Month: August 2018

MoviePass is getting into the movie production business with 10 Minutes Gone, a film starring Bruce Willis.

The movie was announced in Deadline, which says that it will tell the story of a man who loses 10 minutes of his memory after being struck by a bullet during a bank robbery. Production is expected to begin on September 10, with Brian A. Miller directing.

While MoviePass is best-known for its movie ticket subscription service, parent company Helios and Matheson also owns MoviePass Ventures, a film investment arm that backed Gotti and The Row. And earlier this year, it acquired Emmett Furla Oasis Films in order to launch a production company, MoviePass Films.

Helios and Matheson also recently acquired Moviefone, giving TechCrunch’s parent company Verizon a stake in MoviePass.

This announcement comes after a tumultuous couple of weeks for the service, with significant outages leading to an announced a price hike, which has been scrapped in favor of limit subscribers to three movies per month instead.

As the company continues to insist that it has plans to reach profitability, it’s also pointed to MoviePass Ventures and MoviePass Films as important sources for additional revenue.

The artificial intelligence revolution is underway in the world of technology, but as it turns out, some of the most faithful foot soldiers are still humans. A startup called Scale, which works with a team of contractors who examine and categorise visual data to train AI systems in a two-sided marketplace model, announced that it has raised an additional $18 million in a Series B round. The aim will be to expand Scale’s business to become — in the words of CEO Alexandr Wang, the 21-year-old MIT grad who co-founded Scale with Lucy Guo — “the AWS of AI, with multiple services that help companies build AI algorithms.”

“Our mission is to accelerate the development of AI apps,” Wang said. “The first product is visual data labelling, but in the future we have a broad vision of what we hope to provide.”

Wang declined to comment on the startup’s valuation in an interview. But according to Pitchbook, which notes that this round actually closed in May of this year, the post-money valuation of Scale is now $93.50 million ($75 million pre-money).

The money comes on the back of an eventful two years since the company first launched, with revenues growing 15-fold in the last year, and “multiple millions of dollars in revenue” from individual customers. (It doesn’t disclose specific numbers, however.)

Today, Scale’s base of contractors numbers around 10,000, and it works with a plethora of businesses that are developing autonomous vehicle systems such as General Motors’ Cruise, Lyft Zoox, Nuro, Voyage, nuTonomy and Embark. These companies send Scale’s contractors raw, unlabelled data sets by way of Scale’s API, which provides services like Semantic Segmentation, Image Annotation, and Sensor Fusion, in conjunction with its clients LIDAR and RADAR data sets. In total, it says it’s annotated 200,000 “miles of data” collected by self-driving cars.

AV companies are not its only customers, though. Scale also works with several non-automotive companies like Airbnb and Pinterest, to help build their AI-based visual search and recommendation systems. Airbnb, for example, is looking for more ways of being able to ascertain what kinds of homes repeat customers like and don’t like, and also to start to provide other ways of discovering places to stay that are based not just on location and number of bedrooms (which becomes more important especially in cities where you may have too many choices and want a selection more focused on what you are more likely to rent).

This latest funding round was led by Index, with existing investors Accel and Y Combinator (where Scale was incubated), also participated in this Series B, along with some notable, new individual investors such as Dropbox CEO Drew Houston and Justin Kan (two YC alums themselves who have been regular investors in other YC companies). This latest round brings the total raised by Scale to $22.7 million.

When Scale first made its debut in July 2016 as part of YC’s summer cohort, the company presented itself as a more intelligent alternative to Mechanical Turk, specifically to address the demands of artificial intelligence systems that needed more interaction and nuanced responses than the typical microtask asked of a Turker.

“We’re honing in on AI broadly,” Wang said. “Our goal is to be a pick axe in the AI goldrush.”

Early efforts covered a wide spread of applications — categorization/content moderation, comparison, transcription, and phone calling as some examples. But more recently the company has seen a particular interest from self-driving car companies, and specifically the ability to look at, understand and categorise images of what might appear on a road with the kind of recognition that only a human can provide for training purposes. For example, to be able to identify a scooter versus a wagon, a piece of asphalt or an article of granite-colored clothing on a person that could potentially look like asphalt to an unsuspecting camera, or whatever.

“This sub-segment of AI, autonomous vehicles, really took off after we launched, and that segment has been the killer use case for us,” Wang said.

My experience in talking with autonomous car companies and those who work with them has been that many of them are extremely guarded about their data, so much so that there are entire companies being built to help manage this IP standoff so that no one has to share what they know, but they can still benefit from each other.

Wang says that the same holds for Scale’s clients, and part of its unique selling point is that it not only provides data identification services but does so with the assurance that its systems retain none of that data for its own or other companies’ purposes.

“We don’t share across different silos and are very clear about that,” Wang said. “These companies are very sensitive, as are all AI companies about their data and where it goes, and we’ve been able to gain trust as a partner because will not share or sell data to any other parties.”

Scale uses AI itself to help select contractors. “We have built a bunch of algorithms and AI to vet and train contractors,” Wang said. In the training, “we provide feedback and determine if they are getting good enough to do the work, and in terms of ensuring the quality of their work, our algorithms go through what they are doing and verify the work against our models, too. There are a lot of algorithms.”

For clients who are calling in data from the public web — for example Pinterest or Airbnb — Scale uses a broader contractor pool that could include stay-at-home moms, students or others looking for extra money.

For clients who are sensitive about the data that’s being analysed — such as the car companies — the conditions are more restricted, and sometimes include centres where Scale controls the machines that are being used as well as how the data sets can be viewed.

This is one reason why Scale isn’t simply focused on growing the numbers of contractors as its only route for growing business. “We’ve noticed that when you have people who spend more time on this they do better work,” Wang said.

Wang said the Series B funding will be used to expand the kind of work Scale does for existing customers in the area of visual data analysis, as well as to gradually add in other categories of data, such as text.

“Our first goal is to improve algorithms for customers today,” he said. “There is no limit to how accurate they want to make their systems, and they need to be constantly feeding their AI with more data. All of our customers have this, and it’s an evergreen problem.”

The second is to diversify more outside driving and the visual data set, he said. “Right now, so much of the success has been in processing imagery and robotics or other perception challenges, but we really want to be the fabric of the AI world for new applications, including text or audio. That is another use of funds to expand to those areas.”

“Fabric” is the operative word, it seems: “Scale has the potential to become the fabric that connects and powers the Artificial Intelligence world,” said Mike Volpi, General Partner, Index Ventures, in a statement. “For autonomous vehicles in particular, Scale is well-positioned to take over an emerging field of data annotation regardless of which players ultimately come out on top. Alex…has recruited a highly talented and technical team to tackle this challenge and their progress is evident in the marquee list of customers they’ve won in such a short amount of time.”

Chinese AI startup Tianrang has raised a $26 million (RMB180 million) funding round from China’s Gaorong Capital and co-lead CMB International Capital. Other investors included Ziniu Fund and Chinese fintech company Wacai. In 2016, the company raised an angel round led by Gaorong Capital and participated in by Shanghai Jindi Investment Management Ltd.

Based on deep learning and other AI technology, Tianrang provides data analysis and smart solutions for enterprises. It was founded by in 2016 by Xu Guirong, former director of Alibaba’s Ali Cloud and chief scientist at Alibaba’s cloud platform Alimama. So no slouch on the AI front.

Tianrang claims to be able to automatically collect and analyze marketing trends and purchase-related information on Alibaba’s e-commerce platform, allowing vendors to make better marketing decisions.

Wang Hongbo, chief investment officer at CMB International Capital says: “With algorithm and AI, Tianrang lowers the requirement of complex machine decision-making and makes it accessible and scalable for commercial use.”

Tianrang also plans to set up a project to apply machine learning to the urban development of cities, led by Jessie Li, a professor at the College of Information Sciences and Technology of Pennsylvania State University.

Our body is continuously storing and consuming energy to keep us alive — but understanding which fuels are being used, and why is the holy grail of things like weight loss and body hacking. Today’s weight-loss market is saturated with generic products because — guess what — trying to tailor-make a solution for an individual is usually hard and expensive.

For a while now there’s been a technology around which can measure the metabolic gases found in your breath. The theory goes that if you can do that, everyone can work out what they should be eating and when. A few startups have tried but nothing really took off. Now a new startup is having a crack and has secured significant funding to go for it.

Lumen is a pocket-sized device that measures the gases in your breath, and translates reading via an app into advice which gives you daily personalized meal plans.

As I said, this technology was tried by a startup called PATH Breath+Band, which had a similar device in 2016, but which didn’t take off.

The difference with Lumen is that it’s raised a decent war chest, as well as blowing up on IndieGoGo.

It’s now raised a total of $7M from a host of investors These include Disruptive VC, Oren Zeev, Red Swan Ventures, Resolute Ventures, Gigi Levy, Sir Ronald Cohen, Avishai Abrahami (Wix Founder) and RiverPark Funds. As part of that funding it’s also raised over $1M on Indiegogo.

The founders are Merav Mor, a Dr. of Physiology (Ph.D) and Cell Biology and her twin sister Michal Mor also a Dr. of Physiology (Ph.D) and Cell Biology. CEO Daniel Tal is also a cofounder and also founded Wibiya , which was acquired by Conduit. It probably doesn’t hurt that the renowned Frog design helped in the, well, design.

As endurance athletes, the Mors began researching if there was a way for them to understand the impact of their nutrition and workouts on their bodies to improve their athletic performance. They came across a metabolic measurement called RQ (Respiratory Quotient), which is the gold standard for measuring the metabolic fuel usage of an individual. Top-performing athletes have been using this measurement for years, but the methods for measuring it are invasive (blood test), lengthy (1+ hour in metabolic chambers) and expensive (upwards of a few hundred dollars).

After 4 years of research and development they developed Lumen, with the ability to measure an individual’s RQ in one breath. What once took over an hour to measure and a team of nutritionist and scientists to analyze can now be done in under 3 minutes. Michal and Merav’s technology is patent-pending and they claim it has been validated at top hospitals like San Francisco State University and Mt. Sinai Hospital.

So far Lumen says over 300 beta users have lost an average of 6.8 lbs within the first 30 days of using the device.

Now, they do have competitors. These include Habit which does pre-packaged personalized meals; Breezing, a technology which requires 3 minutes of continual breathing and the purchase of new cartridges with every measurement ($5); Levl, which is a small home-lab setup which measures metabolism and ketosis and costs between $100-150/ month. Then there is Ketonix a computer connected device which will only provide data on fat burn for users on a strict ketogenic diet.

But with Lumen you just buy the device and the app is free. No cartridges, filters or replacements.

All in all it’s quite a compelling proposition so it will be interesting to see if Lumen can succeed where others have failed.

InVision continues its slow march toward design world domination, today announcing the hire of Mike Davidson who will take over as Head of Partnerships and Community.

Davidson was previously the VP of Design at Twitter, where he built a 100-person team that was responsible for every aspect of Twitter’s user experience and branding, including web, mobile web, native apps, and business tools.

Before Twitter, Davidson worked at ESPN/Disney until 2005, when he founded NewsVine, which was purchased by NBCNews in 2007. Davidson then took on a Vice President roll for five years before starting at Twitter.

At InVision, Davidson will oversee partnerships, product integrations, strategic acquisitions and community building. This includes leading InVision’s Design Leadership Forum, which hosts private events for design leaders from big companies like Facebook, Google, Lyft, Disney, etc. Davidson will also work with the new Design Transformation team at InVision to help create educational experiences for InVision’s customers.

Davidson says he plans to spend the next 30 to 60 days talking as little as possible, and listening to the feedback he hears from his team around what can be improved.

“InVision has a seamless workflow that includes everyone in the company in the design process,” said Davidson. “If there’s one goal I’d like to realize, it’s that. Design is a team sport these days, which wasn’t the case 10 or 20 years ago.”

In Davidson’s own words, the position at InVision is “less about business to business and more about designer to designer.” Davidson will be meeting predominantly with the design teams from various companies to discuss not only how InVision can help them build better experiences, but how InVision can incorporate those design teams’ personalities into the product.

InVision was built on the premise that the screen is the most important place in the world, considering that every brand and company is now building digital experiences across the web and through mobile applications. CEO Clark Valberg hopes to turn InVision into the Salesforce of design, and partnerships, acquisitions and product integrations are absolutely vital to that.

“We couldn’t be more excited to have an authentic leader like Mike step into this role to help us further build out our design community — which is as important to us as our product — and to help drive design maturity inside of every organization,” said Valberg. “Digital product design is shaping every industry in the world, and as the leader in the space, we see it as our responsibility to support and foster community and advanced education.”

It’s been a few years since Google first launched Classroom, its learning management system for teachers and students. Today, ahead of the start of the new year in many school districts, Google is launching a major redesign of Classroom that introduces a refreshed look and a number of new features for the teachers who use the service.

Classroom now, for example, features a new grading tool that works not just with Google Docs files but also Office files, PDFs, videos and other file types. And because students often make the same mistakes, teachers can now create a “comment bank” so they can reuse commonly used feedback. Google says this is meant to “encourage thoughtful engagement.”

Teachers now also get access to a new site with training materials to bring them up to speed with how to best use its services.

The new Classroom now also features a new “Classwork” page where teachers can organize their assignments and group them into modules and units. It’s now also easier for teachers to re-use previous classes and collaborate with others to design their classes. And because things can get noisy, Google is adding to Classroom some digital well-being features for co-teachers that allows them to turn off notifications for specific classes.

A Google spokesperson also told us that Classroom is getting extended support for Google Form quizzes (and the ability to put a quiz in locked mode to avoid distractions), as well as some new Chrome OS admin features to help manage devices.

And here is some good news for everybody, too: Google is making some changes to how Docs handles margins and indentations “to improve the overall writing experience, especially when making MLA style citations” (and here I thought I never had to think about MLA style again…). Soon, you’ll be able to use hanging indents and set specific indentations. This feature will launch in the fall.

Mozilla’s Firefox web browser announced today a new experimental extension called Advance that uses machine learning to help users more contextually and intuitively surf the web. This extension is part of Firefox’s ongoing Test Pilot program (which users can opt into anytime) and is powered by the machine learning backbone of the startup Laserlike to better understand a user’s browsing habits.

Here’s how it works: Once enabled through the Test Pilot app, you can browse as normal, and Advance will start taking notes and learning about the kind of sites you browse. From what it’s learned, the extension will recommend pages you might want to “Read Next” that complement your current browsing (say you’re searching for a new local hangout) or pages that it thinks you might just like in the “For You” section of the sidebar. But if Advance gets it wrong, users can flag recommendations as boring, off-topic or spam and help fine-tune the extension to their preferences.

This feature is part of the company’s Context Graph initiative that aims to enable the “next generation of web discovery on the internet” and allow users to explore different corners of the web than those they trek daily (read: keep users on the application longer). The first effort in this arena, a new functionality called Activity Stream that helps users more intuitively interact with their history and bookmarks, graduated from Test Pilot and shipped out with the new Firefox Quantum browser in November of this past year.

The introduction of Advance also fills a gap recently left behind by the site StumbleUpon when it closed up shop this May after 16 years of helping users get lost in cyberspace. While Advance offers a smarter option (StumbleUpon had more chance built into its one-click site generation functionality) the spirit of the workplace internet wanderer continues.

But, as is the issue with all life-easing machine learning technologies, in order to help you browse the internet, Advance and, in turn, Laserlike, need to know a lot about your browser history. While this is necessary for the technology to learn, Mozilla acknowledges that fears of misused and manipulated personal data are at a high these days following breaches of privacy and trust by companies like Facebook and Equifax among others in recent months.

To account for this unease, Advance allows users the option to pause the collection of browser history, view it and request Laserlike delete it.

Cowboy Ventures, the early-stage venture firm launched in 2012 by longtime VC Aileen Lee, has lassoed $95 million in capital commitments for its third fund, up from the $55 million that it raised for its second fund and more than twice what it raised for its $40 million debut fund.

That investors are doubling down on the firm isn’t a surprise, given its track record. The firm’s very first check was to Dollar Shave Club, which sold in 2016 for a reported $1 billion. Other early exits include the sale of the nutrition coaching app Rise to One Medical for a reported $20 million; and the sale of the cloud monitoring firm Librato to SolarWinds for $40 million.

More recently, Accompany, a business intelligence startup that drew an early check from Cowboy, sold in May to Cisco for $270 million. (It had raised roughly $40 million from investors.) Tenor, a GIF platform that also received early backing from Cowboy, sold to Google in March (for undisclosed terms). Another Cowboy portfolio company, the smart lock maker August, sold to the Swedish lock giant Assa Abloy last fall (also for undisclosed terms).

Cowboy is a generalist fund that is managed by Lee and Ted Wang, a startup attorney for many years with Fenwick & West who joined as a general partner in January of last year. The outfit added an associate, Samantha Kaminsky, earlier this summer. Among its current bets is the consumer goods company Brandless, the cybersecurity company Area 1 Security, and the mobile linking platform Branch.

The team typically invests in between six to 10 companies each year, writing initial checks on average of $1 million. Its biggest bet to date is on Guild Education, a Denver-based tech-education startup that partners with employers, including Walmart, to offer education as an employee benefit, right alongside healthcare. The company, which closed on $40 million in new funding just two weeks ago, also happens to be the biggest bet to date of another firm that just closed its newest fund, Felicis Ventures.

In a quick exchange earlier this week, we talked with Lee about Cowboy and the market more broadly. (We’ll also be talking on stage with her about this at TC’s upcoming Disrupt show.)

We asked where Cowboy is shopping right now, for example, and she said some areas include back-office tech, including startups that are transforming unglamorous tasks like tax accounting, sales ops and scheduling that can be transformed by modern software; “learning loop software” that builds on prior experiences and on underlying data; and startups that are building tech that’s aligned with improving users’ physical and mental health.

We also asked whether she had concerns about the very long bull market the tech industry has been experiencing, and it sounds like she does as it pertains to “increasing valuations, size of rounds, and dollars going into venture.”

In fact, Lee said Cowboy has turned “extra cautious” with its investment pace over the past year, given that both Lee and Wang have lived through previous cycles.

“It worries me we’re meeting with more startups than ever who are thinking about raising a $4 million seed round,” she said. “Four million dollars is what we used to call a Series A not too long ago. We don’t think bigger and more expensive rounds starting at seed stage will set companies and cultures up for long term success and could also depress returns for everyone on the cap table.”

Still, on the whole, Lee sounded optimistic, both about longer-term startup trends, and about the venture industry as a whole. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she thinks there is little to stop new technology companies from impacting every industry and creating new opportunities for many, while “possibly displacing traditional jobs,” she said. “We just have to work harder to make new technology jobs accessible to the widest set of people possible,” she added.

Lee — who this spring cofounded All Raise, a nonprofit founded by 34 female investors that’s dedicated to diversity in funders and founders — also said she expects the venture-backed startup industry to look fairly different five to 10 years from now, and in a good way.

“I hope and expect because of demographic shifts, the influence of founders and employees, organizations like All Raise, and because diversity is proven to deliver better results that” the ecosystem will change for the better, she said. “We’ll have greater gender balance, and we’ll have more people from historically underrepresented groups in positions of power.”

If you’re curious to learn more, Lee and Wang have written a bit more about the new fund and its intentions here.

In June of this year, Chinese hackers managed to install software into the networks of a contractor for the U.S. Navy and steal information on a roughly $300 million top secret submarine program.

Two years ago, hackers infiltrated the networks of a vendor servicing the Australian military and made off with files containing a trove of information on Australian and U.S. military hardware and plans. That hacker stole roughly 30 gigabytes of data, including information on the nearly half-a-trillion dollar F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program.

Third party vendors, contractors, and suppliers to big companies have long been the targets for cyber thieves looking for access to sensitive data, and the reason is simple. Companies don’t know how secure their suppliers really are and can’t take the time to find out.

“The Department of Defense can have the best cybersecurity on the planet, but when that moves off to a subcontractor how can the DOD know how the subcontractor is going to protect that data?” says Kelly White, the chief executive of RiskRecon, a new firm that provides audits of vendors’ security profile. 

The problem is one that the Salt Lake City-based executive knew well. White was a former security executive for Zion Bank Corporation after spending years in the cyber security industry with Ernst & Young and TrueSecure — a Washington DC-based security vendor.

When White began work with Zion, around 2% of the company’s services were hosted by third parties, less than five years later and that number had climbed to over 50%. When White identified the problem in 2010, he immediately began developing a solution on his own time. RiskRecon’s chief executive estimates he spent 3,000 hours developing the service between 2010 and 2015, when he finally launched the business with seed capital from General Catalyst .

And White says the tools that companies use to ensure that those vendors have adequate security measures in place basically boiled down to an emailed check list that the vendors would fill out themselves.

That’s why White built the RiskRecon service, which has just raised $25 million in a new round of funding led by Accel Partners with participation from Dell Technologies Capital, General Catalyst, and F-Prime Capital, Fidelity Investments venture capital affiliate.

The company’s software looks at what White calls the “internet surface” of a vendor and maps the different ways in which that surface can be compromised. “We don’t require any insider information to get started,” says White. “The point of finding systems is to understand how well an organization is managing their risk.”

White says that the software does more than identify the weak points in a vendor’s security profile, it also tries to get a view into the type of information that could be exposed at different points on an network,

According to White, the company has over 50 customers among the Fortune 500 who are already using his company’s services across industries like financial services, oil and gas and manufacturing.

The money from RiskRecon’s new round will be used to boost sales and marketing efforts as the company looks to expand into Europe, Asia and further into North America.

“Where there’s not transparency there’s often poor performance,” says White. “Ccybersecurity has gone a long time without true transparency. You can’t have strong accountability without strong transparency.”

In Don Burnette and Paz Eshel’s view, trucking is the killer app for self-driving technology.

It’s what led Burnette to leave the Google self-driving project and co-found Otto in early 2016, along with Anthony Levandowski, Lior Ron and Claire Delaunay.

And it’s what would eventually prompt Burnette to leave Uber — the company that acquired Otto — and co-found with former venture capitalist Eshel a new driverless-trucks startup called Kodiak Robotics.

“It was no secret that Uber was primarily focused on the car project and 80 to 90 percent of my time was focused on the car project,” Burnette told TechCrunch. “But I still felt that trucking was the killer app for self-driving. I still believe that. I wanted to focus 100 percent of my time on trucking.”

Now he and Eshel can. Kodiak Robotics, which was founded in April, is coming out of stealth loaded up with venture capital.

Kodiak Robotics announced Tuesday it has raised $40 million in Series A financing led by Battery Ventures. CRV, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Tusk Ventures also participated in the round. Itzik Parnafes, a general partner at Battery Ventures, will join Kodiak’s board.

Kodiak Robotics will use the funds to expand its team and for product development. The company has about 10 employees, according to Eshel, who was a vice president at Battery Ventures, where he led the firm’s autonomous-vehicle investment project.

Burnette noted the core engineering team — many of whom have experience in shipping self-driving vehicles on public roads — has been assembled.

The pair weren’t ready to discuss the company’s go-to-market strategy. They did share the basic vision though: use self-driving technology to ease the current strain on the freight market.

The trucking industry is a primary driver of the U.S. economy. Trucks moved more than 70 percent of all U.S. freight and generated $719 billion in revenue in 2017, according to the American Trucking Association. Meanwhile, “full-truckload, over-the-road nonlocal drivers,” a term used to describe drivers who haul goods over long distances, are in short supply. This long-haul sector, which employs about 500,000, was short 51,000 truck drivers last year — up from a shortage of 36,000 in 2016.

Burnette and Eshel see an opportunity for driverless trucks to help close that gap.

“We believe self-driving trucks will likely be the first autonomous vehicles to support a viable business model, and we are proud to have the support of such high-profile investors to help us execute on our plan,” Burnette said.

They also revealed the company’s technical approach.

Kodiak Robotics plans to use light detection and ranging radar known as LiDAR as well as camera, radar and sonar technologies. “Pretty much everything you can imagine self-driving cars using in a comprehensive sensor fusion type system,” Burnette said.

Engineers will focus on developing the full self-driving system stack from the company’s own hardware and software architectures. However, Kodiak Robotics is not going to build any sensors. Instead it will use sensors from third-party suppliers.