Month: July 2018

The social media apocalypse is on us this week. Days after Facebook’s stock took a record $123 billion plunge on a poor earnings report, Twitter’s shares are down nearly 20 percent after the company announced falling users numbers.

The microblogging service recorded a drop of one million monthly users in Q2, with 335 million overall and 68 million in the U.S.. International users stayed consistent, with U.S. numbers down from 69 million in the previous quarter.

Bloomberg reported that Twitter’s share price sunk by 17 percent in early trading following the earnings announcement.

The market seems spooked that Twitter has failed to grow in the U.S.. Indeed, one year ago it recorded 68 million users on home turf, and while it has grown its international presence by a fairly modest 3.5 percent over that period, there are doubts as to whether Twitter can increase its audience. The company itself said it expects to see its monthly active user count drop by “mid-single-digit millions.”

Twitter has increased its efforts finding and suspending fake accounts, which is said to have doubled over the past year, but it also said that it didn’t expect that to impact users numbers this quarter.

“When we suspend accounts, many of the removed accounts have already been excluded from MAU or DAU, either because the accounts were already inactive for more than one month at the time of suspension, or because they were caught at signup and were never included in MAU or DAU,” Twitter further explained in its release.

The company did say, though, that its work with SMS carriers and reallocation of resources, are the reasons why it is forecasting more user number declines.

While Twitter can (just about argue) that its daily user number grew by 11 percent in the quarter — a little higher than 10 percent in Q1 — the company doesn’t actually disclose this number.

The stock drop will be frustrating for executives because, in its favor, Twitter had a record quarter of profit. GAAP net income came in at $100 million with revenue climbing 24 percent year-on-year to reach $711 million. Adjusted EBITDA came in at $265 million — Twitter is predicting it will decline to $215-$235 million in the next quarter.

That profit was above analyst forecasts of $70 million but, following Facebook’s epic crash this week, investors want to see growth potential… and that means more users. Unfortunately, that’s Twitter’s Achilles heel.

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After weeks of speculation around how it plans to handle conspiracy website Infowars, its creator Alex Jones and others that spread false information, Facebook finally gave us an answer: inconsistently.

The company hit Jones with a 30-day ban after it removed four videos that he shared on the Infowars Facebook Page.

The move is Facebook’s first that curtails the reach of Jones, who has been a major talking point in the media because he is continually allowed a voice on the social network, despite spreading “alternative theories” on events like 9/11 and the San Bernardino shootings.

Confusion

Sounds good so far, but, for a six-hour period today, it didn’t seem as though Facebook itself even knew what is going on.

CNET reported that Jones’ had been hit by a 30-day suspension for posting four videos that violate its community standards on the Infowars page that counts him as a moderator. When reached by TechCrunch to confirm the report, Facebook said Jones had only been handed a warning and that, in the event of another warning, a 30-day ban would then follow.

After hours of waiting for further confirmation and emails to the contrary, Facebook clarified that in fact Jones’ personal account was given a 30-day ban, while Infowars received a warning but no ban.

Facebook is literally shooting the messenger but allowing the page — which pushed the video out to its audience — to remain in place.

In subsequent emails, Facebook explained that the inconsistency is because Jones’ personal account had already received a past warning, which triggers the 30-day ban. Surprisingly, though, this is a first warning for the Infowars page.

At least, that’s what we think has happened because Facebook hasn’t fully clarified the exact summary of events. (We have asked.)

Beyond the four videos, there’s a lot riding on this decision — it sets a precedent. Infowars is one of the largest of its kind, but there are plenty of other organizations that thrive on pumping out misleading/false content that plays into insecurities, misplayed nationalistic pride and more.

That’s why Infowars (involuntarily) became the subject of two Facebook video events held with press his month. On both occasions, Facebook executives said that even those peddling false information deserve to have a voice on the social network, no matter how questionable or inflammatory their views may be. CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself even said Holocaust deniers have free speech on the service.

Based on today, so long as they spew their message within the Facebook community rules, they are fine.

Follow fast

In fact, you could take it further and suggest that if they don’t raise the suspicions of rival platforms like YouTube, they’ll remain untouched on Facebook.

The Jones/Infowars videos were pulled by Facebook days after being removed from YouTube. Indeed, one of the Facebook videos had even survived a review after it was flagged to Facebook moderators last month. The reviewer marked the video as acceptable and it remained on the platform — until this week.

Facebook called that decision a mistake, but arguably it’s a mistake that wouldn’t have been rectified had YouTube not raised the alarm by banning the videos on its platform first. (YouTube has well-documented content moderation problems so that it is it running circles around Facebook should draw much concern from the social network’s management.)

That Facebook is unable to communicate a significant decision like this in a cohesive manner doesn’t give the confidence to think it has its house in order when it comes to video moderation. If anything, it shows that the social network is playing catch up and winging what is a critical topic.

Its platform is being used nefariously worldwide, whether it is to sway elections or incite racial violence in foreign lands, so now, more than ever, Facebook needs to nail down the basics of handling malicious content like Infowars which, unlike those other threats, is hiding in plain sight.

Days after defending its decision to give a voice to conspiracy theory peddler Alex Jones and his Infowars site, Facebook has removed four of his videos for violating its community standards.

But one of the four had already been allowed to slip through the firm’s review system. A source within Facebook told TechCrunch that one of the videos had previously been flagged for review in June but, after being looked over by a checker, it was allowed remain on the social network. That decision was described as “erroneous” and it has now been removed.

Facebook’s removal of the videos comes days after YouTube scrubbed four videos from Jones from its site for violating its policies on content. The Facebook source confirmed that three of the videos it has removed were flagged for the first time on Wednesday — presumably after, or in conjunction with, them being highlighted to YouTube — but the fact that one had gotten the all-clear one again raises question marks about the consistency of Facebook’s review process.

Contrary to some media reports, Jones has not received a 30-day ban from Facebook following these removals. TechCrunch understands that such a ban will be issued if Jones violates the company’s policies in the future, but, for now, he has been given a warning.

“Our Community Standards make it clear that we prohibit content that encourages physical harm [bullying], or attacks someone based on their religious affiliation or gender identity [hate speech]. We remove content that violates our standards as soon as we’re aware of it. In this case, we received reports related to four different videos on the Pages that Infowars and Alex Jones maintain on Facebook. We reviewed the content against our Community Standards and determined that it violates. All four videos have been removed from Facebook,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

Earlier this month, the company’s head of News Feed John Hegeman said of Infowars content — which includes claims 9/11 was an inside job and alternate theories to the San Bernardino shootings — that “just for being false, doesn’t violate the community standards.” He added: “We created Facebook to be a place where different people can have a voice.”

Facebook seemed to double down on that stance on Monday when, at another event, VP of product Fidji Simo called Infowars “absolutely atrocious” but then said that “if you are saying something untrue on Facebook, you’re allowed to say it as long as you’re an authentic person and you are meeting the community standards.”

It’s not been a good week for Facebook. A poor earnings report spooked investors and caused its valuation drop by $123 billion in what is the largest-single market cap wipeout in U.S. trading history. That’s not the kind of record Facebook will want to own.

WeWork’s China business is getting a fresh injection of capital after it raised $500 million.

The company entered China two years ago and today it covers Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu with nearly 40 locations. It claims 20,000 members, and it is also active in Hong Kong, which technically falls under ‘Greater China.’

The new capital comes from Trustbridge Partners, Singapore’s Temasek, SoftBank, SoftBank’s Vision Fund and Hony Capital. WeWork said it’ll be used for expansion into six new cities: those are Shenzhen, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Nanjing, and Wuhan. This new raise is a Series B, WeWork China previously scored a $500 million Series A last year, which was also when the Chinese entity was founded.

The company has been pretty busy over that 12-month period, most notably it scooped up its largest rival, Naked Hub, in an acquisition deal that is worth a reported $400 million and massively grew its reach.

Naked Hub builds on WeWork’s presence in Greater China by adding 24 office locations and a further 10,000 members. That’s why WeWork China’s figures are so impressive for just two years of operations. Now, this new capital will put WeWork’s own DNA into that network through this planned expansion spree.

“This investment will help WeWork fuel our mission to support creators, small businesses, and large companies across China,” WeWork CEO and co-founder Adam Neumann said in a statement. “WeWork has built an incredible team in China that supports our members every day, serving as a bridge for local companies who want to reach the world as well as for global companies that want to enter the Chinese market.”

Outside of China, WeWork is also making inroads in India — where it launched in 2017 — Korea, Japan (where it operates a joint venture with SoftBank) and Southeast Asia, where it made an acquisition to kick-start its presence. Indeed, WeWork has a float of around $500 million for its operations in Southeast Asia and Korea, although the total pot for India is unknown at this point.

WeWork China’s big raise comes days after Hong Kong’s Campfire pulled in $18 million and Awfis in India raised $20 million.

Salto is a jumping robot that is all heart (and legs). A project originally launched in 2017 this tiny robot thrusts itself up and down and back and forth like a crazed grasshopper, jumping with absolute precision and loads of speed.

Created by the UC Berkeley’s Biomimetic Millisystems Lab, this little robot uses rotor-based thrusters and bouncy legs to do its tricks.

Salto, which stands for “Saltatorial Locomotion on Terrain Obstacles,” is designed to mimic saltatorial – jumping – animals like kangaroos and bush babies.

Sadly, this little robot doesn’t always survive its jumps. In this video, Salto basically destroys itself as it jumps, something all robots may need to fear as they reach for the sun (or ceiling.)

Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on TechNode, an editorial partner of TechCrunch based in China.

From Alibaba to JD, China is not short of e-commerce powerhouses. Although the country’s e-commerce market is highly consolidated, it’s not impossible for startup teams to crack this market as long as they are solving the right problems for the right group of customers.

Chinese social e-commerce platform Pinduoduo just proved this. The Shanghai-based company just went public raising $1.6 billion through a U.S. IPO this week, which stands out as one of the largest deals of the year. Excitement is quickly intensifying surround the company, which claims 195 million monthly users and has managed to become successful within China’s highly competitive e-commerce market inside just three years.

What is Pinduoduo and what has it done right?

Like Alibaba’s Taobao and rival JD.com, Pinduoduo is an e-commerce platform that offers a wide range of products from daily groceries to home appliances. Pinduoduo’s twist lies in its integration of social components into the traditional online shopping process, which the company describes as the “team purchase” model.

By sharing Pinduoduo’s product information on social networks such as WeChat and QQ, users can invite their contacts to form a shopping team to get a lower price for their purchase. The mechanism keeps the users motivated and better hooked for a more interactive and dynamic shopping experience. Coupled with other incentives such as cash, coupon, lottery and free products, Pinduoduo manages to acquire users at a very low cost. Combined with the extra satisfaction of scoring a good deal with your friends as a team, Pinduoduo soon became a viral sensation in China.

Extremely low prices are another compelling attraction of Pinduoduo. The discount is usually up to 90 percent, including everything from RMB 10 ($1.50) bed sheets to RMB 1,000 ($150) PCs. But the bestsellers are daily items at unbelievable low prices. More than 6.4 million units of tissue paper were sold at RMB 12.9 ($1.90) for 10 boxes and 4.8 million umbrellas were purchased at RMB 10.3 ($1.51) apiece.

The company’s bulk-selling model easily creates huge orders for the sellers and leaves them more room to cut prices. At the same time, Pinduoduo’s app is designed to facilitate this, an expert explained to local media: “Alibaba Taobao’s interface is search-based and centered on multiple product displays, while Pinduoduo’s is more similar to a news feed and thus gives more exposure to a single product and easy to create “爆款” [baokuan, meaning viral items]. Taobao has more products listed, but Pinduoduo put its focus on fewer bestsellers that attract more buyers.”

Pinduoduo’s C2B model allows it to ship directly from the manufacturers eliminates layers of distributors, not only reduces the price tag for buyers but also raises the profit of manufacturers. This approach is particularly effective for the sales of perishable agricultural and fresh products, where the speed for matching supply and demand is critical.

Lesser-known brands were chosen over famous brands to erase any premium that comes from branding. Additionally, the costs for advertising and marketing are also lowered through user sharing to social media. The approach is both cost-saving and effective. Through social sharing, users are sending the product information precisely to friends and groups that may have similar income and consumption preferences. Viral marketing is a more clever way to build the identity of all the lesser-known brands on its platform. Financially, the platform could even out part of discounts with less marketing budgets.

Price and social features are not only the only path to Pinduoduo’s meteoric rise, and spotting the right user profile is the last piece to the puzzle.

Operation director of Chinese mobile e-commerce platform Chuchujie, Yang Lin shot to the core of the problem in an interview with local media: “Taobao has over 500 million users while WeChat has over 1 billion, the gigantic missing group between two of China’s giant apps is distributed in third- or lower-tier cities, mostly senior citizens. This group, which only recently came online and depends on the ubiquitous WeChat as the chief source of information, is the target users of Pinduoduo.”

Data from research institute Jiguang shows that users from third- and lower-tier cities account for around 65 percent of Pinduoduo’s total user base, while JD’s users in first plus second-tier cities and the rest of China were half-and-half.  Additionally, females account for 70 percent of Pinduoduo’s user base. They are responsible for family purchases and more price sensitive. This guarantees more active sharing and purchases.

Consumption upgrade, a trend in which affluent Chinese customers are increasingly willing to pay for quality, has dominated China’s e-commerce industry in the past few years. Taobao and JD’s globalization initiatives to bring overseas quality products, the boom of cross-border e-commerce sites like Red and NetEase Yanxuan and Kaola are all based on the consumption-upgrading backdrop.

But the growth of Pinduoduo has sparked an argument focusing on whether the platform represents consumption downgrading. Maybe consumption upgrading or degrading isn’t the key problem. It is just one more piece of evidence for how big and segmented the Chinese market can be. Rising income may give part of Chinese urban citizens the freedom to vote for quality, but RMB 1 difference in price tag may be enough of an incentive for their countryside counterparts, who have been more neglected by e-commerce so far.

Cost performance is still the most important factor to consider for consumers. A higher price tag does not necessarily represent the better quality or vice versa. The huge potential in this often-overlooked market is luring more competitors. Taobao launched Taobao Tejia, a dedicated app for China’s low-end users.

Pinduoduo didn’t invent the social e-commerce model. Groupon pioneered the group-buying concept years ago. But it is succeeding thanks to a new ecosystem consisting of super app WeChat, mobile payment infrastructure, and mobile-first users.

Pinduoduo’s history and major milestones

Founded in September 2015, Pinduoduo is the fourth startup of Colin Huang, an ex-Googler who once worked on early search algorithms for e-commerce. His previous startups include consumer electronics e-commerce site Ouku.com, Leqi, e-commerce platform marketing agent service and a WeChat-based role-playing game company.

With experiences in both e-commerce and gaming, Huang founded Pinduoduo with a vision to combine the secret success recipe of both Alibaba and Tencent, the two Chinese internet giants known for their e-commerce and gaming /social dominance respectively. “They don’t really understand how the other makes money,” Huang said to Bloomberg.

Huang seems to be right about how the two industries can work together. Pinduoduo’s annual GMV (gross merchandise volume) surpassed RMB100 billion ($14.7 billion) in 2017, that’s around two years since its inception. To hit the same milestone, Taobao took five years, VIP.com took eight years and JD ten years. Pinduoduo now claims more than 343.6 million active buyers with an annual GMV of RMB 262.1 billion, or $38.5 billion.

A huge turning point occurred in the third quarter of 2017 when the weekly active rate, penetration rate, and open rate of the Pinduoduo app all surpassed those of JD. Compared to the previous year, it reaches up to 1,000 percent year on year growth according to data from Jiguang.

Steep growth trajectory lured financial backings. In 2015, Huang launched Pinhaohuo, a social commerce platform for fruits, with the team from his second startup Leqi. His gaming startup incubated Pinduoduo.

Four months after Pinduoduo received undisclosed A round from IDG and Lightspeed China in March 2016, the company secured over $110 million in Series B financing four months later from Baoyan Partners, New Horizon Capital, Tencent, and others. In April 2018, Pinduoduo completed a new round of financing raising $3 billion at a valuation of nearly $15 billion. Given Pinduoduo’s WeChat-based ecosystem, Tencent joined the round as a returning investor.

Given the history between Pinduoduo and Pinhaohuo, then of the two largest players in the social e-commerce sector, the two companies merged to form one dominator.

Another counterfeit heaven in China?

“If you close your eyes and visualize the next stage for Pinduoduo, it would be a combination of ‘Costco’ and ‘Disneyland’, driven by a distributed network of intelligence agents,” Huang wrote in the IPO prospectus. Huang’s comparison was thus interpreted as a combination of “value for money” and entertainment, but many are questioning whether or to what degree Pinduoduo can live up to the founder’s expectation.

Although Pinduoduo claims to have several channels to lower product prices, increasing product quality and counterfeit complaints still raise concerns for a possible low-cost and low-quality association. The percentage of complains on Pinduoduo is 17.87 percent, and the user satisfaction rating is only 1 star, according to the 2017 National User Satisfaction Survey of Major E-commerce Platforms released by the China E-Commerce Research Center. Complaints mainly target at the problems of poor quality, slow delivery, misleading ads, etc.

In addition to mounting domestic complaints, the Chinese shopping app was hit by a trademark infringement lawsuit in the US, shortly after filing for a US IPO. Alongside Alibaba and JD’s efforts to remove fake goods on their platforms, fake goods are flooding to emerging e-commerce platforms like Pinduoduo and Weishang, according to Alibaba.

As Pinduoduo gets into life as a public company, the firm is following the e-commerce giants in cleaning up the platform. According to the company’s annual consumer rights protection report for 2017, it has taken down 10.7 million problematic listings, blocked 40 million suspicious external links, representing 95 percent of the fake good sellers from the platform. The company set up an RMB 150 million ($22 million) fund to deal with after-sales disputes.

But tightening regulation is causing more friction between Pinduoduo and its merchants on the platform. In June, fourteen store owners who sell products on Pinduoduo protested under the company’s office building claiming that Pinduoduo conducted improper product-quality checks which damaged the owners’ rights. Company founder Huang insisted Pinduoduo’s decision and punishment of the owners is just and fair.

Many also questioned the validity of entertaining features in Pinduoduo’s value proposition. “We have observed that a few users find shopping on Pinduoduo to be very entertaining, which is attributable to its extremely low pricing and interaction among Weixin users,” according to research institute 86 Research.

IPO and beyond

Pinduoduo went public on NASDAQ market on July 26 and raised more than $1.6 billion with a valuation of $60 billion. However, shareholders should still be concerned about the company’s fundamentals

Financially, the company is still in the red. Pinduoduo suffered a net loss of RMB 292 million ($43 million) and RMB 525.1 million ($77 million) in 2016 and 2017, respectively. Its net losses reached RMB 201 million ($30 million) in the first quarter of this year. The net loss is expected to be widened, mainly attributable to investments in branding and ads. Over 88.4 percent of Pinduoduo’s RMB 1.2 billion ($180 million) Q1 revenue was spent on marketing. This could be translated as a sign of difficult traffic acquisition.

The most typical Pinduoduo users are price sensitive women that reside in low tier cities. Merchants are selling at a low price to appeal to this group. But how to maintain these users and its growth momentum is a big challenge for Pinduoduo now given rising product quality complaints.

“The retention rate is a big challenge of Pinduoduo, implying potential GMV slow down. Pinduoduo will have difficulty in upgrading to a marketplace of premium products because of its user demographics and brand image,” according to 86 Research.

After President Donald Trump accused Twitter of “shadow banning” prominent Republicans, the company denied that it uses the practice, in which someone’s posts are made invisible or undiscoverable without them knowing.

In a blog post titled “Setting the record straight on shadow banning,” Vijaya Gadde and Kayvon Beykpour, Twitter’s legal and product leads, respectively, were blunt: “We do not shadow ban. You are always able to see the tweets from accounts you follow (although you may have to do more work to find them, like go directly to their profile). And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.”

Twitter exists to serve the public conversation, enabling important discussions around the world to occur. Favoring one specific ideology or belief goes against everything we stand for. https://t.co/lioupj3aUF

— Vijaya Gadde (@vijaya) July 27, 2018

Gadde and Beykpour also addressed recent complaints, which gained more attention after a Vice article, that some accounts did not appear in auto-suggestions even when users searched for them by name. The two said the issue had been resolved and had affected “hundreds of thousands of accounts,” not just those representing certain ideologies. In fact, “most accounts affected had nothing to do with politics at all,” they wrote.

Gadde and Beykpour said that the platform “ranking models take many signals into consideration to best organize tweets for timely relevance.” Twitter’s search engine shows users results from people they find interesting and popular tweets, while ranking lower “tweets from bad-faith actors who intend to manipulate or divide the conversation.”

“Bad-faith actors,” they added, are determined based on how authentic their account appears to be, the actions they take on Twitter and how other users interact with them (for example, how often they are muted, blocked, retweeted or followed).

Gadde and Beykpour said the third criteria may have made it appear that accounts by Republican representatives were being disproportionately affected by the auto-suggestion issue.

“There are communities that try to boost each other’s presence on the platform through coordinated engagement,” they wrote. “We believe these types of actors engaged with the representatives’ accounts– the impact of this coordinated behavior, in combination with our implementation of search auto-suggestions, caused the representatives’ accounts to not show up in auto-suggestions.”

Gadde and Beykpour’s explanation, however, frustrated users on both ends of the political spectrum, who said the company has to do a better job of defining who “bad-faith actors.” Liberals argued (as many have for a long time) that Twitter does not include enough bullies and troll accounts in its definition of “bad-faith actors,” while some conservatives continued to claim that the platform is biased against them.

If what Twitter means by bad faith actors & manipulation is abusers, harassment, hate speech, then say that. Otherwise, this reads as a values-based decision w/opaque criteria for what constitutes “manipulation.” Maybe spell out what specific *behaviors* you’re targeting.

— Robi-Ann Doyle (@doyle1020) July 27, 2018

It says in this article that you judge ‘bad faith actors’ based on who they follow and what they retweet. And then give NO FURTHER INFORMATION on this. That’s *very* dodgy.

— Jamie (@realurbanspice) July 27, 2018

@vijaya a few problems. “How other accounts interact with you(e.g. who mutes you, who follows you, who retweets you, who blocks you, etc)”

If the Left has large preemptive block lists, that creates a problem. (1)

— Lee Doren (@LDoren) July 27, 2018

Yes you do not “shadow ban” in fact you do not ban not even far right trolls accusing people they dislike of being pedophiles. In fact you give them blue check marks and verify them. Just use @Cernovich as an example and that’s that.

— Raúl Vergara (@RaulVB) July 27, 2018

Nintendo has just announced the latest in its Labo series of whimsical cardboard accessories for the Switch gaming console, and this one looks like a must-have. Called the Vehicle Kit for obvious reasons, the flat-pack, assemble-it-yourself add-ons include a steering wheel, gas pedal, “keys” that activate different vehicles, all of which work inside a cool-looking game that comes with.

Frankly this just looks like a humongous bargain. Perhaps the most humongous of all time. $70 gets you a whole fold-up steering assembly with shifters on the sides; a pedal that I really hope stands up to some serious stomping; a joystick for piloting a plane, a weird thing that controls a submarine; and a “key” that your Joy-Con fits into, which itself slots into the various other setups to activate them.

They’re all meant to be used in a game that, despite not having a name, looks insanely cool. It looks like a big island with secrets hidden all over the place that you just tool around in using your buggy, your submarine, and your plane, and whatever other weird vehicles you might come across.

You can race, spray-paint your vehicles, blow up rocks and cut down trees. There’s also a two-player mode where you battle with cars that have extendable arms for some reason. Don’t think too hard about it.

Of course you’ll have to put all this together yourself (I guess either I think kids read TechCrunch or our readers buy Nintendo gear made for kids), but we found Labo to be a delight to assemble and play with so that shouldn’t be a problem. It’s a feature, not a bug.

You’ll be able to buy this kit starting September 14 for $70, which, again, is obviously a steal. If any of us gets their hands on one ahead of that date we’ll definitely let you know.

Microsoft has partnered with Black Girls Code, led by Kimberly Bryant, to enable the organization to launch a chapter in Seattle, Microsoft announced on LinkedIn today. Since launching in 2011, Black Girls Code has introduced technology and computer science to young black girls in 13 cities throughout the country. Seattle marks Black Girls Code’s 14th chapter.

Microsoft also deepened its partnership with Technology Access Foundation, founded by Trish Millines Dziko. Across both partnerships, Microsoft invested $500,000.

Earlier this year, Black Girls Code teamed up with Lyft — after turning down a $125,000 donation from Uber last year —  to make the non-profit organization one of Lyft’s Round Up & Donate partners.

In a LinkedIn post, Microsoft Corporate VP and Lead Mary Snapp said she hopes the investments will “will help a lot more students find a passion for technology, the opportunity to pursue a STEM education and most importantly believe it is possible for them.

“As Satya has said in the past, Microsoft can only be successful if we have people of all backgrounds building our technology and we cannot build product and services for everyone unless everyone is represented in our engineering ranks,” Snapp wrote.

On Thursday, the Pentagon opened bidding for a huge cloud computing contract that could be worth as much as $10 billion. Given its size, the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract, known as JEDI, is alluring for major cloud computing companies that might not normally do much business with the Department of Defense.

Announced in March, JEDI is structured as a winner-take-all contract with a potential 10-year term, though the Pentagon clarified that the original award will span just the first two years, so all 10 years aren’t set in stone up front.

While it’s not yet sparked the same level of outcry as Google’s AI contract with the Pentagon known as Project Maven, JEDI isn’t uncontroversial. The now infamous Project Maven was a smaller, more specific contract with direct implications for the military’s use of drones, while JEDI is broader and bigger, seeking a vendor to provide cloud services for all branches of the military. Google has since abandoned plans to renew the contract, but Maven was likely a kind of test run for the company in the lead-up to JEDI.

While Amazon is largely regarded as the most likely winner, Google, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle are also among the major tech companies expected to throw their hats into the ring. Earlier in the process, it looked possible that companies could band together to form unlikely alliances against the perceived frontrunner, though it appears in the final request for proposal that the Pentagon plans to award the contract to a single company capable of handling it. Interested parties will have until September 17 to submit proposals, so in the months to come we can certainly expect to hear more from companies in the running and workers who oppose JEDI involvement.