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News: A bank for the creator economy, Karat Financial raises $26M in Series A funding

• July 1, 2021
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The creator economy is changing the way that people earn a living, whether you’re an Instagram influencer or a freelance graphic designer. But traditional banks haven’t caught up. Take Alexandra Botez for example. The Stanford graduate earns six figures playing chess on Twitch, where she has 877,000 followers. But when she tried to apply for

The creator economy is changing the way that people earn a living, whether you’re an Instagram influencer or a freelance graphic designer. But traditional banks haven’t caught up.

Take Alexandra Botez for example. The Stanford graduate earns six figures playing chess on Twitch, where she has 877,000 followers. But when she tried to apply for a business credit card, she was rejected twice. Meanwhile, when the creator behind TierZoo, a YouTube channel with 2.7 million subscribers, tried to rent an apartment, he was rejected because his landlord didn’t see his business as legitimate.

Eric Wei noticed this disconnect while he was a Product Manager at Instagram, where he helped build Instagram Live. With co-founder Will Kim, a previous investor with seed fund Lucky Capital, Wei launched Karat Financial, a better banking system for digital creators. Today, Karat Financial announced a $26 million Series A round led by Union Square Ventures with participation from GGV Capital and SignalFire.

“Banks need to understand you in order to trust you, and it’s only when they trust you that they’re willing to give you credit, process your payments, and hold your money,” Wei told TechCrunch. “If Alexandra Botez has 800,000 followers, and let’s say a tenth of them are paying a monthly subscription fee on Twitch, you can actually back into what these creators’ income streams are, and develop a better underwriting model than what the banks have today.”

But Karat isn’t solving a problem exclusive to the 1% of digital creators. Even for someone like a self-employed small business owner or a gig worker, it can be challenging to find a landlord that will rent an apartment without a proof of employment letter and regular paystubs. But the creator economy remains a fast-growing sector — more than two million creators make over $100,000 per year, and according to VC firm SignalFire, over 46.7 million people have enough of a following to monetize their content part-time.

“This whole industry exploded,” said Kim. “If it’s a flash in the pan, it’s a fifteen-year-old flash.”

Wei and Kim founded Karat in 2019, then earned a spot in Y Combinator’s Winter 2020 accelerator. By June 2020, Karat launched its first product, the Karat Black Card, a credit card for creators, and earned $4.6 million in seed funding from investors like Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin.

Image Credits: Karat

“Our vetting process is we try to evaluate creators as the businesses they are,” Wei said. The Karat Black Card doesn’t charge interest or fees, and only turns a marginal profit off of bank interchange fees. Karat will also advance credit for sponsorship payments at no cost to the creator. So if you’re an influencer and get paid $1,000 to make a video sponsored by a clothing company, it could take months to get paid. Karat will give you that $1,000 now, so long as you pay them back once the clothing company pays you.

Karat proved its concept with 50% growth from month to month and eight figures in transactions since launch last year. More than 30 creators have invested in Karat, including Jared Leto, 3LAU, Nas Daily, and Josh Richards — that’s all without any spending on influencer marketing.

“It turns out that when you do a good job for creators, they share you around with other people,” Wei said.

Since then, their portfolio of investors has grown to include YouTube co-founder Steven Chen, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Former TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer, and Former Wealthfront CEO Adam Nash, among others.

But Karat’s ultimate ambition isn’t to give creators a line of credit. They started out with the credit card to prove their concept, but in the long term, they hope to create a financial infrastructure for creators. That means helping them launch merchandise lines, incorporate their business, get a mortgage, take out business loans, and file their taxes. Wei says that would come after the company’s Series B, opening a more lucrative income stream than collecting bank interchange fees.

“We decided to roll Karat out with the same tried and true fintech playbook,” Wei said. “Start out with something simple before wedging and scaling into those other products. So for us, the card is just a means to an end. Our whole model is, we use the cards to develop our underwriting model and gain trust from creators, and eventually, we can build to be Square for creators.”

Already, Wei and Kim are getting texts from their internet celebrity clients, asking them to be their de-facto financial advisors.

“We’re just like, oh my gosh, we love you, but we’re not building those products yet,” Wei said. “We’ll do that when we hit our Series B, and yes, we’ll charge you fees, because we’re going to provide you with better service than what’s out there now.”

With the newly announced Series A round, Karat plans to double its staff with new hires and begin looking toward new product development.

News: Months later, we’re still making sense of the Supreme Court’s API copyright ruling

• July 1, 2021
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Given APIs’ ubiquity and importance, it’s understandable that all eyes were on the U.S. Supreme Court’s April 5 ruling in Google LLC v. Oracle America Inc., which addressed two core questions.

APIs, or application programming interfaces, make the digital world go round. Working behind the scenes to define the parameters by which software applications communicate with each other, APIs underpin every kind of app — social media, news and weather, financial, maps, video conferencing, you name it. They are critically important to virtually every enterprise organization and industry worldwide.

Given APIs’ ubiquity and importance, it’s understandable that all industry eyes were on the U.S. Supreme Court’s April 5 ruling in Google LLC v. Oracle America Inc., an 11-year-old case that addressed two core questions: Whether copyright protection extends to an API, and whether use of an API in the context of creating a new computer program constitutes fair use. Google lawyers had called it “the copyright case of the decade.”

I was one of 83 computer scientists — including five Turing Award winners and four National Medal of Technology honorees — who signed a Supreme Court amicus brief stating their opposition to the assertion that APIs are copyrightable, while also supporting Google’s right to fair use under the current legal definition.

We explained that the freedom to re-implement and extend existing APIs has been critical to technological innovation by ensuring competitors could challenge established players and advance the state of the art. “Excluding APIs from copyright protection has been essential to the development of modern computers and the Internet,” the brief said.

The Supreme Court ruling was a mixed bag that many observers are still parsing. In a 6-2 decision, justices sided with Google and its argument that the company’s copying of 11,500 lines of code from Oracle’s Java in the Android operating system was fair use. Great! At the same time, though, the court appeared to be operating under the assumption that APIs are copyrightable.

“Given the rapidly changing technological, economic and business-related circumstances, we believe we should not answer more than is necessary to resolve the parties’ dispute,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the majority. “We shall assume, but purely for argument’s sake, that (the code) “falls within the definition of that which can be copyrighted.”

While it may take years to fully understand the ruling’s impact, it’s important to keep dissecting the issue now, as APIs only continue to become more essential as the pipes behind every internet-connected device and application.

The legal saga began when Google used Java APIs in developing Android. Google wrote its own implementation of the Java APIs, but in order to allow developers to write their own programs for Android, Google’s implementation used the same names, organization, and functionality as the Java APIs.

Oracle sued Google in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in August 2010, seven months after it closed its acquisition of Java creator Sun Microsystems, contending that Google had infringed Oracle’s copyright.

In May 2012, Judge William Alsup ruled that APIs are not subject to copyright because that would hamper innovation. Oracle appealed the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals, which reversed Judge Alsup in May 2014, finding that the Java APIs are copyrightable. However, he also sent the case back to the trial court to determine whether Google has a fair use defense.

A new District Court trial began in May 2016 on the fair use question. A jury found that Google’s implementation of the Java API was fair use. Oracle appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals in March 2018 again reversed the lower court. Google filed a petition with the Supreme Court in January 2019, receiving a hearing date in early 2020. However, lengthening the case’s torturous path through the courts even further, COVID-19 forced oral arguments to be postponed to last October. Finally, on April 5, the Supreme Court settled the matter.

Or did it?

“Supreme Court Leaves as Many Questions as It Answers in Google v. Oracle,” read a headline on law.com. The National Law Review said: “The Supreme Court sidestepped the fundamental IP issue — whether or not Oracle’s software code at the heart of the case is copyrightable.”

On one hand, I’m disappointed that the court’s ruling left even a hint of ambiguity about whether APIs are copyrightable. To be clear: APIs should be free of copyright, no ifs, ands or buts.

APIs provide structure, sequence, and organization for digital resources in the same way that a restaurant menu does for food. Imagine if Restaurant A, which serves burgers, fries, and shakes, couldn’t use the same words, as well as the ordering and organization of the words, on their menu as Restaurant B. A menu doesn’t represent a novel expression; rather, it is the ingredients, processes, and service that define a restaurant. Both burger places benefit from the shared concept of a menu and the shared knowledge among their consumers of what burgers, fries and shakes are. It is the execution of the menu that ultimately will set one restaurant apart from another.

Likewise, APIs are not intellectual property; they are the simply operational elements that are common, reusable, remixable, and able to be put into use in as many applications by as many developers as possible.

This pattern plays out over and over across many different sectors of our economy where APIs are being used, reused, and remixed to generate new kinds of applications, integrations or entirely new companies and products or services. Immense value is generated by the free, collective, collaborative and open evolution of APIs.

On the other hand, I’m pleased by the part of the Supreme Court ruling that widens the definition of fair use. I think that provides the scope needed to take the industry into its API future without too much friction.

I also believe the case will chill future attempts by other companies to engage in litigation over API copyright. In the end, the decade-long Google vs. Oracle case negatively affected Oracle’s image when it comes to the fast-growing API sector, and I suspect other companies will think twice before going to court.

Nevertheless, companies may want to be extra cautious about licensing their APIs using the widest possible license, applying a Creative Commons CC0 or CCY-BY to APIs built with tolls and specifications, such as Swagger, OpenAPI, and AsyncAPI.

Now that Google vs. Oracle is finally history, I feel that the API sector will remain as vibrant as ever. That’s excellent news for everybody.

News: Pausing Pepper, packing meat and picking berries

• July 1, 2021
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We’re fresh off of our big Pittsburgh event, and I’ll have more thoughts on that for you next week, once we’ve crawled through all of the interviews, published profiles and all of that fun stuff. t  I admit that I’m also partly putting that off because there’s just a ton of investment news to get

We’re fresh off of our big Pittsburgh event, and I’ll have more thoughts on that for you next week, once we’ve crawled through all of the interviews, published profiles and all of that fun stuff. t  I admit that I’m also partly putting that off because there’s just a ton of investment news to get through in the meantime. Though I do want to note that the Pittsburgh Robotics Network held its own big event the same day as ours — honestly, there’s just a ton of activity in the city this week, including visits from some national politicians.

Per the PRN press release,

The alliance brings together leaders from top robotics companies, research institutions and universities in the Pittsburgh area, including Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Argo AI, Aurora, the University of Pittsburgh, Kaarta, RE2 Robotics, Neya Systems, Carnegie Robotics, HEBI Robotics, Near Earth Autonomy, BirdBrain Technologies, Omnicell and Advanced Construction Robotics. The Richard King Mellon Foundation commemorated this membership milestone with a grant of $125,000 to support the continued growth of the PRN.

I hinted the other week that there would be a uptick in funding announcements, and we’ve certainly seen that come to fruition. Once upon a time, we used to have this thing called the summer doldrums. Maybe it’s the pandemic, but formerly slow season no longer really applies here. VCs are still super bullish on robotics and keep pumping money in across the category.

Before we get started, however, a bit of a somber note to say goodbye to Pepper – for now, at least. A rep for SoftBank Robotics confirmed with TechCrunch that the company will be hitting pause on the production of affable robotic greeter. Reuters was first to report a “retrenchment” in SoftBank’s robotics, including the elimination of 330 roles in France. The company noted in a press release, “Since 2012 SoftBank Robotics Group, a subsidiary of SoftBank, has invested in Humanoid Robotics and intends to keep Pepper & NAO robots business moving forward.”

Source: Aldebaran Robotics under a CC-BY-3.0 license

As a refresher, the investment giant’s 2021 acquisition of French robotics startup Aldebaran Robotics gave rise to both SoftBank Robotics and Pepper. The latter evolved from Nao, a research robot that had pretty wide scale adoption in that world. To this day, you’ll still see the ‘bot at universities and research institutes all over.

Pepper was an attempt to bring some of that underlying technology to a broader commercial audience. The robot was made life-size and designed to hold a tablet and greet people. And, honestly, that was kind of it. Technology in search of a problem, as the saying goes – sophisticated robotics that can greet you at an Applebee’s or offer you some information at the airport.

Precisely why Pepper didn’t work out – and how much issues from the past year played into that – is something better saved for a deeper dive, but I’ve always been skeptical of how useful the robot really was. You’d be hard-pressed to find a compelling argument that this was something that required advanced robotics. Of course, a far more compelling argument can be made that specializing in building research robotics is, at best, a loss leader.

Image Credits: CMR Surgical

That said, there’s still plenty to get excited about on the robotics investment front. And while SoftBank Robotics may be scaling down, the company’s investment arm appears very bullish on robotics that go beyond just holding up signage. The Vision Fund 2 led a massive $600 million Series D for CMR Surgical. The U.K.-based surgical robotics firm is now a unicorn three-times over, with a $3 billion valuation for its keyhole surgery tech.

What I find most appealing about the category is its promise of effectively leveling the playing field for highly specialized procedures. That accessibility could prove huge for developing nations and other markets where premium healthcare is more difficult to come by.

Image Credits: Soft Robotics

Soft Robotics (like SoftBank Robotics, but with less “bank”), meanwhile, specifically cited pandemic demand in the $10 million extension of its $23 million Series B. Not to go all Upton Sinclair on you, but the meat processing industry sounded utterly hellish through much of the pandemic (as a non-meat eater myself, I’ll save you from some of my more personal reflections on the matter). Soft Robotics has long been among the more compelling startups in the robotic picking space, courtesy of its pneumatic powered grippers that are capable of moving around easily damaged food stuffs.

Image Credits: Traptic

Speaking of moving around fragile foods, we exclusively reported this morning that 2019 Startup Battlefield finalist Traptic has begun commercial deployment for its strawberry-picking robot. That follows a previously unannounced $5 million Series A, bringing its full funding to $8.4 million to date. Like so many other industries, field work suffered a massive headcount shortage during the pandemic.

Image Credits: Toggle

Botrista also announce a Series A this week, for its drink-mixing robotic kiosk. The company raised $10 million for further deployment of its system, which is capable of mixing up to eight ingredients in around 20 seconds. Toggle’s Series A, meanwhile, netted the New York-based construction robotics company $8 million.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

Never a dull moment. Here’s the fun of writing a large roundup on Wednesday for Thursday. Sometimes big news breaks in the morning (to all you running robotics startups, if you could hold off on announcing big news on Thursdays, that would be great help to me. Thanks in advance), like Zebra’s intention to acquire Fetch for $290 million. I’ve got some more thoughts on this in piece and will be sharing some later, but meantime, a quote from Fetch CEO Melonee Wise,

The Fetch team is excited to join Zebra and accelerate the adoption of flexible automation through AMRs and our cloud-based robotics platform. Together we have the right team with the right technology to provide end-to-end solutions that solve real customer problems. By helping customers dynamically optimize and holistically orchestrate their fulfillment, distribution, and manufacturing operations, together we help enable their ability to stay ahead of growing demand, minimize delivery times and address shrinking labor pools.

*Picking berries not to be confused with picking…anything else. We’re rooting for you, Biz.

News: Google update will allow digital Covid-19 vaccination cards and test results to be stored on Android devices

• July 1, 2021
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Google is making it possible to store digital versions of either Covid-19 test results or vaccination cards on users’ Android devices. The company on Wednesday announced it’s updating its Passes API, which will give developers at healthcare organizations, government agencies, and other organizations authorized by public health authorities the ability to create digital versions of

Google is making it possible to store digital versions of either Covid-19 test results or vaccination cards on users’ Android devices. The company on Wednesday announced it’s updating its Passes API, which will give developers at healthcare organizations, government agencies, and other organizations authorized by public health authorities the ability to create digital versions of tests and vaccination cards which can then be saved directly to the user’s device. The Passes API is typically used to store things like boarding passes, loyalty cards, gift cards, tickets and more to users’ Google Pay wallet. However, the Google Pay app in this case will not be required, Google says.

Instead, users without the Google Pay app will have the option to store the digital version of the Covid Card directly their device, where it’s accessible from a homescreen shortcut. Because Google is not retaining a copy of the card, anyone who needs to store the Covid Card on multiple devices will need to download it individually on each one from the healthcare provider or other organization’s app.

The cards themselves show the healthcare provider or organization’s logo and branding at the top, followed by the person’s name, date of birth, and other relevant information, like the vaccine manufacturer or date of shot or test. According to a support document, healthcare providers or organizations could alert users to the ability to download their card via email, text, or through a mobile website or app.

In an example photo, Google showed the Covid-19 Vaccination Card from Healthvana, a company that serves L.A. County, However, it didn’t provide any other information about which healthcare providers are interested in or planning to adopt the new technology.

The Passes API update doesn’t mean Android users can immediately create digital versions of their Covid vaccination cards — something people have been taking pictures of as a means of backup or, unfortunately in some cases, laminating it. (That’s not advised, however, as the card is meant to be used again for recording booster shots.)

Rather, the update is about giving developers the ability to begin building tools to export the data they have in their own systems about people’s Covid tests and vaccinations to a local digital card on Android devices. To what extent these digital cards will become broadly available to end users will depend on developer adoption.

For the feature to work, the Android device needs to run Android 5 or later and it will need to be Play Protect certified, which is a licensing program that ensures the device is running real Google apps. Users will also need to set a lock screen on their device for additional security.

Google says the update will initially roll out in the U.S., followed by other countries.

The U.S. is behind other markets in making digital version of vaccination cards possible. Today, the EU’s Covid certificate, which shows an individual’s vaccination status, test results or recovery status from Covid-19, went live. The certificate (EUDCC) will be recognized by all EU members, and will aid with cross-border travel. Israel released a vaccine passport earlier this year that allows vaccinated people to show their “green pass” at places that require vaccinations. Japan aims to have vaccination passports ready by the end of July for international travel.

In the U.S., only a few states have active vaccine certification apps. Many others have either outright banned vaccine passports — which has become a politically loaded term — or are considering doing so.

Given this context, Google’s digital vaccination card is just that — a digital copy of a paper card. It’s not tied to any other government initiatives nor is it a “vaccine passport.”

News: Nowports raises $16M to build the OS for LatAm’s shipping industry

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Nowports, an automated digital freight forwarder in Latin America, has raised $16 million in Series A funding. Mouro Capital — a venture capital fund focused on fintechs and adjacent businesses that is backed by Banco Santander — led the round for the Monterrey, Mexico-based startup. Foundation Capital also participated in the financing, which included participation

Nowports, an automated digital freight forwarder in Latin America, has raised $16 million in Series A funding.

Mouro Capital — a venture capital fund focused on fintechs and adjacent businesses that is backed by Banco Santander — led the round for the Monterrey, Mexico-based startup. Foundation Capital also participated in the financing, which included participation from existing backers Broadhaven Ventures, InvestoVC, Monashees, Base10 Partners and Y Combinator.

A number of angels also put money in the round, including Justo.mx founder Ricardo Weder, Luuna’s Carlos Salinas from Luuna and Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen. The investment brings Nowports’ total raised since its 2018 inception to over $24 million.

Nowports raised its initial seed round in 2019 after graduating from Y Combinator’s Winter 2019 batch with a mission to innovate the freight forwarding industry by helping companies improve the import process. Its software and services track freight shipments from ports to destinations across Latin America. Over time, it has expanded its offerings and now also automates insurance policies for, and provides financing, to its clients. 

“In this way, we allow our clients to import and export more, which helps them grow their businesses and improves the foreign trade conditions of the region,” said Nowports CEO and co-founder Alfonso de los Rios.

2020 was a good year for Nowports, which saw its revenue climb by 605% compared to 2019.

“Our 2021 goal is 400% to 600%,” de los Rios told TechCrunch.

The company currently has offices in Mexico, Chile, Colombia, and Uruguay. Nowports plans to use its new capital in part to expand its 160-person team to China, according to de los Rios. It also plans to expand its logistics and financial services and to “solidify its most important routes.”

Image Credits: CEO and co-founder Alfonso de los Rios / Nowports

“With platforms, algorithms with AI and integrations, our platform allows companies to take control of their shipments and plan and predict the best timing to move the freight based on the needs of their own company,” he said at the time of the company’s seed raise. “Our goal with the series A is to position ourselves as the biggest digital freight forwarder in the region and expand our venture financing solution.”

Tens of millions of containers are imported and exported from Latin America each year, and nearly half of them are either delayed or lost due to mismanagement. And, an estimated 50% of shipping containers suffer delays due to disorganized processes or errors during transport, which ends up costing companies billions per year. It’s a big opportunity. And, Nowports pledges to shippers that its digital management software will keep track of each container. 

“Slow, inefficient, and manual processes in international logistics are disassociated from today’s technological world”, said Nowports co-founder and COO Maximiliano Casal. “Customers are looking for solutions that can improve their logistics processes adapted to current challenges of international trade.”

The two co-founders of Nowports met at a program at Stanford University, with de los Rios hailing from a family with deep ties to the shipping industry. He and Casal linked up and the two began plotting a way to make the deeply inefficient industry more modern and transparent. To familiarize himself with the market for which he’d be developing a technology, Casal worked with a freight forwarder in Kansas City that had been operating for more than 30 years.

Michael Sidgmore, co-founder and partner of seed round lead investor Broadhaven Ventures, described the team as “visionaries in the freight forwarding industry who see the ability to build the operating system for the shipping industry, much like Carta has done for equity ownership.”

The need to track and digitize the supply chain process was never more apparent than with the recent blockage of the Suez Canal by the Ever Given, which became a meme that represented the impacts of inefficiencies in the supply chain, Sidgmore said. 

“Nowports has created industry leading technology to help its customers know when to turn starboard or port side,” he added.

Chris Gottschalk, senior advisor of Mouro Capital, said the Nowports platform brings both “transparency and technology” to a global client base.

News: Tusk Ventures’ Jordan Nof and Wheel’s Michelle Davey to talk fundraising tips on Extra Crunch Live

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The Tusk Ventures portfolio is impressive, if not intimidating. It includes Lemonade, Fanduel, Coinbase, Latch, Bird and many, many more. We’re lucky to be joined by Tusk co-founder and general partner Jordan Nof for an upcoming episode of Extra Crunch Live, and even luckier that he’s bringing Wheel co-founder Michelle Davey along with him. Wheel

The Tusk Ventures portfolio is impressive, if not intimidating. It includes Lemonade, Fanduel, Coinbase, Latch, Bird and many, many more. We’re lucky to be joined by Tusk co-founder and general partner Jordan Nof for an upcoming episode of Extra Crunch Live, and even luckier that he’s bringing Wheel co-founder Michelle Davey along with him.

Wheel is an infrastructure company focused on virtual care, and has raised more than $65 million in funding from Lightspeed, CRV and Tusk, of course.

Extra Crunch Live is all about helping founders build better venture-backed businesses. We do this by bringing together investors and the founders they invest in to chat about how they came together, what stood out to them about the other party, and how they work together today. Register here for Extra Crunch Live: Tusk Venture Partners and Wheel!

We also chat about general principles for fundraising, board construction, packaging and pricing, and other tactical advice for founders.

Oh, and if that weren’t enough, Extra Crunch Live also features an audience pitch-off, where folks in attendance can come onto our virtual stage and pitch their products to our guests, who then give their live feedback.

We’re incredibly excited to be joined by two powerhouses such as Nof and Davey, and we sincerely hope you’ll join us to hear what they have to say.

Extra Crunch Live, which goes down every Wednesday at 3pm ET/noon PT, is accessible to anyone and everyone. But only Extra Crunch members can access the content on-demand. And, by the way, the Extra Crunch library is growing every single day.  Not a member yet? Subscribe to Extra Crunch here!

The Tusk Ventures + Wheel episode of Extra Crunch Live goes down on Wednesday, July 14 at 3pm ET/noon PT.

Register here!

News: The EU’s COVID-19 ‘digital certificates’ are up and running

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A regulation underpinning a digital certification system for individuals in the European Union to verify their COVID-19 status via a common credential has gone into application today — on schedule. From today, almost all EU Member States are now able to issue and verify digital certificates, per the Commission — with only a handful of

A regulation underpinning a digital certification system for individuals in the European Union to verify their COVID-19 status via a common credential has gone into application today — on schedule.

From today, almost all EU Member States are now able to issue and verify digital certificates, per the Commission — with only a handful of (mostly) EEA countries still pending a step, according to its website.

A number of countries had started issuing certificates earlier. The regulation also allows for a six-week phasing in period.

The Commission said more than 200 million certificates have been generated already.

The “EU Digital COVID Certificate” — which has gone through a few names since the idea was publicly floated back in January — is intended to help facilitate cross-border travel within the bloc by providing standardized and universally accepted certification.

EU citizens still have the right to free movement — even without the certificate — but having the common credential may help facilitate travel around the bloc, such as by exempting holders from needing to undergo COVID-19-related restrictions like quarantine.

Certificates can be issued to people within EU Member States who have been vaccinated against the coronavirus with a verified vaccine; who have previously had the disease (and therefore have antibodies); or to people who have had a recent negative test.

While it’s been called a “digital” certificate, a paper version can also be issued — which similarly contains a scannable QR code (albeit printed) — so there’s no requirement for individuals to have a mobile device to be able to use the certificate to help them travel.

Certificates are also issued free of charge.

The Commission has previously said that no personal data is “exchanged or retained” during the digital certificate verification process. Signature keys for the verification are stored on servers at a national level and only accessed — via a centralized gateway — at the point the certificate is scanned.

The EU rules for the digital certificate stipulate that Member States must refrain from imposing additional travel restrictions on holders — unless such steps are “necessary and proportionate” to safeguard public health.

The regulation is due to expire in a year’s time.

More information about the EU digital COVID certificate system can be found here.

News: With $8.4M raised, strawberry-picking robotics startup Traptic begins commercial deployment

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We first covered Traptic back in 2019, when it appeared as a Battlefield finalist on stage at Disrupt SF. Today, the South Bay robotics startup is announcing some major progress. For starters, it began commercial deployment of its strawberry-picking mobile robot early this month. Traptic tells TechCrunch that Blazer-Wilkinson, a top-five U.S. strawberry producer, began

We first covered Traptic back in 2019, when it appeared as a Battlefield finalist on stage at Disrupt SF. Today, the South Bay robotics startup is announcing some major progress. For starters, it began commercial deployment of its strawberry-picking mobile robot early this month.

Traptic tells TechCrunch that Blazer-Wilkinson, a top-five U.S. strawberry producer, began to deploy the technology in June, the system working in tandem with human pickers. That follows a pilot in 2020, when many agriculture companies were seeking assistance amid pandemic-related shortages.

Even prior to COVID-19, labor shortages have resulted in tremendous waste. According to Traptic’s figures, roughly 10% of U.S. strawberries rot in the field, unpicked, resulting in up to $300 million in waste, annually. During the pandemic, there was an even larger crunch, as H-2A workers suffered from restricted travel.

The company’s acceleration comes thanks to an unannounced $5 million Series A from Collaborative Fund, Homebrew Ventures and K9 Ventures that arrived in late-2019, before COVID-19 was on the world’s radar. “We used the recent funding to run a successful pilot,” cofounder and CEO Lewis Anderson tells TechCrunch, “design and build our commercial-scale machine, and start our first paid deployment.” The latest round followed an early-stage $3 million raise in 2017 and $400K the year prior. The company has raised $8.4 million in total.

“As record heat waves force farmworkers indoors and stifle harvests this week, Traptic’s mission has become more timely than ever,” Collaborative Fund’s Craig Shapiro said in comment offered to TechCrunch. “The launch of their robotic strawberry picker in commercial fields is a big step forward for the $10 billion strawberry market, and a peek into the future of agricultural production more broadly. Collaborative is proud to get behind a technology that can heighten crop security while creating safer jobs across the food supply chain, and we’re confident that Traptic is the right team to see that vision through.”

Traptic’s system combines 3D cameras and AI vision with robotic arms capable of plucking the fragile fruit without damaging it. The company currently employees around a dozen people largely in robotics and engineering and is advised by Pieter Abbeel of UC Berkeley and Serge Belongie of Cornell.

News: Zebra Technologies is acquiring warehouse robotics company, Fetch

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Zebra Technologies this morning announced its intention to purchased Bay Area-based warehouse robotics firm, Fetch. The $290 million deal finds the enterprise corporation snapping up 95% of the company, in addition to the 5% it already owns. The deal comes as interesting in warehouse and fulfillment robotics is continuing to heat up, both in the

Zebra Technologies this morning announced its intention to purchased Bay Area-based warehouse robotics firm, Fetch. The $290 million deal finds the enterprise corporation snapping up 95% of the company, in addition to the 5% it already owns.

The deal comes as interesting in warehouse and fulfillment robotics is continuing to heat up, both in the wake of pandemic-fueled labor shortages and as retails are looking for any potential upper-hand in the battle against Amazon’s dominance. It’s been a huge driver for investments in small and large robotics firms alike, including the recently SPACed Berkshire-Grey.

Zebra, for its part, has been extremely aggressive in the category of late. In addition to launching its own retail robotics like the SmartSight inventory system announced early last year, the company has been investing in Fetch’s direct competitors like Locus, for which it led a $40 million Series D last June.

From the outside, it seems that Zebra is may be looking to consolidate the market around a single unified play. As Locus CEO Rick Faulk told me during another recent round, “We think we can build the most and greatest value by operating independently. There are investors that want to invest in helping everyone that’s not named ‘Amazon’ compete.”

He added, at the time, that the company had no interest in being acquired. I can’t say for certain that Zebra was actively pursuing it, but if today’s news is any indication, it’s clear that the company was looking to jump in with both feet – and Fetch’s diverse, modular offering is a pretty good place to start.

“The acquisition of Fetch Robotics will accelerate our Enterprise Asset Intelligence vision and growth in intelligent industrial automation by embracing new modes of empowering workflows and helping our customers operate more efficiently in increasingly automated, data-powered environments,” Zebra CEO Anders Gustafsson said in a release. “This move will also extend our ongoing commitment to optimize the supply chain from the point of production to the point of consumption. We are excited to welcome the Fetch team to the Zebra family.”

Fetch CEO Melonee Wise adds, “The Fetch team is excited to join Zebra and accelerate the adoption of flexible automation through AMRs and our cloud-based robotics platform. Together we have the right team with the right technology to provide end-to-end solutions that solve real customer problems. By helping customers dynamically optimize and holistically orchestrate their fulfillment, distribution, and manufacturing operations, together we help enable their ability to stay ahead of growing demand, minimize delivery times and address shrinking labor pools.”

We’ve reached out for additional comment. The deal is pending the standard regulatory approval. It’s expected to close in Q3.

News: Paper gets $100M worth of venture-backed paper for B2B edtech

• July 1, 2021
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For edtech startups, it’s always been easier to go direct-to-consumer than it is to sell into school districts. The latter has stodgy and strict sales cycles, while the former has a bit more flexibility when it comes to opening up that wallet. The pandemic added validation to this dynamic by supercharging consumer companies like Quizlet and

For edtech startups, it’s always been easier to go direct-to-consumer than it is to sell into school districts. The latter has stodgy and strict sales cycles, while the former has a bit more flexibility when it comes to opening up that wallet. The pandemic added validation to this dynamic by supercharging consumer companies like Quizlet and Outschool, bringing them into the unicorn club.

Despite this growth, many startups still think that going B2B, directly into schools, will have the biggest impact on students, especially those who may not be able to afford supplemental services out of school. And while it’s the long game, Montreal-based Paper, an educational software provider that powers tutoring services in schools, just gave the sector a massive signal that venture-backed returns and school districts can exist in the same sentence.

Paper announced that it has raised $100 million USD in a Series C round led by IVP. Other investors include Framework Venture Partners, Bullpen Capital, Reach Capital, Birchmere Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, BDC Capital and ETW.

The startup, founded in 2014, sells tutoring software to K-12 schools in the United States and Canada. Its software allows students to request live tutor help on-demand, which can then be delivered in four languages across 200 subject areas. In the last year, Paper has grown from 100 tutors to 1000 tutors.

“School districts are not necessarily comfortable working with a company where these educators who have access to all their children are just contractors popping online and disappearing,” said Paper CEO Philip Cutler. “[Our tutors] are held to all the same professional standards that a classroom teacher would be.” The company has made its tutors part-time workers, to add a layer of incentive and formality to the working relationship and potentially limit attrition.

Cutler sees Paper as an alternate pathway for teachers looking to make a living outside of traditional school districts. However, scalability demands could inherently clash with what teachers came to the profession to do – prioritizing speed and number of finished queries instead of consistent, repeatable help.

Still, the flexibility around how Paper’s advice looks and arrives is compelling. Paper claims it has 24/7 support, and that a student can request live chat help for five minutes, or for hours depending on the nature of the assignment. Since the company goes in-district, teachers can see where students are struggling most and cater class time to problem areas.

The company embodies a lot of what companies like Quizlet, Course Hero and Brainly have somewhat only recently invested in: the rise of smart, not slow, tutoring sessions. They’re all betting that that modern-day extra help may not look like a Zoom, but instead a live chat with a white board feature tacked on.

The company declined to disclose valuation, but instead pointed to other growth metrics to illustrate its positioning in the market. Paper grew its staff from 30 employees to 130 employees. It has also grown 40x in revenue over the past two years, which Cutler said is mostly fueled by strong renewals and the network effect within school districts.

“You don’t want to be the last district in your community or your area to have it, so we’ve seen a lot of adoption from that perspective,” he said.

Cutler admitted that there hasn’t been too many breakout B2B edtech businesses for the sector, but he thinks Paper’s latest raise – its third in the past 18 months – could be a signal that the entrepreneurial energy of direct-to-consumer might finally be making its way into the hallway.

“I think school districts are more receptive than they’ve ever been to changing and trying new things, and the last month has really shown us that you can actually take risks and you can try different things in school.”

He added: “It’s been lost in education for a while, and I’m proud of what’s happened over the last year.”