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News: Kaseya hack floods hundreds of companies with ransomware

• July 6, 2021
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On Friday, a flood of ransomware hit hundreds of companies around the world. A grocery store chain, a public broadcaster, schools, and a national railway system were all hit by the file-encrypting malware, causing disruption and forcing hundreds of businesses to close. The victims had something in common: a key piece of network management and

On Friday, a flood of ransomware hit hundreds of companies around the world. A grocery store chain, a public broadcaster, schools, and a national railway system were all hit by the file-encrypting malware, causing disruption and forcing hundreds of businesses to close.

The victims had something in common: a key piece of network management and remote control software developed by U.S. technology firm Kaseya. The Miami-headquartered company makes software used to remotely manage a company’s IT networks and devices. That software is sold to managed service providers — effectively outsourced IT departments — which they then use to manage the networks of their customers, often smaller companies.

But hackers associated with the Russia-linked REvil ransomware-as-a-service group are believed to have used a never-before-seen security vulnerability in the software’s update mechanism to push ransomware to Kaseya’s customers, which in turn spread downstream to their customers. Many of the companies who were ultimately victims of the attack may not have known that their networks were monitored by Kaseya’s software.

Kaseya warned customers on Friday to “IMMEDIATELY” shut down their on-premise servers, and its cloud service — though not believed to be affected — was pulled offline as a precaution.

John Hammond, senior security researcher at Huntress Labs, a threat detection firm that was one of the first to reveal the attack, said about 30 managed service providers were hit, allowing the ransomware to spread to “well over” 1,000 businesses.” Security firm ESET said it knows of victims in 17 countries, including the U.K., South Africa, Canada, New Zealand, Kenya, and Indonesia.

Now it’s becoming clearer just how the hackers pulled off one of the biggest ransomware attacks in recent history.

Dutch researchers said they found several zero-day vulnerabilities in Kaseya’s software as part of an investigation into the security of web-based administrator tools. (Zero-days are named as such since it gives companies zero days to fix the problem.) The bugs were reported to Kaseya and were in the process of being fixed when the hackers struck, said Victor Gevers, who heads the group of researchers, in a blog post.

Kaseya’s chief executive Fred Voccola told The Wall Street Journal that its corporate systems were not compromised, lending greater credence to the working theory by security researchers that servers run by Kaseya’s customers were compromised individually using a common vulnerability.

The company said that all servers running the affected software should stay offline until the patch is ready. Voccola told the paper that it expects patches to be released by late Monday.

The attack began late Friday afternoon, just as millions of Americans were logging off into the long July 4 weekend. Adam Meyers, CrowdStrike’s senior vice president of intelligence, said the attack was carefully timed.

“Make no mistake, the timing and target of this attack are no coincidence. It illustrates what we define as a Big Game Hunting attack, launched against a target to maximize impact and profit through a supply chain during a holiday weekend when business defenses are down,” said Meyers.

A notice posted over the weekend on a dark web site known to be run by REvil claimed responsibility for the attack, and that the ransomware group would publicly release a decryption tool if it is paid $70 million in bitcoin.

“More than a million systems were infected,” the group claims in the post.

News: Volvo, Daimler, Traton invest $593 million to build electric truck charging network

• July 5, 2021
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Volvo Group, Daimler Truck and Volkswagon’s AG heavy-truck business the Traton Group announced on Monday a non-binding agreement to build a network of high-performance public charging stations for electric heavy-duty long-haul trucks and buses around Europe. The news was first reported by Reuters. The three major European automakers will invest €500 million (~$593 million USD)

Volvo Group, Daimler Truck and Volkswagon’s AG heavy-truck business the Traton Group announced on Monday a non-binding agreement to build a network of high-performance public charging stations for electric heavy-duty long-haul trucks and buses around Europe. The news was first reported by Reuters.

The three major European automakers will invest €500 million (~$593 million USD) to install and operate 1,700 charging points in strategic locations and close to highways. They intend to finalize the agreement by the end of this year and start operations next year, with the hopes of increasing the number of charge points significantly as the companies seek additional partners for the future joint venture.

The venture is meant to be a catalyst to prepare for the European Union’s goals of carbon-neutral freight transportation by 2050. One of the main deterrents for both individuals and freight companies for switching to EVs has historically been a lack of charging infrastructure. By building that infrastructure, Volvo, Daimler and Traton can also expect to boost their own sales of electric trucks and buses.

“It is the joint aim of Europe’s truck manufacturers to achieve climate neutrality by 2050,” Martin Daum, CEO Daimler Truck, said in a statement.  “However, it is vital that building up the right infrastructure goes hand in hand with putting CO₂-neutral trucks on the road. Together with Volvo Group and the TRATON GROUP, we are therefore very excited to take this pioneering step to establish a high-performance charging network across Europe.”

The partnership between Volvo and Daimler isn’t unprecedented. In May, the two competitors teamed up to produce hydrogen fuel cells for long-haul trucks to lower development costs and boost production volumes. This latest venture is another signal that major companies are banding together to solve climate-related issues in the industry.

European car industry association ACEA has called for up to 50,000 high-performance charging points by 2030. Traton CEO Matthias Gruendler told Reuters that roughly 10 billion euros would be needed to build out Europe’s infrastructure to be fully electrified by 2050.

According to a statement released by Volvo, this venture is also a call to action for others with a stake in the industry, like automakers or governments, to work together to ensure the rapid expansion needed to reach climate goals.

The charging stations will be brand-agnostic, and battery electric vehicle fleet operators will be able to use both the fast charging during the European 45 minute mandatory rest period for long-distance transport and also charge overnight.

The joint venture will operate under its own corporate identity out of Amsterdam. Volvo, Daimler and Traton will own equal shares in the venture but will continue to compete in all other areas.

 

News: VW offloads Bugatti to Rimac to form new EV company Bugatti-Rimac

• July 5, 2021
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Croatian electric supercar startup Rimac Automobili is taking over Bugatti. Rimac will own a controlling 55% share in the new company, Bugatti-Rimac, with VW’s Porsche owning the remaining 45%, according to reports by the Financial Times. “Rimac and Bugatti are a perfect match in terms of what we each bring to the table,” said founder

Croatian electric supercar startup Rimac Automobili is taking over Bugatti. Rimac will own a controlling 55% share in the new company, Bugatti-Rimac, with VW’s Porsche owning the remaining 45%, according to reports by the Financial Times.

“Rimac and Bugatti are a perfect match in terms of what we each bring to the table,” said founder and CEO of Rimac, Mate Rimac, in a statement. “As a young, agile and fast-paced automotive and technology company, we have established ourselves as an industry pioneer in electric technologies. With the Nevera, we have also proven that we can develop and manufacture outstanding hypercars, that are not only fast but also exciting and high-quality. Bugatti, with over a century of experience in engineering excellence, also possesses one of the most exceptional heritage of any car company in history.”

The company recently unveiled the Nevera, a hypercar powered by a 120kWh battery pack and four motors to achieve a staggering 1.4MW of power, which is about 1,914 horsepower. It can go from 0 to 60 mph in 1.85 seconds and has a top speed of 258 mph. The Nevera is expected to be the fastest sports car, a spot previously held by the Bugatti Chiron’s.

Rimac’s meteoric rise from bootstrapping in a garage in 2009 to building supercars with one of the most desirable and well-known car brands demonstrates how electric vehicles are beginning to take over the luxury and sports car market. It’s not just about doing what’s right for the environment – it’s about pioneering speed in the future of automobiles.

Along with this announcement, Rimac said it would separate the development, production and supply of battery systems, drivetrains and other EV components into a new entity owned by Rimac Group called Rimac Technology, which will work independently with other global car manufacturers.

The formation of Bugatti-Rimac doesn’t affect the shareholder structure within Rimac Group. Mate Rimac will continue to hold his 37% share in Rimac Group, with Hyundai Motor Group holding the same 12% and other investors at 27%, according to a statement from the company. Porsche recently upped its stake in Rimac from 15% to 24%, but its total ownership doesn’t give It a controlling interest in the new EV company, the companies told FT.

Mate Rimac will lead Bugatti-Rimac, which will be headquartered in Zagreb, Croatia. Bugatti’s manufacturing will remain in Molsheim, France.

News: ManoMano raises $355 million for its home improvement e-commerce platform

• July 5, 2021
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French startup ManoMano has raised a Series F funding round of $355 million led by Dragoneer Investment Group. The company operates an e-commerce platform focused on DIY, home improvement and gardening products. It is currently available in six European countries. Following today’s funding round, the company has reached a valuation of $2.6 billion. In addition

French startup ManoMano has raised a Series F funding round of $355 million led by Dragoneer Investment Group. The company operates an e-commerce platform focused on DIY, home improvement and gardening products. It is currently available in six European countries. Following today’s funding round, the company has reached a valuation of $2.6 billion.

In addition to Dragoneer Investment Group, Temasek, General Atlantic, Eurazeo, Bpifrance’s Large Venture fund, Aglaé Ventures, Kismet Holdings and Armat Group are also participating.

“We operate in Europe and we are the industry leader in online sales,” co-founder and co-CEO Philippe de Chanville told me. In France in particular, the company has been profitable for a couple of years already. In 2020 alone, the company’s gross merchandise volume doubled to €1.2 billion ($1.42 billion at today’s rate).

So why did the company raise given that it’s already in a strong position to replicate the same model in other European markets? Because they could and because they didn’t need to. With a high valuation, ManoMano could raise quite a bit of money without having to sell a significant chunk of its equity.

In addition to France, the startup operates in Spain, Italy, Belgium, Germany and the U.K. With today’s funding round, the company wants to develop its activities in the U.K. and Germany in particular — they are Europe’s two biggest markets for home improvement and gardening.

ManoMano sells products to hobbyists and also targets the B2B market with ManoManoPro. It’s already working well in France with very small teams (1 to 5 employees) and the company is expanding this offering to Spain and Italy.

The startup will also invest more heavily in its product and build a better logistics infrastructure. “For the logistics part, we work with third-party logistics companies — we are a tech company,” co-founder and co-CEO Christian Raisson told me.

ManoMano doesn’t have its own warehouses and doesn’t own any inventory. That’s why ManoMano plans to recruit 1,000 people over the next 18 months and most of them will be tech profiles.

While ManoMano has 7 million clients, sales of home improvement and gardening items still mostly happen in brick-and-mortar stores. The startup is well aware that it’s not just a matter of having the best products at good price points.

ManoMano works with advisors (or Manodvisors) so that experts can give advice whenever customers need some tips. Overall, customers have initiated 2.3 million conversations with advisors in 2020. Recommendations and advice will be key to gain market shares. And the company is now well capitalized to innovate on this front and differentiate itself from other e-commerce platforms.

News: Tom Blomfield takes first board post at Generation Home, after leaving Monzo and Angel investing

• July 5, 2021
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Following on from mid-June when first-time buyer mortgage lending startup Generation Home raised a $30.4m Series A round and a £300m loan facility from NatWest, it’s now adding to its board. Although known for becoming an Angel investor since leaving Monzo, the challenger bank startup he co-founded, Tom Blomfield hasn’t joined any startup boards. That

Following on from mid-June when first-time buyer mortgage lending startup Generation Home raised a $30.4m Series A round and a £300m loan facility from NatWest, it’s now adding to its board.

Although known for becoming an Angel investor since leaving Monzo, the challenger bank startup he co-founded, Tom Blomfield hasn’t joined any startup boards.

That changes today with the news that he is joining Generation Home.

The startup launched last year with radically a different model for home buying – effectively allowing relatives to become co-equity holders in the properties their children bought, and go along for the ride.

Generation Home founder and CEO Will Rice says the platform, therefore, unlocks far larger amounts of capital from ‘the bank of mum and dad’ than normally happens when money is loaned or gifted to the next generation.

The UK property problem is acute. According to the English Housing Survey 2020, the average U.K. renter spends 35% of their income on rent compared with 18% for homeowners paying a mortgage. High rents inhibit their ability to save and house price inflation locks more people out of homeownership.

Using Generation Home, parents can contribute deposits as an equity loan. Generation Home then takes responsibility for the repayment of funds to the parents upon a sale of the property or remortgage. Repayment of the loan can also be triggered once the homeowner’s equity in the property reaches a pre-agreed level, and the value of the loan can reflect changes in the house price. Plus the loan can be converted into a gift at any time, through the Generation Home platform.

Speaking to TechCrunch about his move to join the board, Blomfield said: “I met Will last year and what really excites me was the product. I think it’s so relevant, and it hasn’t really been covered in the mainstream press much. The problem with first-time buyers, trying to get a mortgage, is that they almost invariably rely on help from their parents or sometimes their friends to help. I’ve had experience with this and a lot of people actually mean it as a loan and they intend to get that money back. But mortgage lenders make you sign a piece of paper saying this is an absolute gift. So hundreds of thousands of parents around the country are basically committing a – well-intentioned – fraud to help their kids get on the property ladder. So what I loved about the Generation Home product is that they’ve got this new legal structure where parents can effectively lend that money towards the deposit, but it’s structured as a loan if they want it to be. They have the right to get their money back eventually without having to lie. So that’s one thing that really really attracted me to the company. It’s just so so relevant to everyone, and people are just kind of blind to this problem.”

I asked him if he thinks there’s a “Monzofication” of FinTech business models in FinTech, as suggested by the success of Monzo’s model, where the user is put front and centre?

“There’s certainly a lot in common between what we do at Monzo and what Generation Home is trying to do. Big mortgage lenders focus on the mortgage product and the customer is like an inconvenience. As a customer you have to fit with whatever the mortgage provider will offer you and it’s totally inflexible. It’s very similar with Monzo – we tried to flip it around, and focus on what customers really want and care about every day. Simple stuff like notifications when you spend money or alerts before you go into overdraft – those are now commonplace and they weren’t, five, six years ago. I think Generation Home is doing the same thing which is focusing on the stuff that customers really, really care about, and then providing that flexibility and more features to meet their needs, rather than just raming everyone into the straitjacket of what a mortgage is doing,” he said.

News: Hear top VCs Albert Wegner, Jenny Rooke, and Shilpi Kumar talk green bets at the Extreme Tech Challenge finals

• July 5, 2021
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This year, TechCrunch is proudly hosting the Extreme Tech Challenge Global Finals on July 22. The event is among the world’s largest purpose-driven startup competitions that are aiming to solve global challenges based on the United Nations’ 17 sustainability goals. If you want to catch an array of innovative startups across a range of categories,

This year, TechCrunch is proudly hosting the Extreme Tech Challenge Global Finals on July 22. The event is among the world’s largest purpose-driven startup competitions that are aiming to solve global challenges based on the United Nations’ 17 sustainability goals.

If you want to catch an array of innovative startups across a range of categories, all of them showcasing what they’re building, you won’t want to miss our must-see pitch-off competition.

You can also catch feature panels hosted by TechCrunch editors, including one of the most highly anticipated discussions of the event, a talk on “going green” with guest speakers Shilpi Kumar, Jenny Rooke, and Albert Wenger, all of whom are actively investing in climate startups that are targeting big opportunities

Shilpi Kumar is a partner with Urban Us, an investment platform focused on urban tech and climate solutions. She previously led go-to-market and early sales efforts at Filament, a startup focused on deploying secure wireless networks for connected physical assets. As an investor, Shilpi has also focused on hardware, mobility, energy, IoT, and robotics, having worked previously for VTF Capital, First Round Capital, and Village Global.

Jenny Rooke is the founder and managing director of Genoa Ventures, but Rooke has been deploying capital into innovative life sciences opportunities for years, including at Fidelity Biosciences and later the Gates Foundation, where she helped managed more than $250 million in funding, funneling some of that capital into genetic engineering, diagnostics, and synthetic biology startups. Rooke began independently investing under the brand 5 Prime Ventures, ultimately establishing among the largest life sciences syndicates on AngelList before launching Genoa.

Last but not least, Albert Wenger, has been a managing partner at Union Square Ventures for more than 13 years. Before joining USV, Albert was the president of del.icio.us through the company’s sale to Yahoo and an angel investor, including writing early checks to Etsy and Tumblr. He previously founded or co-founded several companies, including a management consulting firm and an early hosted data analytics company. Among his investments today is goTenna, a company trying to advance universal access to connectivity by building a scalable mobile mesh network.

Sustainability is the key to our planet’s future and our survival, but it’s also going to be incredibly lucrative and a major piece of our world economy. Hear from these seasoned investors about how VCs and startups alike are thinking about Greentech and how that will evolve in the coming years.

Join us on July 22 to find out how the most innovative startups are working to solve some of the world’s biggest problems. And best of all, tickets are free — book yours today!

News: Obviously AI, a no code startup for data analysts, increases its seed round to $4.7M

• July 5, 2021
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Nirman Dave’s two startups are very different, but both have a DIY spirit. The first, called CircuiTricks and founded during his gap year after high school, created kits to teach students about electronics and physics. Now Dave is chief executive officer of Obviously AI, a no code AI/ML platform that enables people without technical backgrounds

Nirman Dave’s two startups are very different, but both have a DIY spirit. The first, called CircuiTricks and founded during his gap year after high school, created kits to teach students about electronics and physics. Now Dave is chief executive officer of Obviously AI, a no code AI/ML platform that enables people without technical backgrounds to build and train machine learning models. The Berkeley-based company has raised a seed extension that brings the round’s total to $4.7 million, up from the $3.6 million it announced two months ago. The extension was led by the University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners (UTEC), a deep tech investment firm, with participation from Trail Mix Ventures and B-Capital.

UTEC principal Kiran Mysore told TechCrunch that he found Obviously AI on Product Hunt while helping a friend without an AI/ML or coding background build machine learning models. After using Obviously AI and benchmarking it against other AutoML products, Mysore was so impressed that he reached out to the startup and led the investment round.

No code/low code startups have gained a lot of attention—and funding—over the past year. Some notable examples are Noogata and Abacus. Dave says Obviously AI’s niche is mid-market businesses that don’t have a data science team, or have people who know data analytics but are not programmers.

Obviously AI uses proprietary technology called “Edge-Sharp AutoML” to build and train machine learning models that are customized to their clients’ needs, and can be integrated into their existing cloud services and databases. It focuses on marketing, software, direct-to-consumer, fintech and insurance companies, and currently has more than 3,000 clients, who have used more than 82,000 predictive models hosted on Obviously AI’s model.

Its new seed funding will be used to expand in Asian markets including Japan, where it will partner with client Dai Nippon Printing (DNP), one of the country’s largest printing companies, on its go-to-market strategy.

In an email to TechCrunch, Takeya Shimomura, research and development manager at Dai Nippon Printing, said, “At DNP, cutting edge predictive analytics for marketing and sales is very important to us. However, the tools today are very complicated and take months to get results. With Obviously AI, we were able to onboard several of our analysts seamlessly and got up and running in just a few hours.”

Dave met Obviously AI’s co-founder and chief technology officer Tapojit Debnath while both were international students at Hampshire College. After graduating, they started internships at startups in the Bay Area. Dave was a data science intern at Streamlabs, the live-streaming software platform.

Originally hired to work on video encoding algorithms, Dave also spent a lot of time building machine learning models for the company’s marketing and sales team. Debnath, who was a machine learning intern at retail software startup B8ta, had a similar experience.

The two realized there is a talent shortage of machine learning engineers, and many companies rely on “citizen data analysts,” or people who understand data science, but don’t have coding experience.

“These are people that work with a lot of data but they’re not programmers themselves, and these are the kind of folks we designed these tools for. The goal is that you understand the data, and you can take that data and use the software to build a model really fast, without waiting for hours or days,” said Dave.

He and Debnath quit their jobs in 2018 to start working on the startup, doing chores for their Airbnb host in exchange for rent while learning how to pitch to investors, before joining U.C. Berkeley’s SkyDeck accelerator program.

Dave said that many auto AI/ML software platforms “brute forces a bunch of different algorithms on a data set, and picks one that performs the best.” For example, they might run 100 different algorithms before picking the one that performs the best, which means the time spent automatically building the other algorithms is wasted.

What Obviously AI’s Edge-Sharp AutoML does differently is look at a specific group of machine learning models that can be used on a data set before automatically shortlisting the top five models for a client’s needs, automatically tuning their hyperparameters and returning prediction results.

Obviously AI’s pricing plans start at $75 a month. Its typical clients are mid-sized businesses or small teams in larger businesses that don’t have a data science team, or whose data scientists are preoccupied with other work.

For example, a small microlending company in India with a team of about 15 people was manually deciding which applicants to give loans to when they decided to switch to AI models. They started using Obviously AI to automatically predict the chances of an applicant defaulting and how much they should be loaned. Now the company uses Obviously AI end-to-end in their app, which means customers can see the size of a loan they are likely to get immediately after applying.

Another use case is a German mobile gaming company that wanted to use a dynamic pricing model and needed to figure out how much individual users would be willing to pay for products like in-game tokens. They use Obviously AI to make that prediction based on a player’s interaction with a game.

Part of Obviously AI’s seed funding will be used on machine learning research and development to serve more use cases. Dave said that Obviously AI focuses on supervised learning use cases, where clients have data and know what to predict. Unsupervised use cases are where they have a data set, but don’t know exactly what they want, and use machine learning models to tell them if there are any interesting patterns in it. Unsupervised learning algorithms can be used for things like automatic categorization or recommendation engines on e-commerce platforms.

 

News: SoftBank buys perpetual Yahoo trademark license for $1.6 billion

• July 5, 2021
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As firework volleys launched out of New York City harbor last night, a very different celebration was likely taking place just a few blocks down the street at Verizon’s official headquarters in Midtown. The telco, which owns TechCrunch for hopefully just a few more weeks pending the close of the Apollo acquisition of our parent

As firework volleys launched out of New York City harbor last night, a very different celebration was likely taking place just a few blocks down the street at Verizon’s official headquarters in Midtown.

The telco, which owns TechCrunch for hopefully just a few more weeks pending the close of the Apollo acquisition of our parent company Verizon Media, announced overnight that it had signed an agreement with Z Holdings, a division of Japan’s SoftBank Group, to sell trademarks within the Japan market around the Yahoo brand and related tech infrastructure for approximately $1.6 billion.

The extremely descriptive Z Holdings owns SoftBank’s internet businesses in Japan, most notably Yahoo Japan, whose web portal remains the country’s most trafficked news website. Under its most current agreement with Verizon Media (formerly Oath, formerly AOL + Yahoo), Yahoo Japan paid a regular royalty for the rights to use the Yahoo brand name in Japan and associated technologies. Those royalties will now stop in lieu of a one-time upfront payment.

The resolution of the agreement was one of the key nuances left to figure out in Apollo’s $5 billion buyout of Verizon Media. The deal will give Verizon significant additional consideration as it works to pare down its debt load acquired from a spending spree on wireless spectrum auctions, such as its $52.9 billion acquisition of C-band spectrum earlier this year.

In a press statement from Z Holdings, the company said that “Although the Yahoo Japan License Agreement will be terminated, Yahoo Japan and Verizon Media will retain their cooperative business and technology relationship. Yahoo Japan will continue to deliver more convenient and innovative services under the ‘Yahoo! JAPAN’ brand, based on its mission statement: ‘UPDATE JAPAN.’” Expect further patches to Japan to be delivered shortly, I guess.

News: The Station: Bird has drama in San Francisco, drone delivery startup Zipline raises $250M

• July 5, 2021
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The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every weekend in your inbox. Happy 4th of July! For those of you who are actually checking your emails today while getting some sun at an overcrowded beach or diligently grilling hot dogs,

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every weekend in your inbox.

Happy 4th of July! For those of you who are actually checking your emails today while getting some sun at an overcrowded beach or diligently grilling hot dogs, welcome back to The Station, a weekly newsletter dedicated to all the ways people and packages move (today and in the future) from Point A to Point B.

Kirsten Korosec, your usual host, is off enjoying the great American outdoors, so please enjoy this takeover all the way from Auckland, New Zealand! Despite the winter chill down under and my singularity as an American on this island, I’m feeling particularly patriotic today. It was on this day 245 years ago that the 13 colonies declared themselves free and independent states, with all the power to establish commerce and pursue happiness and what not. 

As I sit here, a journalist, with a front row seat to the history of technological advancement, I can’t help but notice that the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, one that rebuffs authority for freedom to act as one chooses, is alive and well in the startup world. Technology, even in the transportation space, soars ever upward, unshackled in many cases by corresponding rules and regulations, and the government hastens to catch up. 

Don’t know what I mean? I had a conversation today with Lacuna CEO Hugh Martin, and he mentioned something that stayed with me and found its way into this rant. Venture capital is pouring into startups creating technology like eVTOL, air taxis, rockets and drones, but consider this: What is the ratio of startups building such futuristic tech compared to departments of transportation with aviation departments? Public private partnerships need to step up, and fast. 

Ok, rant over. Enjoy your firecrackers. 

Email me at rebecca.techcrunch@gmail.com to share thoughts, criticisms, offer up opinions or tips. You can also follow me on Twitter, but please don’t DM me. — @rebeccabellan.

Micromobbin’

Bird is having a tough week, pulling operations in San Francisco and Santa Monica, as well as Zaragoza in Spain. Both California cities had new scooter permits beginning on July 1, but there hasn’t been a Bird in sight since June 30.

In San Francisco, Bird goes by Scoot, the company it acquired in June 2019 that has been in SF for around a decade. Bird previously operated in the city, but was kicked out in 2018, along with Lime, so this was an off-hand way of making it back into the Golden City. This time around, the SFMTA is asking Bird to halt its operations, even as the 2021 permit program begins without it, and is also levying fines to the tune of $105,600 against the company. Apparently, Bird got caught implementing its fleet manager program with unauthorized subcontractors. The permit does allow for scooter companies to use subcontractors, but they need prior approval and proof of insurance, which Bird did not provide for at least three subcontractors. The SFMTA is currently deferring its decision on letting Bird back in until it has conducted an investigation into the matter.  

“Scoot is proud to have partnered with the city for nearly a decade providing shared micro electric vehicles for San Francisco,” a Bird spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We are cooperating fully with the SFMTA to swiftly resolve the clerical error that occurred while urgently providing existing local businesses an alternative source of revenue during the pandemic. We apologize for the inconvenience to our riders during this evaluation period and are eager to once again serve San Francisco residents and visitors as soon as possible.” 

Lime and Spin, on the other hand, have been asked to stay in San Francisco, so congrats to them. They’ll also be operating in Santa Monica, where Bird was again not chosen for the 2021 scooter program in large part because the city found Bird’s service to be lacking in safety and rider features, affordability and customer service, according to the Santa Monica selection committee scorecard shared with TechCrunch. The company filed an appeal and threatened litigation back in May, but was denied this week and basically told it didn’t have a legal basis for suing, according to letters between Bird’s attorneys and the City of Santa Monica shared with TechCrunch. 

Veo and Wheels will also be operating in Santa Monica. Meanwhile in Spain, the Zaragoza City Council asked Bird to cease operations from September onward due to noncompliance issues. 

Speaking of Veo, the company has been on a bit of a roll after winning the New York permit. This week, Veo unveiled what might be the industry’s first e-scooter with integrated turn signals, a sweet new safety feature that hopefully the rest of the industry will pick up on. Veo will deploy these scooters in Santa Monica and NYC next week. 

Forget sharing scooters. Go get your own.

Electric micromobility dealership Ridepanda is making it easier for the average consumer to purchase a sick light duty electric vehicle like a scooter, bike or moped. Its e-commerce platform displays vehicles that are vetted by the team to ensure high quality with replaceable parts. Once you order a vehicle that’s been curated for you and your needs, it’ll get shipped to your door (optional assembly person included). The startup just raised $3.75 million, an extension from last year’s seed round, from lead investors like Yamaha Motor Company, Porsche Ventures and Proeza Ventures.

Something for everyone?

Have you ever felt like the electric micromobility space hasn’t been badass enough? Well, Evolve Skateboards has the solution for you! Its new Hadean Series skateboard can zoom up to 31 mph, and its battery can go up to 42 miles on a single charge. Rather than a wooden board, this gnarly ride’s frame is made with forged carbon composite making it strong enough to handle increased speeds and next level ollies. The cost is in the $2,500 to $3,000 range, so it’s certainly a toy for the dedicated thrill seeker.

— Rebecca Bellan

Deal of the week

Drone delivery startup Zipline, a company that got its start delivering medical supplies across Africa, has raised $250 million in new funding. This latest round has vaulted the company’s valuation to $2.75 billion and will fuel further expansion of its logistics networks in Africa and the United States.

Big bets are being made in the instant logistics space. While Zipline is pretty focused on delivering health supplies at the moment, it’s open to expanding into other industries as time goes on. Either way, it’s doing very well with partnerships like UPS in Rwanda, the Toyota Group in Japan and Novant Health and Walmart in the U.S.

Other deals that caught my attention…

Microsoft and Sompo Holdings have committed a combined $25 million as part of a partnership with connected vehicle data startup Wejo that will help the company collect, store and analyze data from millions of connected vehicles around the world. This follows Wejo’s SPAC merger with Virtuoso Acquisition Corp., which should close later this year. The company’s total PIPE financing is $125 million. 

While we’re talking SPACs, electric vehicle charging station network EVgo, which announced its SPAC deal with Climate Change Crisis Real Impact I Acquisition Corp. back in January, has completed its business combination with CLII. The combined company will go by “EVgo Inc.” and has been trading as such on the NASDAQ since July 2.

Turntide Technologies, a sustainable technology developer that’s created a smart electric motor system, has announced $225 million in convertible note financing that it says will help fund projects to reduce carbon emissions in the commercial buildings, agriculture and transportation industries.The money comes from the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, Monashee Capital, JLL Spark, Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Suvretta Capital Management, bringing Turntide’s total funding to $400 million

Autonomous driving system developer Ghost Locomotion has raised a $100 million in Series D funding in a round led by Sutter Hill Ventures. Returning investor Founders Fund also participated in the round, along with Coatue. The money will be used toward R&D as the company continues to develop its highway self-driving and crash prevention technology.

Australian rocket launch startup Gilmour Space Technologies has raised $46 million in a Series C that it will use to take its small launch vehicle, Eris, to space next year. The round was led by Fine Structure Ventures and included contributions from Australian VCs Blackbird and Main Sequence, and Australian pension funds HESTA, Hostplus and NGS Super. 

You probably don’t remember, but a little while back we covered Onto, an electric vehicle subscription service in the U.K. Well, this model appears to be catching. A similar business going by imove in Norway has just raised around $19 million in a Series A led by pan-European online car market AutoScout24, venture capital player Norselab, and the Norwegian state climate investment company Nysnø.

Ghanaian-based software company Jetstream just raised $3 million in seed funding. The company aims to enable African businesses to see and control their own cross-border supply chains. It aggregates private sector logistics providers at African ports and borders, and brings them online. Local and international investors participated in the round, including Alitheia IDF, Golden Palm Investments, 4DX Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Asia Pacific Land, Breyer Labs and MSA Capital.

Electric propulsion and powertrain developer Enedym raised $15 million from a round led by P&A Paletta Giving Inc., TRIO Capital Group Inc., Napino Group, KWG Capital Inc., Pathfinder Asset Management Limited and others. The Canadian company will use the funds to accelerate its patented motor development tech and get into more of the electric motor market, including automotive, micromobility, windfarms and industrial markets.

Policy corner

Hi folks, welcome back to Policy Corner. Let’s dive in.

Mayors from nine American cities, including Los Angeles and Denver, sent a letter on June 30 urging federal lawmakers to include funds for planning grants for advanced air mobility (AAM) in the massive infrastructure legislation currently being debated in Congress. The letter, shared with TechCrunch by a source familiar with the matter, argues that federal grant funding for planning studies would help cities better understand and prepare for AAM technology.

The brief letter is fuzzy on the details. The mayors request a “modest” amount of funding. The source told TechCrunch that it would likely be in the low tens of millions, with the assumption that a one-year planning study in a large metropolitan city would cost around $1 million. So the total funds would cover around 15-20 cities. The idea is that this information could inform future rule-makings or even the Federal Aviation Administration’s reauthorization bill that’s coming up in 2023.

One thing that’s notable about the letter is a line that starts, “When this new transportation technology launches in 2024 and beyond … ”. While 2024 has been publicly set as a launch target for eVTOL developer like Archer Aviation and Joby Aviation, timelines are a tricky thing for emerging technologies.

In any case, I’ll be keeping track of these developments. It’s hard to imagine Congressional Republicans agreeing to funding for AAM when they could hardly agree on electric vehicles, but we’ll see — the low tens of millions may be a blip on the budget line of such a large funding package.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on June 29 issued an order requiring OEMS and drivers of vehicles equipped with autonomous driving systems to report crashes within one day of learning about them. The order specifically relates to SAE Level 2 advanced driver assistance systems or SAE Levels 3-5 automated driving systems. Any incident that involves an injury that had to be treated at a hospital, a death, a vehicle tow-away, air bag deployment, or a pedestrian or bicyclist must be reported, the order says.

NHTSA says the data collected from this order will help identify safety issues or defects in the technology. “By mandating crash reporting, the agency will have access to critical data that will help quickly identify safety issues that could emerge in these automated systems,” said Dr. Steven Cliff, NHTSA’s acting administrator. “In fact, gathering data will help instill public confidence that the federal government is closely overseeing the safety of automated vehicles.”

— Aria Alamalhodaei

Notable reads and other tidbits

Extra Crunchy

Alex Wilhelm explored some financials about Uber and its Chinese rival Didi, which is looking to list in the U.S. The company’s IPO filing was big news, but it appears to be valued several tens of billions of dollars lower than Uber, despite the fact that it’s larger and more profitable. 

Renaissance Capital calculates Didi’s midpoint valuation using a fully diluted share count at $67.5 billion, and Yahoo Finance pegged Uber at $95.2 billion. Why the large difference? Wilhelm speculates it could have something to do with Uber’s more expanded reach and different revenue streams, like its delivery business, as Didi is mostly concentrated on its Chinese mobility business. 

Rimac Automobili sat down with Kirsten Korosec to share his lessons from bootstrapping his EV company during our TC Sessions: Mobility 2021 event. 

We actually bootstrapped a car company. We had revenue from day one, not because we wanted to, but because there was no alternative and there was absolutely no other way for us. So most of the years in business, we are actually profitable. And that’s pretty tough.

You have these big electric car startups that have received billions of funding and so on. Hats off to them, great job. But we had to survive from the very beginning by the stuff that we were doing and making for other car companies.

GM’s newest startup investment BrightDrop boasts an ecosystem of EV hardware and logistical software products targeting fleet and delivery companies. GM has invested $800 million to convert a Canadian factory that currently builds the Chevy Equinox to build the EV600 delivery van.

Electric vehicles 

Chinese EV maker NIO released its June delivery results. It delivered 8,083 units of smart electric vehicles which it says is a YOY increase of 116%. In Q2 in total it delivered nearly 22,000 vehicles, and in the first half of 2021, it delivered nearly 42,000 vehicles. Ok, NIO, we see you.

Honda will be selling its first electric SUV in North America in early 2024. The new car’s name, Prologue, is meant to signify the beginning of what the company called its “new electrified era.”

Revel, the company that started with electric moped shares and now has its hands in a lot of electric mobility pies, has officially launched its Superhub in Brooklyn. With 25 chargers all in one place and easily accessible, it’s the largest universal charging station in North America, the company says. 

This week Volvo Cars detailed its strategy for electrifying its entire car lineup by 2030. It plans to work with partners like Northvolt, Google and Luminar to build out its future vehicles lineup. It also unveiled the first images of “Concept Recharge,” a concept EV that has flat floors, two interior screens and rear “suicide doors” that open from the middle of the vehicle.

Autonomous vehicles

Pittsburgh-based autonomous trucking company Locomotion is pitching a convoy system in which a lead driver pilots a truck and another truck, with a human passenger/backup operator, follows it autonomously. The company told TechCrunch it thinks using such a human-guided system will be the fastest and smoothest route to commercialization. 

Aurora’s CEO Chris Urmson shared some thoughts on the progress the company has made on commercializing the Aurora Driver and delivering it at scale. 

Data is power

Kruze Consulting, a startup CFO/accounting firm with access to the books of over 450 venture-funded startups, has shared some data with TechCrunch that shows ride-share spend is rebounding in the startup world, with Uber expanding its lead against Lyft. The study also found cost per ride is higher than 2020 averages, likely due to a scarcity of drivers. 

Stockholm-based e-scooter operator Voi released a study that demonstrates how partnerships between operators and transit authorities can lead to higher public transit ridership. The study specifically details how a joint initiative with Stuttgart’s rail operator S-Bahn Stuttgart to integrate Voi and the Mobility Stuttgart app, saw at least a 35% increase in rail tickets purchased by Voi users. 

Fresh meat

Autonomous delivery company Nuro announced the appointment of James Owens as the company’s new head of Regulatory. 

Anthony Gregory, former VP of ground operations at Southwest, has joined GM-owned Cruise as the new VP of market development. 

Other tidbits

Columbus, Ohio won the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge in 2015. Smart City Columbus ran from 2016 until mid-June 2021, using all kinds of new tech to improve its transportation system and general mobility. What did Columbus do with its $50 million in grant money? Check out all the tech that went into the Smart City.

BMW i Ventures, the venture capital arm of BMW Group, has announced a new $300 million fund to further its investment in technologies that make transportation, manufacturing and supply chains more sustainable. This isn’t about core car tech. It’s about everything that goes into making the cars, from sustainable materials for car seats to decarbonizing metal. 

Ford is partnering with insurance company State Farm to share vehicle data to better understand how safety features impact claims. A statement from Ford reads: “Ford’s new Vehicle Build Data product provides State Farm a comprehensive view of a vehicle’s feature content and a better understanding of how advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) impact the frequency and severity of auto claims. State Farm is also sharing claims data with Ford to help inform them on how specific vehicle features impact auto claims.” 

Last mile logistics management software company Onfleet has announced its 100 millionth delivery and significant company growth. 

General Motors has announced the creation of a new $25 million Climate Equity Fund for equitable climate action. This is intended as a complement to the automaker’s recently announced $35 billion investment into EV and AV technologies globally through 2025.

News: Why former Alibaba scientist wants to back founders outside the Ivory Tower

• July 5, 2021
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Min Wanli had a career path much coveted by those pursuing a career in computer science. A prodigy, Min was accepted to a top research university in China at the age of 14. He subsequently obtained Ph.D. degrees in physics and statistics from the University of Chicago before spending nearly a combined decade at IBM

Min Wanli had a career path much coveted by those pursuing a career in computer science. A prodigy, Min was accepted to a top research university in China at the age of 14. He subsequently obtained Ph.D. degrees in physics and statistics from the University of Chicago before spending nearly a combined decade at IBM and Google.

Like many young, aspiring Chinese scientists working in the United States, Min returned to China when the country’s internet boom was underway in the early 2010s. He joined Alibaba’s fledgling cloud arm and was at the forefront of applying its tech to industrial scenarios, like using visual identification to mitigate highway traffic and computing power to improve factory efficiency.

Then in July 2019, Min took a leap. He resigned from Alibaba Cloud, which had become a major growth driver for the e-commerce goliath and at the time China’s largest public cloud infrastructure provider (it still is). With no experience in investment, he started a new venture capital firm called North Summit Capital.

“A lot of enterprises were quite skeptical of ‘digital transformation’ around 2016 and 2017. But by 2019, after they had seen success cases [from Alibaba Cloud], they no longer questioned its viability,” said Min in his office overlooking a cluster of urban villages and highrise offices in Shenzhen. Clad in a well-ironed light blue shirt, he talked with a childlike, earnest smile.

“Suddenly, everyone wanted to go digital. But how am I supposed to meet their needs with a team of just 400-500 people?”

Min’s solution was not to serve the old-school factories and corporations himself but to finance and support a raft of companies to do so. Soon he closed the first fund for North Summit with “several hundreds of millions of dollars” from an undisclosed high-net-worth individual from the United Arab Emirates, whom Min had met when he represented Alibaba at a Duhai tech conference in 2018.

“Venture capital is like a magnifier through which I can connect with a lot of tech companies and share my lessons from the past, so they can quickly and effectively work with their clients from traditional industries,” Min said.

“For example, I’d discuss with my portfolio firms whether they should focus on selling hardware pieces or software first, or give them equal weight.”

Min strives to be deeply involved in the companies he backs. North Summit invests early, with check sizes so far ranging from roughly $5 million to $25 million. Min also started a technology service company called Quadtalent to provide post-investment support to his portfolio.

The notion of digital transformation is both buzzy and daunting for many investors due to the highly complex and segmented nature of traditional industries. But Min has a list of criteria to help narrow down his targets.

First, an investable area should be data-intensive. Subway tracks, for example, could benefit from implementing large amounts of sensors that monitor the rail system’s stauts. Second, an area’s manufacturing or business process should be capital-intensive, such as production lines that use exorbitant equipment. And lastly, the industry should be highly dependent on repetitive human experience, like police directing traffic.

Solving industrial problems require not just founders’ computing ingenuity but more critically, their experience in a traditional sector. As such, Min goes beyond the “Ivory Tower” of computer science wizards when he looks for entrepreneurs.

“What we need today is a type of inter-disciplinary talent who can do ‘compound algorithms.’ That means understanding sensor signals, business rationales, manufacturing, as well as computer algorithms. Applying neural network through an algorithmic black box without the other factors is simply futile.”

Min faces ample competition as investors hunt down the next ABB, Schneider, or Siemens of China. The country is driving towards technological independence in all facets of the economy and the national mandate takes on new urgency as COVID-19 disrupts global supply chains. The result is skyrocketing valuations for startups touting “industrial upgrade” solutions, Min noted.

But factory bosses don’t care whether their automation solution providers are unerdogs or startup unicorns. “At the end of the day, the factory CFO will only ask, ‘how much more money does this piece of software or equipment help us save or make?’”

The investor is cautious about deploying his maiden fund. Two years into operation, North Summit has closed four deals: TopScore, a 17-year-old footwear manufacturer embracing automation; Lingumi, a London-based English learning app targeting Chinese pre-school kids; Aerodyne, a Malaysian drone service provider; and Extreme Vision, a marketplace connecting small-and-medium enterprises to affordable AI vision solutions. 

This year, North Summit aims to invest close to $100 million in companies inside and outside China. Optical storage and robotic process automation (RPA) are just two areas that have been on Min’s radar in recent days.