Year: 2018

Lilium, the developer of a new, electric, vertical take-off and landing vehicle for a novel flying taxi service, has poached some pretty big former executives from Airbus and Audi as it builds out its technology and gets ready to bring its service to market.

Mirko Reuter, the former head of automated driving at Audi, has come on board as the head of autonomous flight at Lilium. Jakob Waeschenbach, who worked as the head of equipment installation at Airbus, and Rochus Moenter, former vice president of Airbus’ finance and leasing group, have joined Lilium as head of aircraft assembly and general counsel and head of legal, respectively. 

Co-founded in 2015 by Daniel Wiegand, Sebastian Born, Patrick Nathen and Matthias Meiner, Lilium’s vision is to create a network for its proprietary vertical take off and landing vehicles that will slash the costs of air travel and can ostensibly take a passenger from Paris to London in about an hour.

Reuter, a longtime head of automated driving at Audi will be responsible for leading and developing the process and technologies necessary to bring autonomous aircraft systems to market, the company said in a statement.

“I am deeply committed to our mission of creating a revolutionary service that enables effective and affordable transportation that is widely used among all sectors of society. At Lilium, we are building a new and revolutionary way of transport, and I am very excited to be a part of it,” said Reuter, in a statement. 

Lilium’s bulking up its executive team as it prepares for a rollout of its first vehicles in 2019, according to news reports. In 2017, the company raised $90 million in fresh funding from investors including Tencent; LGT, the international private banking and asset management group; Atomico, Lilium’s Series A backer founded by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström; and Obvious Ventures, the early-stage VC fund co-founded by Twitter’s Ev Williams.

The funding, and the executive hires, lend credence to Lilium’s business in an increasingly competitive industry (yes, the flying taxi industry is competitive).

German automaker Daimler joined a consortium of investors that backed Volocopter with roughly $28.5 million and the ride-hailing service Uber is working with Brazil’s Embraer and the Slovenian company, Pipistrel, to develop its own flying taxi. Indeed, the airplane manufacturer, Airbus, has its Vahana autonomous flying taxi, which it is hoping to bring to market in the coming years.

 

The scooter startups are taking over the world — or trying to.

Earlier this week, Bird debuted its electric scooters in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park; today, Lime is announcing its foray into the land down under with the launch of a three-month scooter pilot at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

Lime has also released several hundred of its dockless electric bikes in Sydney and plans to introduce its scooters there, as well as in Brisbane, soon.

“Sydney’s need for innovative transport solutions, which cater to the first and last mile, gives us confidence we will see high uptake of Lime electric bikes within the community,” said Mitchell Price, Lime’s director of government affairs and strategy in Australia and New Zealand.

The company is also announcing that it’s clocked in 20 million rides just two months after it surpassed 10 million.

Using the nearly half a billion dollars it’s raised to date, Lime is rapidly expanding across the globe and filling out its C-suite. Last week, it brought on David Richter as its first-ever chief business officer, followed by the appointment of GV general partner Joe Kraus as its chief operating officer.

Headquartered in San Francisco, the startup is backed by GV, Andreessen Horowitz, IVP, Section 32, GGV Capital and more.

Buoyed by international attention from U.S. and Chinese investors and technology companies, new financing keeps flowing into the coffers of Latin American venture capital firms.

One day after the Brazilian-based pan-Latin American announced the close of its $150 million latest fund comes word from our sources that ALL VP, the Mexico City-based, early stage technology investor, has held a first close of $73 million for its latest investment vehicle.

The firm launched its first $6 million investment vehicle in 2012, according to CrunchBase, just as Mexico’s former President Enrique Peña Nieto was coming to power with a pro-business platform. One which emphasized technology development as part of its strategy for encouraging economic growth.

ALL VP founding partner Fernando Lelo de Larrea said he could not speak about ongoing fundraising plans.

And while the broader economy has stumbled somewhat since Nieto took office, high technology businesses in Mexico are surging. In the first half of 2018, 82 Mexican startup companies raised $154 million in funding, according to data from the Latin American Venture Capital Association. It makes the nation the second most active market by number of deals — with a number of those deals occurring in later stage transactions.

In this, Mexico is something of a mirror for technology businesses across Latin America. While Brazilian startup companies have captured 73% of venture investment into Latin America — raising nearly $1.4 billion in financing — Peru, Chile, Colombia and Argentina are all showing significant growth. Indeed, some $188 million was invested into 23 startups in Colombia in the first half of the year. 

Overall, the region pulled in $780 million in financing in the first six months of 2018, besting the total amount of capital raised in all of 2016.

It’s against this backdrop of surging startup growth that funds like ALL VP are raising new cash.

Indeed, at $73 million the first close for the firm’s latest fund more than doubles the size of ALL VP’s capital under management.

But limited partners can also point to a burgeoning track record of success for the Mexican firm. ALL VP was one of the early investors in Cornershop — a delivery company acquired by Walmart for $225 million earlier this year. Cornershop had previously raised just $31.5 million and the bulk of that was a $21 million round from the Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm, Accel.

International acquirers are making serious moves in the Latin American market, with Walmart only one example of the types of companies that are shopping for technology startups in the region. The starting gun for Latin American startups stellar year was actually the DiDi acquisition of the ride-hailing company 99 for $1 billion back in January.

That, in turn, is drawing the attention of early stage investors. In fact, it’s venture capital firms from the U.S. and international investors like Naspers (from South Africa) and Chinese technology giants that are fueling the sky-high valuations of some of the region’s most successful startups.

Loggi, a logistics company raised $100 million from SoftBank in October, while the delivery service, Rappi, raked in $200 million in August, in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital.

In a market so frothy, it’s no wonder that investment firms are bulking up and raising increasingly large funds. The risk is that the market could overheat and that, with a lot of capital going to a few marquee names, should those companies fail to deliver, the rising tide of capital that’s come in to the region could just as easily come back out.

 

Read this slowly: The White House’s press secretary has tweeted a manipulated video shared by the editor-at-large of conspiracy theorist outlet Infowars to attempt to justify its decision to suspend the press credentials of CNN’s chief white house correspondent.

CNN’s Jim Acosta had his press pass pulled by the White House earlier today after press secretary Sarah Sanders claimed he had “plac[ed] his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job”.

Acosta disputes this.

The journalist had being trying to continue asking president Trump questions during a contentious exchange at a White House press briefing.

During this exchange Trump cut over him verbally — saying “that’s enough” — at which point a female White House intern moved towards Acosta and attempted to take the microphone out of his hands.

The journalist dodged and then blocked several attempts to take the microphone by using his arm and the side of his hand against the intern’s arm, addressing her with “pardon me ma’am” as he did so, and indicating that he was trying to ask Trump another question.

You can see what happened in a video shared by NBC News which captured footage of the incident (below). In the footage the intern can be seen stopping trying to remove the mic after Acosta speaks to her. He goes on to ask Trump if he is “worried about indictments coming down in [the Russia] investigation”.

Trump does not answer, repeating “that’s enough” and “put down the mic”.

Getting no answers, Acosta does then relinquish the mic.

Far right conspiracy theorist outlet Infowars quickly spun into action after this episode — publishing a couple of posts on its website couching Acosta’s actions as a “physical confrontation with female White House staffer”, and asking in a lengthy video post whether Acosta “assault[ed] a woman?”.

In the video Infowars editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson can be seen following the modern political disinformation playbook — avoiding personally claiming the incident constituted an assault while repeatedly showing manipulated, slowed down footage, stripped of its audio, to make it look like an assault — all the while suggestively reframing what happened to whip up hyperpartisan sentiment (‘what if this had been a conservative reporter ranting at Obama’ etc) in order to manipulate his audience to side with the president against CNN. 

Watson was also active on social media, seeding a further doctored version of footage on Twitter — which includes a repeat close crop that zooms in on the CNN reporter’s hand against the intern’s arm, making it look as if Acosta is giving her a karate chop.

This is very clearly not what the unedited video shows.

In the unedited footage Acosta can be seen essentially brushing off the intern’s attempt to grab the mic — and addressing her politely at the crucial moment, when the side of his hand is resting on her arm. She responds to his polite “pardon me ma’am” by stepped back and stopping trying to take the mic away.

Acosta then asks Trump more questions which Trump does not answer.

Now Infowars conspiracy theorists creating doctored videos to try to spin hyperpartisan junk news is not new or news. Their business model is based on manipulating viewers’ emotions to flog them, er, junk supplements.

But what is new is that three hours after Sanders issued her series of tweets accusing Acosta of inappropriately placing his hands on a young woman, the White House press secretary tweeted again — this time appearing to share the exact same doctored video that had been shared earlier by Watson, as he worked to put the Infowars’ divisive alternative spin on reality.

Sanders referred directly to the video in her tweet, claiming that “inappropriate behaviour” had been “clearly documented in this video”:

So the White House is using video footage that’s been manipulated through a conspiracy theorist lens to justify a free speech-chilling ban on an actual journalist.

I’ll say that again: The White House is using a manipulated video shared by conspiracy theorists to justify suspending the press credentials of CNN’s chief white house correspondent.

And once more: The White House is using lies to justify pulling the press credentials of a genuine journalist.

Trump has made no secret of his hatred for CNN — repeatedly badging the cable news network ‘fake news’ in myriad vitriolic tweets since taking office.

Now his administration has gone a step further in seeking to stamp out reality by using manipulated video to bar a genuine news outlet from presidential press briefings. A news outlet that the president especially hates.

Let that sink in.

It’s not just conspiracy theorists who use this kind of information manipulation playbook of course. Authoritarian regimes, terrorists, criminals, racists… the list goes on.

Now you can add the White House press secretary to that ignominious list.

We’ve reached out to the White House to ask why Sanders chose to share the Infowars video — rather than sharing unedited footage of the incident. We’ll update this post with any response.

Meanwhile, on the list of people being allowed into White House press briefings these days…

Southeast Asia ride-hailing firm Grab is continuing to add strategic investors to its ongoing Series H round — which is targeted at over $3 billion — after it revealed Thai bank Kasikorn put in $50 million as part of a strategic partnership to advance its financial services strategy.

Kasikorn joins Hyundai ($250 million), Microsoft (undisclosed) and travel firm Booking ($200 million) as strategic backers announced over the past month. The round also includes Toyota, which invested $1 billion in its largest ride-hailing deal to date, and institutional investors OppenheimerFunds, Ping An Capital, Mirae Asset-Naver Asia Growth Fund, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Macquarie Capital.

In the case of Kasikorn, Grab is working with the bank to roll out its GrabPay payment service in Thailand, a country with over 60 million people, as it begins to truly take steps to become a fintech player, in addition to ride-hailing.

The deal marks the completion of GrabPay efforts to reach the six largest markets in Southeast Asia, which also include Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. Grab has taken a mixed approach, it has gotten e-money licenses independently in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, while it has found local partners in the other countries — including Thailand. It has also struck deals with other in fintech, including Visa which will see it offer virtual debit cards inside the Grab app for all users next year.

The broad goal is to operate a payment network across Southeast Asia and among its cumulative population of over 620 million people. Grab believes that payments can be a glue that ties together its platform and compels customers to use multiple services beyond ride-hailing, for example, food delivery, on-demand services and a range of third-party-backed offerings that it is adding to its platform. There are also plans to go beyond payments and offer financial services such as loans.

Grab and Kasikorn will begin their payment rollout in 2019. That’ll initially mean that a ‘GrabPay by KBank’ wallet will pop up inside Thailand-based Grab users’ apps, but there are plans to offer Grab features in Kasikorn’s own K-Plus banking app further down the line. Kasikorn has also committed to offering loans via the services in the future.

Grab is not alone in targeting financial services. Japanese messaging firm Line offer products in Thailand co-branded with the operator of Bangkok’s Sky Train service, while Alibaba’s Ant Financial unit is present across most of the Southeast Asia region through local ventures. Close rival Go-Jek, which is expanding in Southeast Asia and looking to raise $2 billion, has offered payment and financial services in Indonesia for some time. Then there is also a plethora of financial services startups looking to address the region’s banking gap using the growth of internet access.

Grab is valued at more than $11 billion and it has raised over $6 billion to date from investors that include SoftBank and Didi Chuxing. It claims 125 million downloads across eight countries in Southeast Asia.

RealtimeBoard, a visual collaboration tool particularly suited to distributed teams, has picked up $25 million in Series A funding. Accel led the round, with participation from existing investor AltaIR Capital.

The 150 person-strong company — which itself is distributed across offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, and Perm — says it will use the additional capital to continue to scale, including building out its customer acquisition capabilities by bolstering sales and marketing teams, and growing its user community.

To that end, RealtimeBoard counts the likes of Hubspot, Skyscanner, Qlik, Autodesk, Netflix, and Twitter as customers, and claims 2 million users worldwide. The startup generates revenue by charging for use of its SaaS on a per seat basis for teams or company wide.

“As companies continue to compete for talent, and how we work rapidly changes, connecting the dots between teams in different offices, hubs or cultures becomes harder and harder,” says RealtimeBoard founder and CEO Andrey Khusid.

“Often the first teams to be distributed are product teams (to resolve the war for talent), and rituals that are built into product development frameworks like design thinking or scrum, which require visual collaboration (usually on a whiteboard), are challenging to scale”.

To solve this, Khusid says RealtimeBoard is building a visual collaboration platform that enables white-boarding work to happen in a digital space, and can serve as the glue between other collaboration platforms used by companies.

“[It] can be the visual hub for teams to huddle around and use throughout the product development process, design, sprint, or project lifecycle,” he says. “RealtimeBoard creates transparency and continuity through all stages of the product development process from ideation to development to launch”.

Features RealtimeBoard offers include the ability for teams to create virtual spaces or huddle boards to collaborate, where users can sketch, annotate, add posts, create flow charts or draw freehand on an infinite whiteboard canvas. The tool also supports comments, @mentions, live chat and video conferencing.

Crucially, the platform integrates with other commonly-used workforce tools such as Google Docs, Slack, Sketch, Jira, Trello, and Dropbox and more.

“All the major productivity tools can be embedded into RealtimeBoard, so we are enabling work that happens between systems happen in one place by incorporating all relevant content and conversations into the same visual space,” explains Khusid. “And, with some bi-directional integrations with Google Docs, Office 365, and Jira, you can do work in RealtimeBoard and update information in other systems and visa versa”.

Meanwhile, Khusid tells me the company’s early adopters have been “rapidly scaling tech companies” that leverage modern collaboration frameworks like Agile, Scrum, Lean, Design Thinking, etc., and that these teams are used to leveraging whiteboard rituals and are looking for ways to improve and scale in order to better engage remote team members. RealtimeBoard is also being used by around 100 enterprises, such as Salesforce, Netflix, SAP, Autodesk, Ikea, and Cisco.

Adds Khusid: “[They] have active workforce transformation initiatives to roll out things like ‘Design Thinking; globally or drive innovation through new tools and ways of collaborating. We also see a lot of management consulting companies like PwC, McKinsey, BCG and Deloitte that leverage RealtimeBoard to innovate with their customers”.

TripActions, one of the most well-capitalized travel startups in Silicon Valley, has raised yet another round of capital valuing the corporate travel manager at more than $1 billion.

Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz will join TripActions’ board of directors as part of the startup’s $154 million in Series C funding. Lightspeed Venture Partners, Zeev Ventures and SGVC also participated in the round.

Co-founders Ariel Cohen and Ilan Twig said TripActions’ $236 million raised to date, as well as its new “unicorn” valuation, is justified by its 700 percent annual growth rate and more than 1,000 customers.

“We mean it when we say our solution is so good we want to make sure we are bringing it to as many companies, as many employees as possible,” TripActions’ CEO Cohen told TechCrunch. “The main reason to raise more money is just to continue to go for that as fast as we can.”

Cohen and Twig previously co-founded StreamOnce, business collaboration software that was acquired by Jive Software for an estimated $10 million in 2013. They founded TripActions in 2015.

The Palo Alto-based company provides a corporate travel platform that integrates with company HR and expense systems. Using TripActions, business travelers can arrange flights, hotels and transportation, with 24/7 global support from the startup’s staff. Dropbox, Lyft, Twilio, Allbirds and Tuft & Needle are among its customers.

The company has expanded its platform by adding TripActions Luxe, a VIP program for executive travelers; TripActions’ in-house Meetings & Event solution for group travel; and TripActions’ Guest Invite Portal, designed for HR and recruiting teams. It also recently opened its European headquarters, an engineering and data science hub in Amsterdam, and plans to double down on R&D, AI and machine learning with the fresh investment.

Travel companies have been raking in capital this year in what Cohen sees as a big moment for tech startups in the space. The global travel and tourism industry is, after all, one of the most valuable industries, worth some $7 trillion. The online travel market, in particular, is expected to grow to $817 billion by 2020.

“Something is really happening in the industry; something bigger than us,” Cohen said. “Different startups are identifying the opportunity here and the fact that companies want to make sure their employees are happy while they are on the go, that’s why you see investments in companies like Brex and like TripActions.”

“It’s about time that employees really feel great while they are booking their trip, while they are on the go and while they are doing their expenses at the end.”

In just a half hour, we’ll be starting Startup Battlefield LATAM in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Along with interviews with Nubank, Movile, Yellow, and a keynote from Facebook (TC’s partner for the event through FB Start), 15 startups from all across Latin America will be pitching their innovative companies on the TechCrunch stag for the first time.

We will be posting videos of the pitches, panels, and the competition winner on TechCrunch later today, so if you can’t be here in person check back.

In partnership with FB Start, this is the first year that TechCrunch is hosting Startup Battlefield in Latin America. TechCrunch reviewed hundreds upon hundreds of startups from all across the region, finally selecting 15 of the companies most promising startups to compete for Startup Battlefield. Startups are competing for a $25,000 prize (equity free), plus a trip for 2 to TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2019 and the coveted, objectively correct title of “Latin America’s Favorite Startup.”

Founders have received extensive coaching from the TC team and are ready to launch on this prestigious international stage. For each round, teams will pitch for six minutes, including a live demo, followed by an intense six minute Q&A with the judges – elite VCs and product experts. After judge deliberations, five companies will move on to the final round of TechCrunch Startup Battlefield – the same pitch but a more rigorous Q&A.

Who are the 15 top companies? From rapid diagnostic TB tests and cattle weight management artificial intelligence, to finance banking solutions, management systems and point of sale solutions, this batch of companies impacts the lives of millions globally. Companies also include, at-work medical service innovations, music management platforms for brands, blockchain based prescription management, and even innovations in keyless entry for short term rentals and office spaces. Founders in the agricultural tech industry are poised to revolutionize how we grow food.

From innovations in utility tracking and management, farm management platforms, to women focused direct sales optimization platforms, Startup Battlefield LATAM is poised to showcase the regions top innovations. Stay tuned for videos on TechCrunch.com after the event.

Session 1: 9:35am – 10:40am

Cuidas, Nube, Beluga Pay, SimpliRoute, Unima

Session 2: 11:40am – 12:40pm

Elenas, Finerio, Space AG, Agilis, Olho do Dono

Session 3: 1:40pm – 2:40pm

LoopKey, 1Doc3, Brandtrack, RxChain by Prescrypto, Cuenca

Finals: 4:00pm

_________________________________________________

9:30 am – 9:35 am: Welcome Remarks by Jordan Crook (TechCrunch)

9:35 am – 10:40 am: Startup Battlefield Session 1

TechCrunch’s iconic startup competition is here and for the first time in LATAM, as entrepreneurs from around the region pitch expert judges and vie for US$25,000 no-equity cash prize and a trip for two to compete in the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2019.

10:40 am – 11:05 am: A China Twist to Brazil’s Mobility Revolution with Ariel Lambrecht (Yellow), Eduardo Musa (Yellow), Tony Qiu (Didi Chuxing), Hans Tung (GGV Capital)

With Didi Chuxing’s acquisition of car-sharing service 99 and GGV’s investment in scooter / bike mobility startup Yellow, what lessons from China’s mobility revolution will unfold in Brazil?

11:05 am – 11:20 am: Break

11:20 am – 11:40 am: Keynote by Konstantinos Papamiltiadis (Facebook)

Facebook’s Director of Platform Partnerships discusses the Facebook developer ecosystem. Sponsored by Facebook.

11:40 am – 12:40 pm: Startup Battlefield Session 2

TechCrunch’s iconic startup competition is here and for the first time in LATAM, as entrepreneurs from around the region pitch expert judges and vie for US$25,000 no-equity cash prize and a trip for two to compete in the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2019.

12:40 pm – 1:40 pm: Break

1:40 pm – 2:40 pm: Startup Battlefield Session 3

TechCrunch’s iconic startup competition is here and for the first time in LATAM, as entrepreneurs from around the region pitch expert judges and vie for US$25,000 no-equity cash prize and a trip for two to compete in the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2019.

2:40 pm – 3:00: Fireside Chat with Cristina Junqueira (Nubank) and David Velez (Nubank)

With $180 million in fresh capital and a $4 billion valuation, where will Nubank go from here

3:00 pm – 3:20 pm: Keynote by Rodrigo Schmidt (Instagram)

The director of engineering at Instagram discusses the rapid growth and development of the popular photo-sharing app. Sponsored by Facebook.

3:20 pm – 3:45 pm: Venture Investing In Latin America Today Eric Acher (Monashees),Veronica Allende Serra (Innova Capital ), Hernan Kazah (Kaszek), Fernando Lelo de Larrea (ALLVP)

The pace and scale of venture investing in Latin America is accelerating fast. How will the ecosystem adapt?

3:45 pm – 4:00 pm: Break

4:00 pm – 5:15 pm: Startup Battlefield Final

The final round. One of these five finalists will be the winner of Startup Battlefield winning US$25,000 no-equity cash prize and a trip for two to compete in the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2019.

5:15 pm – 5:35 pm: 20 Years Ahead of the Curve with Fabricio Bloisi (Movile)

Movile started with SMS and ringtones in 1998 and evolved into a powerful conglomerate of digital businesses on mobile platforms. Founder Fabricio Bloisi discusses the journey and what’s next.

5:35 pm – 6:00 pm: New Wave Latin Founders with David Arana (Konfio), Juan Pablo Bruzzo (Moni), Ana McLaren (Enjoie), Sebastian Mejia (Rappi)

The latest generation of tech founders in Latin America may be more disruptive than their predecessors but also face rapidly rising expectations at home and abroad.

6:00 pm – 6:15 pm: Startup Battlefield Closing Awards Ceremony

In just about three weeks, on 29-30 November, literally thousands of startup fans will flock to Deutschland’s edgiest city to experience Disrupt Berlin 2018 — Europe’s premier tech conference focused on early-stage startups.

Attendees tell us time and again that networking and building relationships with the right people is one of the most essential and rewarding aspects of TechCrunch Disrupt. We couldn’t agree more, and that’s why we decided to make networking at Disrupt Berlin a whole lot easier by offering CrunchMatch, our free business match-matching platform, to all registered attendees — not just investors and founders.

No matter who you want to meet in Berlin — tech service providers, product managers, developers, marketers or engineers, founders or investors — CrunchMatch will help you “Die Nadel im Heuhaufen suchen” or find the needle in the haystack. And here’s the best part. CrunchMatch, powered by Brella, makes the connections based on your specific criteria, goals and interests.

Here’s how it works. All registered Disrupt Berlin attendees will receive an email explaining how to access the platform and fill out a profile. Identify your role (developer, service provider, founder, etc.) and who you want to connect with at Disrupt. CrunchMatch works a little algorithmic magic to suggest matches and, if approved, sends meeting requests and proposes meeting times, which recipients can accept or decline.

CrunchMatch helps you make the most of your limited time at Disrupt. Caleb John, the CEO of Cedar Robotics, had this to say about his experience with the service at Disrupt San Francisco 2018. “CrunchMatch is a great way to pitch your ideas to investors quickly. Instead of approaching each one individually, just type up your pitch and send it to 50 people. Even if only 10 percent get back to you, you still have five investors. It’s one of the best benefits.”

The service also makes networking quick and efficient, according to Michael Kocan, a managing partner at Trend Discovery. “I used CrunchMatch to schedule more than 35 meetings with startups. It makes vetting deals extremely efficient.”

Disrupt Berlin 2018 takes place November 29-30, and it’s not too late to buy your ticket. Opportunity’s knocking, and now we’re making CrunchMatch available to help every attendee fling the door wide open.

Infarm, the Berlin-based startup that has developed vertical farming tech for grocery stores, restaurants and local distribution centres to bring fresh and artisan produce much closer to the consumer, is expanding to Paris.

Once again, the company is partnering with Metro in a move that will see Infarm’s “in-store farming” platform installed in the retailer’s flagship store in the French capital city later this month. The 80 metre square “vertical farm” will produce approximately 4 tonnes of premium quality herbs, leafy greens, and microgreens annually, and means that Metro will become completely self-sufficient in its herb production with its own in-store farm.

Founded in 2013 by Osnat Michaeli, and brothers Erez and Guy Galonska, Infarm has developed an “indoor vertical farming” system capable of growing anything from herbs, lettuce and other vegetables, and even fruit. It then places these modular farms in a variety of customer-facing city locations, such as grocery stores, restaurants, shopping malls, and schools, thus enabling the end-customer to actually pick the produce themselves.

The distributed system is designed to be infinitely scalable — you simply add more modules, space permitting — whilst the whole thing is cloud-based, meaning the farms can be monitored and controlled from Infarm’s central control centre. It’s data-driven: a combination of IoT, Big Data and cloud analytics akin to “Farming-as-a-Service”.

The idea isn’t just to produce fresher and better tasting produce and re-introduce forgotten or rare varieties, but to disrupt the supply chain as a whole, which remains inefficient and produces a lot of waste.

“Many before have tried to solve the deficiencies in the current supply chain, we wanted to redesign the entire chain from start to finish; Instead of building large-scale farms outside of the city, optimising on a specific yield and then distributing the produce, we decided it would be more effective to distribute the farms themselves and farm directly where people live and eat,” explains Erez Galonska, co-founder and CEO of Infarm, in a statement.

Meanwhile, the move into France follows $25 million in Series A funding raised by Infarm at the start of the year and is part of an expansion plan that has already seen one hundred farms powered by the Infarm platform launch. Other recent installations include Edeka locations in Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, and Hannover. Further expansion into Zurich, Amsterdam, and London is said to be planned over the coming months.

“One thousand in-store farms are being rolled out in Germany alone,” adds Infarm’s Osnat Michaeli. “We are expanding to other European markets each and every day, partnering with leading supermarket chains and planning our North America expansion program for 2019. Recognising the requirements of our customers we have recently launched a new product; DC farm – a ‘Seed to Package’ production facility tailored to the needs of retail chains’ distribution centres. We’ve just installed our very first ‘DC farm’ in EDEKA’s distribution center”.