embedded directly into its people analytics software. The result, Quan said, is an “Insight Engine” designed to give CPOs both quantitative and qualitative insights with the goal of helping them make “smarter, holistic” decisions about their workforce. The network is a referral-only community aimed at giving HR professionals a forum to discuss best practices and their “most pressing challenges,” such as how to navigate the COVID Delta variant and transition to and from remote work, Quan said.

 Chief people officers can also use Knoetic to do things like build board decks and present data to their CEOs. The company also claims the platform can help CPOs improve employee retention, compensation and hiring. 

Image Credits: Knoetic

In a short amount of time, Knoetic has built an impressive customer and community base, including the likes of Lyft, Squarespace, Amplitude, Discord, Dollar Shave Club and Zapier. 

Vas Natarajan of Accel believes that Knoetic is solving “a deep pain point.”

“We see how overstretched people teams are trying to wrangle information to make organizational decisions,” he wrote via email. “Across our best companies is a strong people function backed by great data to help inform all kinds of decisions around compensation, performance, and diversity and inclusion, among other things. Knoetic is uniformly solving this for everyone.”

The startup will use its new capital toward building out new products and hiring. It currently has about 25 employees, and Quan expects that number to grow to “north of 40” by year’s end.

“We want to build the single greatest network for HR professionals and build a dedicated community team,” he said.

Down the line, Quan also envisions creating an analytics engine that is “prescriptive and predictive” and can do things like tell HR leaders what kind of turnover their companies are seeing, what they can do about it and how to improve retention.

“And then it would be predictive as we gather more big data points as more people use the platform,” he added. “Then we could use that data to proactively predict who’s going to be a fast-rising company or who’s going to trip over the next 12 months. We’re starting to build those kinds of models on the back end.”

News: Headspace and Ginger are merging to form Headspace Health

• August 25, 2021
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Meditation app Headspace this morning announced plans to merge with on-demand mental health service, Ginger. Barring unforeseen regulatory roadblocks, the two companies will combine to form Headspace Health. The new organization would sport a combined value of $3 billion and a headcount of more than 800+. The merger comes during accelerated usage of both parties,

Meditation app Headspace this morning announced plans to merge with on-demand mental health service, Ginger. Barring unforeseen regulatory roadblocks, the two companies will combine to form Headspace Health. The new organization would sport a combined value of $3 billion and a headcount of more than 800+.

The merger comes during accelerated usage of both parties, as a seemingly endless pandemic has put a strain on mental health across the globe and many have turned to virtual solutions to address the growing problem.

“We are witnessing a mental health crisis unlike anything we’ve experienced in our lifetimes, yet the majority of mental healthcare today is neither broadly accessible nor affordable,” Headspace CEO CeCe Morken said in a statement. “Together, as Headspace Health, we will address the systemic challenges of access and affordability in a fundamentally different way by creating the world’s most holistic, scalable, and effective mental health and wellbeing company.”

Morken will become the President of Headspace Health, while current CEO Russell Glass will serve as the new company’s CEO.

Image Credits:

“Headspace and Ginger have a shared recognition that the mental health crisis can’t be solved by simply hiring more therapists or moving care online,” Glass said. “Through this merger, we can uniquely tackle the full spectrum of mental health needs — from prevention to clinical care — all from one integrated platform.”

Ginger announced a $50 million Series D roughly one year ago and a $100 million Series E this March, bringing its total funding north of $220 million. Headpace, meanwhile, has raised $216 million, courtesy of last year’s $100.7 million Series C. Headspace is one of the top global meditation apps, along with chief competitor, Calm. The new company would find it pushing well beyond its current mindfulness focus to, “provide the full spectrum of proven, effective virtual support – from mindfulness and meditation, to text-based behavioral health coaching, to video-based therapy and psychiatry – for all types of patient populations.”

Just as importantly, the combined company would push beyond a direct to consumer model, including a corporate and Medicaid plan focus.

Further details of the deal have not been disclosed. The deal is expected to close in Q4.

News: Last-mile robotic delivery firm Coco raises $36M

• August 25, 2021
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Los Angeles delivery robot startup Coco this week has announced $36 million in funding. The Series A was led by Sam Altman, Silicon Valley Bank and Founders Fund, with participation from Sam Nazarian, Ellen Chen and Mario Del Pero. It brings the company’s total funding up to around $43 million. “I strongly believe the delivery

Los Angeles delivery robot startup Coco this week has announced $36 million in funding. The Series A was led by Sam Altman, Silicon Valley Bank and Founders Fund, with participation from Sam Nazarian, Ellen Chen and Mario Del Pero. It brings the company’s total funding up to around $43 million.

“I strongly believe the delivery service industry in its current state is massively under-serving merchants. We have an enormous opportunity to create a better experience for hundreds of thousands of merchants and their customers, today,” co0founder and CEO Zach Rash said in a release. “This is not a research program experimenting with technology to be productized at some unknown point in the future.”

Image Credits: Coco

The UCLA spinout, formerly known as Cyan Robotics, is operating in a crowded field that includes names like Starship, Nuro and UC Berkeley alum Kiwibot. Rather than pushing for full autonomy, Coco’s solution utilizes remote drivers (which are a more popular solution than many companies care to admit).

Coco is still young, having launched in February 2020. The company currently has a headcount of 120, with plans to “grow to over 1,000” by end of year, as the pandemic continues to fuel additional interest in robotic deliveries. The new funding will also go toward hardware and additional city launches.

Coco says it has been able to operate with a 97% on-time rate, while reducing delivery times for its clients by around 30%. The company lacks a massive partner like Nuro’s work with Domino’s, though California-based Umami Burger is probably the largest on a list of 18 restaurant partners currently listed on Coco’s site.

“We are currently operating in Santa Monica and in five different L.A neighborhoods,” the company tells TechCrunch.  “Later this year we are expanding into a number of other major U.S. cities. We have partnered with national restaurant brands like SBE (Umami Burger) and are actively scaling across many locations, and we are serving a wide range of family operated restaurants like Bangkok West Thai in Santa Monica and San Pedro Brewing Company in Los Angeles. We are out of the pilot phase and are launching with dozens of new merchants every day.”

News: Myelin launches second venture fund to target North America, Europe, Latin America

• August 25, 2021
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Venture capital firm Myelin on Wednesday launched its second fund, Myelin II, that will invest in some 40 early-stage technology companies.

Venture capital firm Myelin on Wednesday launched its second fund, Myelin II, that will invest in some 40 early-stage technology companies in North America, Europe and Latin America.

The firm was started in 2020 by serial entrepreneurs Matías Nisenson, Martin Varsavsky and Alec Oxenford, who lead the firm remotely from Argentina, New York and Spain. They are joined by Cesar Levene, an international tax and law expert.

Nisenson previously founded and sold two startups, Tiempy, a social media tool, and Experimental, a blockchain-based online gaming company, while Varsavsky has founded eight companies, and currently is founder of Goggo Network, developer of autonomous mobility networks.

“As an entrepreneur, I build ‘unicorns,’ and now I’m searching for them with Myelin,” said Varsavsky in a written statement.

Meanwhile, Oxenford is founder and former CEO of letgo, an online secondhand marketplace. He told TechCrunch that Nisenson and Varsavsky were good friends that were successful and smart, so it made sense to join them in the firm. Though he has made over 100 investments, he is also a founder and said he wanted to help other entrepreneurs not make the same mistakes he did.

The firm aims to raise between $25 million and $50 million for the second fund, Oxenford said. The fund is industry agnostic, but they are attracted to seed and Series A startups in biotech, fintech, proptech, femtech and food tech.

It also partners with large portfolios and networks for leads. An average check size for the firm is $250,000 to $500,000 for a first check, and $1 million to $3 million for follow-on funding.

However, Oxenford sees check sizes increasing as valuations, especially in Latin America, are rising and more capital is flowing. This also makes it more difficult to identify the companies with substance.

“Having been founders — all three of us — we can understand a bit better than others whether there is substance, and the projects have true potential,” he added. “We look for unicorn potential, some revenue, a serial entrepreneur and a good culture that is data-driven. We are taking a special approach that is founders helping founders in various stages of their careers.”

The new fund follows Myelin I, which invested several millions into 23 startups, including CookUnity and Buenbit. Nisenson says the first fund was “mostly proof-of-concept,” and was his first time as a fund manager, though Varsavsky had worked on other funds. They decided to have a very small fund and co-invest with larger funds.

“We found that nano funds can outperform big funds because you can invest in every deal,” Nisenson added. “The big funds don’t care because you are not competing with them.”

News: Final vote delayed for Korea’s plan to ban Google and Apple in-app payment rules

• August 25, 2021
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As Apple and Google continue to face increasing scrutiny over the rules they set for how third-party apps in their app stores charge for services, a significant development in that story is going down in South Korea. South Korea’s parliamentary committee passed on Wednesday (25 August) a landmark bill to prevent Google and Apple from

As Apple and Google continue to face increasing scrutiny over the rules they set for how third-party apps in their app stores charge for services, a significant development in that story is going down in South Korea.

South Korea’s parliamentary committee passed on Wednesday (25 August) a landmark bill to prevent Google and Apple from charging software developers’ commissions on in-app purchases, the first of its kind in the world. The final vote by all members of the National Assembly – required to pass and activate the proposal – which was expected to be held in a plenary session on the same day, was delayed until further notice.

The plenary session was tentatively delayed to 30 August, according to a media.

South Korea will be the first country to prohibit such global tech giants from imposing billing systems on in-app purchases if voted into law.

The bill, dubbed the “Anti-Google Law”, was approved by the legislation and judiciary committee of the National Assembly to revise the Telecommunication Business Act, seeking to restrict Google and Apple from requiring app developers to use their billing system.

Google said in September 2020 it would impose its billing system on all app developers, collecting up to 30 percent commission for all in-app purchases.

In July 2021, Google decided to defer its new billing policy to the end of March 2022 upon request by app developers and lowered its play store commission to 15 percent, based on local media reports.

Apple said in its statement, “The proposed Telecommunications Business Act will put users who purchase digital goods from other sources at risk of fraud, undermine their privacy protections, make it difficult to manage their purchases, and features like ‘Ask to Buy’ and Parental Controls will become less effective. We believe user trust in App Store purchases will decrease as a result of this proposal—leading to fewer opportunities for the over 482,000 registered developers in Korea who have earned more than KRW8.55 trillion to date with Apple.”

Apple and Google of course argue that there are bigger issues around better and safer user experience that come with mandating their own in-app payment systems. And this is the argument that it falls on here too.

Google did not immediately respond.

News: Xiaomi reports record 64% revenue growth, acquires Deepmotion for $77.3 million

• August 25, 2021
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Xiaomi reported a second-quarter net income of $1.28 billion on revenue of $13.56 billion following the Chinese technology giant’s strong surge in smartphone market share globally. During the quarter that ended in June, Xiaomi said it saw a 64% year-on-year growth in revenue, and its net income surged over 80% from the same time a

Xiaomi reported a second-quarter net income of $1.28 billion on revenue of $13.56 billion following the Chinese technology giant’s strong surge in smartphone market share globally.

During the quarter that ended in June, Xiaomi said it saw a 64% year-on-year growth in revenue, and its net income surged over 80% from the same time a year ago.

The Hong Kong-listed firm said its smartphone revenue grew to $9.1 billion, thanks to a just as impressive jump in its smartphone shipment to 52.9 million units in the quarter, in which it topped Apple to become the world’s second-largest smartphone vendor, according to market intelligence firm Canalys.

The U.S. government’s sanctions against Huawei, Xiaomi’s chief domestic rival, has helped the younger firm — along with some other manufacturers — gain market share domestically as well as globally.

Xiaomi’s revenue from Internet of Things and lifestyle products category also saw a 36% jump in revenue to $3.2 billion.

Shortly after reporting its earnings results, the company said it will buy the four-year-old autonomous driving technology startup Deepmotion for about $77.3 million. The investment follows Xiaomi’s bold plan to invest $10 billion over the next decade in the electric vehicles space.

Xiaomi is the latest Chinese tech company to enter the EV industry. Chinese search engine giant Baidu earlier this year announced that it would be making EVs with the help of automaker Geely. In November, Alibaba and Chinese state-owned carmaker SAIC Motor said they had joined hands to produce electric cars. Ride-share leader Didi and EV maker BYD are also co-designing a model for ride-hailing.

As my colleague Rita Liao reported earlier:

The internet behemoths are competing with a raft of more specialized EV startups such as Xpeng, Nio and Li Auto, which have already debuted multiple models and are often compared to Tesla. They strive to differentiate from each other by investing in functions from in-car entertainment to autonomous driving.

For Xiaomi, the obvious advantage in making cars is its vast retail network and international brand recognition. Some of its smart devices, such as smart speakers and air purifiers, could be easily incorporated into its vehicles as selling points. The real challenge, of course, is in manufacturing. Compared to phone making, the automotive industry is more capital-intensive with a long and complex supply chain. We will see if Xiaomi will pull it off.

Xiaomi said Wednesday its investment in Deepmotion will help the giant shorten the time to market for its products.

News: BreachQuest emerges from stealth with $4.4M to modernize incident response

• August 25, 2021
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BreachQuest, an early-stage startup with a founding team of cybersecurity experts building a modern incident response platform, has emerged from stealth with $4.4 million in seed funding. The investment was raised from Slow Ventures, Lookout founder Kevin Mahaffey, and Tinder co-founders Sean Rad and Justin Mateen, who described BreachQuest as having a “disruptive vision and

BreachQuest, an early-stage startup with a founding team of cybersecurity experts building a modern incident response platform, has emerged from stealth with $4.4 million in seed funding.

The investment was raised from Slow Ventures, Lookout founder Kevin Mahaffey, and Tinder co-founders Sean Rad and Justin Mateen, who described BreachQuest as having a “disruptive vision and a world-class team.”

The latter is certainly true. BreachQuest is made up of former U.S. Cyber Command, National Security Agency, and Department of Defense employees that it sees as its biggest competitive advantage. The second is its Priori platform, which the Texas-based company believes will re-engineer the incident response process and move incident preparedness into the future.

Currently, it takes most organizations thereabouts 280 days to detect a breach, the startup says, and the slow recovery process that typically follows means this largely manual process costs the average U.S. business just shy of $4 million. The startup’s Priori platform uses aims to improve on what the team sees as “unacceptable industry standards,” enabling organizations to detect intrusions and compromises far faster. That allows companies to near-instantly respond and contain the compromise, the startup says.

BreachQuest’s co-founder and CTO is Jake Williams, a former NSA hacker and founder of Rendition Infosec, an Augusta, Ga.-based cybersecurity company that was acquired by BreachQuest. Williams told TechCrunch that while most other incident response firms are focused on preventing incidents, BreachQuest is focusing on preparing for the inevitable.

“It’s a reality that determined adversaries will get into your network regardless of what tools you put in place to keep them out,” he says. “That’s not [fear, uncertainty and doubt], it’s just a reality that if you’re targeted you’re going to be compromised. That’s what our mission is all about: preparation to facilitate response.”

BreachQuest, which will also assess the cybersecurity risks posed to an organization by potential mergers and acquisitions, believes it has little competition in the market right now because incident preparation is a tough market.

“We continuously see statistics about how IT managers think their security controls will prevent them from being breached, so selling incident response preparation tools and services to those organizations is a hard sell,” Williams said. “But given the landscape of ransomware and other cybersecurity threats being regular front-page news, we think the market is ready.”

BreachQuest will use its $4.4 million seed investment to accelerate the rollout and development of its Priori platform, with future plans to speed up its forensic evidence collection processes and improve response coordination across its disparate team members.

“Incident response is chaotic and it’s hard for people who infrequently work in these situations to address all the issues identified throughout the investigation,” Williams said. “Fundamentally, the problem is a combination of the difficulties getting the right evidence in a timely manner and understanding the status of the response.”

Read more:

• Passwordstate customers complain of silence and secrecy after cyberattack
• FireEye to sell products unit to Symphony-led group for $1.2B
• Why incident response plans fail

News: MaxAB gets an extra $15M, acquires YC-backed Moroccan startup WaystoCap

• August 25, 2021
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Last month, MaxAB, the Egyptian B2B e-commerce platform that serves food and grocery retailers, raised one of the largest Series A on the continent, to the tune of $40 million. Today, it has raised a $15 million extension from existing investors — RMBV, IFC, Flourish Ventures, Crystal Stream Capital, Rise Capital, Endeavour Catalyst, Beco Capital

Last month, MaxAB, the Egyptian B2B e-commerce platform that serves food and grocery retailers, raised one of the largest Series A on the continent, to the tune of $40 million. Today, it has raised a $15 million extension from existing investors — RMBV, IFC, Flourish Ventures, Crystal Stream Capital, Rise Capital, Endeavour Catalyst, Beco Capital and 4DX Ventures —  bringing its total Series A fundraise to $55 million.

The company, founded by Belal El-Megharbel and Mohamed Ben Halim in 2018, manages procurement and grocery delivery to shops in Egypt. Store owners can use the platform to purchase goods, request delivery or logistics to move the goods, and access a customer support team.

When CEO El-Megharbel spoke to TechCrunch during its first Series A tranche, he said MaxAB, which operates in Egypt alone, was looking to expand across the Middle East and North Africa besides launching new product offerings and growing its team.

Today’s announcement marks MaxAB’s first step toward regional scale. The startup is announcing the acquisition of Morocco-based B2B e-commerce and distribution platform WaystoCap for an undisclosed amount.

Niama El Bassunie co-founded WaystoCap with Mehdi Daoui, Anis Abdeddine and Aziz Jaouhari Tissafi in 2015. The company was originally a cross-border trade platform for transacting business goods in Africa. That business model got WaystoCap into Y Combinator’s Winter batch in 2017, making it the first company accepted from Morocco. The company subsequently raised a $3 million seed round.

WaystoCap took its cross-border services to Ivory Coast and Togo, and at some point, was processing over $3 million worth of transactions per quarter. However, since its pivot to a similar model to MaxAB, in that it connects retailers with suppliers across Morocco, WaystoCap has pulled out from both countries while growing to a network of over 8,000 retailers in Morocco.

El-Megharbel mentioned to TechCrunch that MaxAB’s plan to move into Morocco coincided with WaystoCap’s bid to raise new funding (the last time the company took venture capital was in 2017) and push further into the Moroccan market. But both companies agreed to work together rather than compete with each other.

“I love the team. They share the same values and they’re on a mission that is using a tech-enabled supply chain to optimize food distribution across the continent,” he said in an interview. “For us, our strategy is to build a global team that can think local and execute properly. And we figured out that they’re already a perfect fit for that.”

While the acquisition signals MaxAB’s move into Morocco, it also shows the company’s entry into the Maghreb markets — Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia, where there’s little or no contest.

MaxAB says more than 70,000 retailers across both platforms will “benefit from its technology, expanded end-to-end supply chain solutions and business intelligence tools as well as WaystoCap’s knowledge and expertise.”

El Bassunie will take over the position as the managing director at MaxAB Morocco. Commenting on the acquisition of her startup, she said, “… We are thrilled to play a pivotal role in the new all-star team being created and led by experienced, innovative entrepreneurs to establish a regional market leader in food and grocery supply. We are looking forward to continuing our close working relationship with our new team and taking the business to its next phase.”

The Maghreb market is new territory for MaxAB and the acquisition positions it as the most funded and largest B2B e-commerce platform for retailers and suppliers. Morocco’s growing tech hub offers huge potential and the acquisition of WaystoCap empowers MaxAB to become a truly global team with a targeted local approach, setting the company on track to be the leading B2B retail and grocery platform in the Middle East and Africa.

“At the end of the day, what we want to do is build a tech-enabled supply chain, in all the African countries, in the Middle Eastern countries, and then connect them together. That’s where the magic happens. This is where we can actually have a real impact by putting the right amount of food at the right place at the right time, and minimizing the waste which MENA cannot afford,” said MaxAB CEO El-Meghabel.

MaxAB’s acquisition of WaystoCap is the second local cross-border acquisition that has played out in Africa this week. On Monday, Nigeria and Canada-based mobility startup Plentywaka announced the acquisition of Stabus, its counterpart in Ghana, for an undisclosed amount. From a narrower consolidation perspective, Kenyan consumer experience platform Ajua acquired Kenyan AI and ML messaging and payments company WayaWaya, early in April.

WaystoCap is also the second YC-backed company in Africa to exit, after Paystack got bought by Stripe for more than $200 million last October.

News: Vietnam after-school learning startup Marathon raises $1.5M pre-seed round

• August 25, 2021
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Marathon Education was created after its founders realized after-school education in Vietnam hadn’t evolved much since they were kids. Some of the most popular tuition centers in big cities teach hundreds of students at once. “They’re packed like sardines and that really has not changed in the past one or two decades when I went

Marathon Education was created after its founders realized after-school education in Vietnam hadn’t evolved much since they were kids. Some of the most popular tuition centers in big cities teach hundreds of students at once. “They’re packed like sardines and that really has not changed in the past one or two decades when I went to these sorts of classes in Vietnam,” said co-founder Pham Duc.

Pham launched Marathon six weeks ago with his brother-in-law Tran Viet Tung to make after-school learning more accessible in Vietnam. Today the startup is announcing it has raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding led by Forge Ventures (a new fund launched by Alto Partners), with participation from investors including Venturra Discovery and iSeed SEA.

Marathon is currently focused on math and science courses for grades six to 12 of the National Curriculum developed by Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), and will eventually cover all MOET subjects.

Before founding Marathon, Pham was an investor at TPG Global, while Tran is a serial entrepreneur whose previous startups include travel platforms Triip.me and Christina’s. Both grew up in Hanoi and spent much of their childhoods going to after-school learning centers.

About 50% to 70% of K-12 students attend after-school classes, but the industry is very fragmented, says Pham. Many learning centers are run by former public school teachers, and are clustered in major cities.

“If you speak to students, I think the biggest issue we’re seeing is accessibility,” said Pham. “If you’re a student in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, there’s no guarantee that you’ll get into classes run by top tutors.” Meanwhile, students in other areas often travel to Tier 1 cities before major tests, like university entrance exams, staying in a hostel for about a month while attending prep courses.

For teachers, running a center means handling administrative tasks like marketing, admissions and parent communications, which cuts into the time they spend designing their courses. When the current COVID-19 lockdowns started a few months ago, they had to switch quickly to online teaching platforms.

When teachers join Marathon, the company takes over administrative tasks. Its online model also means they can reach more students, including in other cities. Pham says teachers who switch from offline centers to Marathon can potentially increase their earnings two to three times.

Before joining Marathon, teachers go through a screening process, including how many of they previous students passed exams or improved their grades. Marathon pairs them with teaching assistants who work directly with groups of about 20 to 25 students during online lectures, answering questions through instant messenger, and then manage breakout rooms to go through the lessons in detail.

Marathon launched first in Ho Chi Minh City and its expansion strategy will take cultural differences between the north and south of Vietnam into account. For example, it will find tutors with regional accents, and adjust its marketing strategies.

“We are going to focus on the teachers and curriculum separately, because the two regions are quite different. Parents in the south are more experimental and more willing to try out new services. Parents in the north very much rely on their network and word-of-mouth, so they are more cautious about trying out what we’re doing,” Tran said. “So when we serve the north and south, we serve distinctive sets of customers.”

Marathon plans to continue its online-only model after lockdowns end and kids go back to in-person classes for regular school. “After one year in intermittent lockdowns, we’ve noticed there’s been a marked shift in parents’ behavior. They are much more receptive to online learning. Right now, even though there’s a lockdown, attendance rates are 99%,” said Pham. “In the future, I think online is the way to go and it’s much more scalable, so we want to focus our strategy around that.”

News: Musk admits Full Self-Driving system ‘not great,’ blames a single stack for highway and city streets

• August 24, 2021
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It hasn’t even been a week since Tesla hosted its AI Day, a livestreamed event full of technical jargon meant to snare the choicest of AI and vision engineers to come work for Tesla and help the company achieve autonomous greatness, and already CEO Elon Musk is coming in with some hot takes about the

It hasn’t even been a week since Tesla hosted its AI Day, a livestreamed event full of technical jargon meant to snare the choicest of AI and vision engineers to come work for Tesla and help the company achieve autonomous greatness, and already CEO Elon Musk is coming in with some hot takes about the “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) tech.

In a tweet on Tuesday, Musk said: “FSD Beta 9.2 is actually not great imo, but Autopilot/AI team is rallying to improve as fast as possible. We’re trying to have a single tech stack for both highway & city streets, but it requires massive [neural network] retraining.”

This is an important point. Many others in the autonomous space have mirrored this sentiment. Don Burnette, co-founder and CEO of Kodiak Robotics, says his company is exclusively focused on trucking for the moment because it’s a much easier problem to solve. In a recent Extra Crunch interview, Burnette said:

One of the unique aspects of our tech is that it’s highly customized for a specific goal. We don’t have this constant requirement that we maintain really high truck highway performance while at the same time really high dense urban passenger car performance, all within the same stack and system. Theoretically it’s certainly possible to create a generic solution for all driving in all conditions under all form factors, but it’s certainly a much harder problem.

Because Tesla is only using optical cameras, scorning lidar and radar, “massive” neural network training as a requirement is not an understatement at all.

Despite the sympathy we all feel for the AI and vision team that may undoubtedly be feeling a bit butthurt by Musk’s tweet, this is a singular moment of clarity and honesty for Musk. Usually, we have to filter Tesla news about its autonomy with a fine-tuned BS meter, one that beeps wildly with every mention of its “Full Self-Driving” technology. Which, for the record, is not at all full self-driving; it’s just advanced driver assistance that could, we grant, lay the groundwork for better autonomy in the future.

Musk followed up the tweet by saying that he just drove the FSD Beta 9.3 from Pasadena to LAX, a ride that was “much improved!” Do we buy it? Musk is ever the optimist. At the start of the month, Musk said Tesla would be releasing new versions of its FSD every two weeks at midnight California time. Then he promised that Beta 9.2 would be “tight,” saying that radar was holding the company back and now that it’s fully accepted pure vision, progress will go much faster.

Perhaps Musk is just trying to deflect against the flurry of bad press about the FSD system. Last week, U.S. auto regulators opened a preliminary investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot, citing 11 incidents in which vehicles crashed into parked first responder vehicles. Why first responder vehicles in particular, we don’t know. But according to investigation documents posted on the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration’s website, most of the incidents took place after dark. Poor night vision is definitely a thing with many human drivers, but those kinds of incidents just won’t fly in the world of autonomous driving.