Friday, April 30, 2021

Roku removes YouTube TV from its app catalog amidst contract disagreements

As Roku reached the end of its contract with Google to host the YouTube TV app on its channel store, Roku sent all its customers an email notifying them that they may lose the ability to use the YouTube TV channel on Roku devices. In this messages to consumers, it pointed at Google and accused it of “unfair and anticompetitive requirements” that are, according to Roku, designed to allow the collection of user data and to “manipulate” search results. That was on Monday. Fast forward to Friday, Roku has actually removed the YouTube TV channel from its store and issued a statement to...



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Xiaomi Mi 11X Pro hands-on review



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See if the Huawei Mate X2 survives a durability test

Foldable smartphones are generally considered to be more fragile than 'normal' ones, unlike gaming phones for example - then again it turns out that among the latest batch of the latter, two out of three do snap in two or three parts when bent. So you may be thinking that foldables should fare even worse in such testing, but is that actually true? Let's find out. Zack from the JerryRigEverything YouTube channel is back at it again, and this time the device being 'durability tested' is Huawei's latest and greatest, the Mate X2. Will it scratch? Burn? Bend? Take a look below. In case...



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Early bird extension gives you more time to save on passes to TC Early Stage 2021: Marketing and Fundraising

Startup life, especially in the early innings, is nothing short of hectic. Who wouldn’t love a clone or two to help get everything done? Well, we can’t clone you, but we can give you more time to sign up and save on a pass to TC Early Stage 2021: Marketing and Fundraising on July 8-9.

We’re extending the early bird deadline to Friday, June 4 at 11:59 pm (PT). Sweet! That should help calm the cray-cray and save you $100 on admission to our virtual two-day bootcamp experience. Of course, you don’t need to wait. Buy your pass now while it’s top-of-mind and feel the joy of having one less task on your to-do list.

Not familiar with TC Early Stage? It’s specifically designed to help new startup founders learn essential entrepreneurial skills to build a successful startup. We tap the very best experts in the startup ecosystem, and they deliver actionable insights you can put in place now, when you need them most.

At TC Early Stage 2021, top-tier investors, veteran founders and respected subject-matter experts will lead highly interactive sessions on topics ranging from fundraising and marketplace positioning to growth marketing and content development. Get answers to your burning questions.

Here’s just one example. Rebecca Reeve Henderson, founder and CEO of Rsquared Communication, will hold forth on how to create an effective earned media strategy for your startup. Talk about an essential skill. Want more examples?

  • Mike Duboe, general partner at Greylock will share the latest growth trends in consumer and B2B technology.
  • Sarah Kunst, founding partner at Cleo Capital, will focus on best practices and offer solid advice on how to get ready to fundraise.

We’re announcing more speakers every week, and we’ll share the event agenda soon, so stay tuned.

TC Early Stage 2021: Marketing and Fundraising takes place on July 8-9, and now you have an extra month to save $100. Calm the cray-cray and take one important, business-building task of your to-do list. Buy your early-bird pass to TC Early Stage 2021 before June 4. We can’t wait to see you there!

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Early Stage 2021 – Marketing & Fundraising? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.



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Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra is finally reaching Europe on May 11

Xiaomi went all-in with the Mi 11 Ultra this year, producing what is its first proper mainstream flagship smartphone ever to be released internationally (as last year's Mi 10 Ultra was a China-only affair). The company unveiled the Mi 11 Ultra's European eye watering €1,199 pricing at an event in late March, but it stayed mum on a release date for the continent. Now thanks to Xiaomi's official Dutch Facebook page, we know that the Mi 11 Ultra is expected to finally become available on May 11. Get it? May 11. This is at least true for the Dutch market, and even if the other...



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Computer vision inches towards ‘common sense’ with Facebook’s latest research

Machine learning is capable of doing all sorts of things as long as you have the data to teach it how. That’s not always easy, and researchers are always looking for a way to add a bit of “common sense” to AI so you don’t have to show it 500 pictures of a cat before it gets it. Facebook’s newest research takes a big step towards reducing the data bottleneck.

The company’s formidable AI research division has been working on how to advance and scale things like advanced computer vision algorithms for years now, and has made steady progress, generally shared with the rest of the research community. One interesting development Facebook has pursued in particular is what’s called “semi-supervised learning.”

Generally when you think of training an AI, you think of something like the aforementioned 500 pictures of cats — images that have been selected and labeled (which can mean outlining the cat, putting a box around the cat, or just saying there’s a cat in there somewhere) so that the machine learning system can put together an algorithm to automate the process of cat recognition. Naturally if you want to do dogs or horses, you need 500 dog pictures, 500 horse pictures, etc — it scales linearly, which is a word you never want to see in tech.

Semi-supervised learning, related to “unsupervised” learning, involves figuring out important parts of a dataset without any labeled data at all. It doesn’t just go wild, there’s still structure; for instance, imagine you give the system a thousand sentences to study, then showed it ten more that have several of the words missing. The system could probably do a decent job filling in the blanks just based on what it’s seen in the previous thousand. But that’s not so easy to do with images and video — they aren’t as straightforward or predictable.

But Facebook researchers have shown that while it may not be easy, it’s possible and in fact very effective. The DINO system (which stands rather unconvincingly for “DIstillation of knowledge with NO labels”) is capable of learning to find objects of interest in videos of people, animals, and objects quite well without any labeled data whatsoever.

Animation showing four videos and the AI interpretation of the objects in them.

Image Credits: Facebook

It does this by considering the video not as a sequence of images to be analyzed one by one in order, but as an complex, interrelated set,like the difference between “a series of words” and “a sentence.” By attending to the middle and the end of the video as well as the beginning, the agent can get a sense of things like “an object with this general shape goes from left to right.” That information feeds into other knowledge, like when an object on the right overlaps with the first one, the system knows they’re not the same thing, just touching in those frames. And that knowledge in turn can be applied to other situations. In other words, it develops a basic sense of visual meaning, and does so with remarkably little training on new objects.

This results in a computer vision system that’s not only effective — it performs well compared with traditionally trained systems — but more relatable and explainable. For instance, while an AI that has been trained with 500 dog pictures and 500 cat pictures will recognize both, it won’t really have any idea that they’re similar in any way. But DINO — although it couldn’t be specific — gets that they’re similar visually to one another, more so anyway than they are to cars, and that metadata and context is visible in its memory. Dogs and cats are “closer” in its sort of digital cognitive space than dogs and mountains. You can see those concepts as little blobs here — see how those of a type stick together:

Animated diagram showing how concepts in the machine learning model stay close together.

Image Credits: Facebook

This has its own benefits, of a technical sort we won’t get into here. If you’re curious, there’s more detail in the papers linked in Facebook’s blog post.

There’s also an adjacent research project, a training method called PAWS, which further reduces the need for labeled data. PAWS combines some of the ideas of semi-supervised learning with the more traditional supervised method, essentially giving the training a boost by letting it learn from both the labeled and unlabeled data.

Facebook of course needs good and fast image analysis for its many user-facing (and secret) image-related products, but these general advances to the computer vision world will no doubt be welcomed by the developer community for other purposes.



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The second shot is kicking in

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

First and foremost, Equity was nominated for a Webby for “Best Technology Podcast”! Drop everything and go Vote for Equity! We’d appreciate it. A lot. And even if we lose, well, we’ll keep doing our thing and making each other laugh. (Note: we are in last place, which is, well, something.)

Regardless, the Equity team got together once again this week to not only go over the news of the week, but also to do a little soul searching. You see, some news broke yesterday, so we figured that we had to talk about it in our usual style. So, here’s the rundown:

  • Do you want to buy TechCrunch? Apparently you can? Albeit probably along with a few billion dollars worth of other assets — whatever is left of Yahoo and AOL — you can now own an NFT. A non-fungible TechCrunch. What is ahead for us? We don’t know. So if you do know, tell us. Until then we’ll just yo-yo gently between panic and optimism, as per usual.
  • We also dug into the latest All Raise venture capital data, and the results were abysmal. 
  • Next up was the news that fintech startups are setting records in 2021, raising more capital than ever before. That brought us to the latest from Brex.
  • And then there was a suspicious trend when three fintech companies focused on teen banking raised in one exhale. We talk Step, Greenlight, and Current.
  • Natasha talked about her last Startups Weekly post, in which she unpacked The MasterClass effect’s impact on edtech.
  • And to close, we discussed the latest cool-kid venture capital funds. Sure memes are cool, but did you know that they can help you raise a $10 million fund? They can!

We are back Monday morning with our weekly kick-off show. Have a great weekend!

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:00 AM PST, so subscribe to us on Apple PodcastsOvercastSpotify and all the casts!



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MIUI 12.5 Global Stable ROM testing program announced for Poco phones

Xiaomi announced its MIUI 12.5 back in December last year, but Poco phones are yet to receive the update. Now the company has announced a testing program for plenty of its devices globally and you need to be fast because slots are limited. Here's the full list of eligible devices and their respective regions. POCO F3 [MI, RU, ID, EEA] POCO X3 PRO [Global, IN, EEA, RU, ID] POCO X3/NFC [Global, RU, IN, EEA, ID] POCO F2 PRO [Global, RU, ID, EEA] POCO X2 [IN] POCO M3[ Global, RU, ID, EEA, IN] POCO M2 PRO [IN] POCO M2 [IN] POCO C3 [IN] As you can see, only the original...



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Geothermal technology has enormous potential to power the planet and Fervo wants to tap it

Tapping the geothermal energy stored beneath the Earth’s surface as a way to generate renewable power is one of the new visions for the future that’s captured the attention of environmentalists and oil and gas engineers alike.

That’s because it’s not only a way to generate power that doesn’t rely on greenhouse gas emitting hydrocarbons, but because it uses the same skillsets and expertise that the oil and gas industry has been honing and refining for years.

At least that’s what drew former the former completion engineer (it’s not what it sounds like) Tim Latimer to the industry and to launch Fervo Energy, the Houston-based geothermal tech developer that’s picked up funding from none other than Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures (that fund… is so busy) and former eBay executive, Jeff Skoll’s Capricorn Investment Group.

With the new $28 million cash in hand Fervo’s planning on ramping up its projects which Latimer said would “bring on hundreds of megawatts of power in the next few years.”

Latimer got his first exposure to the environmental impact of power generation as a kid growing up in a small town outside of Waco, Texas near the Sandy Creek coal power plant, one of the last coal-powered plants to be built in the U.S.

Like many Texas kids, Latimer came from an oil family and got his first jobs in the oil and gas industry before realizing that the world was going to be switching to renewables and the oil industry — along with the friends and family he knew — could be left high and dry.

It’s one reason why he started working on Fervo, the entrepreneur said.

“What’s most important, from my perspective, since I started my career in the oil and gas industry is providing folks that are part of the energy transition on the fossil fuel side to work in the clean energy future,” Latimer said. “I’ve been able to go in and hire contractors and support folks that have been out of work or challenged because of the oil price crash… And I put them to work on our rigs.”

Fervo Energy chief executive, Tim Latimer, pictured in a hardhat at one fo the company’s development sites. Image Credit: Fervo Energy

When the Biden administration talks about finding jobs for employees in the hydrocarbon industry as part of the energy transition, this is exactly what they’re talking about.

And geothermal power is no longer as constrained by geography, so there’s a lot of abundant resources to tap and the potential for high paying jobs in areas that are already dependent on geological services work, Latimer said (late last year, Vox published a good overview of the history and opportunity presented by the technology).

“A large percentage of the world’s population actually lives next to good geothermal resources,” Latimer said. “25 countries today that have geothermal installed and producing and another 25 where geothermal is going to grow.” 

Geothermal power production actually has a long history in the Western U.S. and in parts of Africa where naturally occurring geysers and steam jets pouring from the earth have been obvious indicators of good geothermal resources, Latimer said.

Fervo’s technology unlocks a new class of geothermal resource that is ready for large-scale deployment. Fervo’s geothermal systems use novel techniques, including horizontal drilling, distributed fiber optic sensing, and advanced computational modelling, to deliver more repeatable and cost effective geothermal electricity,” Latimer wrote in an email. “Fervo’s technology combines with the latest advancements in Organic Rankine Cycle generation systems to deliver flexible, 24/7 carbon-free electricity.”

Initially developed with a grant from the TomKat Center at Stanford University and a fellowship funded by Activate.org at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab’s Cyclotron Road division, Fervo has gone on to score funding from the DOE’s Geothermal Technology Office and ARPA-E to continue work with partners like Schlumberger, Rice University and the Berkeley Lab.

The combination of new and old technology is opening vast geographies to the company to potentially develop new projects.

Other companies are also looking to tap geothermal power to drive a renewable power generation development business. Those are startups like Eavor, which has the backing of energy majors like bp Ventures, Chevron Technology Ventures, Temasek, BDC Capital, Eversource and Vickers Venture Partners; and other players including GreenFire Energy, and Sage Geosystems.

Demand for geothermal projects is skyrocketing, opening up big markets for startups that can nail the cost issue for geothermal development. As Latimer noted, from 2016 to 2019 there was only one major geothermal contract, but in 2020 there were ten new major power purchase agreements signed by the industry. 

For all of these projects, cost remains a factor. Contracts that are being signed for geothermal that are in the $65 to $75 per megawatt range, according to Latimer. By comparison, solar plants are now coming in somewhere between $35 and $55 per megawatt, as The Verge reported last year

But Latimer said the stability and predictability of geothermal power made the cost differential palatable for utilities and businesses that need the assurance of uninterruptible power supplies. As a current Houston resident, the issue is something that Latimer has an intimate experience with from this year’s winter freeze, which left him without power for five days.

Indeed, geothermal’s ability to provide always-on clean power makes it an incredibly attractive option. In a recent Department of Energy study, geothermal could meet as much as 16% of the U.S. electricity demand, and other estimates put geothermal’s contribution at nearly 20% of a fully decarbonized grid.

“We’ve long been believers in geothermal energy but have waited until we’ve seen the right technology and team to drive innovation in the sector,” said Ion Yadigaroglu of Capricorn Investment Group, in a statement.  “Fervo’s technology capabilities and the partnerships they’ve created with leading research organizations make them the clear leader in the new wave of geothermal.”

Fervo Energy drilling site. Image Credit: Fervo Energy



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Rapchat tunes into $2.3M as its music-making app hits 7M users

YouTube, Snapchat, Twitter, TikTok and Facebook’s Instagram have upended the film and TV industries, with a new wave of cinematographers, directors and actors leveraging innovations in technology to create new work and connect directly with billions of consumers to see it. Today, a startup is announcing some funding as it looks to make a similar impact in the world of music.

Rapchat, an app that lets people create music tracks — raps, as its names suggest, or something else — using a platform that crowdsources beats and lets people put vocals on top of them, has raised $2.3 million.

Co-led by Sony Music Entertainment and NYC VC firm Adjacent, this is an extension to Rapchat’s seed round of $1.7 million back in 2018, and CEO and co-founder Seth Miller tells me it’s coming as the startup is getting ready for a bigger Series A.

With no connection to Snapchat — not now at least, except that founders Seth Miller and Pat Gibson did think it was a funny pun at the time that they were first conceiving of the company as a side hustle while still in university in 2015 — Rapchat has already gone quite some way in scaling.

The company today has some 7 million registered users, and at the moment some 250,000 songs are being created around a catalog of about 100,000 beats by 500,000 active users on the platform each month. Engagement is hovering right now at 35 minutes per day on average, a mix not just of people making tunes, but through the beginnings of a social graph: people coming onto the app to discover and share those tracks.

Rapchat plans to use the funding to continue expanding the scope of what you can create on its platform, including growing the prize pools for Rapchat’s ‘Challenges’ competition series; expand to have more artists, producers, and industry executives on the platform for mentoring; and to extend that platform’s reach to integrate more deeply with the likes of TikTok, Snapchat, Spotify and Apple Music — platforms where creators are already making a lot of content, and where music is figuring strongly in that effort.

Rapchat’s growth not only speaks to how the startup has pulled off its ambition to make it easier to make music, but it also speaks to an appetite, an itch, in the creator economy: there is a big wide world of music-making out there, and more want to see if they can strike the right note.

Rapchat is definitely not the only, nor the first, company to think of how to address music creators within the bigger creator economy.

Another app called Voisey had conceived of a similar idea but focused primarily on letting people create and record shorter clips rather than full music tracks before sharing them to other platforms. It has not quite come a household name, but it did have some small success in bringing attention to new artists, and interestingly, it was quietly acquired by Snap last year (and for now Snap’s kept Voisey’s app up).

TikTok’s parent ByteDance has also made an acquisition of another music creation app, Jukedeck. As with Snap’s acquisition, so far we’re not fully clear on how and where that acquisition is going, but we’ve heard through the grapevine that TikTok is working on a new music service that sounds like it might let more content get plugged into TikTok’s music layer, so perhaps watch this space.

And in perhaps the most trend-endorsing act of all, Rapchat has been cloned — by Facebook, no less. NPE, the social networking behemoth’s in-house skunkworks team, in February rolled out BARS (all caps! stand out!) — which is, yes — an app on which you can create your own rap music.

Miller, at least for now, is about as laid back as you could be, considering all of the above, confident that at least for now, he is very happy with the engagement Rapchat is seeing, including around tests it has been running around offering new premium features — the app is free to use right now, but it has plans to offer creators more production tools and better ways of sharing their work and helping build a business out of it. Key to that will be never demanding licensing fees on music: creators keep the royalties, with Rapchat’s value lying in helping them make and track how that music gets used with the metadata that it holds on those tracks.

Some of the low-key approach might well come from the fact that Rapchat and its founders are somewhat outside of the startup fray. The idea for the app first came up in 2013, Miller said, when he and Gibson were students at Ohio University in Columbus.

“We were coming of age when everyone in college was using apps like Snapchat and Instagram,” he said. “We loved them for video, but saw there was nothing like them for creating music. So we pitched the idea during a Startup Weekend competition: snapping like Snapchat but for rap. Someone said, ‘Rapchat’ and we liked it.”

They went full-time on the idea in 2015 when they got into 500 Startups with the app, but even so it’s taken them years to build up the business, get attention from investors and raise money. Why? Partly because music is hard, and frankly the main game in town for years has been streaming services, rather than creation services.

Miller and Gibson persisted: “I knew that this market was huge. It just made so much sense to me,” he said. “The advent of the mobile devices the moment that apps like Instagram, VSCO and Snapchat have turned people into photographers and video makers, and Substack is turning people into writers.” And now Rapchat wants to tap the world for rappers.

“Rapchat has created a music studio that fits into your pocket,” said Nico Wittenborn, lead Investor at venture capital firm Adjacent, in a statement. “It decreases the friction of creativity by allowing anyone, anywhere in the world to record and publish music straight from their phones. This mobile-enabled democratization of technology is what Adjacent is all about, and I am super excited to support the team in building out this next-level music platform.”



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The health data transparency movement is birthing a new generation of startups

In the early 2000s, Jeff Bezos gave a seminal TED Talk titled “The Electricity Metaphor for the Web’s Future.” In it, he argued that the internet will enable innovation on the same scale that electricity did.

We are at a similar inflection point in healthcare, with the recent movement toward data transparency birthing a new generation of innovation and startups.

Those who follow the space closely may have noticed that there are twin struggles taking place: a push for more transparency on provider and payer data, including anonymous patient data, and another for strict privacy protection for personal patient data. What’s the main difference?

This sector is still somewhat nascent — we are in the first wave of innovation, with much more to come.

Anonymized data is much more freely available, while personal data is being locked even tighter (as it should be) due to regulations like GDPR, CCPA and their equivalents around the world.

The former trend is enabling a host of new vendors and services that will ultimately make healthcare better and more transparent for all of us.

These new companies could not have existed five years ago. The Affordable Care Act was the first step toward making anonymized data more available. It required healthcare institutions (such as hospitals and healthcare systems) to publish data on costs and outcomes. This included the release of detailed data on providers.

Later legislation required biotech and pharma companies to disclose monies paid to research partners. And every physician in the U.S. is now required to be in the National Practitioner Identifier (NPI), a comprehensive public database of providers.

All of this allowed the creation of new types of companies that give both patients and providers more control over their data. Here are some key examples of how.

Allowing patients to access all their own health data in one place

This is a key capability of patients’ newly found access to health data. Think of how often, as a patient, providers aren’t aware of treatment or a test you’ve had elsewhere. Often you end up repeating a test because a provider doesn’t have a record of a test conducted elsewhere.



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Roku removes YouTube TV from its channel store following failed negotiations

Earlier this week, Roku warned customers that the YouTube TV app may be removed from its streaming media players and TVs, and alleged that Google was leveraging its monopoly power during contract negotiations to ask for unfair terms. Today, Roku is announcing the deal has fallen through — meaning YouTube TV will no longer be available to new Roku subscribers. However, the company says it has taken steps to ensure existing subscribers can continue to use the YouTube TV app.

Roku had argued that as a part of its attempts to renew the carriage agreement for YouTube TV, Google was asking for special treatment, including a preferential ranking of YouTube content in search results, and even the permission to override Roku customer’s default settings when the YouTube app was open. That is, if a customer used the voice search button to ask for music, Google wanted YouTube Music to play the request — even if the customer had set another app, like Pandora, as their default.

The company also alleged that Google was asking for customer data that was “outside the realm” of industry standard practices and more than Roku offered other customers. And it said Google threatened to increase the hardware spec requirements for YouTube TV which would ensure Roku’s low-end and competitively priced players wouldn’t be able to access it.

Google, however, disputed the claims were as Roku said. It pointed the finger back at Roku for turning to customers to help sway the negotiations in its favor. The company also said it had been working in “good faith” to reach an agreement and all its requests were about providing a good user experience. Notably, Google also said it made “no requests to access user data or interfere with search results.”

Roku today offered a statement on the decision to pull YouTube TV, as the agreement has not been renewed. A Roku spokesperson said the following:

“We are disappointed that Google has allowed our agreement for the distribution of YouTube TV to expire. Roku has not asked for one dollar of additional financial consideration from Google to renew YouTube TV. ​

We have only asked Google for four simple commitments. First, not to manipulate consumer search results. Second, not to require access to data not available to anyone else. Third, not to leverage their YouTube monopoly to force Roku to accept hardware requirements that would increase consumer costs. Fourth, not to act in a discriminatory and anticompetitive manner against Roku. ​

​Because our contract has expired, we have removed YouTube TV from our channel store. To continue to provide our users with a great streaming experience, we are taking the extra step to continue to offer existing subscribers access to YouTube TV on the Roku platform unless Google takes actions that require the full removal of the channel. Because of Google’s conduct, new subscriptions will not be available going forward until an agreement is reached. ​

​It is well past time for Google to embrace the principles that have made streaming so popular for millions of users by giving consumers control of their streaming experience, by embracing fair competition and by ceasing anticompetitive practices. We believe consumers stand to benefit from Google and Roku reaching a fair agreement that preserves these principles and we remain committed to trying to achieve that goal.”

An email was also sent to customers informing them of these details. We’ve asked Google for comment.



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Developer-focused video platform Mux achieves unicorn status with $105M funding

Barely more than eight months after announcing a $37 million funding round, Mux has another $105 million.

The Series D was led by Coatue and values the company at more than $1 billion (Mux isn’t disclosing the specific valuation). Existing investors Accel, Andreessen Horowitz and Cobalt also participated, as did new investor Dragoneer.

Co-founder and CEO Jon Dahl told me that Mux didn’t need to raise more funding. But after last year’s Series C, the company’s leadership kept in touch with Coatue and other investors who’d expressed interest, and they ultimately decided that more money could help fuel faster growth during “this inflection moment in video.”

Building on the thesis popularized by A16Z co-founder Marc Andreessen, Dahl said, “I think video’s eating software, the same way software was eating the world 10 years ago.” In other words, where video was once something we watched at our desks and on our sofas, it’s now everywhere, whether we’re scrolling through our social media feeds or exercising on our Pelotons.

“We’re at the early days of a five- or 10-year major transition, where video is moving into being a first-class part of every software project,” he said.

Dahl argued that Mux is well-suited for this transition because it’s “a video platform for developers,” with an API-centric approach that results in faster publishing and reliable streaming for viewers. Its first product was a monitoring and analytics tool called Mux Data, followed by its streaming video product Mux Video.

“If you’re going to build a video platform and do it data-first, you need heavy data and monitoring and analytics,” Dahl explained. “We built the data layer [and then] we built the streaming platform.”

Customers include Robinhood, PBS, ViacomCBS, Equinox Media, and VSCO — Dahl said that while Mux works with digital media companies, “our core market is software.” He suggested that back when the company was founded in 2015, video was largely seen as a “niche,” or “something you needed if you were ESPN or Netflix.” But the last few years have illustrated that “video is a fundamental part of how we communicate” and that “every software company should have video as a core part of its products.”

Mux founders Adam Brown, Steven Heffernan, Matt McClure and Jon Dahl

Mux founders Adam Brown, Steven Heffernan, Matt McClure and Jon Dahl

Not surprisingly, demand increased dramatically during the pandemic. During the past year, on-demand streaming via the Mux platform growing by 300%, while live video streaming grew 3700% and revenue quadrupled.

“Which is a lot of work,” Dahl said with a laugh. “We definitely spent a lot of the last year ramping and scaling and investing in the platform.”

This new funding will allow Mux (which has now raised a total of $175 million) to continue that investment. Dahl said he plans to grow the team from 80 to 200 employees and to explore potential acquisitions.

“We were impressed by Mux’s laser focus on the developer community, and saw impressive customer retention and expansion indicative of the strong value their solutions provide,” said Coatue General Partner David Schneider in a statement. “This funding will enable Mux to continue to build on their customer-centric platform and we are proud to partner with Mux as it leads the way to this hybrid future.”



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As concerns rise over forest carbon offsets, Pachama’s verified offset marketplace gets $15 million

Restoring and preserving the world’s forests has long been considered one of the easiest, lowest cost, and simplest ways to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

It’s by far the most popular method for corporations looking to take an easy first step on the long road to decarbonizing or offsetting their industrial operations. But in recent months the efficacy, validity, and reliability of a number of forest offsets have been called into question thanks to some blockbuster reporting from Bloomberg.

It’s against this uncertain backdrop that investors are coming in to shore up financing for Pachama, a company building a marketplace for forest carbon credits that it says is more transparent and verifiable thanks to its use of satellite imagery and machine learning technologies.

That pitch has brought in $15 million in new financing for the company, which co-founder and chief executive Diego Saez Gil said would be used for product development and the continued expansion of the company’s marketplace.

Launched only one year ago, Pachama has managed to land some impressive customers and backers. No less an authority on things environmental than Jeff Bezos (given how much of a negative impact Amazon operations have on the planet), gave the company a shoutout in his last letter to shareholders as Amazon’s outgoing chief executive. And the largest ecommerce company in Latin America, Mercado Libre, tapped the company to manage an $8 million offset project that’s part of a broader commitment to sustainability by the retailing giant.

Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund is an investor in the latest round, which was led by Bill Gates’ investment firm Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Other investors included Lowercarbon Capital (the climate-focused fund from über-successful angel investor, Chris Sacca), former Ãœber executive Ryan Graves’ Saltwater, the MCJ Collective, and new backers like Tim O’Reilly’s OATV, Ram Fhiram, Joe gebbia, Marcos Galperin, NBA All-star Manu Ginobilli, James Beshara, Fabrice Grinda, Sahil Lavignia, and Tomi Pierucci.

That’s not even the full list of the company’s backers. What’s made Pachama so successful, and given the company the ability to attract top talent from companies like Google, Facebook, SapceX, Tesla, OpenAI, Microsoft, Impossible Foods and Orbital Insights, is the combination of its climate mission applied to the well-understood forest offset market, said Saez Gil.

“Restoring nature is one of the most important solutions to climate change. Forests, oceans and other ecosystems not only sequester enormous amounts of CO2from the atmosphere, but they also provide critical habitat for biodiversity and are sources of livelihood for communities worldwide. We are building the technology stack required to be able to drive funding to the restoration and conservation of these ecosystems with integrity, transparency and efficiency” said Diego Saez Gil, Co-founder and CEO at Pachama. “We feel honored and excited to have the support of such an incredible group of investors who believe in our mission and are demonstrating their willingness to support our growth for the long term”. 

Customers outside of Latin America are also clamoring for access to Pachama’s offset marketplace. Microsoft, Shopify, and Softbank are also among the company’s paying buyers.

It’s another reason that investors like Y Combinator, Social Capital, Tobi Lutke, Serena Williams, Aglaé Ventures (LVMH’s tech investment arm), Paul Graham, AirAngels, Global Founders, ThirdKind Ventures, Sweet Capital, Xplorer Capital, Scott Belsky, Tim Schumacher, Gustaf Alstromer, Facundo Garreton, and Terrence Rohan, were able to commit to backing the company’s nearly $24 million haul since its 2020 launch. 

“Pachama is working on unlocking the full potential of nature to remove CO2 from the atmosphere,” said Carmichael Roberts from BEV, in a statement. “Their technology-based approach will have an enormous multiplier effect by using machine learning models for forest analysis to validate, monitor and measure impactful carbon neutrality initiatives. We are impressed by the progress that the team has made in a short period of time and look forward to working with them to scale their unique solution globally.” 

 



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Huawei P50 leaks in hands-on images

We’ve already seen plenty of rumors and renders of the upcoming Huawei P50 series and today we have our first live look at the vanilla P50. The images come courtesy of reliable tipster DigitalChatStation who shared them on his Weibo account. Huawei P50 (source: DigitalChatStation) We can see the display which is rumored to measure in at 6.3-inches, will sport a much smaller centered punch hole cutout this time around instead of the pill shaped one on the P40. More importantly, we can see the huge camera cutout on the back composed of two large circles which should house 4 camera...



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Asus Zenfone 8 Mini memory options and battery capacity leak

The jury is still out there whether Asus will be launching two or three members of the Zenfone 8 family and we are still unsure how Asus will call them. In any case, the alleged Mini model is subject to a big leak revealing not only battery capacity but memory variants as well. Asus Zenfone 6 and 7 Pro According to Dealntech's inside sources, the smallest of the bunch will come in five memory variants - 6/8GB paired with 128GB of storage and 8/12/16GB of RAM coupled with 256GB of internal storage. The battery capacity is said to be 4,000 mAh, which would probably make the phone feel...



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Europe charges Apple with antitrust breach, citing Spotify App Store complaint

The European Commission has announced that it’s issued formal antitrust charges against Apple, saying today that its preliminary view is Apple’s app store rules distort competition in the market for music streaming services by raising the costs of competing music streaming app developers.

The Commission begun investigating competition concerns related to iOS App Store (and also Apple Pay) last summer. But today’s charges relate only to music streaming apps, and the App Store’s role as a gatekeeper for such apps to access iOS users. This is also a market where Apple competes, with its eponymous offering (Apple Music).

“The Commission takes issue with the mandatory use of Apple’s own in-app purchase mechanism imposed on music streaming app developers to distribute their apps via Apple’s App Store,” it wrote today. “The Commission is also concerned that Apple applies certain restrictions on app developers preventing them from informing iPhone and iPad users of alternative, cheaper purchasing possibilities.”

The statement of objections focuses on two rules that Apple imposes in its agreements with music streaming app developers: Namely the mandatory requirement to use its proprietary in-app purchase system (IAP) to distribute paid digital content (with the Commission noting that it charges a 30% commission fee on all such subscriptions bought via IAP); and ‘anti-steering provisions’ which limit the ability of developers to inform users of alternative purchasing options.

“The Commission’s investigation showed that most streaming providers passed this fee [Apple’s 30% cut] on to end users by raising prices,” it wrote, adding: “While Apple allows users to use music subscriptions purchased elsewhere, its rules prevent developers from informing users about such purchasing possibilities, which are usually cheaper. The Commission is concerned that users of Apple devices pay significantly higher prices for their music subscription services or they are prevented from buying certain subscriptions directly in their apps.”

Commenting in a statement, EVP and competition chief Margrethe Vestager, added: “App stores play a central role in today’s digital economy. We can now do our shopping, access news, music or movies via apps instead of visiting websites. Our preliminary finding is that Apple is a gatekeeper to users of iPhones and iPads via the App Store. With Apple Music, Apple also competes with music streaming providers. By setting strict rules on the App store that disadvantage competing music streaming services, Apple deprives users of cheaper music streaming choices and distorts competition. This is done by charging high commission fees on each transaction in the App store for rivals and by forbidding them from informing their customers of alternative subscription options.”

Apple sent us this statement in response:

“Spotify has become the largest music subscription service in the world, and we’re proud for the role we played in that. Spotify does not pay Apple any commission on over 99% of their subscribers, and only pays a 15% commission on those remaining subscribers that they acquired through the App Store. At the core of this case is Spotify’s demand they should be able to advertise alternative deals on their iOS app, a practice that no store in the world allows. Once again, they want all the benefits of the App Store but don’t think they should have to pay anything for that. The Commission’s argument on Spotify’s behalf is the opposite of fair competition.”

Spotify’s founder, Daniel Ek, has also responded to the news of the Commission’s charges against Apple with a jubilant tweet — writing: “Today is a big day. Fairness is the key to competition… we are one step closer to creating a level playing field, which is so important for the entire ecosystem of European developers.”

 

Vestager is due to hold a press conference shortly — so stay tuned for updates.

This story is developing… 

A number of complaints against Apple’s practices have been lodged with the EU’s competition division in recent years — including by music streaming service Spotify; video games maker Epic Games; and messaging platform Telegram, to name a few of the complainants who have gone public (and been among the most vocal).

The main objection is over the (up to 30%) cut Apple takes on sales made through third parties’ apps — which critics rail against as an ‘Apple tax’ — as well as how it can mandate that developers do not inform users how to circumvent its in-app payment infrastructure, i.e. by signing up for subscriptions via their own website instead of through the App Store. Other complaints include that Apple does not allow third party app stores on iOS.

Apple, meanwhile, has argued that its App Store does not constitute a monopoly. iOS’ global market share of mobile devices is a little over 10% vs Google’s rival Android OS — which is running on the lion’s share of the world’s mobile hardware. But monopoly status depends on how a market is defined by regulators (and if you’re looking at the market for iOS apps then Apple has no competitors).

The iPhone maker also likes to point out that the vast majority of third party apps pay it no commission (as they don’t monetize via in-app payments). While it argues that restrictions on native apps are necessary to protect iOS users from threats to their security and privacy.

Last summer the European Commission said its App Store probe was focused on Apple’s mandatory requirement that app developers use its proprietary in-app purchase system, as well as restrictions applied on the ability of developers to inform iPhone and iPad users of alternative cheaper purchasing possibilities outside of apps.

It also said it was investigating Apple Pay: Looking at the T&Cs and other conditions Apple imposes for integrating its payment solution into others’ apps and websites on iPhones and iPads, and also on limitations it imposes on others’ access to the NFC (contactless payment) functionality on iPhones for payments in stores.

The EU’s antitrust regulator also said then that it was probing allegations of “refusals of access” to Apple Pay.

In March this year the UK also joined the Apple App Store antitrust investigation fray — announcing a formal investigation into whether it has a dominant position and if it imposes unfair or anti-competitive terms on developers using its app store.

US lawmakers have, meanwhile, also been dialling up attention on app stores, plural — and on competition in digital markets more generally — calling in both Apple and Google for questioning over how they operate their respective mobile app marketplaces in recent years.

Last month, for example, the two tech giants’ representatives were pressed on whether their app stores share data with their product development teams — with lawmakers digging into complaints against Apple especially that Cupertino frequently copies others’ apps, ‘sherlocking’ their businesses by releasing native copycats (as the practice has been nicknamed).

Back in July 2020 the House Antitrust Subcommittee took testimony from Apple CEO Tim Cook himself — and went on, in a hefty report on competition in digital markets, to accuse Apple of leveraging its control of iOS and the App Store to “create and enforce barriers to competition and discriminate against and exclude rivals while preferencing its own offerings”.

“Apple also uses its power to exploit app developers through misappropriation of competitively sensitive information and to charge app developers supra-competitive prices within the App Store,” the report went on. “Apple has maintained its dominance due to the presence of network effects, high barriers to entry, and high switching costs in the mobile operating system market.”

The report did not single Apple out — also blasting Google-owner Alphabet, Amazon and Facebook for abusing their market power. And the Justice Department went on to file suit against Google later the same month. So, over in the U.S., the stage is being set for further actions against big tech. Although what, if any, federal charges Apple could face remains to be seen.

At the same time, a number of state-level tech regulation efforts are brewing around big tech and antitrust — including a push in Arizona to relieve developers from Apple and Google’s hefty cut of app store profits.

While an antitrust bill introduced by Republican Josh Hawley earlier this month takes aim at acquisitions, proposing an outright block on big tech’s ability to carry out mergers and acquisitions. Although that bill looks unlikely to succeed, a flurry of antitrust reform bills are set to introduced as U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle grapple with how to cut big tech down to a competition-friendly size.

In Europe lawmakers are already putting down draft laws with the same overarching goal.

In the EU, the Commission recently proposed an ex ante regime to prevent big tech from abusing its market power. The Digital Markets Act is set to impose conditions on intermediating platforms who are considered ‘gatekeepers’ to others’ market access.

While over in the UK, which now sits outside the bloc, the government is also drafting new laws in response to tech giants’ market power. It has said it intends to create a ‘pro-competition’ regime that will apply to platforms with so-called  ‘strategic market status’ — but instead of a set list of requirements it wants to target specific measures per platform.



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Xiaomi working on a Memory extension feature for MIUI

Memory allocation has been all the craze lately. Take the vivo X60 Pro+, for example. It gives you the option to extend the memory by allocating storage so you gain extra 3GB of RAM. Well, it seems that Xiaomi is working on such a feature of its own too. A tipster found buried deep in MIUI 12's source code a feature named "Memory extension". It does what the vivo X60 Pro+ does but it's limited to 1GB only. It requires some tinkering before you can unlock the toggle, though. Memory extension feature description Hopefully, the feature won't be limited to high-end Xiaomi...



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SA: Global 5G smartphone sales in Q1 2021 soar, Apple with 30% market share

Strategy Analytics has published its latest research on 5G smartphone shipments around the globe, and the numbers look mightily impressive, with increases between 114% and 1,165% among manufacturers. According to the report, the period between January and March 2021 saw 133.9 million sales, which is 458% more than last year’s mere 24 million. Company Q1 2020 sales(in million) Q1 2020market share Q1 2021 sales(in million) Q1 2021market share Yearly change Apple 0 0% 40.4 30.2% N/A Oppo 1.7 ...



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PUBG Mobile teased for the Indian market

After PUBG Mobile received a ban in India, the company behind the game said that it would release an Indian-friendly version in the future with reduced gore, violence and nudity. The adapted version was first teased back in November 2020, but PUBG Studio has been fairly silent since then. Until now, that is. A short teaser video of PUBG Mobile India showed up on the Indian YouTube branch but has since been taken down. Sadly, it didn't reveal a release date or an approximate time frame, so we are still in the dark. However, the fact that the video showed up is a strong indication of...



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Realme Watch 2 unveiled in Malaysia

Almost a year ago Realme announced its first smartwatch with the aptly named Realme Watch. Since then the brand has expanded with two more models in the Watch S series but now there’s a true successor to the original Realme Watch with the same square look. The Watch 2 brings an identical 1.4-inch touchscreen IPS LCD with 320x320 pixel resolution and up to 600 nits of brightness. Realme is bringing over 100 watch faces to choose from including new live options. There’s a single button on the right-hand side and the whole package is IP68 water/dust resistant. The Watch 2 weighs 38...



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Honor Play 5 specs leak, to arrive with OLED screen

Yesterday we shared an exclusive render of the Honor Play 5 and reported the smartphone will come with a 64MP primary camera and 66W charging. Today we learn more about the Play 5 as reliable tipster Digital Chat Station revealed the smartphone's full specs. According to the tipster, the Honor Play 5 will be powered by the Dimensity 800U SoC and pack a 6.53" FullHD+ OLED panel, which we know will have a notch for the selfie camera. The Play 5's back cover doesn't have a fingerprint reader, but since the smartphone will come with an OLED screen, we could see an in-display...



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Thursday, April 29, 2021

Eclipse Ventures has $500 million more to digitize old-line industries and bring them up to speed

Two years ago, we talked with Lior Susan, the founder of now six-year-old Eclipse Ventures in Palo Alto, Ca. At the time, the outfit believed that the next big thing wasn’t another social network but instead the remaking of old-line industries through full tech stacks — including hardware, software and data — capable of bring them into the 21st century.

Fast forward, and nothing has changed, not inside of Eclipse anyway. While the world has gone through a dramatic transformation owing to the coronavirus pandemic — never has the U.S.’s crumbling infrastructure been so apparent to so many – Eclipse is backing exactly the same kinds of companies that it always has and with the same size fund. Indeed, after closing its second and third funds with $500 million, the firm quietly closed its fourth vehicle earlier this month with $500 million in capital commitments from predominantly endowments.

This morning, we talked with Susan about Eclipse’s focus on revitalizing old industries that remain largely untouched by tech, and why the pitch of Lior and the rest of Eclipse’s team has never been more powerful. Excerpts from that conversation follow, edited lightly for length and clarity.

TC: Because of where Eclipse focuses, you were long aware of the coming supply chain crises that the pandemic brought to the fore. Have your priorities changed at all as an investor? Did you have a to-do list going into 2020 and has that changed?

LS: Not really. We’ve been saying from inception that the infrastructure that we are living in is 50 to 60 years old across the board. We’ve been all of this time in those social software and fintech, new ideas and consumer trends. But we don’t live in the internet, we actually live in the physical world. And the physical world is not [receiving investment] at all. But much of that innovation can be applied to the world in which we are living, and what we want to do is bring that $65 trillion backstage economy into the digital age.

TC: In this go-go market, not a lot of funds are raising the same amounts as they have previously. Why did you choose to do so?

LS: We have a very specific strategy. We only lead early-stage investments in around 22 companies per fund, we [want] 20% to 25% with our initial check, and we double down on companies that we think are breaking out and try to lead two or three rounds in a row. And we know how to run the spreadsheets and we know how to make an assumption [about] what is the enterprise value we need to create in order to deliver alpha returns, and [that math leads us to] $500 million.

TC:  The last time we’d talked, Eclipse had also helped created and funded a company, Bright Machines, which primarily develops software for robotic systems inside of manufacturing companies. Have you launched any other companies in the last couple of years? I remember you don’t like the word ‘incubate.’

LS: We call it venture equity internally, but basically, we are very thesis oriented, so a lot of our investments start with us [circling around] an investment thesis and an area that we believe is getting really interesting. I’m right now working on a thesis around insurance in the manufacturing space [that will cover] working comp, facilities, assets . . . It [always] will start with a one-page thesis and we’ll talk inside the firm about it, and we’ll go hunt. But we don’t find what we like in a lot of cases. This is where we’re like, ‘Okay, we come from operating backgrounds. Why not roll up our sleeves and figure out how we can go and build these companies?’

You’re right that we did Bright Machines. We’ve also done Bright Insight (an IoT platform for biopharma and medtech that just raised $101 million in Series C funding led by General Catalyst), Chord (a commerce-as-a-service software for direct-to-consumer brands that just raised $18 million in Series A funding), and Metrolink (a new company that helps organizations design and manage their data flows). We’ve done [this model] a [few] times where we didn’t just invest in the company but we’re part of the founding team or we’re carving out assets. We’re trying to keep it very flexible.

TC: Interesting that you couldn’t find an insurance company focused on the manufacturing industry that you like.

LS: We have a lot of theses like that. We see a lot of horizontal business models and tech that [could work well] in the verticals where we’re playing and that we know need solutions. So, can you do a Slack for construction, or can you find the right people to build a Lemonade for manufacturing, or can you find the Shopify for industrial assets or spare parts?

TC: What size checks are you writing?

LS: I’d say $3 million to $4 million initial checks and up to $20 million or $25 million in a Series B, but you will find a lot of our companies where we invested $150 million plus over the lifetime of the company.

TC: Which company has attracted the most from Eclipse?

LS: I’d guess Cerebras [Systems, which reportedly makes the world’s largest computer chip].

TC: What do you make of what we’re hearing from the new administration in the U.S. on the infrastructure front. Do you think it’s talking about pouring money into the right verticals?

LS:  I was on a call with the manufacturing task force on Monday, and I will tell you — without getting into politics at all, because that’s above my pay grade — that the current administration is going to pour hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions of dollars, into upgrading the infrastructure of this country. And it’s going to be semiconductors, batteries, manufacturing, industrial infrastructure as a whole . . .

[I think last year’s ventilator shortage made clear] that we’d lost 100% of the manufacturing capabilities of this country and Western countries as a whole. And I think everyone now understands that you’re going to see a massive swing of investment in infrastructure and the only way to do it is through technology, because we actually don’t have a million people here that want to [work on an assembly line].  We actually need automation lines and software and computer vision and machine learning and everything that Silicon Valley is really good at.

TC: You have insight into what’s happening on the semiconductor front through Cerebras and other bets. There’s obviously a huge chip shortage that’s impacting everyone, including the auto industry. How long will it take for supply to catch up to demand?

LS: I think we’re going to see some big changes, but it’s  going to take many, many, many years. This is not software, we cannot bring everything up [to speed overnight] as you actually need fabs and cleaning rooms and assets. It’s pretty complicated.

It’s going to get worse in the next couple of quarters. It’s good for some of our companies that are working on the problem, but overall, as an economy, it’s pretty bad news.



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The era of the European insurtech IPO will soon be upon us

Once the uncool sibling of a flourishing fintech sector, insurtech is now one of the hottest areas of a buoyant venture market. Zego’s $150 million round at unicorn valuation in March, a rumored giant incoming round for WeFox, and a slew of IPOs and SPACs in the U.S. are all testament to this.

It’s not difficult to see why. The insurance market is enormous, but the sector has suffered from notoriously poor customer experience and major incumbents have been slow to adapt. Fintech has set a precedent for the explosive growth that can be achieved with superior customer experience underpinned by modern technology. And the pandemic has cast the spotlight on high-potential categories, including health, mobility and cybersecurity.

Fintech has set a precedent for the explosive growth that can be achieved with superior customer experience underpinned by modern technology.

This has begun to brew a perfect storm of conditions for big European insurtech exits. Here are four trends to look out for as the industry powers toward several European IPOs and a red-hot M&A market in the next few years.

Full-stack insurtech continues to conquer

Several early insurtech success stories started life as managing general agents (MGAs). Unlike brokers, MGAs manage claims and underwriting, but unlike a traditional insurer, pass risk off their balance sheet to third-party insurers or reinsurers. MGAs have provided a great way for new brands to acquire customers and underwrite policies without actually needing a fully fledged balance sheet. But it’s a business model with thin margins, so MGAs increasingly are trying to internalize risk exposure by verticalizing into a “full-stack” insurer in the hope of improving their unit economics.

This structure has been prevalent in the U.S., with some of the bigger recent U.S. insurtech IPO successes (Lemonade and Root), SPACs (Clover and MetroMile), and more upcoming listings (Hippo and Next) pointing to the prizes available to those who can successfully execute this expensive growth strategy.



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Redmi K40 Gaming sale goes through the roof with 100,000 units in one minute

Xiaomi’s brand Redmi has launched its own understanding of what a gaming smartphone should be under the name K40 Gaming. The device runs on Dimensity 1200 chipset and comes with the latest bells and whistles like UFS 3.1 storage, LPDDR5 RAM, 67W ultra-fast charging and several solutions for cooling and heat dissipation. With such specs, it is no wonder that the Redmi K40 Gaming was a huge success during its first flash sale in China. According to the brand, the device sold 100,000 units in just one minute. The sale includes all five different memory combinations - from the cheapest...



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Samsung Galaxy M32 key specs revealed by Geekbench

A Samsung device bearing model code SM-M325FV, and believed to be the Galaxy M32, has popped up on Geekbench with its key specs. According to the benchmark database, the SM-M325FV runs Android 11, has 6GB RAM onboard, and is powered by MT6769V/CT, which we know is a part of the Helio G80 SoC. Geekbench doesn't reveal any other specs of the SM-M325FV, but the smartphone was spotted on DEKRA last week with a 6,000 mAh battery. The Galaxy M32 is said to be based on the Galaxy A32 4G, which comes with the Helio G80, 6.4" FullHD+ 90Hz AMOLED screen, in-display fingerprint scanner, and...



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New iPad Pro and iMac with M1 will be available on May 21, British retailer reveals

The global chip crisis keeps chugging along, and Apple has long been rumored to be affected in the production of its new devices. Case in point - the new iPad Pro 11 and 12.9 and the new iMac with M1 that the company announced at last week's spring event are going up for pre-order later than new devices usually do after an Apple event. And in a move that's very uncharacteristic of it, Apple hasn't actually revealed an official release date for any of these three products. Thankfully though, a British third-party retailer, John Lewis, has risen up to the occasion and given us the date we've...



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Lambda School lays off 65 employees amid restructuring

Nearly a year after its last layoff, online coding bootcamp Lambda School just announced more cuts amid a broader structuring. In a blog post, CEO and founder Austen Allred said that the startup, which raised a $74 million Series C in August, is laying off 65 employees. 

The roles that were cut span senior product, engineering, design, community management, or instructional staff. There is a Google form for companies to post job opportunities for new Lambda School alumni. 

“We have been working for years on making incentive-aligned education work,” Allred wrote in a tweet. “It’s harder than we initially thought; we’ve had to invent a lot from scratch simultaneously and we have to get a lot of things exactly right.”

Lambda School creates online bootcamps in the career and technical space — and it’s also a pioneer of the ISA, an income share agreement, touting it as a vital way to finance employment-ready education. ISAs essentially allow students to avoid paying upfront fees to attend a bootcamp, and then ultimately pay back class fees through a percent of their future income. A number of startups have taken the ‘Lambda School for X’ format, such as Henry and Microverse. Other companies also offer ISAs such as Pursuit, V School, Launch School, and the Grace Hopper Program, one analysis shows. 

The pandemic, and volatile economic circumstances, have made ISAs a harder route. Allred said that some startups pivoted from the model, but it appears that Lambda School will not. It’s still a hard thing to finance as a startup, since the company is essentially in a waiting game of debt until students pay. The company might be looking at a variety of ways to fund the ISA business, one of which got them in hot water years ago. 

 “We have a lot of interest in purchasing the income share agreements at the point of graduation, from investment funds and that kind of thing,” Allred said back in April 2020. 

We don’t know how exactly the restructuring will look from a strategy perspective, beyond the fact that Lambda School is pausing new enrollment in part-time programs. . Earlier this month, Lambda School announced a new partnership with Amazon: a back-end engineering program that will last for nine months. Since the program is full-time, it is likely not impacted by the restructuring. 

Today’s call by Lambda School illustrates how hard it is to build an edtech company that is truly doing something new. The company has a lot of stakeholders with different incentives to consider: students saving money, businesses making money, and venture capitalists who have given millions and millions to the company expecting some type of exit one day. 

“Despite these changes, our mission remains the same. As we move forward, we will continue to focus on unlocking opportunity, regardless of circumstance, for everyone willing to put in the work,” the blog post reads. Allred didn’t immediately respond to request for comment



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Vivid Money raises $73 million to build a European financial super app

German startup Vivid Money has raised a new $73 million Series B funding round (€60 million) led by Greenoaks with existing investor Ribbit Capital also participating. Following today’s funding round, Vivid Money has reached a valuation of $436 million (€360 million).

Vivid Money could be considered as a Revolut competitor designed specifically for the Eurozone. Built on top of Solarisbank for the banking infrastructure, the company lets you send, receive, spend, invest and save money in different ways.

When you create an account, you get a German IBAN that starts with DE as well as a metal card. There are no card details on the card itself — everything is available in the app instead. Like other fintech startups, Vivid Money lets you control your card from the app — you can lock it and unlock it, add it to Google Pay and Apple Pay, etc.

After that, you can top up your account and hold dozens of different currencies. When you pay with your card abroad, the startup applies a small mark-up on the current exchange rate — you should get a better exchange rate than what you usually get with a regular bank.

In addition to this fairly standard feature set, Vivid Money offers stock trading with fractional shares. You can invest in stocks and ETFs and there’s no commission. Similarly, you can buy, hold and share cryptocurrencies from the app. The startup has partnered with CM Equity AG for those features.

The company also has a cashback program and a premium subscription for €9.90 per month. Paid users get higher limits on free cash withdrawals, the ability to create a virtual card, support for additional currencies and better cashback rewards.

Finally, users can create sub-accounts called pockets. You can move money around from one pocket to another and add other users to your pockets. Each pocket has its own IBAN, which means that you can pay for certain bills with a separate pocket. You can also associate your card with a specific pocket for upcoming purchases.

Vivid Money has managed to add a ton of features in no time. It now has a ton of money on its bank account. Now let’s see if it can attract a significant user base to compete with other, well-established European fintech players.



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