Yearly Archives: 2021

News: Twitter is testing a feature that puts users’ Revue newsletters on their profiles

• August 19, 2021
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This January, Twitter acquired the newsletter platform Revue, but until now its integration into Twitter has been minimal; sometimes when you write Twitter threads, you’ll be greeted with a “Hello, wordsmiths” message that tells you about its newsletter tools). Starting today, Twitter is testing a feature that brings Revue newsletters more prominently into the Twitter

This January, Twitter acquired the newsletter platform Revue, but until now its integration into Twitter has been minimal; sometimes when you write Twitter threads, you’ll be greeted with a “Hello, wordsmiths” message that tells you about its newsletter tools).

Starting today, Twitter is testing a feature that brings Revue newsletters more prominently into the Twitter experience. Some users on web and Android will be able to see writers’ Revue newsletters appear on their profile beneath their follower counts. If you click subscribe, you’ll be prompted to read a sample issue or subscribe using the email address connected to your Twitter account. Revue says this feature will also roll out on iOS soon.

The newsletter market is heating up — Medium and Quora have both recently released new monetization structures, Substack is currently valued at $650 million, and Facebook is curating a slate of flashy newsletters on Bulletin. Even Tumblr is attempting to cash in on paywalled writing, though its user base isn’t thrilled. But with its new front-and-center integration on Twitter profiles, Revue may pick up steam too.

“One of the reasons I switched to using their platform was the potential to link my newsletter with my Twitter feed & make it easier for my followers to subscribe,” Revue writer Jewel Wicker tweeted. “Happy the rollout has begun.”

Revue takes a 5% cut of creators’ earnings, plus a standard 2.9%, plus $0.30 processing fee. So, if someone subscribes to your Revue newsletter for $5, you’ll take home $4.30. Comparatively, Substack takes 10% of writers’ revenue plus processing fees.

News: When VCs turned to Zoom, Chicago startups were ready for their close-up

• August 19, 2021
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Chicago is an outlying benefactor from accelerating venture capital activity and the rise of remote investing.

Chicago’s startup scene is finally getting the attention it long felt it deserved.

By now it’s common knowledge that 2021 is shaping up to be a breakout year for the startup and venture capital worlds, surpassing years of strong results in a long-term bull market for tech-focused business upstarts. But no boom is equally distributed.

Different markets are seeing differing amounts of activity, driven in part by their startup ecosystem’s maturity and the ease with which external capital can be deployed. African startups will set fresh venture capital records this year, for example. But markets closer to the leading hubs of venture capital are seeing even stronger results, as Latin America demonstrates. China’s venture capital market, meanwhile, is easing as others accelerate.

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Even inside the United States, there is divergence in how individual markets are performing. Chicago is an outlying benefactor from accelerating venture capital activity and the rise of remote investing. Data collected by CB Insights, for example, indicates that Chicago’s ability to attract venture funds has risen to new heights in the first half of the year.

While we anticipated Chicago might do well in a generally warm environment for startup investment, its results were better than we expected. To more fully understand just what is going on in the Windy City, The Exchange corresponded with M25, a Midwest-focused venture capital fund; Moderne Ventures’ partner Liza Benson (fresh off her firm raising $200 million for its second fund); Scott Kitun, of the Technori community and investing platform that has roots in the city; and Brian Barnes, CEO of M1 Finance, a local unicorn in the fintech space that TechCrunch has covered extensively.

The picture that emerges from their comments is one of a city long underfed in capital terms leaning into a changing investing market. And the investors don’t expect that the back half of the year will be too different from the first. That means Chicago-based startups are in the middle of their best year of raising capital ever. Let’s talk about how that came to be.

A venture capital run for the ages

The pace at which Chicago-area startups have raised capital reached a new, high plateau starting in the second half of 2020. In historical terms, data indicates that Chicago was a beneficiary of an accelerated pace of venture investment that took hold globally once investors, concerned that startup growth could slow, shrugged off initial COVID shocks. 

In short, startups were not affected as many feared, with many young tech companies actually accelerating during the pandemic’s first quarter of lockdowns, as many traditional businesses had to lean into software solutions and other services that startups sold.

The early boost to Chicago’s venture totals in the final two quarters of 2020 was easily bested in the first quarter of 2021. And then the second quarter of this year crushed that record.

News: Ample raises $160M to scale its battery swapping service

• August 19, 2021
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Instead of an EV battery being something that needs to be recharged, like an iPhone, Ample wants to turn them into things that can be swapped out, like batteries in a digital camera.

San Francisco-based Ample has raised a $160 million Series C to scale its battery swapping service, the largest round yet for the 8-year-old startup that wants to completely rethink how we use electric vehicles.

Ample’s approach is relatively straightforward: Cars equipped with the company’s modular battery pack can drive into one of Ample’s automated charging pod locations and swap out their depleted batteries for ones that are fully charged. The swapped-out batteries are then recharged in the pod and ready to be reinserted into another vehicle.

Although Ample’s battery swapping model is simple on paper, the company is proposing thinking about EV batteries in a completely different way. Instead of an EV battery being something that needs to be recharged, like an iPhone, Ample wants to turn them into things that can be swapped out, like batteries in a digital camera.

This latest nine-figure funding round is a sign that investors are paying attention. The internationally funded Series C was led by Moore Strategic Ventures with participation from PTT, a Thai state-owned oil and gas company, and Disruptive Innovation Fund. Existing investors Eneos, a Japanese petroleum and energy company, and Singapore’s public transit operator SMRT also participated. Ample’s total funding is now $230 million.

“We realized that there’s this big elephant in the room with electric vehicles and [it’s that] nobody is that excited about spending an hour, two hours or three hours charging their vehicle,” Ample co-founder John de Souza said.

Industry’s response has been to develop technology like DC fast chargers, which have managed to shave charging time down to only 20 or 30 minutes. But de Souza said that improvements in charging time don’t get rid of fundamental problems: “[Fast charging] generates a lot of heat; the grid doesn’t support it,” he said. “Even if you could have batteries you charge in five minutes, you’d need chargers that were massively powerful and you’d need power plants around every corner to do it.”

Ample is currently focused on fleets – it operates five battery swapping stations in the Bay Area for participating Uber drivers, and it also locked in a partnership with Sally, an EV rental company for taxi and last-mile deliveries in New York City. But the company sees its battery swapping service as suitable for consumers, as well. Ample co-founder Khaled Hassounah said battery swapping could also be useful for personal consumers who don’t have a good charging solution available to them, like people who live in apartment buildings. “We’re really a lot more focused on the cars that are coming on the road” rather than EVs that have already been manufactured, Hassounah added.

The company says that its modular system means that drivers only need to carry around as much battery as they need. For Ample, that means less battery waste and less weight in the vehicle.

Much of Ample’s vision relies on buy-in from automakers. For example, the company is imagining that when a person goes to buy a car, the OEM could offer either a fixed battery option or a vehicle equipped with an Ample battery system.

Ample says it has validated its approach with 10 different car models by working directly with OEMs, and that none of them have required making modifications to the vehicle. That doesn’t mean that there are no interfaces between the battery and the car that need to be altered — there are things like voltage cables or a cooling line, for example — but that the actual architecture of EVs is simpler than one might think.

“The marketing departments at the OEMs want to tell you that … ‘This is a super-duper battery that is very well integrated with the car; there’s no way you can separate it,’” Hassounah said. “The truth of the matter is they’re built completely separately and so true for almost — not almost, for every battery in the car, including a Tesla.

“Since we’ve built our system to be easy to interface with different vehicles, we’ve abstracted the battery component … from the vehicle,” he added.

Ample said it’s working with five different OEMs right now, “some of the largest OEMs out there,” de Souza said, though he declined to specify which ones. He added that growing demand from fleets goes hand in hand with conversations with OEMs, which are eager to sell vehicles.

It could be an attractive proposal because much of the cost of an electric vehicle is its battery system. The market has seen a version of this idea from Chinese automaker Nio, which offers consumers the option of purchasing a vehicle with or without a battery (for the latter option, Nio leases the batteries). Under the leasing option, drivers shave ¥70,000 ($10,800) off the price of a vehicle. Nio has already completed more than 2.4 million battery swaps for Chinese drivers, founder William Li said in May.

Looking to the future, Ample is focused purely on scaling: deploying with large customers in new cities. Interestingly, de Souza added that the company is getting a lot of interest from governments who want to shift to electric transportation but don’t have the requisite charging infrastructure.

“The question is, how can we get more miles and be electric, rather than build more infrastructure?” Hassounah said. “If you go and deploy a million fast chargers and no one uses them, we haven’t achieved anything.”

News: 4 common mistakes startups make when setting pay for hybrid workers

• August 19, 2021
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Regardless of your startup’s stance on the topic, having a consistent compensation philosophy that you apply to your evolving workplace has a unicorn-sized influence on important growth metrics.

Leaders and senior management everywhere are grappling with how (or not) to bring employees back to the office. It’s a high-stakes decision: Fifty-eight percent of workers said they will look for new jobs if they can’t work remotely, according to a FlexJobs survey.

An often overlooked and/or cobbled-together piece of this puzzle is compensation. And inside the transition to hybrid work, compensation planning encapsulates a cacophony of nuances for founders, people leaders and compensation experts.

Here are just a few new questions this group needs to answer:

• Do we adjust salaries for people who have moved to different regions?
• Do we alter pay for employees performing the same role, with the same title, when one is remote and the other is in-office?
• How can we educate geographies that aren’t as familiar with the value of equity as is, say, Silicon Valley?

As we’ve seen in recent weeks, the answers to these questions are different for us all. Google employees who work from home may experience a pay cut. Adobe workers can self-select what days they work remotely, up to 50% of the time, with no salary impact. Meanwhile, LinkedIn just loosened its policy, allowing employees to work from home permanently.

Regardless of your startup’s stance on the topic, having a consistent compensation philosophy that you apply to your evolving workplace has a unicorn-sized influence on important growth metrics: attracting and keeping top talent, as well as creating a culture of trust and performance.

As the CEO of a compensation intelligence company, I see four common mistakes that startups commit when compensation planning that hinder successful remote or hybrid workforces. Here are the ways to sidestep them.

1. Using subpar data for competitive analysis

The first step in developing a compensation plan — regardless of your company’s stance on distributed work — is determining how your team’s pay compares with the market. To understand market rates, you need one thing: data.

If you’re moving from a strictly office-based environment to a hybrid model, 2019 data won’t work. While it’s tempting to search for free data online or use survey data that your company has purchased in the past, both approaches have risks. Traditional compensation survey information is stale, limited and often not verified. And spreadsheets are hyperprone to error and security risks because they involve manual, and often super laborious, work.

In a world that’s still reacting to a pandemic, only fresh, real-time, accurate benchmarks and pay ranges are sufficient. Both must reflect aggregated information about what others in your segment are paying employees — by experience level, role, department, geography, industry and company size.

For example, technology startups need different data sources than global financial services organizations. Both need information geared toward companies of a similar size and stage. Software engineer salaries need to reflect those of similar roles, with nuances for those that specialize in machine learning, data science, etc.

You’d be shocked how often self-reported data on free websites is inaccurate and unverified. As you seek a credible intelligence source for your compensation data, a data source must:

News: Paladin publicly launches Knighthawk, a first response drone for cities

• August 19, 2021
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Emergency response is a time-sensitive business. When fires burn or a driver crashes their car, seconds can mean the difference between saving lives and watching a situation spiral rapidly out of control. For fire and police departments, getting teams on site can be challenging, what with the vagaries of traffic and bad routing. Houston-headquartered Paladin

Emergency response is a time-sensitive business. When fires burn or a driver crashes their car, seconds can mean the difference between saving lives and watching a situation spiral rapidly out of control. For fire and police departments, getting teams on site can be challenging, what with the vagaries of traffic and bad routing.

Houston-headquartered Paladin is a startup building a custom drone hardware and software solution for cities to be able to respond to emergencies faster and with better data. After years of development, the company is publicly unveiling its Knighthawk and Watchtower products.

The Knighthawk is a custom-made drone designed for the specific needs of emergency response personnel. It comes complete with two cameras — one 10x zoom optical and one thermal — to provide the best video feeds on a developing situation at both day and night with only a half second latency. Importantly, the drone has a time range of 55 minutes and can travel multiple miles away to reach a site, according to the company. Launch time can be as short as a few seconds from when a 911 call comes in.

To manage the drones and watch the video feeds, operators use the company’s Watchtower software (available as an app) to place a pin on a map to direct the drone to the likely site of an emergency. Once there, uploaded video feeds will display in the app as well as in a 911 center’s existing computer-aided dispatch systems, a topic we covered quite a bit in our RapidSOS EC-1 from a few weeks ago.

The public launch is a huge step forward for the company, which TechCrunch last profiled in 2019 as it was emerging from Y Combinator with a $1.3 million seed from the likes of Khosla, Correlation Ventures, and Paul Buchheit. Back then, the focus was on building software to integrate with an off-the-shelf DJI drone. Paladin was experimenting with a beta Android app where an operator could place a pin on a map and direct the drone to a site.

Yet, that model proved insufficient for the task. CEO and co-founder Divy Shrivastava said that as the company developed its product, it learned it needed to own the hardware stack as well. “The drones that we were using weren’t purpose-built for automation,” he said. “We ended up coming up with our own communication technology for our drones … so that we won’t lose connection.”

Since the company’s founding in 2018, it has responded to about 1,600 emergencies, according to its own internal data. The company has spent prodigious hours with departments in two locations — Memorial Villages in Houston and Orange Township in Ohio — responding to a handful of calls per day at specific hours.

That restriction hints at what has been one of the toughest challenges for the drone startup: regulations. The FAA has put in place strict rules around visual line of sight for operators of drones. In order to realize its vision of a completely seamless and easily deployed system, Paladin has had to collect extensive data and present it to the FAA to get operating waivers, which the agency offers through a “First Responder Tactical Beyond Visual Line of Sight” exception. So far, it has secured these types of waivers for the two cities it works with, and Shrivastava is confident that the company has developed a repeatable process for any new cities that want to purchase its products.

Installation is relatively simple, according to Shrivastava. The drones themselves can be placed anywhere, even “a parking lot,” and are often stationed at a police department or firehouse. No special hardware or sensors or guidelines need to be installed in the city for the drones to process the terrain or understand their surroundings. Some software integration is required to connect drones into the computer-aided dispatch system used by 911 call takers.

With the public launch and more proof points on the board, the company is focusing on ramping up sales and “our long-term goal is to have every single fire, police and first response agency use us,” Shrivastava said. The team has expanded to about eight, although the company’s other co-founder, Trevor Pennypacker, departed in late 2019, and now works at Tesla.

News: Actuator: Stop making sense

• August 19, 2021
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First of all, we’ve got a fancy new name. While “Robotics Roundup” was nothing if not very technically accurate, it lacked the kind of panache one ought to strive for when rounding up robotics. Actuator, on the other hand — that’s a mover and shaker. It’s a name you can take to the bank (or

First of all, we’ve got a fancy new name. While “Robotics Roundup” was nothing if not very technically accurate, it lacked the kind of panache one ought to strive for when rounding up robotics. Actuator, on the other hand — that’s a mover and shaker.

It’s a name you can take to the bank (or at least run by the legal department for clearance). To mark this momentous occasion, we employed our resident graphic design genius Bryce to sketch up something befitting our rebrand.

We’re also using the opportunity to announce that Actuator will be coming soon to an inbox near you as a free TechCrunch newsletter. All of this fun change seems extra fitting, given that this happens to be the 25th edition of the roundup. You can find all of the older updates under our Actuator tag if you want to catch up.

If you’ve been following for a while, you’ve got the gist of what the newsletter is about: a digestible look into the week’s robotics news. We cover all of the startups making waves and the big companies impacting the industry, along with the most fascinating updates in the world of robotic research, as well as dives into labor concerns and various ethical issues stemming from automation and AI.

If all of that sounds good, you can sign up here to get Actuator in your inbox as soon as the first issue hits. I’m told you may have to prove you’re not a robot, so apologies in advance to all of the robots reading this. But hey, if you’ve gotten this far, you’ll figure it out.

Following an earlier report from CRN, Intel has since confirmed with TechCrunch that it will be winding down its 3D imaging platform, RealSense. It’s always a shame to see these sorts of forward-looking initiatives go away. And certainly Intel has been leaning pretty heavily on the division as a leading indicator of its efforts to remain relevant as the industry evolves.

Over the years, we’ve covered RealSense’s involvement in drones, robotics and AR/VR. In June of last year, we covered the platform’s embrace of 5G connectivity.

“We are winding down our RealSense business and transitioning our computer vision talent, technology and products to focus on advancing innovative technologies that better support our core businesses and IDM 2.0 strategy,” the company said in a statement offered to TechCrunch. “We will continue to meet our commitments to our current customers and are working with our employees and customers to ensure a smooth transition.

Translation: The company is choosing to focus its core competency. IDM 2.0 refers specifically to the new chipmaking strategy into which the company is pumping $20 billion. Understandable, but it’s always hopeful to see big companies like Intel, Nvidia and Qualcomm really go all in on such forward-facing technologies.

Boston Dynamics, meanwhile, made news this week, ostensibly for another slick viral video, this one featuring the Hyundai-owned company’s humanoid Atlas robot. By now we’re all well aware of the fact that the company makes impressive robots and highly effective YouTube videos that launch a million Black Mirror and Terminator jokes on Twitter.

I’ve seen Atlas do some really impressive stuff in person at BD’s headquarters, and I’ve got a pretty good idea of what it’s currently capable of. So, while Atlas is extremely cool, I didn’t find the recent parkour video especially shocking. What did catch me off guard, however, was the fact that the company also used the opportunity to essentially publish some outtakes from the film.

A six-minute, behind-the-scenes video featured a montage of Atlas falling on its face. Like any great skateboarding video, there are a few gratuitous shots included that demonstrate that, regardless of how advanced the system is, there are still going to be some face-planting, gasket-blowing falls that leave its chest scuffed in a pool of its own fluid. The company notes:

During filming, Atlas gets the vault right about half of the time. On the other runs, Atlas makes it over the barrier, but loses its balance and falls backward, and the engineers look to the logs to see if they can find opportunities for on-the-fly adjustments.

That’s probably enough news of shuttered divisions and bodily robot harm for this week. A couple of fundraising rounds are worth noting.

First is Rapid Robotics, which has been on a fundraising tear of late. The new $36.7 million Series B values the manufacturing robotics company at $192.5 million and marks its third(!) fundraising round in a year that started with a seed raise.

CEO Jordan Kretchmer cites pandemic-fueled manufacturing bottlenecks as a big source of interest in the company:

We hear a lot about the semiconductor shortage, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Contract manufacturers can’t produce gaskets, vials, labels — you name it. I’ve seen cases where the inability to produce a single piece of U-shaped black plastic brought an entire auto line to a halt

Rapid will be making its robotic systems available through the increasingly popular RaaS (robotics as a service) model also being employed by Diamond Age. The fellow Bay Area-based firm announced its own $8 million seed round this morning for an intriguing mix of robotics and 3D printing designed at speeding up house construction. The company is still in its early stages, but it claims its technology can dramatically reduce the need for manual labor and shrink house construction time from nine months to 30 days.

Following its own recent funding back in May, Picnic this week announced that it’s finally selling its modular robotic pizza maker. Pizza is, of course, a popular target for food robotics companies, because Americans eat a ton of it — reportedly 100 acres a day, as of 2015. It’s also relatively uniformly constructed as far as self-contained meals go, and is therefore easier to automate.

And speaking of pizza robots, before we leave you this week, a note to check out the EC-1 on Nuro. Here’s a fun anecdote from Domino’s chief innovation officer that seems to ring true across the robotic spectrum:

One of the things we laugh about is how customers constantly talk to the bot. It’s almost like they think it’s ‘Knight Rider.’ It’s very common for customers to thank it or say goodbye, which is great because that indicates we’re creating an engaging experience that they’re not frustrated by.

News: In growing battle with TikTok, Facebook to test ‘Facebook Reels’ in the US

• August 19, 2021
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Reels are coming to Facebook in the U.S. The company this morning announced it will begin testing a new feature, Facebook Reels, which will give Facebook users the ability to create and share short-form video content directly within the News Feed or within Facebook Groups. The addition is an expansion of tests launched earlier this

Reels are coming to Facebook in the U.S. The company this morning announced it will begin testing a new feature, Facebook Reels, which will give Facebook users the ability to create and share short-form video content directly within the News Feed or within Facebook Groups. The addition is an expansion of tests launched earlier this year in India, Mexico and Canada, which had focused on bringing short-form videos to Facebook users, including by sharing existing Instagram Reels to Facebook, as had been reported.

In addition, Facebook today says it will also test a new feature that will give Instagram creators in the U.S. the option to have their Instagram Reels shown as recommended content on Facebook. If the creators opt in, their videos will appear in the “Reels” section in users’ News Feed, alongside other Reels created on Facebook.

There will be many places where users can create Reels from Facebook, as the new feature launches.

Initially, you’ll be able to tap a “Create” button from the Reels section that appears as you scroll the News Feed, while you’re watching Reels or by tapping on “Reels” at the top of your News Feed. From here, users will gain access to a standard set of creation tools, including those for video capture, music selection, camera roll import, timed text and more — much like you would have access to on Instagram.

For audio, you can either choose a song from Facebook’s music library, record your own original audio or even use someone else’s audio, if their Reels are set to “public.” There are also a variety of effects and editing tools to choose from, including a timer for recording Reels hands-free, tools to speed up or slow down a part of the video or your original audio and a number of augmented reality effects created either by Facebook or third-party developers.

Facebook told us that, for the time being, “most” of Instagram Reels’ features will also be available on Facebook Reels. But other features — like Remix (its take on TikTok’s side-by-side videos called Duets) — will be added over time as the test scales to more people. The user interface for Reels may also evolve over time to look somewhat different from Reels on Instagram, depending on user feedback.

After a Reel has been created, you can choose who to share it with — such as “Friends,” a specific audience like “Friends except…”, or the general public. The latter is the default setting.

The feature will be made available within Facebook Groups, where Reels can be created then shared with members of the community who have similar interests.

Users can also choose to tap into “My Reels” to view past creations. And you can browse Reels created by others in the News Feed, and in select Groups and Pages — where you can like, comment on or share them, just as you could with any other type of post. Reels will now be surfaced in Search results, too, Facebook told us.

Like much of what appears on Facebook, Reels will be recommended to users based on what people are interested in, what they engage with and what’s broadly popular. This will apply to both the shared Instagram Reels and the Facebook Reels.

The company explained the decision to replicate the Reels product inside Facebook is a result of consumers’ growing interest in video, and particularly short-form video. Today, video accounts for almost half of all time spent on Facebook, in fact. On Facebook’s latest earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg remarked that Reels was “already the largest contributor to engagement growth on Instagram,” given the popularity of short-form video.

“We’re very focused on making it easy for anyone to create video, and then for those videos to be viewed across all of our different services, starting with Facebook and Instagram first,” he had told investors.

But Facebook also understands that people have different communities and audiences on Instagram and Facebook, so simply offering a cross-posting option may not have sufficed.

However, for existing Reels creators who do want to tap into Facebook’s large audience, a new option will allow them to opt-in to have their Reels shared to Facebook. This could be useful for those producing more general-interest Reels content.

These shared Reels will display the creator’s Instagram username, as well, which could help them build a following. Creators’ Reels can also be remixed, with the creator’s permission, and their original audio can be re-used in other people’s Reels — again, much like on TikTok.

This feature will also be introduced as a “test,” Facebook said.

While Instagram is already beginning to monetize Reels through ads, Facebook told us that Reels on Facebook don’t currently include ads. But, “we plan to roll out ads in the future,” a Facebook spokesperson added.

Reels, which is Facebook’s answer to the growing threat of TikTok, first launched to global audiences a year ago. This launch alone was not enough to win Instagram the top spot as the world’s most downloaded mobile app. In 2020, that win went to TikTok, after years where Facebook-owned apps dominated the top charts. And TikTok today continues to sit at the top of App Store charts in terms of both app installs and consumer spending, according to multiple third-party reports. 

For Facebook, TikTok represents an existential threat to its business. If users’ time and attention are being spent elsewhere, Facebook’s advertisers could then follow, impacting Facebook’s bottom line. So instead of competing with TikTok in just one app, Facebook is now using two. And it’s leveraging its apps’ interoperability to ensure the best content can easily flow to both places.

The company is also directly investing in the creator community in hopes of tipping the scales back in its direction.

In July, the company announced a plan to invest more than $1 billion in creators across both Facebook and Instagram through 2022. This fund will reward more than just Reels’ creators, to be clear, as it will also pay out bonuses for videos with in-stream ads enabled or for enabling IGTV ads, among other things. It will also bonus top creators who have invited fans to send them tips in the form of a virtual currency, “stars.” But Instagram Reels, and now Facebook Reels, will be looped into that initiative.

Today, Facebook said it will announce additional bonus programs and seed funding in the months ahead that will pay out bonuses for Reels on Facebook. These will be funded from that $1 billion commitment. The company declined to share details on this front, but this news alone indicates Facebook Reels is far more than just “a test” in Facebook’s eyes.

The new Facebook Reels features will begin to roll out starting today, August 19, in the U.S. It will first be available to a “small percentage” of U.S. users on iOS and Android.

The feature will continue to operate in India, Mexico and Canada, as well.

News: Indian fintech CRED launches peer-to-peer lending feature Mint

• August 19, 2021
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India’s CRED, which rewards users for paying their credit-card bills on time, is broadening its offerings to help its 7.5 million members gain more from the service. The Bangalore-based startup said on Thursday that CRED users can now lend to one another at an interest rate of up to 9% annually. Kunal Shah, founder and

India’s CRED, which rewards users for paying their credit-card bills on time, is broadening its offerings to help its 7.5 million members gain more from the service.

The Bangalore-based startup said on Thursday that CRED users can now lend to one another at an interest rate of up to 9% annually.

Kunal Shah, founder and chief executive of CRED, said the startup is rolling out this feature, dubbed CRED Mint, initially to some users after testing this internally for months.

“We’re super excited about this because it’s the first time our community members will be able to invest in one another directly. It’s going to focus on high-quality, low-risk, but much better, inflation-beating returns you can get on your money,” he said in an interview with TechCrunch.

CRED members have on average 200,000 Indian rupees ($2,685) sitting in their savings accounts, the startup said. “At up to 9% interest, CRED Mint will help these users India’s most creditworthy individuals to be rewarded for responsible financial behaviour with a smarter way to make idle money work for them. CRED members can apply for early access to Mint.”

Peer-to-peer lending is not a new business idea. Several large and small firms operate in this space, but CRED appears to be uniquely positioned to solve one of the biggest challenges this category faces: defaulters. According to some estimates, more than 20% of individuals taking a loan in a peer-to-peer service don’t pay back.

CRED members have a credit score of 750 or higher, making them the most trustworthy audience to provide financial services. On CRED, a user has to have a credit score of 750 or higher to join the app.

“We do believe that the product-market fit of our offering is very strong. We believe that this could set a new benchmark for what fintechs should be doing,” said Shah. CRED also does lending itself — which is available to limited members — and has disbursed about $269 million to customers in loans,

“Even at the scale of CRED Cash, the default rate has historically been less than 1%. To reduce risk further, the invested money will be routed directly to an escrow account held by CRED’s NBFC partner, Liquiloans, and diversified across 200+ borrowers on average,” the startup said.

For CRED Mint, the startup has partnered with Liquiloans, an RBI-registered P2P NBFC. Shah said CRED will eventually partner with more players. Users can invest between 100,000 Indian rupees ($1,345) to $13,450 in about two minutes, and also request withdrawal at any time with no penalty.

“The withdrawal process is fully online, and the money with interest will be returned to the investor within a working day. As a digital platform, CRED reduces friction, inefficiency, commissions, and overheads to pass on higher earnings for members,” the startup said.

CRED, backed by Tiger Global, Ribbit Capital, and Sequoia Capital India and valued at $2.2 billion in April round, has also received inbound requests from internal investors to raise a new round of over $300 million. The proposed terms value CRED at about $4 billion post-money. CRED isn’t currently in advanced stages to close a round. Shah declined to comment on fundraise talks.

News: Spatial audio is coming to Netflix on iPhone and iPad

• August 19, 2021
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If you use AirPods Pro or AirPods Max, your mobile Netflix-watching is about to get a bit more immersive. Yesterday, Netflix confirmed that it has begun rolling out spatial audio support on iPhone and iPad on iOS 14 after the feature was spotted by a Reddit user. Netflix joins streaming competitors like HBO Max, Disney+,

If you use AirPods Pro or AirPods Max, your mobile Netflix-watching is about to get a bit more immersive. Yesterday, Netflix confirmed that it has begun rolling out spatial audio support on iPhone and iPad on iOS 14 after the feature was spotted by a Reddit user.

Netflix joins streaming competitors like HBO Max, Disney+, and Peacock in enabling this feature, while other popular apps like Amazon Prime Video and YouTube still don’t have this functionality. Still, Netflix said the rollout won’t be immediate — users who have the update should be able to toggle it on or off in the Control Center.

Recently, Apple has been emphasizing its spatial audio features. The company first announced that it would bring spatial audio to AirPods Pro during the WWDC conference in 2020 — during this year’s conference, Apple added that Apple Music subscribers would gain access to spatial audio and lossless audio streaming at no extra charge. This even supports dynamic head tracking, which adjusts the sound when you move your head.  The Android version of the Apple Music app also supports spatial and lossless audio. In February, Spotify said it would rollout a high-end subscription service, Spotify HiFi, which would enable lossless audio, though there’s been no news since.

Last month, Netflix revealed that it start looking toward mobile gaming in addition to its original movies and television series. The company has already experimented with interactive entertainment with projects like Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and its Stranger Things games.

“We view gaming as another new content category for us, similar to our expansion into original films, animation and unscripted TV,” the company said in its quarterly earnings report.

Spatial audio is popular among video game players — so while this update will enhance the streaming video experience on iPhone and iPad, perhaps we’ll see this feature at play in eventual Netflix mobile games, too.

News: Eaze to become America’s largest cannabis delivery service after buying Green Dragon

• August 19, 2021
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Eaze this week announced  significant plans to expand into one the U.S.’s largest cannabis delivery services. One of the original on-demand cannabis delivery services, the Bay Area-based company is set to acquire cannabis retailer and cultivator Green Dragon, which operates in the hot markets of Colorado and Florida. Combined with existing operations in California and

Eaze this week announced  significant plans to expand into one the U.S.’s largest cannabis delivery services. One of the original on-demand cannabis delivery services, the Bay Area-based company is set to acquire cannabis retailer and cultivator Green Dragon, which operates in the hot markets of Colorado and Florida. Combined with existing operations in California and Michigan, the deal would find Eaze operating in America’s four largest cannabis markets.

Less than two years ago, it was unclear if Eaze would have enough cash to continue operating. According to TechCrunch’s reporting, it was experiencing significant trouble raising funds and went through unannounced layoffs. The company was switching from providing delivery services to operating as a delivery dispensary. Eaze was effectively the Uber of Weed, attempting to become the Amazon of Weed.

Founded in 2014 by Keith McCarty, Eaze has raised over $255 million to date. The company cycled through leadership and has seen three CEOs, with Rogelio Choy leading it since 2019. Former CEO Jim Patterson recently pleaded guilty in a $100 million scheme to deceive banks into processing credit and debit payments in cannabis purchases. The case is similar to one brought against Eaze in 2019, though the company denied involvement and is not a defendant in the case against Patterson. The future was unclear, but now two years later, it’s raising more funds and is on track to become the nation’s largest multi-state cannabis delivery service.

The company switched gears in 2019 and closed a previously-announced Series D financing round of $90 million in August 2020. This year, Eaze is trying to close a $75 million Series E with 80% of the funds already committed. The company expects this round to close in November. Eaze tells TechCrunch that this round will value Eaze at more than $700 million — double its fundraising valuation in 2019. The anticipated funding will be used to drive additional retail expansion.

Eaze Chief Strategy Officer Cory Azzalino justifies the higher valuation as such, “The company is fundamentally different. Even our California operations are significantly larger than they were back in 2019 from a revenue standpoint. But also just in terms of future growth opportunities. There’s a substantial increase in our addressable market. Florida, Michigan and Colorado create some $6 billion worth of incremental market size.”

Eaze is quickly becoming a major national cannabis operator. Earlier in 2021, it announced that its delivery service will be moving into Michigan, the hottest cannabis market in the midwest. If the Green Dragon purchase closes, the company also gains delivery operations in Colorado (now approving cannabis delivery companies) and Florida (a state with a massive medical marijuana market). According to a press release, Green Dragon saw more than one million transactions in 2020, and its Colorado stores grew 39% in 2020. In July, the company turned to Florida, announcing the opening of its first two dispensaries in the state and its intention to secure 20 more locations by the end of 2021.

The timing couldn’t be better for Eaze. In June 2021 Apple changed an App Story policy, allowing licensed cannabis dispensaries to list and sell cannabis products (flower, edibles, and vapes) directly from an iOS app. Eaze jumped, becoming the first retailer to sell weed from an iPhone app. However, purchases are only possible in Eaze’s two markets: California and (soon) Michigan.

“Eaze has achieved exponential growth over the last two years by successfully shifting to vertical operations and continuing to grow our loyal customer base,” said Eaze CEO Rogelio Choy said in a released statement. “Green Dragon’s airtight operations in Colorado and expansion into Florida’s booming market adds key operational capabilities to our national footprint and cements our leadership as California’s largest MSO. Together, we are well-positioned to leverage the market’s explosive growth now and into the future.”